Les Dawson found Sid James ghost so chilling that he never talked about what it revealed. It must have been some encounter that Sunderland night, the cackling walnut faced James haunting the gurning piano playing Dawson. What did he reveal ? Was it that Covid 19 was on its way ? Was it that Roy Barraclough would end up on Coronation St and Babs on Eastenders – chilling .
I discovered recently my notes on a biography I read of James, it may have been 10 years ago but the ghost story has stuck and could be a film in itself !
The biography details that after his heart attack ( I think he had more than 1), he was restricted to no animal fat, 3 pipes a day, 2 whiskeys and a vodka !
He was a born advertiser including hot dogs ” get you teeth into something this size, darling ”
His Cardiovascular risk was a clause in his Carry On films, had a face like a scrambled egg then its really all drink, horses and Babs Windsor.
Face like a squashed lemon after a drought is one of the best lines about his looks
He did release a song called ” A punch up the ooter”
He was driving home at top speed as he was having a heart attack, the police stopped him ” Please bear with me Im in the middle of a heart attack ”
Most fitting he advertised Derby Day a horse gambling game for kids ! Imagine that !
There’s one thing it hasn’t a deterrent effect on, says Alf…. The poor bugger’s tool that’s being hanged. … I heard that from the head warder that was in Kilmainham [jail] when they hanged Joe Brady, the invincible. He told me when they cut him down after the drop it was standing up in their faces like a poker James Joyce Ulysses
There is no truth in suicide and this becomes more apparent with celebrity suicide.
We can create our own truths, our meaning and understanding of what and why. It becomes a fascination – is it because we can’t see ourselves doing it we have to create a reason? Or is it our desire to feel the act?
This book ( The final days of Michael Hutchence by Mike Gee ), though empathetic to the human side of Hutchence cannot avoid such traps. Suicide, his friends claim, wasn’t him, he saw it as cowardly, he wasn’t that type of person ….but what is that type of person?
Research found that men who commit suicide with firearms are more likely to be married and to carry this out at home. Unmarried men are more likely to hang themselves than unmarried women. Men with a history of depression are more likely to hang themselves than women with a history of depression. Men with a history of substance abuse are more likely to poison themselves than men without.
So Hutchence possibly fits some of our profile.
This book was written close to the events and predates the death of Paula Yates. In some respects the compounding effect of Yates death completes the story.
For the author the key to the death is twofold. Firstly an intense and failry instant impact crash on the morning of his death. The lack of progress around child custody arrangements, the failure of his partner to board a flight to spend the next 3 months with him.
Then there was the effect of fame. Or rather the losing of it. This wasn’t live fast and die young, by 37 he had peaked and was on the slow sluggish trudge back down. The hell of smaller and smaller venues, lower and lower sales, and inevitable decline truths. And for what? Why continue? Gee discusses the collapsible man of prominence – is this the inevitable end for rock stars?
Fashion changes, you age in front of everyone and then they look to someone else. It a very public betrayal of their truth. Gee doesn’t pull punches on the weakness of the bands output and that they struggled to ride the downward curve.
Success can be an antidote to vulnerability and weakness, but when it wanes it leaves open the opportunity for depression. Like the awakening from a big night out, you suddenly realise the reality around you is just as bad as before you started – only your older.
Was Hutchenes use of Prozac the issue- it is supposed to reduce suicidal episodes, but not for everyone, and dose management is crucial. Shaun Ryder, Hutchences friend and all round drug ox is convinced Prozac was at the root of his death. I know the mix of Prozac and alcohol is not good, but I’ve yet to wank myself to death.
Gee’s Hutchence kills himself in a momentary emotional wave. Was he boxed in? Emotionally, financially, physically? Was he Yates stooge? Who knows? Gee dismissed the auto-erotic insinuations around Hutchence death while also relaying that many of his friends felt he would never commit suicide. A paradox he doesn’t really address. Erotic hangings have caused fascination for many, deliberate or otherwise sexual asphyxia is a phenomena across the board, apparently its all in the lumber chord ( Stephen Milligan MP was famously found dead with an orange in his mouth, a rope round his neck and women’s underwear- one imagines it wasn’t just a cry for help !).
