TOP MAN

The sad news that Network, the finest of all companies issuing vintage TV on DVD, has gone into liquidation is a double blow to anyone who finds intelligent grownup television drama from half-a-century ago preferable to today’s often pitiful excuse. Firstly, the other companies that competed with Network in its early days, such as Acorn and Simply Media, appear to have completely abandoned the DVD/Blu Ray market, meaning Network was virtually operating in a field of one that has few potential operators to fill its shoes; and secondly, Network’s eagerness to keep releasing physical product meant it was a superior option to those that have succumbed to the dubious advances of streaming, a system vulnerable to the vagaries of pop cultural fashions, and one that can edit or remove content without the consent of the subscriber if the puritanical arbiters of permissible material suddenly declare it ‘problematic’. The timing of Network’s tragic collapse was also strangely ironic for me personally, as the very evening I heard the news I’d just finished watching perhaps what could be called an archetypal Network box-set release, ‘Man at the Top’.

The wonderful thing about Network was that it not only released remastered versions of programmes that have survived in the public consciousness as classics via regular screenings on repeat channels, but also put out series that were popular in their day yet have barely been seen since, thus failing to stretch their reputations beyond their initial audience. ‘Man at the Top’ was one such series; produced by Thames between 1970 and 1972, ‘Man at the Top’ continued the life and times of Joe Lampton, the cocksure character created by John Braine in his 1957 novel, ‘Room at the Top’. When the book was filmed a couple of years after its incendiary publication, its literary impact was replicated on the big screen, lighting the blue touch paper for the ‘kitchen sink’ era that gave the British film industry a kick up the backside. Lampton was played with swaggering charisma by Laurence Harvey in the movie, but the roots of the cinematic social realism that ‘Room at the Top’ inspired lay in the theatre, primarily with John Osborne’s groundbreaking play, ‘Look Back in Anger’ in 1956. In a canny piece of casting, when Joe Lampton’s adventures were updated for the early 70s small screen, he was played by Kenneth Haigh, who had brought the eloquent antihero Jimmy Porter to life onstage in the original Royal Court production of Osborne’s play.

Joe Lampton is a beneficiary of post-war educational improvements and the social mobility that followed them, a working-class northern lad who took advantage of the opportunities available to him and transcended the limited horizons that had kept his parents tied to their humble origins. Brash, bullish and bright, once the ambitious Lampton can see this tantalising career path laid out before him, he seizes every chance he gets with a ravenous ruthlessness that mirrors the avaricious arrogance of the local self-made men who run the town – the councillors, mill-owners, and all the usual cigar-smoking Masonic movers and shakers; Lampton is desperate to get what they’ve got and he sets about it with little care for who he tramples over to get there – including women. Despite being involved with the older wife of a colleague, he also courts the boss’s naive young daughter Susan; the predictable outcome of that pre-pill period is a shotgun marriage that secures Lampton’s lofty place in the family firm. For many, that would be job done; but Lampton’s ambition stretches beyond the north; Yorkshire isn’t big enough for him.

When we rejoin Joe Lampton in 1970, he’s a high-flying management consultant, prowling the concrete jungle of the capital’s sky-scraping office blocks; he drives a flash motor, resides in the Surrey stockbroker belt, and is 16 years into a static marriage whose vows he doesn’t exactly honour. The odour of executive success proves to be an irresistible aphrodisiac to seemingly every woman he comes into contact with and I swiftly lost track of all the ones he beds throughout the series, most of whom are familiar faces from the 70s TV rep company such as Stephanie Beacham, Katy Manning, Ann Lynn and Janet Key. Joe Lampton is a fascinating character because he’s such a bastard, yet Kenneth Haigh gives us an utterly believable and honest portrayal of a man of his generation, background and class – warts and all. Whenever his long-suffering wife Susan (played with sympathetic weariness by Zena Walker) attracts male attention or appears to take a shine to a member of the opposite sex, Lampton reverts to caveman mode and all-but drags her back home by her hair. Yes, one didn’t have to dig too deep beneath the sophisticated veneer of the moustachioed waistcoat-wearing businessman-about-town of the era to reveal the uncouth backstreet ruffian with his arse hanging out of his pants; indeed, a semi-regular character played by Colin Welland (a coarse old school-friend from Lampton’s hometown) proves the one thing money cannot buy is class. Yet Lampton, by contrast, seems far more able to conceal his provincial shortcomings when mixing with the high and mighty.

Yes, Joe Lampton is a bastard; but he’s in an environment where he’s surrounded by bastards, many of whom were born with advantages he never had. This fact is made all the more stark when we encounter a character such as the one played in a memorable episode by Michael Bates, a good man married to a philandering, spendthrift wife he inexplicably worships; the character ends up as a casualty of the system when she leaves him for his best friend; he dies by his own hand because he lacks the clinical streak necessary to survive and prosper in the world he finds himself in. So, despite ourselves, we can’t help rooting for Joe Lampton because whenever he experiences a fall from grace, it’s usually been caused by an even more unlikeable, self-serving, amoral brute who puts personal gain in business above and beyond every other concern. The message is pretty clear that nice guys don’t make it all the way to the top. And once at the top, Joe Lampton soon comes into contact with the equally callous cold fish of hereditary privilege, something that finally impresses his overbearing, self-important, self-made-man of a father-in-law, Abe Brown.

To opportunists like Abe Brown, his son-in-law’s rise is a chance to feather his own nest, and he and Lampton’s aristocratic patron push him into running for Parliament. Lampton sacrifices the chance of genuine love rather than another one-night stand to pursue this aim and then walks away from it at the eleventh hour, belatedly realising the gold in the pot isn’t enough after all. The series ends on an uncertain note, though Kenneth Haigh’s portrayal of Joe Lampton received one final outing in a 1973 movie that followed the second series. Haigh is the only actor from the TV series to feature and although the film is an interesting extended episode, it doesn’t quite hit the same heights. Nevertheless, the fact the movie was included on the box-set of the series was a classic Network move; no other company would have bothered to complete the set like that. But Network always made sure its releases were of the best quality, not only picture-wise, but all the extras, the accompanying booklets, and even the original transmission dates printed on the flipside of the DVD sleeve. Nothing was left out; the company knew its niche audience and went out of its way to give it what it wanted.

I counted 66 Network releases amongst my DVDs just before penning this paragraph, and chances are there are a few more I overlooked. They range from children’s shows to grownup telly to movies and documentaries. The variety Network offered was never less than impressive, and one wonders now how many neglected series they may well have excavated in the future will henceforth remain locked away in vaults for good. Even streaming sites tend to stick to the obvious vintage shows that have been repeated to death; Network could always take you by surprise with what it exhumed, and it’ll be missed.

© The Editor

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A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS

Amongst life’s most notoriously impossible tasks is one which most of us will be mercifully spared – to take every piece of music that has ever meant something to us and to narrow the list down to a paltry eight pieces. Such is the challenge confronting any guest on ‘Desert Island Discs’. Like many (I would imagine), I’ve tried preparing a list several times over the years – just on the off-chance, of course – and whenever I think I’ve cracked it, another dozen discs will materialise before me, each of which has an absolute right to claim a place in the eight. So I screw the paper up and start again. The select few who’ve been invited to that desert island twice don’t know how lucky they are. When it comes to selecting a solitary book to sit alongside the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare – which are already generously waiting underneath the palm tree – this is potentially an even greater task; just one out of all the hundreds to have provoked thought, tears, laughter or anger from a lifetime of reading? Surprisingly, I know without any hesitation which book I would pick, because it’s one I want to read again, perhaps over and over again – if only to remind me just how mind-blowingly brilliant and breathtakingly beautiful it is: ‘Time’s Arrow’ by Martin Amis.

‘Time’s Arrow’ is one of those novels that must have been a bugger to summarise in its back cover blurb. Essentially, it’s the story of a life lived backwards – the life of a Nazi war criminal we join as an old man decades later in America, having evaded any judgement at Nuremburg. Only, the entire world he inhabits is one where everything takes place in reverse, so he didn’t euthanize anyone at Auschwitz, but brought them to life and sent them home on the train out of the camp with a clean bill of health. Unlike in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, it isn’t merely the lead character who goes from old age to infancy while the world around him moves at a normal forward pace; in ‘Time’s Arrow’, everything and everyone follows the same reverse path. The flipping of the order of things so that a Nazi death camp is a place where life is created rather than extinguished is replicated throughout the story; the reader cannot but marvel at the inspired twists on everyday banalities as much as the great historical events the character is privy to; in one comically grim scene, for example, the lead character is sat before the hearth when toenail clippings fly out of the open fire and are then attached to his toes by a pair of scissors in his hand. Of course, that’s precisely what would happen if life was literally lived backwards, just as the end would find us as babies being pushed into the womb, where we eventually shrink into nothingness.

