VERY NEARLY AN ARMFUL

New Year, even more than Christmas, is one of the few dates ringed on the calendar in which overindulgence is practically compulsory; outside of weddings and stag-do’s, getting plastered any other time of the year tends to be frowned upon, but on December 31 it’s officially OK to let yourself go. You must enjoy yourself. Without wishing to sound too contrary, however, I’ve always been uncomfortable about any state-sponsored ‘fun’; it feels too much like a Bacchanalian Butlin’s, and if I’m going to indulge I’d rather do so on a day of my own choosing, not have government or the drinks industry choose it on my behalf. And on the odd occasion when I do indulge, one frustrating thing I’ve found is that there’s never quite enough in one bottle of wine; at the same time, there’s too much in two. If only one last glass could be squeezed out of that first bottle, there’d be no need to crack open the second. Well, it seems moves are now afoot to sell wine by the pint, reducing the number of glasses in a bottle – one of the more eccentric ‘Brexit opportunities’ to have been dreamt up by a government that apparently has nothing better to do.

None other than Winston Churchill himself was fond of the pint measure when it came to his favourite champagne, claiming the bottle provided ‘enough for two at lunch and one at dinner’ – though if we are to believe the stories of Sir Winston’s appetite for a tipple, I suspect he had more than one at dinner. Robert Burns was another notable historical figure to celebrate what he referred to as ‘a pint o’ wine’, and even though beer remains resolutely served in pints, wine and spirits have long since shed the remnants of imperial measurements to fall into line with the European metric system. Indeed, for many decades the faint rumblings of a determined rejection of edicts imposed on the British people by the EU was largely manifested as an anti-metric movement, with market traders and shopkeepers routinely afforded headlines in the more Euro-sceptic dailies as they valiantly battled to uphold traditional weights and measures we were ordered to abandon; long before the Brexit vote, the so-called ‘metric martyrs’ were staging their own little battles against Brussels, even if the majority greeted these turf wars as trivial and insignificant.

During the premiership of Boris Johnson, there were vague hints that some imperial measurements would again be an option, with any trader still wishing to use pounds and ounces no longer forced to convert to the metric system or face prosecution for failing to do so. But pints of wine appear to be the limit of this flirtation with the old ways on the part of the Government, which hasn’t indicated it will introduce any legislation to enforce them. The Department for Business and Trade said, ‘Following extensive consultation, the Government has decided not to introduce any new legislation in this area. But new guidance has been issued to promote awareness and use of imperial measurements.’ Reaction from winemakers has been fairly unenthusiastic, however; one was quoted as saying ‘No one is going to make a pint-sized bottle. In order to make one, you’re going to have to invest a huge amount of money. It’s a silly measure’.

The standard bottle of wine contains 750ml and is the universal bottle size where most wines in the world are concerned; there are, of course, the larger magnum (1.5 litres) and jeroboam (3 litres), as well as the half-bottle, which holds 375ml; but 750ml is the most common size. A pint-sized wine bottle would house 568ml, so as a measurement it doesn’t sound like an improvement; granted, there may well be ‘romantic’ nostalgic associations, especially from those old enough to remember pint-sized bottles of champagne from before 1973; but I can’t honestly say there’s much appeal to it for yours truly, despite the characteristic hyperbole spouted by Kevin Hollinrake, who is apparently the Minister for enterprise, markets and small businesses. ‘Our exit from the EU was all about moments just like this,’ he gushed, ‘where we can seize new opportunities and provide a real boost to our Great British wineries and further growing the economy.’ He went on to add hackneyed buzzwords like ‘innovation, freedom and choice’, but I won’t bore you with any further quotes. And I won’t be having a pint either.

RESTING IN PEACE

I’ve no idea how many posts this year ended up paying tribute to a notable figure to have passed away, but it feels like a hell of a lot. I guess 2023 has just been one of them years. Television celebrities were well-represented: Mike Yarwood, Michael Parkinson, George Alagiah, Paul O’Grady, and Wilf Lunn – to name just a small handful. Sport, especially football, suffered several losses this year: Terry Venables, Bill Kenwright, John Motson, Bobby Charlton, Francis Lee, Trevor Francis, and Gianluca Vialli were amongst some of the more prominent. Music bade farewell to Shane MacGowan, Sinead O’Connor, Tony Bennett, Jane Birkin, Tina Turner, Burt Bacharach, Jeff Beck, Denny Laine, and David Crosby. The acting profession lost Ryan O’Neal, Matthew Perry, Michael Gambon, David McCallum, Alan Arkin, Joss Ackland, Glenda Jackson, Raquel Welch, and Gina Lollobrigida. Politics saw the departures of Alistair Darling, Nigel Lawson, and Betty Boothroyd, whilst the written word would no longer be written by Benjamin Zephaniah, Martin Amis, or Fay Weldon.

Some of those characters received brief – and extended – obituaries on here, whilst others passed away between posts and failed to claim any column inches in the Winegum. To be honest, at times it was hard keeping up with the relentless roll-call of the departed, coming so quickly after one another (and often on the same day) that it was no wonder memories of 2016 – another especially busy year for the Grim Reaper – kept springing to mind. Many of those who conked out in 2023 had reached a ripe old age, and their passing – however sad – was no great surprise; others appeared to have bailed out prematurely and left us feeling they had plenty more to achieve. I suppose, considering how many people must pass away in the space of a calendar year, a small proportion are bound to be household names known to millions due to their professions commanding large audiences, and their deaths are the ones that inevitably make the headlines. There’s also the fact that a fair amount of the celebrities we lost this year emanated from the first generation to capitalise on the rapid growth of the mass media in the 1960s and 70s – and, as we are reminded whenever one of them pops their clogs, the 1960s and 70s get further away from the here and now with each passing year.