Gee ends his book with a reminder that there are no truths. Everyone close to Hutchence has a different truth of not only what happened but why. Perhaps the sanest response came from his brother, who went to the hotel room where Hutchence was found dead looking for answers – but there weren’t any!
Robyn Toomath provides an insightful and well researched look at why we are getting fatter and what we can do about it. Being told to eat less and do more activity hasnt worked and indeed may not even be the solution for many of us. One of the key points she makes is that for thousands of years we have been genetically predisposed to gaining weight as a safety and survival mechanism. Our bodies are even less likely to breed when we lose weight. Weight storage allowed us to survive the seasonal provision of local foods. Yet the last 100 or so years have seen the food production and consumption cycles move away from seasonal and possibly unpredictable to one of constant supply. Added to this are a range of food policy issues that for Toomath dont help. These include trade deals and the WTO rules, proximity to fast food outlets and the marketing of and production of processed foods.
It leaves us in an unhealthy, dangerous and potentially costly place – and the problem has only got worse in recent years.
Toomath presents us with the need for a wholesale and systematic change around joined up policy, wider than just Food Policy but including transport, education and the wider governmental system. This way we can achieve the shift needed to re-set our relationship with food and activity and rebalance. This poses 2 contemporary problems. Firstly this approach is almost a war on obesity, and it is compared to approaches towards tobacco consumption. This battle has been slow and yet to achieve its ultimate gain. The main policy tool has been the tax increase. There’s no doubt this has worked , but is it the right place to start on food ? A Sugar Tax or similar would provide ample opportunities for long and convoluted fights with the grocery industry- and it may only provide a positional change rather than a great societal one. There is no denying the need for a whole of system approach, but my second concern is that with all the system-thinking now shifted to climate change are we likely to see co-ordinated government responses to anything else. The obesity epidemic isn’t going away, but it gets less and less airtime as a matter of concern under plastic bag bans and recycling stations.
One cant help thinking that all our so-called “wicked” problems obesity,poverty,housing will be overridden by the policy effort and focus on the now super-wicked problem of climate change. This may, or may not be the only way for Governments and public policy to respond – its implications though are far reaching.
Fat Science – Robyn Toomath, Auckland University Press,2016.
” smaller and smaller men are moving across narrower and narrower stages “
For those civil servants who were going to be called on to man the bunker and keep British government functioning there would have been a sense of doom and disaster and no doubt a little sense of injustice at the situation the world had come to. Whether it was to create a sense of normality or just a British sense of fair play – these civil servants were also told to take a packed lunch, wear informal dress, send mail via a PO Box and take a book to read. Quite how the end of the civilised world as we knew it was to impact we fortunately never found out – but Peter Hennessy’s Winds of Change at least lets us understand the formalities that would have accompanied it.
Hennessy brings alive the world of the early 60’s as British politicians grappled with two issues, which formed a subset of a rather larger and at times existential issue – what is the role of Britain. They were challenged with the big idea of joining the European Community and at the same time challenged with reducing their Empire at a rapid rate.
The attempt to join Europe, failed at this time of asking. It brought some marvelous debate though , with Derek Walker-Smith rambling on the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire, Michael Foots wonderful point that Britain wanted to join the West European Football League so long as the games resembled Cricket. Harold Wilson privately called the application “a cold douche”. Speaking afterwards Richard Wilson noted that ” We always go into our big decisions as if under anesthetic, only waking up many years later wondering ” Did we really mean to do that ?”” The current day parallel is obvious.
The negotiations managed to get zero duty on Tea,cricket bats and polo sticks but only a suspension for desiccated coconut and a slowing down of the tariff for pepper. The serious discussion on the continent of being flooded with eggs and bacon and ruining the continental breakfast was a premonition that 70’s and 80’s Spain saw come to life.
Of course De Gaulle ( who we are reminded traveled everywhere with vials of his own blood ?) said no.
We discover that Selwyn-Lloyd gave his black Labrador “Sambo” to chequers and the dog was distraught that the first cabinet meeting post-night of the long knives his former master didn’t appear.
Britain’s European entrance was juxtaposed with its exit from empire. Hong Kongs civil servants were trained by watching meetings of the Stepney Borough Council ( the so called Devonshire courses ).
