My Blog

FIFTY YEARS ON

03/08/2013 14:01:00

FIFTY YEARS ON

As I was saying some months ago….sorry about the silence but bad light stopped play in the shape of broken ribs and various complications and enough already. But now I’m back and here to tell you of my very own sliding doors experience, a moment that forever changed my life and a certain other person’s life as well. And it happened fifty Januaries ago exactly - I would have accounted for it on the day itself but for the fact that I physically was not able to do so. But no matter – a half a century is a half a century and the exact date is of little importance – for the record the exact date being the 13 of January 1963.

Then I was appearing in the hit show Beyond the Fringe at the Fortune Theatre, having taken over from Peter Cook, one of the originators, and on this fateful and freezing winter Thursday I had just finished the second of two shows when a girl I knew from Dublin came backstage to see me. I took her for a drink then I drove her to where she was staying – or rather more precisely I determined to drive her to near where she was staying since my route home lay one way and hers quite another. And this was where the doors slid open and/or shut, for at a crucial juncture stood a building which was then a shop called The Scotch House. Had I turned left here as was my intention and dropped my friend off at an agreed point along the Cromwell Road I would not be writing this now because my life would have been an entirely different one. And make no mistake – it was my firmly avowed purpose to take my normal route home because I was cold and tired and wanted to get home before the forecast blizzard. But no. As the Scotch House came into view something changed my mind. The doors slid open and I entered a time and a place in which I had not intended to be and for absolutely no reason. Against all my reasoning and judgement I took a right instead of a left and ten minutes later found myself being introduced to a beautiful girl with whom I was to spend the rest of my life.

It was that much touch and that much go. Had I gone left we two who became as one would never have met. But instead I went right, invited myself into a strange house and fell in love right there and then at first sight. The beautiful girl who immediately took my heart I learned had just written a book, something about which I was totally ignorant, being far too wrapped up in myself and my own importance. The book was only casually mentioned en passant and not by the beautiful young author, but by the other girl who was a mutual friend of us both. I asked the beautiful young author to marry me the next day but she just laughed, and when I asked her again the following day she just laughed once more and again, and again every time I asked her for the next days, weeks and months still she gaily laughed. While she was still laughing her book was published and then finally when she stopped laughing because she realised I was being serious her book had become a national number one best seller, taking the top spot in the non-fiction list, the book being none other than what was then being touted as a 'sensational autobiography that took the lid off Society'. You may remember it. It was called Coronet Among the Weeds and the author was the nineteen year old Charlotte Bingham. If you don’t know of it, maybe now is the time for you to become acquainted with a slim volume that many people say will almost certainly become a future classic.

So in January this year I found I had two fifty year old things to celebrate – the publication of a book which to this very day remains one of the favourite all time reads of literally hundreds of thousands of people worldwide – the book having been published in twelve countries including the USA – and the day I took a right instead of a left and suffered a life changing coup de foudre. The French are right, as they so often are in these matters ~ falling in love at first sight is very akin to being hit by a thunderbolt. As for the famous or as some might have it the infamous book, as the critic in the Sunday Times assured his readers in his opinion it thoroughly deserved all its ballyhoo ~ and what marks it out as being even more singular is that in my opinion as well as the opinion of all its army of fans the book has stood the test of time and may now be read as the young author hoped and intended it might be read, as an expression of hope and of youth, the thoughts and observations of a remarkably gifted young woman ~ albeit one blessed with a wonderful sense of humour ~ and as such is very much a quite unique testament to those now distant times. Yet what it says and what the author believed then still holds good today in our supposedly hard-nosed twenty first century.

The author became what they like to call an overnight sensation, even though it had taken her well over a year to write her 120 page book, working as she did every night from seven till midnight after she returned home from the War Office where she was working and each and every weekend too – sometimes writing no more than one sentence a night, knowing instinctively it would seem that easy writing generally makes for damned hard reading. She celebrated finishing the book by having a drink in the Ritz where by chance she met her father’s literary agent who took the book away with him and sold it within forty eight hours. It was published with trumpets and with drums by Heinemann and serialised in The People, a Sunday newspaper known more for its salacious stories than its literary merit and which had just finished serialising Christine Keeler’s infamous memoirs. Minds boggled but she was the editor’s choice. It was his birthday and as a present he bought Coronet because as he said it was one of the very few books he had ever read in his long tough life that had made him laugh out loud. He was right too, because the People who read The People loved the author and laughed out aloud along with the editor; in fact so universally popular was the young writer that she was taken on a whirlwind tour of Working Men’s clubs up north to appear well out of her stamping ground alongside stars as famous as the late and great Tommy Cooper.

The author’s image was in fact everywhere – on the sides of London buses, on massive roadside billboards and along the walls of the underground. She shared book signings with Bob Hope and appeared on just about every television show it was then possible to appear on. When she went to promote her book in America she was invited to appear on the biggest game show ever, a production called Tell The Truth which was viewed throughout the US and Canada by an audience estimated at over 80 million viewers. She was Town and Country’s cover girl, and as a result of being photographed posing with the family cat the famous American journal recorded its best sales ever. Paris Match adored her and made her their cover girl, too – and even the mighty Life magazine came down from on high and awarded her a four page spread. Outside her family home in what is always described as leafy Kensington the paparazzi hid up in the trees in the hope of shooting something sensational and/or indiscreet only to find themselves regularly chased away by a determined and stockily built impoverished Irish aristo brandishing a swordstick, the author's father, himself later to find fame when identified by the writer John le Carre as being the role model for the fictional hero, spymaster George Smiley.

And all this time I waited for an answer to my proposal, fearing that the sudden global fame thrust upon this totally unsuspecting and innocent young woman could well and easily affect her deeply, wound her, alienate her, change her. But no – she took it all in her stride and none of it seriously, in spite of being the youngest guest ever at the famous Foyle’s Literary Luncheon where according to Christina Foyle herself she was also the best ever of the guests so far. Finally when we thought the noise had abated sufficiently we got married in a small ceremony in a church hidden away in the side streets of Soho – only to find as we left the church the world’s press waiting ten deep on the road outside.

We spent our wedding night in Claridges famous hotel where the management put us in the first floor wedding suite while charging the exact same rate as for the small room I had booked previously on the fourth floor. The next morning we found our pictures and story on the front page of every carefully ironed newspaper the staff put before us and had to sneak out a side entrance to avoid another flash session with the paparazzi. Knowing how hot they were on our trail my Best Man told the boys from Fleet Street that we were off to the Balearics for our honeymoon to which location the press corps duly stampeded while we drove quietly off to Devon where we enjoyed a fortnight of unbroken winter sunshine and unforgettable cuisine at a tiny village pub.

But that golden anniversary is still to come next January when please God it will be duly and properly celebrated in a fitting manner, although we’ll probably have to forgo Claridges…. This year I am celebrating the joint anniversary of the time the Gods chose to throw that full size thunderbolt at my head and the re-publication of a book that I still read regularly and enjoy more each time that I do – and in the hope that you might share in the fun I’ve just re-published it as an e-book at a knock down, give-away, you simply cannot resist it price – so go to Amazon, go to the Kindle store, search for Coronet Among the Weeds,and do not pass Go! until you have downloaded the book described by the Daily Telegraph and by Punch as hilariously funny – by Woman’s Own as clever, witty and dead honest, by the Guardian as very funny and scaringly fluent, by Harpers as hilariously comic and unusually original and by the Times Literary Supplement as always loving, positive and uninhibited.

I was going to add that if you don’t enjoy the book as much as I think you and your young will I’d give you your money back – but since the author has decided to donate 50% of all her royalties from the sale of the e-book to our local children’s hospice instead I suggest that if you don’t laugh and love it you send them a donation yourselves for being - as the author would have so aptly described you back then – so awfully po-faced. Coronet Among the Weeds by Charlotte Bingham is published by Hardway Books and available as an e-book through Amazon.co.uk and Amazon. com.

A MAN CALLED WINNER

10/24/2012 11:28:00

A MAN CALLED WINNER

Some years ago when we were living in London we developed a long standing desire to wall our garden. It wasn’t a very large garden, about a hundred and twenty feet by twenty five but we’d done a lot of work on it and at the end of our horticultural labours we decided old brick would look a lot better than old fencing and it was this reason and this reason alone that we accepted a commission that normally in full possession of our sanity we would have thought not twice but four or five times about, such was this man's particular reputation. Even so when our notoriously monosyllabic agent rang us and outlined the deal still we hesitated.

‘You did say Winner?’ we wondered yet again. ‘Winner as in Michael Winner?’

‘Yes,’ mono-agent muttered. ‘He wishes to see you. You should go. He pays well.’

