Bob Monkhouse and Jonathan Ross

 

A comedian goes out onto the stage and says to the audience 'I am here to make you laugh. This is funny' and it has to be – or he dies out there in front of everybody; and that's why a lot of us are depressed and have alcohol and drug problems.

from The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone.

There we are – Bob Monkhouse and Jonathan Ross; Ross at the top then Monkhouse; the sublime to the ridiculous. Which is which, depends on how old you are, of course, or even what you know about comedy and the traditions and history of it. Comedy is really what is funny and what isn't and some of the funniest things happen without people knowing about it; but they're not comedians. Look at the quote from my play above that about sums up what a proper comedian is; in my opinion, of course.

I am grateful that some people read this blog and allow me to vent my opinions and they are only my opinions; I don't pretend to be an expert on anything but here's what prompted me to write this – and at the moment I don't know where it's going, so stick with me.

A comedian – any comedian – goes on stage and does something not many people would like to do; he faces an audience. You will see people telling jokes in the pub, managing directors and CEOs telling a joke at a board meeting and people laughing out of courtesy or embarrassment. So when I criticise comedians in this post I do it out of respect – but you know I don't think I will criticise actual comedians.

But this is what made me write this:

A friend of mine, whom I don't need to identify, met a writer who writes for Jonathan Ross. Jonathan Ross, for people in America who have never heard of him, is a talk show host and general television personality. He has been on TV here since he was a boy doing TV commercials and the like and he is identified by having a lazy 'r' sound. In other words he can't even say his own name properly he has to say Woss as opposed to Ross.

His 'r' sound is Dickensian as opposed to people who simply cannot say it. The 'King' in the movie The King's Speech, for example, just couldn't say his 'r' properly but his was an affliction and he also had the stammer which is what the film was about – I have noticed Prince Harry uses the lazy 'r' to effect too.

But even though Jonathan Ross has this speech impediment he hasn't let it bother him, in fact he has used it to great effect and is very successful – but he is not a comedian. He has a bunch of writers who write his jokes and because he has been doing it for years and years he gets his laughs; and my friend met one of his writers.

My friend told him that he didn't find things funny these days and the writer asked him what he thought was funny; my friend told him and the writer said that what my friend said was 'old fashioned' comedy.

Old fashioned comedy!

Does he mean Tommy Cooper, Morecambe & Wise, Laurel & Hardy, Jack Benny?

Old fashioned comedy!!!

He said he had worked with Bob Monkhouse who was old comedy and was a little critical of him.

Now I admire Jonathan Ross because of his success but I would never watch him on TV; it's a bit like Blankety Blank when it was introduced by Terry Wogan; it was amusing, he got his laughs but when Les Dawson did it, it was really funny – because he was a comedian.

You would never see Terry Wogan or Jonathan Ross in a pantomime – they wouldn't be any good – but Les Dawson was brilliant.

The problem with Bob Monkhouse was that he had a certain smarmy manner, he came from a well to do middle class family and didn't have that hungry street feeling or 'end of the pier' manner.

A lot of comedians in the old days were miserable off stage but I have known a few minor ones who would never stop telling gags; after a while the same gag would be funny!!

MAN ENTERS WEARING A FUNNY HAT AND CARRYING A BUCKET

COMEDIAN: Where you going?

MAN: To milk a cow.

COMEDIAN: In that hat?

MAN: No in this bucket!!

Old joke but if you tell it properly it will get a laugh.

Billy Connelly will come on stage, and not always know what he is going to say so he will start a subject, develop it, improvise which will lead to hilarity – heckle him at that point and you are the idiot!!

His comedy was and is based on observation and he was good at it and the Jonathan Ross writer would be trying the same thing; looking through the paper and trying to be topical but I can't get over his remark.

When the alternative comedians came on the scene in the 80s – was it the 80s? - they kind of put Bob Monkhouse into the same bag as Jim Davidson and Bernard Manning; the latter two were course comedians (Manning is Dead) but they were still comedians. In a programme about comedians a well known expert said that he would take Jim Davidson every time over some of the alternatives because he is a comedian; but I don't like his jokes so I don't watch him.

Nowadays a lot of the comedians who bad mouthed Bob Monkhouse try to take it all back; but it's too late he's dead.

I worked with him once and someone I knew said very sarcastically to me 'only working with the best, Chris' – well, yes; I was.

He was exceptionally clever and filed thousands of jokes in his joke books, studied the history of comedy, wrote thrillers under an assumed name, was a gifted artist and comic book artist too.

The fact that he was clever maybe stood against him; when I worked with him I found he had to wear make up because he had some kind of mark on his face but he was quick and clever - and actually lacked confidence.

The guy that writes for Jonathan Ross does just that – writes for Jonathan Ross.

I mean I could have written for Tommy Cooper – here we go: Enter Tommy Cooper. And that's all I would have to do!!

Michael Winner

Michael Winner.

It was sad to sad to see that Michael Winner has died; for those who didn't know who he was he was a British film director. A flamboyant character who sent himself up and usually rubbed people up the wrong way - particularly if he felt they were somehow beneath him.

      Once he was offered the OBE (Order of the British Empire) and turned it down; Danny Boyle turned down a knighthood because he didn't want to be Sir Danny and so did Albert Finney, many times, but it seems the that the OBE wasn't good enough for Mister Winner. He said the lavatory cleaners at King's Cross Station are offered the OBE so didn't want to be put in the same class. I have to say I'm grateful for the lavatory cleaners at King's Cross and all the other stations and at times when the pipes are blocked and the place smells of the soft and smelly the last person I want to see coming through that door to help is a film director.

