York, York Minster and Dick Turpin.

One of the gates to the city of York.

We went to York recently which is about 200 miles south of Edinburgh; it is a city I had always wanted to visit and I wasn't disappointed.

One of the reasons I wanted to visit York was that I knew it was a walled city and I wanted to see the city walls; I also wanted to see the little inky dinky streets with the tiny fairytale like bent buildings and the historic magnificent York Minster; it is a wonderful building and it takes some time to actually walk around it.

There were one or two disappointments and one of these was the appearance of charity/thrift shops and a pound stretchers shop within the city walls and some other franchise shops; but there were only a few of these.

Recently, in our lives, we have eaten a lot of Italian food and we longed for a French meal and found a nice little French Restaurant where the food was a delight.

I will presume there was a French cook but there were local waiters and waitresses and I asked one of them if they knew where Dick Turpin was executed.

Dick Turpin was a famous Highwayman of the 18^th century, famous for the phrase, I suppose, Stand and Deliver; he was also famous for his ride by horse from London to York which is about another 200 miles, in less than 24 hours; his horse's name was Black Bess.

Of course a lot of his exploits were legend and maybe some of them should have been attributed to other highwaymen, especially the ride, and it has always amazed me that a movie hasn't been made about him – he truly is the stuff of legend, like Robin Hood, but, unlike Robin Hood, there is proof that he actually existed.

The waitress in the French Restaurant didn't know anything about him and he was the first thing I thought about when we decided to go to York.

The waitress called another waiter in and he said, “Dick Turpin? - No! They hung him in London!”

Well they didn't – they hung him for being a horse thief at York Racecourse – his body was stolen by body snatchers to add to the legend; so why no movie? There was a British TV series in the 70s or 80s but no movie.

Come on Jack; look him up on Wikipedia and get your script to me!!

The legendary Dick Turpin jumping a 'toll' gate on Black Bess.

Very near to our hotel was the gate of the city and we went around the walls looking through the battlements, imagining we were in the olden days and looking across the (dried) moat to modern cars and life.

The City walls of York - it is a 2 mile walk all around.

There was also a Richard III museum and I almost started to recite 'Now is the winter of our discontent' but stopped through modesty.

It was a rare show of modesty, I might add; when I visited the Taj Mahal, in Agra, I tapped danced on the marble floor and played the drum in a tiny Indian village.

A 'rare' show of modesty which I will fight off the next time it raises its ugly head!!

York Minster Cathedral; completed in 1260.

Follow up to Modern England and our smiling cat!!

Ealing aftermath.

Well after my post with my opinions about modern England I had quite a few emails in response to it; I'm glad to say that people agreed with me so I obviously don't have many hangers and floggers in my readership.

It might be an idea to put your comments into the comments box if you want to throw things open to others where we might generate a discussion. I don't censor any comments whatsoever so whatever you write will be up there.

The other thing I have not asked people to do before is to 'follow' me; then you will get your picture, logo or whatever at the top of the page and be able to leave comments easily; do that if you wish.

A few blogs ago, I had some emails returned. These are the emails that go out automatically when I write a post; these emails were returned from the same source namely the American Military. It was the post with the word 'cock' in the title and I got in touch with them and they thought it was spam as the URL was from Columbia; well . . . . it wasn't.

The URL is actually either from tinyurl.com or someone called deliver it who put my blog directly on to Twitter; the reason for this? Twitter have a maximum of 140 characters including spaces so if you want to point out a news item on Twitter you need a small URL so you go to a tiny web site and convert it.

The last post, for example, had a url this seventy eight characters long - http://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.com/2011/08/modern-england-my-opinion.html and that is a bit long to put onto Twitter or even the notification email that goes out.

There was something that I didn't point out the other day and it was the fact that there was no rioting this side of the border; it seemed to stop there. The young people in Edinburgh, where we are, were doing other things, had other things to do or were . . . . again I don't know.

