Matthew Coniam

Bang Bang

2012-02-10T00:53:00.000-08:00

I've already uploaded this sensational performance of Bang Bang by the great Italian songstress Mina at one of my other sites, but it's so fabulous I thought it belonged here too.
Enjoy!

More Italian sitcom magic

2012-02-02T04:14:00.001-08:00

Following my post here on George e Mildred - aka George and Mildred dubbed most satisfyingly into Italian - here are two more seventies ITV treats given a touch of the old Rai Unos, as found on You Tube by my wife when she was supposed to be working.

First, we have Un Uomo In Casa, then Il Nido di Robin.
If you need to be told the original English titles of these programmes you've landed on the wrong island, pal.

Now I've got the 'flu, but at least I'm here with you

2012-01-25T10:15:00.000-08:00

Back here, when we were having a chinwag about Freddie and the Dreamers, you remember, I remarked on the tragedy that there seemed to be no film recording of them performing their - or anybody's - greatest single, the scandalously non-charting Brown and Porter's (Meat Exporters) Lorry.

Well don't get too excited: I still haven't found one.

But here at least is the song itself, eccentrically coupled with various bits of imagery from Garrity's career, including its final stages when he looked a bit like a goofier Anton Rodgers.

Don't say I never do anything for you.

The Dad's Army Jigsaw Challenge

2012-01-22T08:23:00.001-08:00

Watch my wife attempting to complete this 1970s original 400-piece puzzle, showing Mainwaring, Godfrey and Frazer looking a bit gloomy round the back of Jones's van.
It's not easy: there are lots of murky, Lucian Freudish patches of dark green and brown, and roughly a third of it is gravel.

So wish her luck....

Hooray!

Childhood in a bag

2012-01-19T13:22:00.000-08:00

Scampi Fries, to be found occasionally in corner grocery shops and mini-mart garages, but naturally occurring behind the bars of pubs, hanging from the back of the door on a cardboard sheet, are one of the supreme luxuries of life.
Never having eaten scampi in my life, I can only speculate as to the extent to which they actually taste like these almost unbelievably delicious little cereal pillows, designed to recreate their complex, evolved flavour by purely chemical means.
But I find it hard to believe that anything in the natural world can be as satisfying, let alone something that has to be dragged out of the sea and killed first.
The flavour of the Scampi Fry to me, therefore, is not imitative but unique, to be judged not on the grounds of how accurately it duplicates the taste of something else but on the grounds of sheer inventiveness.
And on those grounds: how can it not delight?

I can remember where I was the first time I tried one, and - despite a cautious reticence upon which I can now only look back and smile - how instantly and completely they claimed me as a devotee.
I remember I had a copy of Scream comic with me at the time. Well, Scream comic is long gone, but the Scampi Fry marches boldly on, even as nations crumble and ideologies clash; it is, as Sherlock Holmes once described Watson, with an admiration equally applicable in this context, one fixed point in a changing world.

But the best thing about Scampi Fries is that they are not generally available, not guaranteed to be found in every corner shop, like those dreary usurping Walker's crisps (that through sheer market saturation and aggressive advertising pushed the infinitely subtler flavours of Golden Wonder, Smiths and, my favourite of all, KP out of the general crisp market and into the specialist nut and snack hinterlands.)
Scampi Fries are rarer, and so always a treat. They have always had a vaguely holidayish, special occasiony quality to them for me.
I suspect their magic would wear off if I had regular access to them, and so I note with joy and trepidation mixed that the Spar at the end of my road stocks them, along with their Son and Holy Ghost: Bacon Fries and Cheese Moments.

Loving Cheese Moments puts you in a truly discerning minority. How they have survived so long is a delightful mystery: nobody could love them more than I, and even I have no trouble appreciating why almost everyone finds them so totally disgusting.
The Moment can be seen as a response to the sole design challenge posed by the Scampi Fry. While the exterior of the Scampi Fry is far too delicious for this to ever be a disappointment as such, first-timers may be nonetheless surprised to discover on their initial crunch that it is hollow. The Moment solves this conundrum in the most ingenious of ways. It is fashioned, like the Fry, as a cereal pouch, tasting this time not of fish but of a strange, potent but fictitious cheese, somewhere between Gruyere and marmite. But this time, on crunching, the delighted consumer encounters not empty space but a bizarre, cheese-effect paste. The contrast between the crunchy exterior and soft interior is a most seductive one.
Moments go very nicely with red wine, whereas the Scampi Fry is best washed down with a lovely cold Chablis.

