It's been mentioned elsewhere, but to make it official, the sitcom Not Going Out has been recommissioned by BBC1 for a third series. Another eight episodes, I believe. This is great news. Robin's Nest, which I have just finished watching in its entirety on the ever-reliable Paramount Comedy 2, ran for six series (1977-1981). It's been weird watching it again. I enjoyed the first few at the time, having been a big fan of Man About The House and George & Mildred (which spun off first, in 1976), but I watched it this time out of cultural curiosity.
How times have changed! First of all: humorous Irish character - one-armed Albert Riddle (David Kelly) - whose main joke is that he's stupid. Quaintly stupid, but stupid, nonetheless. He was my favourite character, of course! Second: endless hand-on-hip gay jokes - not vicious ones, but there nonetheless. The main set-up of the whole series is that chef Robin Tripp (the charismatic Richard O'Sullivan) and wife Vicky (Tessa Wyatt aka "How could she do that to me?" as she's known by Tony Blackburn) have her domineering ex-army father, James Nicholls (Tony Britton, mugging for Britain) breathing down their neck, as he is the sleeping partner in the pair's French bistro in Fulham, perhaps the least atmospheric eaterie in the whole of London. (Seats: about 12 at a push.) Actually, Robin and Vicky weren't married in series one, and were thus the first "common law" couple in British sitcom, according to the Radio Times Guide To Comedy. As someone who's spent a great deal of the last two years banging his head against whiteboards trying to come up with plots for a similarly populist sitcom (albeit shown an hour to an hour and a half later), it's amazing how little actually happens in an episode of Robin's Nest! It's always engaging, and O'Sullivan could carry anything with his cheeky teeth, but in what amounts to a full 22 minutes, either James or Albert have to run the restaurant for the night, and ... well, and that's about it. What easily-pleased times.
By the way, hats off to co-creators Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke, who wrote every episode of Man About The House (six series), every episode of George & MIldred (five series), and 14 episodes of this, giving up the ghost around series three and handing over to various others, including George Layton. If I ever complain ever again about my workload, sing the theme tune of Robin's Nest at me. Doo-doo-do-do-do-dooo-do-doooh etc.
I was asked to write a blog for the Guardian this morning to commemorate the passing of Tony Holland, who co-created EastEnders. You can read it here, and now Guardian readers can comment on me. (Under Tony's obituary on their website, someone weighed in immediately with the helpful comment that EastEnders has destroyed British culture or something. Nice. He won't be sending any flowers then.) Sorry about the doleful self-portrait.
Oops! ... He did it again Or did he? In today's NME (above, left), Morrissey gives two interviews - one in person, the other a follow-up on the phone - in which his views on immigration to the country he used to live in chime very much with those of the Daily Mail and the News Of The World. Unsurprisingly, the spectre of Morrissey's alleged racism has reared its ugly head. I feel I should comment, since I was part of the scheming cabal who sought to bring him down in 1992, when we did that (above, far right).
First of all, when, in August 1992, myself, Danny Kelly, Stuart Maconie, Gavin Martin and Dele Fadele knuckled down and filled five pages with our report and dissemination of Morrissey's flag-waving behaviour at Finsbury Park's Madstock gig, the NME's relationship with the great man was one of embarrassing adoration. If he moved, we put him on the cover. New Morrissey Express, they used to call us. But Moz always gave good copy, and his fans were as loyal as we were, meaning a Moz cover was a "banker". However, disquiet had set in. He'd pulled out of Glastonbury, after his fans had bought their 49 quid tickets, and he pulled out of the second day of Madstock (another 20 quid down the pan). He'd been mucking about with skinhead imagery, and he'd said one or two odd things in interview ("I really don't think, for instance, black people and white people will ever really get on or like each other"), and the lyrics to Bengali In Platforms ("It's hard enough when you belong here" - implication: you don't) had long rubbed liberals up the wrong way, even though he was simpy addressing what he'd seen around him in multicultural Manchester. Despite being a "news" paper, it was rare in those days of dinosaur printing presses that we actually ran "news" on the cover (the colour pages had to go off on a Friday, which meant that if anything happened between then and press day on Monday, it could only appear in the black-and-white news pages). To bin the planned Kylie cover (she still had the colour centre spread) and draw up a new one was thrilling indeed, but we felt, after a staff meeting, that the subject of Morrissey's Union Jack dance to an audience certainly made up of a lot of fat, middle-aged skinheads was worthy of examination. That it was Danny, Stuart and I who did much of the leg-work was the ultimate irony - we were the paper's biggest Morrissey fans. We felt he needed to answer his critics and deny racism, but he chose not to.
Interestingly, we never called him a racist, merely cautioned against the direction he was heading in. Even Dele, our only black writer, eloquently concluded, "For what's it's worth, I don't think Morrissey is a racist. He just likes the trappings and the culture that surround the outsider element. He has some racist friends. And if he carries on this way, he'll have thousands more." The conclusion to the editorial went, "So why, at the end of all this, is NME bothering? Why are our knickers in such a twist? Well, there's nothing new in this. In the past, when the likes of Eric Clapton, David Bowie and even Elvis Costello have dipped their unthinking toes in these murky waters, the music press have been equally quick on the case. And Morrissey, unlike, say, a bigoted idiot like Ice Cube, holds tremendous sway over thousands of fans in Britain and is generally regarded as one of our most intelligent rock performers. Therefore when he sends out signals on subjects as sensitive as those discussed above, there seems little room for playfulness, never mind ambiguity."
