The Storyteller: October 2012

Thursday, October 25, 2012

My Mother.

Esther Sullivan

(Essie of the Alex; my mother)

I have had a few people ask me what my mother did at the Alex; the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, which I wrote recently about concerning Marlene Dietrich's appearance there in 1973.

Well she made the tea and bacon and eggs for the stars and backstage workers. She asked them all for autographs and her collection of autographs must have been worth a small fortune when the boss of the 'Alex' asked her for it, which she freely gave; where is it now, I wonder?

But I have no idea how she came to work there (but I'll guess, later on) – and we all worked there at one time or another; the family, I mean.

When we were growing up, she was a company director at a firm in Birmingham called The Lawden Manufacturing Company in the city centre. She would arrive home in the evenings at around 7:30 – 8:00 and tell my dad about her whole day. He would hear about the ups and downs at the board meetings, the welfare of the staff and employees, the office politics and a lot of gossip.

I would sit there listening to this too and I would love it. I knew what Tom Pierce was like at work when we went around and met his family, I knew a lot about the managing director, Mr W.W. Kirk and knew he liked a drop of whisky.

When he would come to our house, with his wife, for dinner the whisky bottle would take quite a beating.

He was a dynamic little Scotsman with the gift of the gab; he was brought to my mind when I first heard the J.M. Barrie phrase 'There are few more impressive sights than a Scotsman on the make,' as he certainly was on the make. He had a great knack for publicity and we were quite used to seeing him, and our mother, in the newspapers.

One time a whole supplement was devoted to the Lawden Manufacturing Company in the local paper and she was heavily featured.

Another time, when I was 16, a photographer came to the house and took photographs of the whole family.

And why did they profile us?

Because my mother was a company director and she was a woman!!!
Unheard of in those days.

Who would look after us?

Who would do the cooking and cleaning?

My dad didn't really like being photographed as he knew the men at work would take the piss and jeer that he was doing housework; he was right. Many a time when I went in to work (at the post office) people in their offices would ask me if I'd done the washing up – but that was then; this is now.

It never occurred to me in those days that you shouldn't drink and drive and many a night Bill Kirk would drive home from our house in his posh Jaguar with a good few drams inside him; but he got away with it and survived; I presume.

Barely a week went by without him being interviewed on TV about this that and the other and, many years later, when I was working at a TV station in Birmingham I saw him waiting to go on to be interviewed.

There he was; all five feet six of him strutting about like a Scottish James Cagney spouting controversial sound bites which would get picked up by other news sources.

One day he was discussing 'prisoner's rights' and he was complaining that they had too many already and used the phrase 'they get a bunk up at the weekend.'

People sitting around the studio burst into laughter and the next day the phrase was headlines in the newspapers.

Bunk up, by the way, was – sexual intercourse; still is!

It all ended when my mother came home one day and told us she'd resigned. Kirk kind of kept in touch but not much.

I saw him at the railway station in Wolverhampton when I was a drama student and he invited me into the first class compartment. I didn't really want to go in there but he assured me all would be okay and we sat and discussed my mother; he was surrounded by a lot of other men in suits on their way to London.

I think one day a friend of a friend of my mother's asked her if she could help out at the Alex; she (the f of f) had a job backstage making tea and snacks and she wanted my mother to relieve her for a week or two and this is what she did – but I have no idea how she became a permanent fixture there. The little canteen was about nine feet by about twelve with a hole in the wall which was the counter.

She wasn't a great cook at home but she could sure do bacon and eggs so I got used to seeing the most unlikely of people sitting down on one of the stools, eating this from the shelf (which is about all it was) which surrounded the room.

People like Laurence Olivier, Richard Todd, Margaret Lockwood, Leslie Phillips – all these people well known in Britain at the time - and when they did a pantomime I saw Des O'Conner and a host of other so called stars.

To Essie, thanks for the bacon and eggs read most of the dedications on the signed autographs.

When touring in a play at various theatres and venues, stars would come up to me and wonder where they had met me and I would tell them.

My mother was mentioned in the artistic director's autobiography – she was referred to as Essie of the Alex; I had a copy once which was by Derek Salberg.

My brother eventually went to work there part time as a backstage electrician – moving the lights etc. That's where he met his wife who was the stage manager.

I did the electrics too, for a time, when I was at drama school and I also did the sound a few times. My dad would help my mother and burnt the toast one night and the whole audience could smell it; I would also help her once in a while with the dishes.

