The Mitford Sisters!*
That got your attention. I shall be appearing on the latest august and varied bill of Robin Ince's famed comedy-and-talking night, The School For Gifted Children, at the Albany pub, 240 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5QU, next Wednesday, 29 October. Having spoken at past evenings about serial killers and The Poseidon Adventure, I plan to debut my illustrated** talk Why I Love The Mitford Sisters (Even Though Two Of Them Were Nazis). Come along. Robin's nights are always splendid, and, as evinced by this listing, from Chortle, there are some actual comedians on as well. I'm a "biographer".
* This picture sadly only depicts five of the Mitford Sisters. I really like it though.
** Illustrated with some things stuck on bits of card.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 6:19 PM
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48 Comments:
If I didn't live so far away I'd attend if only to say I have seen a parapsychologist live.
Also, hate to be 'that guy' but I'm assuming you meant the 29th of Oct
JB
The middle Mitford in the photo is a hottie. She wasn't a Nazi, was she?
And Ben Goldacre is brilliant! - be careful not to tal to him about homeopathy.
Andrew,
Small typo - you have put 29th November in the body of your post and not October.
Thanks
Mark
Mr Collins, when you get a break from all that biographizing you do, can you ask Robin Ince to get himself a proper web site so those of us not on MySpace can leave comments on his blog.
Please?
Just think, it would combine your hatred of social networking sites with my love of half-heartedly bothering minor celebrities online.
Thanks.
P.S. I have even linked a duck to my name as enticement.
I managed to hold down a conversation (admittedly after a rather large amount of wine) with someone about the Mitford Sisters after they'd read the book of letters that you talk about. The only thing I know about the Mitfords is from your podcast.
I shall come along, I think.
Ah, the Mitfords are addicting, aren't they? I received a bio for a Christmas gift and it started an absurd reading binge on the girls. Though you may reveal it at School (I can not see it, sadly), which one is the most interesting to you? I may like Decca best right now.
Really love the podcast!
Excellent pub the Albany, last time I went there I got a bit carried away and left my scarf there.
Good luck!
Wowser, the middle Mitford in the photo is Diana, known to be the beauty of the family. And a Nazi. (Certainly a fascist, and she went to her grave insisting that Hitler was really ace.)
I wish Ince had a website other than MySpace too. At least this particular date has been advertised on Chortle. The last one I went to at the Albany was comedy's best-kept secret.
For the record: (l-r) Jessica (Communist), Nancy (novelist), Diana (Nazi), Unity (even more of a Nazi), Pamela (farmer). Deborah (future Duchess of Devonshire), the youngest, not pictured.
maybe the missing sister took the picture?
I like Decca the best, Anon (reveal yourself!), but I find Unity the most fascinating.
Maybe Debo, as she is known, did take the picture. I rather think photography was a man's game in those old days, though. (The Mitford Sisters weren't even allowed to go to school, like their brother Tom, because they were "gels".)
Just received another anonymous comment (don't do it!)
It said this:
All I know about the Mitford Sisters I have gleaned from my friend and the (excellent) podcasts. Can you recommend a good book on the Mitford sisters to get me started? Should I start with those letters by Charlotte Mosley, or with some other book?
I would indeed recommend The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, edited by Charlotte Mosley, as it's the one that sucked me in. Even though other books give more detail, this gives you their voices, right from the start. The best biog about them all is by Mary S. Lovell, The Mitford Girls.
If BBC3 ever do an 'I Love the Mitford Sisters', they'll know who to call.
I'm ashamed to say when asked to choose between paying to see you, Robin and the delightful Ben (I also have a soft spot for Jo) and being offered free tickets to something else, I chose the free thing.
Sorry. Cunch and all.
you can hear Decca & The Dectones here! http://cdbaby.com/cd/mitford
One of my favourite Jessica Mitford quotes, (having exposed the U.S. funeral industry), remarking on the Pyramids said "Now there is a society where the funeral industry got completely out of control." A great bon mot, she made a good few eh, AC.
All I know about the Mitford sisters I learned from that song by Luke Haines. Maybe that could be the theme tune to "I Love The Mitford Sisters"? Bit long though...
