Tony Curtis RIP.

If there was one thing Marlon Brando was right about it was that his favourite actor was Tony Curtis. He said he was the only actor who could smile properly and he was right.

Anybody can scream and shout and burst out crying but when it comes to something in between it's not that easy. Just look at some of the false smiles on present day movie stars and see what I mean.

There is another thing he did better than most and that was comedy; comedy acting is one of the hardest things to do in the actors' repertoire and they say 'stand up' is even harder.

Look how much he had to do and how good he is in a below par movie Boeing Boeing!

Some people say that actors like Tony Curtis and other actors like Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum were some kind of 'personality' actors bringing their own personality to all of their roles; well so what? Great actors with great reputations do the same thing; it really is easy to play extreme characters – maniacs, mentally ill people, monsters and the like but very hard to be Cary Grant – or Tony Curtis.

I met him when I first came to live in Los Angeles; one is always a bit tentative when meeting one of your favourite actors but he was no disappointment. He was such a regular guy – and a movie fan – that it was unreal. He was also about the same size as me!!

I loved it when he came to live in Britain and did the Persuaders with Roger Moore all those years ago; if ever his character needed an alias he would use his real name Bernie Schwartz.

When I was about 16 I would go to the barber's and asked for the Tony Curtis cut – wouldn't have been the same if I'd asked for a Bernie Schwartz would it?

Actually it was the Tony Curtis, Boston DA; Tony Curtis being the hair style, the Boston being the square neck (which I hate now) and the DA was the Duck's Arse; that was the way the hair was swept around the sides to the back which looked like the back of a duck; yes the Duck's Arse which is the way the people in Minnesota say duck sauce.

Of course my dad, who's trade was a barber, when he saw the Boston, was disgusted; you've had a bleedin' neck shave, he would say.

He was right.

Bye bye Bernie!!

Sally Menke RIP and the heat of Los Angeles.

The day before yesterday, Monday 27th September is to go down in the history of Los Angeles as the hottest day ever – 113 degrees Fahrenheit; that's 45 degrees Celsius in other parts of the world; other parts of the world that don't use Fahrenheit only when temperatures there reach either zero or one hundred; now why would they do that?

I have been receiving e-mails from friends and relations in Scotland and England complaining how cold it is there and raining too and here we are suffering.

There was a very good very famous film editor who died from heat exhaustion not far from here in Griffith Park; Sally Menke (above) edited all Quentin Tarantino's films and she went walking with her dog; her friends looked for her when she didn't return and her body was found many hours later at 2:00 am and the dog didn't leave her side.

An editor is the person on a film who finds a big piece of concrete and shapes it into a statue; Tarantino will be lost without her as she was a close friend of his as well as his trusty editor. He said that he writes and directs alone and the only collaborator he has (had) was Sally.

When actors made a bit of a mess in a scene in Tarantino movies – you know fluffed a line or something – they would turn to the camera and say 'sorry Sally' and a lot of them would just simply say 'hello Sally.'

There were also many thousands of people here without power – so think yourself lucky with your wind and rain!

My shaving gel turned to foam because of the heat; our main window faces north so it hasn't been too bad here till later in the day but the bathroom faces south. This means the wall in there is hot when you touch it and my poor old shaving gel was touching the wall. I put it in the fridge and it was okay yesterday.

Our front door faces south too and that gets very hot; the idea is to keep the windows closed because as soon as you open them you can feel the hot air entering the room – if you put the fan by the open window it blows hot air in too.

We don't see much of the cat in this kind of heat; he stays under the bed or in the wardrobe.

Los Angeles usually has heat waves in September even though it is autumn – fall as they call it here.

So goodbye Sally Menke and I hear Arthur Penn has just died too – 2 movies I remember from him were The Left Handed Gun and Bonnie and Clyde.

Ed Miliband and the 'F' word.

Before I start to write this post there is a chance that I might say the 'F' word; I did mention this when I extended my mailing list some time ago. I said this blog would not be censored in any way so it it offends you – wassamatter with you – it's only a word!!

I think it was only in the Victorian era that certain words were deemed taboo and their uses were stopped. A bit like America today in fact. Here they will not use the word Godamn on TV; they will bleep the God part however they don't mind using the word bollocks and piss. To hear commentators and talk show hosts using the word piss and bollocked (as in the bollocked things up) is funny and the other day I heard the word bugger; so things must be looking up.