But a lot of people really loved him. He lived with a few women over the years but didn't get married till about two years ago and the wife he left behind described him as a wonderful man.

I never met him let alone work with him but I remember hearing a story that he was being awkward on a film set one day and Oliver Reed threw himself into the river in full medieval costume which caused everybody a problem.

Lately he was known for sending himself up in some TV commercials for an insurance company and he was a food critic for one of the Sunday Newspapers.

He said he didn't know anything about food but he knew how to eat it. The editor of the newspaper gave him the job as he was fed up paying food critics who were in the pockets of the 'celebratory chefs' and Winner just spoke the truth and his columns were, apparently, very controversial.

Restaurants in the west end would put notices in the window saying things like 'Winner Free' and the newspaper would receive many letters of complaint; which were published.

When asked why the letters were published the editor said that Michael Winner insisted upon it.

I didn't have a lot of time for him or his films but I saw him recently being interviewed on television in a one to one interview – rather like a psychiatrist – and the psychiatrist asked him at one point if he cried at his parents' funerals and he said no. He said that there was only one funeral he ever cried at and that was Oliver Reed's.

He said Oliver Reed was buried in Ireland and there was nobody from the film business there apart from himself. He said he looked at the coffin holding Reed and thought of the wonderful times they had had together and when he was saying this you could see the glint of a tear in his eye; I kind of warmed to him after that.

Trust in Constaninople and elsewhere.

Sledging in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

Snow covers Britain with big freeze to continue into next week

That's what it says in the papers here so I thought I'd put a picture to cheer up all my friends in Los Angeles.

Constantinople is a very long word; if you can't spell it you're a dunce. This is the first question kids ask each other in the playground but what they are really asking is - Constantinople is a very long word; if you can't spell it you're a dunce. Because that's the answer – IT!

I heard something strange the other day about this great city, which is now Istanbul of course, a woman there wanted to lock herself away and not see anybody at all for a while – she didn't want to see friends or relations, tradesmen or anybody else, whilst she concentrated on writing a book.

The first thing you ask yourself is how would she get her supplies? The answer, in this city of thirteen and half million, surprised me: she hung a basket out of her window, put some money in to it and a note of what she required. Tradesmen came along and put what she ordered into her basket, took the money and left the change. Then the girl pulled the basket up with the rope. In this way she could cut herself off completely from the outside world but I am amazed that in this day and age this could be done.

Many years ago we lived in a flat in Erdington which was really part of a large house – rooms, my mother called it. We didn't have a telephone so when we needed to use one we would go to the telephone box around the corner or use the one in a neighbour's flat – and we would pay for it.

It was a strange phenomenon in those days paying cash for the call – people would sometimes leave a little money box next to the phone with a slot in it for donations to the phone bill. 

When we moved to Shropshire, we had a telephone installed, and friends would come and use it if they had to make a long distance call; I was determined not to charge them as I thought it so petty. But they would insist and I could sometimes hear them say things like “I'll have to go – I'm paying for this call!” as if I was standing next to them with a stop watch.

In those days people would put their telephones in the hallway of their houses right next to the draughty front door – another thing we wouldn't do.

When we were leaving the flat I owed the neighbour ten shillings for phone calls – God knows where I must have called – so I left a ten shilling note in an envelope and pinned it to the wall near his door. I wrote a note on the envelope to say that ten shillings was inside - but somebody else took it. Ten shillings was half a pound, by the way.

So that's why I am refreshed by what happens in Istanbul. But I got to thinking that near my daughter's house in Suffolk they leave bundles of wood for the fire (kindling) and people leave the money and take the wood.

In Los Angeles at the entrance to Runyan Canyon bottles of water are left on a bench which people pay a dollar for and nobody steals either the water or the dollars They would sooner stick a gun in your face and rob you that way!!

Of course the last bit is a half joke. Strange place Los Angeles – gang members, drug dealers, muggers and the like, stand at the side of the street and will not risk a jay-walking ticket so they wait for the white crossing light to come on before crossing the road.

When the mail man comes to deliver the mail he also has to collect mail and people leave out going mail sticking out of letter boxes at the end of their gardens and nobody takes it – they trust that it will be left there for the mail man to collect.

Not me – I lost ten shillings once.

The Brummy accent, Trigger and who was Chris?

I get responses to my posts in two ways; as comments on the site and as personal emails. I got a few emails about my post on Dreamboats and Petticoats and in particular about Birmingham, and the Hippodrome there.

The most famous thing about Birmingham is its accent; a lot of people like it and a lot of people don't. A lot of the people who live there don't like it and a lot who don't live there like it. So there is no set opinion.

The accent is a guttural one and I think the most famous user of a Birmingham accent is Julie Walters - but the first thing about the Birmingham accent is the way Birmingham is pronounced.

In Alabama they say BirmingHAM; in other words they pronounce that aitch and say the word ham, as Americans do in words that end with ham such as Buckingham. Whereas in Birmingham, England it is pronounced Burrr min gum. The Burr at the beginning defines how much of an accent you have.

I was in Wolverhampton a few years ago at the railway station and a woman at the front of the queue asked for a return ticket to Bar mingum, BARRingham!! The rest of the queue could hear this and started laughing, pulling faces and doing funny walks.

That old lady didn't want to be thought of as being common as muck and must have practised her delivery before asking for her ticket for quite some time – and then made a Hames of it!

Not everybody can do a good Brummy accent (which is what it's called) and I have heard Harry Enfield – whom I love – try one. The character he was playing was very rich and obviously lived in one of the southern suburbs of Birmingham and worshipped money. The trouble was he thought the Brummies would call it 'munay' – I loike munay, he was saying. - No they say 'munny'.