Hennessy writes in a wonderful style, Macleod ” herbivorous policies defended in a carnivorous way ”
The shadow of nuclear catastrophy, either by design or accident hung over the world and the Cuban missile crisis gave the Prime Minister diarrhea. One of the reasons Hennessy rejoices is that had the global war been triggered in 1963, Cliff Richard may have been considered the highest form of pop music that the country would ever attain. Cuban brought its own bizzare afterthought. Leyland buses, made in Lancashire had taken an order for 10m pounds of buses and 1 million in spares. LBJ was distraught and offered to personally recompense the company if the order was scrapped. Alec Douglas Home pointed out that ” buses dont pose a nuclear threat to the US ” but LBJ wasn’t listening.
The book covers the bizzare transition from Macmillian to Home to Wilson ( met by the Oh Jeremy Corbyn of its day – Wilson yeah yeah yeah !). One hopes Hennessy continues these volumes they are mental gold.
Part way through reading this glorious book by Pat Butcher it suddenly dawned on me. I had as a child been allowed to think of the era of Ovett and Coe as , well two things. Firstly the era of Coe & Ovett, even though Coe was clearly the younger and junior and secondly that Coe was the natural champion and Ovett somehow the person who tried to rain on his parade.
How did I get it so wrong – why had I swallowed that narrative that somehow the 800 metres in Moscow was where Ovett robbed Coe and the 1500 metres where Coe proved his class. Why not, as Butchers book clearly lays out, the other way around.
Ovett never gains the recognition for winning that gold instead the story was of Coe’s loss and ultimate redemption. Was it a class thing , was it Ovetts indifference? I don’t know. But from the book I have three observations and an aside.
Firstly whoever calls running 800 metres a middle distance race has never run a marathon.Seriously imagine stoping after 800 metres and thinking you might be about half way through !
Secondly Ovett was a running machine . The book tells of periods where he was running everything from 400 metres to 3,000 with little change in results. The story of him borrowing kit and winning an international class half marathon is just delightful.
My third observation is the wonderful way Butcher takes us up to the last lap of the 1500 metres final in 1984 and the point it all ended. There’s a moment where it could be a British 1,2,3 and then it’s over. Not in a linear sense but the magical era ends before the race does. We all move on , grow up, realise perhaps it was all a dream.
And my aside , well trivial as it may seem a neighbour during my childhood insisted his real name was Steve Obett and that my TV had some sort of malfunction. I have now put that ghost to rest.
There can never be enough study of the ideology and thought of the confused and chaotic British 17th Century. The role of women in this process is often neglected. Twenty years ago or so Hilary Hinds wrote a book which for me was a showstopper in terms of my thinking on the 17th Century – “ God’s Englishwomen” she illustrates how women had to circumvent the male dominated religious paradigm they operated within to get their point across. In the terms of Hinds book she demonstrated how women could relay thought through the process of revelatory dreams was seen as ok , but simply having an idea was not. Fast forward 400 years and consider the treatment of women politicians and maybe not a lot has changed.
So its an early xmas present to find Manchester University Press have published another great looking book on 17th century thought this time focusing on Women poets of the english civil war. If the interview below is anything to go by it should be a great read, and if I’m lucky enough to get a copy I will no doubt post a review.
The Truth About Trump, Michael D’Antonio (St Martins Press,2016)
During the reconstruction of the building that would eventually become Trump Towers, workers destroyed two art deco friezes. There had been on going debate about the value of the friezes and Trump had agreed to donate them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Facing criticism for having broken this earlier agreement, the Trump organisation were coming under increasing public pressure. Enter John Barron who defended the decision based on economics. John Barron was vice-president of the Trump organisation. However, his existence was not a physical one, Barron was a construct of Trumps imagination played by none other than Donald Trump. It may have been a shield, some form of protection or a way to throw legal threats and deal with rumours. But it was Trump pretending to be someone else. Trump also employed the services of John Miller, another character of his imagination, to inform the press of Trumps dating history with celebrity women. Michael D’Antonios book “The Truth About Trump” contains this story and many others about the odd world of Donald Trump up to November 2016.