There are a few words that have come into the vernacular since we have been here; words such as queue were never used and when I first came I heard a new word oxymoron – I certainly heard moron a lot in the UK but never oxymoron.

But words and phrases are catching on here from the UK as words and phrases catch on in Britain that come from America. They don't rhyming slang here, that I love, which has spread away from the cockneys and into the middle and upper classes in England and they don't really use the word fortnight; but time will tell.

All that above to explain why I'm using the 'F' word later on.

I used to hear my parents say that the policemen are getting younger which was really telling them that they, themselves, were getting old but what about politicians??

The new leader of the Labour Party in Britain is younger than our eldest daughter; that's very hard for me to write down particularly as I always say I'm 39 years old.

Ed Miliband, bless him, and there he is above, has come from an excellent background. He was educated at a North London Comprehensive school as opposed to the Public School posh background of Clegg and Cameron – the Brokeback Twins – and the son of the Marxist Theorist, Ralph Miliband and his parents were pals of Tony Benn; so what could be better?

He is also the younger brother of David Miliband, the former Foreign Secretary whom he contested and narrowly defeated for the leadership of the party over the weekend.

He is more left leaning than his brother whom I think was associated with Gordon Brown/Tony Blair too much but he (Ed) only won the contest by a tiny percentage.

Now I hope we don't have a Cane and Abel thing going on here!!

The other thing I noticed was when David Miliband arrived at the railway station the other day in Manchester for the conference he was wearing a dark shirt, tight jeans and, what looked like, winkle picker shoes. Bit of a change from the old guard entering (below); Brown with his entourage as opposed to David Miliband as Spring Heeled Jack. .

So where has this fella, Ed, come from?

From The Guardian - There was a brief stint as a television researcher before he went to work for Harriet Harman (who had called the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley to ask if he would recommend the bright, young, left wing man who had worked with him).
Miliband junior went on to work at the Treasury with the chancellor and was soon an undisputed Brownite. In the days that the relationship between the two camps became most strained Ed was seen as the one person who could span the warring tribes – perhaps down to his relationship with his brother. He had also dated Liz Lloyd, who had worked for Blair and was a close friend of James Purnell.
Blairites nicknamed the younger Miliband the "emissary from the Planet Fuck".

So there we are – The Guardian said it not me.

Socialism and Ryanair!!

Now what does socialism have to do with Michael O'Leary (above) of Ryanair? Absolutely nothing.

Michael O'Leary is a genius of an entrepreneur and gets his airline into the news all the time; a few months ago he was on news items all over the world because it got out that he was proposing to charge for the use of the lavatories on his flights; and what did that do? It got everybody asking who Ryanair was and when people looked into it they found that the airline was offering incredibly cheap flights between various places in Europe; but maybe not for those with a weak bladder.

The flights are mostly from Dublin and last year I went from London (Stanstead) to Dublin and back for very little money. The first time, last March, it cost me less that £10 ($15) for a round trip; the second time a little bit more.

So what am I getting at?

Socialism has been banned in America since the 1950s and the red scare, red channels, reds under the bed, the House Unamerican Activities Committee and all the other paranoia clap trap. Nobody who has lived here consistently for the past fifty odd years has ever lived under Socialism or probably knows the first thing about it.

Which is why when Republicans and members of the so called Tea Party call the policies of a very soft left President Obama Socialist, they prove they know nothing about Socialism or even politics.

If Obama was a Socialist he would have nationalised the means of power, transport, the health service and the post office. Not necessarily the banks, I might add, as the Labour and Socialist Party which governed Britain in the sixties didn't nationalise the banks then; they did, however, nationalise The Bank of England which, for American readers, is kind of equivalent to the Federal Reserve.

To save you looking on Wikipedia the Bank of England is (despite its name) the central bank of the whole of the United Kingdom and is the model on which most modern, large central banks have been based. It was established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and to this day it still acts as the banker for Her Majesties Government. The Bank was privately owned and operated from its foundation in 1694 until it was nationalised in 1946 by the Labour Party which was a Socialist government.

In 1997, under the very UN-Socialist government of Tony Blair, it became an independent public organisation, wholly-owned by Government, with independence in setting monetary policy.