We have been in the UK since July 13th when the ship came in and our cat, El Grande, has been in quarantine since then.

Animals coming into Britain have to be quarantined because of the rabies law. So far they have kept rabies on the other side of the English Channel but now there is a tunnel. . . . .

Here is a picture of our cat – it has been on here before but look; he's smiling for you.

The smile of our cat.

Modern England; my opinion!!

The situation in Ealing, west London.

What a title aye? Bit pretentious perhaps but my opinion is just that – my opinion.

People who read this blog on a regular basis will know one thing about me; I am not an expert on anything. That has never stopped me giving an opinion, of course; I know a bit about acting, a little bit about directing and I used to have an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music – I could tell you the songs on the 'b' side of a hit record from the 50s and 60s but all that has gone now.

Sometimes I hear an old song on the radio and immediately I can tell you that A One Way Ticket to the Blues by Neil Sedaka is on the 'b' side of Oh Carol. - let's hope I'm right!!!

I used to be quite an expert on military side/snare drumming in fact I used to teach it many many years ago, I was a solo drummer, and I also taught map reading.

I taught those 2 things in the Army Cadets; this was not the private schools' version which was the Combined Cadet Force (CCF); we were attached to a regiment and in our case The Royal Artillery.

At one time I was even in a gun team; those are the big guns which took (I think) 8 of us to operate. I think it was called the L70 – I may be wrong there too and I think I was number six which meant I was behind the big gun and had to run around if the aim was changed drastically.

Here's a picture of an Israeli L70.

Yes Number Six – maybe I should have gone into the TV series The Prisoner (in joke there for Prisoner fans)..

I think the army cadets attracted a lot of inner city kids who didn't want to join The Boy Scouts and who kind of thought they were going to have to do 2 years national service and it gave a lot of us the chance to get rid of the jingoistic and militaristic feelings men get when they are youths; but the camaraderie you get with a military organisation is life lasting; you learn how to get on with people and learn self discipline.

Watch that word camaraderie as I think I will be using it later.

I am not going to advocate the return of national service – the draft as they call it in America – because I saw what the end of it brought; it brought us artistic freedom, it enabled the youth of the day to develop a taste for something and anger against the establishment and it brought us The Beatles!! who nearly ended the class system; before The Beatles all the people on TV spoke with plummy accents; another one of my pet projects.

The parents of The Beatles generation have been described by Tom Brokaw, amongst others, as the greatest generation – the greatest generation produced the 'baby boomers' who still rule the roost; make no mistake about it; Steven Spielberg, Paul McCartney et al are still with us and still call the shots no matter who Justin Beaver is.

So where am I going with this?

We have returned to the UK after spending 16 years in Los Angeles; we spent two and a half weeks in England and then left for Edinburgh and since we have been up here all hell broke loose in England with the riots.

Who are those kids? Those kids in the riots aged between 11 and 17? Forget about the one or two middle aged professional idiots who were found looting and the gang members in Birmingham who fired guns at the police, concentrate on those kids; who are they?

Those kids weren't here when we left for the USA 16 years ago but they are the children of the greediest generation of them all. Thatcher's Britain with the 'loads a money' mentality; the Keith Joseph, via Milton Friedman, economic policy which seemed to be a miss interpretation of Adam Smith's classic economics.

Before then John Maynard Keynes economic policies were used but when stagflation came along the economists didn't understand how that could happen – high unemployment and high inflation?Couldn't happen, the Keynesians said.

According to the preaching of Keynes that couldn't happen but maybe they forgot that 60 years after the lost generation the 2,000,000 people, that died in world war one, who didn't retire in 1976 and leave 2,000,000 vacancies for the school leavers.

In the early 70s inflation seemed to be a hobby and when those 2,000,000 jobs suddenly didn't become available for school- leavers unemployment increased!!!! They couldn't retire in their masses because they didn't live!!