Sometimes we would do 'get ins' and/or 'get outs' – I hated those but they were well paid; it involved clearing all the scenery from a touring production, flats, scenery, props and costumes, etc, from the theatre before the next tour came in.

We worked for the world famous Sadlers Welles Opera, London Festival Ballet and the Gilbert & Sullivan Company, D'oyle Carte.

Even now if I hear snatches from their operas or The Sleeping Beauty ballet I remember the times we had cues.

Derek Salberg was a cricket enthusiast and would cast his plays depending on how good a cricketer you were; but he never cast me – I was Essie's son.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Rock 'n' Roll.

Buddy Holly

There is one thing about the Americans which I don't think they appreciate; I don't think they appreciate some of the things they have started, or invented if you like, which have influenced the world.

They think they invented the computer and the Internet – well they didn't.

A British scientist called Donald Davies started the Internet – and with a name like that he was probably Welsh – and the computer was invented by an Englishman called Charles Babbage in the 19^th Century, he was the first to conceptualise and fully programme a computer which he never developed but his son completed and simplified a version of the machine's analytical unit and gave it to the Science Museum in South Kensington where I believe it is still there to this day.

Alan Turing is generally considered to be the father of the modern computer; he was in the news recently as 2012 is his centenary.

But what am getting at?

I am getting at the great things Americans have given to the world; no not cooking or food, unless you like hamburgers and the dreaded Americano coffee, which the Italians think they invented, but the music.

They have given to the world some of the greatest music and they ignore this feat. And I'm not talking classical music either, even though I love Samuel Barber and Philip Glass.

Rock'n'Roll and jazz – that's what they gave us.

I used to attend many of the jazz concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and also the smaller ones at the Hollywood/Highland Centre (or Center) where they hold the Academy Awards.

My favourite, of course, is rock'n'roll. I have seen some great bands over there, in Los Angeles, who were largely ignored by the punters.

I saw The Blasters at The House of Blues but that was because they were the support group for Percy Sledge, and I think they were appreciated by the audience on that night, but a couple of years ago I went to a party at the Peterson Car Museum – well The Peterson Automotive Museum – as the local auctioneers, Bonhams & Butterfields, were selling a collection of Steve McQueen's motor bikes and cars.

There were quite a few motor-bike enthusiasts there who were full of hair and leather and who turned out to be the most gentlest of gentle creatures. These fellas stood around mainly in groups of blokes and some groups had their women and I got the impression, now and again, that they were Hell's Angels but they weren't.

At one time, during the evening, the actor Robert Patrick, who was in Terminator 2, came in with a politician and they stopped the band for a while, whilst he spouted some garbage about 'our boys in the front line' – they stopped the band.

Do you know who was playing?

None other than Ricky Nelson's son. He looked just like Ricky Nelson and sounded like him and he was singing his dad's songs – I'm not sure if he was Gunnar Nelson or Matthew Nelson - I was spellbound as he sang and the guitarist was playing just like his dad's great guitarist, James Burton.

I couldn't believe that they were being treated like background. Some excuse for a guitarist, whom I knew and could only play Bossa Nova, came up to me and said 'rubbish.'

That was enough to put him in my shit list!

Just listen to James Burton's guitar work for Ricky Nelson and later with Elvis Presley and see what I mean; and this guy was up to that standard but because it wasn't jazz he was thought of as 'rubbish.'

One of the songs he sang was his dad's song Garden Party, which his dad wrote in disgust after a Madison Square Garden audience booed him, because, in his mind, he was playing new songs instead of just his old hits; the song was about that Madison Square Garden Concert and was autobiographical; the younger Nelson, at the party, joked about it being autobiographical for him too.

All lost on the crowd that night.

Another time I went to a bar on La Brea, in Hollywood called the Lava Lounge, and the band – or the group – played and sang Buddy Holly songs and Bobby Fuller songs.

Again the crowd didn't even look at them.

I had heard many groups years ago play and sing Buddy Holly songs in fact before The Beatles that's what a lot of groups would do – Holly or The Shadows in Britain. But they couldn't quite get that guitar lick that Buddy played on Peggy Sue.

I asked someone I was with if he knew who the originator of the songs was and he guessed Elvis!!!! Arrrrgghhhhhhhh!!!!

All of them dead, now of course. Buddy Holly and Ricky Nelson in plane crashes and Bobby Fuller died mysteriously in Hollywood right by where we used to live.