Since nationalisation in 1946, the country has been ruled for a majority of the time by the Conservative Party including the right wing Thatcher debacle and not once did they de-nationionalise the bank – ask yourself why.

The UK didn't have extreme Socialist policies like the USSR (The United Soviet of Socialist Republics) it established the National Health Service and to this day – even though the present Tory Government will try and change it somehow – nobody in Britain is without free health service. I wrote about that recently and don't need to go into it again so what is my point?

Nobody in America has even talked about Socialism since the 1950s until the opponents of President Obama started calling him a Socialist; now people are looking up Socialist in their dictionaries and Wikipedia and finding something they like – or dislike of course - just as the people who were disgusted with the fact that Ryanair were going to charge people for using the lavatory on their flights looked into the company which drew attention to them and increased their business.

Name recognition!!!

There is a lot of talk about the Republicans taking over the Senate well I think they shot themselves in the foot – I don't think they will; they have let the Tea Part influence them too much; thank you Sarah Palin.

By the way Michael O'Leary went to the same college as James Joyce!

Fedex and my broken guitar; a happy ending.

A lot of people had asked but I'm pleased to report a happy ending to the missing/broken guitar saga – but not without a very long phone call and a few choice words – so let me tell you in case it might happen to you one day . . . .

Back in Los Angeles I thought I would get on to Fedex and see what was what so the other day I gave them a call. The department was the CAD in Georgia; now I know the devil went down to Georgia so when I called them I was wary; I asked for the woman I spoke to the very first day the guitar was on its way back to Los Angeles and for the umpteenth time I was told she had stepped out - again – so I settled for another woman - again.

I had to explain the whole situation and eventually she cottoned on to the situation; she told me there was no complaint number so she would make one and settled for that; I then told my daughter and she told me that I'd quoted the wrong complaint number so I called them back in Georgia and spoke to someone else who passed the new number on.

The next day I received an email from an International Claims Rep in the FCIS, whatever that is; she told me that a claim for damages had to be made within 21 days from the delivery date and she said Unfortunately, I will not be able to honor a claim for this shipment. Cheeky bugger, I thought to myself then I forwarded it to my daughter and said 'here's a bit of fun.'

So I called the woman and before I could even get out a few digits of the ten digit number of the complaint number my daughter had told me she interrupted me and continued to interrupt me till I hung up on her as she wouldn't even put me through to her supervisor when I asked.

Back to Georgia; the original woman had stepped out yet again but this time I persisted and told them I had called so many times and she had always stepped out but this time they needed to fetch her; I was asked to hang on and I hung on for about fifteen minutes till she actually came to the phone. She confirmed that her department was the Customer Advocate Department so deduced from this that she was my representative in hell.

I told her that I'd been refused and that we'd been talking since day one and she said “I need to find this woman's supervisor and get you to talk to her.”

So after what seemed forever I was put in touch with the supervisor who couldn't have been nicer.

After a very long conversation they gave me the price I paid for the replacement guitar, the price I paid for the original shipment and credited my daughter's Fedex account which was invoiced for the international shipment.

My daughter had called them within days and that call was recorded so the woman who refused me was totally wrong.

So there we are – I'm satisfied.

Here's a bonus:


The devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal.
He was in a bind 'cos he was way behind: he was willin' to make a deal.
When he came across this young man sawin' on a fiddle and playin' it hot.
And the devil jumped upon a hickory stump and said: "Boy let me tell you what:
"I bet you didn't know it, but I'm a fiddle player too.
"And if you'd care to take a dare, I'll make a bet with you.
"Now you play a pretty good fiddle, boy, but give the devil his due:
"I bet a fiddle of gold against your soul, 'cos I think I'm better than you."
The boy said: "My name's Johnny and it might be a sin,
"But I'll take your bet, your gonna regret, 'cos I'm the best that's ever been."

Johnny you rosin up your bow and play your fiddle hard.
'Cos hells broke loose in Georgia and the devil deals the cards.
And if you win you get this shiny fiddle made of gold.
But if you lose, the devil gets your soul.

The devil opened up his case and he said: "I'll start this show."
And fire flew from his fingertips as he rosined up his bow.
And he pulled the bow across his strings and it made an evil hiss.
Then a band of demons joined in and it sounded something like this.
When the devil finished, Johnny said: "Well you're pretty good ol' son.
"But sit down in that chair, right there, and let me show you how its done."