Is Robin Ince being impish by putting your good self and Ben Goldacre on the same bill for the second time?
I like both of you and it would be nice to think you end up being best friends.
Never mind second, Ian, this will be the third time we've shared a bill. (And we share a fourth in December, at the Bloomsbury.) It's more like the Andrew and Ben Roadshow! I'm glad you like both of us. But I suspect we will not end up best friends.
Office Pest, Jessica is definitely the most witty of the Mitfords, closely followed by Nancy and, less self-consciously, Debo. Her account of their lives, Hons & Rebels, is one of my favourite Mitford books. And I find her life the most admirable, by far. She really did not make life easy for herself. And she ran a bar in Miami.
Hello! Is there somewhere we can buy tickets for this from please?
Why did the Nazis get all the hot chicks?
Helga in 'Allo Allo, that blonde lady in Indy and the Last Crusade and now this foxy Mitford.
It's enough to make you consider converting for a few lust filled seconds, until you remember that their kind was responsible for the holocaust.
I'm one of five sisters (not quite as good, I know) who all vote differently and at least one of whom has been linked to a rich and powerful man (Terry Venables, how d'ya like THEM apples?). Moreover, one of us can ride a horse and likes gardening.
After that the similarities end, as we're all ugly and thick, but if you run out of things to say about the Mitfords, I could probably slip you some 'ISBW Sister' anecdotes. Do bear it in mind.
What kind of Office Pest was Jessica?
Unity looks a bit down in the dumps to me. Being a Nazi obviously upset her.
"Office Pest" was a reference to the pseudonym of a previous contributor.
Mat, the Albany box office: 020 7387 5706
Andrew,
Just out of interest, how do you get on with Ben Goldacre, as you had theat big spat a year or so ago about alternative medicine and homeopathy and you have very different views on the subject and I remember you getting quite upset.
Do you and Ben get along? Or do you not really get a chance to talk?
Mike, I didn't really have a spat with Ben Goldacre. He writes things in the Guardian which annoy me. I took it upon myself to "answer" a G2 cover story he penned in February 2007 about Gillian McKeith which I read as a broader assault on the practice of nutritional therapy, with which he has little truck.
Within my piece, which wasn't published in the Guardian, but on this blog, I implied that he had a problem with women, which was unwise of me - and no doubt inaccurate. I was a bit fed up with his access to such a large audience, I suppose. He didn't counter-attack, but his followers did, and it all got very nasty. I came very close to giving up blogging, since it seemed I was disallowed from having the views that I held about certain things.
Since then I've tried to keep my opinions on this subject to myself and write about The Wire. I met Ben Goldacre at my second School For Gifted Children night. We shook hands. He was perfectly civil and so was I. On the same night I met Simon Singh, also appearing, who published a book attacking alternative medicine. He was very nice. We exchanged a few emails. It is possible to get on with people who hold contrary views to your own.
I know better than to get into an argument with Ben Goldacre about what he believes in. In the words of the playground, it's not worth it. He has a platform in a national newspaper whose official circulation is 345,362 (with an estimated readership of 1,217,000). I have this blog, which is read by around 200 people according to my tracking software. He has nothing to fear from me.
Ironically, most of the people who read this blog don't agree with me either! Pretty much everybody on Ben's forum agree with him, vociferously. Why fight that? It would be like fighting the tide. Now ... who else likes The Wire?
I like The Wire! I may not be the best person to talk to about it though; I'm not even through Series 2 yet.
I quite like The Wire.
Simon Singh is a top bloke. His documentary on Andrew Wiles and his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is just fantastic and now, happily if illegally, available on YouTube. Non-mathematicians need not be put off - this is a story of childhood inspiration, dedication, exhilaration, disappointment and relief.
There are tears that only the hardest heart would fail to be moved by and by the time its finished you'll be talking about elliptic curves and the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture like a good 'un.
The Wire is indeed the DBs. Although I tried in vain to get my sister to get into it, but she didn't like it because it wasn't Desperate Housewives.
"biographer" was a typo, it should of said "bummer".
I like Collins, Goldacre, Singe, Ince, and The Wire. Gillian Mckeith, however, is a fucking idiot.
"have", not "of".
I am also a fucking idiot.