So with our garden in mind we went to see the man. We found he lived in a very large house that occupied a very large part of Kensington, the rumourbeing that this large mansion had been funded by the proceeds of Winalot, the dog food. This was later strenuously denied by Mr Winner and possibly for good reason otherwise he would have been called Michael Wina, or perhaps even Michael Winalot but that is neither here nor there. It was and still is a huge house and within its vast cubic footage resided the famous film director/producer. On arrival we were shown into a very large drawing room by a weanling wearing bright white tennis shoes where we were introduced to Mr Winner who in his turn was wearing ample garments, with a silver spoon hung from round his neck and suffering from gout. In highly decorated speech he told us what he proposed we should do for him, namely write him a comedy thriller. He called us my dears and pronounced Charlotte as if she was a cup of tea and in two syllables, as in my dear Char Lot.

This proposed film was to star the American actor Art Carney and - ironically enough as was later proved to be the case when swe worked with her a decade later - the talented Madeline Kahn, two of the star players he told us who had headlined in his very latest and as yet unreleased masterpiece, Won Ton Ton the Dog Who Saved Hollywood, and yes - the movie really is called that. Won Ton Ton the Dog Who Saved Hollywood. Mr Winner told us he was now through with biff-bang, the sort of films he had been making up till then, and was now in love with comedy. Comedy he told us was the new black, Art Carney was a complete and utter genius and he Mr Winner just loved our writing. In return we said little because firstly even though suffering from gout Mr Winner was a world class non-stop talker and secondly neither of us could quite believe what we were hearing. We had seen enough of Mr Winner’s films to know that comedy was not his forte unless unintentionally so, as in for instance The Cool Mikado, Mr Winner’s quite unforgettable take on Gilbert and Sullivan’s great work, which film is apparently is rated on the internet as one of The Ten Worst Movies Ever Made Ever. A friend of ours was one of the dancers on the ill-fated movie and she used to reduce everyone to tears with her stories about what happened on the set, including the wrap party where the director was drenched with a bucket of water thrown over him with the compliments of his exhausted and infinitely bewildered cast.

So we stood in silence and perhaps the great producer mistook our shock for awe for he clapped us both pretty solidly on our backs and told us how deeply thrilled and delighted he was to have us on board and that for our delectation he had arranged a private showing of Won Ton Ton the Dog That Saved Hollywood for us that very afternoon – whereupon we were at once despatched to a private cinema in Mayfair to watch with open mouths a film that must also surely have the right to be on the list of The Ten Worst Films Ever Made Ever. We witnessed the talented Ms Kahn doing her demented best to try and rescue a ship she quite visibly knows is sinking fast but by the time she has to share a hunk of meat with the Also Starring dog you can see she knows the game is long lost. We also saw the gallant and normally expert Bruce Dern play every scene as if apparently looking for a way out – and we watched Art Carney, Winner’s proclaimed genius, boring even himself rigid while also wondering why on earth they had bothered with casting molto talented actress Terri Garr then giving her less than zero to do. The direction was later described by one of the film’s many bewildered critics as being simply hopeless. The only funny thing about the entire viewing was the fact that the telephone kept ringing while we were silently watching the film in a state of total stupefaction and we could hear Mr Winner on the other end of the line loudly wondering of the projectionist if we had laughed yet and always receiving a constantly negative response.

Later when cross examined by Mr Winner we admitted that we had indeed failed to fall about at the supposedly comic capers in his latest masterpiece, yet still and nevertheless the redoubtable Mr Winner insisted on employing us, assuring us that together we were going to write just the most funny and rambunctious comedy gangster film ever made and when we found out what he was promising to pay us we equally readily and enthusiastically agreed that we would indeed try to make his dream come true. What we had missed picking up was the key word together, taking togetherness to mean we two writers sitting quietly at home working away in our usual style, whereas what Mr Winner meant was - well, you’ll see.

So began the curious case of writing a comedy thriller with a producer stroke director who was really at his happiest pointing a camera at an actor whose trademark was asking his putative victims if they believed in Jesus before shooting their faces off. We would be rung at all hours of the day and night to see how funny we were being, we would be summoned at all hours of the day and night so that Mr Winner could read how funny we were being, and we would spend all hours of the days and the nights with the three of us putting our heads together to consider how funny we might be going to be in the few hours of the days and the nights possibly left to us to live. Besides submitting a very detailed step outline of the movie we had yet to write, an odd task given that writers do not really have a single clue how a scene is going to develop until they begin to write it, but there you go, needs must – we had to do as told and after all these were the orders coming from a man who had directed not just Charles Bronson, Oliver Reed, and Charles Bronson but also Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren, Charles Bronson, Anthony Hopkins, Oliver Reed, Jeremy Irons, Robert Duvall, Charles Bronson, Faye Dunaway, James Stewart, Charles Bronson and Oliver Reed as well as Robert Mitchum, John Cleese, Burt Lancaster, Michael Caine, Roger Moore, Oliver Reed, Charles Bronson, Lauren Bacall, Peter Ustinov, John Gielgud, Joan Collins, Olympia Dukakis, Paul Scofield, Jack Palance, Michael Crawford, Ryan O’Neal, Orson Welles, Ava Gardner, Jeff Goldblum and Oliver Reed not forgetting Charles Bronson. So who were we to argue? Flies on the windscreen, deah reader, as Mr Winner might have put it – mere flies on the windscreen. More importantly Mr Winner had assured us that he would prove to be the only film producer who ever paid us up, because he always paid his writers every penny of the money due to them – every penny, and we were he boasted to mark his words, still somehow managing to make his boast sound more like a threat.

And besides the highly detailed step outline in those few mad weeks during which it seemed every night had a full moon, we wrote three whole, complete and utter drafts of a film entitled All That Glitters, yet still the Maestro was not quite happy and called us in shortly after one midnight to tell us so.

We won’t reproduce the actual language used by Mr Winner because it was quite seriously military. For readers of a less nervous dispositions, feel free to insert your own decorations, on the understanding that they were abundant.

‘Well my deahs,’ he informed us, hurling our latest draft on to the fire. ‘I am sorry to say this is not quite turning out the way I hoped that it would - and the trouble to me seems to be centred round the heist of the diamonds itself. You have all this business with our heroine forgetting the number of the combination of the safe and where she has parked her car and you have our hero abseiling in reverse up the glass fronted building where the loot is stashed and getting his rubber suckered feet stuck to the windows - while below the cop chasing them has lost one of his contact lens in a can of coca cola while their deadly rival in crime has managed to get himself locked in the ladies toilet. Now whereas this might be all very fine and large on the tele in some comedy show or other but this - my deahs - this is a proper movie - so here is how the climax of the movie should go. Our hero should drop out of a helicopter on a rope and smash through the plate glass window, breaking a couple of limbs in the attempt but nonetheless having applied a tourniquet himself and with blood spurting out of these serious wounds he breaks through into the inner office where our heroine is preparing the explosive that she knows will blow open the safe and just as she is about to do so doors burst open and the villains burst in and open fire with Russian machine pistols blam-blam-blam only for our hero to grab this priceless antique shield from off of the wall and while deflecting all the bullets the villains are pumping at him he hurls a grenade at the bad guys shouting hope you believe in Jesus - you bastards! And the frag grenade explodes BOOM! blowing off legs and arms and possibly heads just the same time as the explosive blows open the safe hurling our heroine across the room and there’s blood everywhere and many bodies and dead people all over the place as the cops drive up the main staircase in squad car but too late because our hero and heroine have vamoosed in an atomic submarine or some-such a device. Now that is the sort of thing I am after, my deahs. That is the sort of film I wish to make.’

‘News to us, Mr Winner,’ we replied. ‘What you’ve been asking us to write all along is a comedy.’

‘Oh my God!’ Mr Winner groaned, smiting his forehead and falling back on to one of his many sofas. ‘Oh my God I had forgot!’

Many moons later when we had recovered, we went out to dinner with some friends and told them all about our experience, particularly how all the way through every meeting we had including our lecture on how to write caper movie as Death Wish just outside Mr Winner’s drawing room had come the sound of an invisible typist tap-tapping everything out. As we recounted this particular memory the waitress who was busy serving us smiled the smile of a sadder and wiser person and admitted that she in fact was the unseen typist who had been tap-tapping out every word outside the door and assured our friends that every word of the story was true. Best of all, without having to be reminded and as good as his word Mr Winner paid us every penny that we were owed and so we got to wall our lovely garden and have been rather absurdly fond of Mr Winner ever since.

extracted from forthcoming joint memoir:

JOINT ACCOUNT

Terence Brady and Charlotte Bingham

DON'T I KNOW YOU

10/05/2012 18:27:00

DON’T I KNOW YOU?

Performers are often and usually most unfairly famous for their conceit. People love to prod the artiste and see the stuffing pop out, but there’s another side to the coin as always and it’s this: Joe Public's got quite a big head on him, too and if you pull up your chair and listen I’ll tell you how and why. You’re a face – it might be an old face, it might be a forgotten face, or it might a vaguely familiar face, or you might be what Joe likes to describe you as a bit of a writer/painter/composer. But whatever brand you are, you are irksome to Joe because you are better known than Joe and on some occasions even famously so. But whatever it is or whatever you may be, there you are at some gathering or other nursing a glass of the world’s warmest white wine and standing minding your own business while wondering to whom you might safely speak when up comes Joe to thrust his unfamiliar face far too close to your own.

