Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

I was at Green Park tube station the other day; not above ground but way below changing from the Jubilee Line to the Piccadilly Line; I always think the same thing when the announcement says ' . . alight here for Buckingham Palace . .' that the Queen has probably never been down to her local station.

You do, actually, alight there for Buckingham Palace, then you go through the park and there it is – Buck House!!

If you cross the street you would be crossing Piccadilly into Mayfair with the expensive and beautiful buildings of Half Moon Street, et al, which eventually lead into Berkeley Square, where you could pause for a while and listen for that Nightingale which is the subject of one of the most beautiful songs ever written - incidentally written in, more or less three chords.

But I was down in the bowels of Green Park tube station walking to the Piccadilly Line and not in Mayfair at all; I was in that other world that exists beneath the capital.

It took maybe ten minutes to walk from one line to the other which means it must be about half a mile – all that beneath the streets?? – and I have to say that Green Park is a fairly cosy station and the walk isn't that unpleasant unless you are in a hurry.

But who could be in a hurry on such a day?

As we proceeded along the main walk a familiar sound was heard; a song; whistling: it was a busker singing the song written by Eric Idle for the film Life of Brian - Always Look On the Bright Side of Life – together with whistle and amplification.

Now there were loads of people around walking in two directions, that day, and from one end of the tunnel to the other we were entertained by this wonderful song.

The further we walked the slower we seemed to walk with the rhythm of the music and after a while most people started to whistle; I kid you not.

It was a wonderful moment and I dropped a pound, which joined many others, into the busker's guitar case.

As I did this he gave me a look in the eye – what more could he do he was playing, singing and whistling?

Life sure is nothing without music – all kinds of music!

Years ago the buskers would play on the underground and people would come from all over the world and listen to them. Then the Transport Police would come along and run them off – these days it's legal but they have to audition, so I hear, before being given a slot and space – you wouldn't think so sometimes but here's a link to the song; whistle away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo

 

The Greatest Generation.

Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four Manuscript.

The Greatest Generation is a phrase coined by Tom Brokaw for his book and television series of the same name.

He was referring, of course, to his fellow Americans who came over and fought in the second world war with the allies in Europe.

The fact that they didn't arrive till 1942 when the war had been going for two and a half years is another story; Roosevelt wanted in and Congress wouldn't let it happen. So when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor it was a good day for the allies.

It's the same with Obama – he said he would close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp as soon as he was elected but found that the President, even though he is given the ridiculous title as the leader of the free world, is not as powerful as he thought.

The Americans think he is all power, has been lying about health care and everything else but they are wrong and what they will do is vote another idiot in next time.

But it doesn't matter whether the President is an idiot or not he doesn't run the show; he is not a dictator.

Everybody knows that Obama doesn't really believe, or didn't when he was 'good old Barry', in what he is forced to do and sign, and when he is finished and writes about it maybe we will know more; or maybe not.

I watched him making a speech today in Belfast, giving encouragement and praising the Good Friday Peace Agreement and getting ready to join his fellow leaders at the G8 summit and I wondered whether the CIA will be doing what The Guardian, in today's issue, alleges they did when the G8 (or whatever they were then) met in Britain in 2009 when phones were monitored and fake Internet cafes set up in London to gather information from the allies.

Did he, when he was standing in local elections in Chicago before he was a Congressman, or when he made the great speech to the Democratic Convention in 2004, know that one day he would condone drones, or that he would re-craft and extend Bush's secret state?

Bush?

It wasn't Bush's secret state – he was only the patsy so you see what I mean when I laugh at the term 'leader of the free world.'

But The Greatest Generation, even though they are well thought of in America, were not a patch on the greatest generation in Britain.

Now I am not and have never been patriotic about Great Britain, in fact I'm not patriotic at all about anything - not even about Ireland - but the generation that went to war for Britain in the late thirties and forties have a lot to be proud of.

For a start they voted out the government that got them into the war in the first place.

In the eighties the voters in Britain re-elected a government who did the same thing. The previous Labour Government saw a war looming in The Falklands and avoided it but the Conservatives didn't see it coming – look it up if you don't believe me!

The generation of the forties wouldn't have re-elected them after their failure to prevent war!

After they voted the Labour Party in, in 1945, Labour formed the National Health Service according to the recommendation of the Beveridge Report and the service started in 1948 and then – oh yes – there was a General Election in 1951 which returned the Conservatives to power again and they started their general interference with the NHS which they have intermittently carried on with ever since.