Morrissey was "branded a racist" according to popular lore, which, although untrue, stuck. He declined to speak to the NME after this. In fact, it took 15 years, and a number of editorial regimes later, for the ice to thaw. (Key to remember though is this: when Danny, Stuart and I had decamped to Q, Morrissey never had any problems dealing with us there, which rather suggests that his beef, if any, was with the newspaper as a whole, and not with the specific people who challenged him. This makes it seem a bit more like an affectation than a boycott, doesn't it? He is a drama queen, and a brilliant manipulator of myth, and it suited him to think that his argument was with the NME. Nobody ever asked him why he still happily entertained a magazine run by someone he had decided was his nemesis, even though Danny wasn't.)
So now, here he is, interviewed in New York by Tim Jonze, and the world is very different. Morrissey is back on top. As a solo performer, he rides high once again, having put out two amazing albums in a row. The fans never really went away. He did. (I was once called names on a Morrissey forum for single-handedly driving Morrissey out of the country, but my answer was always: he seems so much happier in LA. And lately in Rome, where he looks as fit and handsome as he's done for years. He misses England, it seems, but not the real one, only an imagined or fondly misremembered one.
The offending section of the Tim Jonze interview goes like this:
You live in italy now. Would you ever consider moving back to Britain? Britain's a terribly negative. And it hammers people down and it pulls you back and it prevents you. Also, with the issue of immigration, it's very difficult because although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England, the more the British identity disappears. So the price is enormous. If you travel to Germany, it's still absolutely Germany. If you travel to Sweden, it still has a Swedish identity. But travel to England and you have no idea where you are! Why does this bother you? It matters because the British identity is very attractive. I grew up into it, and I find it quaint and amusing. But England is a memory now. Other countries have held on to their basic identity, yet it seems to me that England was thrown away Isn't immigration enriching the British identity rather than diluting it? It does in a way, and it's nice in its way. But you have to say goodbye to the Britain you once knew. That's just the world changing But the change in England is so rapid compared to the change in any other country. If you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week you won't hear an English accent. You'll hear every accent under the sun apart from the British accent.
First thought: it's not that shocking. It confirms that Morrissey has lost touch with his native country just like those salmon-pink, Sun-reading expats in Spain, who have a very fixed idea of when Britain was great and it's circa 1945. Morrissey is from Irish stock, who arrived in this country in the 50s and 60s just as Poles and Romanians and Lithuanians are doing now. You might think Moz would have a more circumspect view of immigration, perhaps even a more compassionate one (not that it's a given that one immigrant will have empathy for another). Then again, he doesn't exactly say: "Enoch was right! Get back to where you belong!" - he merely laments the loss of British identity. I say: surely immigrants are part of the British identity and have been for decades. Moz does not take this view because a) he's a bit older than me, and b) he feels no need to confirm his liberal credentials in public. Is he actually a liberal anyway? He doesn't have to be; it's not enshrined in showbiz law. The fact is, if you walk through Knightsbridge, which is a tourist trap anyway, you'll hear every accent under the sun including British. But that image doesn't fit his romantic argument.
Morrissey is not a racist today, and he wasn't the last time. He's a showman. He likes to cause trouble. Unlike 99% of all the other, younger bands interviewed in the NME, he is eternally interesting, and always comes up with something new to say. Morrissey has done what a lot of people who love this country do, and that's leave it to go and live in another one. My guess is that if you live in Sweden or Germany, you'll have noticed plenty of changes over the past couple of decades, just as we have. Again, it's a romanticised view. But Morrissey is a romantic. Always has been. In the Smiths, he found romance in the grease in the hair of a speedway operator and as a solo artist he has found romance in a seaside town they forgot to close down, and in Latino gangs, and in being misunderstood. The one thing that seems to be true is that he was quoted in context this time, and there is less speculation based on behaviour and implication. He appears to have actually used the phrase, "England's gates are flooded" (as quoted on the cover of the paper), which might have come from a Peter Hitchens column.
Morrissey's manager seems to claim that he had an email from the journalist disassociating himself from the piece, but since his name appears on it, I don't see how this could be true. The plot will probably thicken for a few days, but I doubt it'll develop into another Jade Goody. Not enough people read the NME or - and I hate to say this - care about Morrissey.
That got your attention didn't it? It's a shame that BBC1's Monarchy: The Royal Family At Work couldn't beat ITV1's I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here! in the all-important ratings last night. (The former managed 6.7 million on average, while the latter won out with 7.9 million.) I say it's a shame not because I support the royal family in any way. It's a shame because this, the first part of five, was a fine piece of documentary television, whereas I'm A Celebrity is just churning over the same old maggoty contents as last year and the year before and the year before that and apparently it's enough to draw a crowd. (For the record, and to sidestep any cries of snobbery, I've watched two and a half series of I'm A Celeb: the first one, naturally, which had the element of surprise; the one with John Lydon, which I felt compelled to watch for reasons of cultural morbidity ... until he left, after which I felt compelled not to watch; and the one after that, which Joe Pasquale won, which I started because of the unlikely sight of Vic Reeves, who turned out to be quite dull, but by then the TV catnip had got into my system. But this is not edifying television, especially not if you're soppy enough to care about the welfare of insects, reptiles and rodents, which seem to be treated as if they have no nervous systems and chucked about by the bucketload.)