The greedy generation, who have produced these kids, are around 40-45 now and their kids are the children who have been forgotten; so what did you expect?

We hear the opinions of the so called pundits as to why these kids were so unruly but a lot of them belong nowhere.

Their parents spent all their loads a money and left their kids to fend for themselves and those who didn't spend it just threw money at the children with no love.

Since we have been in America something strange happened in English schools; some politically correct teachers or parents or both got rid of team sport; so where do boys get to play football and cricket?

Where do the girls get to play netball and hockey?

Where do they all experience the camaraderie of belonging to some kind of organisation?

Nearly everybody likes to belong to something – look at the camaraderie (that word again) amongst the homeless. They have moved the homeless out from their tent city (more like blanket city) in London and I have read interviews with some of the homeless saying that the thing they say they miss most is the camaraderie.

The kids who used to play team sports at school left school and joined football teams at youth clubs or sports and leisure centres; a lot of kids actually returned to school just to play the team sports if they couldn't find a team out of school.

Boys could play football and cricket at all levels right up to the millionaire professional; I mean I even played and I was terrible.

There were always opportunities, and always will be, for people who wanted to play middle class games like tennis or track and field sports – those people will always find a way and it's a bit of a waste of time introducing things like fencing or other minority sports to state schools.

That's not the whole reason they are rioting and looting; one of the reason they do that is because it's fun. It's great fun to smash a window; if ever I have worked on a movie or TV show and a window needs breaking people seem to line up to do it.

If they had other things to do which were as much fun they would be doing it and not rioting; it doesn't have to be sport; if they were all geniuses they would be holed up in their bedrooms, contemplating their navels, inventing or discovering things by themselves – that's okay and that's what the geniuses are doing.

A good upbringing and a good education cannot be taken away afterwards so, for arguments sake, the private school cannot take the education back if the parents don't pay the school fees!

By the same token a bad upbringing and the lack of education has a permanent impact and it could be too late for all of those kids; they truly are the lost generation.

If you are unfortunate enough to live in a place which has been a victim of the riots ask yourself what you have done in the past for the youth of your neighbourhood and what you are going to do about them in the future.

It's no good turning a fire hose onto them or putting them in gaol – I don't have the solution I am not an expert.

Kate Copstick review in The Scotsman for Eddie Ramone..

This is another review; this time it's from Kate Copstock who, I am told, is not always easy to please and it's in The Scotsman which is nothing to be sneezed at.

So thank you Kate if you read this.

Theatre review: The Two Sides of Eddie Ramone
By Kate Copstick Published: 22/8/2011

This is a sweet, sad, lovely little play - partly the comedy act and partly the internal monologue of one Eddie Ramone, once a Big Comedy Star and host of a game show, now playing the cruise ships on autopilot (him, not the ships) and going over and over in his mind the train of events that led him to this point.

A tiny piece, but telling, it is written and performed by Chris Sullivan, an actor known to fans of Emmerdale and Bergerac. His is a face you can believe has lived the whole life of Eddie Ramone and the performance is wholly believable, nicely underplayed and cleverly nuanced. The change in Sullivan as he crosses the dramatic line from internal monologue to stand-up is subtle but tangible. This is a lovely gem of a show - a proper fringe play and very well worth an hour. The story Eddie tells is unexpected, and Sullivan absolutely takes you with him on Eddie's journey. Go. You won't regret it.

• theSpaces at Surgeons Hall (venue 53)

Posters in Edinburgh - I AM NOT THE BOY and Cock-gate!

Guinness poster from about 1973.

There are loads of posters around Edinburgh of me advertising my show; not getting blasé about it but I tend to ignore them after a while. When the Guinness poster was all over Britain in the early seventies I learned to get used to it and that was in every city and town throughout the UK. I remember standing underneath one waiting for a bus talking to a drunk and we took no notice.

That poster was around twenty feet high but these are A3 and I have often wondered why nobody has ever drawn a moustache or a beard on my face; maybe even a pair of glasses.