The thought and planning that must have gone into the writing of ‘Time’s Arrow’ to ensure the narrative progressed logically is something it’s difficult not to be in awe of. But the fact such an odd and unnatural premise unfolds as a wholly engaging story that can stir so many different emotions not only elevates the book above mere literary experiment; it is also testament to Amis’s skills as an exceptionally gifted storyteller. And, unlike all the long-gone novelists whose names roll off the tongue whenever great literature is discussed, he walked among us as recently as just a few days ago. The death of Martin Amis at the age of 73, claimed by the same form of cancer that killed his long-time sidekick Christopher Hitchens 12 years ago, has deprived the written word of one of its finest caretakers, a writer whose waspishly witty, deceptively effortless and relentlessly readable style owed an undoubted debt to the giants upon whose shoulders he lounged without their influence ever hindering the unique tone of his own distinctive voice.

Amis once admitted that however terrible the first novel he attempted might turn out to be, he knew it would nevertheless be published regardless, simply on the strength of his surname; the literary dynasty to which he belonged ensured he was one to watch from the first day he put pen to paper. His father Kingsley Amis was one of the key post-war authors who made their mark in the mid-50s; ‘Lucky Jim’ was a satirical slice of red-brick university life that spoke to the generation benefitting from the slow erosion of the pre-war class certainties via the widening of educational opportunities; along with the novels that followed in its wake, such as John Braine’s ‘Room at the Top’ (as well as the plays of John Osborne and the poetry of Kingsley’s close friend Philip Larkin), ‘Lucky Jim’ gave British literature a fresh provincial edge that dragged it kicking and screaming into the second half of the 20th century. Martin’s stepmother was novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, author of ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’; he credited her with introducing him to the canon of English classics that proved to be so significant in shaping his own literary abilities as well as encouraging him to write.

As it happened, when Amis’s first novel was indeed published, 1973’s ‘The Rachel Papers’, it wasn’t terrible and was well-received by critics who could just have easily shot him down solely due to his entitled status. As the 70s careered towards the 80s, Amis established a somewhat louche public image of the stick-thin, vaguely decadent dandy with a cigarette never far from lips that always appeared to be bordering on a sneer; in some respects, this enduring image – along with the broadsheet soap opera of his private life – served to distract the uninitiated from just how masterly a writer he was evolving into. By the turn of the 80s, he was being grouped alongside a new wave of British authors such as Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie in the same way his father had been lumped-in with the ‘Angry Young Men’ of the 50s; but Amis wasn’t a team player and proved himself to be an astute individual interpreter and caustic translator of changing mores with era-defining novels such as 1984’s ‘Money’ and 1989’s ‘London Fields’.

Amis’s assertion that Dickens was not so much a social commentator as a social sorcerer who manufactured a curiously eccentric England from the real tools he found around him was mirrored by his own ‘parallel universe’ impression of the country, something he continued to delve into with the likes of 2012’s ‘Lionel Asbo: State of England’; like many of the bombs he dropped on the cosy clique of the London literary world, it provoked as much controversy and outrage as admiration for his ability to turn depressing subject matter into such a blackly comic, picaresque excursion into the dark heart of the nation. By the time it appeared, Amis had already embarked upon a well-trodden path as the Englishman in exile, studying his homeland from afar and inspiring bitchy envy in those whose inability to escape denied them his wider perspective.

Amis didn’t merely limit his talents to works of fiction. Along with his entertaining essays and contributions to newspapers and periodicals, he would regularly be called upon to provide an enlightening observation on whatever happened to be under discussion – the Arts or politics – on highbrow TV shows. One of his most memorable outings on television was a documentary he made for BBC4 around a decade ago in which he took a more in-depth personal look at England, upholding a tradition of the artist abroad developing a greater fascination with the place he came from than he had when he was there. Martin Amis was one of our most compelling cultural voices – one whose willingness to express his views with the kind of refreshing candour largely absent from those terrified of giving offence for fear of being cancelled made him all the more of a rarity in today’s diminished creative landscape, a landscape that will now be even more diminished without him.

© The Editor

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CUM ON FEEL THE NOISE POLLUTION

The BBC’s – or BBC management’s – arrogantly dismissive attitude towards its musical public service has been summed-up by its recent treatment of the Corporation’s orchestras and the BBC Singers, something strongly at odds with the approach of, say, a revered composer whose works received invaluable exposure at a time when the remit was scrupulously adhered to. Ralph Vaughan Williams, the man who wrote the piece of music that regularly tops polls to find the nation’s favourite classical tune – ‘The Lark Ascending’ – believed he had an almost moral duty to make his music as available to the widest possible audience. He was fortunate his 85 years on this earth encompassed the revolutionary rise of radio as an unparalleled platform that took classical music out of the expensive enclosed space of the concert hall and placed it in everyone’s living room; the BBC was instrumental in the process. The Corporation’s current disregard for this legacy and the vital role it has always played in exposing untrained ears to something other than pop pap is, sadly, not out of step with the way in which the educational system has downgraded the Arts in general and music in particular, with the latter retreating back into the elitist bosom of the fee-paying school, seen as a luxury that state system kids can do without.

The current penalisation of a singer-songwriter whose instrument of choice is the far-from disruptive acoustic guitar, has further underlined the lack of support for – and hostility towards – musicians that is characteristic of an attitude bordering on the philistine, not to mention being a sad comment upon the changing nature of the way we live now. Even the most gifted musicians still need to practice, though with the disappearance of so many rehearsal spaces – and the spiralling cost of those remaining – it’s unsurprising that those not receiving grants or financial assistance to help them hone their talent are forced to practice at home. Within living memory, the fixtures and fittings of the domestic environment once included at least one musical instrument – and at least one member of the family would be capable of playing it; from party pieces on the old Joanna after Saturday night’s last orders in the working-class parlour to the violin recital of little Anthony in the middle-class drawing-room, the playing of music was as much a part of the furniture as dressing tables or doilies.

The arrival of the TV set contributed towards the gradual erosion of ‘making your own entertainment’ in many households, leading all the way to a situation whereby the sound of music being played on an instrument can now be viewed as noise pollution on a par with repeatedly barking dogs, beeping car horns, or even the thundering boom of a neighbouring nightclub, not to mention the equally window-rattling portable sound systems emanating from passing vehicles. The majority of householders may no longer derive pleasure from the simple joy of playing as a means of relaxing or channelling redundant energy, but professional musicians have no choice but to devote several hours a day to their instrument, in the same way a professional footballer needs to maintain the fitness levels required for a 90-minute match on a weekend when training during the week. If a musician is thus confined to quarters due to the absence or expense of alternative premises, the possibility of their practice being overheard by others is a strong likelihood.

Granted, a lot depends on the style of dwelling in question – a detached house is more sound-proofed than a semi or a terrace or an apartment block, of course – and a lot also depends on the volume of the instrument being played; an electric guitar or a drum-kit will register more decibels than any woodwind instrument, for example. Another significant factor is the time of day in which the practice takes place. As someone whose sleep used to be routinely disrupted by neighbours who either plugged-in their amps or switched on their decks in the middle of the night without once considering that I – or anyone else in the locality – might not want to be forced (and then kept) awake by their bowel-churning bass-lines echoing throughout the wee small hours, I have every sympathy for those plagued by genuine noise nuisance in built-up urban areas; but there’s a difference between that kind of inconsiderate disruption and the sound of an acoustic guitar being strummed between the hours of 11am and 3pm, hours when many won’t even be at home to overhear it. Not that the overzealous killjoys masquerading as the Environmental Health Officers of Lewisham Council see things this way.