The accent is often confused with the Black Country accent which comes from Wolverhampton, and surrounding area, but the Black Country accent is more rural and is not so guttural as the Birmingham one – they say things like 'bay yow kicka bow agen a wow, 'ed it an bust it!!'

Yes, they do.

Translation: Can you kick a ball against a wall, head it and burst it - bay yow kicka bow agen a wow, 'ed it an bust it!!'

The answer being 'ah' of course – ah being 'yes.'

I mentioned the other day that Birmingham was in Warwickshire – well it is – or was. There is a place in Birmingham called 'The County Ground' where Warwickshire Cricket Club play and yet they say Birmingham is now in the West Midlands; Warwickshire is somewhere else!

The new counties have done nothing but confuse people; I know that there is no such place as Middlesex any more even though there is a Middlesex cricket club and that I live in Middlesex; I officially live in Greater London, of course. Doesn't sound very good does it, bit like giving everybody a number and calling them that. I can't see poets using it for inspiration.

There used to be two questions schoolboys knew the answer to – the biggest and the smallest counties in England. The biggest was Yorkshire and the smallest was Rutland. Now neither of them exist.

Yorkshire used to have three ridings – north, east and west – in fact the word 'riding' means – ha ha, what does it mean? Does it mean a third? Does it mean a third of Yorkshire or does it mean a third of an administrative anywhere?

Well it comes from the word thriding and there you can see how it came about – the thri being similar to a third but the word was lost through assimilation as it just sounded like riding – for example the word grandpah was changed into grandpa eventually due to assimilation – that's why I like to be called granddad; eventually that second 'd' will disappear – betcha.

Now we have West Yorkshire which is a county unto itself – the same with the North and South Yorkshires. And where is South Riding? South Riding is a book.

Of course I received an email from my brother too as he would come with me to the Hippodrome; in his email he said 'what about Roy Rogers and Trigger?'

Well, yes we were taken to see Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and they had Trigger with them, his horse. It was great for us kids and as usual we went to the stage door to see the stars coming out. That was interesting as they would come out and sign autographs (not Trigger). Who knew how close I would be to Roy Rogers later on in life although I didn't actually meet him.

Everybody would gather by that narrow stage door so autographs had to be signed and off the stars would sweep into their cars – not limos – and then . . . and then there was Trigger - when everybody else had gone!

He was the last one out and quite a few big men tried to squeeze him through that door. They pulled one way and Trigger pulled the other. The men wore brown cow-gowns and were pulling backwards but Trigger liked The Hippodrome and wanted to stay in there.

But the narrow door wasn't for Trigger; he had to come through the big door; the door they used for moving scenery in and out of the theatre but there was always the problem of getting Trigger to that big door and we could hear shouts and neighing and collopping (no I just made that word up) and everybody in the street looked towards that big door; then the van arrived.

We were in the street and, I suppose, it was some kind of horse box and it backed up to the stage door. Trigger took one look at it and wanted to go the other way but the men pulled on his reigns and one of the men was actually pulled a long by the great horse.

They eventually got him (Trigger, not the man) into the box which was Trigger's cue to kick the walls. It sounded like thunder or the hammering of a group of boot repairer trainees as the bloody great beast whinnied and snorted and kicked and kicked. I can still hear the kicks and screeches as he was driven away.

Off went the van in to the distance leaving behind it a neat pile of horse-shit.

The next time I saw Trigger he was stuffed and standing outside the Roy Rogers' museum in Victorville, California.

Of course Trigger was only the name the horse was playing in the movies. I believe he was 15 hands high which is about 65 inches. His real name was Golden Cloud and he lived for about 30 years.

Now here is a bit of family news: I don't usually make these posts personal and very rarely mention the name of a friend or someone in my family, so you will not be familiar with any of my families' names unless you know me personally.

I have a cousin, whom I have never met, who is older than me, I believe, and who likes looking into our family tree. A few years ago he sent me a list of my ancestors and it was very interesting. It went back to County Cork, in Ireland, in the year 1770; that was when Michael O’Leary stole a sheep and was transported to Australia for punishment. He left his wife/woman/partner at the time and she went off and married a Sullivan – or a suilleabhain, more like or even an o'suilleabhain – and that's the line on my father's side where I came from.

I looked at the names of some of them and they are names like Timothy, Patrick, Michael, Daniel, John, Mary and a few Jeremiahs. But there was no Chris and we wondered where it had come from as my dad was Chris as well – Christopher.

Those names, incidentally, have been in the family since the date of 1770. In the last 40 years or so it hasn't been a tradition to keep names in families and we're as guilty of it as any body but my son's middle name is Christopher and it's the same with his son.

My other cousin in Dublin thought that it might have been on our gran's side, maybe a brother. When the elder cousin had been in touch that time he said that very little was known about our grandmother and he wondered what she was doing in Dublin at the time she met our granddad. We knew she was from Kildare but he found no trace of her. This was when I was writing my last novel and I knew that my girl, Gertie, was a mystery to her family as to where she came from too – not a mystery to me as I wrote it!!

Then last year another cousin in Cork died and papers were found last week amongst her effects. It turns out that Chris was one of my grandmother's brothers after all and their parents died when when my grandmother and her siblings were children. It also transpires that the poor fella, Christopher Condron, was killed whilst in the Navy serving as a Leading Seaman on the ship HMS Canopus. He fell headlong into the hold – about 40 feet – whilst loading ammunition. It's very hard for me to find out the exact date of the accident but very proud am I to be named after such a man, even though by proxy through my father, and so on with my son and his son.

