Hooray for Hollywood and Crowdfunding.

Well the Academy Awards will be this weekend and I'm sad to be missing them again. That's the guy, above, who will win the Oscar for best actor Leonardo de Caprio.

He will win because he won the best actor at the SAG (Screen Actors's Guild) Awards.

It happens every year because it is the same people who vote for best actor in both awards – SAG and Academy.

I don't get a vote now but because I used to get a vote I would go and meet the stars at a screening of their movies; they cared, so they came along. A lot of actors say they don't care but they are usually actors who would never be considered in any case. I knew one guy who would go and read a book in Santa Monica rather than appear to take an interest. On the other hand I popped in to Dan Tanna's the first year I was there and everybody at the bar was watching the show in their tuxedos.

The last person I met was Jeff Bridges, who was a really nice and with great hair; I don't think he won for True Grit – but he might have done – and others that came along were George Clooney, Heath Ledger – oh and Leonardo de Caprio himself when he played Howard Hughes.

So I'll miss all that again this year.

I'll be starting a crowdfunding campaign – maybe this week so if you win a load of money with your bet on de Caprio come along! 

You won't get your feet wet.

If you haven't heard of crowdfunding – and why would you? - it's very simple.

Well the easiest way to explain is to look in Wiki – it's been going since 1997 and here's what they say:

Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, today often performed via internet-mediated registries, but the concept can also be executed through mail-order subscriptions, benefit events, and other methods. Crowdfunding is a form of alternative finance, which has emerged outside of the traditional financial system.

The crowdfunding model is based on three types of actors: the project initiator who proposes the idea and/or project to be funded; individuals or groups who support the idea; and a moderating organization (the "platform") that brings the parties together to launch the idea .

In 2013, the crowdfunding industry raised over $5.1 billion worldwide.

I am not after any where near that but the main idea is to spread the word – so watch this space.

The Artist, the town, the PM and the writer.

It was just then she told me she'd got an old man,

She said come round for tea on Sunday if you can,

He'll be in Margate for the day

And that's when I said 'no way'

It's time to walk back to my van.

Excuse that indulgence – a few lines from a song I wrote some time ago. It was in my head when we went to Margate last week; maybe I'll record it soon.

Yes Margate; it's a seaside town in Kent and the painter, JMW Turner, said 'the skies over Thanet (where Margate is) are the loveliest in all Europe.'

He painted over one hundred oils and water colours on his visits there which is a pancake flat semi island jutting in to the North Sea and is surrounded by water on three sides. It has vast skies and dramatic light which was perfect for his art.

He stayed in a guest house in Margate and if you go there today you will see the Turner Gallery on the spot where the guest house stood. 

From one of the windows you can see an impressive vista of the sky, the sea and what Turner must have experienced at the time.

But what is art?

Some people say that it you call yourself an artist you are pretentious and I say, 'Pretentious? Moi???”

There's an ongoing conversation with lots of American actors, and actors from other places, as to whether acting is an art or a craft. 

Personally I don't really care to join the conversation but sometimes it's a bit sickening to hear actors talk about their craft in nearly every sentence. I would just say this – yes it is pretentious to keep talking about your art but a craft?

With a craft you know how it's going to end up – it's going to be a table, a chair, a piece of origami whereas with art – painting, acting, singing or whatever – you don't really know how it's going to end up – and if you do then it becomes an craft.

Now I am not going to mention any names here but when I walked in to the Turner centre; and look at it (above) it's very impressive – I went along a corridor and on the wall there were some pictures and I immediately thought 'oh they are exhibiting some children's pictures; maybe from an infants' class close by?'

The first picture was of a face; just an oval face as any child would draw. It was maybe 18 inches by 24 inches.

An oval face, two dots for eyes, a line for a nose and a smiley mouth. 

In the background was a pair of lips as roughly drawn as the face.

There was nothing else in the picture.

At the side it mentioned who it was drawn by, told us what it was drawn on and gave the dimensions.

Along the wall there were other pictures, all, more or less the same size, and of the same standard.

On the opposite wall, in the corridor, was a monitor playing a DVD.

I put the head phones on and it was an old lady of maybe 70 who was the artist of the pictures on exhibit.

She was talking very seriously about her inspirations and influences and . . . .

What is art?

I haven't said anything derogatory about anybody here but you have to think.