Lewisham – ironically the ‘London Borough of Culture’ just last year – has some strange ideas as to what constitutes culture. Fiona Fey, who practices an instrument with a volume level no higher than a vacuum cleaner in the hours just mentioned, and does so in a room with sound-proof doors and carpeted concrete floors, has been served with a noise abatement notice by said EHO and failure to comply could result in a £5,000 fine and the confiscation of her guitar via a legal forced entry; and all on the strength of one complaint. Imagine a similar treatment being dished out to builders – who generate far more noise than an acoustic guitar – and the tools of their trade being removed if they refuse to do as they’re told by the EHO. They’d have a strong case against any council that attempted to deprive them of a living in such a manner, and a union to back them up; why is a musician like Fiona Fey not receiving the same support, left with little option but to pack her bags and be reduced to sofa-surfing?

The abuse of laws put in place to cope with actual noise pollution has been highlighted by this particular case, whereby the playing of a musical instrument has been classified as a nuisance, yet what is referred to as ‘living noise’ – such as a loud TV or radio – is not; it feels as though musicians are being persecuted whilst the genuinely guilty noise polluters are spared any punishment whatsoever due to the undefined vagueness of the laws on noise being enforced by the singular interpretation of an Environmental Health Officer. As Fiona Fey herself says, according to Lewisham County Council, she is now forbidden to play any musical instrument in her home at any time. This is an outrageous curb of an individual’s rights to do as they please within the confines of their own home. The slamming of doors, the flushing of toilets, conversations, arguments, orgasms – all can be overheard at one time or another if one lives where people are packed close together; to expect absolute silence in a city as though one’s home were an isolated rural cottage miles from the nearest village is ridiculous. But a considerate neighbour will restrict the hours when degree of noise is unavoidable in order to maintain an often fragile harmony, and it would appear Fiona Fey achieved this due to the fact the majority of her neighbours admitted her playing wasn’t a problem.

A judgement by Environmental Health Officers can be appealed against, but who the hell can afford the cost of such a legal challenge, let alone a jobbing musician? The laughable advice of the EHO that Fiona Fey ‘think more carefully about where you live in future’ rather overlooks the dearth of affordable properties in London, especially for anyone struggling to make a living in an industry that has become increasingly harder for those without financial privilege to break into in recent years. I personally find it remarkably mean-spirited that Lewisham Council’s Environmental Health Officers saw fit to penalise her for what is a necessary element of her profession when those I myself was driven to call out when pushed to the end of my tether by noisy neighbours basically told me they was nothing they could do; if the only disruption I’d had to deal with had been an acoustic guitar at 3pm as opposed to a wannabe club DJ at 3am, I wouldn’t have even made the call. Playing a musical instrument should not be placed on the same level as a faulty car alarm that rings around a neighbourhood on a loop for hours at a time; the fact it has been is a sad indictment on a society that sees fit to silence one of the few noises our weary ears are exposed to that can still stir emotions other than anger.

© The Editor

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THE BEAT GOES ON

So, normal Eurovision service has been resumed. Sweden won it, and after finishing second-from-top last year, the UK is back in its rightful place on the board as second-from-bottom. Mind you, with no danger of a second consecutive win for Ukraine, the rest of Europe didn’t need Brits to foot the bill as surrogate host again and voted accordingly. Not that one was allowed to forget Ukraine, however; despite Liverpool’s best efforts to big itself up, the Contest was awash with that now very-familiar flag as well as numerous subtle and not-so-subtle expressions of solidarity with the under-fire nation on Putin’s doorstep; the show even opened with an interpretation of last year’s winning number performed by various artists in the manner of the 1998 BBC version of Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ – just in case anyone watching hadn’t got the message.

Presentation-wise, at one time Katie Boyle on her own would suffice as hostess; then it became a male/female double act, and this year we had no less than four of ’em – including Graham Norton, following in Wogan’s footsteps last time the UK hosted the Contest 25 years ago, emerging from behind the mic and onto the stage. We had the usual toe-curling scripted banter to endure, only this time spread between four; and then we were straight into the first act. In order to make the writing of this post less reliant on online checking, I decided to differentiate between the acts by jotting down my immediate thoughts on each performance as it happened, and I thought I’d reproduce them here in all their raw and uncut glory. So, here we go…

1: AUSTRIA – Two girls singing 90s Europop-style number about Edgar Allen Poe (sounds like it took about 10 minutes to write); 2: PORTUGAL – Blonde girl in red dress singing 90s Europop-style number with ‘ethnic’ flourishes; refreshing to hear native tongue; 3: SWITZERLAND – Creepily boyish solo singer; ballad in Wilkos background Muzak style; lyrics about not wanting to be a soldier a bit ‘political’; 4: POLAND – Ace of Base B-side; standard nursery rhyme vibe on ‘chorus’; dance routine Britney Spears circa 2001; 5: SERBIA – ‘Pretty boy’ solo singer with moody ‘electro-pop’ number attempting to sound ‘mysterious; looks like a young Hugh Grant in eyeliner; 6: FRANCE – Girl singer channelling Piaf spirit until we plunge into routine Europop beat; 7: CYPRUS – Clean-cut solo singer; standard ballad in Enrique Iglesias mould with accompanying ‘fire fountains’ to liven up performance; 8: SPAIN – ‘Ethnic’ intro straight into electronic backing; girl singer with thigh-tastic dancers; actually not bad; 9: SWEDEN – Girl singer with mad talons doing a Johnny Logan (won in 2012, apparently); laying down at beginning of song; lung-busting voice doing Leona Lewis-style ‘power ballad’; 10: ALBANIA – Six family members; another ‘ethnic’ intro that tumbles into routine ‘electro’ beat.

11: ITALY – Macho bearded solo singer; usual routine piano-led ‘moody’ intro before melodramatic chorus; 12: ESTONIA – Girl singer; another moody piano intro – this time on a ‘pianola’; not bad, can hold a note; 13: FINLAND – Solo singer with ‘basin head’ cut, slightly ‘non-binary’ in ensemble; dance-type rhythm Ibiza 1999; chorus like nursery rhyme for 21st century toddlers; 14: CZECH REPUBLIC/CZECHIA – Six-piece girl group; same backing as so many others this evening; slight ‘ethnic’ touch plus ‘rapping’ element ala Pussycat Dolls circa 2005; all in pink with platted ponytails; 15: AUSTRALIA – Novelty ‘rock’ band with electro-pop airbrushing; performance gimmick includes car; vacuous stadium rock ‘woah-oh’ chorus; 16: BELGIUM – 42-year-old gay-boy; early 2000s neo-Disco vibe; not bad; different from rest so far; 17: ARMENIA – 21-year-old also starts on her back (like Sweden); soft ballad opening that leads into predictable high-speed ‘rap’ vocal; 18: MOLDOVA – Another 2012 veteran; bearded bun-head with dancing midget; more ‘ethnic’ sounds set to electronic rhythm; 19: UKRAINE – Male duo; Nigerian-born singer and other guy on decks.

20: NORWAY – Girl singer (Italian); bouncy electro-pop rhythm (any point saying that again?); rather thigh-tastic; 21: GERMANY – Eyeliner-infected ‘rock’ act with camp visuals; look like a fictitious band from a 1980s Channel 4 drama series about the music business; 22: LITHUANIA – Another Eurovision veteran (2015); girl singer; yet one more moody piano intro leads into rather plodding chorus; surrounded by plump Gospel-style backing vocalists to presumably give ‘soulful’ touch; 23: ISRAEL – Another early 20s popette; third female singer to open her act looking like she’s in bed; standard ‘X Factor’ audition vocal and routine Europop beat; dance routine same as every other Eurovision act of this ilk for last 20 years; 24: SLOVENIA – Boy band with guitars, though backing is same electronic rhythm wearing a little thin after two hours; 25: CROATIA – Comedy ‘gay’ look – anti-war song; old-school not-taking-Eurovision-too-seriously vibe ala early 2000s; bloody awful, but refreshingly silly after two hours; 26: UNITED KINGDOM – That electro-pop backing for one final time; quite catchy from the off; coming at the end might help it stick in the head more; presentation and tune adhere to successful Eurovision formula; bit too lightweight, though?