Then another startling fact came up – my grandmother's parents – Mr & Mrs Condron – were called Margaret and Chris – just like me and my wife.

Not a great thrill there for you but . . . it thrills me!!

Dreamboats and Petticoats

A long time ago, when God was a little boy and Stephen Fry hadn't even been thought of, I went to a place called The Birmingham Hippodrome – and guess where that place was? Yes you guessed it – Birmingham. Not any of the thousands of Birminghams in America like Michigan but Birmingham, Warwickshire – incidentally there are not thousands in America just 16 not forgetting New Birmingham in Tipperary, Ireland.

You don't believe me?? Okay here we go:

Birmingham Alabama the largest city in Alabama and the largest city named Birmingham in the United States.

Birmingham Connecticut.

Birmingham Kentucky, a sunken town

Birmingham Indiana,

Birmingham Iowa,

Birmingham Michigan,

Birmingham Missouri,

Birmingham New Jersey

Birmingham, Erie County, Ohio

Birmingham, Guernset County, Ohio

Birmingham, Chester County, Pennsylvania

Birmingham Huntington County, Pennsylvania

Birmingham Township, Schuyler County, Illinois

Birmingham (Pittsburgh) a neighborhood in Pittsburgh now known as South Side.

Birmingham Township, Pennsylvania.

There we are I'm glad I got that out of the way – everybody says that the 'other' Birmingham is in Alabama and now you can see it isn't! There are loads of them. Now I suppose I'm going to get hits from all of those Birminghams.

But back to The Birmingham Hippodrome; I was taken there first by my mother, who loved the theatre. I was also taken to The Alexandra Theatre (just round the corner), with the school, to the Christmas Pantomime one year, which had a lasting impression upon me. I can't remember which panto it was but I remember the set and I remember actors coming on and – acting!!

The Hippodrome was more for variety shows and it had a long auditorium and you needed microphones; the Alex had a wider auditorium so the acoustics must have been better.

I saw loads of pop singers at the Hippodrome, as I used to go every week, and lots of other shows – I even remember seeing a trapeze act where we thought the man on the flying trapeze was going to fly in to the audience but caught the trapeze at the last moment. I saw Norman Wisdom there – he played many instruments including the drums – and some of the pop singers I saw were Charlie Gracie, Slim Whitman and many others including pop packages when I saw Billy Fury, Dickie Pride, Vince Eager and one time one in the pop packages was a certain Mark Wynter.

He was more of a ballad singer than a rock singer and he covered songs, which was common in those days, of American hits. A cover, in those days, was a cover of a major hit in America and they would release the song in the UK before, or at the same time, as the American hit. Sometimes the UK version would start to sell so well that the American original version would be wiped out so great singers like Gene McDaniels never really made it in the UK - although I saw him at the Hippodrome too.

Mark Wynter covered Venus in Blue Jeans which was originally recorded by Jimmy Clanton (but there was a hit by Frankie Avalon); Go Away Little Girl, recorded by Steve Lawrence – which is a better version than Mark Wynter's. It was written by Gerry Goffin and Carol King when they were in the Brill Building in New York and I always thought it should have been recorded by Bobby Vee, as he was Goffin & King's kind of muse. I see he did record it but too many covers meant it didn't get noticed.

The expresion 'cover' has changed over the years – like lol – as it only meant a cover of a current recording. All bands, groups, pop singers sang on stage other people's songs – or numbers (where did that word come from for a song?) - when I saw The Beatles they sang other people's songs – Twist and Shout, Baby It's You, Chains, Till There Was You etc. In fact Elvis never wrote a song in his life (not even Don't Be Cruel), neither did Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby or any of the major stars. If you revived a song it would be called a revival but then someone called it a cover one day – probably some idiotic deejay - and now they call bands who do other people's songs cover bands – or cover groups.

When we saw the pop package at the Hippodrome we went around to the stage door to see the pop stars emerge – it has to be said that most of them emerged as spotty little Herberts and I remember thinking there may be a chance for me – but in those days I didn't have the gall to get up and do that. I won a singing competition at the army cadets Christmas Party one day but – ah we were only messing about, we were on our way to be macho men and . . ..

One of the stars who emerged that day was Mark Wynter – as the girls approached him he said 'Mind my Sunday best!'

So we shoot forward many years in fact to last Saturday night; we went in to the west end because our son bought tickets for us to see the show Dreamboats and Petticoats a rock'n'roll show set in the early sixties. When we approached the theatre the first thing I saw was that Mark Wynter was in it; there was an old photo of him up in the street; in it he looked about 25 and it said that he was starring in the show and that he would be singing his four hits for the first time in 40 years. So the first thing we wanted to see when we went in was what he looked like!

We didn't have to wait long for that as he opened the show. His (character's) grandaughter was up in the attic playing his Dancet Player and he went up to her; what did he look like? Remarkably similar to what he did when he was 20 or 17 or however old he was when I saw him. However when he turned around he was going very thin on top and there was a kind of stoop in his posture – but from the time the show started to the finish he never stopped dancing; however – he did dance like a granddad at a wedding. He had all the steps and the fancy footwork but the stoop gives the age away and make his legs look to be from a different body. But best of luck to him I thought he was great.

The show itself was wonderful – it was announced that all the music and the singing was live which is a great change from the insulting backing tracks. Three guitars, drums and piano plus two young female saxophonists.

I know all the songs they performed and if you are a rocker and you like this stuff trust me they played it just as it was played in the day.