In reading the book you are never quite sure that Donald Trump really exists. Or perhaps its which Donald Trump exists. Trumps relationship with reality is difficult to comprehend. D’Antonio sees the Trump performance as similar to a slightly off-beat comedian. His slow dead beat delivery chipping away an insult at a time. Whether its potential rivals for the Presidency, potential Mrs. Trumps or just his business rivals, the combination of over the top insult, innuendo and fear mongering have been consistent for decades. This has accelerated in recent years with Trump taking to social media for additional delivery. His Twitter storms are referred to as “shitposting”. An inoculation against the facts and perhaps even against reality. The benefit for Trump in doing this is that he always leaves one foot on the edge of the post. The character of Donald Trump might say these things but the real man is somehow hidden a little further away. Maybe though this is the real man, and D’Antonio leaves enough pointers for us to understand that the irrational, inconsistent and at times insulting behaviour is part of Trumps truth.
Examples abound. Trump’s business activities form the main part of this book. Trumps debt funded and ego fuelled deals rarely make commercial sense. It perhaps explains also why, as someone who was overly keen to ensure the media reported his wealth in billions, when he applied for a gaming licence in 1982 he could only demonstrate cash assets of $400,000. His empire was heavily indebted with insufficient available cash. The solution for the Trump organisation was to continue doing deals, to free up some more cash to prolong the inevitable payback. When in the early 1990s this all started to go horribly wrong for Trump he managed to bluff and bluster his way out of it. His Taj Mahal resort-casino went bankrupt and with it a number of his other ventures. As part of the arrangement with creditors Trump continued to receive $1 million per year for use of his name on the complex. In trying to salvage something from the continued operation of his businesses, the creditors avoided lengthy court processes. They also allowed Trump to ride to a position of power from his corporate disasters. He reduced many of his own liabilities but retained a significant asset base. His major financial restraint was a $450,000 per month expenses allowance. In exchange he walked away from over half a billion dollars of debt. Or as he later said” You have to be strong enough to not pay”.
None of this stopped his image of being a success. A winner as he often calls himself. Trump didn’t feel constrained by just being a business man he became something of a celebrity. Brand Trump expanded itself beyond real estate, it was a lifestyle, a statement, a monogrammed gold plated high interest junk bonded one. Like his business deals though the personality needed to do further deals to fund the ego. Not content or able to just be the promoter of Trump steaks (and who would) he needed to go further. Leading a successful television show takes him further. As does his almost comical “invasion” of a Scottish coastal town to build a golf resort. Sadly, it was not comic for those on the receiving end of the abuse and bullying that went with it.
However, niggling away was the idea of the biggest promotional deal he could possibly do. Run for President. Having looked at it in the late 80’s, though not in a serious way, he returned in a more serious manner for the 2000 election and the possibility of being the Reform Party candidate. He offered the party “a business mans eye for the bottom line” just as his organisation posted a $34.5-million-dollar loss for the last 3 months. Timing in politics can be everything. Much of his exploratory campaign was built around negative comments about other contenders. D’Antonio lists many of them. Too many to repeat. He managed to turn the campaign though into a book and speaking tour. His campaign eventually ended but not after extensive promotion of Trumps assets.
His 2011 attempt to gain momentum for the Republican nomination was backed by what is now becoming an all too familiar Trump trait, racial ignorance. Trump led the “Birther “charge. A name he rejected on the grounds that being a “Birther” seemed to imply anyone who questioned the Presidents birth details was an idiot. You can judge this statement for yourself. Trumps version of Birther was something else though. It wasn’t that Obama was born overseas (though he didn’t accept this entirely) it was that Obama had a secret. The secret may be that he is a Muslim, maybe something else. Obama, according to Trump, went to a school where no one remembers him and gained an education on the back of being a poor student. Of course it may just be that Trump didn’t like having a non-white President. Though different versions of Trump may have had different views. Trumps campaign ended when he decided to film another series of “The Apprentice”. It wasn’t over though. His 2011 testing of the waters included some strong stuff on Mexicans, and on foreign leaders laughing at America. His next attempt would, to use a quote from a Trump book “Think Big and be paranoid”.