Perhaps my thoughts on the UK entry were accurate, but it was no better or worse than anything else I sat through; somebody has to finish second-from-bottom, I suppose. It was evident fairly early on in the long, drawn-out voting segment of the show that the European juries weren’t going to do us any favours this year; few included the UK in their initial results and none gave us the magic 12 points. Watching the voting could be a depressing experience were it not for the entertainment factor of those announcing the jury votes as they either go for the hyperactive kids TV presenter thing, competing to see who can declare the loudest what a great show it’s been, or they attempt to be self-consciously wacky. One guy was dressed like a gimp Jedi and took forever to unmask himself before simply saying ‘Australia’, for example. Sweden took an early lead and pretty much stayed there throughout, despite surges from Israel and Italy; when we had the strange ‘viewer vote’ addition after the jury votes, the appalling Finnish entry momentarily toppled the Swedish chanteuse with the fingernail implants; but she won out on the viewer vote in the end.

Unsurprisingly – considering his less than gracious treatment by the BBC recently – there was no Ken Bruce commentary on Radio 2 this year, but other than that it was really a case of ‘business as usual’ with the Eurovision in 2023, following the unique atmosphere of the post-pandemic/post-invasion of Ukraine Contest last year. Paying extra attention in order to jot down my instant opinion of what I was watching and hearing, the repetition of the ‘slow piano intro-into electronic Europop beat’ formula throughout the evening began to grate fairly quickly, and let’s be honest, when you’ve seen one dance routine you’ve seen ‘em all at the Eurovision, however thigh-tastic some of the dancers might be. There was less of a ‘Trans’ aspect to it than I’d expected, though perhaps all the drag queens were eliminated in the qualifying rounds this year; and even the ‘gay factor’ wasn’t quite so in-yer-face as usual; but the similarity between the songs and presentation, right up to the fact that three of the female performers opened proceedings laid down, would’ve have made it even harder to distinguish between them if I hadn’t made those notes. Still, there are apparently worse ways to spend a Saturday night; and I did it so you didn’t have to.

© The Editor

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WOMAN’S WORK

The unconvincing argument for the tiresome trend of replacing iconic male characters with inferior female substitutes – whether that be a particular Jedi, a specific Timelord, or the non-binary individual at the helm of the USS Enterprise – rests upon a lack of ‘representation’ in the past. According to this jaded narrative, there were no leading women fronting movies or TV shows before Year Zero was initiated and therefore the guys have to be castrated to balance the books; the fictional heroes whose adventures kept more than one generation entranced were male, yet they were apparently pale and stale, a heinous situation that necessitated gender reassignment surgery. Let’s just conveniently ignore the ‘women’s pictures’ that kept Hollywood ticking over in the 1940s and propelled the likes of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck to superstardom, eh? Well, not only has this approach proven disastrous in terms of box-office receipts and small-screen viewing figures, but it’s also a dishonest act of cultural revisionism, dismissing pioneers that placed an authentically strong female character at the centre of attention.

All TV before the glorious advent of inclusivity and diversity was male, pale and stale? What about one of the first great US sitcoms, ‘I Love Lucy’ (1951-57) and one of the most enduring, ‘Bewitched’ (1964-72)? And not forgetting Mary Tyler Moore, who progressed from playing Dick Van Dyke’s wife to starring as a single career woman in her own show from 1970 to 1977, spawning two spinoffs also fronted by strong female characters, ‘Rhoda’ (1974-78) and ‘Phyllis’ (1975-77). In drama, nothing but strong female characters could be found in London Weekend’s prison series, ‘Within These Walls’ (1971-78), which inspired an entertaining Aussie equivalent that was a late-night cult amongst Poms suffering from insomnia in the early 90s, ‘Prisoner: Cell Block H’. Cop shows, the bread-and-butter of 70s American TV, gave us Angie Dickinson in ‘Police Woman’ (1974-78), followed later by ‘Cagney and Lacey’ (1982-88); on this side of the pond we had the uniformed branch of the Force in the shape of ‘Juliet Bravo’ (1980-85) as well as CID with Jill Gascoine in ‘The Gentle Touch’ (1980-84) – a spinoff from which was ‘C.A.T.S. Eyes’ (1985-87), starring a trio of female characters.

The villains got a look in with Lynda La Plante’s ‘Widows’ (1983-85), whilst much earlier, ‘Take Three Girls’ had the notable distinction of being BBC1’s first foray into colour drama in 1969 as it focused on a trio of independent young women making their way in Swinging London. The more familiar female profession of nursing had been featured in the BBC’s hospital soap, ‘Angels’ (1975-83) – nothing to do, of course, with ‘Charlie’s Angels’ (1976-81) or those other popular slices of escapist feminine fantasy, ‘The Bionic Woman’ (1976-78) and ‘Wonder Woman’ (1975-79). And all of this was long before ‘Prime Suspect’ supposedly smashed the glass ceiling. Indeed, when the amount of archive series starring strong leading female characters is stacked-up, it’s evident those who propagate the ‘lack of representation’ myth either suffer from amnesia or are in wilful denial of what preceded them in the dark ages that supposedly reigned until they arrogantly took credit for going where no woman had allegedly gone before. Even the Law, a subject that gave us one of television’s great male characters in the portly shape of Leo McKern as ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’, saw a woman beat Horace to it by a good seven years.

‘Justice’ was a legal drama produced by Yorkshire Television from 1971 to 1974, one that had its roots in a one-off play that aired in 1969. It proved to be a career reboot for one of Britain’s leading movie actresses of wartime and immediate post-war cinema, the magisterial Margaret Lockwood (along with her trademark beauty spot), and though unfairly overlooked today, the series was genuinely groundbreaking and comes across as a compelling example of ‘grownup’ TV via the series’ current repeat run courtesy of Talking Pictures TV. Like the best of its era, ‘Justice’ doesn’t interpret ‘grownup’ TV in the way broadcasters do in our enlightened age, where after-the-watershed dramas are essentially – in terms of plot, dialogue and characterisation – glorified daytime soaps where everyone says ‘fuck’ a lot. ‘Justice’ saw Lockwood play Harriet Peterson, a gay divorcee who managed to achieve a Law degree despite her ex-husband’s imprisonment.

The series initially covered her progress as a barrister in ‘the North Country’ before she eventually attracted enough attention to warrant an invite from a top London chambers, which she accepted. Once established in the capital, Harriet was under the watchful eye of Head of Chambers, Sir John Gallagher – played with memorably witty pomposity by Philip Stone, who is perhaps better known for playing Malcolm McDowell’s beleaguered father in ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Despite operating in a male-dominated environment that leaves her conduct far more scrutinised than any of her male colleagues, Harriet is involved in a ‘scandalous’ relationship with GP Dr Ian Moody, a relationship untroubled by matrimony; whilst this doesn’t seem especially unusual today, it was certainly brave territory to traverse in the early 70s. Incidentally, Moody was played by John Stone (no relation to Philip), who was Lockwood’s real-life (unmarried) partner. Dr Moody and his do-gooder charity work with ex-cons represent an archetype of the period whose activities possess a resonance still relevant today where condescending middle-class spokesmen for the underclass are concerned; Harriet’s far more effective (not to say realistic) logic routinely expose her partner’s naivety and his emphasis on ‘feelings’, whereby a criminal is rebranded as victim to sway a sentence.

Later in the series, Anthony Valentine joins the team as an arrogant, self-important young buck; fresh from his masterly portrayal of both the ruthless aristocratic assassin Toby Meres in ‘Callan’ and a sadistic SS officer eager to save his own skin when the tide of WWII turns in ‘Colditz’, the charismatic Valentine would undoubtedly have stolen endless scenes had he not been up against such an expert old pro as Lockwood. As it is, the former star of ‘The Lady Vanishes’ and ‘The Wicked Lady’ dominates every scene she’s in, relishing the opportunity to flex her theatrical muscles in her 40s, an opportunity that television offered her when the big screen had written her off. It’s surprising – though sadly not unexpected – that Lockwood’s efforts remain largely unrecognised by a generation that imagines it invented the idea of strong female characters, but Harriet Peterson ends one series of ‘Justice’ by being elevated to Head of Chambers and the next to finally becoming a QC – and how right QC sounds rather than KC, which we now have to use following the accession of a male sovereign. I’m afraid KC still sounds like someone who should be fronting the Sunshine Band. But that’s the way they like it, apparently.