If one thinks of popular music as being perhaps the most culturally significant art produced during this period, it’s worth remembering how many of that generation are now either approaching their eighth decade or are already well in it. Paul McCartney will be 82 next year, Mick Jagger 81, and Bob Dylan 83. All three appear relatively fit and well, still recording and touring, and could feasibly make it into their 90s or maybe even reach 100; but there’s also the sad truth that none of them will be around forever; indeed, with the loss of numerous important musical figures belonging to their own generation in recent years, they must be more conscious than ever as to how quickly the clock is ticking. But, for the moment, they’re still with us; and the art, at least, always will be. And that’s a nice cheery note to end the year on, I reckon. It could’ve been worse, though – I’ve managed to avoid mentioning some of the more depressing news stories of 2023, and let’s face it, we haven’t been short on those. So, unless some major event occurs in the next three or four days, I’ll meet you in the next world…sorry, year; don’t be late.

© The Editor

Website: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/

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THE GREAT BRITISH ECCENTRIC

The first time one sees a famous face in the flesh as a child tends to stick in the memory; those tiny figures crammed into the cathode ray tube were difficult to imagine outside of that context, to visualise as full-size, bona-fide people just like everyone else, so it’s no wonder encountering them beyond the box was borderline surreal. At a young age I remember seeing Richard Whiteley filling up his car at a petrol station on Kirkstall Road, just across from the Yorkshire Television studios; so he was definitely the first, even though he was only a household name in the YTV region at the time, still being a decade away from network celebrity via a certain afternoon institution. The next famous face I saw was in 1976, when I was spending a few days at my grandparents’ home during the school summer holidays; they lived in Huddersfield, and journeying into the town centre with my grandma was a regular outing as we shopped for something that would keep me occupied, usually a book or a comic. As anyone of a certain age will remember from those rationed television days, BBC1 would schedule a holiday mix of repeats for younger viewers on weekday mornings, usually containing one of the four foreign serials – ‘Robinson Crusoe’, ‘The Flashing Blade’, ‘Belle et Sébastien’, and ‘The White Horses’; the year in question also saw the line-up include the rerunning of early 70s editions of ‘Vision On’, the brilliantly imaginative series theoretically produced for the deaf, but enjoyed by all children who saw it.

One of the stellar characters of the ‘Vision On’ team – alongside mime act bendy Ben Benison, artist Tony Hart, Pat Keysell (with her sign language), and future Time Lord Sylvester McCoy – was a uniquely eccentric inventor of amusingly oddball objects and joyfully pointless machines, ‘Professor’ Wilf Lunn. This wild-haired, hirsute ginger magician with Lennon-esque spectacles and the air of a less manic Vivian Stanshall was one of the most distinctive figures on children’s television at the time, the kind who could only have gained a foot in the door during the early 1970s. After viewing one of his performances from that period on a (no doubt) warm morning in 1976, I set off for the bus with my grandma and we headed for Huddersfield town centre. Walking alongside her down one of the numerous shopping thoroughfares, I spotted a sore thumb sticking out of the multitudes, an unmistakable, bespectacled and red-headed, slightly portly figure striding up the street in a denim waistcoat plastered in badges; it felt as though he had literally stepped out of the television set, for there he was – Wilfred Makepeace Lunn. It couldn’t have been anybody else.

I pulled at my grandma’s arm and told her it was ‘that man off the telly’ and I can’t recall her response, though it was probably one of those ‘Oh, yes, that’s nice’ lines that adults come out with for children when their minds are elsewhere; but she wouldn’t have recognised him, anyway. Prof Lunn wasn’t part of her generation’s televisual wallpaper. I had no one to confirm I was actually seeing who I was convinced I was seeing as he walked past, and the brief incident slowly faded into the realms of childhood memory, one of those where it almost ends up midway between dream and reality because it was hard to believe a TV star would be pounding the streets of a provincial town. Well, several decades later, I was working my way through YouTube channels during the early novelty years of stumbling across long-lost archive footage, and I discovered Wilf Lunn had his own channel. After visiting it once or twice, I decided to tell the great man himself that I thought I’d seen him in Huddersfield as a child, and posted a comment with words to that effect. Within a few hours, I received a reply; he said it probably was him, as he was living in the area at the time. So, finally, it was confirmed. I hadn’t dreamt it! I’d seen Wilf Lunn doing his shopping.

Rob Halford, the screeching singer with Metal band Judas Priest, and a man known for his leather-and-stud stage outfits, once observed in his trademark West Midlands lilt that members of the public who recognise him offstage often expect him to be dressed in his familiar gear; but, as he said, he’s not going to be wearing it when he’s buying his groceries in Morrison’s. The fact Wilf Lunn looked the same in the flesh as on TV was a bonus, like seeing Jon Pertwee in his frills and velvet jacket even when not battling the Daleks; as viewers, and especially as children, we want our heroes to always be the way they look when encased in the perimeters of the gogglebox. Granted, Wilf Lunn wasn’t wearing a hat with a plastic pigeon perched on top of it – as he occasionally did on television; but he was still Wilf Lunn. And, looking back, what a gloriously original and entertaining character he was. I say was because I’ve only just heard his name has recently been added to the Grim Reaper’s lengthy list of scalps in 2023, passing away a little more than a week ago at the age of 81.

Lunn was born in 1942 in the village of Rastrick – just outside of Huddersfield and once renowned for its part-share in a brass brand with neighbouring town Brighouse; perhaps the most famous son of the vicinity was movie star James Mason, whose parents lived nearby. It was through them that the young Wilf met the actor, who introduced him to a theatrical agent. Lunn auditioned for ‘Vision On’ (which, like that other children’s mainstay of the era, ‘Animal Magic’, was based at BBC Bristol), but didn’t initially get the gig. Beginning in 1964, ‘Vision On’ had broken new ground for kids TV at a time when the medium was still struggling to escape from its somewhat starched 50s suit; ‘Vision On’ was very much in tune with the 60s zeitgeist more than any other children’s programme of the period, and it seemed a natural home for Wilf Lunn. He would get there eventually, but his first big TV break came on BBC2’s ‘Late Night Line-Up’, which had given exposure to several notable fellow eccentrics such as the deadpan Scottish poet and musician Ivor Cutler; indeed, Cutler’s appearance on the programme in 1967 was caught by Paul McCartney, who invited him to appear in ‘Magical Mystery Tour’. With nothing else occupying television space in the twilight hours, ‘Late Night Line-Up’ was routinely watched by night-owls like rock stars returning home from recording sessions, so it certainly helped give Lunn’s career a leg-up.