In the first scene he found his fender and his grandaughter said 'Were you in a band?' and he said 'The Coldstream Guards were a band – I was in a group – for five minutes.' Then she said 'Oh look at this (record) Let's Dance'  'Play that one' he said 'that was my audition.'

And the scene shoots back 40 years and away we go with Let's Dance!

nick nacks for Dick Heads in the new year.

Something struck me the other day, in this age of social networks, smart phones, texting, tablets, voice recognition, address books in mobile phones and so on; are we losing some of the skills of our forefathers and replacing them with useless ones?

I was watching a programme on TV called QI which is introduced by Stephen Fry who is surely the busiest actor/presenter/pundit/writer etc in Britain. Someone said the other day that he was due to be on TV here in Britain over 100 times over the Christmas period – he is also on lots of radio shows, plays and quiz games and this is not to mention that he is playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night in the west end.

On QI he asked his little panel of comedians what date was the first piece of music added to an advertisement; now you may think that it must have been since the radio was invented but you'd be wrong. It was a magazine add with words and music written out for the public to read and sing for themselves and it was sometime during the 19^th Century many years before Marconi even invented the radio.

Many people could read music in those days; they had pianos in their front rooms to entertain themselves; most pubs in Britain had pianos in the bars and people – the hoy poly (the plebs) – would gather there and sing along with the pianist.

By the way 100 pubs per week are closing in Britain and going out of business – that's the downside to social networking and cheap booze in supermarkets.

Pianos in pubs was quite common right up to about 20 or 30 years ago; in my childhood I would go to people's houses and there would be a piano there too. 

Someone in the house usually played and if it was somebody really good it was always a great experience.

I sat with a pianist at Butlin's Holiday Camp in Pwllheli, Wales, one day who was a Fats Waller fan and he went through his Waller repertoire for me and a few others - my brother included; I also sat with Jools Holland at the piano in Cannes when he played a boogie for a lot of people who had gathered around. On each occasion the one word that went through my head was 'practice' – I should have practised.

I could have sat with the same two people and they could have played me a tape of Fats Waller or lent me their iPod but it wouldn't have been the same.

I'm not saying we should all be playing pianos but I know that with the advent of automation we are forgetting how to do things. People used to write to each other; they still do but they don't write properly putting pen to paper, they use emails, in fact a lot of us never put pen to paper and have literally lost the skill.

I used to be able to remember all of my friends' telephone numbers, all the phone numbers of the TV Companies in London, the casting directors there, my National Insurance Number, my wife's, my Social Security number and my wife's in the USA and now – I don't even know my wife's cell phone number; it's in my address book on my mobile phone. I still remember all the other numbers in London but these days most of the hirers and firers have moved – to Manchester!!!

The only things I have to remember now are the PINs and where the lavatory is!!

And with texting words are being cut – 'n' for 'and' and so on. Words have always been cut; if you look at a postman's badge you will see the name of the city or town where he works such as LDN for London and BM for Birmingham and so on.

It would be terrible if the shortened words and coded phrases made it to the hard copy page – such as lol (laugh out loud) as this would ruin the language. The Americans have already ruined some of the English language with their Webster's Dictionary; I mean what was the point of that? What was the point of changing the word colour to color?

Leaving words the way they were educated us and we could find out where some of the words came from. Colour came from the French word coleur which, I suppose, came from the Latin colōr – so there we are going around in circles.

But we always did go round in circles - we started electronic communcations with morse code - -.-- . ... / .-- . / -.. .. -..

But I think you know what I mean.

One of the series on TV that Stephen Fry is in, is a show called Gadget Man in which he tries various gadgets. I haven't seen it as I am bored by those kinds of shows - and cooking shows, sports programmes etc. - but it shows the lengths people go to, to not do something. If you want to play a guitar like Eric Clapton it is perfectly possible to buy the guitar hero game and stand there pretending to be a rock star – or you can practice like he did and does and play it properly.

I have no idea where Stephen Fry came from; he kind of appeared one day about 20 years or so ago in sketch comedy with a wonderful 'RP' voice which he seems to be able to do whatever he likes with; he has gone on to be an author, compare, quiz show host, actor and general bon viveur but when I see him introduce the quiz show QI with his ridiculous good evening good evening good evening good evening good evening schtick, I can see a look of uncertainty in his eyes whereas I'm sure he would be better off just saying 'good evening' – I know he is supposed to suffer from bipolar disease and I'm not getting at that. In fact I'm not getting at him at all because he manages so many things at once, has so many balls in the air that I wonder how he copes.

He made a lot of money when he wrote the stage show 'Me and My Girl' which was a huge hit on Broadway and many other places and if you follow him on Twitter – which I did for a short while – you won't be able to keep up with him. He goes from here to there and back again all the time. Sometimes in Los Angeles, where he will do a few episodes of a thing called 'Bones' then off to Berlin to a Wagner concert then back here and . . . . I saw him one day in The Farmers' Market, Los Angeles, getting some food from one of the worst food places there; maybe I should have said hello and guided him to the French place.

The next thing is new year – 2013. As with any other year I wonder if I'll get used to that number. I don't usually make any resolutions; I don't smoke, I'm not fat so there is nothing for me to cut out, but I will think about it. Maybe not moan about coffee so much or stop telling my daughters how to boil rice or maybe even look for somewhere to live permanently – the lease runs out on this cottage in November!!

Happy New Year. - Yes that man above is the famous Robert Burns who wrote these words:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu'd the gowans fine;
But we've wandered mony a weary fit
Sin' auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidled i' the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roared
Sin' auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught

For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Happy Christmas

I have been writing this blog since September 2009 and I get plenty of hits; I use two counters, one comes with the software and the other you can see to the right at the top. The one that comes with the software says I have had 69,144 hits since I first started and 3611 last month. The one at the top of the page – Statcounter – says I have had 49,028 hits so it must be somewhere in between; that's good enough for me.