Alongside the likes of the aforementioned ‘Callan’ as well as other examples of ‘grownup’ TV from the same era such as ‘Public Eye’ and ‘Man at the Top’, ‘Justice’ is a good pointer as to how television once rated the intelligence of its audience; in the case of ‘Justice’, it evidently assumed that audience would accept a female as the leading character without concessions to her ring-fenced ‘weak and feeble’ sex. And watching such a series half-a-century later, it’s clear that it wasn’t remotely necessary for this century to symbolically hack off the dicks of all those iconic male characters and recast them as obnoxious ‘sisters’ impossible to love; we already had a rich history of strong female characters in leading roles. They didn’t play the victim, they didn’t wear their sex as a placard, and they didn’t subject the audience to tedious post-#MeToo lectures on how hard it is to be a woman in a patriarchal society; they just got on with it.

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THE BEFORE AND AFTER LIFE OF BRIAN

BEFORE…

Even though most of us are reliant on archive film footage of elaborate decorations and street parties as well as parental anecdotes to inform our impressions of 1953, there seem to be numerous factors as to why it’s not quite the same 70 years on from the occasion that has always been referred to simply as ‘the Coronation’. Talk today is of a lavish bout of pomp and circumstance in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis being ill-timed and in poor taste, yet when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned the country was lingering in far darker shadows than anyone now would recognise. Only eight years away from a war that still scarred most urban landscapes and staggering through a decade blighted by rationing and austerity, Britain was hardly in the full bloom of health at the time. But a young woman suddenly enshrined as the nation’s new figurehead was perceived by many as a luminous beacon of better days to come and the majority appeared to get behind her; let’s face it, there hadn’t been much to celebrate since VJ Day, so why not? Brenda’s coronation was pomp and circumstance on the most grandiose of scales, yet it appears to have been almost universally welcomed, viewed as the Technicolor shot in the arm black-and-white, broke and beleaguered Britain needed.

It’s not so easy to see a brighter future embodied in an over-familiar, ruddy-faced old man who spent over half his life as the most public of understudies before finally getting his sausage fingers on the crown. If it were possible to sense a palpable and genuine optimism in 1953 – one that was manifested in those joyous images of the day we’ve all grown up with – the first occasion of this nature most of us have ever seen as it happens largely radiates an air of ambivalence, a shrug of the shoulders, and celebrations that are muted at best. Of course, the usual types who used to yell ‘Come on, Tim’ at Wimbledon 25 years ago were camped-out along the Mall well in advance of the event, but they’d turn up for the opening of a royal envelope, anyway. Yet aside from a bit of Union Jack bunting strung across the aisles in Sainsbury’s, I haven’t really seen much in the way of visible markers commemorating the occasion. Indeed, the powers-that-be seem to put more energy and effort into Pride week.

Perhaps it’s also harder to drum up enthusiasm with the strange decision to stage the Coronation on a Saturday; the late Queen’s was on a Tuesday – arguably the most boring day of the week – and a public holiday on a weekday always finds people in a better mood because it’s a treat, unlike a routine Saturday. Moreover, Brian’s big moment is taking place in the morning; I only realised this the day before, assuming it would be an afternoon event like the Cup Final always used to be. The first crowning of a British monarch for 70 years and it’s happening on a Saturday morning? It’s almost as though the planners of the ceremony realised it wasn’t going to unite the nation ala 1953, so they figured they may as well get it out of the way early. The funeral of Her (late) Majesty probably united the nation in a way this occasion never could; saying a fond farewell was a spontaneous gesture as opposed to some enforced allegiance, a much more natural response than feeling obliged to hail the accession of such a cantankerous old soak as Charles. It’s like when a football club desperately drags a journeyman manager out of retirement in the futile hope of staving off relegation. You wish them well, but you don’t exactly see in them an embodiment of a glorious future; it’s a short-term fix.

…AND AFTER

Job done now – deciding to split this post into thoughts before and thoughts after certainly helped when it came to the writing of it, which I was able to spread over a couple of days. Having sat through the TV coverage and endured both the familiar tropes of nauseating waffle from gushing ‘special guests’ and banal vox-pop asides on the Mall, I did my best to absorb the event from afar. Like most, I associate an occasion called Coronation with either grainy monochrome pictures narrated in hushed tones by Richard Dimbleby or the colour film, ‘A Queen is Crowned’, which has accompanying commentary from Olivier at his theatrical zenith; to therefore witness this spectacle as a live outdoor broadcast was an undoubtedly strange and (quite possibly) once-in-a-generation viewing experience; and though I don’t use the term once-in-a-generation in an SNP sense, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility I might live to see another live Coronation at some point in the not-too distant future; the King will be 75 this coming November, after all.

Anyway, he didn’t replicate Napoleon’s dismissive attitude towards the Pope by snatching the crown from the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury and placing it on his bonce himself, but when Charles was finally fully kitted-out in the Coronation ensemble, I couldn’t help but think he looked like he was trying on his mother’s gear for a perverse laugh. So used had we become to Brenda being the sole owner of that outfit, seeing Brian in it evoked that memorable line from ‘The Queen is Dead’ by The Smiths, ‘Charles, don’t you ever crave/to appear on the front of the Daily Mail/dressed in your mother’s bridal veil’. I can imagine the young (former) Prince of Wales having his own equivalent of playing tennis racquet guitar in front of the mirror, endlessly rehearsing the scene and wondering if it would ever actually happen. Well, it has, and not only that but the one-time mistress his family should have allowed him to marry decades before he did was crowned alongside him. The ‘Queen Camilla’ label may have been deemed heresy for several years by the pro-Diana lobby whose narrative was predominant for a long time, but few seem to care today.

The ceremony itself was a reminder that the Coronation’s ancient roots are as religious as they are regal; melodramatic fears that Charles might be serenaded by a Trans choir in rainbow uniforms or might have to swear allegiance to Allah proved unfounded as he paid token respect to the multitude of faiths that survived the Christian influence across the Commonwealth and have now taken root on home soil as the commentators and pundits spouted the ‘inclusivity’ mantra; otherwise, we witnessed a beguiling and occasionally boring ritual that – bar the odd recent addition – has been periodically enacted for the best part of a thousand years. Hard to think of another country where that’s the case, which says something, I guess. Yes, there were moments that cried out for a faux-solemn Pythonesque commentary of the absurd as the plodding ceremonials bordered on the ridiculous, but in a weird way the slow-motion choreography was crucial to the unique oddity of an occasion so refreshingly alien to tiresome modern sensibilities in its unashamed antiquity.

We eventually received the Buckingham Palace balcony routine and the Red Arrows flypast, though even this eagerly-anticipated money shot came across as a tad reserved in comparison to the euphoric reaction of the Kop-like swarm at the gates in the 1953 footage; mind you, Everest couldn’t be re-conquered, so there was again less to celebrate than 70 years ago. Well, it’s all over now, and despite the best efforts of broadcasters to big-up an event they set aside several hours to cover, I don’t think its impact will resonate for long. 1953 lingers as a collective folk memory even amongst those who weren’t there because it was one of those pivotal pop cultural touchstones that drew a line in the sand between what had gone and what was to come; the 2023 equivalent felt like merely a morning-off from the grindstone, and one that probably won’t be cited as an enduring reference point 70 years from now.

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DAYS THE MUSIC DIED

Sometimes footage shot for the TV news that would’ve been shoved way down the pecking order when broadcast turns out to be far more fascinating in retrospect than whatever was grabbing the headlines. Joe Public going about his business or enjoying himself can provide a greater insight into how life was lived for the majority than whatever the President or Prime Minister of the day was up to. The fashions, the vehicles, the street furniture – all offer a window to a vanished world that is nevertheless remarkably recent in the grand scheme of things; and it is realising just how much the world we look out on day-to-day has visually altered within living memory that makes such footage so compelling. YouTube has proven to be a good repository for this people’s archive, and whenever I stumble upon another addition I tend to download it and stash it away for future use in my own DIY videos. A couple of months back, I rediscovered film of punters dancing the night away at the Hammersmith Palais in the early 1970s, something I’d downloaded years before and never done anything with; this uncut reel evidently trimmed for transmission ran for the best part of 25 minutes in its raw form, and I found it so intriguing that I wondered if the old-school ballroom venue was still with us. I quickly learnt it fell beneath the wrecking ball in 2007.