He didn’t appear in any Beatles movie, but he was recalled to Bristol and arrived just in time for television’s transition into Technicolor, with few other BBC shows bar ‘Top of the Pops’ more suited to the move away from monochrome than ‘Vision On’. During his long stint on the programme, Wilf Lunn spent most of each edition hammering away at some madcap creation that would then be unveiled before the rest of the team; he had clearly found his niche, and it’s hard to imagine where else could have been so receptive to it. When ‘Vision On’ came to an end the very year I saw the Professor in person, Lunn didn’t cross over to the spinoff ‘Take Hart’, but resurfaced three years later in another highly original children’s series created by ‘Vision On’ producer Clive Doig, ‘Jigsaw’. Lunn’s bonkers and intentionally impractical inventions continued to be the main draw, and he exhibited them on everything from ‘Nationwide’ and ‘Game for a Laugh’ to…er…’Rolf on Saturday, OK!’ and ‘Jim’ll Fix It’.

Wilf Lunn continued to pop up on television whenever that endangered species, the Great British Eccentric, fell under the spotlight; and to be honest, it was difficult to think of a more fitting example, particularly as society accelerated its depressing slide into conformity and uniformity. Wilf Lunn remained defiantly Wilf Lunn, regardless of how much the nation turned away from his brand of admirable individuality; and even if it has become the mother of all clichés to declare we don’t make ‘em like that anymore, the sad truth is we really don’t.

© The Editor

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POOR ME

Tis the season to be sorry – or to at least ‘strike a pose’ as Madonna once advised on her 1990 No.1 hit, ‘Vogue’; after all, we’re well-versed by now with the public figure caught out and forced to apologise in a one-to-one television interview. Indeed, so well-versed are we that it rarely convinces as a genuine apology and always looks like a PR stunt designed as an act of contrition that will hopefully set the guilty party on the road to redemption. MPs nabbed with either their trousers down or their hands in the till at one time infamously favoured standing outside their houses, reading a pre-prepared statement to the media with their family cynically positioned beside them, whereas celebrities tended to opt for the soft-focus plea for forgiveness, usually coached beforehand by an upstanding pillar of the community like Max Clifford and making their plea in the presence of an upstanding pillar of the community like Martin Bashir. For many years, it was seen as a necessary evil for such fallen figures, a last shot at repairing a broken career; with the televised apology thrust upon them as the sole remaining option available, they banked on the public being prepared to give them a second chance if they played it right on camera.

Matt Hancock took a different television route, choosing the C-list beauty contest in the jungle and hoping he might actually be revealed as a loveable boy-next-door when he was prepared to chew kangaroo knackers with an 80s pop star or a WAG. His ongoing, somewhat pitiful post-political reboot received further exposure at the Covid Inquiry, an arena that also provided another discredited character with the misguided opportunity to exonerate himself by offering the token apology too late after the event to alter perceived wisdom. For Boris, the damage is already done. Curiously, however, the theatre of the Covid Inquiry is not the only superficial platform for those embroiled in the exploitation of the pandemic to have a crack at redeeming their tarnished reputations. Michelle Mone – known to her friends as ‘Baroness’ – has decided to go for the tried and trusted television confessional, though she had her husband to hold her hand throughout the interrogation conducted by the Beeb’s Laura Kuenssberg.

Michelle Mone, you may recall, is the former Tory peer and lingerie tycoon who allegedly benefitted rather handsomely when her husband’s company PPE Medpro was awarded a £200m contract to provide the NHS with PPE back when the Government was handing out such contracts to old friends and acquaintances. The Baroness received her seat in the House of Lords from David Cameron and was well-placed to qualify for the ‘VIP lane’ when the contracts were up for grabs; no great surprise, then, when PPE Medpro won the golden ticket. Unfortunately, millions of the articles the company supplied to the NHS went unused and, in the proud tradition of Captain Tom’s daughter, Ms Mone and her old man had previously strenuously denied they’d in any way personally profited from a contract which boasted profits of £60m. Now that PPR Medpro is being sued for £122m by the Government for breach of contract and unjust enrichment, the Baroness has come clean and admitted the cash has been safely deposited into financial trusts she stands to be a beneficiary of as soon as her old man kicks the bucket. According to her, not a penny of it has yet greased her palm, and it certainly wasn’t used to buy a yacht. Perish the thought!

The Covid Inquiry so far has largely seen a continuation of the kind of buck-passing that has characterised the Grenfell Inquiry, where nobody is prepared to take responsibility for their actions and it’s always someone else’s fault. Michelle Mone has now adopted a similar approach, though to be fair, she pretty much did so from the off. Once the accusations began flying in at the back end of 2020, she denied she had anything whatsoever to do with PPE Medpro, a denial to which the Government eventually responded by claiming she had been ‘the source of referral’ when it came to awarding the contract in question; Mone is also under investigation by the Upper House for not declaring her interest in the company. In her defence, Mone says that she was advised to declare her interest to the Cabinet Office rather than the Lords, though she has taken a leave of absence from the cushiest private members’ club in the country for the best part of a year. Her recollection of declaring her interest is that she was told a Peer need not do so if they don’t stand to financially benefit and, of course, she spent the best part of three years publicly denying she would financially benefit. The Baroness claims the Government knew of her association with PPE Medpro from day one and denies defrauding the Department of Health; the latter launched its claim against the company a year ago, hot on the heels of a separate investigation by the National Crime Agency; the NCA has been investigating the case on the grounds of conspiracy to defraud, fraud by false representation and bribery.