Did you know you can buy Scampi Fries on Amazon? Here's the link, and just look at the sincerity and passion in those customer reviews! I especially like the one from the army wife who can't stop eating them even though her husband refuses to kiss her after she's had a bag.

(In a possible follow-up post - The flavour sensation that is the Barry Norman pickled onion: how many can you consume at a sitting?)

The choice collection of good time well known songs on wax today

2012-01-16T07:20:00.000-08:00

Picked up this fabulous LP recently.
Exactly as the cover implies, it's a collection of old pub standards delivered with bellowing, pissed-up imprecision by what would seem to be a genuinely assembled crowd of booze-crazed wastrels.
I'm not sure if the piss artists performing are the same ones saluting us from the magnificent cover, though I suppose it is unlikely. A shame, because they look like a great crowd. I particularly like the chap on the right, who resembles the actor Norman Eshley, and the one in the background, leering sinisterly from between the one that looks like a country solicitor and the redhead in the denim suit.
Also, though it's probably less striking in this scan than it is on the cover itself, the barman looks like, but presumably can't be, a cardboard cut-out.

The album dates from 1974, and 'Stereo Gold Award' is the name of the label, not an indication that it actually won any kind of award.
There's a slight possibility that it was meant to provide 'English atmosphere' abroad, perhaps for ex-pats or English theme pubs. The sleeve notes read like the instructions you get with Japanese stocking-fillers:

Young and old alike are invited to this foot tapping "glasses up" sing along party with the Rowdies. You pay yer money and you gets the choice collection of good time well known songs on wax today. Here's the ones we love to sing whenever happy folks get together. And if you're all alone, come as a solo it'll put a smile on your face and a bit of sing along magic in your heart.

These ones we love to sing whenever happy folks get together include Underneath the Arches, I Belong to Glasgow and Ilkley Moor Ba'tat. It's infectious fun for sure, but the thought of someone who really is all alone resorting to Sing Along With The Rowdies in order to put a bit of sing along magic in their hearts is a genuinely poignant one.

Strangely, though the album is generally cagey about naming those responsible - no producer is credited, and exactly who the Rowdies are is never revealed - it does tell us that the cover photo was taken by Julian Ruthven at the White Hart, Harlington, Middlesex.
This pub still exists, so I shall write to them to see what they can tell me about the Rowdies.

Watch this space...

Doctor, I have CD rot

2012-01-15T11:59:00.000-08:00

Do doctors and dentists decide for themselves what magazines are stocked in their waiting room?
And if they don't, who does?

Reader, I am old enough to know that it was fact, not just a popular notion, that all doctors' and dentists' waiting rooms once stocked copies of Punch (and in some cases Country Life).
By my time they had become anachronistic and unloved, an unquestioned convention almost, and I was drawn to Punch in part by the pristine allure of the neat, untouched stacks of them one invariably found. (Hip to the streets even then, I became a fan, and Pick of Punch buyer, during the final years of Alan Coren's editorship.)

The new Punch is Classic FM Magazine. You get the feeling that this is as close as a doctor can get to the demotic but is an attempt to connect with the masses all the same: after all, it's not Gramophone; it's got Myleene Klass on the cover. Like Punch, the ratio of ill to healthy readers must be at least 4:1. The list of subscribers must read like the end credits of Casualty.

I've had to go to the hospital a few times lately, and can confirm that Classic FM Magazine is a hoot, well worth the kidney stones, in fact.
I especially like the little highlighted boxes containing soundbites from the station's presenters.

Simon Bates has ideas for how to keep the children entertained this Summer: "Why not enjoy Classic FM on your long car journeys?"

I was also diverted for many minutes by an advert for big wallets to store all your CDs and DVDs in, made by a company called Arrowfile.
Have you heard about this 'CD rot' business? It's apparently caused by plastic CD cases, and the only way to prevent it is to put your discs in big wallets made by a company called Arrowfile.
"It's a myth that CDs will last a lifetime!" screams the ad in big red type, above a kind of rubber stamp impression-type logo, that says: PVC FREE - Prevents CD Rot!
And there's testimonial from a grateful customer called Mrs Mae: "I am shocked to learn that CD cases may accelerate CD rot (rust), and surprised to discover that manufacturers recommend vertical storage to prevent this."