Sadly, the Hammersmith Palais is not unique amongst this country’s culturally significant pleasure palaces for the proles in that it now exists only on film. With the Brixton Academy currently threatened with closure, it’s interesting that so few of these venues are regarded by developers and local councils as sites worthy of preservation, as though the fact they provided entertainment for the masses and served as epicentres of pop culture renders them completely dispensable and historically irrelevant. They’re not the Royal Opera House, therefore they don’t matter. How wrong they are. Take The Cavern, perhaps the most famous club and musical hub of the past century – yes, visit Matthews Street in Liverpool and you’ll find a venue called The Cavern; but it’s not The Cavern; it’s not the same place that acted as the maternity ward for a revolution, as the actual location where John, Paul, George and Ringo lit the blue touch paper for all of our lives was across the street from the club that now bears the Cavern name. It was demolished in 1973 to make way for a car park, long before the Rock Heritage industry existed and realised its profitable potential.

The Cavern was still primarily regarded as a Jazz club prior to the incursion of ‘Merseybeat’, with a coffee bar-cum-live venue called The Casbah previously providing The Beatles and their contemporaries with somewhere to play; this was owned and run by the mother of Pete Best and had been inspired by Soho’s 2i’s Coffee Bar, a Skiffle venue that facilitated the first wave of British rock ‘n’ rollers. The café’s handy location in London’s ‘naughty square mile’ ensured any snotty young Elvis imitator strutting his scruffy stuff could swiftly be signed-up by some Denmark Street shark and sewn into a shiny suit for a speedy transformation into an all-round entertainer. But the 2i’s was gradually usurped as the place to be once the 60s started swinging and the nature of pop acts altered; it closed in 1970, and where the 2i’s used to be is now a fish & chip restaurant, with the token plaque on the wall outside the only indication as to its past incarnation.

The increasing popularity of less ‘showbizzy’ venues than the 2i’s was epitomised by the increasing success of The Marquee, situated in the same neighbourhood on Wardour Street; unlike the 2i’s, whose Skiffle roots had led to it being viewed as a rather juvenile enterprise, the Marquee had hosted ‘grownup’ music – i.e. Jazz and R&B – when situated in its original home on Oxford Street. When it relocated to Wardour Street in 1964, The Marquee quickly established itself as one of the key stepping stones on the live music circuit, particularly for up-and-coming acts who would shortly progress to household name status. The Rolling Stones had made their live debut at the Marquee’s first home and also played the Wardour Street version, as did everyone from The Who, The Yardbirds and David Bowie to The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, to name but a tiny handful. When many of the clubs that had served as the breeding grounds for the British pop and rock scene of the 60s closed their doors in the early 70s due to the cheaper appeal of a DJ spinning discs, The Marquee remained a pivotal medium-sized music venue and continued to be so until the mid-80s. In 1988, the year I myself was photographed standing outside the Wardour Street Marquee during a whistle-stop tour around the capital’s most notable pop hot spots, the site was sold for redevelopment and the club reopened on Charing Cross Road, a location it remained at until 2001, the start of a nomadic period for the Marquee that saw it attached to various different locations until finally disappearing in 2008. The Wardour Street site is now occupied by a couple of restaurants, a cigar shop and apartments.

Most of the music venues that helped put Britain on the pop map weren’t purpose-built as such, with many undergoing several regenerations that reflected the changes in the kind of entertainment the public sought on a night out. The Wigan Casino, world-famous home of the Northern Soul scene, had been a ballroom in the Hammersmith Palais vein until its declining attendances were dramatically reversed by the introduction of all-nighters that capitalised on the regional popularity of obscure black dance music from the US. Several American Soul singers struggling to make a living at home were flown over to the UK and were pleasantly surprised to be enthusiastically received as big stars by the Northern Soul crowd; and the patrons’ passion for vintage tracks that had flopped first time round helped push a sizeable amount of them into the charts, giving a further kiss of life to down-at-heel singers who suddenly found themselves on ‘Top of the Pops’. Northern Soul was a passing fad in commercial terms, but continued to be a popular live attraction until the closure of the Wigan Casino in 1981. Nothing remains of the club now; the Grand Arcade shopping centre, an utterly forgettable retail cathedral packed with empty units, stands on the site today.

Manchester’s Hacienda had been a warehouse until Factory Records boss Tony Wilson and his label’s star band New Order converted it into a nightclub in 1982. Early attractions at the venue were something of a mixed bag, including The Smiths, Madonna (making her live UK debut), and even – on the opening night – Bernard Manning; but it was from the late 80s onwards that the club’s reputation grew as an important centre for cutting edge sounds via the Acid House scene, for which the Hacienda proved to be a Northern base. The ‘loved-up’ Ecstasy drug culture that went hand-in-hand with the music was credited with reducing football hooliganism in the city, though when harder drugs and the armed gangs that went with them began to plague the venue in the early 90s, the club’s days were numbered; ironically, drug-use at the Hacienda meant few patrons bought drinks and the venue made little money from the sale of alcohol, which is a key element of a nightclub’s income. The Hacienda finally closed in 1997 and after a period standing empty was demolished five years later. An apartment block is in its place now.

At the height of rock’s live pulling power, there were also several notable large venues that routinely held landmark concerts by the biggest draws, such as Finsbury Park’s Rainbow Theatre (closed its doors, 1982 – now an Evangelical church) and Earls Court, scene of a many a memorable big gig (closed 2014 – demolished by 2017). It’s a shame how few of the clubs and venues that gave birth to something which made a greater global impact than anything else produced in this country over the last 100 years actually remain standing and/or in use for the staging of live music. Times change, of course, and the dearth of charismatic young performers able to fill a large venue is evident at the pensioners’ away day masquerading as the Glastonbury Festival every summer; but the absence of physical evidence in the shape of these legendary locations is a sad statement on how this country views its most recent cultural legacy.

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BULLY FOR HIM

I don’t think of Dominic Raab very often – indeed, why would I? Life, as they say, is rather short. But if I ever do think of him, the image that instantly springs to mind is his lockdown interview from home, one conducted on the TV news. Who can forget the pile of books behind him, balanced precariously on a shelf clearly unaccustomed to supporting such weighty tomes, evidently placed there moments before the interview began by his PR posse to convey an intellectual gravitas not normally associated with a man whose desired public image was that of an Alpha Male political bruiser? The icing on the cake of this superficial makeover, however, was the seamless spines of the spotless volumes, giving the impression underlings from Team Dominic had just dashed back from the nearest branch of Waterstones armed with a recommended list of books nobody had yet perused the pages of, resulting in a telltale absence of cracks and lines on those spines in the process. Were there a camera on me as I write this, readers would notice a similarly crammed shelf behind me – albeit one designed to actually hold books whose spines indicate they’ve all been well and truly thumbed. I’m sure online comments wondering if Raab had ever read any of the books behind him must have got back to the now ex-Justice Secretary pretty swiftly, and the possibility of Raab losing his rag with those responsible seems highly likely, were the reasons that prompted his belated resignation to be believed.

If we are to take the findings of the bullying inquiry as Gospel, it appears Raab’s approach to the Minister/civil servant relationship was akin to that of an old-school football coach who assumes repeatedly telling his players how useless they are will somehow galvanise them into upping their game. Not for macho man Dominic the ‘call me Dave’ supply teacher route – far from it; but was his approach the kind of kick up the arse Whitehall needed when confronted by incompetence or was it an ill-timed misfire in today’s touchy-feely workplace, where graduates of an educational system that infantilises its students and leaves them incapable of coping with criticism without bursting into tears and seeking therapy perceive any routine bollocking as bullying? During her stint as Home Secretary, Priti Patel was accused of similar behaviour as that which forced Raab to fall on his Ministerial sword, but the exposure her attitude towards her staff received perhaps revealed the tricky balancing act a Minister is required to master when the occasional need to issue a reprimand can so easily be misinterpreted.

Dominic Raab doesn’t come across as an especially ‘sensitive’ individual, it has to be said; but is that what his job demanded? He wasn’t running a nursery or a Sunday school, after all. Raab himself may have resigned, but he hasn’t exactly accepted the findings of the inquiry into his conduct as Justice Secretary, Brexit Minister and Foreign Secretary with good grace, airing his private grievances in public following his exit as Justice Secretary on Friday. He labelled the inquiry as a flawed, ‘Kafkaesque saga’ that ‘sets a dangerous precedent’, and claimed he’s been the victim of anti-Brexit ‘activist civil servants’ with ‘a passive-aggressive culture of the civil service, who don’t like some of the reforms – whether it’s Brexit, whether it’s parole reform, whether it’s human rights reform – effectively trying to block government.’ If that’s the case, it’s a pity the guilty parties in question didn’t do more to intervene when the Government was introducing some of its more draconian legislation during the pandemic; but maybe the influence of these ‘activist civil servants’ is less wide-reaching than Raab suggests. Maybe it’s simple sour grapes we’re getting from him at the moment.