The ‘apology’ that was central to the Kuenssberg grilling mirrored the tone of a YT propaganda promo produced by PPE Medpro, in which Mone publicly admitted the financial benefits of the contract for the first time; she now says that the denial was issued on the advice of lawyers and the only thing she is guilty of is lying to the press. ‘I should have said I am involved straight away,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t want the press intrusion for my family. My family have gone through hell with the media over my career.’ She said the denial to the media was not a crime and that ‘no one deserves this’. By bringing her family into the equation and producing the requisite quivering voice when discussing them, Mone had more than a touch of a TV talent show contestant being close to tears when explaining they wanted to win the contest for their ailing Nan. Moreover, the ‘no one deserves this’ line sees her taking an all-too familiar route where these kind of confessionals go – playing the victim. Meghan Markel has honed this tactic into a fine art over the past few years, and as victimhood is the 21st century currency of celebrity when seeking to deflect accusations, it was no surprise that the Baroness chose this approach.

Turning the tables by putting the blame at the door of the Government, Ms Mone said, ‘It’s appalling that over £9.1 billion (of PPE equipment) was over-ordered, five years of stock, when it only has a shelf life of two years. And all I will say right now is why are we not holding the Department of Health to account?’ The Baroness claims her and her husband’s life were destroyed by the media, scapegoated because they were high profile and successful. Again, playing the victim by attributing ultimate responsibility to an unpopular administration is something Michelle Mone imagines will win her favour; but I doubt most will distinguish between a Tory Peer and a Tory Government; they’re all rats from the same pack. All Michelle Mone apologised for was denying benefitting financially from the PPE contract; otherwise, according to her, ‘I don’t honestly see there is a case to answer. I can’t see what we have done wrong.’

The fact she and hubby Doug Barrowman stand to profit from tens of millions derived from personal protective equipment that was largely used to gather dust at a time when thousands were on the brink of complete financial ruin thanks to the privations imposed upon them by the same administration signing blank cheques for Mone and her ilk is something that might just explain the anger directed towards her. In this respect, any crocodile tears shed by the Baroness during an interview on the BBC will have little impact on the popular perception of both her and the way in which such contracts were allocated; the stench of corruption and cronyism hovers around everyone associated with the whole business, and passing the buck by portraying herself as some sort of sacrificial lamb rings as hollow as all the other guilty parties pleading innocence at the Covid Inquiry. Saying sorry where these figures are concerned is really just saying ‘It weren’t me, guv; I weren’t even there’.

© The Editor

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TO BE DISCONTINUED

It all began with lime flavour Angel Delight; well, it did for me, anyway. As a child, lime was always my favourite option when it came to the famous mousse dessert manufactured by Bird’s, the powdered sweet in a packet that constituted exotic ‘afters’ for households in which the tin was king. At some point in the late 1970s, however, lime mysteriously vanished from the supermarket shelf, leaving chocolate, banana, strawberry or the somewhat sickly butterscotch as the only alternative to the late, lamented favourite that was never reintroduced. Since then, it often seems that whenever I find a foodstuff I’m rather partial to, it’s only a matter of time before it goes the way of lime Angel Delight. But it’s always worse if the item in question was one that stimulated your taste buds as a child; childhood is crammed with more first-time experiences than any other period one lives through, loaded with sensations leaving impressions that remain with you for the rest of your life, including what you eat. Take Puffa Puffa Rice, another ever-present from the same era, this time in the Kellogg’s catalogue. It stood as a companion piece to what were then known as Coco Krispies (AKA Coco Pops), with Sooty gracing the box of the former and Sweep the latter. Of the two, I preferred Sooty’s cereal, and yes, it is still a taste I can summon up with ease – even if its own disappearance in the early 80s means it hasn’t melted in my mouth for more than 40 years.

It’s silly and it’s illogical, I know; but people get attached to shit like this. Maybe when a line is discontinued decades later rather than at the height of its personal popularity, the nostalgia factor then comes into play, the childhood connection that the severing of provokes a minor midlife crisis and a conviction that all certainties are slipping away. We see it in other facets of life when change occurs, so why not food too? Of late, there appear to have been a few such moments, if social media reactions to freshly-discontinued lines are anything to go by. Nestlé, the Swiss confectioner that swallowed-up Rowntree Mackintosh in 1987 recently announced it was axing two of the old firm’s long-running institutions, Caramac and Animal Bar. I remember both from childhood – though Caramac competed with the Pink Panther chocolate bar as the sweet you could eat between meals without ruining your appetite whilst simultaneously inducing sickness worthy of a long car journey. Caramac was a chocolate bar with all the best bits taken out; it was a last-option purchase, the only choice available when pocket money had been whittled away down to a sixpence.

I’m just bringing personal bias to the table here, mind; a lot of people – though evidently not enough to secure the bar’s future – became rather irate on Twitter at the news of Caramac’s demise, with many scrambling to stock-up on what’s left. I did this myself when the brand of shaving foam I’d used for years was replaced by a ‘new improved’ (code for ‘not as good’) version a couple of years ago, but I inevitably ran out of supplies in the end and had to find another brand instead; for the few Caramac hoarders out there, it won’t be so easy. There’s only one Caramac. I learnt my lesson with the shaving foam, which is why the predictable news that Heinz will be discontinuing their quite delicious cream of tomato and basil soup hasn’t resulted in me buying up every tin of it I can locate; it’s a futile exercise, however much I rate this variation on the formula. I guess I knew it was doomed to go the way of lime Angel Delight once again. Anyway, to return to the death row of sweets Nestlé inherited from the much-missed Rowntree, the company clearly isn’t content with dispatching merely Caramac and Animal Bar to that great confectioner’s shop in the sky; Nestlé has also apparently added Polo Fruits and Polo Gummies to the hit list. To be honest, I only remember the former and wasn’t even aware they still existed; not for much longer, it would seem.