Margate has been a renaissance town of late with quite a few films set there; a television series or two, lots of organic cafés, independent galleries and vintage clothes shops but the day we went it was closed.

The recent series there True Love, was improvised love stories so there must be some attraction – but the day we went not only were the shops closed Margate was closed.

The place has a reputation of all things artistic; Tracey Emin made her bed there, won the Turner Prize with it and contributed to the Turner Centre but, and I have to ask this what is art?

There are people totally devoid of art of any kind. 

Whether you like it or not people following soap operas on TV are following an art form – drama, acting whatever.

I remember in the sixties when a court case was reported in the media a witness would say they were listening to The Beatles or watching James Bond and the judge would ask 'what or who are The Beatles?' or James Bond?

They were obviously living in a different world from anybody else.

When we read Shakespeare there are sometimes funny lines we don't understand. 

These are the same kind of lines that are used in panto here when an act will refer to a TV commercial or programme in a joke. The judge wouldn't get the joke as they don't follow the zeitgeist. 

Politicians have tried to make jokes but when they take their kids to the panto at Christmas they don't get the jokes as they never watch television.

I heard the case of the Canadian Prime Minister of whom it was said never read a novel – just text books and the like.

He was also the Prime Minister who, upon the death of Pierre Tredeau, criticised him instead of paying tribute.

The Canadian writer Yann Martell, who wrote The Life of Pi, sent that Prime Minister, Stephen Harper by the way, a book every month and a letter and Harper didn't even acknowledge him. he sent 101 books and letters.

A very famous Canadian writer, as with The Beatles, who is Yann Martell?

The same Yann Martell wrote to Barack Obama who sent back a hand written note saying that he and his daughter had loved The Life of Pi.

Barack Obama aye?

Appreciate him whilst you have him, America, the road doesn't look too optimistic ahead!

Circumventing the Circumflex.

I think, and I am probably the only one does, that the worst thing America did to itself, like some leviathan masochist, was to release Webster's Dictionary on the populace.

I mean what was the matter with the original spelling? Why couldn't they get used to spelling diarrhoea as diarrhoea instead of diarrhea; why couldn't they get used to that extra 'o'? No wonder nobody in America writes about diarrhoea as there is no challenge when writing it down. It's easier to let Donald Trump talk diarrhoea than to let someone write about it.

Webster didn't bother changing the name of Albuquerque because he knew how to spell it. That doesn't mean that he was a brilliant man because he could spell it, as William Shakespeare wouldn't have been able to spell it if he'd been alive today and why would he bother when the world would be at the feet of a 400 year old living writer?

But to the point: what has become a big pain in the arse for me since returning from America, where I lived for 17 years, is that I got used to the American spellings and now since my return I can't remember which is which.

I remember a Canadian writer (not you Jim), whom I knew in Los Angeles in 1995, would only submit his scripts with American spelling as he believed they wouldn't employ non-Americans – or wouldn't hire non-Americans, to use the American vernacular.

One guy said to me once that the English put the 'u' into words like colour to be fancy; to be fancy?? 

No the Americans took it out – Webster took it out and in so doing cut off the access to the history of some words.

You can see where some words come from by their spelling. The way to pronounce Ye olde Shoppe, by the way, is the old shop. 

Plain and simple. 

In the olden days (daze) F and S were the same and I've told you about the 27^th letter of the alphabet! Yes I did it was the ampersand = &.

Recently the French have done a Webster; they have cancelled the circumflex – this is a circumflex ^ - it goes over lots of words such as those with certain vowels but accent (known as a fada in Ireland and the tilde in Spanish) will remain on the 'e' and the 'a' (????) and they are going to remove the hyphen in compound nouns such as porte-monnaie and week-end.

Why?

Incidentally the circumflex is a good thing to use for a password; for example your password could be ^forexample12F – everything in it.

Right – back to France before I get interrupted with any more thoughts – actually I get interrupted by thoughts all the time, when I write, and sometimes, even though I have not written any masterpieces yet – Yet I say – some brilliant thoughts have come to me whilst writing a fiction!

You have your password so onward: 26 years ago France decided on these changes and they were suggested by Académie Française (you see I put them in including that funny little thing on the bottom of the C ç) and in 2008 the education ministry suggested the new spelling rules were 'the reference' to be used but few people noticed.