So yesterday I came upon one and someone had put a sticker over my mouth which said 'I AM NOT THE BOY.' - I thought 'I've arrived!'

A bit later on we found a lapel badge 'I AM NOT THE BOY.'

There is a campaign here called Cock-gate; little symbols of a penis and a pair of balls have been stuck to loads of posters - again I was left out; I trust I don't offend anybody by showing this

most of all the publishers of this blog; if it disappears after today you will know why.

These people have a show here and may win an award for their cheek – if you look up 'cock-gate' on Google it will explain all.

If I see another review I will put it up – sorry this is so short but you know the Woody Allen joke – 'that restaurant is terrible; the food is awful - and such small portions.'

I AM NOT THE BOY poster.

Review: The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone.

Still flying in Edinburgh.

Hi folks: here's a review from the publication Three Weeks.

Sunday August 14th, 2011 22:47

ED2011 Theatre Review: The 2 Sides Of Eddie Ramone (Chris Sullivan)

In this thoughtful piece, Eddie Ramone (Chris Sullivan) reflects on the strange duality of a comedian’s life where one moment he may be the darling of a crowd, and the next, sitting alone and gloomy in a darkened bar. His initial 15 minute stretch of bad stand-up is revealed to be purely an act when he begins to slip between his “autopilot” stage persona and his ongoing internal thoughts. He holds the rapt attention of the audience throughout the story of his personal life, but the true interest of the show lies in the contrast of his shallow stage persona with the gradually revealed pain and sorrow which colour the life of even some the most successful show-people.

theSpaces at Surgeons Hall, 6 – 27 Aug (not 7, 14, 21), 6.00pm (7.00pm), £5.00, fpp307.
tw rating 3/5
[zg]

Tags: Chris Sullivan, theSpaces at Surgeons Hall

Sections: by Zulekha Grace - ED2011 Theatre Reviews - tw rating 3/5 | No Comments

Trevor Nunn, Jimmy from Liverpool and 100,000 wet fringe fliers!

"Flying" in Edinburgh.

Well here we are in Edinburgh and I have never seen so much rain. Ordinarily I don't mind a bit of rain here because it doesn't exactly rain hard in Britain as opposed to Los Angeles where it comes down like a monsoon but when there are things to be done outdoors it becomes a bit of a pain; the rain, this is.

It's dangerous for the street performers; the fliers and posters peel off the walls, water runs down the necks of the people working outside trying to grab the week when their earning potential is high and it eventually becomes frustrating.

We have been putting posters around a kind of totem pole in the middle of The Royal Mile and they stay up for maybe an hour before people put posters over the top of them. One of the days last week when it rained really hard for 24 hours most of the posters were washed off the walls, the hoardings and our totem pole – which is one of about eight I might add.

As the posters peeled to the floor, to be taken away later by council sweepers, one of my posters from the last day without rain appeared under the sludge like the grand masters appeared under the sewers of Rome for that brief second in Felinni's film Rome. As with what happened in that film my poster disappeared soon thereafter by someone putting something over it.

So it was a welcome bit of sun on Saturday when I headed towards The Royal Mile to stand in front of some posters of myself and hand out postcards.

In Edinburgh at the moment there are approximately two thousand people handing out fliers; they do not work very well as most of them end up in a bin at the top or the bottom of The Royal Mile. Also people doing half of their show in the open or going around dressed as a character from it are not cost affective; it's a bit of fun but that's it.

People are constantly told to be selective as to whom they are giving fliers to but they are not, hence the full bins and the 100 thousand wet fliers in the bins.

The one thing I did not notice on Saturday were any official 'paid for' posters of my show in any place apart from the exterior of The Surgeon's Hall where I am appearing; I called the poster company a few times and sent them a few emails but I had yet to see even one.