Sadly, we all know where D’Antonios book is taking us. The 2016 General Election win for Trump built on his concepts of thinking big and paranoia. He advocates violence, exploits racial tension, seems comfortably misogynist and creates a climate of fear around immigrants, Muslims and Mexicans. He wants global trade and local news to be on his terms. Trump makes a political deal with those left behind, the unemployed, the Birthers, the white supremacists, climate change deniers and many more. As with his commercial deals there’s too much inherent debt and their wont be enough ability to pay all these political creditors. When the inevitable payback comes what kind of deal will emerge? Will it be more elaborate than the original? A bigger wall? More Walls? Will it cut deeper? What we do know is Trump doesn’t like to lose out in these arrangements. In avoiding Trumps political bankruptcy, we may all feel the pinch.
But are these images of Donald Trump that D’Antonio shows us our real issue to deal with? D’Antonio is certain that Trumps characteristics are known even if the characterisation is murky. The bigger question is what are we going to do about it?
Political bag carriers and gatekeepers have a new patron saint. Step forward Alyssa Mastromonoca. The inside cover of her book claims “ if your funny older sister were the former deputy chief of staff to President Obama, her behind the scenes political memoir would look something like this …” and with that she nailed it.
Mastromonaco writes in a fluid style and takes us all over the place, not just in a geographic sense but in her own world as well. She’s open and honest about herself ( there is no such thing as too open and honest ) and takes you inside the world that seems both exhilarating and frustrating at the same time.
If you ever find yourself undertaking a job like this ( even if its for a small place local body politician ) you will benefit from Mostramonaco’s guide as to how to explain your job. Don’t go into detail just say it slowly, in hushed tones and with some inclusive hand gestures.
The human side of the book is wonderfully self-deprecating and funny. How could fighting the urge to need the toilet whilst waiting to meet the Pope not be both ? How could you possible end up married when your first date is gate-trashed by Jim Messina ?
Behind this though are some more serious points. She is put down in the press mainly as a scheduler because, well hey she’s a Woman. And the stress and strain of the job remind me of Stephanopolousis also wonderful insider memoir. They burn them out in the White House. It may not be intentional, it may be it craves a certain type. Not just funny older sisters who pretend to be hedgehogs. And even if you don’t share her love (obsession) with lists, you’ll still find something wonderful in this book.
Who Thought This Was A Good Idea ? Alyssa Mastromonaco, twelve books,2017
Sean Mahoney on how the revolutionary Marxism of Antinio Gramsci can provide solutions to some of the predicaments of Europe and the US today.
Michele Filippini, Using Gramsci: A New Approach (Pluto Press, 2017)
In late 1926 Antonio Gramsci wrote an unfinished manuscript with the working title ‘Some aspects on the Southern Question.’ As with other essays by Gramsci it takes a local, narrow and perhaps niche issue and transforms it into an argument that is expansive and of universal interest, not only for the world of 1926 but for the world today.
The ‘Southern Question’ as considered by Gramsci focused on the unification of Northern industrial workers and Southern peasants, a unification that would be required in order to overcome the bourgeoisie. ‘For the proletariat to become the ruling, the dominant class, it must succeed in creating a system of class alliances which allow it to mobilise the majority of the…
I blame the Los Angeles Review of Books. Earlier this year I noticed a link to a review of a biography on Kenneth Clark. Lord Clark of Civilisation as he was hilariously known. Alan Clarks dad as he was also hilariously known, though mainly posthumously. Clark, was an interesting character and the review was good.It reminded me I had volume 2 of Clark’s Autobiography in a box somewhere. I located it and read it firly rapidly. Published in 1977 and dedicated “ To Alan “ it covered the years from before the second world war to publication.
Clark is a lucid writer and you enter a world as bizarre and out of touch as anything his son ( The racist Mr Toad ) conjures up in his diaries. He bought a castle for gawds sake ! How many of us will be able to put that in our autobiographies ?
Clark takes us through his time as a wartime Civil Servant. He doesn’t seem to have enjoyed it or been very attentive at it. He wrote If the Invader Comes a pamphlet sent to every household. Its a document worth further exploration, but he dismisses it as useless. He put on films and Concerts during the war to keep up morale. It seems he had little problem with his own morale.Away from his wife he claims to have been “ the least Strindbergian of men”….and he got into a trouble away from his wife that he “need not specify nor describe”. Im sure this is his way of saying he met nice ladies and they were nice back to him. Its not quite in the Princess Diana/ Prince Charles league of admitting adultery by semaphore …its more like by cryptic crossword.