Nestlé is not alone in the current wave of discontinuation, though. Celebrated crisp company Walkers has been at it as well, but I have to admit some of the flavours it has decided to do away with are not ones familiar to me. Salt and Vinegar Quavers, FFS? Quavers were always cheesy-based, recognising the supremacy of cheese ‘n’ onion over salt ‘n’ vinegar in the great crisp contest; the thought that Quavers might have veered in the direction of the enemy is something that utterly warrants this particular deviation from the formula being abandoned IMHO (as some might say). Walkers, like Nestlé, is another company that has inherited many lines belonging to former rivals (in this case, Smiths), including such mainstays as Monster Munch and Wotsits; as the number of producers of the nation’s favourite snacks narrows due to corporate cannibalism, perhaps it’s inevitable that certain titles vanish, despite the protests of those for whom these defiantly unhealthy nibbles have remained essential ingredients in the collective coronary lunch-box.

Apparently, Worcester sauce flavour Walkers has now been added to the list of vanishing crisps, though again – speaking personally – they weren’t a particular favourite; nevertheless, I suppose for some out there they were the equivalent of lime Angel Delight, and their disappearance will be responsible for many a future pondering on how the decline and fall of Western civilization got underway. Walkers have also discontinued Max Strong Hotsauce Blaze, a flavour which sounds utterly horrific and is one I’ve never encountered myself. I recall around the mid-2010s Walkers launched a short-lived experimental run of strange novelty flavours that included salad cream; this was one I actually tried and found remarkably close to the source material; I was impressed, though they clearly didn’t catch on, as I don’t remember seeing them since. A shame, as I quite liked them. Anyway, another personally untried line – that of ‘Max Wasabi Peanuts’ – has also been curtailed, though I have to admit ‘Max Wasabi’ does sound a bit like an African musician that the likes of Andy Kershaw would once have eulogised.

Mind you, bearing in mind the time of year, it’s interesting that Cadbury – a well-established Nestlé competitor – is mysteriously encountering what a spokesperson describes as ‘supply chain challenges’ when it comes to the Orange Creme flavour from that essential festive item, the box of Roses. Having just exposed its ruthlessness by bringing the axe down on its peanut caramel crisp chocolate bar, Cadbury’s excuse for this might come across as a tad unconvincing. ‘This year,’ the spokesperson said, ‘a small percentage of Cadbury Roses products will not contain any Orange Cremes…but don’t worry; you’ll still be able to enjoy the same amount of chocolate as usual, as we’ve replaced them with our much-loved Strawberry Cremes.’ I’m sure I remember recently reading tins of Quality Street – manufactured by Nestlé, as their huge factory beside Halifax railway station declares extremely loudly and proudly – would be low on the divisive green triangle this Christmas too. Is there no end to this madness, a nation asks itself.

Memory is littered with the carcasses of chocolate bars, crisps and sweets that fell by the wayside in the march of progress – which is why the names of Spangles, Rancheros, Bones, Banjo, Drifter, Toffo and numerous others spark a characteristically Proustian reaction in those for whom they formed formative eating habits. At the end of the day, however, whatever magical spell they cast on the nostalgic imagination, they’re not necessarily made to make your mouth water, but to make money for the companies that manufacture them; and if sales take a fatal dip, they won’t hesitate to axe a beloved brand, no matter how much lingering affection the public has for it. We might like to think of sweet and snack manufacturers being run by benevolent Willy Wonka-like eccentrics, but the truth is they’re just as clinically corporate as the rest of big business. After all, a man’s gotta chew what a man’s gotta chew.

© The Editor

Website: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/

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DUMB DOWN, DEEPER DOWN

I guess it could have been a subconscious response, though I thought I was simply following a familiar pattern of choosing an old friend as salvation during a lean period for lunchtime viewing. Deciding to dip into James Burke’s landmark BBC documentary series, ‘Connections’ is something I haven’t done for a few years, but there it was on the shelf. I’m only halfway through it this time round, but excavating it anew comes in the wake of exposure to the supposed equivalent 45 years later. The 2023 series in question is called ‘The Secret Genius of Modern Life’ and airs in around the same time slot as ‘Connections’ did in 1978 – i.e. the hour leading up to the ‘watershed’, though the fact it’s on BBC2 rather than BBC1 (which hosted ‘Connections’) implies something highbrow in nature. Well, actually, it doesn’t anymore; but it used to do, back when BBC2 was reserved for that kind of thing. Of course, then BBC4 came along and took on the mantle of BBC arts and cultural broadcasting – until the Beeb burghers in their wisdom withdrew funding for the channel and reduced it to a repeat repository, leaving no television wing of the Corporation earmarked for anything higher up the evolutionary scale than ‘Strictly’.

BBC2, meanwhile, appears to be mainly competing with Channel 4 (another one-time saviour of intelligent broadcasting that appears to have abandoned its original remit) and aims for the populist common denominator these days. With BBC1 utterly out of the question now, I suppose there was nowhere else for ‘The Secret Genius of Modern Life’ to go but BBC2; yet, the style of the presentation and overall tone of the programme fits neatly into what BBC2 represents these days. The remarkable fact BBC1 screened ‘Connections’ in 1978 tells you all you need to know about the difference between that particular channel’s ambitions half-a-century ago and today, and the new series presented by Hannah Fry being shunted onto BBC2 is another pointer to how things have changed, despite it addressing its audience as though they were a class of 10-year-olds – which BBC1 would be very much at home with. But allow me to backtrack a little.