’Hang on,’ he might say after an uncomfortable moment spent staring tightly at you. ‘Hang on – don’t I know you?’ Or worse: ‘Should I know you?’

And right here and there hangs great big snag number one. If you don’t know Joe, how can you possibly know whether or not he knows you? Or should know you? Or even should not know you? You cannot. You cannot possibly know what if anything goes on in Joe’s head, and so feebly you reply I don’t know – do you? Should you? I don’t know. Sorry.

‘Hang on,’ he may well continue, with ever increasing menace, ‘hang on – I should know you, shouldn’t I?’

Which is indeed the very moment when you need the courage that has now altogether deserted you, the courage to reply yes indeed you should, chummy - and if and since you obviously do not, shove off and leave me be. But you don’t. Instead you give a bleak little smile, mutter something self-deprecating and search in vain for a loose revolver. But it’s too late, you’re hooked and you’re about to be cooked and there’s no getting out.

‘Come on,’ you hear Joe persisting. ‘Come on – help me out here. Tell me what I might know you from. Where I might have seen you. Because I have really do have this feeling I really ought to know you.’

And still there are no flashing blue lights or approaching sirens hurtling to your rescues and still the ground does not open to swallow Joe or even you up and so you stumble on, giving ever stronger hints and clues to an ever increasingly bemused Joe as to what indeed he might have once seen you in or in or about, finding every suggestion you offer being greeted with either a totally bewildered frown or an adamant shaking of the head. Finally, when you have run quite out of submissions Joe calls up reinforcements, other members of Joe Public’s family and entourage who gather around to stare even more bleakly at you who have now become the pariah of the gathering.

‘This fellow here,’ Joe announces. ‘ This fellow here is meant to be someone or other and this may well be so, but for the life of me I can’t place him, try as I may – not for all the sweepings on the factory floor. Anyone got any bright ideas where we could have seen him? Because apparently we really ought to know him.’

A friend of mine, an infinitely well know fellow, he gets basins full of this all the time – with knobs on. First he gets the look of wondered and silent adoration, followed by a cheeky, intimate smile, the sort exchanged by close buddies, then he gets the finger and the admonition Don’t tell me. I know – just as if he was a bad little puppy dog who had just done something norty but is also just about to be forgiven. Don’t tell me, his new buddy-buddy insists with a little more coy finger waving – because I know. I know who you are! – the last five words almost sung, in a slowly rising inflexion. You’re xxxxxxx! – always the name of his most famous character – never the name with which he was christened. Another pal – now sadly gone from us alas, except on ITV 3 – he got nationally famous playing a police detective, and although during a previously pretty illustrious career he had enjoyed his share of public adulation he was astonished when now professionally masquerading as a top ranking police Chief Inspector to find himself asked to police dinners where he was invited to address them as a Chief Inspector, right down to giving them hints as to how best to solve their latest cases. I asked him once how he coped with Joe and his should I know you routine, and he replied that for years he had done so with the greatest difficulty, until an even more famous actor, one of the Sirs, had tipped him off. When they ask you should they know you, say yes immediately, Sir advised. Say yes of course you should. Then when they founder further as indeed they will and finally beseech you to identify yourself, give them an entirely false name – the name of some other well-known thespian or even conjuror for all that it matters. Just give them a major bum steer. Then when they protest that you don’t look at all like this other famous mummer or juggler or whatever simply reply ‘How would you know? You couldn’t even recognise me.’

Writers often face the same problem, made worse by the fact that very few people can ever recognise a writer face to face. I’ll bet even Shakespeare got the treatment – the Do tell me, should I have read anything of yours? request. Again, how? How do you possibly answer that because once again you the artist are expected to be able to enter your inquisitor’s head by some strange portal or other in order to know the sort of thing they do read. The woman who shares my life, the Beloved one, having been confronted as a novelist year in year out by this and other similarly inane questions now has a ready answer. She simply puts her interrogator at ease by assuring them that it’s perfectly all right because she doesn’t write books for people like them. No answer to that when you think about it. Just as when a famous madman General said to me quite unprompted at dinner once that he was here to tell me (his very words) that he had never seen one thing I had done nor read one word I had written - to which I told hi that was fine because I had never killed anyone.

Alas, against Joe sometimes even absolute honesty doesn’t pay. Alec Guinness, that most fastidious and modest of actors, was once sitting on a bus as actors in those far off times oft did, and found himself being stared at very hard by a member of Joe’s vast family. After six or seven stops, Joe finally leaned over to Guinness and with a smug smile told him that he knew him. ‘I’m quite sure you don’t, Guinness smiled back. I don’t recall us meeting’.’ No’, Joe assured him. ‘No but I know who you are. You are David Nixon.’ Now at that time and in those pre Tommy Cooper days, thanks to the television David Nixon was the most famous conjuror in the land, but other than shared balding heads looked only very faintly like the great actor. No, Guinness assured him most kindly and most patiently. ‘No I am not David Nixon.’ ‘No?’ Joe said in return before adding his coup de grace. ‘No, but I bet you wish you were.’

As the famous ballet star Robert Helpmann did so wondrously once in New York when crossing the street and losing hold of his walking stick to be loudly informed by a burly Irish cop that - hey, faggot! You've dropped your wand, how during that bus ride Guinness must have longed for a similar enchanted prop so like Helpmann he too could have pointed his magic baton at his tormentor and cried – pouff! Vanish!

THE EYES HAVE IT

09/07/2012 13:10:00

THE EYES HAVE IT

Like a lot of lucky people I recently had my sight restored this year. Nothing dramatic – just a couple of cataract operations which are fine, once you’ve come to terms with the fact that someone is going to stick something surgical in your eye. I think we all suffer from that fear but having gone through not one but two such procedures let me tell you that speaking as a rank and arrant coward it was utterly painless as well as totally non-scary. I had a very kind and brilliant specialist who like so many of the truly skilled, gifted and dedicated saw no great talent in the intricate surgery he practices. He told me that was his job and he was glad as always to have performed a successful operation. Wish that other professions that I won’t name shared his modesty.

But I haven’t quite told the truth. There is something scary about this procedure and that is what happens the morning following the procedure when you uncover the overhauled eye - because miracle of miracles, behold! Not only can you see but you can see better than you have ever seen before, ever, ever, ever. I now have the vision of an astronaut or a jet pilot whereas before even first with glasses and then contact lenses I had the sight of a bedazzled mole. Now I see everything with awful clarity – everything. The leaves on distant trees, the kite marks on clouds, spinach teeth on diners sitting the far side of restaurants, shaving cream residual on the ear of man conducting the Birmingham Sinfonia, cobwebs behind half closed doors and finger marks on paintwork in the dead of night, a habit that is driving everyone who knows me mad, particularly my beloved and ever patient partner person. I now no longer need a clear day to see for evermore. I am now purely and simply Optical Superman.

How I wish that this had always been the case and that I could have seen like this all my life. And because of that how I wish that this procedure could be carried out on the myopic young because then they would not have to undergo the ritual humiliation of spectacles and being called four eyes and other such jokey sobriquets and having forever to rely on spectacles in order to be able to see to find your glasses in the morning. Yes, contact lenses can change your life entirely, but they have drawbacks as anyone who has ever worn them knows. I won’t knock them though, because my first pair of lenses changed my entire existence, particularly as an actor because it meant I could see the facial expressions of my peers and try and react accordingly whereas pre-lenses it had always been down to guesswork and homework and quite a lot of

physical work – like feeling people's mouths as they spoke - which is why I wish the miracle of perfect vision could be bestowed on everyone.

When I was a child the only alternative to wearing glasses was for your peepers to be fitted with a pair of thick plastic lenses that covered the entire eye, aids that were both dangerous on the field of play and unhygienic off them. I loved playing sport and wasn’t bad either, but as my sight deteriorated so my sporting prowess waned and I never achieved my lifelong ambition to run out at Lansdowne Road wearing the number 9 shirt for Ireland. But then along came the smaller hard lenses and game for anything I gave them a go. The man who fitted them warned me they might be a little uncomfortable at their initial insertion and he was more than utterly right. Once he had inserted the lenses and muffled my screams with one hand placed over my mouth for fear of upsetting those outside in the waiting room he advised me to take a walk up and down the street outside his surgery in order to cool down and off. I dutifully and blindly obeyed and was found some hours later by a kindly policeman staggering around a distant alleyway looking much as the Earl of Gloucester does when the Duke of Cornwall has finished re-arranging his optics. But such is the power of vanity I stuck with the razor blades in my eyes and in no time at all if you count in decades I was wearing them to work and the improvement was obviously quite noticeable because the actors I was then working with said how much easier life had become with not having surreptitiously to move furniture out of my way on my entrances and exits. But for some reason I could never physically bear wearing these lenses in very bright light. In bright summer sunshine (those were the days) I would have to wear industrial strength dark glasses, aids that I could not employ as a performer unless cast as a welder or riveter, roles that oddly enough did not that often come my way. This quirk of fate however gave me a short lived reputation as a tragedian because when lensed up every time I appeared under the spotlights I would appear to be weeping copiously, so much so that when once and very briefly playing Charley’s Aunt, a notable critic wondered why I had chosen to play the role like Oedipus might after his discovery that he has boffed his mum.