So when I saw a couple of guys putting posters up on my way to The Royal Mile I stopped and had a chat with one of them; he was Jimmy from Liverpool and I told him I hadn't seen any so he asked me for a post card and when I showed him one he said he had seen some of my posters and would put them out 'tomorrow – where do you want them?' I said 'around here.'

We exchanged phone numbers and he said he would let me know.

Around the corner from Jimmy I went through a crowd of leaflets and fliers and as I passed one of the venues I saw Trevor Nunn going in – he had walked through many people giving out their stuff and they didn't recognise him so left him flierless.

I didn't realise till that moment that he was about the same size as me but . . . he was dressed almost the same as I was too – dark blue cotton jacket, jeans and a pair of pumps; he is heavy around the eyes, like me but he has a beard. Unerving!! Maybe he was the version of me on the road that I didn't take and I was the other version of him? Who knows?Let me add for people who don't know, that Trevor Nunn is one of the most influential people in the British Theatre – in fact the International theatre having directed on Broadway and The West End and he was one of the artistic directors of the RSC – The Royal Shakespeare Company.

Trevor Nunn, the one guy who could change any of their lives with the offer of a great acting job, was not even approached by a single person giving out fliers – as for me??? I should have had a post card in my hand and as he climbed the steps of the venue I should have shouted gently 'Trevor?' and as he turned around I could have put a flyer into his hand; but I didn't!! L'esprit de l'escalier; – or more like L'esprit le boulevard??

So I went up to The Royal Mile and as you can see above I held my hand up and waited for people to come and take them from me hoping they might be more interested in coming to see the show if they took a post card from me instead of having one forced into their little mitt; I did this for about an hour.

On the way back I saw, coming the other way, Trevor Nunn and he passed me again. But I wasn't having Le spre l'escallier again so I ran into the middle of the road and passed him. Then when I got to two telephone boxes I dodged ever nonchalantly between them hoping to be walking the other way from him but this time with a post card in my hand but as I did this he had the same idea of going between the two boxes and I put my post card straight into his hand – 'there we are' I said ' I recognise you but you don't recognise me!'

'What's this?' he said – then he saw it 'Ah!' he said ' best of luck with this' and gave me a hug!!!

No he didn't give me a hug but gave me two pats on the back from the front – nearly a hug!

I didn't think I would hear from Jimmy from Liverpool again but when I walked up the street on Sunday the streets were full of my posters; Jimmy turned out be genuine and even called me to ask for more posters and he did it for the oldest reason in the world; he recognised me! Unlike Trevor!!

So Trevor, my terrible twin, might see one of the posters or even read the post card I gave him and come and see my show; but I doubt it.

By the way – no I don't know why they call it The Royal Mile but that's what it's called so I call it that too.

The glamour of the fringe!!

Gullane.

I did some rehearsals last week in a beautiful village on the east coast of Scotland called Gullane; it's about 20 miles from Edinburgh and could probably qualify as a small town.

I have a cousin who lives there, Patrick Tuite, and spent time there in my youth with my brother and Pat's mother and father; Tom and Peggy Tuite.

It's a wonderful village and we bought some meat in the local butchers which came from local farmers; we also bought some black pudding and white pudding and I had some for breakfast this morning with a sausage and egg. I have to say it's not as good as the white pudding you get in Ireland but I would, chauvinistically, say that wouldn't I?

I must have been about 16 when I was there as a youth with my brother – also named Pat – and we managed to get a job at a visiting fairground. We collected the money on the dodgem cars; this involved going from car to car, standing on the bumpers and leaning across to the young girls, trying to impress them and taking their money. Then we would jump, very dramatically, to the next car trying to impress those girls too; if they were girls.

We would hold that bar at the back, the bar that took the power to the ceiling of the structure which pumped the power into the cars. The bars were quite safe to hold onto but if you went from car to car and held the bar an both cars at the same time you got a nasty shock down your arm and up the other. When you're feeling this sensation you are trying to look sexy as the girls can see you leaping from car to car like Tarzan and they probably mistook that yell of pain from the electricity for a Tarzan yell and probably looked at us with a whatareyoudoing look on their faces.