I wish more people had watched Monarchy because this is the programme that claimed the scalp of BBC1 controller Peter Fincham, who, among other achievements in his too-short tenure, commissioned Not Going Out. This first episode was even the one with the non-offending Annie Leibovitz episode in it, creatively edited for "that highlights package" so that it looked as if the Queen was huffily walking out of the photo session when in fact, as seen last night, she was huffily walking into it. (As Katherine Flett wisely pointed out in the Observer, the Leibovitz photos appeared in Vanity Fair, a magazine that sells millions, in May - if there had been a huff, do you not think it would have emerged then, and not two months later when the highlights tape was aired?) This turned out to be a very interesting section in a 90-minute film that offered numerous fascinating insights into the life of the 81-year-old monarch, which might have been titled, She's A Celebrity ... Move Her Over Here!, as its abiding theme, following her around before and during a state visit to the States, was of the feisty pepperpot being choreographed from one walkabout to the next walkabout, via a photo op with the Kentucky Derby cup and a stop-off at a Virginia hotel where they'd installed a new, unused toilet seat. You really had to admire the logistical expertise required to keep this show on the road, which shames most rock tours. What a pity that Fincham, his head of publicity Jane Fletcher and production company RDF boss Stephen Lambert lost their heads over it when all about them lost theirs. This was good telly. The narration, read with a pulse by Tim Piggott Smith, even dared to suggest that this was the end of an era for the Royals, which it is. Will thousands of fawning Americans really line the streets of Jamestown and Washington DC when an 80-year-old Charles steps off the plane? I don't think so. The Empire may be a sour memory for all but Daily Telegraph leader writers, but until Queenie goes, the smell won't go away.
I can't wait to see the other four parts. Beautifully photographed, well edited (oh yes!) from hours and hours of footage, with enough grit to stop it being an advert and enough deference to get where other camera crews have failed to get, you don't have to be a royalist to find this stuff compelling. In fact, as a republican, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. The royal staff: where do they get them from? These plummy, forelock-tugging groupies speak like nobody speaks any more, regardless of age. What will they all do when the Royals have been put up against the wall? Who will employ them? Where will they go? I particularly liked the footage of other media, too, especially the American anchor delivering a piece to camera at Bucking-Ham Palace, who actually spoke, with no irony, about the knock-on effect of "her hit movie", as if perhaps the Queen was in The Queen.
Somebody should have quietly told President Bush that she's not technically "the Queen of England" though. Mind you, I loved his dogs.
Sorry, I've been offline for most of the weekend, and I've missed a lot of the fun. I'm glad I had comment moderation on, as the holding pen is now full of anti-homeopathy enthusiasts trying to bring me down, and agreeing with the notion that a man who gave his daughter homeopathic treatment which did not save her life a "cunt", which is a new low for this lobby. I should have known I'd been targeted again, as anyone who strays from the Bad Science status quo must be. What a lot of energy they spend on attacking. I mean, really, what's the point of attacking me? I'd said my heart sank when I read the latest Goldacre piece, which it did, but I was careful not to get into an argument with him/them again, as I remember only too well how it played out last time. Stalemate is a nice way of putting it. I only wrote the pied wagtail entry to express the way the sight of a bird lifted my spirits during a bit of seasonal affective disorder, and how even the idea of another anti-homeopathy piece in a national newspaper sank it again. I choose birds.
Unfortunately, I've now read the lengthy thread about me on the Bad Science web forum (started by someone who actually posts sensibly on here about other subjects, with a handy link to come and get me - talk about backstabbing). It's so full of bile and sarcasm (one person calls me a cunt, and says I only have my writing career through good fortune and not talent, which is pretty much what I say in my book), I'm quite exhausted by it all. If these people are so sure they are right, what threat am I?
Anyway, I've had to take the previous thread down and re-post it without the dialogue, as it had descended into name-calling and scoundrels misleadingly posting under other people's names to stir things up, and in a moment of late-night madness I even decided to ban one person after his comments on the parent mentioned above (whatever you think of an issue, calling a man whose daughter had died a "cunt" smacks, if nothing else, of a complete lack of compassion - a quality I believe lies at the heart of all the political ideas I hold dear - also, and I know I've used it in the past, but the word does still offend some people). The act of removing the comments from the thread, which meant well, but led down a dark path, will look to the Bad Science regulars as if I have "taken my ball home" or something, or as if they have won. Well, in a very tiny way, they have won, yet again. They are tenacious. They take no prisoners. But I have won too, because by writing about anything but the h-word in the future, hopefully they will find someone else to belittle and patronise and attack. I hereby remove myself from the public debate on this matter.