The later soft and then disposable lenses were a revelation of course, and were so comfortable and easy to wear that I would often forget I was wearing them and sleep through the night in them. This was great for dreaming because of course I could see all my reveries in outstanding detail but not so good for my dearest and most beloved partner who oft times would wake up panic struck when she found she was in bed with the Earl of Gloucester sometimes spelt Gloster (see above), King Oedipus Rex (see also above but nearer) or someone who appeared to have just gone fifteen rounds with Muhammad Ali. To prevent such incidents I was forced to go to bed and to sleep under a large notice that said TAKE YOUR EYES OUT.

I could have done with dailies or disposables when I was boy and how. They would certainly have helped prevent many of the accidents and errors brought about my severe myopia, such as going home for the holidays with someone else’s parents, or getting undressed in the wrong changing rooms at the public swimming bath (I can still hear those wretched girls’ laughter). Most of all they would have prevented the Dreadful Incident of the Inebriated Eucharist in our local church of St Cuthbert and All the Sycophants. I was an altar boy, small, dozy and near blind. I was more than near blind on this particular and what was to prove historic morning as the day before a spotted youth called Carew Junior had stolen my pair of pink framed and wire-sided NH spectacles and subjected them to a considerable stamping under his size ten boots. So when in church it came to doing all my stuff at the altar understandably a certain amount of fumbling and busking went on. The main problem and one I had not foreseen, particularly unable to do so with the loss of my eyepieces, was that one of the jobs of the altar boy is to check on the number of possible communicants gathered in the knave and then to compare the count with the Churchwarden when he arrived in the chancel after the Collection, a job that had a double responsibility since the vicar – due to some chronic eye condition of his own – was even more of a bat than I. Naturally and for reasons already given the vision I personally had that day of those gathered in the Church of St Cuthbert and All the Sycophants was more than a little blurred so I was doubly reliant on the gen about to be given to me by the Churchwarden, a man named Dombey who suffered with more than a slight cleft palate. So when I asked him the key question as to how many in the congregation he said seventeen but I thought he said seventy. In order to be quite sure I was about to whisper the number back in repetition but Mr Dombey had already bowed and left. Thus when the near blind Reverend Archibald Smallpiece enquired of me as to the amount of possible communicants and I replied sotto voce seventy small wonder both his rheumy eyes and his somewhat slack mouth opened cavernously since this would be possibly the largest congregation ever gathered in the Church is St Cuthbert and Sycophants since half the village had taken shelter there from an errant Doodlebug during the war. Seventy? He whispered back, screwing his eyes up to try and get a view of the congregation. Are you completely sure? Yes, I whispered back in reassurance. According to Mr Dombey.

Of course that did it because Mr Dombey was known not only to the vicar but indeed to the entire Parish as a man of upstanding moral rectitude, vouchsafed by the fact that he was also said to be married to a woman who was rumoured to have conceived immaculately. So with confidence restored and without bothering to take another pointless look into the body of the echoing church the Reverend Archibald Smallpiece went about the business of preparing Communion for the now expected bumper throng of worshippers, only to be confronted finally by well less than half a dozen bodies kneeling at the rails in the moment of truth. Once he had administered to them the all but unseeing Reverend Archibald Smallpiece remained in position and in hope for more communicants, attended by his all but blind altar boy, but unfortunately no more sheep were forthcoming from the tiny flock and so now it was wrap time. But of course now also came The Problem, for as you probably know once the Communion is over the Celebrant has to finish up what is left. Normally this is but a wafer or two and a small sip of wine but today, having prepared communion for an anticipated bus load of people, the Reverend Archibald Smallpiece now faced finishing off a box of wafers and what had to be a bottle and a half of Communion wine. Not surprisingly the repast took a good deal of time and the congregation gazed in wonder at the back of their priest as he stood steadfastly eating and drinking away for the next several long minutes. And when at last he finished the wine and had wiped the cup clean, he very slowly turned round to the congregation and with a big red mouth slowly bestowed upon them possibly the most incomprehensible Blessing they would ever hear before staggering off to collapse in the vestry like a winning oarsman after a Boat Club Ball.

Unsurprisingly I was never invited by the Reverend Archibald Smallpiece to help serve Communion again.

THE FACTS OF LIFE

09/04/2012 15:30:00

THE FACTS OF LIFE

When I was ten and came home from school one day I found my sister closeted in the dining room with our father. My mother reassured me that there was no trouble and the reason that my sister and father were parleying was because my father was telling my sister The Facts of Life. Not having a clue what they were - naturally I enquired, whereupon my mother’s eyes took on a veiled look as she told me that to know those I must wait for the day when I too would be summoned into the dining room to be told.

After what seemed to be an eternity, the dining room door opened and my sister emerged white in the face. I followed her silently up to her room where she then sat on her bed staring blankly into space. When asked what she had been old she refused to divulge any vital Facts at all or even give me as much as a faint hint as to what had been divulged, and so I took my leave and returned to my state of absolute, utter and what would turn out to be abject ignorance - for in the many and long years that followed I was never summoned to the dining room by my father. As I grew older and out of short trousers and into longs I would hang around in our hallway when I saw my father disappearing into the dining room at times at other than mealtimes in the hope that this was the moment I might receive the call, be told the Facts of Life and be thus relieved of my witlessness. But no summons ever came and all my hints went unnoticed. Finally, many years on when my voice had begun to break and a soft down had started growing on my chin, on one of our regular rural rambles my father muttered imprecations about what fate had befallen someone biblical by the odd name of Onan as well as warning me not to take any unsolicited food, drink or cigarettes from vicars or school-teachers, the penalty for which wrongdoing apparently leading somewhat illogically I thought to the possible appearance of warts on one’s hands and a deterioration in one’s vision. I asked him if these were indeed the longed for and long awaited Facts of Life and his reply were that they were certainly some of them and as for the rest of them it was up to me as a growing young man to get the full set myself.

Attending as I did an all boy school it would seem obvious in conversation with one’s peers that the truth must out. Sadly this was not the case. In fact it was the very opposite and was as far as matters carnal went it was a prime case of the blind leading the blind without even one one-eyed boy to lead us out of the swamp of sexual illiteracy. Many was the myth that was perpetuated after lights out, mainly that girls had babies miraculously by way of their umbilical cords and that boy’s reached their maturity overnight by way of a meteoric process that told of falling asleep as an underpowered boy and awakening as a miraculously endowed young man. Every morning in the middle dormitory the first question boys would ask each other was has it happened yet? – such enquiries being immediately followed by a furtive and private look under the bedclothes in order to confirm whether or not puberty and all that is mysteriously entailed had arrived or not. Consequently the fair sex remained an all but entire mystery until the day we shook hands with the Headmaster for the last time and were formally loosed upon the world as card bearing sexual ignoramuses, given to much blushing and fidgeting whenever and if ever one was left alone with a girl. Worst of all were the feelings of guiltthat seemed to accompany every thought or feeling one had towards the fair sex. Any desire to take a girl out was treated like a putative mortal sin, exposing one to parental inquisitions such as what do you want to do something like that for? besides being openly considered as being way too young to have any such ideas. Consequently notions grew fast and furiously in our small and still uninformed fraternity that girls in fact were dangerous and could harm both your mental and your physical health, unless you took something called precautions, safety measures of which of course we were still totally ignorant. At the start of one term a senior boy smuggled into our dormitory an unopened and thus far unemployed prophylactic, an article that was passed around after dark and examined by the light of a dozen or so torches to become the subject of rapt investigation.

From conversation it appeared there was only one source of supply for these mysterious latex sheathes, namely and quite inexplicably barber shops. We wondered of the senior boy why it should be that only places that did hair should supply these goods to which he replied that when he had asked an uncle of his why so the uncle had replied more than a little enigmatically that the reason why barber’s shops purveyed such items was because barber’s shops were not all they appeared to be. One boy, an emergent lateral thinker, declared that we were all barking up the totally wrong tree and that there was nothing in any way sinister about such an item because he had indeed and only that very summer seen his mother wearing two such objects on her fingers after an unfortunate incident with her secateurs, information that somehow removed any further sense of purpose from our investigation.