He was found in his car dead; there's a bit of a complicated story about his death, which is maybe apocryphal in Wikipedea:

Bobby Fuller

Within months of "I Fought The Law" becoming a top 10 hit, Fuller was found dead in an automobile parked outside his Hollywood apartment. The Los Angeles deputy medical examiner, Jerry Nelson, performed the autopsy. According to Dean Kuipers: "The report states that Bobby's face, chest, and side were covered in “petechial hemorrhages" probably caused by gasoline vapors and the heat. He found no bruises, no broken bones, no cuts. No evidence of beating." Kuipers further explains that boxes for "accident" and "suicide" were ticked, but next to the boxes were question marks. Despite the official cause of death, some commentators believe Fuller was murdered.

Erik Greene, a relative of Sam Cooke, has cited similarities in the deaths of Cooke and Fuller. Fuller bandmate, Jim Reese, suspected that Charles Manson may have had something to do with Fuller's death but never provided credible evidence. A sensationalist crime website has speculated that the LAPD may have been involved because of Bobby's connection to a Mafia-related woman.

Over the street from where Bobby was found, is The Highland Gardens Hotel; Janice Joplin died in there from a drug overdose one night and they still rent out her room. Our kids would stay there when they came out to see us with their families.

So I am asking Americans to appreciate what you have and what you are really famous for overseas; it wasn't Ronald Reagan who brought the Berlin Wall down; it was pop music and another American product – Levi Jeans.

A few months ago I bought my 23^rd pair when I was in Los Angeles; when I was a lot younger I would buy a new pair of 501s, put them on and get into a bath - to shrink them to my shape - I think I had read about it somewhere. I don't do that any more as I don't think it works at all.

After a time, 501s get a bit bigger as you wear them and become 'old person's jeans' – as they are called by some people – but they're not really.

Levi Jeans started out being worn by cowboys and 'blue collar' workers in America so why the 'old person' moniker?

It's because the older you get, the shape of you changes – you can't help it, it isn't a crime or even a vice but and, by the way, I lied about the jeans I bought a few months ago being my 23^rd pair.

Rock On!!

Levi Jeans

worn with boots - as they should be.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

I remember - Marlene Dietrich

I noticed the other day a CD for sale: Marlene Dietrich with the Burt Bacharach Orchestra, recorded at the Sydney Opera House in 2007. Unbelievable really as she's been dead since 1992.

I remember they recorded together sometime during the early seventies, and she toured Britain with the Burt Bacharach Orchestra and sang songs to promote the album.

Burt Bacharach didn't come over to the UK and I doubt very much, knowing the Musicians' Union at the time, that any of the personnel of the great man's ensemble toured either.

One of the theatres she played was The Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, where she played for a week, which included two matinée performances in the afternoons, from May 14^th - 19^th 1973.

In those days, my mother worked at the 'Alec' so I was privy to the backstage area and saw the screen legend in the flesh many times; well not exactly 'in the flesh' but you know what I mean!

She would arrive at the theatre, via the stage door, a few hours before her show was due to start and each day a devoted crowd of fans, paparazzi (before they were named that) and a few passers by, would welcome her as she arrived.

When she left, after the show, a huge hue of glittering glamour would fill the tiny street that ran alongside the Alec. The glitter would be the flashes from her jewellery made by the flashlights from the many cameras.

It didn't make any difference how many people were there, Marlene greeted the crowd as if there were a multitude.

I couldn't get a ticket to see any of the evening shows, but was fortunate enough to see a midweek matinée, which was an experience, but which played to a half full house; notwithstanding this, Miss Dietrich played as if to an audience of thousands.

She sang all the well known songs – See What the Boys In the Back Room Will Have and Lili Marlane, of course.

Unbeknown to the outside throng, was a young woman in her forties, who came to the Alec each evening by bus; she would leave Marlene at their hotel to go alone to the theatre in a chauffeur driven limo, so that she, Marlene, could arrive at the theatre alone without any distractions – who's that? Could she be? - and when she went back to the hotel in the evenings my father gave the young woman a lift in his mini.

My mother said it was Marlene's daughter even though she would refer to her mother as Marlene, and I think she spoke with the same kind of German accent as her mother did; if indeed it was her mother.

The request for my dad to give her a lift came from Miss Dietrich's dressing room, so it was from the great screen legend, herself. He was recommended as a 'reliable bloke' who could be trusted with someone so precious but not so precious as to qualify for a ride in the limo.