James Burke – one-time co-presenter of ‘Tomorrow’s World’ as well as the BBC’s coverage of the Apollo missions – had branched out in the early 70s to make a series of thought-provoking primetime BBC1 shows under the title, ‘The Burke Special’. Despite being a man of science, Burke had a groovy polytechnic lecturer vibe about him that complemented his ability to communicate information in terms the layman would understand whilst making him think. ‘The Burke Special’ was presented before a studio audience that Burke interacted with whilst imparting fascinating facts, and it pioneered a format that was quickly repackaged by ITV in the mid-to-late 70s as ‘Don’t Ask Me’. Once the series ended in 1976, Burke then progressed to the filmed documentary genre, though his approach was in contrast with the somewhat stern university don style of Kenneth Clark in what was the then-benchmark for such programmes, 1969’s ‘Civilisation’. Unlike Clark, who came across as someone you might be wary of putting a question to for fear of having your head bitten off, James Burke always seemed very ‘matey’ – an indisputably clever bloke, but not remotely intimidating. This persona worked perfectly in the documentary series that emerged in the autumn of 1978, ‘Connections’.

The premise of the programme was for Burke to join the dots between numerous seemingly random inventions and developments in technology spanning centuries, with each breakthrough way back in the mists of time eventually leading us to where we are now – or where we were then. Although the series was dealing with serious subjects, it had a quirky and eccentric atmosphere about it, albeit never sliding into the juvenile or treating the viewers as though they were suffering from arrested development. It knew when to tackle something lightly and when to adopt a less frivolous tone, and it got the balance just right. ‘Connections’ is something I as an 11-year-old was able to watch at the time without feeling as though I’d stumbled upon an incomprehensible Open University module. James Burke was the dream teacher I wished I’d had at school, stimulating an open mind and doing so in an accessible style that avoided talking down to the audience and instead engaged them with wit, panache, and, above all, intelligence. Had I been a little older in 1978 – when I’d yet to see any of the era’s other great documentary series bar the odd episode of ‘The World at War’ – perhaps ‘Connections’ wouldn’t have struck me as anything especially unusual; more seasoned viewers were accustomed to this type of programme and their expectations were consequently far higher than a modern audience. But viewing it in 2023, particularly in the wake of a contemporary series, can really make you realise how low the bar is now set.

‘The Secret Genius of Modern Life’ is presented by, as I said earlier, Hannah Fry. She’s a 39-year-old Professor of Mathematics with a rather fetching flaming barnet, and she’s someone who already has a substantial radio and TV CV under her belt. Ironically, she actually presented a one-off special edition of ‘Tomorrow’s World’ in 2018, but any hopes she might follow in the footsteps of James Burke have been dashed by anyone unfortunate enough to catch her latest series. It’s no ‘Connections’, to put it mildly. The premise of this one is to look how various contemporary items we might perhaps take for granted came to be indispensible without us really noticing. The series opened with a look at the passport; upon reading the blurb in the Radio Times, I figured it might be quite interesting. After all, what could be more relevant at a time of increased illegal immigration claiming so many headlines than a history of the humble passport, the pocket-sized ID card that enables us to cross borders and has done so for over a century? The programme promised to demonstrate how the authorities are constantly redesigning the passport to make it even harder for counterfeiters to produce fakes, and I assumed it would make for a passable way to fill sixty minutes.

To be fair, there were some moments in there that proved to be eye-opening, though what actual information was imparted could probably have been condensed into around fifteen minutes; no, what really ensured this would be the sole episode of the programme I’d tune into was the toe-curling daytime TV presentation, riddled with the very same hyperactive, infantile giddiness that runs through the likes of ‘Bargain Hunt’. Had this series been produced by CBBC it might just have been acceptable wacky fodder for kids, slipping in snippets of info amongst the slapstick antics, albeit still delivered in that infuriatingly perma-cheery tone of voice, the kind you hear plugging crap on commercial radio ads; but it wasn’t produced for an audience not old enough to buy a pint, hence the timeslot. I don’t really hold Hannah Fry solely responsible for this approach; a whole team of individuals combine to produce a series like ‘The Secret Genius of Modern Life’ and they decide beforehand the way in which they’re going to do it. Perhaps they simply don’t know any other way to do it anymore.

It’s interesting how post-watershed documentaries such as David Olusoga’s recent outing, ‘Union’ (which was also screened on BBC2) tell their stories in a radically different manner, sticking to a more traditional adult model and dispensing with the gimmicky tropes prevalent before 9.00. One wonders why the mid-evening series – and I’d include drama in this – has to adopt a style that treats its viewers as though they’re retarded, when any cursory watch of a series airing in the same timeslot 50 years ago, everything from ‘Z Cars’ to ‘Connections’, seems so much more grownup. Maybe it says something not only about mainstream TV, but society in general.

© The Editor

Website: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/

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EVASIVE ACTION

Well, last time we visited the Covid inquiry we came to the conclusion that those in the role of de facto prosecutors had a clear agenda to cast the promoters of the science we were threatened to believe in as heroes and the Ministers entrusted with pandemic policies as villains; and, of course, lockdown was the correct thing to do, but it was implemented too late. That’s the narrative they’re sticking to, and that’s the reason for the entire inquiry in the first place, to put the Government of the day on the spot for f***ing everything up, end of. Therefore, it’s only logical that, after having hosted the latest episode of Matt Hancock’s abysmal redemption campaign last week, the inquiry has been having fun this week with the main man in the hot-seat, as though the whole exercise is an edition of ‘Celebrity Mastermind’. Can we have the next contestant, please? Up steps Boris, with several passes anticipated on questions the viewers at home will be shouting out the answers to. Actually, it appeared a few spectators turned up to shout them out in person, though they were ejected from the building. Not that we saw them on live TV, mind – anymore than we saw Rupert Murdoch’s gate-crasher when the Digger was memorably grilled by a Commons Select Committee in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal. As John Motson used to say when a streaker invaded the pitch and the director cut to another camera, ‘Well, we’re sure the viewers at home don’t want to see that.’