We're all shocked, love.
Is this true? Or do they just want me to buy the big wallets?
I've no idea but I'm now madly looking for signs of CD rot (rust) whenever I play one.
Is it visible to the naked eye? Can it be reversed or halted once detected? Or is a diagnosis already too late? Can it spread from CD to CD? Can it spread from CD to people? I can't sleep now. Damn you, Arrowfile!

Classic FM Magazine has invited its readers to email questions to Katherine Jenkins.
They want to know if she would wear a wig if she ever sang Carmen (maybe, but she has no immediate plans to), if she has any diet secrets (not really), would she ever "launch commodities under (her) own brand name - i.e. perfume or underwear" (no immediate plans to) and if she has any plans to visit Australia (no immediate plans to).
But here's a big picture of her anyway.
Yes sirree!

Next month: Russell Watson, probably.

Also making the headlines in the classical world is the theme music of the new Batman film (New Batman score goes Kapow!) and Natasha Marsh's version of Mozart's 'Queen of the Night' from The Magic Flute, specially arranged for ITV's coverage of Euro 2008. There's a picture of her in a ballgown holding a football. "I love football, and I love the passion, beauty and power that football and music share... Everyone's waiting for that moment, and everyone feels the goosebump factor."

Just time for some hi-fi equipment reviews.
There are things called i-Pod docks, which even I can see are just speakers for an i-Pod.
The review begins: "Unless you've been living under a stone for the past few years, you'll be all too aware of the ongoing digital music revolution."
Exactly the tone to take with readers of a specialist classical music publication.
It continues: "But listening to your music on an MP3 player or through a computer is only the half of it - what about listening to your tunes out loud?"
'Tunes'. Like it.
But isn't out loud the way we all used to listen to our choons, back in the olden days?
These reviews are crazy; surely unfair as reviews.
The Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere is good because; "Listening to tenor Andrea Bocelli sing the emotive 'Time To Say Goodbye', his voice sounds clear, strong and full of emotion".
Is that how you test them, then? Just don't buy the i-Pod docks where Andrea Bocelli comes out singing the emotive 'Time To Say Goodbye' like a girl.
Then there's this which, unless I'm wrong, means absolutely nothing at all:
"There may not be quite the same level of bass as delivered on other iPod docks but in terms of playing a tune, this Logitech is a class leader."
In terms of playing a tune? What is this maniac talking about?
Or there's the Griffin Evolve, ideal if "you want an easy, reliable way of sending music to different rooms".
Actually, since all three models under review have the same maximum star rating and are each labelled the best, albeit the best at different things, this is basically an advert.
The B&W Zeppelin is 'Best for looking good' (all-important, I have no doubt), as well as the one to go for if you "want an i-Pod dock to set tongues wagging".
(B&W's tagline, by the way is: 'Listen and you'll see'.)
But it's not just an odd-shaped black plastic thing of beauty. There's also the matter of sound, or "sonic prowess" if you will. And at £400, it's "worth the extra money if you crave something close to true hi-fi performance". Yep, that's modern technology. 400 smackers for something close to what you're looking for.

Ah, but what about defence against i-Pod dock rot? I don't know: the doctor was ready to see me at this point.

The Library of Oblivion #1

2010-07-18T08:39:00.000-07:00

Your last chance to see the books that no human eye will ever encounter again; that no charity shop, jumble sale, or car boot sale will ever again deem worth the effort of getting out of the cardboard box they rode into town on.
Any book featured in The Library of Oblivion can be yours free of charge. Simply drop me a line at matthewconiam@aol.com explaining which book you are interested in, and why you want to give it its last chance. Don't forget to include a postal address, ideally not in Australia or something.