Typical. Nazi's snaffle the hotties and the gloomy Commies get the sister with the "great personality". Shouldn't you be back at the Guraniad Gamesblog Office Pest?
If Gillian McKeith was a character in The Wire, which one would she be?
With her scatological tendencies she would clearly be Senator Clay Davis.
Different Office, different Pest, Mr Noseybonk; I wouldn't know one end of a game from the other.
According to Radio Times, one of the specialist subjects on Mastermind tomorrow is...
...the Mitford sisters.
(Although I'll probably be rewatching The Wire)
Just spotted that myself, GD. The Sky+ is primed. I hope I get all the answers right. I shall report back.
Does anyone know how much the thing's going to cost?
"I know better than to get into an argument with Ben Goldacre about what he believes in. In the words of the playground, it's not worth it. He has a platform in a national newspaper whose official circulation is 345,362 (with an estimated readership of 1,217,000). I have this blog, which is read by around 200 people according to my tracking software. He has nothing to fear from me."
But on the other hand, Gillian McKeith has (or had?) a televison programme watched by millions. And the newpapers are always full of terrible health stories (MMR etc). You and him both feel like beleaguered minorities. Which might account for some of the nastiness.
I'm sure you had to put up with some terrible abuse during Wag-Tail gate, and I wish people could conduct debate on the net in a civil manner. But that probably isn't going to happen. I don't know, judging by your blog and the podcasts, some of your concerns and those of Ben Goldacre seem to overlap- what I mean is, you talk a lot about how the newpapers distort reality in their reporting of it, and he does exactly the same, in the areas of health and science reporting.
Anyway, I don't really know what I'm talking about, and I understand if you don't want to publish this on your blog because you don't want to get into a massive debate about this again (or because I've just written a load of drunken nonsense.) Either way works for me.
Jack, I have no idea how much it costs. I have emailed Robin and asked him.
And, Ian, as I always say about the Goldacre issue, he's a doctor, he writes for a newspaper, he's got the Consensus on his side. He has nothing to fear from Gillian McKeith, nor from me.
It would probably be fairer to attribute the MMR scare to Andrew Wakefield rather than to the media, who were only responding (in good faith) to his report published by The Lancet (also in good faith).
Wakefied can obviously be identified as the root cause of the MMR. But it was the British media that gave his claims national attention, and whipped up the hysteria that turned it into a panic.
Publishing a paper in a journal is what peer-review is about. It allows others with expertise to verify or disprove the claims. it does not make something a scare.
Besides which, very few non-medical, people read The Lancet. Had it not been reported no one would have known. But that is the thing, it was reported, but only really by the broadsheets, and it only received a little attention.
It was another paper in a toxicology journal about three years later that which somehow got the attention of the tabloid press. And without the background or understanding to be able to critically assess his claims they instead promoted them.
The government likes MMR because it is cheaper than three separate vaccinations. Clearly the doctor must be right and the government and condemning our children to save money. Or something like that.
That is when an already discredited old piece of research became a scare.
But only in Britain. In the rest of the world, Wakefield's comments were also available to be reported on. But without the media hype few came to believe there was a link and levels of vaccination did not drop, as they did in the UK.
It is easy to scapegoat Wakefield because he is completely discredited and arguably corrupt (the GMC must surely be giving the verdict in their hearing soon). But that would be like blaming a murder on the poison rather than the poisoner.
In summary, I also like The Wire, and have watched it since it first aired unlike any of you boxset-bandwagon jumpers.
For the record, I got 12 points on the Mitford Sisters on Mastermind tonight. The contestant, who'd been in training, got 16 - but I got one that she got wrong! (Jessica and Edmond ran a bar in Miami, not San Francisco.) Fair play: she knew more about the Mitfords than me.
Wow, The Albany don't make it easy to book tickets, do they? I shall be there hopefully, probably on my todd.
I am also very fond of the Mitfords. Did you see in last weeks' Observer magazine the current Baron Redesdale is trying to rid England of grey squirrels, and has killed about 20,000 of them.
I won't pretend I know anything about The Mitford Sisters, but the ones who were Nazis looked pretty tasty (for them days, anyway).
Cah. First Palin, and now this! The right-wing always get the hotties.
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