One does have to wonder, though, if the former PM’s long-awaited appearance at the inquiry is akin to when Donald Trump was impeached – i.e. giving his opponents and detractors a rare opportunity to simply put him on the spot and rip him to shreds for the sheer clickbait theatre of it, regardless of the more serious underlying issues he needs to answer for. If that is the case, it seems to be letting Boris off the hook somewhat, with legal eagles using his presence as a chance to act the part of the grand inquisitor in a mock trial rather than addressing his role in an affair that people are still having to deal with the ramifications of almost four years later. Is it about the pandemic or is really about Boris? Having no doubt watched how other witnesses have been dealt with at the inquiry, Boris and his advisors will have studied the tactics of the lawyers asking the questions meticulously, and it was evident in the manner Johnson approached his cross-examination, giving a relatively confident performance despite wearing his customary look of having been dragged through a hedge backwards beforehand.

Nevertheless, confronting Boris with evidence of diary entries and WhatsApp messages from the time and asking him to comment on the language used and the casual attitude towards those whose lives the Government had in their hands was undeniably fascinating. One could argue such exchanges were private correspondence unintended for public consumption – we all do them, and wouldn’t necessarily want them read out loud in the media glare; yet any public figure, especially one holding the highest office in the land, cannot expect these things to stay under lock and key. Harold Wilson was so famously riled by the nature of the questioning he received from David Dimbleby in the BBC’s ‘Yesterday’s Men’ documentary produced in the fallout of the 1970 General Election that he unleashed his attack dog Joe Haines (a proto-Alistair Campbell) on the BBC Director General of the time and managed to have the offending scene edited out of the programme before broadcast, allegedly demanding that the film be destroyed altogether. The BBC was criticised for capitulating to Wilson’s whim, but the greatest criticism was reserved for Harold himself in his attempt to suppress something everyone found out about anyway – probably because he’d foolishly drawn attention to it.

In the case of Boris Johnson, the staggering idiocy of his Health Secretary handing over his own WhatsApp messages to Isabel Oakeshott helped lift the veil on the attitude of indifference to the suffering that happened on his watch, which prepared the public for the similarly revealing exchanges aired during the Covid inquiry. There was nowhere for Boris to hide, and with his very own Joe Haines – Dominic Cummings – having long since bitten the hand that fed him, nobody to call upon to cover his back. Boris being Boris, of course, whenever anything especially awkward reared its ugly head he indulged in his trademark mumbling as he evaded the issue. One of his frequent habits when interviewed on TV during his premiership was to begin answering a question without really answering it and then to keep talking waffle over the interviewer in a style Richard Madeley once reserved for Judy Finnegan; most interviewers abandoned their Paxman tribute act out of straightforward exhaustion. Boris couldn’t really fall back on that technique at the inquiry, but he was still as evasive as ever when faced with an uncomfortable question.

Ultimately, though, the whole spectacle of Boris’s performance, and the neatly-scripted act of contrition that was the expected apology to open proceedings, offered no great surprises; and by painting him as the sole man with whom the buck stopped again turns the spotlight away from the real motivators behind lockdown and the most extreme policies associated with it, those a man with such a limited capacity for strong, decisive leadership as Johnson was easily led by. The tone of the inquiry to date seems to be to validate them and to heap all the blame when their policies proved so disastrous on the politicians whose job it was to sell them to the public. The anger of the protestors who turned up in force to make their feelings heard is totally understandable, but one can’t help but feel that anger has been conveniently steered in the wrong direction.

REAPER WATCH – THE LATEST

Since the last post, two notable figures have joined the lengthening list of 2023’s celebrity casualties – and both hailed from the Second City. First up was Denny Laine, original lead singer of The Moody Blues and then Paul McCartney’s musical sidekick for the entire decade-long duration of Wings. The second was the celebrated Brummie poet with the distinctive dreadlocks, Benjamin Zephaniah. Denny Laine provided the vocals for the sole No.1 hit of the Moody’s career, ‘Go Now’ in 1965, but departed a couple of years later, leaving his former bandmates to recruit Justin Hayward and help lay the foundations for Prog Rock at the end of the 60s. After a solo career greeted with indifference and a stint playing with Ginger Baker, Laine accepted the invite from Macca to join his new post-Beatles band in 1971 and was the only musician to remain with Wings throughout ten years of pretty heavyweight commercial (and occasionally critical) success. Laine struggled in the wake of the band’s split following a 1980 tour of Japan that was infamously curtailed without a show being played, and he eventually found the going so tough that he sold his co-songwriting credit for ‘Mull of Kintyre’ to pay the rent. He passed away at the age of 79 from lung disease.

Benjamin Zephaniah was 65, claimed by a brain tumour he was only diagnosed with two months before. This was a particularly unexpected death for me, as I’d heard Zephaniah on Roger McGough’s evergreen ‘Poetry Please’ on Radio 4 when catching the end of it just a few nights ago; he seemed to have been around forever and it felt like he always would be. Like John Cooper Clarke, he injected a sleeping giant of writing with a fresh urban vitality, gifted with the skill of making poetry as relevant to younger generations as song lyrics or the rhyming ranting of Hip Hop. It’s thanks to the likes of Zephaniah that poetry has been resurrected and revitalised in recent years, particularly in terms of performance. His contribution to that revival has been vital, and he will be sorely missed as a passionate promoter of the art.