I had one comment over the weekend from "bengoldacre" but I don't believe it is from him. As ever, my personal email address appears for all to see on this website, and always has done, so even if I never blogged again, it would remain open to anyone who wished to challenge me or, frankly, call me a cunt, if that gives them a thrill. That's the nature of these things. Oddly, it seems that the game is calling me a cunt in public, not in private, and no fun otherwise. I don't mind being a cunt if a cunt is someone who enjoys the natural world and sometimes writes about it, and exhibits inconsistencies and changes his mind, and wonders aloud. I don't even mind being one if a cunt is someone whose heartfelt views don't stand up to rigorous scientific scrutiny. The message coming through from Bad Science is that if I dare to even allude to my views on homeopathy, they will be forced to shut me down. Such a sense of righteous purpose! One person on the BS forum was crowing about "marking" my previous God Delusion review a "D-minus" - what a glorious victory for science that was. If I am to write anything, I have to provide evidence and citations, as if writing in the Lancet, and yet, it was just on a blog. As I've said on many occasions, as a writer, I enjoy writing on here because it's not for publication and doesn't go through the usual filter of editors and sub-editors and fact-checkers, or, in TV, script editors and producers. That's the fun of doing it. To write what I think, at any length, whenever I fancy it. Nobody is going to commission me to write about a science book or a religion book, so this is my only outlet to stray and experiment and go out of my depth.
Anyway I'm bored with the whole thing, and don't have the strength for a fight. I wish I'd never mentioned the h-word (I think the BS believers call it "woo", which I guess is a reference to it being "magic"), even in passing, on here. Please don't bother visiting the Bad Science forum to counter house policy. It's really not worth posting unless you're one of the gang. Maybe there's a gang here, too. A much nicer one.
Here's a revolutionary idea: I have actually fixed it so that you can't leave comments after this particular entry, which I'll leave with you for a while. It is, as stated, a statement.
It's Friday morning. I don't mind admitting that I'm feeling a bit fed up at the moment: struggling with work, I can feel the year slipping away from me with no concrete writing jobs pencilled in for 2008, I've had hassles with my office, the clamour of another materialistic Christmas is already making me feel that the human race is doomed and heading for oblivion, the BBC's falling apart, my underbelly has been way too sensitive of late (complete assassination of my R4 documentary, including personal slur, on the R4 message board), I've slipped back into eating wheat, which is dragging me down, and there's other stuff, but this is not the point of this blog entry. Working lates this week on 6 Music has been enjoyable while it was happening, and I thank you for your contributions, but I'm dog tired as a result, eye off the ball, easily irritated, and with no time to slack off during the daylight hours. (Nobody but myself to blame: I took the job on.) Upshot: I've been spending a lot of time gazing glassy-eyed out of the windows of trains to and from Central London rather than reading my excellent book Fiasco - I just can't concentrate on it - and getting unecessarily annoyed by people on the train with loud voices, jabbering away into phones, and, hey, fuck it, it happens to us all, not least at this time of year. This is not a sympathy safari. The point is this:
I saw a beautiful pied wagtail alight upon the station platform at Clapham Common, and it lifted my heart. In that instance, all my relatively minor troubles evaporated. Filled with love for the natural world and its mysterious ways, I was able to watch him hop about and peck the ground for a minute or two before the train pulled off. I had found a focus. It reminded me of the wagtails I used to stand and watch, every day, on Redhill station when I lived out in the suburbs - again, a blessing on a sometimes tiresome commute, and a ray of hope. This morning, I walked under a tree down my street and saw two plump blue tits. Again, my heart soared, especially with the news that the tit population suffered terribly this year with the floods - just seeing a blue tit strikes me as good news now.
So, on the one hand there's the simple sight of a common British bird, going about its bird-like business, and its ability to cast a beatific spell over me like no other. And on the other, there are things that have the power to annoy me. I know where my heart lies.
(I borrowed the above photo from the RSPB, of which I am a proud member, and it was taken by a photographer called Mike Read - I hope they don't go all Prince on me and take it down.)
Let us then belatedly mark the nicest job the BFI have ever asked me to do: the Spaced event on Saturday. A marathon, tied in to Channel 4's 25th birthday, at which hundreds of Spaced fans gathered and watched the whole of series one and two on the big screen in NFT1, introduced by the cast and director Edgar Wright (albeit sadly lacking Jessica Hynes, who sent a filmed message), and with an hour-and-40-minute Q&A, hosted by myself. I've interviewed assorted filmmakers on this very stage down the years (Michael Moore, Terry Gilliam, Christopher Guest), not to mention hosted three TCM Classic Shorts awards, but this was a true labour of love. (Simon Pegg actually asked me by text about a month ago, and I texted back yes without even asking when it was.)
It was a lovely way to spend a few hours, not least because of the audience, which comprised the most devoted fans (one guy had flown to London from Seattle specifically to attend), who were warm and appreciative, and didn't need anything explaining to them, obviously. I've met Simon a few times this year, and we've become email pals (partly because we discovered we have a Northampton connection), and I met Nick Frost briefly, but this was the first time I've been in the presence of all of them, in a big row. Edgar and Simon came on first, then I introduced the others, to a massive round of applause each: Nick, Mark Heap, Katy Carmichael (Twist for the uninitiated) (actually, if you're uninitiated, you won't know who Twist is), and Julia Deakins, who wins the prize for being least like her character. Although both Katy and Mark insisted in the green room that they didn't want to speak, I made sure everybody got a question, and it turned into a free-for-all come the end. We could have talked all night, but they still had series two to screen. You can watch amateur highlights, thanks to YouTube (scroll down), although if you're not a fan of Spaced or shaky camerawork from Row H, I wouldn't recommend it. Here are some grabs, for posterity. (Oh, and by the way, I also met Colin the dog, aka Ada. Which will mean nothing etc. etc.) If anything like professional photos come my way, I'll post them here.