Let me just wish everybody who reads this whether on a regular basis or now and again, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I know it's politically correct to say happy holidays in America and it's hard to even buy Christmas cards but I find it quite embarrassing even saying happy anything to people.

So Happy Christmas, Happy Honika, Happy Quanza and Happy New Year.

Hope to be back in the New Year!!

And that picture above - that's my class in school when I was eight years old. Unfortunately I'm not in the photo but I recognise some of the faces.

Dave Brubeck.

Dave Brubeck.

Very sad to hear that Dave Brubeck died yesterday; he was 92 apart from one day. Today is his birthday. My dad died the day before his birthday; it was a bit pathetic as the birthday cards came in the mail to him and he wasn't there to read them.

Dave Brubeck upset a lot of purist jazz fans in the 60s; his type of jazz wasn't traditional enough for them – his stuff was too clever; it was called modern jazz. I haven't heard that description for a long time and the other crime he was guilty of was having some of his records in the hit parade, the top twenty, the charts in other words they were hits!

The thing I really loved about Take Five, which is what he is famous for, was the repetitive rhythm of the piano; doo dat doo dat doo dah – I loved this minimalist accompaniment to Paul Desmond's solo on his licorice stick; a solo which was a kind of fugue which gave way to the best drum solo on record by maybe the best drummer ever, Joe Morello, who died not too long ago.

Joe Morello was almost blind and wore those dark spectacles for sight reasons as opposed to looking cool; but he looked cool as did Dave Brubeck.

Of course there were other hits (how terrible for those purists) Blue Rondo a la Turk and It's a Jazzy Waltz – I think it was a Jazzy Waltz or a Raggy Waltz but a something waltz at least.

Dave Brubeck's rhythm influenced my taste a lot as I have been hooked on minimalism ever since and another of my favourite composers is Philip Glass the greatest exponent of it.

It's a strange thing, isn't it, when purists protest at something new – Dylan going electric, springs to mind. Up to the time of The Beatles, University students in Britain would only follow jazz and they would grow beards of the type which seem to be fashionable at the moment – I don't know what it's called; Van Dyke?

But back to the jazz – I am not the greatest jazz fan but I do like piano music of all kinds. I love Fats Waller (and Fats Domino) and his stride piano style of play. Stride piano is when the left hand plays the bass part plus the rhythm; so it's like a guitarist playing the bass and rhythm guitar at the same time plus the lead. The little finger plays the bass and the chord follows it to keep the rhythm and the right hand plays the melody – or the solo.

A great stride piano player, besides Fats Waller, was a middle aged woman who was fairly heavy in weight who had permed hair – yes my mother. But another one was a woman called Mrs Mills. But because she was as she was – middle aged and permed – she wasn't very popular with jazz fans but she was with piano players; she was an amazing player. I can't say the same about my mother but she could certainly knock a tune out too.

A few years ago – and I can't remember the exact circumstances – The Dave Brubeck Quartet were due to play at The Hollywood Bowl, in Los Angeles, and on the night they were due to play something happened to the flights from New York to LA – it might have been the volcano but the point is Dave Brubeck was in Los Angeles and the other three were in New York and flights were cancelled between the two cities. So Dave merely recruited a clarinettist, a drummer and a bass player in Los Angeles who did the concert at a moment's notice; they knew all the tunes.

So that's the end of the Quartet - I have forgotten the name of the bassist as I didn't want to search the Internet for this particular post – and one wonders if it will go on like The Glenn Miller Band; I hope not.

Bitterly Cold Weather.

Me in my 'Bates of Jermyn Street' Gatsby cap.

Recently I walked out of my front door and headed towards Eastcote Tube Station, and as I walked I could feel the icy cold wind at the back of my head. I pulled the collar of my leather jacket up but the wind caught the very top of my napper and it was then I realised that I had walked out without my very expensive Bates of Jermyn Street Gatsby Cap – given to me as a present, I might add, by the lovely manager of The Jermyn Street Theatre, Penny.

As I walked I knew that I had put it onto the radiator so it would warm my head when I came out the house and that thought made the icy blast seems even colder but then . . . . I remembered last year when I would walk out of my front door and think about my baseball cap. Should I have put it on to stop the sun from burning my hair as I felt the warmth of it on my shoulders? I was well protected with factor 30 sun barrier which would prevent that terrible red burnt look that tourists attract and which I would get if I ever forgot to use barrier cream and I was trapped in some place without shelter – from the sun and not the rain as in London – and as I thought of this in my imagination I got warmer.

I could actually feel the LA sun on my back and that kind of warmth you get around the ankles when you step off a plane in a warm climate. This was great as I carried on towards the station but as I crossed the road by Budgen's Supermarket a real big blast nearly knocked me off my feet and I was back in Eastcote.

It wasn't the coldest I had ever been. I remember once when I went to New York from Los Angeles on the red eye; this, as it sounds, is as it is; you get your flight from Los Angeles around midnight and land in New York at about 8:00 am New York time, and when we landed the temperature was zero. That's zero degrees Fahrenheit which is 32 degrees below freezing – or minus 18 Celsius.

The hotel we had booked wasn't ready for us till midday and we had to hang about, go and eat somewhere, browse a book shop and take coffee and the like till midday – Oh you should have come straight around, they said, when we told them as we were checking in.