The people who worked full time at the fairground tried to teach us how to give the punters the wrong change.

The idea was that the people in the cars gave you their money; the cars are ready to go as everything has to be quick so you give them the change quickly after showing them the correct amount in your hand – when you turn your hand over, you keep a tanner between two fingers, and they will just dump the change into their pockets and drive away without checking it.

A tanner by the way for anybody under about 50 was a sixpence.

We didn't swindle anybody a) because we were honest and b) because we couldn't do the act of prestidigitation even if we had wanted to.

Our cousin Pat, by the way, and I'll call him Part to distinguish him from my brother Pat, as that is what his name sounds like in a Scottish accent was even tempered, tall and always wore a black mac which was double breasted and belted. In fact from a distance he looked like a cop.

When the day came for us to get paid we went up to the boss for our money and we were sent on a wild goose chase from one person to the other.

Then we reached Mister Big – the boss - and he said that "ye're no' getting paid today; come back tomorrow!"

We knew that they would not be there 'tomorrow' as the fair was moving on – and we told them that.

"Och!! ye thank we gonna make off wicha bliddy muney do ye? Eh? See you - wicha blidy money . . ."

Pat and I then realised we either had to go and forget about it or stay for a kicking!

A shout “Hey Christy – Pat?”

We turned around and it was Part; dressed in his copper's mac.

"Who's thart?" said Mister Big "the blidy polis??”

"That's our cousin."

He took a queer look at Part.

" Yer cousin!! Yer blidy cousins . . . Here!"he said "here's your blidy money."

And he gave us the money.

Off we went with Part.

He is still in the village and we bumped into him in the street before we even went around to knock on his door.

His mother Peggy, our aunt Peggy, used to be Ronnie Corbet's housekeeper as he lives in Gullane.

Her husband Tom was from Dublin, my mother's younger brother – they died within a day of each other – joined the Royal Air Force as a lad and retired, with Peggy, to Gullane. He worked at Muirfield golf course and Part worked at the other golf course in Gullane. The whole place is crazy about golf.

When you see young kids with a basketball in Los Angeles or a football in London, in Scotland you see them with golf clubs; they play golf on waste ground, parks and anywhere they can hit a ball.

I don't know if many golf champions are Scottish but it surely is the national sport of Scotland.

After we met Part in the street the other day we walked up to where the fairground used to be – and there, lo and behold, was the visiting fair once again (above).

The toilet, Amy Winehouse and The Little Chef!!

The Little Chef: somewhere in Yorkshire.

Further to my piece the other day about the word toilet and my piece about being near to where Amy Winehouse on the day she died.

First of all I went into Little Chef on the way up. They have the worst food in Britain without a doubt but I only stopped in there to use the loo and buy some coffee.

Look what I found – they call their lavatories loos; isn't that wonderful? At least they do something right.

When I came out with my coffee I passed some people sitting at the tables out front. I asked if they were eating food they had bought there or whether they had brought their own; they were AMERICAN!! They did what a lot of Americans do when they travel the roads in Britain – they'd stopped at a Little Chef – no wonder they think English food is bad if that's what they eat!!

Now to Amy Winehouse: I can't help being disgusted with some of the comments on Facebook and YouTube from nobodies – Amy Winehouse had an amazing voice. I know people who were within a few feet of her when she sang who said she was amazing and I have heard some of the songs she wrote and they were brilliant.

People are saying things that she didn't deserve – it's easy to write things anonymously (I've had things said about me on YouTube) and hide behind a nom-de-plume but it isn't easy for those nay sayers to say anything else as they have no empathy and having no empathy is the first sign of a psychotic so maybe these critics should keep quiet before someone takes them away.

I'm rehearsing this week and getting ready for my opening but I'll write again soon.

The late Amy Winehouse.