Then in November the changes were mentioned in another government document – but nobody noticed again.

Then when it was reported on TV there was an uproar – all over the Internet, social media, Twitter, the lot – you must have noticed?

No?

Oh well.

The only thing is that people in Britain will not take any notice; ever since England was invaded by William the Conquerer in 1066 – William of Normandy – the English refuse to pronounce French words with the accents. 

The 'T' is sounded in fillet here, the 'H' in herb and all the other naughty to the English things the Americans do.

I think Starbucks tried to confuse the Americans with the size of the drinks – English (tall) for small, Spanish (grandé) for large and Italian (venti) twenty ounces.

Of course 20 ounces here is a pint as opposed to the 16 ounce pint in America; that's why you never get a true pint of ale there.

Fame and Terry Wogan.

Terry Wogan with Princess Diana.

Celebrity is a strange thing isn't it? It's a bit like profit, or getting paid, who wins the Oscar, which picture has grossed the most last week.

Never which picture is the grossest?

Last week the nation's heart was broken with the death of Terry Wogan.

It was on the front of every newspaper here – and there are lots of national newspaper dailies here – and the two shittiest newspapers (I refer you to the thought above), The Daily Mirror and The Sun, published the same headline on the front page – Thank you for Being Our Friend. And a photo of Terry Wogan with it.

The Daily Mail, surely the worst kind of right wing newspaper (they even supported Hitler, so they say) had some kind of Wogan v Bowie feature which, I'm sure you will agree is an example of very bad taste.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say a bad or a negative word about Terry Wogan – I'm sure they will come out of the woodwork – as everybody here loved him.

He was a wonderful human being, had a wonderful voice, great Limerick Irish accent, was quick witted, kind a cuddly.

He was ostensibly a radio deejay and commentator. When JFK visited Ireland in the 60s his was the voice that described the visit but after he came to England and became a deejay it was quite obvious that this was no airhead spin jockey. His quick wit and love of words and the fact that he never let politics mar either his shows or judgement, endeared him to the listeners and eventually viewers of Britain that by the time he died last Sunday the nation was in shock.

Yet he was largely unknown in America.

His position on the pro list of the IMDb – the Internet Movie Data Base – was about the same as mine; this is because the IMDb is mainly American even though it is a British company which is centred in Bristol. (guess who bought it? Yes – Amazon).

David Bowie on the other hand was known the world over. His star was not as large as Terry Wogan's here in fact it could be said that only a minority of the population knew many Bowie songs. I knew loads because I still have a lot of his albums – on vinyl of course.

So that's all I have to say about our two late friends – they joined, in January, quite a few fellow artists, stars and even garters who we lost, including Ed (stewpot) Stewart, Alan Rickman, Brian Bedford, Glenn Frey and Frank Finlay (whom I worked with) and more.

Terry's fame was national and he lived in Windsor near The Queen but what is fame?

Many years ago I did some radio commercials for Chiltern Radio; they were, or maybe still are, in Bedfordshire and I was a regular listener as I liked the music they played. When I went in the front door of the building, just behind the receptionist, there was a reel to reel tape recorder on the wall which was recording the entire output of the station which I could hear.

As I walked along the hall to the little studio where I was to record, I could see through a glass door a man sitting behind a desk with a microphone in front of him. He was the only person in the room and he was speaking to a few hundred thousand listeners in the county of Bedfordshire.

What I found crazy was the fact that he was the only person in the room – I couldn't see any producers because of the angle of my view, so he looked like some kid in his bedroom playing records and pretending to be a deejay - maybe that's the secret?

When I had finished my recording, he was coming out of his little cave – a man cave they call them these days (deez daze) – and in the street I saw him driving out in his new car.

On the side of the car was his name - let's say it was Harry Smith and underneath his name was nearly famous sponsored by . . . . whatever the make of the car was.

Incidentally, and I may have mentioned this before, on one of the days the producer asked me to say 'Chiltern Classified Pools Check at Five Forty' and nothing else; I did this and every Saturday after that at five forty pm that ident would introduce the football scores.

Many years later I was driving up the M1 in the Bedfordshire area, at about that time on a Saturday, and I tuned in and there was my voice still churning out the same message.

Strange thing isn't it, fame – bye bye Tel' - thanks.