Intimidating and aggressive were two words used to describe Raab as a boss in the findings of the five-month investigation led by lawyer Adam Tolley KC, and (in his words) ‘the definition of bullying had been met’. Tolley said Raab had been guilty of ‘an abuse or misuse of power in a way that undermines or humiliates’, though he added Raab’s conduct ‘did not intend to upset or humiliate’ and nor did he ‘target anyone for a specific type of treatment’. As a rule, genuine bullies tend to have their favourites, but it appears Raab was indiscriminate in his outbursts, lashing out at anyone within close range rather than honing in on the same faces whenever a rage took hold of him. As Raab said he’d quit his post unless utterly exonerated by the findings of the inquiry relating to eight formal complaints of bullying, he had no choice but to walk the plank; but those findings are somewhat ambiguous in their conclusions. Adam Tolley says he was unconvinced that Raab employed threatening physical gestures, or that he had the kind of vocabulary that once emanated from the potty mouth of Malcolm Tucker, or even that his criticisms of civil servants in the firing line were either offensive or malicious. Yet the definition of bullying had been met?

Raab’s resignation letter – described by an anonymous source as one of the best examples of a non-apology from a Minister in recent years – claimed the inquiry ‘dismissed all but two of the claims levelled against me’ and Rishi himself has said he believes the process of investigating bullying has ‘shortcomings’, suggesting civil servants need to look again at the handling of complaints of this nature. The Prime Minister has obviously had a reshuffle thrust upon him and loses one of his key allies from his leadership contest last year; but whether or not the Government will unduly suffer by Raab’s relegation to the backbenches – and him being branded a bully – is debatable; in the first instance, it can hardly be argued that Raab was an effective or invaluable Minister, and in the other, the evidence against Raab still seems dubious despite the publicised findings. Meanwhile, the two posts Raab held have now being split between two Sunak loyalists – Alex Chalk as Justice Secretary, and Oliver Dowden as Deputy Prime Minister, further strengthening the presence of ‘Team Rishi’ within the Cabinet, with former Liz Truss groupies now very much in the minority, and Dominic Raab very much out in the cold.

BARRY HUMPHRIES (1934-2023)

An interview I recently watched with ‘alternative poet laureate’ John Cooper Clarke saw the Salford bard recall his first big break performing in the unlikely environs of the Embassy Club – a venue owned and hosted by none other than Bernard Manning. Despite being informed, upon his request for a gig, that the club’s patrons wouldn’t take to poetry because most of them couldn’t read, the young poet was nevertheless rewarded with a ten-minute slot and was greeted by the performer’s worst enemy – indifference; the punters talked amongst themselves rather than pay attention to Cooper Clarke’s recital. A similar fate greeted Barry Humphries when he made his debut on a UK stage in the early 60s, performing at Peter Cook’s legendary home of satire, The Establishment. Cook had been sufficiently tickled by Humphries’ character of a middle-class Aussie housewife name of Edna Everage to offer him a slot, but Brits took a long time to warm to the persona Humphries eventually elevated to a Dame of the British Empire.

As part of the Australian exodus to the mother country that included Clive James and Germaine Greer, Humphries took a little longer to establish himself as a television fixture, initially making a modest living writing for Private Eye, for whom he created the long-running cartoon strip, ‘The Wonderful World of Barry McKenzie’, and appearing in London stage musicals; but by the turn of the 1980s, Dame Edna Everage and her lecherous male counterpart Sir Les Patterson had become household names in the UK, with Dame Edna in particular paving the way for future alter-egos such as Caroline Ahern’s Mrs Merton to interview stars when in character, thus enabling them to be far ruder to them than straight interviewers. Humphries’ death at the age of 89 closes yet another chapter on a comedy era in which causing offence was regarded as a virtue rather than a sin.

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QUANTUM LEAP

Watching an archive ‘Coronation Street’ of more than 50 years’ vintage the other day, I remarked to a friend that Ena Sharples’ face was like a roadmap of the first half of the 20th century; in the story imprinted on that fascinating countenance one could discern traces of the Great War, the Great Depression and the Blitz, to name but a few traumatic chapters that left a mark so indelible it would define that character and everything she represented for the remainder of her life. At the time Violet Carson was bestriding the nation’s TV sets as one of the medium’s greatest creations, the generation seizing the day in a way the generation of old ladies in hairnets and curlers had been cruelly denied was perhaps embodied in the contrasting shape of Mary Quant, a woman several years Ena Sharples’ junior, yet one who actually lived way beyond the lifespan of that character’s onscreen duration. It’s somewhat humbling to realise that when one of the late 20th century’s pivotal pop cultural architects shuffled off this mortal coil, she had actually reached the grand old age of 93, which perhaps serves as a reminder of how her generation has now superseded the one that fought the War as our most senior of citizens.

Of all the creative industries revitalised by the cultural renaissance on these shores during the 60s – music, cinema, television, photography, fashion, art – pop music was generally spearheaded by war babies, with barely any member of a band that mattered born before 1940 (Bill Wyman was a rare exception). The other creative industries tended to be driven by slightly older heads who suddenly found themselves in the right place at the right time. Mary Quant was a good ten years ahead of, say, The Beatles, born a full decade before John Lennon; but many who helped shape the scene that flowered in the 60s had spent the 50s busily laying the foundations for it, whether they knew it or not. Mary Quant herself had started the ball tentatively rolling by opening her first boutique, Bazaar, on the King’s Road in 1955, long before that quarter of Chelsea became the Mecca for the beautiful people; the boutique gatecrashed a static and somewhat snooty fashion world still dominated by the houses of haute couture, utilitarian clothing, and elegant grownup models posing with all the animation of mannequins. What happened next must have felt to those who experienced it like taking a trip from black & white Kansas to Technicolor Oz.

Along with the burgeoning live music scene that would shortly bear exceedingly rich fruit, the opening of Bazaar was one of the first indications the country was finally emerging from its lengthy post-war fog. Quant once described the difficult decade leading up to her first boutique’s arrival as ’10 years of gloom and despair, when London was a bombsite. Nothing moved, nothing happened, and then suddenly the next lot of young people said, “Enough of this, we’re going to do it,” and they did it themselves.’ When asked many years later what the main difference was between the 50s and 60s, Quant recalled that in the 50s young women strove to look much older than they actually were; 30 was the desired age every girl was eager to pass for. The big change in the 60s was that daughters stopped wanting to emulate the style of their mothers and mothers instead sought to resemble their daughters. The hourglass woman was out and the slim-hipped girl was in; and Mary Quant played no small part in that transformation. She put a smile on the face of an aloof industry by injecting it with a very British sense of humour.

Quant had spotted a gap in the market, selling to a demographic barely catered for; Bazaar pioneered all the hallmarks central to the ‘swinging’ shopping experience, generating a vibe closer to that of a carefree night-club than the stuffy environments girls had previously endured when looking for something to wear, such as intimidating department stores. Although initially selling stock she’d bought in from wholesalers, Quant’s own colourfully quirky designs – virtually ‘Pop Art’ in their distinctive patterns – proved more popular, and by the time her unusual surname became a byword for the wardrobes worn by It Girls of the era, it had become a brand as potent as Chanel or Dior, and one not encumbered by a past; it was extremely ‘Now’. In the same way the advent of the flapper in the 1920s had freed a generation from the corset, Quant’s clothes had a similar effect in emancipating young women from the constricting ensembles their mothers had been fastened into. And nowhere was this more noticeable in the increasing preference of tights over stockings and suspenders; however unappealing this development may have been to the male of the species, tights were more conducive to the kind of outfits Quant was producing, especially when hemlines began to rise at a rapid rate.

‘It was the girls on the King’s Road who invented the mini,’ said Quant. ‘I was making clothes which would let you run and dance and we would make them the length the customer wanted. I wore them very short and the customers would say, “Shorter, shorter”.’ Whether or not Mary Quant can be held responsible for the introduction of the mini-skirt remains the subject of debate, with John Bates and André Courrèges also being credited with its invention. But she certainly capitalised on the mini, cannily exploiting a loophole in the law; a hemline of a certain height was viewed as children’s clothing and therefore exempt from tax; the lawmakers had evidently failed to foresee that grown women would wear skirts so far above the knee. Indeed, as the 60s progressed, the distance between hemline and knee grew so vast that the mini was eventually superseded by the ‘midi’ and the ‘maxi’, as hemlines couldn’t rise any higher without giving everything away.