For some stupid reason we went to the top of the Empire State Building; up there we could really feel the cold. We could feel it biting into our bones and once or twice we stayed out in the open air for at least one minute. I have to say that I took some terrific photographs in the crisp clear air but brrrrrr!!

One sort of silly thing happened: when we reached our desired floor, we were invited to have our photo taken in front of a picture of the building with the New York skyline in the background. I laughed at that but that was before I realised just how cold it was outside up there.

When we were in Los Angeles and I would see people attending theatrical first nights on the TV in London or New York I would wonder how they got to the theatre in the cold and ice or the rain but now I am back in London it doesn't seem too bad; especially after New York.

The one thing about London is that you dress for the weather and don't have to come to a decision about what to wear. No more do I have the inconvenience of having to dress in a black suit to go out for a commercial in the hot 100 degree sun and having to drive to the other side of Los Angeles in traffic with the heat and the . .. God was it really such an inconvenience?

I spent most of the time in Los Angeles in the car; you have to as it's such a huge place with very little rapid transport. Of course you can get a bus to any place but it takes so long – it's a bit like London without the tube.

So I would be wearing shorts most of the time and one day my agent called and told me I had to get to West Los Angeles and go dressed smartly in my suit as they wanted to see people about playing a King in a commercial.

So I drove home, went to the bedroom and grabbed my suit, shirt and tie and some black shoes. I put them into the car and headed out to West LA which was quite a jaunt. I got there with about five minutes to spare and got changed in the parking lot. It was a lovely sunny day and I was between two cars and I didn't care that people would see me in my underpants. Everything went smoothly till it came to the shoes. I had picked up two right shoes and one of them was a tap shoe.

I kept my sneakers on and didn't get the job anyway!!!

LMS, British Rail and Finglas.

LMS logo

When I was a little boy, around the same time as God was a little boy, my dad worked for the Railways. He worked for LMS which was the London, Midland & Scottish Railway Company which I thought, till today, meant the London, Midland and Southern but you can see how a life time of thinking one thing can disappear in a moment.

He didn't have anything to do with the trains as he worked at the goods yard at Lawley Street, Birmingham, and delivered parcels to all and sundry using a horse and cart; the horse's name was Bob and I know for a fact that my dad loved that horse in a way that grown men love animals and not in any modern thinking perverted Equus type of way.

My dad stayed at that job for most of his working life, even though he'd been a qualified barber in Dublin where he had a little shop. Business was so bad there that he used to sit my mother in the chair pretending she was a customer when anybody walked passed.

When he retired from the railways he was the boss of that yard and as to Bob? Dog meat or glue, I suppose, but he never forgot him.

My first job was in an Army & Navy Store in the warehouse and various goods were delivered via the back entrance to the Goods Inward where I would take them from the drivers of railway vans. I would say – my dad works there, and they would say – he's my boss!!

For some reason, and I can't remember what, my dad had to visit the place where I worked one day, on business and he came via the back entrance – it's my dad, I told my supervisor, who kind of trembled into the corner as he might have thought I had told my dad about him trying to reach for my back entrance when I was up some steps putting army boots and the like on to the shelves. I didn't tell my dad because he would have killed him and in any case, at the age of 15, I was quite able for the old 'perv' with a few kicks that he always managed to dodge. 

Yes it was always a world full of perverts and pranksters who blacked young kids' balls with polish 'just for fun' amongst other things.

In January 1948 LMS was nationalised and turned in to a part of British Railways but it didn't make any difference to us as we could still travel free on all railways, including those in Ireland, three times a year – so that's what we did. We went three times a year to Dublin on the ship and train – we could have gone to the Continent but went to Dublin and in the summer time we were left there with our aunt & uncle in Finglas.

When we went back to school in September we would have Dublin accents which lasted for a few weeks – it still happens today in Roman Catholic Schools in Britain, I am told.

One day my father brought home a pudding spoon for me; it was a spoon from the Railways and it was made by Mappin & Webb, a famous silversmith (even today). The spoon was from the railway canteen but it didn't have 'LMS' on it – it had GWR which was another of the private companies who were nationalised at the same time as LMS. 

GWR were known as 'God's Wonderful Railways' but officially as Great Western Railways and I believe they ran the famous Flying Scotsman which was the most famous train of all.

Sometimes, when our bikes had punctures, our dad would mend them and as he didn't have any tyre levers he would use pudding spoons – or dessert spoons as some seem to say – and one day a few of those spoons bent with the pressure. So in he came and took my spoon from the drawer. As soon as I saw this I screamed as I didn't want my spoon broken but the spoon was very strong and stood up to it.

For some reason that spoon came with me when I got married so I used it for my breakfast up to the time I went to live in America. One day, before my wife came across, the mail man came with a packet for me and it was my spoon; my wife had sent it.

I still use it now but only for breakfast such as porridge or corn flakes etc – never for pudding for some reason.

So I suppose the spoon will stay with me for the rest of my life; it has never been treasured or revered by me it just kind of stayed – here is a picture of it.

As far as I was concerned British Railways seemed to work okay; if you wanted to get a train to anywhere you would just show up at the station and buy a ticket. If you missed that train you would get the next one and so on.

It was very useful when I was working in London and living in Northampton; I would never know what time I finished work and sometimes would stay for a few drinks.

But since we came back from America things have changed – and not for the better. Now you have to nominate the train you wish to travel on and sometimes even book your seat. If you are caught on the wrong train your ticket is no good and you have to pay for another.

If you book a ticket at the last minute you have to pay an arm and a leg – it's okay if you book well in advance but . . . . there are so many railway companies these days; one company owns the track and leases the lines out to the others; private catering companies supply the food and drinks and when this arrangement first came into force the company that owned the track went bankrupt.