© The Editor

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A PERFECT STORM

With less than a month left of this year, it appears the Grim Reaper is picking up the pace again with what little time he has left before it’s 2024. The bar was certainly set at its highest in recent times by the year 2016; in case you’ve already forgotten, that was the twelve month period in which we lost (in no particular order) David Bowie, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Fidel Castro, George Michael, Leonard Cohen, Johann Cruyff, Carrie Fisher, George Martin, Victoria Wood, Rick Parfitt, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Robert Vaughn, Jean Alexander, Gene Wilder, Tony Warren – to name but a few, as they say. An hour or so scanning through the Winegum posts of that year highlighted these names, many of which came within days of each other; and we’ve had a few moments in 2023 when it’s been oddly reminiscent of that rolling roll-call from seven years back – not least the end of November when the deaths of Henry Kissinger, Shane McGowan and Alistair Darling were all announced on the same day. To be honest, I’m half-expecting to complete writing this post and then I’ll hear another one has bitten the dust. I just thought I’d mention it before the next obituary appears on here.

However, 2023 has seen more than merely the kind of death we associate with the loss of a household name; this year can also lay claim to a different sort of death – the death of local government, if you like. Last week, Nottingham City Council issued a Section 114 notice, effectively declaring itself bankrupt by doing so. Following hot on the heels of Birmingham City Council in September, Nottingham’s Labour-controlled local authority announced it was incapable of coming up with a balanced budget, laying the blame at the door of the same problems routinely cited by other councils in the country – inflation, social care for both adults and children, the rising cost of running public services etc. And, regardless of the undoubted truth of those being contributing factors, it’s undeniable that incompetence in the field of financial governance has played a significant role in the virtual bankruptcy of Nottingham City Council – as it did Birmingham in September, or indeed Northamptonshire County Council back in 2018.

In the case of Northampton, the County Council attributed their insolvency to austerity measures imposed by central government which, again, was an undeniable factor albeit not one that could completely paper over cracks of incompetency that had been locally-sourced. A Government Inspectors report concluded that a non-metropolitan county council which had been in existence since 1889 should be abolished and that two smaller-scale unitary authorities effectively replace it. This finally came to pass in 2021. Whether or not this is the fate awaiting both Birmingham and Nottingham remains to be seen; but opponents of the latter, such as the Tory MP for Newark, Robert Jenrick, are sticking the knife in; Jenrick accused the council of ‘breathtaking waste and incompetence’, calling for order to be restored by government commissioners. The result of the Section 114 notice only ring-fences spending on the vulnerable and on statutory services, whereas everything else is suspended; therefore, the good people of Nottingham, like Birmingham, have some even leaner times to look forward to where their public services are concerned – as though these (as with so many across the country) haven’t already been slashed to within an inch of lean as it is.

Perhaps Birmingham and Nottingham are reflective of a depressing trend that suggests a considerable number of other local councils in England and Wales are rapidly approaching the point of no return – upwards of 26, according to SIGOMA (the Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities), which claims the funding model for such institutions is broken and the country could be in for an epidemic of S114 notices. The money set aside for local councils has dramatically diminished in recent years; the £1bn in government cuts over the past decade is no great surprise considering we went from austerity to the pandemic with what feels like no pause for breath in between; but some of the key issues to which the difficulties in Birmingham and Nottingham can be attributed suggest those running the cities were just not up to the job. Birmingham – which is also run by Labour – experienced the familiar failing of an over-expensive IT system (£100m) that was implemented before being exposed as useless; despite – or quite possibly because of – Birmingham being the largest local authority in Europe, the issuing of a Section 114 notice in September was a cry for help to central government that it no longer had the resources to plan ahead, claiming a black hole of £87m in its current budget. A statement issued by the council leaders proclaimed, ‘Like local authorities across the country, it is clear that Birmingham city council faces unprecedented financial challenges – from huge increases in adult social care demand and dramatic reductions in business rates income, to the impact of rampant inflation, it is clear that local government is facing a perfect storm.’

The response from No.10 to Birmingham was to emphasise it was up to local councils to manage their own budgets, though there was concern about ‘their governance arrangements’ and that requests had been made for ‘assurances from the leader of the council about the best use of taxpayers’ money’. Stephen Houghton, chair of SIGOMA, commented, ‘There are fundamental systemic issues with the local government finance system that have resulted in an increasing number of councils reaching breaking point. The Chancellor in his recent autumn statement had the perfect opportunity to help address some of the well-publicised pressures in local government and the wider public sector, but failed to do so.’ When it comes to the problems confronting Nottingham, again, it would appear there is more to it than simply the falling amount of cash doled out to local government by Whitehall. Accounts revealed the council was careering in the direction of a £23m overspend for the financial year of 2023-24, but the incompetence goes back quite a bit: an energy scheme run by the council cost millions when it went tits-up in 2020, and £40m from the housing revenue account ended up being spent as general funds, necessitating a repayment somewhere in the region of £50m.

Another of the seemingly endless bodies set up to monitor such developments is the Local Government Information Unit, whose chief executive was moved to observe, ‘Nottingham isn’t the first to issue a Section 114 and certainly won’t be the last. More and more well-run and effective councils are saying they could be next. Government is quick to point the finger at failing councils, but the truth is we have a broken system.’ And if well-run and effective councils are heading for a fall, God knows where that leaves the incompetent and ineffective ones. Meanwhile, the Government’s own illustrious Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities responded with, ‘We used our statutory powers to intervene at Nottingham City Council last year over serious governance and financial issues and have been clear that improvements must be made. We have expressed concern over the lack of urgency demonstrated by the council in addressing these challenges. We are assessing the situation and will consider whether further action is necessary.’

As with all areas of politics, there are obviously those who enter into local government with the best of intentions and seek to improve the system for those it is intended to serve; and there are also those who see local government as the first stop on the gravy train to Westminster. Equally, there are those involved in it who couldn’t manage the proverbial piss-up at the proverbial brewery. When seriously reduced budgets allocated by central government are tossed into the mix, it’s hard not to conclude we’re looking at not so much a perfect storm as a perfect recipe for disaster. And, as for who carries the can – well, it’ll be me and thee, of course. It’s yet another sorry situation that can only enhance the ongoing narrative that the country’s ultimate destination is shit creek.

© The Editor

Website: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/

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