The rides in the mini took my dad out of his way fairly late each evening and he got to know how devoted the woman was to Marlene. He didn't say much but would listen intently as she would relay how grateful she and Marlene were for this service; I mean he must have saved them all of about £10 - £15 in taxi fare and at the end of the engagement my dad was rewarded with a signed copy of the Marlene Dietrich/Burt Bacharach LP.

I saw the great film star quite a few times coming out of her dressing room; it was on the first floor, right next to the stage, so she had to climb the stairs each evening to get to it. She always looked a million dollars and the short trip from her dressing room door to the stage could have been on a Paris or New York cat walk at the height of fashion week as she swept passed everyone; stage hands, and electricians alike, on full performance and charisma.

I would see her come out of the room sometimes; the mysterious woman would open the door for her and Marlene would 'put her face on' – her movie star performing face; I could see this as the door would open sometimes before she had fully prepared.

She never met my eyes either there or when she was exiting the theatre later on, so I never knew that look she must have given to the scores of lovers of both sexes she was reputed to have known: Gary Cooper, John Wayne, James Stewart - rumours were she had affairs with Frank Sinatra, John Kennedy and Edith Piaf. She was quite open about her bisexuality but not about her age.

Nobody knew how old she was but we now know she was around 73. In the matinée that I attended I remember her singing one of her really famous songs and looking into a part of the theatre where there were empty seats. Of course it's impossible to see passed the lights when you are up there, but she was acting as if she had caught somebody's eye in a particular part of the audience.

She died in Paris in 1992 aged 90; dependent on alcohol and only seeing very few people.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Jimmy Savile: Life After Death!!

Jimmy Savile

Everybody in Britain, Jews, Gentiles, Protestants, Catholics even heathens, agnostics, atheists and sinners, are praying.

Some praying that they got it right others praying that they are wrong. All praying for one thing: that there really is life after death.

Life after death so that Jimmy Savile is getting his just deserts.

Of course before I go on I have to say that the above deserts is spelt correctly (as is spelt) and is not desserts, which is what the Americans call the pudding course:
from 1599, in Warning Faire Women:

"Upon a pillory - that all the world may see, A just desert for such impiety."

For the Americans reading this, or other people abroad, Jimmy Savile was a “TV Personality” here in the UK, who died last year. Since his death it has been discovered that he was a predatory sex offender. Mainly with young girls in vulnerable positions: girls with learning difficulties, girls in children's homes, hospitals and girls that were a bit simple, probably plain and a lot of the incidents took place in his dressing room when he was compare of Top Of the Pops, a pop music show, popular in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Here is a quote from the Telegraph:
Savile was first investigated by police “for interfering with young girls” when a nightclub manager in Leeds as long ago as 1958. His former bodyguard has told The Sunday Telegraph that Savile claimed to have paid officers to drop the case.
It was the first in a series of at least six investigations that included:
An inquiry into underage sex taking place in the Top of the Pops changing rooms in the late 1960s, according to the show’s then producer. Police interviewed BBC staff but did not pursue a case;
An allegation in 1971 that Savile was involved with a 15-year-old dancer on Top of the Pops, who committed suicide. The girl’s half-brother said Savile was interviewed as a witness, but no further action was taken;
Claims that Savile was abusing patients at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in the late 1970s. John Lindsay, a detective constable at the time, reported the allegations – made by a nurse – to his commanding officer but was told there was not enough evidence to proceed against a celebrity of Savile’s stature;
So here we are a little more than a year after his death and we are all wise after the event.

I saw Jimmy Savile round and about a few times. A nasty looking little man with a moon face who wasn't funny, didn't have any talent, charisma or sex appeal. He looked asexual and I often wondered where he got his money from; driving around in a Rolls Royce and smoking big cigars – he was a deejay for Christ sake. He would boast rather than reveal himself and when he died last year not one of the deejays who worked with him throughout the years recalled ever having a serious conversation with him.

He lived with his mother up to the time of her death and there was talk that he kept his mother's body in the house like Norman Bates did in Psycho; that was a theory, an apocryphal story or an urban myth, as they say in America.
That's the trouble with urban myths and conspiracy theories – they hide the truth.
I saw him at Top Of the Pops when I was working in the next studio at the BBC and when I finished one day I met a friend who was working on the show. He told me to come and see a dress rehearsal and then we could go to the BBC Club for a few drinks; which turned out to be a helluva few drinks.