Incidentally the Labour Party in the 1951 General Election received more votes than the Conservatives but, because of the boundaries, they were not elected. The Conservatives were in power till 1964 and didn't exactly nurse the fledgling service at the time when it needed it most – now they are at it again and this generation are letting them get away with it.

There is a danger that other idiots are on the horizon here in line for election to high office and people here – those who voted Boris Johnson as Mayor of London for instance – will vote for them again.

There are people here who voted Labour all their lives and who abandoned them at the last election and voted for the Liberal Democrats. Some of it was tactical voting (don't ask) and some of it was because of Labour's involvement in the war in Iraq.

I ask one question: if you abandon the only party that's electable that you agree with how can you change anything?

Here we have another 'incidentally': Tony Blair, by backing Bush, gave him and his cronies such as Wolfowitch, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc credence for invading Iraq.

Would they have gone in alone??

In 1948, when the NHS started in England, George Orwell started to write his novel 1984; he called it 1984 by reversing 48 to 84 even though it wasn't published till 1949. 

 

Big brother is watching you!

In that novel he invented a character called Big Brother who was the supreme leader of a fictitious country and the phrase big brother is watching you has been used ever since.

I have never read the novel or seen the film; I don't like dystopian novels or stories and I think a BBC production of 1984, possibly in the 50s, put me off. But one of the things I did wonder was how the authorities got so much information.

Orwell got the idea to write the novel from advertising hoardings according to Anthony Burgess and when you think about it, without being too technical, he got a lot right. I mean with the latest revelations about the American secret service surveillance getting their information from . . . . from where?

Here's the kicker!

They're getting it from today's generation who write all their secrets and happenings on the social media web sites like Facebook, My Space and the rest on the Internet.

It doesn't matter how you set your security settings on Facebook they are available. You can't even terminate your Facebook account. You can try and it will disappear but a few clicks will bring it back on; with all the old friends and embarrassing photographs which made you close it down in the first place.

I think the inventor of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, would be spinning in his grave if he was dead!

Would the greatest generation on either side of the Atlantic give so much information away?

I know there have to be secrets and the Secret Services but are they going too far?

Do you know how much your local supermarket knows about you through the loyalty cards and do you know what they do with the information; one day you will go to the doctor and he will tell you how much you drink!

A lot of people reading this, who use Facebook and reveal their secrets, will not know who Edward Snowden is, what Prism NSA surveillance does and even what I am getting at.

By the way, I use a spell-check and checking the spelling on this post I got a few alternatives words to use for some of the names:

Wolfowitch - Witchdoctor

Rumsfeld - Doldrums

Cheney - Chechen

Success!!!!

Peter Jones - Tycoon.

Well I hope you liked my two repeat posts – took me back to when I wrote them, and I couldn't remember what I had written so it was a gentle reminder of wilder days.

My play went very well on Saturday; nothing went wrong, I seemed to be on form and it was a full house. I followed the play with a Q&A afterwards which went quite well.

One thing about the Q&A which made me laugh – the second question was from a woman in the front row and she asked - Is that your car outside? 

It was a Jag!! 

- Not guilty, I said.

So it was a success.

Well a success in my world; it was what I had aimed for and more, it was a chance to perform live in the theatre, which I think all actors should do at least once a year, and it was good for the ego – yes we certainly need that. Some actors just need to be recognised in the street to feel good but I like to work.

But what is success?

I think any actor that works is successful. If you knew how many of us are at it and how many of us never get a sniff you'd be surprised. It's a disease we all have – it's a bit like going to Las Vegas and winning a lot of money and being hooked on gambling for the rest of your life.

We chose this kind of life so there's no good moaning when things are not too good but I ask again what is success?

I was listening to The Archers on the radio, last night and a good friend of mine, whom I worked with in Night Must Fall in 1975, was in it for about 30 years; he died a couple of weeks ago and he loved being in show and was a success. I hadn't seen him since about 1978 - so you can see how good a friend he was - but that's what it's like being an actor. 

You don't see people for years and years and then when you see them again on a job it's as if you'd seen them the day before.

Whilst I was listening to The Archers, the television was on with the sound turned down and even though I couldn't hear it I knew what the programme was about.

An entrepreneur called Peter Jones was meeting two businessmen and – I presume – comparing ideas and getting to know them. One of the men was a 'Lord' who owed 80 million pounds and was determined to pay it all back. He drove a very posh car and ate in the best restaurants in London and lived the life of a . . . lived the life of a Lord!

The other was a working class businessman who had done very well for himself. I have no idea what he did but there were photographs of him as a boxer, years ago, and at one time he went into the ring with Peter Jones and sparred. 