The present railway companies have to apply for the franchises to run their trains every so often and recently Virgin Trains lost their franchise to run their trains on a particular line – and then Richard Branson whinged and wept and moaned about the company that won the franchise and how incompetent they were and how they had submitted a dodgy tender, then lo and behold Virgin were re-awarded the franchise.

But isn't it about time we went back to British Railways? Why did people stand for it and why are we standing for what is happening to the National Health Service here now? And everything else – but there we are and . . . . here we are!

By the way, last week I went to the movies to see The Master; good enough movie and a superb performance from Joaquin Phoenix. I thought I was going to see it at The Curzon Cinema in Soho but when I got there they told me it was showing at The Curzon Cinema in Mayfair; so I went to Mayfair and waited for my companion.

I was chatting to the man on the door and he said that a lot of people went to the Soho theatre by mistake sometimes and sometimes it was the other way around. He had a kind of Irish accent so I asked him where he was from – Dublin, he said, Finglas.

Finglas, the place we would go to as children all those summers ago. 'I know Finglas' I said, 'we went there for the summers when we were kids.' 'What about that?' he said. 'Mellowes Road' I said, 'number 11.' 'Ha ha', he said, 'I lived at number 15.' 

I think his name was Wally MacDonald!

NW by Zadie Smith

I have just read NW by Zadie Smith; in fact I have just read it for the second time. I watched the first in the series of FILM 2012 on the BBC and when they reviewed The Master the reviewer said I loved this film and when it had finished I wanted to watch it all over again; well with a book you can do that quite easily: you go back to page one – or back to 101 as they say in Los Angeles – and this is what I did.

I always knew Zadie Smith was a wonderful writer by reputation and I saw a dramatisation of her first novel, White Teeth, which I think was made by Channel 4 when I was in America.

I was attracted to it by the reviews; they mentioned that this novel could be put in to the same bag as Ulysses as it was written with the 'stream of consciousness' technique which James Joyce was famous for; he was also renowned for not using inverted commas to denote when someone is speaking; he used a dash; for example – Come in, he said.

Zadie uses them sometimes, uses the dash at others and sometimes doesn't use anything at all as in this passage:

The rain got heavy. They stopped in a pub's doorway, Jack Straw's Castle

  Them shoes are bait.

  They're not shoes, they're slippers.

  They're bait.

  What's wrong with them?

  Why they so red?

  I don't know. I think I like red.

  Yeah, but why they got to be so bright? Can't run can't hide.

  I'm not trying to hide. I don't think I'm hiding. Why are we hiding?

  Don't ask me.

  He sat down on the damp stone step. He rubbed at his eyes, sighed.

  Bet there's people that live in them woods, blud.

  On the Heath?

  Yeah. Deep in.

  Maybe. I really don't know.

See what I mean; it's quite easy to see who's doing the talking without the inverted commas or the dashes. I think James Joyce called them 'perverted commas' when the publishers of his first novel put them in. He ordered them to be removed by the 'sergeant at arms!!'

As well as Joyce calling them perverted commas they are also called quotation marks or speech marks

As I mentioned I was drawn to the novel by the reviews and I know that part of London a little bit, the part with the NW postal code: Willesdon, Kilburn, Notting Hill and the novel is about a few people who come from the Caldwell council estate and the lives they try to make for themselves in the nearby suburbs.

One of the leading characters, a black girl called Natalie who looks like Angela Basset, has become a barrister and in that passage above she is wandering, towards the end of the book, with Nathan who came from the same estate and is high on drugs and homeless.

He was a charmer when he was at school with a lot of girls fancying him.

Another character called Felix is a tragic character; we know what's going to happen to him before it happens but we have forgotten that we have been told so when it does happen it comes as a bit of a shock but . .. that's up to you to find out.

There is also the mystery of Chapter 37 – it comes between Chapter 11 & 12 and is on page 37. It starts off - Lying in bed next to a girl she loved, many years ago, discussing the number 37. Dylan is singing. The girl has a theory that 37 has a magic about it, we're compelled towards it.

It goes on to say that the number 37 is used in movies and poetry etc and that web sites discuss it (I don't know I haven't looked) and then, later in the book, she skips from Chapter 36 to 38 – the 37 bus also runs through NW by the way.

It isn't like Ulysses at all as it's not so dense or nearly as long; Ulysses is about 720 pages and NW about 295; but Zadie does write in a stream of consciousness as I think many writers do these days.

It's a kind of interior dialogue and the reader will know what the character is thinking all the time and once in a while the stream of consciousness will be interrupted by some external dialogue as someone might pass them in the street or they might order a pint in a bar.

You have to concentrate when reading it as you can miss bits – which I did about Felix the first time I read it – but if you are at one with the author it's a great experience in reading.

NW is set in the time leading up to the Notting Hill Carnival which is a Caribbean celebration that takes place once a year. There's Caribbean food, reggae and dancing but it also attracts trouble and the metropolitan police haven't quite learned how to handle it yet.

In the novel various people are getting ready for the big weekend, planning what they are going to wear and who they are going to dress up as and the mood of the novel reminded me of The Trouble With Harry by Jack Trevor Story.

It's a long time since I read it but that novel seemed to be set in the sun and NW seems to be too, even though it is set in London.

London gets very humid in the summer months and there is a pregnant woman on the tube who is sweating and in other scenes people are sitting out on their balconies playing music. A haziness and laziness is there all the time and now I'm going to put the book away and hoping to read it again one day.