I watched the rehearsal and stood where the dancing audience were going to stand and the cameras went around me; there were a few girls in there and a few plain looking girls with Savile. I remember thinking what a swell guy he must be to bring those girls – little more than children – for a day trip to Top Of the Pops where they would see Roger Daltrey, Sweet and other pop stars of the day. They were in the studio and the stars had to walk through the crowd to get to where they were to perform; in the rehearsal it wasn't a push.

When we had finished our drinks in the club I went back in to the studio and was told that if the camera came near me, and I was in shot, I had to dance; which I did. More people seemed to spot me on that show than in any of the other TV shows and plays I had been in!!

The place was full of very attractive girls, and the show's dancers, either Pans People or Legs and Co, were the official dancers. I used to see the official girl dancers a lot at the BBC rehearsal rooms in North Acton and was on a nodding acquaintance with one one or two of them. I never saw any of the attractive girls, or the dancers, go anywhere near Savile; his acolytes were the poor things that surrounded him who came from wherever he had inveigled them. The rest of the girls in the studio had to prove they were over 16 to be admitted – so they were above the age of consent – but Jimmy's girls didn't need that.

So now we have Jimmy Savile – Sir Jimmy Savile as he was – on the front of every newspaper in Britain every day and the real news has been forgotten; oh what a godsend for the government.

Savile's coffin.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Barack Obama; yes we can?? Or can he again?

I often wonder why the Americans call their president the leader of the free world; he isn't even leader of America. But isn't it an insult to other countries? I mean - is he the leader of Ireland? Norway or Sweden or even Great Britain?

A little thing I found out years ago, maybe from the movies, is that if ever there was an attack on the USA, a nuclear bomb for example, the president would disappear in to Air Force One, to conduct the war from there, and the Vice President would go to an undisclosed location. When New York was attacked in 2001 that is precisely what happened. But Americans were asking 'where is our president?' 'why isn't he here?'

I knew that was going to happen so why didn't they?

It's the same with this president; he has no more power than his majority in Congress so it's no good blaming Obama because things didn't go to plan with some of the things he promised: closing down Guantanamo Bay, boosting the economy and all the rest.

Now as most regular readers of this blog will know, and there are regulars, I am not an expert on anything. But when has that stopped me? In fact when has it stopped lots of pundits pontificating; including the Pontiff!

Things started out okay for Obama, Senator Edward Kennedy must have thought that his life's work would come to some kind of fruition, with maybe free health care at source and one or two other things and when Ted Kennedy died he probably thought things would go ahead smoothly – just like Jimmy Savile.

Obama had a majority in both houses, he had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate (by one) and things were going to be okay.

But the democrats didn't take seriously the election for Kennedy's Senate seat; the woman that stood for it let a Kennedy type looking fella from the Republican Party – the GOP – steal the seat and Obama's filibuster proof majority.

From then on it was up hill all the way for Barry Obama.

Every time he tried to get things through Congress he was thwarted by the Republicans, - the nasty party - and now there is a chance that the USA might vote for Mitt Romney - which would be a disaster. This is because the American voter has a short memory – they voted Nixon in remember – and as H L Menkin put it 'No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.'

One of the worries is that Obama didn't do too well in the first Presidential debate but there again Bush didn't do too well in any of his debates with John Kerry or those with Al Gore so all is not lost.

Some people say the reason Clinton beat Bush Sr is because of the economy; the economy stupid was the phrase. But anybody could see that the right wing was split between George Bush Sr and Ross Perot. Clinton won 32 states plus DC to Bush's 18 states. But the popular vote went 43% to Clinton and 56.4% against; in other words the right (Bush and Perot) won the majority between them but cancelled each other out.

In 1996, Clinton did slightly better by getting 49.2% of the popular vote and the right wing (Dole this time and Perot again) got 49.1%. That time though Clinton only won 31 states plus DC and Dole improved on Bush and won 19.

Is this a fair way to elect the 'leader of the free world?' The fella they get rid of as soon as there's trouble by bundling him into an aeroplane at the first sign of trouble? The fella who also gets bundled into a car or frog marched out of a room if anybody goes for him? The fella who says he wants to close down Guantanamo Bay, introduce free health care at source, regulate the banks, put more money into education and a lot of other things.

Wouldn't you say those things if you believed in them and you were being voted in for the job and wouldn't you be very surprised when you got into your Casa Blanca to find you were left holding a tambourine like Pete Best said Ringo was left holding at The Beatles first recording session – can't blame him for being bitter can you about not being as good as Ringo.

