Cheers and laughter greeting the survival of the Government’s public sector pay cap, emanating from the fat, affluent arses settled on the Tory benches, doesn’t exactly make one feel proud to be British. The PM’s praise of how the emergency services performed in the recent disasters to have befallen the country has a hollow ring to it when a magic money tree can buy DUP support but can’t provide a pay rise for those dealing with the disasters on the front-line. More than that, though, it was the absence of both dignity and humility on the winning side as the result of the vote was announced, receiving the news in a manner that implied delight in the misfortune of others, something that serves to reinforce the low opinion so many have of Parliament.
However, when confronted by such an ugly and unedifying spectacle, it’s worth remembering that there are some out there who illuminate our parade rather than rain on it, some who exist to bring pleasure into our lives rather than maintain misery. One such person was Michael Bond, whose death at the age of 91 was announced yesterday. Bond was the author of the Paddington Bear books and also the producer of the memorable animated Paddington series that once curtailed the daily children’s TV schedule on BBC1 before the real world elbowed its way into the picture again via the news. I have to admit the version of the theme tune accompanying the closing credits still induces a sadness that ‘my telly’ is over for another day, even though it’s been over for decades.
Like his illustrious bear predecessors Winnie the Pooh and Rupert, Paddington is an anthropomorphised creature, and in his distinctive hat and duffle coat stands as one of the most recognisable characters in children’s literature; personality-wise, he is (to use a much-derided word) nice. His charming, child-like inquisitiveness with the world he arrives in from Darkest Peru often lands him in trouble and creates trouble for those around him, but he is an innocent abroad and his kindly nature, coupled with his very English politeness, makes him impossible not to warm to. Provide him with enough marmalade sandwiches and he’ll be your friend for life.
The first of the Paddington books appeared in 1958 and the last just three years ago. I first became aware of the character, though, via the short stories that for many years appeared in the annual ‘Blue Peter’ book. Then, of course, there was the original Film Fair series that debuted in 1975, bringing the loveable bear to a wider audience than ever. Seven years previously, Michael Bond had created another immortal animated series also produced by Film Fair for BBC1, ‘The Herbs’. With each character named after an actual herb, the likes of Parsley the lion and Dill the dog still immediately re-enter my head when browsing the herbs and spices shelves at Sainsbury’s, which I suppose is testament to the impact the series had on an impressionable infant imagination.
As animals, bears seem uniquely enduring as children’s characters, stretching all the way back to the trio that found Goldilocks in their abode; perhaps the connection with teddy bears is important. If we’re lucky enough, a teddy will be our first bedtime companion, and I guess it was to be expected that this bond would be played upon by authors. The aforementioned and long-running success of both Pooh and Rupert no doubt gave Paddington’s creator the idea he’d probably be onto a winner if he added another bear to the animal farm of children’s fiction and he was right. Paddington’s ongoing popularity led to a successful animated movie in 2014; a sequel is scheduled to be released this year. There’s even a statue of him at the London station from which he took his name.
The 1970s TV series was narrated by Michael Horden, whose marvellous rich voice was one of many in a long line of inspired choices to narrate children’s series during this era. Another was Brian Cant, whose death last week I marked in a post; his narration covered the entire ‘Trumptonshire Trilogy’, which had a longer run on television than even Cant’s lengthy stint on camera in both ‘Play School’ and ‘Play Away’. Michael Bond’s creation was more well-known than the creator himself, but his death, coming so soon after the death of Cant and of John Noakes, is one more sobering reminder of time passing. Happily, all three lived to a ripe old age and the magic they wove stays with those of us for whom it was pivotal to our formative years.
The mood of the moment sometimes appears to be so relentlessly bleak that when someone leaves us whose contribution was joyous and made us smile, it’s inevitable we feel sad at their departure. When the nasty, unpleasant and hate-fuelled seem to have the biggest platform of all, it’s only natural we celebrate a benign legacy and mourn the loss of that legacy’s creator. We could do with a few more of them, and a little less of the other.
© The Editor
The ungracious and shameful manner in which Charles Kennedy’s alcoholism was handled by his party – the same party, lest we forget, for which he had grabbed the largest number of seats since its previous incarnation eighty years previously – was a sober lesson in Westminster morals at their most ruthless. Stabbed in the back by colleagues with unrealisable ambitions to better what Kennedy had achieved, he was replaced by Sir Menzies (AKA ‘Ming the Merciless’) Campbell, whose leadership was such a roaring success it lasted barely a year. And then came Clegg. Alas, poor Nick, we knew him well. Gordon Brown agreed with him, and so did David Cameron.
The news that six people – three of them former coppers – will be charged with offences relating to the Hillsborough tragedy of 1989 flies in the face of the usual routine where ex-police officers have bent the rules to cover their own backs. Early retirement is the standard reward as the offenders are pensioned off and stick to their stories. Yes, it may be a belated announcement that the Crown Prosecution Service have charged six involved on the day, but it’s about bloody time. One of the six is Sir Norman Bettison, a Chief Inspector with the South Yorkshire Police in 1989, and a man who competed with Kelvin McKenzie to propagate the most despicable myths re the behaviour of the fans that day. He is being charged with four offences of misconduct in public office.
Yes, desperate times call for desperate measures and Theresa May is desperate. Once upon a time, the Conservative Party could always rely on the tacit support of Ulster Unionists to ease the passage of unpopular legislation through the Commons, though the Northern Ireland peace process has negated favouritism in recent years and the blue bridge across the Irish Sea has been closed to traffic for quite some time now. There was also the self-conscious rebranding of the Tories by David Cameron, seeking to lose the ‘nasty party’ tag by promoting a series of socially liberal reforms that culminated in same-sex marriages; not only did this infuriate old-school commentators in a more traditional Tory vein such as Peter Hitchens; it also alienated the Conservatives from their ancient allies in the Loyalist camp.