Jones held the pads and the businessman hit them.

This fella had a huge house (I presume again) in Spain – in a sunny climate in any case – where he had tennis courts and all the rest of the paraphernalia, and a house with a swimming pool in Britain; his business was in the London area and he drove a Bentley.

Now that man, to me, was successful. 
It was and is a different kind of success from my success on Saturday evening.

If I was the working class businessman, above, I would be as delighted as he was but Peter Jones was suggesting that he open more branches – expand! 
- Why don't you open a branch in Manchester? he asked

Now why would he want to do that?

The multi billion multi national companies that run the world just could not stop their expansion, could they; just the thing Peter Jones wanted the above fella to do? 
He replied that he was happy as he was and I would be too - but isn't it a pity we let the big boys take over our world.

The Lord, mentioned above, was very comfortable years ago but how does anybody get to owe 80 million pounds – that's £80,000,000; about $120,000,000!!!!

I will bask in the warm glow of my little success on Saturday and, as it's a 'work in progress' I'll try and write down all I learned from the performance for the next time.

In a chopper from Cannes to Nice and all the rest.

The Cafe de Paris in Monte Carlo left and a view of the Principality on the right.

As I'm still up to my eyes I thought I would do another repeat and then next time back to normal.
The film was well liked by people and we tried to make it in to a series so I went to Cannes with the distributors and loved the life.

The film - the pilot - is on You Tube now so if you want to look at it here it is: my pal, Jim. saw it and said my hair was always grey - well it wasn't but maybe the ups and downs, in and outs and generally all the meetings with the banks, financiers sent me white - but it was great fun as you will see from the following post which was from 2009.

Here's the movie, by the way, and as they say in America 'enjoy.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUZXIPAd9Z8

So this is from December 2011:
Well yes it was very nice going from Cannes to Nice in a helicopter but at the time it didn't really feel like a pleasant experience; I went four time to Cannes to try and sell the series: three times I had to catch a chopper from Nice to Cannes and the other time I travelled by train catching it at Cannes and going west to Marseilles before heading north to Calais going through Lyons and Paris.

When I say I had to catch a chopper it was because we were partying so much there that I would have missed my flight from Nice to London if I'd have travelled by coach and the three times I choppered to Nice I travelled with a terrible hangover.

The train journey was good and I travelled on the high speed train at a million miles an hour all that way of about nine hundred miles or so and arrived in Calais smack on time – then after the ferry to Dover the London train was delayed – figures!!

But let's go back to the cutting room in London; one of the partners in the distribution company was an ex editor, and a good one too, and he helped me put the finishing touches to the movie; we tightened up the continuity and made some sense out of it but looking back now it needed a lot more work and when I have the time I'll do it just for the sake of it; we also found that a piece of the cutting copy was missing.

In the film I run up to a door leaving my car door open, only to find that the door I ran up to was locked. I walk back to my car and give the door a kick. This put a dent in the door and as I stood there I suddenly realise that there is a dent and do a kind of subtle double take; the original editor had cut that out – just a little bit of sense needed there as it was very funny! So the first thing me new editor said was 'you've got to find that clip.'

We looked and looked but couldn't find it – it ended up on the floor of some cutting room at one of the film schools; this is why I believe there are comedy editors and drama editors.

On stage an actor times his laugh; he knows exactly when to come in with the next line after a laugh and to be quite frank some editors don't; they just stop the laugh dead in its tracks as the audiences strain to hear the next line.

The next job after the fine cut was the sound edit and I had to find a sound editor – nobody wanted to do it.

I had worked on a film with Giles Llewellyn-Thomas called 'Terence Walker on the Moon' – I saw a bit of a movie on a flight once called 'The Astronaut Farmer' with Billy Bob Thornton which looked very similar; anyway I got in touch with Giles who promised to do the sound editing for me; it's a very shitty job and I was forever grateful.

I don't know how much he knew the new way to serve Guinness but at that time Guinness had introduced draft Guinness in a can; it was almost the same as the draft you bought in the pub and they achieved this – and won the Queen's Award for Industry for it – by putting a widget in the can.

Our afternoons were spent very happily drinking the various cans of Guinness I bought and this seemed to be enough of a payment for Giles – he wasn't a boozer but I might have been on a temporary basis.

We had two deadlines to meet: number one was the dub when we would go into the dubbing theatre and put all the sound affects and music onto the film and the second appointment was with Universal Studios to put the whole film directly onto broadcast-able video tape directly from the negative. This cut out a lot of the printing and colour balances which usually takes a long time. I figured if was supposed to be for TV what would be the point in making any other format than tape.