1. Football Daft, by Michael Parkinson

I picked up Football Daft in the 10p bin of a local charity shop. Not even the fact that the world cup was in full swing was enough to deem it worthy of placement inside the shop. In a wire basket on the pavement is last chance city for paperbacks.
I hate football, but I was strangely moved by the cover, which shows the Yorkshire-born chat show host wearing a wet weather coat and a small plastic novelty hat, waving a rattle and clutching a toilet roll.
When all is said and done, I warm to Parky; he has a few annoying traits, but it's hard not to be basically well-disposed to someone who began his interviewing career chatting to the likes of Bette Davis and Orson Welles, and ended it having to pretend to crack up at Sanjeev Bhaskar, OBE.
The book itself is a series of lightly comic articles originally published in the Sunday Times; some are wry meditations on actual football personalities and topics, others are Benchleyesque flights of fancy. The book is charmingly dedicated "To anyone who is football daft", and is a semi-follow-up to an earlier book called Cricket Mad. But though it speaks primarily to the confirmed fan, it also conveys useful information to the novice, especially one with a taste for a natty simile or two: "Goalkeepers, like things that go bump in the night, defy analysis"; "wingmen, like people who thatch roofs and make clogs, are a dying breed"; "Great inside forwards, like blissful marriages, are made in heaven", and so on.

Here is a sample paragraph:

"I don't know if you've ever considered the remarkable fact that bandy legs are an asset to most sportsmen. That they help people who ride horses is a thought too obvious to need explanation. But it is not generally known that they greatly assist cricketers also. I once played in a cricket team with a man who possessed the most splendid pair of hooped legs I have yet seen."

The phrase "I have yet seen" introduces an element of optimistic speculation to the sentence, as if he hopes that he will see an even more splendid pair of hooped legs in the future. Since the book was published in 1968, it is entirely possible that he has done so in the years following.
I certainly hope so.

Some things are simply not possible in a rational universe, and Sally Geeson turning sixty is one of them

2010-07-14T11:50:00.001-07:00

If anyone is anything; if anyone was ever anything; if anything can ever have been said to be something; if the universe has constant properties, then Sally Geeson was, is and ever shall be a teenage girl on the fumbling cusp of adulthood.

Temperamentally, constitutionally, professionally, she is inconceivable any other way.

She is also, of course, Judy Geeson's sister. I know, I know.
In any age or context, Sally is always Sally.

She is Sally, for instance, in Cry of the Banshee, a period dress horror film with Vincent Price, animated titles by Terry Gilliam, and a dog whose growling is obviously dubbed by a man.

She's Sally in What's Good For The Goose, in which she has an affair with Norman Wisdom and takes him to a nightclub where the waiters wear ties over bare chests.

She is Sally in Carry On Abroad, in which she pulls Bernard Bresslaw, playing a monk, and wears a bikini with 'This' and 'That' written on it.

Most of all she is Sally in Bless This House, the ITV sitcom in which she plays Sid James's daughter Sally. She later married the programme's producer, William G. 'Fifteen to One' Stewart. Her brother Mike was played by Robin Stewart. According to Robin Askwith's autobiography, he was perpetually late for rehearsals, and once attempted to excuse himself by claiming that his car had hit and killed a camel on the way to the studio.

I have a friend who knew an actress who took a small role in one episode. She said that Sid was delightful, but Diana Coupland, who plays his wife Jean, was a bit snooty.

The family's next-door neighbours are married couple Betty, played by Carry On stalwart Patsy Rowlands, and Trevor, played by Anthony Jackson (Mr Mumford in the first series of Rentaghost).

Sally remembered Sid as behaving very much like a father in real life. Askwith (who auditioned for the role of Mike, plays it in the film and appears in the series as one of Mike's friends) paints an evocative picture of working at Thames at this glorious, magical time. Imagine: Askwith and Sid swagger into the Thames studio bar, to meet Richard O'Sullivan, already there. "Awlright Richard!" says Sid. "You must be earning a bloody fortune, mate! You getting them in then?"

I love sitcom spin-off movies, and Bless This House (1973) is probably the best sitcom spin-off movie ever made. In the series Sally is your average squeaky teen with the average squeaky teen's interests. The film turns her into an ahead-of-her-time green extremist and proto-eco-Fascist climate change fanatic. There's a wonderful moment where she's in the garden in a bikini in what could well be November, reading a book with nothing on the cover except the fantastic title MANKIND IS DOOMED. She starts sniffing when their neighbour starts a garden fire and attempts to put it out with a hose, which Sid then tries to turn off in a slapstick sequence that requires the viewer to accept that he is both mentally and physically incompetent, has forgotten or never knew how to turn off a hose, and is incapable of pointing it in a different direction or getting it out from between two fence posts by lifting it up and out rather than pulling at it.