The upside of my obliviousness to the Facts, particularly as well and truly and thoroughly in contrast with today’s rude and early awakenings, is that the thrill was still very much in romance. St Valentine’s was one of the most exciting days of the year if and when you received an anonymous card from and unknown admirer perhaps signed just V or F or C and maybe even containing one X, going to the cinema with a mixed bunch of friends meant many a sleepless night before the big day as you tried to plan how you were going to sit next to Anne in the angora sweater, or Valerie with the store bought string of pearls, or Susan with the fantastic second service, and then if you did and actually managed to sit next to one of your dream girls and got to hold her hand for longer than five minutes that would mean no sleep at all until you saw her again. When there was no one in the house you would secretly telephone Anne, or Valerie, or Diana, or Susan just to hear their voices, or just to enjoy the pregnancy of the silences that followed any timid enquiry as to when you might perhaps maybe even go the cinema maybe perhaps and ever again, and as for the monthly Saturday night dance at The Cambridge Hotel – oh, the thrill of it all, with the girls dressed up to look like the mannequins in Pages’ windows and the boys all dandy in their father’s discarded evening suits, the lucky ones driving borrowed family 10 horse powered saloons spring cleaned specially for the occasion, all of us dancing to real bands that played the very best of tunes, Polka Dots and Moonbeams, Walking My Baby Back Home, This is a Lovely Way to spend an Evening, Moonlight Serenade, and of course the last waltz when the lights went down and cheeks were brushed as you dared to dance just that little bit closer. Maybe all that innocence wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

Things changed on campus, although Ireland in those days was hardly a sea of iniquity with the Church very much still calling the shots. Trinity College had a different standing, being basically a Protestant enclave with a lot of British and other foreign students, including some pretty worldly Americans doing their PhDs. And as mentioned elsewhere a considerable proportion of the Brits were a lot older than current under-graduates as most of them had done military service, so they were most certainly had The Knowledge and as a result they wore the most glamorous stuff on their arms. As for the rest of us, the bashful boyos who’d escaped the rigours of National Service we had to wait in line or somewhat foolishly try out our courting skills on native Irish girls, most of whom were purely drop dead gorgeous. In my Fresher year I took out quite a few of them and one in particular, a waitress with film star looks, the sort of countenance and figure that would have won her a contract with any major American studio had she ever been able to save up the fare to cross the Atlantic. She liked me and I liked her and we used to go to the cinema a lot and every time we did she would take my arm and drape it around her shapely neck and snuggle up close to me. And every time she did I would attempt to kiss her and every time I did she would move very quickly and very sharply away while announcing fortissimo to the cinema at large that I was very bold and that I was to stop that at once. About ten minutes later once more she would take my arm and drape it round her neck and the whole pantomime was replayed exactly as before. In all the time I took her out I never got to kiss her once, nearly but never quite. The nearly moment came when right out of the blue one evening after we’d been out dancing at The Crystal and she asked me back to her family house. When we got there we found it was bare inasmuch as her parents were out, and so having put my last shilling in her gas meter we sat on the mat in front of the fire, she draped my arm around her neck, I moved that little bit closer and the door burst open and her father came in and threw me out of the house.

As he did and as I tumbled head over heels down the front steps he called after me.

“I knows all about you!” he shouted. ‘You’re the famous bold boyo. Well you can take your famous auld boldness and you can go try it on one of your own!”

Then as I left my fresher years behind me and became a Sophister I was swept along on a tide of pretty and pretty interesting young women, some of them fellow students, others imported from the mainland and in their company I grew to learn the full facts of life, and such was the fun, the heart ache and the romance of it all that I had far rather it had happened that way and not via some embarrassing and cold parental lecture in a dim and distant dining room.

DIPPED IN INK

08/29/2012 18:27:00

DIPPED IN INK

People are inclined to wonder why and how anyone starts writing, and so far I’ve never read a really good explanation yet as to why someone else was dipped in ink – as to whether it was their parents’ fault or their own or whatever. Whenever I get asked this question I tread water like mad as I try to come up with some plausible motive, but so far I feel I have failed utterly to convince my inquisitors with any given reason. Truth is, I really am not at all sure.

Certainly I have always read a lot – an awful lot as it happened when I was a child because until the Queen was crowned we had no television and as children we were most certainly not allowed to stay up later than 7.30pm, often being retired for the night long before that. I would then read for at least an hour before lights out after which I would read for easily another hour by torch-light under my blankets. So I fell in love with storytelling and the very art of it from an extremely early age. Then when television came into our lives, as a family we watched a lot of drama and there was a lot of drama to watch then – good drama too, not only home produced but also plays imported from America under the banner of the Goodyear Theatre – seasons of plays by then unknown but emerging playwrights such as Paddy Chayefsky and Gore Vidal. I well remember seeing Chayefsky's Marty being premiered in 1953 starring none other than the great Rod Steiger, as well as the writer’s next most famous piece The Bachelor Party produced two years later, the same year as Vidal's Visit to Small Planet was shown, as well as original dramas by the great sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury, while the BBC used to show seasons of plays by Eugene O’Neill, Pirandello and Shaw as well as adaptations of tremendous writers such as George Orwell (who will ever forget the original 1984 starring Peter Cushing?) and totally original drama such as The Quatermass Experiment by Nigel Neale, the BBC’s first in house playwright, plays shown first on Sunday evening and then repeated the following Thursday, another chance to see that was seldom refused - so small wonder then that as a teenager I became totally entranced by drama, yet I still don’t know why I began to write other than to see if I could.

I began writing plays before I saw any on television or even in the theatre, other than pantomime. Up until mid-teenage my theatrical experience had been pretty limited, confined to The Crazy Gang, Maskelyne’s Magic, Bertram Mill’s Circus, the Windsor Repertory Theatre and Drury Lane Musicals – the latter on account of my father’s boss John Ellerman owning a couple of rows of prime stalls, tickets for which were given gratis to members of his staff. Perhaps the turning point came when my parents gave me a toy theatre when I was eight years old and how I bet they wished they hadn’t because every week which had a Thursday in it, on returning from work while my mother made supper my father would be treated to yet another miniature production of Aladdin – Unabridged, one of the longest running productions even, even though it ever did just one performance. I won’t reproduce too much of the dialogue here as I would like to hold your attention; suffice it to say most of it sounded like this:

PRINCESS Hello Aladdin.

ALADDIN Hello, Princess.

PRINCESS How are you, Aladdin?

ALADDIN I am very well thank you, Princess. How are you?

PRINCESS I am very well too, Aladdin. Oh look. Here comes

Nebuchadnezzar. (don’t ask). How are you, Nebuchadnezzar?

NEBUCHAD I’m fine, thanks, Princess. Hello, Aladdin.

ALADDIN Hello, Nebuchadnezzar. How are you?

And so on ad infinitum, or possibly more accurately, ad nauseam. I’d got a little better at the dialogue bit by the time I was sixteen and wrote my first full length play called The End, about – oh, you’ve got there already – yes, it concerned The Bomb and the End of the World As We Know it. It was written in blank verse and had a cast of a size and an amount of global sets that not even today’s Cameron Macintoshes could afford. It was never performed. I followed this with a seven hour epic about Luther, only to find on finishing it that someone called John Osborne had beaten me to it. This also was never performed, probably because Osborne managed to sign up Albert Finney before I did.

Having written endlessly for school literary magazines and drama societies when I got to University there was ink on every finger. By the time I graduated I was up to my elbows in it, having edited and contributed regularly to Icarus, Trinity College’s literary magazine as well as editing and writing for the weekly journal TCD and most of all I had discovered Players, the University’s already famous dramatic society, a place crawling with beatniks (yes, really), poets, would be dramatists and script writers, as well as many a would be actor bearing L plates. With Michael Bogdanov, then just plain Mike Bogdin, I found my first writing partner and together we wrote revues, plays and musicals, first for Players and then for the Dublin Theatre Festival and then for the Theatre Workshop, Stratford East, and finally for British television. By the time I met and married Miss Bingham I was like Lydia the Tattooed Lady, covered in blue-black pictograms from all I had written and yet as it emerged still with room for more, for since that day way back when, the two of us have written unceasingly, ceaselessly, boundlessly, infinitely, interminably, incessantly and sometimes even non-stop. And I’m still not sure why.

Stephen King said he writes because he can’t imagine doing anything else but that doesn’t quite work for me because I can imagine all too well doing something else and most of what I imagine horrifies me. I just have to imagine the unimaginable, something which for me usually involves either heavy cleaning or bearing arms, and I am straight to my desk putting a clean sheet of A4 in the typewriter. I once tried to do the nine to five, only once, and having barely made it through to the five I thought never again. It wasn’t that I couldn’t imagine doing such a thing for the rest of my life; it was quite the opposite. It was because I could imagine it that I knew I couldn’t do it, and I can only suppose that once I tapped into that level of awareness I opted out and decided to create my own version of the world and things, and daily to live in my own and very personal Utopia.

One of the joys of writing is the ability to be able to re-order events, tidy everything up, to give things a nice shape and an acceptable sequence. Life all too often proves to be an untidy and a messy progress, populated by people with little if anything to say or do other than the spiteful or the dismissive, so the writer can move all the pieces on the chessboard until the game is shaped and ready to be played to his or her liking. Georges Simenon called writing not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness but again I beg to differ which I would do because I’m a writer. I think the people writing calls to its ranks are the control freaks, or perhaps even those who suffer from a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, except instead of constantly cleaning or ordering our households we need to constantly clean and order the universe. I know I often feel a lot happier and fulfilled when I have just finished running everyone’s mythical lives than I do at the end of a day dealing with say recalcitrant friends or family members.