So why blame Obama? If Obama does get re-elected it will be no good if he doesn't have a majority in Congress; he will be a lame duck president from day one so what's the point?

Tell me what the difference is between voting for a President or voting for a flag?

Monday, October 1, 2012

WeHo Daily, LA and California.

Mission San Juan Capistrano

I am asked a lot if I'm I glad to be back in London - well yes, but there are things I miss about Los Angeles – well California – and things I'm glad to see in London. It would be great to live in both places. There would be nothing like it for expanding the mind.

Some of the things I miss about Los Angeles are the things I never quite got to do whilst there. For instance we never went to Mexico although we were very close to it. One day we drove to the border, parked and watched people walking across. We didn't have our passports or green cards with us so didn't chance it. It was at the Tijuana border so we wouldn't have seen much without the car and we certainly weren't going to take that across.

Places like Hawaii were relatively close but it wasn't really a place I had hankered after.

I saw the great Hitchcock movie recently Vertigo and once again loved every minute of it. Well not every minute of it; I'm not much of a James Stewart fan, although I thought he was more than adequate in this, but I hated his opening scene when he is sitting down holding a walking stick and he is trying to balance the stick on his hand – why couldn't he just sit there like people do in real life?

In the film someone throws them self from the roof of one of the missionary buildings – like the one in the photo above - and it got me thinking about those buildings. I used to live a short drive from one or two of them and a few more were accessible to me if I wanted to see them on a 'day trip.'

But I didn't actually go into any of them.

There are 21 missionary buildings in California up the coast from the north to the south of the state. They were set up by the Spanish in the late 18^th to 19^th centuries when Spain tried to colonize the west coast of America and convert the Indians in to Roman Catholics.

By the way – the few Indians I have met, and they were mostly Navajos, preferred the title of Indian to ‘native American’ which came from the white man – white men professors. Some people – naming no names, Jim – call the people of India, the real India where the word came from, as East Indians!!!! They were only called Indians when America was discovered because the discoverers (Columbus) thought they had reached India.

But I digress again:

Mission Santa Barbara.

Mission San Juan, Bautista

Used in the movie Vertigo.

Those missionary buildings are still there even though they were officially closed down by the Mexican Government in the 1830s. The Mexican Government? Yes they sold California to the United States just before gold was discovered in 1849, I believe!!

Those buildings are some of the oldest buildings in the state of California and they are the most frequently visited places in the state. I stood outside the one in San Juan Capistrano (Misión San Juan de Capistrano) one day, which is half way between Los Angeles and Mexico, and the most famous of the Missionary Buildings because of the seagulls story, (http://www.sanjuancapistrano.net/swallows) but didn’t have the time to go in and another time I had business near the one in San Fernando but that time I dropped my wife off there and picked her up when I was ready; so she went in.

The building of those buildings and the colonization by the Spanish are the reason the Mexican and other Latinos of the state are Roman Catholic.

But it isn't just the scenery I miss – as I have mentioned before there are beautiful places in London and expansive scenery in other parts of the British Isles.

I have some wonderful friends in California and there is a certain madness about Los Angeles. I used to see a man every day running backwards. He would look over his shoulder as he jogged along and one day it rained; so he turned around and ran home – backwards!

Some terrible things happen there, of course, but it's the madness I used to like; in rock'n'roll Ralphs I would think nothing of seeing someone with purple hair, a woman with a breast implant which must have been 90 inches all around, in fact I've written on here about the girl who came and asked me if I had ever farted in a supermarket – that was almost two years ago and here it is if you want to read it again http://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/have-you-ever-farted-in-supermarket.html

Recently there was another bit of lore that will go down with the girl who jumped off the Hollywood Sign, the Black Dahlia, OJ Simpson and River Phoenix. An up and coming star battered his 81 year old landlady to death, climbed up on his roof and fell to his death – that was last week.

When I lived there I followed someone called WeHo Daily on Twitter. Now WeHo is short for West Hollywood so West Hollywood Daily tells you on Twitter what is happening at that precise moment. It can become addictive especially if I was going out. I would look at WeHo Daily and they might say that the street is blocked off somewhere with police activity or something. That could mean anything from a hostage situation to a road accident to a street crime – anything.

So I looked at WeHo Daily for the day when the commotion took place last week and the place hasn't changed. This made me laugh:

26 Sep