Later, she and some junior activists, chanting "No more non-disposable containers!" dump a ton of empty drinks cans outside the factory that makes them. The cans have all been specially made for the film and bear the logo of the fictitious drink they supposedly contain. It is called 'Fizzo'.

In a slapstick wallpapering sequence she steps in the paste with her big white boots on and starts screaming hysterically when Sid gets wallpaper on her head.

Anyway, if you are capable of believing it, the record claims that Sally turned sixty on the 23rd of June. She is apparently now a schoolteacher.

Why not leave a comment explaining what Sally means to you, the first time you saw her, how she changed your life, or anything at all on any subject whatsoever. Then at last I'll be able to cancel my membership of the Solipsist Society of Great Britain.

Vote for Sally!

Sally with a load of weird-looking old dolls and toys

The Geeson girls: Imagine growing up in the same street as them. You'd never get any homework done.

Goodbye, man about whom I know more or less nothing

2010-06-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

Kenneth McKellar has died at the age of eighty-two.

I've always known the name, and had a vague idea that he was a Scotsman who sang traditional songs on tv wearing a kilt. But I'd never actually seen or heard his work until last year, and it's not until now that I learn from his obit in Gramophone magazine that he was a proper, well-regarded tenor who chose light ent over the operatic stage because he found the life "like living in a goldfish bowl."

He was a major cultural icon, particularly of Scottishness, in the sixties and seventies, his name coming readily to the lips whenever the subject of kilts or sporrans was raised. (All I can't say for sure is just how often the subject of kilts or sporrans was raised. If our household was typical: not all that often.)
Two references that always stick in my mind are the bit in The Burkiss Way when Chris Emmett goes to the doctor because his left leg is feeling a bit Scottish, and is eventually diagnosed with Kenneth McKellar of the knee by doctor Nigel Rees, and the line in the great Morecambe and Wise sketch where Eric, resplendent in platform boots and fake chest hair, announces he has "jumped on the pop bandwagon", but later admits that he has to get the tufts of fake hair back to the supplier by the end of the evening because "Kenneth McKellar's doing a Sunday concert and he wants them for his legs."
Bloody hell, that was a long sentence.

Anyway, when the scumbags of the BBC suffered a momentary lapse of uselessness a couple of years back and started issuing complete and unedited Morecambe and Wise shows, I finally got to see McKellar at work. He's charming, devilish handsome, has a laugh, and delivers this blistering rendition of one of my favourite howling songs If It Takes Forever, I Will Wait For You.
I have a jewellery box shaped like a little piano that plays this melody. It used to be my grandmother's. That remains the best version I know, but Kenneth is a close second. You'll notice he's got trousers on, but otherwise this is a faultless performance.

Godspeed ye on yer way, Kenneth lad.

Pan's People are in noisy chainmail and all is right with the world

2010-05-17T05:46:00.000-07:00

In my previous post, on the subject of Freddie and the Dreamers, I pointed out how in the clip of them performing Do the Freddie it was an especial treat to hear Garrity's feet banging on the wooden boards of the studio, something you rarely get to enjoy in the more professionally sound-recorded tv of today.
Well in just the few minutes that have elapsed since the piece went live I have been inundated with emails, and even one postcard - very quick work, there, Mr C. of Wolverhampton - from readers who share my love of this lost joy of the 'let's just have one big microphone and point it roughly in the direction the noise is coming from' age.
And all are agreed that the all-time classic example is the performance by Pan's People, from an early episode of The Two Ronnies, that you can enjoy at the end of this post.
As you'll see, the girls are all done up with long braids of chain-mail, and all the time, above the track, you can hear this constant swishing and rattling, almost hypnotic in its distracting intensity. And I think, although I can't swear to it, there's also the sound of their boots scraping on the floor to be enjoyed somewhere in the mix too.

Incidentally, were Pan's People supposed to dance completely out of time with both the music and each other, and not do very much anyway, as if conceding that the reason we are watching them has nothing whatever to do with what they are ostensibly doing? Because my girlfriend was wondering.