So there you are – what we writers actually suffer from is a malady, and like all fellow sufferers even though our conditions and symptoms may widely differ, we have no idea as to why we have been inflicted and while indeed we may well be in the grip of some sort of madness we believe ourselves to be the sanest and wisest of folk. It’s not as if writing’s a lot of laughs either, at least not while you’re actually at the coal face, as Mel Brooks once and so memorably remarked sitting there staring at a blank sheet of paper until your forehead bleeds, as you reach the uncomfortable conclusion that the art of writing really might be little more than the art of applying the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair. Except actually….

Actually I have just looked out of the window and noticed that the sky once again has become overcast and heavy rain is beginning to fall and like everyone I am more than a little fed up with nothing but endless terrible weather – so to cheer myself up and maybe some of my readers as well I am going to make up a story where we are all lying on a deserted beach in warm Mediterranean sunshine having just finished the most perfect Italian lunch cooked for the table. The company is excellent, the hotel superb, and someone’s private yacht is just dropping anchor, ready to whisk us all away on some exciting and possibly even romantic adventure. Because that is the one thing we writers can do. The world after all is only made of words and if you put these words in various and different orders you can make of the world what you wish.

FIVE GOLDEN RINGS

08/14/2012 16:14:00

FIVE GOLD RINGS

In common with many other people I suspect, I was somewhat dreading the Games and for various reasons, the main one being fear of disappointment. As someone who follows sport in this country I think that’s fairly understandable most particularly when you think of football which I have now stopped watching all but entirely and utterly. How they have managed to take a great game – no, not the beautiful game, just a very good game – and turn it into ninety minutes of utter ennui played by teams of posturing, petulant, over paid, egotistical maniacs defies and defeats any logical analysis, but there you go. If you stick your nose out far enough you’ll end up being led by it. I was fearful of the Games because for one awful moment, presaged perhaps by the most absurd opening ceremony possibly ever staged, that after all that nonsense was over team GB wasn’t going to turn up. I know we have a history of excellence as far as staging big events goes, but somehow and for some reason or other we seem to have both lost both our confidence and our way – no disrespect here but the Jubilee fell a long way short of what was expected of it, thanks both to the BBC’s puerile coverage and the media’s preposterous overkill, so small wonder that as Danny Boyle’s interminable pantomime lumbered on and on and on, hearts were in many mouths and countless a faint heart was nervously palpitating at the prospect of this farce being extended into the Olympics proper.

And of course we all know what happened, even those defiantly opposed to sport in all shapes and forms and sizes – we won. No we didn’t come top of the medal table (not quite) but there’s no doubt who the overall winner was – so-called funny old, mocked at, bashed up, stony broke and world weary Britain. We won going away, we won on the bridle, we won with so much in hand that we all began to walk around with eyes wide open and huge smiles on our multi coloured faces, now and then catching sight of the Jeremiahs hiding their shamed faces behind their hands and clapping with delight as the hacks ceased dipping their pens in vitriol and instead took up writing in red, white and blue. And of course as we also all now know the heroics and achievements were not confined to field and track, road, pool and velodrome but occurred everywhere, in every location where the people turned out in their hundreds of thousands to witness and support the athletes from two hundred and forty countries – to support them with affection, enthusiasm and fair-mindedness, the latter characteristic a trait once so renowned in this country and up until now feared finally dead and buried – to such effect that as the visiting athletes finally took their leave they left the sort of messages of genuine affection and gratitude that would warm even the most reserved of hearts. Multi-thanks as well to those amazing volunteers who proved that we are not necessarily a nation of churls and louts and yobs all set on pushing each other out of the way in supermarkets and on public transport in between getting off our faces and trashing our neighbourhoods; instead these various and very different people smiled and helped, laughed and listened, bearing everything with humour and patience, reminding those who lived through the last war of the sort of spirit prevalent then and happily still present in this land of ours, as well as showing those who may still be uncertain as to what the components of the British character are precisely – tolerance, modesty and above all good humour.

So we all feel swell. We feel more than swell –once more we can feel proud, we can feel dead and nicely chuffed that in spite of all the odds Britain has showed that this country shines not only in adversity but in times of direct challenge, because there are surely few things more daunting nowadays than the task of mounting one the most public, accessible and vulnerable of all events – a global sporting pageant. And for that much thanks as well to our Armed Forces, fresh from the killing fields of Afghanistan and cynically press ganged into helping secure the security, a job that they then did most perfectly, tactfully and precisely without ever the hint of intimidation or duress – other countries nota bene – visible might does not always equal immutable right. You may have your guns, but we’ve been rolling the lawns for an awful lot longer than you. And was it not purely wonderful as the cyclists wheeled their speedy bikes up and down dale to see those camera shots of the beauteous rolling countryside that constitutes this green and pleasant land – hoping that any of those wretches we still call politicians who were watching might now think twice before infilling the valleys with jerry built starter homes - was it not great to be reminded of the beauty of leafy Surrey and the character of the villages that lay along the route of these races? Was it not a time to rejoice and laugh and celebrate and cheer and cry? In recent memory was than an ever better time than those rare and astonishing seventeen bright August days?

But now these wonders and these thrills and these achievements, victories, losses, triumphs and despairs - but no failures – no one failed here, no one – not one person came up short whether they lost by a nose or trailed in a long and weary last – all these feats and astonishments will soon be nothing but memories if we are not very careful. For that is where we will assign them, to our memory banks, to a brief anecdotal histoire of the event which may be drawn up to bolster our egos or supplement our pretences, and then in all too short a time we will be searching under Who and What and When, trying to remember races, jumps, rides, performances or indeed the whole Games themselves. No of course we cannot and must not live in the past, however glorious and triumphant it might be. We must move on. We must look to the future and try to recover other ground that has been previously lost, our economic strength and shape, try to put the responsible back into government, make a good and proper attempt to make public life safer everywhere, yet perhaps there is a way to do this now, now we have all seen what this nation is capable of when given incentive and purpose, when allowed a proper share of power and responsibility instead of being bullied and lied to by Westminster, mock-mollycoddled by Health and Safety and bled dry by the Revenue. Instead of sitting down under these increasingly rotten governments, instead of going back to our default down in the mouth situation, instead of all that let’s start looking on life as being like one great big Olympic Games.

For what we must not do is surrender the initiative we have won back. We must not let the Pollies (as in politicians with a small p) wrest it back from us, as they will surely be fully intent on doing. The people took the mantle of responsibility on themselves quite independently and insured that everyone who came to this country as a visitor, guest or competitor should leave here convinced that this was the best Games ever, and why did they do this? Because of their pride – the peoples’ pride – the pride people have in themselves and in the country in which we all live. The authorities can call on who they like to do what they like, but they can’t make them do it not just well but sublimely so – no, no that ability has to be inherent in this good hearted nation, the desire to put a cup of tea in front of the visitor, to make sure their rain soaked clothes are dry before leaving, to show them the best way to go, to ensure they have had a good welcome – churls and louts can’t do this, but we are not born to be churls and louts – we make churls and louts, and the sooner that we recognise that boredom in the young is one of the greatest dangers to our civilisation and give kids something to do, sport, recreation, work, art, music, anything you like – anything rather than nothing - the quicker we will have more people like Bradley Wiggins, Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah, oh and every single one of those extraordinary athletes who came out of the shadows to shine like a thousand suns. And the other thing we can do is to structure our society in such a way that encouragement is at the heart of it, and that incentive is the word embroidered on sofa cushions everywhere – if we want the country to recover its economic oomph then the Pollies must stop punishing those who work so hard – they must stop hitting small businesses so hard they can’t stand up again – they must cut VAT, lower taxes, give generous tax concessions to those starting up new businesses, give rewards for endeavour, give funding in other words, and give everyone a sight of the podium.

Don’t take away our life force, because that, ministers and governors all – that is precisely what you have all been busy doing while fiddling your expenses and speaking to us in weasel. You have as they say in Ireland taken away our shawls, the magic shawls that give us power, strength and belief and now it is time to give us them back. You have seen what this great nation can do. You have seen how we can impress the whole world with our warmth, our humour, our friendship and our boundless energy. We are not a nation of loud mouthed rock stars and fancy footballers and their lager-lout followers – we are the people who have so very often had our backs to the wall, endured, and survived and not only survived but come up smiling. So don’t let these smiles fade – please don’t let them. Please keep this great big glittering magical ball in the air and allow us to keep the self-belief which we have rediscovered. And if you do not ensure that this great nation builds on its triumph – then not only will you have failed all our gallant, brilliant, courageous and sporting heroes you our governors will have failed the entire nation. So, Mr Chillax and your army of poseurs, get up out of your recliners, take every leaf out of every book and story written by Team and Nation GB, emulate the actions of these tigers, absorb the wit and the wisdom of the Nation and really and truly Go for Gold.