I had to take the cutting copy and the negative into the neg cutters and I left a bit of space on the cutting copy for the missing piece of film and when we first saw the shot it fitted exactly – and it was funny!

So we met our two deadlines, drank many a pint of Guinness and I rented a theatre in Soho for the first showing.

As none of the actors had been paid I figured I owed them, at least, to try and get casting directors in to see it. Most of the casting directors in London were within a hundred yards or so of the theatre I had booked and as I'd booked it for 1.00 pm I thought I'd stand a chance of getting a few of them in. I bought a load of wine and some finger food – but only one casting director turned up; but why wasn't I surprised?

Most of the actors in the film were new faces and I think I decided there and then to go to Los Angeles at the first opportunity – which I did; but not before I went to Cannes.

There seems to be a festival every month in Cannes; the film festival is world famous but they also have commercial festivals, a music festival but the two I went to were MIP and Mipcom; the former the month before the film festival in the Spring and Mipcom in October sometime.

The first time I went it was to MIP and the distributors paid for my apartment and from then on I paid my own way; they paid a lot of money to have me registered with MIP and Mipcom too.

I thought it was wonderful but most of the people who went there moaned and groaned. I had never worked very hard in factories or down the mines but going to Cannes wasn't like work to me; work to me is hard work that hurts your back.

My hosts – and I don't mention any names on here much – were drunk from morning to night; the lady had a brandy for breakfast the day she took me out to the local market and drank pastise (a kind of Pernod) for the rest of the day; I don't know what the guy drank but he was the same.

I wasn't exactly a teetotaller there but I didn't drink before the evenings.

One time I went to Monte Carlo (above right) and we ate at the famous Café de Paris (which is the picture to the left above); we were suddenly with the jet set eating wonderful food and seeing all those rich people with their amazing French clothes accents and hair styles waiting for the next Formula One Grand Prix to come along and fill their Principality with gasoline fumes.

We couldn't get into the Grand Casino, I'm sorry to say; we were in the building, which seemed to be totally made out of marble, but to get into the casino we needed some kind of ID; two of us had our passports which were acceptable but one of us didn't – there were three of us. He was asked if he had any other form of ID and when he said only his press card we were shown the door so fast it was unbelievable!!

We had to go into a casino next door or so and I won a load of money playing black jack.

There were plenty of parties in Cannes and I went to a party on a boat one night and we were watching a film on a TV monitor with Jools Holland – he was the piano player with the band Squeeze.

Jools was talking in the film and then I heard his voice too – so I turned around and he was standing behind me. I introduced myself and we had a chat and a drink and then it was time for me to go to a bar in one of the hotels; so I said my goodbyes and went.

I heard later that when I went out a few people went to the port hole to look at me walk along the plank back to the quay to see if I was going to fall into the drink; didn't realise I was that drunk.

At the bar in the hotel – I think it was the Carlton – there was a black piano player who knew me and when I walked in he started playing Danny Boy.

I had more drinks in there and the piano player went leaving me sitting on the piano stool.

With the courage and bravado of a drink I played, maybe, eight chords of a boogie which is the extent of my piano playing, and then I stopped; 'Messieur!! Messieur!!' they shouted for me to play but I had to let them down; when I sat back down at the piano Jools Holland sat on the stool next to me “hello Mate” he said and launched into a boogie.

It was absolutely wonderful; the people around the piano went wild, I clapped my hands to the music, like the drunken idiot I must have been, and that was one of the times I had to get a helicopter to Nice.

From that hotel I went to the Casino in Cannes and won enough money to pay for the whole trip – again playing Black Jack; “Why don't I move here?” I thought to myself as I made my way back to my apartment; but I didn't I went to Los Angeles where it is very hard to get a bet on.

I never did sell the idea of the series; it was a well tried formula, a buddy series, but there were others on offer too.

The film itself sold to Finland, some airlines and other places in Scandinavia. It also sold to a cable company in England called British Satellite Broadcasting but before they showed it the company was taken over by Rupert Murdoch's BskyB and they didn't honour the deal.

Funding a film - one way!!

Nagra tape recorder for movies.

Steenbeck - editing machine.

I'm going to try and make a small film in August; try. I've spent many years in Hollywood and know how to raise the money. You raise seed money, get a distributor interested then sell off territories to other distributors, get a star to be in it and you are away.

What could be simpler?