Edgar, me and Simon (I wore a jacket to give myself an air of authority, which worked)
Edgar in full anecdotal flight
Simon and me attentively listening to Edgar
Me looking adoringly at Simon
Edgar, me, Simon, Nick, Katy (Nick may have just mentioned bukaki)
We had joy, we had fun
Part 1 (which includes the intro and part of the Q&A)
Part 2 (all Q&A)
These rather more official photos appeared on Edgar's MySpace blog (so I'm kind of assuming he won't mind me showing them here):
This is a picture of Prince. Apparently, I am breaking the law by putting it on my website. Now, I don't even like Prince. Outside of perhaps Sign O'The Times and 1999 I think he's shit. Creepy and deluded and self-important and totally lacking in a quality filter. This is not a Prince fansite. I'm just printing his picture to draw attention to his lastest act of idiocy, which is to have his lawyers send cease and desist orders to three of his most loyal fansites, telling them they risk being taken to court if the don't take down all images of Prince, including his album sleeves and lyrics and anything linked to his freakish face, from their sites. The legal letter asked the fansites to provide "substantive details of the means by which you propose to compensate our clients [Paisley Park Entertainment Group, NPG Records and AEG] for damages." That's damages. We are talking about precisely the sort of website that helps perpetuate Prince's stock, encouraging interest in him and his records. We are also talking about an artist whose latest album was given away for free with the Mail On Sunday. If I was a fan of Prince, I'd be tearing up my membership card, wouldn't you?
A coalition of fans, Prince Fans United, representing housequake.com, princefans.com and prince.org, has been formed by the website organisers to fight back. (Apparenlty the legal ruling went as far as calling for the removal of pictures taken by fans of their Prince tattoos. We must assume he'll be going after these people personally next, and asking them to remove their skin, or propose to compensate Paisley Park Entertainment Group.)
Of course, it's possible that Prince has nothing to do with all this, but he must have the power to stop it. It's also possible that he's gone a bit mental in the nut, in which case we should be sympathetic. I stole the above picture from his official website, which, unless I'm very much mistaken, has been rebranded to help sell Prince perfume, called 3121. It smells of money, with a hint of self-delusion and moustache.
Come on then, Prince's lawyers. I'm ready for you.*
*In that, if they tell me to, I'll take down the whole blog entry, including the link to his stinking perfume advert.
I'm getting a bit tired of the little spurts of abuse I'm currently attracting, so I'm giving myself a few days off the blog. I'm on the radio all week anyway (10pm-1am, 6 Music, Mon-Fri; Rockumentary Rollercoaster one-off documentary, Radio 4, Tuesday Nov 13, 11.30am and on Listen Again thereafter for seven days), so feel free to get in touch. It's amazing how quickly the fun goes out of all this when you are constantly niggled. When I'm feeling a bit less fragile, I'll be back with more drivel. Your patience is appreciated.
Landlord fined over smoking ban Here we go. You probably saw this story. The first pub landlord in England to be prosecuted for defying the smoking ban has been fined 500 pounds. Hugh Howitt (known as Hamish) of Blackpool, vowed to continue letting smokers light up in his bars, which are called The Happy Scots Bar and Del Boy's. (Both sound like they have a real traditional northern English feel.) This carcinogenic libertarian admitted at Blackpool Magistrates Court to allowing customers to smoke on 12 separate occasions in July. He was fined 100 pounds for five of these counts, plus 2,000 in costs. (Not quite the maximum penalty of 30,000 pounds, so he got off lightly, mainly because Blackpool Council didn't want to appear heavy-handed.)
Hamish has apparently set up a political party called Fight Against Government Suppression (spot the acronym). The judge, who said he didn't wish to make a "martyr" of Hamish, said that the landlord's campaign had been "silly, pointless and misguided. It has achieved nothing. All it seems to have done is cause a great deal of problems for yourself." You will not be surprised to learn that Hamish "remained defiant" on the courtroom steps, saying, "I'm not putting two fingers up at the judiciary. I'm putting two fingers up at posturing political prats." That'll show them. He then promised to "fight on and fight on. I'm not putting anybody out of my pub until they shut me down."
Why is it that I feel differently about the defiance of Hamish than I would if, say, he'd refused to pay the Poll Tax (remember that?), or refused to sign up for an ID card (coming soon, unless David Cameron isn't a lying liar)? I'm all for a bit of civil disobedience to make a political point and to keep things interesting, but the smoking ban is not really political, is it? It's about health. It's not, as some initially whinged, about soft southerners trying to ruin the fun of honest, working-class northerners - London's full of smokers. What about the "suppression" of bar staff who didn't want to breathe in poisonous smoke in the workplace? Anyway, you can imagine how painful it must have been for the business-snogging government to resist the charms of the tobacco lobby and finally push the ban through this summer - especially when coughers contribute so generously to the Treasury's coffers (nice). Standing outside pubs, especially as the cold weather sets in, is bound to have an effect on the number of smokers in this country eventually. And don't give me the fashionable argument about pubs now smelling of piss and BO. I'd rather know what I'm smelling, for better or worse, which is why I despise chemical air fresheners.