A BIT OF A MIRACLE

07/25/2012 17:15:00

WHATMATTERS IT ANYWAY?

Once at the first night party of a play of ours, someone quietly asked us if theatre mattered. I don’t know why the question needed to be asked at such a time but asked it was; nor do I know if it was meant seriously or facetiously, although recalling the look on the face of our inquisitor I was inclined to believe the enquiry to be of a facetious nature, and here let it be said that I dislike facetiousness intensely, seeing it as no more than a cowardly form of sarcasm which in itself is little more than the worst form of joke, which was possibly why the question rankled and still does.

I was reminded of this the other day when reading an on-going debate in the media as to whether or not the Arts should involve themselves with politics, both social and philosophical. Most people it would seem have so far preferred that the Arts remain politically uninvolved so that those who read, watch and listen may draw their own uncluttered conclusions from an unbiased appreciation of the works before them, yet equally there are those who maintain that it is the duty of artists to commit themselves to a political and social point of view since this is the only way forward to a better balanced society. On hearing them propound the latest in these arguments I began to wonder, remembering how various great and even more not so great creators have made themselves look rather foolish when trying to align themselves with political movements or even worse – with politicians themselves. Bernard Shaw for instance and of all people deeply embarrassed himself by a brief association with Josef Stalin (he wasn’t the only one) as did many other artists and writers when they decided to align themselves politically, while in more recent memory a whole tranche of the acting and writing profession in this country have made utter jackasses of themselves at election times, jumping about all over various venues in homage and salutation to the latest parliamentary loony who was promising to transport them all to some Brave New World.

Personally I suspect that artists who openly associate themselves with politics lessen the impact of their works – as the great essayist and critic Ken Tynan said if you try to write about Something you end up writing about Nothing. So you pause on the stairs to listen to what people are saying in the well below you and you write about what you hear – and when and if you do that you then write about Something that might even turn out indeed to be Everything.

The same goes for painting and composing – many is the turkey that has been created in homage to some leader or other – think for an instance of Shostakovich’s famous cantata The Song of the Forests which praised Stalin as the ‘great gardener’ and you’ll get the idea – then in contrast think of another Russian, Pushkin, whose supercilious and wicked verses in which he made fun of ‘major and minor tyrants’ persistently and desperately infuriated the Tsar - and so conclude how much better it is by far to maintain an independent stance so that one may prod, criticise and protest whenever necessary. Yet the world of Art itself is split into two factions, those who believe that art is useless as a tool for political change and those who do not, and these are twain that never shall be met. For myself I am of the opinion that the artist by simply being an artist becomes a revolutionary, however radical or however tame a one matters not. By its very existence Art break all the rules and so the artist stands outside society, free to comment on it or not to comment à choix.

So when asked does theatre matter? you don’t have to reply that all depends, i.e. it matters not if you’ve just seen Anyone For Tennis? but quite a lot if you’ve just seen The Cherry Orchard, because theatre matters full stop and I’ll tell you why. Why is not just because when you see as so many of us have just so recently seen Thea Sharrock’s superb production of Henry V on the BBC and are put in mind of everything from useless and pointless warfare, loyalty and friendship, courage and cowardice, truth and betrayal and to love and finally death itself, or when you see Michael Frayn’s joyous farce Noises Off and laugh until you think you can take no more, or cry your heart out at Tracey Bennet’s heart-rending performance in End of the Rainbow – it’s also when to your dismay you find yourself making your up own entertainment as part of ‘performance art’ in some dilapidated building in the East End or walking out of the RSC’s appalling revival of the Marat Sade because among the many things that theatre does and what art in general does is it prevents us from ossifying, from mentally stagnating, from spiritually festering.

We are the only creatures that have a culture; no other beings feel the need for art yet it has been part of the human fabric ever since the day we started to paint on the walls of our caves. Art gives a rhythm to life, it helps us experience ourselves in relation to the Universe, it allows us to express our imagination in totally unorthodox ways, it expands our ways of communication and it also entertains – and while some might say that entertainment is the least important of all artistic achievements this is not necessarily so since the relaxation brought about by entertainment helps us to perform other more important tasks. But art also does one other thing, one very important thing, the thing that brings about my conclusion, and that is that namely - art can heal.

After a recent performance of one of the enchanting boutique ballet evenings our son presents he received a letter from the mother of a young woman who had attended the show which she had been forced to watch from her wheelchair, having been thus confined since contracting a particularly brutal tick borne disease, an infection that left her wasted and immobilised. Her mother thanked our son and his wonderful troupe of dancers from the bottom of her heart for what they had done for her daughter whose singular ambition it now appeared was to become involved with such an inspiring ensemble and perhaps one day somehow even to work with them, and so powerful was her daughter’s newly found determination and so great the effect of the dance that on the very day after seeing the show her mother found her previously powerless daughter not only on her feet and out of her wheelchair but actually walking. So in answer to the Doubting Thomas who once upon a time wondered if theatre mattered in this instance I think we can answer with a very firm and confident yes – for the very reason that more often than not it not only inspires us to do things and to think things we had never been inspired to do or think before but in some exceptional cases it may and even can indeed perform a miracle.

THE SON ALSO RISES

07/14/2012 17:12:00

THE SON ALSO RISES

It was quite a weekend, the last one. As all of those who live in this country know it rained as in biblical proportions, and likewise since it is the stuff of which Britons are made, we smiled in the face of adversity and pretended it wasn’t happening. Since it was the week of Herself’s birthday – (see her own blog on that www.charlottebingham.com - O Perfect Day) we had certain things planned which we were blowed and dashed and splashed and soaked if we were going to cancel. The first of these might have appeared to have nothing to do with the family yet it did, and as it happens very directly too – we went to see the inimitable, inestimable, immeasurable, singular and matchless Ms Stacey Kent and her Band doing a gig in deepest Dorsetshire, and had it not been for the services of the one and the only son of ours this incredible concert might well have been a wash out.

But first a word about the venue, the lakes at Pallington, brainchild of the uniquely talented sculptor Simon Gudgeon and his beautiful wife. Here be fair lakes and fine gardens, a landscape most beautifully enhanced with many of Simon’s works – and here be the spot where Simon and his fair wife decided to hold events, musical, artistic, theatrical, horticultural – in fact any word ending in -al you like to name in fact – and it was to this wondrous spot that he took a chance in inviting the famed Ms Kent and her band. Now for those of you who don’t know – and shame on you for not being the wiser – Ms Stacey Kent is without any doubt the Top Jazz singer in the Whole Wide World, Universe, Space and The Beyond, a fact that can safely be underwritten by the fact that she and her band have just finished a tremendously successful tour of the Whole Wide World, Universe, Space and the Beyond – ending up with an evening in deepest Dorsetshire. How come? Because Simon Gudgeon and his lovely wife asked if she might come and sing there. Too far – the songbird said, having glanced at a map of the world – and they, undeterred by the initial refusal, they sent her a picture of Palling ton Lakes and she said straight back and quick as a flash that instead of a flat no it was a round yes and that she would most certainly be there.

And so this global superstar found herself about to perform on the coldest midsummer night imaginable in a rainstorm that would have done Ararat proud, conditions that tested her famous tenacity and professionalism to the very limits. Yet she managed to perform and did so exultantly and triumphantly due not only to her indomitable will but also to the superlatively beautiful stretch tent erected in advance by our one and only boyo. Inside the exquisitely designed and constructed tent there were chairs and tables and scatter cushions and rugs and other objects of comfort on which we Ms Kent’s devoted fans could sit, recline, loll and take our ease while one of the most bewitching voices in the world entranced us with melodies from America, France, Brazil and Porter, accompanied by one of the very best small bands anyone could hope to hear, while all the while the rain teemed down without, dancing off lakes and meadows decorated with sculpture and fire. It was an evening of the most sublime musical bliss, performed by one of the world’s most singular voices and greeted with an ovation of cheers and tears of joy, and we were proud to be a very small part of the effort that had enabled such an occasion. Two days later the venue was flooded and a subsequent event cancelled, so how lucky were we.

The following day we went to another remarkable venue, Hatch House in Wiltshire where the one and only now stages his annual ballet festival. He started this only three years ago for one evening only in a tent that was not yet his own with but a handful of dancers. Now he stages a three night event in exotic stretch tents belonging to him in the exquisite gardens of this beautiful English country house with headliners from companies in London, Basel, Paris and America. It is an intimate event, in that the audience sits closer to the performances than is ever possible in a theatre and thus they see dance performed in a way they most surely have never seen it before. The programme is divided into four parts so that the audience may dine and wine in the intervals and I can tell you hand on still throbbing heart that the experience is a totally emotionally gripping and utterly enchanting one. The artistes are superlative, the choice of dance exceptional and the standard of performance second to none. Not only do you see classical ballet – such as pas de deux from Giselle and Swan Lake, you also see brand new and specially commissioned pieces choreographed and danced by headline talent – and all this in the midst of a classical and wondrous English garden, much of it enclosed under the one and only’s gorgeous flower bedecked and strikingly lit tent. On the night we were there as a surprise our son had commissioned a piece especially for his mother’s birthday, Waltz For Charlotte – a most lovely ballet which culminated with the male dancer presenting the birthday girl with a red rose – and I swear there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. There most certainly wasn’t when as a climax to the programme the prima danced The Dying Swan. It was hard to know who was weeping the most, the audience or the skies above us.