Fire on the mountain, run boys, run.
The devil's in the house of the risin' sun.
Chicken in the bread pan, pickin' out dough.
"Granny, does your dog bite?"
"No, child, no."

The devil bowed his head because he knew that he'd been beat.
He laid that golden fiddle on the ground at Johnny's feet.
Johnny said: "Devil just come on back if you ever want to try again.
"I told you once, you son of a gun, I'm the best that's ever been."

And he played fire on the mountain, run boys, run.
The devil's in the house of the risin' sun.
Chicken in the bread pan, now they're pickin' out dough.
"Granny, will your dog bite?"
"No, child, no."

By Charlie Daniels

The difference in health care between the UK and America.

Here we are back in our own beds; since we left Scotland we haven't slept in the same bed for more than a few days running.

Here we are back in our own beds; since we left Scotland we haven't slept in the same bed for more than a few days running.

I want to give an example of the difference in health care between the UK and American and this will be based on very recent experience.

My wife, Margaret, has pneumonia; she catches pneumonia like other people catch colds and in the last six years she has had it around five or six times. It's worrying but she seems to get over it and is caused by a weak immune system due to an auto immune disease she has.

The symptoms are easy for us to detect by now and they usually start with a cold; if we can catch it there it's great but if not we know the outcome.

So last week she picked up the chicken pox virus and woke up in London in a cold sweat with a high temperature; we called a doctor's surgery – what they call in the USA a doctor's office – and they agreed to an appointment. We had to be at the doctors for 11:15 and wait to be 'slipped in' between proper appointments.

As we are not registered with that particular surgery we had to fill in a form with my wife's national health number included; this we did.

The surgery was a very modern building in Ealing; it was split into 3 reception windows; one for the doctors and the other two for clinics. When a doctor was ready for you a beep was heard and whomsoever was next had their name displayed on a neon notice which told you what room to go to; much like any doctor's office in the US.

After about forty five minutes we were called in to see a very pleasant and attractive female doctor of about forty who greeted us at her door - not like in the USA where you are shown into a consulting room and told to sit on the edge of an examination bed where you wait for what seems forever.

The doctor had a computer on her desk and we sat next to her. On the computer was the Internet and my wife's name was on the screen with her national health number. The doctor mentioned that there was no information about my wife and we explained that we live in America. If we lived in the UK and had been to the doctor – any doctor – in recent months that information would have been on the screen; I don't know if this happens in the USA yet but I suspect not.

The doctor examined my wife, took her temperature and asked her to go to the lavatory to produce a sample of urine in case my wife had a urine infection. This she did and the doctor tested it there and then.

Of course the doctor, as all doctors do, didn't believe that my wife had had pneumonia so many times; she listened to my wife's chest and said it was clear. We explained that it was always clear at this stage and the doctor then prescribed an antibiotic.

This was a broad spectrum antibiotic meant to cover a whole range of infections and as I mentioned in the last paragraph she didn't believe us about the pneumonia.

So we went to the pharmacist, which was less than a hundred yards away, and the pharmacist filled out the prescription and gave it to is – by the way no money changed hands either at the doctors or the pharmacist – universal health care you see.

As it happens the antibiotic didn't agree with my wife as she experienced one of the side affects mentioned on the pamphlet so, as they advised, she discontinued use. She carried on with the aspirin and other pain killers but because it was Saturday evening she didn't bother to get the antibiotic changed; looking back she could have as all surgeries do a night and weekend service.

So when we arrived back in Los Angeles I couldn't really call anybody as it was Labour Day – a holiday. If we called our doctor we would have been told to either go to the ER or call 911 but in any case it was late in the day so I called the doctor yesterday – Tuesday.

Now bear in mind that this is our regular doctor in Beverly Hills; not all residents of the USA have this kind of access especially if they don't have health insurance but the doctor is available to everybody providing you have the means and are willing to pay for it.

Also – he is our regular doctor and has my wife's medical records with the history of pneumonia over the past six years; but they don't have it on a computer; not yet!!

As with the doctor in London there are no appointments; so I had to talk to the receptionist to try and put a case forward for the doctor to see my wife as soon as possible. I explained about the previous bouts of pneumonia but she still wanted me to describe symptoms and temperatures and when I explained everything she said she would have a word with the doctor and call me back.