(Source)
"Pan's People have a particular attraction for me..."
I don't know what it is, all I know is whenever I see them I have to go out and steal tape.
You and me both, Keith. One minute I'm watching them cavorting on The Two Ronnies, the next the clock has mysteriously jumped forward one hour and I'm waking up in the middle of the room clutching an Asda bag and surrounded by unopened rolls of sellotape. My girlfriend is starting to ask where they keep coming from and, let me tell you, I'm running out of excuses. There's only so many things you can tape to other things in an average-sized flat without it starting to get obvious that you're just looking for things to tape together, just so you can use up some of the damned stuff.
If Keith Jackson is still out there and reading this, please get in touch. A problem shared is a problem halved, after all.
More on Pan's People can be located here, but for now, on with the show.
You may want to put a sheet over the budgie's cage first.

Anybody want anything sellotaping?

Do the Freddie

2010-05-17T04:48:00.000-07:00

I don't get nostalgic about pop music by and large. In fact I hate most of it.

Like the movies, pop music obviously goes into decline around the time of the Second World War, and the sound of Elvis Presley is the sound of nails being hammered into the genre's coffin. And don't get me started on the Beatles.

Actually do. When are people going to grow up and see these amateur twang merchants for what they are? They sounded bad enough at the time. Now they don't sound like anything at all; just a vaguely perceptible noise that seems to be coming through the wall from the house next door.

I left a comment on somebody's site a week or so back about the Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup, explaining that though it is one of my least favourite Marx films, it's still a Marx film, and therefore I still enjoy it more than almost anything else in the universe, just not as much as most other Marx films. And the guy said, yeah, it's like Beatles songs: you have to look a long time before you find a bad one.

Oh, I don't know. There's Yesterday, for example, and that one about needing love. (There's nothing you can do that can't be done... So true.) There were a dozen or so on Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band last time I heard it, including a real doozy called A Day in the Life. Still gives me a chuckle just thinking about it. Is John Lennon a genius? No. He's an ass. How profound are the lyrics to Eleanor Rigby? Answer: not at all. They're like a schoolboy wrote them.

Where was I going with this? Oh, yes. There are exceptions to every rule, and for some reason I must confess to an affection bordering on adoration for Freddie and the Dreamers. The late Freddie Garrity was one of the great oddballs of British culture, as well as one of its most refreshingly unpretentious. A friend of mine remembered his father, who worked with Freddie in the sixties, describing him as "an amiable former milkman from Manchester who couldn't quite believe the amount of sex he was suddenly getting." (One of the rules of being a pop star, I always think, is that you must never be pretentious, as you are making a great living doing one of the silliest, most trivial and least important things imaginable. Bob Dylan! Goodness me.)

Obviously, I love Freddie's stage presence, all that silly leaping around, and the man looks amazing with his big specs and curly hair: that much is obvious. But I also have a genuine affection for most of their songs. Some of the most interesting are to be found among their last, dating from that period of frantic activity when those big booby Beatles made pop even sillier by suddenly pretending to go all serious about it. Freddie and the boys obviously could never go po-facedly into the experimental age: their image forbade it. So instead, they briefly - all too briefly - took the Kinks route by way of Bonzos Avenue, and produced one of the greatest singles of all time: the fantastic Brown and Porters (Meat Exporters) Lorry, a song about which everything is perfect, from the title on.

Sadly, no film of them performing it seems to exist; it's odds-on they never got the chance to perform it again after the first recording. Their last single that had got anywhere near charting was Thou Shalt Not Steal, which reached the dizzy height of number 44 in 1965; Brown and Porters, in 1967, was their fifth in a row to not chart at all.

Freddie revived the Dreamers as a cabaret act in the nineties, though I'll bet nobody was shouting for Brown and Porters come encore time. I would have been, though. Now it's too late.

But here they all are again, with Garrity in exceptionally foolish form even by the man's own high standards, doing the Freddie in 1965. As well as great in itself, it's a lovely example of something you don't get with music acts on tv these days: the clearly audible sound of their feet banging on the stage.

Imagine no John Lennon. It's easy if you try.

No sadder sight

2010-05-10T05:19:00.002-07:00

I’ve been finding out about pigeons.

Did you know that the feral pigeon is in fact the descendant of domesticated rock doves?
Or that they have 37 taste buds (as opposed to our 10000)?
Or that they cannot take a continuous drink from a pool of water, but must instead take small sips and tilt their heads back to swallow?