I was never a militant anti-smoker, but I do believe the liberty to breathe in non-carcinogenic air in places of leisure is one that outweights the liberty of smokers to provide it. The irony is, you're much more likely to breathe smoke in while walking down the street now. Unless you drop into Del Boy's in Blackpool, obviously. You can probably hunt a fox in the beer garden.
So, in the week of its 25th birthday, Channel 4 galvanises its reputation for serious drama and social conscience, with Britz, a cracking and thought-provoking two-part thriller-cum-morality tale that actually worked in two parts and benefitted from being shown across two nights. Written and directed by Peter Kosminsky (The Government Inspector, Warriors, The Project), it was the story of a British Muslim brother and sister who take diverging paths in reaction to the War On Terror: one joins MI5, the other becomes a suicide bomber. [Spoiler alert! It's impossible to write about it otherwise.] That it is Nasima (Manjinder Virk) who straps the homemade bomb to her body, concealed beneath a false pregnant belly, is the shock. She starts out as a secular political activist and medical student, seen composing a letter in her bedroom to President Bush complaining about the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay: an idealist, basically. She goes against her family's strict wishes by going out with a black non-Muslim at college. This proves a flashpoint, when she is sent back to Pakistan in shame after telling her father - the other motivating factor is the suicide of her best friend, arrested on a jumped-up non-charge under the Terrorism Act, abused and put under a Control Order, the draconian nature of which is apparently all true (you surrender your passport, you're restricted from seeing listed persons, electronically tagged, your case is heard at a closed hearing where your legal representative is chosen by and works for the state, the Home Secretary has the power to renew indefinitely etc.). This required a leap of faith - aptly enough - on behalf of the viewer, as handing out leaflets at a student demo, which Nas is seen doing, does not necessarily lead to a training camp in Pakistan and the decision to offer up your life to jihad. You had to suspend your disbelief a bit for the story of Sohail (Riz Ahmed), too - he's a law student, again pretty much disinterested in religion, who joins the secret service, where his position as the token Muslim - asked to spy on his friends back in Bradford - gives him pause for doubt. His story is told first, so when it intersects with Nasima's, you've no idea how she got to that point. Her story, told second, fills in the gaps.
What I liked about Britz was that it seemed to sidestep cliches. Although Kosminsky clearly isn't a Muslim, or Pakistani, he based his script on hours of interviews with British Muslims. Certainly, the legal picture painted by the film is an accurate one, and it's not pretty for post-September 11 Asians in Britain or anywhere. The police were depicted mostly as getting on with their job under the Terrorism Act - it's the laws passed down by this government in the last six years that were being questioned. (Certainly, we saw a couple of ignorant, racist cops, but we also saw ignorant, racist Pakistanis, kicking the shit out of Naz's black boyfriend. Bigotry abounded throughout, not least in terms of gender within the family.) Britz pandered to neither those who would paint all Muslims as potential suicide bombers, nor those liberals who romanticise Asian religion without looking too deeply into it. The final shot - after well over four hours of drama - was Nasima's suicide video, in which she spoke to all non-Muslim Brits (or Britz), conferring guilt upon us for voting Tony Blair back in. Which is all very well in theory, but hey, some of us didn't. In fact, a minority of Britons voted him back in, thanks to the first-past-the-post system. It was a powerful ending nonetheless. It wasn't put there to excuse her act of mass-murder - far from it - but this was an intelligent, educated young woman from Bradford who'd reached a point where she wasn't gonna take it any more.
The thriller elements occasionally sat uncomfortably with the unfolding family drama, but I guess you have to keep bums on seats, and this was certainly a far more challenging two-parter than an episode of Spooks, which some of it resembled, except with a lot more paperwork. (I love Spooks, but it's so left-wing, anti-government and anti-American, it's possible to second-guess sometimes. Anyway, it's a pure thriller, and the political issues it touches on are ultimately there to serve the suspense.) Reading the Channel 4 forums after the show, there was a general consensus, from Muslim and non-Muslims, that it was a good drama with useful things to say about two burning issues: how to deal with a multi-racial, multi-faith society and have we turned into a police state? One or two doubters had their say, but in CAPITAL LETTERS, which always undermines your argument, and quite a few questioned the veracity of the MI5 scenes, such as the use of a mobile phone by a visitor inside the lobby of Thames House, which isn't permitted. (Having just seen Elizabeth: The Golden Age at the pictures, I can live with a couple of factual inaccuracies like that!)
* Sorry, I stole this headline from Shazia Mizra, the Muslim stand-up. It struck me as apt in the circumstances, but I don't wish to make light of the subject.