The mini, as with many of Quant’s clothes, was perhaps kinder to those of a more beanpole build than the shapelier figure; Quant herself was fashionably skinny and the model whose unique look became entwined with the Mary Quant brand in the mid-60s was Twiggy, a striking stick insect Quant could well have designed on her drawing board. Quant’s designs had a sharp edge perfect for the Mod period and seemed to mirror the zest for the new that could also be seen in the high-rising architecture of the era; she embraced fresh materials like PVC, though the late 60s saw the shifting sands of pop culture take a turn into Victoriana and then Art Nouveau; the classic Quant modernist look was overtaken by the more bohemian hippie styles as personified by Barbara Hulanicki’s Biba brand. Quant had already expanded into other areas, such as cosmetics and household goods, though she ended the decade by effectively introducing hot pants, an item of clothing that kept legs on display even when hemlines were starting to drop again.

Made a Dame in 2015, Quant had been awarded the OBE as early as 1966 – just a year after John, Paul, George and Ringo had paid a visit to the Palace to receive their slightly humbler gong. In her own way, Mary Quant was as crucial to the revolution that transformed British pop culture from a minority interest to a global brand as the Fab Four had been, and her name is never far from the lips whenever the words ‘Swinging’ and ‘London’ renew their marriage vows for one more nostalgic promenade down the King’s Road of old.

© The Editor

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HOLIDAY VIEWING

For all the talk in recent years of the UK ‘leaving Europe’, Britain’s membership of a certain European institution has nevertheless proven to be remarkably enduring, far more so than another renowned European institution – i.e. the one we opted out of in 2016 (the one that continues to be held up as both Messiah and Antichrist, depending where you stand). I’m talking about the EBU – that’s the European Broadcasting Union to those of you only aware of one European Union. Our membership of the EBU predates any economic alliance with the Continent, stretching all the way back to the early 1950s – long before satellites enabled live pictures from mainland Europe to be beamed into British living rooms, a time when we were reliant on cables buried deep under the Channel to relay the Eurovision Song Contest as it happened. In fact, we have the EBU to thank for our continuous participation in Europe’s premier kitsch event and gay night-out; had we not been one of the ‘big five’ countries making substantial financial contributions to the EBU, our woeful bottom three finishes in so many Eurovision Song Contests over the past couple of decades would’ve seen us relegated from the competition; and who over here would want to watch were we denied the edge-of-the-seat drama of seeing if the UK would manage to achieve nul-points?

Our membership of the EBU has not only kept us alive as vital participants in a tournament we will finally be hosting again this year, but continues to provides Radio 3 listeners in the post-midnight wee small hours with something soothing in the background as the station links up with other EBU member states across the Continent and broadcasts extended performances from numerous European orchestras. And anyone who was a viewer of children’s television in the 1960s and 70s felt the benefits of this enlightening post-war co-operation via various European series that were dubbed into English and seared themselves upon the subconscious memories of more than one generation. Iron Curtain cartoons such as Czechoslovakia’s ‘The Mole’ and ‘Dorothy’ were regular features of BBC1’s children’s teatime line-up 50 years ago, as was the Franco-Polish bear ‘Barnaby’ in the lunchtime ‘Watch with Mother’ slot – ‘Barnaby the bear’s my name/never call me Jack or James’; but it was the serials screened repeatedly on mornings during school holidays that left the longest-lingering legacy.

There was the disturbingly surreal Grimm-like East German fairytale, ‘The Singing Ringing Tree’, and Yugoslavia’s ‘The White Horses’ – the latter chiefly remembered courtesy of Jackie Lee’s adorable theme song; there was France’s ‘Belle and Sebastian’ and the unforgettable ‘Adventures of Robinson Crusoe’ starring Robert Hoffman; and there was ‘The Flashing Blade’ (AKA ‘Le Chevalier Tempête’), another French outing that received the redubbed treatment at De Lane Lea studios in London, dependent upon a dependable cast of voice actors who made a decent living putting English words into the mouths of funny foreigners. It is the latter I’ve recently re-watched on DVD for the first time in a long time, sticking to the old formula in the process – i.e. watching one episode a day rather than the somewhat dishonest back-to-back binge-watch that rather distils the viewing ritual such serials had at the time.

‘The Flashing Blade’ is set in the 17th century, during one of the endless battles between France and Spain for Continental dominance; our hero is Frenchman the Chevalier de Recci, a dashing, swashbuckling mercenary whose lust for adventure grates as much with the more straitlaced military establishment of his home country as it does the enemy; along with his loyal sidekick Guillot, Chevalier embarks upon a death-defying mission to save an under-siege French garrison town from Spanish bombardment, and over the course of 11 episodes we follow his adventures as he outfoxes the Spanish during their illegal occupation of one of the numerous independent principalities that characterised Europe in this period. The hero is played by Robert Etcheverry whilst his suitably villainous Spanish nemesis Don Alonso is played by Mario Pilar, and the frenetically restless nature of the lead character is reflected in the breathless pace of the series, in which barely five minutes go by without a sword fight or a chase sequence. It had such an impact on me at the time that I even named my first pet goldfish after the series’ hero; and how many pets were called Chevalier in the 70s, I wonder?

‘The Flashing Blade’ had a degree of longevity beyond its Continental competitors in that it was shot in colour and therefore received its last terrestrial TV outing as late as the late 80s; considering it had originally been filmed in the late 60s, this was no mean achievement. But it still looks as though it was afforded a big budget in comparison to the studio-bound home-grown serials of the era, making full use of the period costumes and picturesque locations that give it a cinematic ambience. Once translated and edited into English, ‘The Flashing Blade’ was gifted a fantastic theme song called ‘Fight’ (one absent from the original French language series), which has a galloping rhythm perfectly suited to a series that spends so much of its time on horseback. Swiftly established as a mainstay of school holiday schedules for the best part of a decade, in the pre-VHS/DVD/streaming television era repeated broadcasts on TV were the only way to see a series more than once, and ‘The Flashing Blade’ was a beneficiary of this system. And as someone who came to it after its initial 1969 transmission, I was unaware what I’d always been led to believe was the final episode was actually the penultimate chapter.

Upon purchasing the Network DVD of the series a decade or so ago, I was pleasantly surprised to discover there was a twelfth episode I’d never seen before, though on the DVD this is presented in its original French language version with English subtitles. It’s somewhat jarring to hear the authentic voices of the French actors instead of the more familiar dubbed English voiceovers – and to be deprived of the memorable theme song; but I subsequently learnt that when the dubbed version of the official final episode aired in 1969, the film was subject to constant breakdowns during transmission and even resulted in an ‘Ask Aspel’ request to see the scenes affected by the repeated break in broadcast. At some point in the 1970s, it would appear the BBC hierarchy decided the actual final episode was too problematic to air again and the series was reduced from 12 to 11 episodes thereafter. A pure stroke of serendipitous luck is that the final episode doesn’t really add anything to the overall story and follows the characters as they return home after their battles; by ending the series on 11 episodes, the breathtaking pace is retained and the postscript is rendered superfluous.

It’s easy to forget today just how essential it once was, having to tune in every morning to catch the next instalment of a serial; this was genuine ‘appointment’ television of a kind we’ve completely lost now, probably forever. The rest of the day may well have constituted climbing trees or scaling building site scaffolding as well as engaging in a ‘jumpers-for-goalposts’ cup final, but mornings were reserved for the daily diet of swashing and buckling that would provide at least half-an-hour’s inspiration for recreated sword fights once the great outdoors beckoned. ‘The Flashing Blade’ was the most endearing example of this vanished genre of viewing and is deserving of a retrospective view; the nice thing is that it really stands up, and remains an enjoyable example of just how much time, effort and money once went into children’s programming – not only the original French production, but the English language revamp (including that classic theme song). It also proves not all of Britain’s entries into Europe proved to be a damp squib, whether led by Ted Heath or by Jemini. After all, you’ve got to fight for what you want, for all that you believe…

© The Editor

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