Actually, the urban pigeon has always struck me as the saddest thing in the world. Now, tragedy is presumably in the eye of the beholder. Things that seem tragic and sad to me may be hilarious to you - indeed, if you work for BBC Light Entertainment it’s virtually a dead cert.
But there is a case to be made for the proposition that, correctly understood, the pigeon shuffling its way through life is a sadder sight than almost anything: sadder even than the sight of Ronnie Corbett appearing on Little Britain. The lot of the pigeon is, I think, the ultimate symbol of the essential futility of existence, which is not a compliment I throw about lightly.

For some reason, the aesthetic joy almost everybody takes in birds stops short at the pigeon. True, they do not sing, though their cooing is far from unendearing. Neither are they beautifully marked, though their dappled grey giving way to green around the necks and piercing orange eyes are far from ugly. They waddle rather appealingly like ducks, their heads in constant absurd motion like chickens. Yet we seem to loathe them.

At least until a few years ago, and probably still, London’s Victoria Coach Station (which lines its every level surface with spikes in the hope that lost souls waiting in vain for the arrival of a coach with four wheels that runs for longer than fifteen minutes might be diverted by the sight of birds impaling themselves) ran an endlessly looped tape message, warning that pigeons are “a potentially fatal health hazard”.
You could try writing to them to ask for the exact number of pigeon-related fatalities in England and Wales over the last century or so. Or you can just take my word that the answer is none and they won’t bother to reply anyway.

Somewhere in the middle of this commotion is a polystyrene tray containing three chips and half a kebab

“They’re rats with wings!” people say, a comment which isn’t true, wasn’t funny even the first few hundred times you heard it, and presupposes a shared low opinion of rats that finds no echo in my soul, I’m afraid. Rats are sensitive and charming mammals, as intelligent as dogs, and if they were kept solely as pets while dogs were allowed to breed freely in sewers and rubbish tips people would call pigeons ‘dogs with wings’ and it would be, if anything, an even stupider thing to say.
What pigeons and rats do have in common is that they more than any other animals have done the seemingly impossible: successfully carved a niche for themselves in the howling grey concrete and steel wilderness of human cities. Both profit from human wastefulness and are then blamed for their success. Their eat-anything policy pays off in all realms other than the aesthetic.
But the rat is secretive, flees from human contact and tries to avoid drawing conspicuous attention to itself. Pigeons by contrast are everywhere all the time, and their strategy for avoiding danger, according to one authoritative website I have consulted, is “keeping still and trying not to be noticed”.
Despite the manifest failure of this plan, they persist in stumbling about the streets, pecking at discarded cigarette ends, their feet often deformed, or missing, or trailing lengths of nylon wire, their lifespan a three to five-year cycle of being born, causing others to be born, eating crap off the pavement and dying – with never a second’s rest, peace or pleasure.
Yet in captivity they can live anything between fifteen and thirty-five years. So I just want to get hold of one of them and say: What are you DOING? You could live ANYWHERE! According to this website here you are excellent fliers and can reach speeds of 50 mph – so what’s with all this walking? If you can outmanoeuvre almost any bird of prey in the air, as once again the internet assures me is the case, why hang around on the ground where you can't even get out of the way when there's a truck coming? Why not fly to the woods, or the seaside, and rediscover the taste of wholesome insects and berries? You’ve got wings! USE THEM!
But do they? No they do not.

See - you can do it!

Far from inviting our derision and contempt, the lives of the pigeons should speak to us as deeply and profoundly as the lives of the poets. (More so, actually: when was the last time you saw a poet crushed under the wheels of a bus? As opposed to merely wanting to, I mean.)

I think we hate pigeons because we look at them and see ourselves.
They have freedom all around them, yet they choose enslavement. They could have beauty, and they choose ugliness. Theirs is the skies, but they choose the pavement. They have access to a world without limits, and they choose confinement. All for the sole and dubious advantage of comparatively easy pickings. And when those pickings take the form of human vomit that’s about as dubious as advantages get, I don't care how few taste buds they've got.
And yet that’s the point, isn’t it? They don’t choose. They don’t know they live lives of uniquely unnatural horror. They don’t know that if you don’t like your life you can change it. (H G Wells, to them, was just one more moving target.) They think the world they have is all there is.
That is their small tragedy: how much greater the tragedy, then, to know exactly what we are forfeiting, as we do, and still opt for the narrow, the easy, and the tenth-rate. Willingly eating vomit pales beside this insanity.