A journey back in time, then ... Carter USM's reunion/final gig at Brixton Academy: I wouldn't have missed it for the world. There was something gorgeously nostalgic for me about going in via the guest list door down the side of the Academy (these days I don't generally do guest lists at gigs - in my days as a music journalist, it's all I did!) - and then, of course, bumping into various figures from the old Carter days: Jim's girlfriend Jakki, Daz the super-roadie, Adrian their old manager (I can't believe Steve Lamacq wasn't there, but I didn't see him before, during or afterwards). Carter long- and short-sleeved tops abounded, but were they originals, or new ones? It didn't matter. Old Carter fans had filled out a bit, and most presumably now had babysitters to thank for this rare Saturday night out. We were talking about a sold-out Brixton (always Carter's local venue) full of fortysomethings, and perhaps a few thirtysomethings, re-living those glory years of the early 90s - perhaps some of the younger ones were kids of Carter fans? No apologies for this bit of moderate time-travel (ten years since Carter split, 20 since they formed - both decisions made on Streatham Common - and around 25 since they bestrode the world, or part of it, as two) - Jim and Fruitbat had made the wise decision that those earlier days of conquest were the ones to be celebrated: no Wez the drummer (nice fella though he was), no other unecessary band-members, and no songs from the later albums (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Glam Rock Cops, 1994, was the most recent song played).
Thanks to Eddie Curry from the Carter USM boards, even though I didn't ask him, for the borrow of these hot-off-the-camera photos, and to Mark Reed for getting the set-list up so quickly:
Surfin' USM Every Time A Church Bell Rings My Second To Last Will And Testament Say It With Flowers Rubbish Billy's Smart Circus Taking Of Peckham 1-2-3 Do Re Me This Is How It Feels Anytime Anyplace Anywhere The Only Living Boy In New Cross Prince In A Pauper's Grave Shoppers Paradise After The Watershed RSPCE Glam Rock Cops Lean On Me The Impossible Dream Bloodsport For All The Music Nobody Likes A Perfect Day To Drop The Bomb
England A Sheltered Life Rent Sheriff Fatman GI Blues
Sorry about this, but yes, Fat Jon Beast came on to introduce the boys in time-honoured fashion.
I've seen him do this from London to New York in the past, and it was only fitting that he did it again tonight, dressed only in a gourd, and just as portly as he always was. (Lovely to see him and give him a big hug after the show - he was fully dressed by then.) If you never saw Carter, or had them down as indie chancers, I won't try to convert you now - it's somewhat late in the day - but for two blokes, two guitars and a backing tape, they once again made a fantastic noise. Yes, it's effectively DIY punk rock, but constantly melodic, with synth flourishes and social realism, plus Jim's crossword-clue lyrics, most of which came with massed accompaniment on Friday. It was brave to have some of the promos showing on a screen, as we could compare the faces of Jim and Les with their younger selves (they looked particularly lean and hungry in Rubbish). Because of his choice of flat cap, Fruitbat looked very much like an athletic granddad, but in an act of high camp he returned for the encores in his old costume of shorts, t-shirt and cycling cap - at which point he downed his first alcoholic drink for seven months, and commented, "That was nice." Jim looked stylish indeed in black shirt with red braces and red armbands.
The aftershow was well-attended in the upstairs bar, where, swiz, the beer cost three pound thirty a bottle. Thanks to current manager Marc I was escorted back to the dressing room (mainly because I couldn't hang around long), where I expressed my appreciation of a great and emotional night to Jim with a further manly hug. It was a hugging sort of night. Grown men crying. That sort of thing.
I never felt the need to see the reformed Sex Pistols (if you didn't seem them with Sid, it wasn't the Sex Pistols), nor the Pixies (whom I saw the first time around). I witnessed Bauhaus at Brixton the other year, and that was a fabulous night of theatre, and I'm glad I experienced the reformed Pop Will Eat Itself too - a similar vintage crowd to Carter's, and another good night for babysitters. So I have nothing against bands reforming in essence. If the audience is there, where's the harm? As long as they don't play new songs. Heaven forbid.
Nice to feel like a 26-year-old fan again. And this exchange took place in the bar beforehand which has nothing to do with Carter but made me smile:
Irish bloke [to me]: You're Stuart Maconie! Me: No, I'm not. Irish bloke: Yes you are! Me: No, I'm not, I promise you. Irish bloke: You sound like him. Me: I'm not him. [I'm kind of teasing him at this point, hoping he will realise his error without me having to tell him who I am] Irish bloke: My wife is a big fan of your books. Me: That's great. But do you mean she's a big fan of my books, or a big fan of Stuart Maconie's books? Irish bloke: No, definitely yours. Can I take a picture? Me: Of course you can. [I still have no idea if he thinks I am me or Stuart at this stage, but I figure his wife can work it out later] [He holds camera phone out and we put our heads together for a snap. Click. The flash doesn't go off] Irish bloke: Oh well. Cheers anyway! [We shake hands and he goes off, merrily]
Welcome to my world. Yesterday afternoon, I went up to Broadcasting House to record a column (ie. authored piece that you read out) for the estimable Front Row on Radio 4. It compared the opening night of Channel 4 with the schedule of this week, in a light-hearted way. (They don't usually ask me on for a non-light-hearted view - they have plenty of others for that type of thing.) It was fun to do, as it began with me musing on the fact that TV channels no longer have fanfares, as they all did when I was growing up. I was going to ask producer Laura to drop in clips of the fanfares for Thames, LWT, Anglia and early C4, which are all reassuringly available on YouTube, but we decided it would be more amusing if I sang them, as you might in a pub during a conversation about theme tunes. So I did. With the column recorded, I came home. Then, about an hour and a half later, I had a concerned call from Laura, who was mid-edit: it turns out I had erroneously sung the Thames theme for Anglia. Hey, you try remembering channel idents on the spot, in a BBC studio. They get mixed up. So, I travelled all the way back into Central London just to sing the Anglia TV ident. We found a studio, we set up, I put on my headphones, sang, "Bah bah bah ba-baaah ba-ba-da-ba-baaahh!" and then came home again. What professionalism, you're thinking.