Anecdotes abound, normally about the great and the good. He hears that the war has ended after lunching with Ernest Bevin and then taking his wife Jane to a German Surgeon to remove a broken needle left in her backside. He continues post war in a variety of public service roles and each of these brings fascinating tales.
Clark though doesn’t see himself as a powerful person. He tells of his mission to ask De Valera ( Irelands Premier ) to change his mind over the issue of port access not to reveal power but to reveal the lack of power. Indeed as Chair of the Arts Council he says he had less power than a lollipop lady ( who oddly he says enjoy using it ?).
Like his son, Clark sees the world darkly. He claims to have seen “Death” enter Maynard Keynes opera box the night before he died. A natural optimist he is not. I must confess to never having watched Civilisation, but I did allow myself one clip after reading this book. Clark gives a rather gloomy view of the world today. He is a stick in the mud and quotes Yates second coming, before looking reflectively around his Castle. He owned a Castle !
At the same time as reading this I also received a free trial download of an audiobook. I currently don’t have much cash to buy new books so decided to try this out. I am not a fan of audiobooks in general but decided to spend my daily commute with that other Kenneth Clarke. Partly because I seem to recall a story that he sued Trivial Pursuit for claiming he was Kenneth Clarks son, or perhaps Alan did or some such combination. A rubbish anecdote I digress but a perfect connection for the Clark/s.
Clarke was a “big beast” political figure. His autobiography read in a rather sing song and friendly tone provides an entertaining if not revelatory account of life in British Politics since the late 1960’s.His early life was content and happy he enjoyed everything it seemed from trainspotting (not the film) to sport and joined the elite very easily. He ran up an enormous overdraft as a student that he didn’t pay off until he was in his 40’s ( a sentiment I can concur with ) and then had a bizarre life as a QC in Birmingham by day, MP for Nottingham at the weekend and on a train to westminster for the evening session each day and back to Birmingham for bed. Oddly he thinks this was good for democracy.
His reminisces about the 70s political scene are rather stereotypical, but then maybe they were compared to the current times.
Audiobooks create an odd relationship, at times I miss large chunks of what is being said either through concentrating on the road or over concentrating on what had been said. I almost career into a ditch when Clarke recalls standing dripping wet with no clothes on arguing with Mrs Thatcher. He was on the phone I think and not in the same house but it was mental torture and not easy to just skip back. Clarke enjoyed the Thatcher years and rose to prominence, he then became chief smartarse during the Major years. Im not sure he really respected Major and always seems to be the smartest guy in the room whether its at Euro meetings or on Black Wednesday. As Chancellor he enjoyed tinkering and claims that all students during his Chancellorship smoked Drum roll ups. I know this to be a lie. I was a student during his Chancellorship and my tobacco of choice wasn’t Drum, however I can’t recall its name it was in a more yellowy packet. Drum of course was not available in the UK and was all bootleg. Clarke wanted his duty.
Later Clarke stood for leadership of the party 3 times and lost in rather different circumstances each time. When rejected he nursed his directorships, most controversially at British American Tobacco, though its hard to see why a man who loved smoking so much wouldn’t have done this job.
Each chapter is named after a Jazz classic and Clarke introduces them like a poor mans Alan Partridge. If only he had slipped a few John Zorn titles in. Fuck the Facts about his time as Chancellor or bonehead . Maybe he did and I had drifted off mentally on the commute home.
Throughout the book the real star is his now deceased wife Gillian. Gillian sacrificed an academic career because Ken wanted a political one. She travelled second class while Ken flew business and she put up with his working hours, overdraft and raised the children.
Clarks return to Government under David Cameron paints him as a crazy uncle tolerating the noisy kids. He likes Osborne, seems contemptible of Cameron and eventually moves on. Clarke is now the hero of Bremainers, I personally will miss his midlands sing song voice on the commute tomorrow, though I still have to remember the name of my 1990s Tobacco taste.
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