I’d hate for you to think that all I’ve been doing is finding out about pigeons. Here’s some of the other great stuff I’ve discovered this morning:

The copyright on the song “Happy Birthday To You” expired last year.

A man called Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel called Gadsby in 1939 that does not feature a single use of the letter e, and he died on the day it was published.

Pot Noodles have been around since 1977 and are made in the Welsh town of Crumlin to the tune of 155 million pots a year.

The Kenny Everett Collectors' Guide #1

2010-04-18T07:42:00.000-07:00

Kenny Everett's Ultimate Loo Book (1988)

The golden age of Everett-related collectibles was undoubtedly the Thames years: this highly desirable item dates from the other end of his tv career, appearing in the shops after his almost completely ignored fifth and final BBC series. (The cover shows him climbing out of a lavatory bowl with the severe, short hairdo he had sported since series 3.)

The book claims to have been written, like his 1982 autobiography The Custard Stops at Hatfield, by Everett and Simon Booker, which presumably again means that it was ghosted by Booker. Still, he gets Everett's tone of voice well enough, and makes a commendable stab at replicating the absurd wordplay that (I would guess) Barry Cryer had been responsible for on tv.

Billed as "the world's first paperback laxative", it hangs on a piece of red string so it can be attached to the toilet roll dispenser. (See photograph, taken in my own bathroom. My soon-to-be-wife allowed this on the strict instructions that it be removed again once the photo had been taken. For some reason, she questioned the merits of a Kenny Everett Ultimate Loo Book as a permanent bathroom fixture, particularly one that had been purchased second hand and thus had hung in close proximity to lavatories unknown for time periods uncertain.)

Taking the form of an almanac, the book is a mixture of 'on this day' type items ("Happy birthday to Margaret Thatcher; whatever your politics, she's a remarkable woman"), 'Bathroom Brain-Teasers' ('Q: Whose turn is it to pay for lunch? A: Nicholas Parsons'), Everett's Astro-loogical forecasts ("It's not often that you get invited to appear naked on prime-time television, and this week is no exception"), 'Loo Laffs' (very old jokes), and helpful hints, such as this one for ensuring the success of a dinner party: "In the middle of the boeuf en croute a la Marseillaise, reveal your hidden store of knowledge about flatworms - a rare breed of animal which reproduce by pulling themselves to pieces; each part then develops into a worm."
The back cover boasts, "All that remains now is to lock the door, assume the customary position and turn to the entry for today's date. Minutes later you will emerge wittier, wiser... and about two pounds lighter."

Collectors note: Before purchasing, check that the book still has its original red string attached. I have seen several for sale without any string at all, and even one that had been slyly renovated using new, white string. Buyers beware!

Tremate, tremate, i Roper son tornati!

2010-04-15T04:33:00.000-07:00

We all know that British sitcom travels with surprising success to some surprising places, but this has to be the winner.
If the bewildering range and quantity of them to be seen at those little newsstands you find on virtually every street there is anything to go by, Italy must be the world's biggest consumer of DVD partworks. But even allowing for this, to what force or process more local than chaos theory can we possibly attribute the fact that a partwork that builds into a complete collection of all five series of George and Mildred (or George e Mildred as they seem doggedly intent on calling it over there) is a viable Italian commercial proposition?
Curse fate for having birthed you anywhere but Italia!

Chicks with hammers

2010-03-14T06:27:00.000-07:00

To kick off my new blog, here's a picture of the lovely Glynis Johns, about to put a hammer through the skull of Terry-Thomas in that fine English film Vault of Horror (1973).
I re-encountered this picture, which comes trailing so many memories of hours of primary school playground time spent staring at the book Horror Films by Alan Frank, when researching a magazine article on Glynis recently.
It reminded me of one of my favourite artistic subjects: women who have hurt their thumbs with a hammer trying to put up a picture.
Here are three great examples. The first two are professional injured thumb models. The third is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The latter picture is one of a series in which Buffy re-enacts various of the calamities that are the average female's daily lot.
Here she points out the dangers of playing tennis in high heels:

Lastly for now, here's a picture of Norman Wisdom spooning ice cream out of a woman's top.