When it comes to precedents of an old man inspiring hysterical fanaticism amongst the young, the omens aren’t great. The Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran from exile in 1979 was especially well-received by students, some of whom stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took 52 American citizens hostage, keeping them there for 444 days in the name of the Revolution. Just over a decade earlier, Mao Tse-tung decided the best way to neutralise his rivals within the Communist Party of China was to instigate a ruthless purge made possible by the personality cult of Mao himself, something that particularly appealed to teenagers in the absence of pop stars.
Well, exactly one year ago today we were all about to wake up to the news that a majority of the Great British Public had voted to leave the European Union. At the time, this blog showcased a variety of views pre-vote, and I welcomed them all into what I hoped would be perceived as a healthy forum for the great debate of our times. Twelve months on, the subject remains on the tip of that same public’s tongue, though the phrase ‘Brexit’ has become so ubiquitous that I have to admit I’m pretty sick of it. The General Election of just over a fortnight ago was called in order that Theresa May could strengthen her position when it came to orchestrating the actual physical withdrawal from the EU, and the inconclusive result of that campaign speaks volumes as to how divisive the issue has remained ever since June 23/24 last year.
There’s something about cricket that lends itself to a certain kind of voice. John Arlott, Johnners, Jim Laker, Fred Trueman, Richie Benaud, and Henry Blofeld – none of these great gentlemen could have commentated on football or rugby league, for example. The fast-paced nature of both those sports was suited to immortal voices belonging to the likes of Brian Moore or Eddie Waring – the former able to capture goalmouth action with such a memorable level of fevered excitement that it ensured Jim Montgomery’s miraculous save from Peter Lorimer in the ’73 Cup Final would be incomplete without him; and the latter perfectly complementing what was once a gritty, grubby sport played on cold, muddy pitches with a bullish northern delivery that was never better expressed than when Wakefield Trinity’s Don Fox missed a penalty kick in the dying seconds of the ’68 Challenge Cup Final that handed the cup to Leeds – ‘eeh, the poor lad’.
A hidden track on his first solo album and a single that understandably failed to pick up much in the way of airplay, ‘Running the World’ by Jarvis Cocker achieved modest notoriety via its catchy chorus, which repeated the simple phrase ‘C***s are still running the world’. One could argue the lyrical sentiment of the song should qualify it as a far more apt number to be covered by a multi-artist ensemble for victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster than an obvious, irrelevant anthem like ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’. But what else can we expect when a clueless cretin like Simon Cowell, a man for whom music is merely a means to a big car and a big house, is the mastermind behind assembling so many practitioners of the vocally histrionic and emotionally sentimental under one roof?
A few weeks ago I marked the half-century of ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ in a post intended as a little nostalgic interlude from the contemporary doom ‘n’ gloom that has invariably continued to dominate posts ever since. Although I’m not adhering to precise dates, another landmark album – albeit one that characterised the ‘post-Rock’ age we still reside in – also appeared in the month of June, thirty years after The Beatles’ magnum opus and twenty years away from today, Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’. The media may have neglected to mark the occasion, but in many respects, ‘OK Computer’ is the landmark album the media doesn’t like to talk about. I’d almost forgotten two decades had elapsed since its release, for it still sounds like the soundtrack to the here and now.
‘Forces of anarchy, wreckers of law and order: Communists, Maoists, Trotskyists, neo-Trotskyists, crypto-Trotskyists, union leaders, Communist union leaders, atheists, agnostics, long-haired weirdos, short-haired weirdos, vandals, hooligans, football supporters, namby-pamby probation officers, rapists, papists, papist rapists, foreign surgeons, head-shrinkers – who ought to be locked-up; Wedgewood-Benn, keg bitter, punk rock, glue-sniffers, Play for Today, squatters, Clive Jenkins, Roy Jenkins, up Jenkins, up everybody, Chinese restaurants…’
Only three weeks ago I penned a post in tribute to childhood giant John Noakes and mentioned how Noakes’ memorable persona was in the ‘daft uncle’ tradition so prevalent on children’s television in the 1970s. A name that cropped up in this post was that of Brian Cant; and now Cant too has gone. He was the same age as Noakes – 83 – and was held in the same affectionate esteem by those of us who watched him as kids.
The death of Helmut Kohl last week was understandably overshadowed by more dramatic events in Blighty, but I’ll be fair and declare that Kohl (for good or ill) was the most influential German since Franz Beckenbauer or the collective members of Kraftwerk, rather than that funny fellow with the toothbrush moustache – who was really an Austrian, anyway. Kohl passed away on Friday at the age of 87, having retired from public office in 1998; but he was German Chancellor at the most crucial stage of the country’s post-war existence, overseeing unification in 1990 and consequently becoming the first properly elected Chancellor of a united Germany since a certain Mr Hitler in 1933.
The old complaint always used to be that there were too many repeats on television; but I suppose it depended on what was being repeated. A classic BBC series such as ‘The Forsyte Saga’ benefitted from being repeated, with the programme and the audience joint beneficiaries. It earned its household name popularity when receiving a repeat run on BBC1 in 1968, having originally been screened on BBC2 the year before. At the time, the majority of the country’s viewers couldn’t receive the Beeb’s second channel on their ageing 405-line sets, so it was a shrewd move by BBC1, intended to justify the considerable expense spent on the serial. One is made aware of just how poor the image quality must have been on those 60s tellies when watching ‘The Forsyte Saga’ on DVD today; some of the makeup used to age the actors doesn’t necessarily bear up to digital scrutiny.
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