She did call back and said the doctor wanted my wife to have an x ray and that she had sent a fax to the imaging company that do them to authorise it – we have been many times to the place over the past six years so that's what we did.

When my wife had the x ray they saw something on her lung and called our doctor; the doctor instructed them, over the phone, to do a catscan (ct scan) and this they did.

We were told to call the doctor and we did on the way home and the same receptionist told us that he would call us later at home. When he did he told my wife she had pneumonia; then he called the pharmacist and gave them the prescription over the phone

I went and picked it up and it cost $65; we didn't see the doctor at all so we were kind of treated over the phone or by proxy – no TLC there.

To be fair to the British system it would have been different if they'd had my wife's records on line with her history (or the back story as they are annoyingly saying these days).

They would have treated her accordingly but blood tests and x ray results usually take longer than this as a rule in America and I'm not sure how that would have worked in the UK.

I leave it to you to judge which system is better but in the UK it's available to everybody through the National Health Service and no such system exists in America where forty million people cannot go to a doctor as they have no health insurance.

They can go to an ER and they will treat them and the government will pay for that I believe.

This is my one hundredth post so here is a photo I took of our cat yeaterday - welcoming us home with a smile

The Edinburgh Book Lovers' Tour and Literary Pub Crawl and other things....

That building, above, is the Writer's Museum where a friend I got to know in Edinburgh, Allan Foster, starts a Literary Pub Crawl twice a day from around May to September. Allan came to my show and I enjoyed his talks at the Havers and Blethers evenings at The Captain's Bar.

What a wonderful thing to have in your city - A Writer's Museum.

By the way - earlier readers of this post will have seen a different picture. Now THAT is the Writers' Museum, above, and not the one previously.

Here's Allan's blurb taken from his web site:

The Edinburgh Book Lovers' Tour and Literary Pub Crawl are led by Allan Foster, author of 'The Literary Traveller In Edinburgh' & 'The Literary Traveller In Scotland', published by Mainstream. All prominent Scottish writers from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century are included and discussed in their literary, historical and cultural contexts, set in the landscapes where they were born and which inspired them. It details the birthplaces, childhoods, former homes and burial places of famous Scottish authors, uncovers sites, restaurants and pubs with a literary connection, and lists notable bookshops, literary museums and other places of relevance in the world of Scottish writing. This attractive tome is lavishly illustrated with photographs, whilst maps enhance many of the entries, including the Kidnapped trail, Boswell and Johnson's Highland journey, Burns country, Richard Hannay's 39 Steps trail, the Pentland walks of Robert Louis Stevenson, a plan of Rosslyn Chapel, Gavin Maxwell's Sandaig, Compton Mackenzie's Barra, the Ettrick Valley of James Hogg, the Mearns of Lewis Grassic Gibbon, J. M. Barrie's Thrums and the ports and pubs of Para Handy, to name a few. There has never been a national literary guide for Scotland until now . . . . etc.

He tells tails of two writers - Mark Twain and Walter Scott; Mark Twain blamed Scott for the American Civil War - in as much that Scott "had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the American Civil War that he is in great measure responsible for the war"

Pity they didn't meet!

What a response to my last posting about the number 27 bus in Edinburgh; over 150 hits on that posting alone, a couple of comments on the blog and quite a few e-mails from people I know.

I heard from loads of people but not from my brother who usually responds to every one; he is still sending e-mails about the one before which concerned the nun coming into my (our – everybody's) dressing room and getting changed.

Of course she wasn't a real nun she was an actress (an actress???? Who's she living with?? - Peter Ustinov) and I was joking but my poor brother is living on the edge of civilisation doing his bit for crown and country so he can and has to be forgiven.

I also sent it to a friend of mine separately and it went by mistake to the Scottish press folder which was where I was sending my press releases that they ignored. This time I got a lot of response from them but this time it was 'your e-mail was unread' - at least they are alive as I suspected otherwise when they ignored my show – but in the end we didn't need them.

Hope you received it by now Scott!

So I head back to Los Angeles one guitar short; I had to buy one, as you may remember, over here and as United Airlines wanted $200 to transport the new one back I sold it for half the price I bought it for; so it was a cheap hire in the end.

I hope to be on the beach in Venice with some friends on Sunday September 12th for my Sunday morning breakfast and bike ride – a million miles from Edinburgh but it will be close to my heart.