For it not only rained all evening, it poured, tipped, decanted and bucketed. As it did the lights caught the raindrops and turned them into an impressionistic, multi-coloured monsoon, a glittering, glistening cataract of red, green and gold tears that danced and fell as the dancers onstage circled and spun – and as the swan finally left this world, we stood as one, tearful and yet joyous, clapping our hands above our heads and calling please for more, for none of us there ever wanted the joy to end. Magic can happen – magic does happen. On those two nights those of us privileged to be at those venues - we saw it happen.

Matthew, our son and brother to Candida, has been patiently working towards this for quite some years, and now his patience and his vision has been rewarded. What better joy can parents have than two children who realise their gifts and bestow the fruits of them on the rest of us. Long may they continue to share with us and you their joy and their delight.

(and if you need a really special tent - and I've been told to call them stretch tents and NOT marquees – go to marquee@coventgardendance.com or if you would like bijoux ballet for a special event in your house or garden go to www.coventgardendance.com ) And do also pay a visit tohttp://sculpturebythelakes.co.uk - best of all, go visit

IF MUSIC BE.....

07/04/2012 16:29:00

IF MUSIC BE….

Music is very much the vibe right now. Never has the phrase and she shall have music wherever she goes rung more true. Now she can have every kind of music played in every kind of way on every sort of occasion and if you just look at the words in that sentence and don’t bother too much about the import you’d be kind of inclined to think cool -or maybe even groovy - or who knows? Perhaps even marvellous. Except. Except yes – because there’s always a but to come along and spoil everything, isn’t there? And the but in this instance is but do we have to have it all the time and everywhere and played so very, very loudly? Speaking for myself which is what I like to do I don’t really think so.

This isn’t just because my ears are still ringing from the dull thumping sounds that in very recent memory kept us all awake round here for four nights on the trot as some sort of alien species - and believe me, if you had seen them you would know this was no exaggeration - celebrated some sort of solstice, or sunrise festival or maybe it was just the rising of the moon because let us be agreed here – it takes a very small reason or even excuse to gather several thousand sub human oddments into a muddy field somewhere to celebrate something or other at the very highest possible level of sound. No the aliens can’t be altogether held responsible for the loudness and the universality of the music that is drowning out our very existence because listen up - if you still have any hearing left - a cricketer in a 20/20 match hits a boundary and not only the sporting arena but the not so immediate vicinity is deafened with a celebratory few minutes of thunderous, ear-splitting and quite mind deadening rock. A player lies injured on the rugby field and while the paramedics examine him to see if he will ever rise to play again both the spectators and those who live within about a fifty to a hundred miles radius are entertained with a wall of sound that actually causes the more sensitive to hold their heads and moan in silent agony. Pleasure boats (what boats?) sail up and down our once tranquil rivers belting out such a noise that brain bashed fish rise to the surface where they float in stunned submission. And now we learn that the Olympics is to be garlanded with celebratory bursts of mezzo-mezzo-fortissimo-fortissimo +++ ‘music’ before, after and who knows? Perhaps even during events. Can you imagine? There you are, Sam the highest jumper in the world waiting to flop yourself over the bar and you are warmed up with three minutes of unrecognisable cacophony played at C.I.A. torture level. Good for the concentration, yes? Athletes are people who need to find their own rhythm, that inner beat that works for them, that helps them find their zone, that takes them to their place and helps give them the vital inspiration they need to over-perform – so what are they going to make of their inner peace being suddenly torn to shreds by a sound equivalent to and as disruptive and uninspiring as a fully laden jumbo jet roaring right overhead towards take off point? Brilliant, isn’t it? I mean whoever thought that one up? Or rather than who do I mean what because who ever dreamed that one up is surely subhuman.

Noise deadens us everywhere, sometimes even deep in the once peaceful bosom of our countryside. It’s worse in towns, of course it is. Besides the constant din of traffic and people and life in general we are forced to listen to the conglomerate clashing of massively over-amplified car stereos as their drivers sit gridlocked in a fog of carbon emission and throbbing bass pulses. You go to the cinema perhaps, and in the pseudo-Italian piazza you are serenaded by a non-stop musical ribbon of ex-Eurovision song-wash. Then as soon as you take your seat in the popcorn guzzling theatre proper you are stunned into a semi-deafened stupor by the music in a series of inane advertisements and trailers played at fffffffffff deci-levels, a pitch souffrant, a wall of sound that makes your limbs ache. Home then, for a therapeutic stiff one and a quiet look at the wonderful world of nature on the television perhaps, a world you are now and equally stupefied to learn is blanketed in a sea of sound, background music so loud and intrusive that even the trumpeting of a herd of wild elephants is drowned in the strident and utterly unwarranted orchestral ruckus, a blare so clamourous that the subsequent and normally raucous subsequent Sky! All in Smack-Down! Wrestling trailers! seem like a balm to the troubled soul.

To get back to our recent sleepless country nights – what is it with some that they must invade the most beautiful and quiet and peaceful parts of the land and pollute it with their din? Most importantly of all, why do councils allow it (silly question I know, but one that must be asked) and not only allow it but grant 24 hour licences so that the thumping, grinding, wailing and percussive disharmony lasts not just a few hours in the evening but all day and all night, and then the following day all day and all night again and so on times 4. Oh yes I bearded them. I beard them every time it happens somewhere when the people who actually live, work and try to sleep in the country not only lose thirty two hours sleep out of a possible thirty two, but are seen to be walking around during daylight hours wearing insulated earphones and a stupid expression on their be-dazed faces. According to the peripatetic priest who looks after about 24 parishes in a twenty miles radius, the entire congregation of an historic, beautiful and normally happy village that lies right below the farm where this disgrace takes place quite and utterly literally did not get one wink of sleep for four nights, yet the council officer to whom I spoke somewhat fervently assured me that his ‘noise monitors’ – the council’s equivalent of prefects one must imagine – had measured the sound most rigourously and had found no fault. Pass. The ‘music’ could be heard and felt in an easy five mile radius - and as those of you who have been exposed to this sort of noise know well, feeling is most certainly one thing your body does as the enormously over amplified bass and drum tracks thunder over nocturnal field and dale.

But why oh why oh why I kept asking do you not only allow and licence such a monstrous event but actively encourage something that for a certain amount of time actually makes life inexcusable, unpleasant, unbearable, excruciating, nasty, noisome, obnoxious, insufferable, abhorrent and unendurable for the people who actually give proper life to the countryside? For not only do the aliens invade our quiet air with NOISE but they pollute it with an enormous amount of LIGHT, lights so ultra-potent that the distant town – normally a horrid neon glow – looks as dim as a nursery night-light? Why do they need enough lights sufficient to illuminate a town when they are here reportedly to celebrate the Sun and the Moon? And why are there no police (another silly question I know etc etc) to monitor their transport, a fleet of clapped crap vehicles with possibly the highest carbon emissions known to man and sub man and the fewest valid road tax discs and the least known insurance documentation? This dreadful caravan weaves, bangs, coughs and smokes its filthy way through the countryside chugging from ‘Festival’ to ‘Festival’, chucking its garbage in our hedgerows and doing God knows what in our ditches. Yet if the plods find one of us so called normal people with one tiny thing wrong with our scrupulously maintained and fully legal vehicles we are up before the Beak as soon as you can say Solstice. So why, why oh why oh why I begged to know of the council officer, why is this sort of thing welcomed everywhere by the very people who can only manage to take our rubbish away once a fortnight as long as there’s an r in the week? Because, he said, and stand by your beds, everyone – because you are about to hear things that are very rarely heard nowadays – you are about to hear Words of Wisdom. We are very pleased to encourage these ‘Festivals’ because we consider them to be part of the all Important Social, Cultural and Economic interface that is so relevant and important to our community and while the likes of you might see them as otherwise you represent only a minority of interest and it is the council’s firm belief that if we are to realise a proper understanding of our changing communities we must enjoin this kind of socio-cultural and of course economic exchange and be an active part of the interface, he said.

So there you are and now you know it. Next time you wake in the middle of a summer night to the cacophonous pounding of some ‘Festival’ beat please take a pull, bite on the bullet and realise you are playing a vital role in changing the interface of your local community, albeit one that provides no rural bus services, no mains drainage, no services of any real note, no local hospital, no local police force and which only takes away your stinking rotting garbage every third Friday in any month with a Z in it.

And let us always remember ~ one man's music is another man's noise.............