Anyway, it was worth it, I think, to lower the tone of Radio 4 for a few minutes on a Thursday evening. You can, if you wish, listen to the column (it's the last item on the show, as my items always are!) and to Kirsty Lang back-announcing it with a jaunty laugh in her voice, possibly put on, possibly not. I don't care! Look for Thursday night's Front Row here.
(Of course, C4 dropped its fanfare in 1996 and went all esoteric. Nowadays you get an ambient "bed" over which the announcer can rabbit on, and the logo is constructed, mid-air, out of haystacks or bits of council estate.)
And if anybody needs to see or hear the old Anglia fanfare, here it is:
So there I was, last night, standing on stage at NFT1 at the BFI South Bank, standing behind the podium wearing a cheap Halloween mask. For a laugh. (Albeit, I'm afraid, a rather muted one.) Yes, it was my third stint as host of TCM Classic Shorts, the now eight-year-old short film award, open this year, for the first time, to entrants from the rest of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Another bumper year: 381 entries, 141 of which were from outside the UK (foreigners coming over here, stealing our prestigious film awards etc.), and two of which made the final shortlist of six. The award is open to anyone with a camera, but once again, the quality was incredibly high, and the six finalists are all fantastic. You can watch them on TCM this weekend (Nov 3-4, details here), but it was great to see them on a big screen, as ever.
Here's my blog entry on last year's event, with pics. I am only in possession of the one above, currently, which is (l-r) me, Tom Tagholm, director and writer of winning film A Bout de Truffe (a very sweet and sad parody of a French film about a man and his truffle-snuffling pig), his editor, award presenter and British film production legend Nik Powell (who is already thinking in this pic, "Can I make the second half of the Arsenal match?"), and, in front, French actor Stephan Cornicard, who plays the man. As soon as I get my hands on more pics, I'll post them. What you're not seeing in this one is me in my cheap Halloween mask, which was my opening "gag", and not spectacularly successful. But it was Halloween! The rest of my opening speech was a little more successful - having mused in previous years on the fact that everything is getting bigger, and how small things are best, I went for it this year and delivered a Short History Of Cinema in five minutes. I was very pleased with this as a piece of writing, but I had no idea how well it would go down as a speech. Luckily, the crowd were very kind, and even, on my instruction, cheered every time I mentioned George Clooney, which I did often. At one point, some people cheered in advance of a mention of George Clooney, which I really loved. They really are a nice crowd. Among them, this year, were Kris Marshall, star of one of the shortlisted films, The Amazing Trousers (and, coincidentally, the first ever winner of TCM Classic Shorts in 2000, Je T'Aime John Wayne), Paul McGann, star of the second prizewinner, Always Crashing In The Same Car, opposite - history being made alert! - Richard E Grant, and Zoe Ball and Norman Cook, as Zoe was the producer of the aforementioned film. (It was nice to see the south coast's favourite couple afterwards - Norman expressed sympathy for the fact that my mask joke had fallen flat. I knew it had, which is why, when I returned to the stage after we'd watched all six films, I wore a second cheap Halloween mask, and thus rescued my joke through sheer commitment. What a pro.) I was really pleased to meet Paul Andrew Williams, writer and director of the best debut of last year, London To Brighton. He was one of the TCM judges this year and had expressed trepidation about presenting the second prize because he's a bit shy, but I talked him into it, and it was good to have him up there. (Filmmakers love other filmmakers, especially ones who've enjoyed the whirlwind success of Paul Andrew Williams, who's now in post on his second film, The Cottage, and has just had a baby, four weeks ago, so is permanently knackered. He made it to the after-show party, at some lurid club in Kingly Street, where I imagine the DJ was a little self-conscious about having Fat Boy Slim in the same room. A few nibbles, a nice chat to the BFI's Dick Fiddy about The Sopranos and barge holidays, and to a nice lady from TCM Germany who was very excited that I had mentioned Berlin Alexanderplatz twice in my speech, and I was out of there before the goody bags had even been lined up. Last year's contained some nail varnish that stunk out the taxi.
Here is the actual envelope Nik Powell opened.
A good night. Have a look at the short films. They're very good. I think my favourite is the German entry Cocoon, probably because I'm in a German cinema frame of mind currently, but there's not a duff one among the six. The ceremony wasn't being televised this year, so I said "fuck" quite a lot, but I think it was appropriate. And I never called Jonathan Ross's wife a pig.
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