I won't be going that way, nor will I be doing crowdfunding, which is the way a lot of films are getting financed these days, as I'm only going to make a small film; just me and a couple of actors, two or three crew and that will be it.

Here's what happened last time. As I'm busy rehearsing I'm repeating a post from a couple of years ago:

This is from December 2009:

I'm not sure but I think yesterday was the coldest day in Los Angeles since I've been here; it's now fifty five degrees which is about as hot as it will get today and I see the low for today is forty one - yesterday was thirty seven; now this would be a summer's day in other parts of the world but this is Los Angeles in California here I come; the land of the sun and a lot of people here are just not used to it; it's really sunny, by the way, even if it's cold.

I was out at the flea market on Sunday selling my wares, which is what keeps me going between acting jobs, and it was like standing at Hemel Hempstead; which is one of the places I used to go and sell which is near London.

Our maladies seem to be over so I am back to ducking and diving for work the same as any other actor; I am booked into The Surgeon's Hall at the Edinburgh Festival next year for three weeks at six-o-clock so if you're in the neighbourhood come and see the show.

I've already written here that I plan to shoot a pilot in the new year in London for a comedy series; I don't think that's going to cost too much these days; the last time I did it cost me a fortune.

That was around nineteen ninety or so and then we had to shoot on film or the old fashioned video tape; taping then was not as acceptable as it is now with the way technology has taken off with High Definition etc.

We shot the movie on sixteen millimetre; I just dived into the project and took it from there but I had a lot of fun in fact so much fun that I'd love to do some of it again – some of it but not the excesses.

I wanted to direct something after taking over as the director on a movie I was in; that movie needed six additional scenes to make sense of the plot and they asked me to do it. I got on well with the Director of Photography (the DP) and as he was a documentary DP and wanted to get into drama I showed him my script and we decided to go ahead.

He was the cautious one and I was the hot head – as I said I just dived into it.

I knew actors so I could cast easily and play in it myself and he knew crew; the idea was to give people a promotion: we had a camera operator who was usually a focus puller, a focus puller who was a clapper loader and a clapper loader who was usually a camera assistant.

Of course people who don't know sometimes play down the importance of the clapper loader; the clapper loader has to take the film out of the camera, put it somewhere safe and put more film into the camera. Can you imagine shooting a multi million dollar movie (Titanic) and spoiling the film whilst changing it??

The sound was different; sound men are thin on the ground so we had a few; one of them went on to do Shakespeare in Love and loads of other movies.

Of course I was new to the game but I knew how to direct actors and I knew how to rehearse which usually does, and did, help us to discover things. I watched a lot of formulaic TV to get an idea how to set up the shots and if they were impossible I usually accepted it.

The other thing I did was to open an account with the Rank Organisation (J. Arthur Rank) to get the film processed; they didn't know me from Adam but they gave me a lot of credit and processed everything I gave them; of course they retained the negative so there was nothing I could do with the dailies or the rushes they gave me apart from look at them. I liked the excitement of dropping the film at various 'drops' around London who would deliver the film to Pinewood Studios to catch the evening 'bath' and I loved picking up the rushes the next day wondering what the film looked like.

I also got to know that there was such a thing as mag stock; 'where are you getting your mag stock?' I was asked and I kind of shrugged: 'mag stock?'

Well when you make a film visually you also have to record the sound; this is usually recorded on a Nagra Tape Recorder onto quarter inch tape; then when you edit the film on a Moviola or Steenbeck editor you thread the film using the perforations on the edges; so where are you going to put the sound if it is on quarter of an inch tape?

You have to get the sound transferred to mag stock which, if you are using sixteen millimetre film, will have to be the same width and it fits onto the Steenbeck (which we used).

Let me digress here to say that I have a pal, Jim Makichuk, who writes a blog, which you can access from here, about the move he is planning to produce; in fact he is producing it as he is in the planning and the raising money stage and he puts photos and things onto his blog – so I am planning to put photos up today and show you the Nagra, the Steenbeck and even the Moviola; the Moviola was the innovator and they are now collector's items; and there are the photos at the top of the page - the NAGRA on the left, then the Steenbeck.

After we finished shooting and then some re-shooting I had to settle down to the business of editing. I had appeared in an award winning student film called The Swimming Pool and I kept in contact with the students; one of them being the editor.

So I got in touch with him and he was the only one who wanted paying and he edited the film for me at the film school and I had to travel there once a week to pay him and see what he'd done.

It's not a good way as he had done too much by the time I saw it and I had to ask him to, for one thing, watch the continuity. We didn't have a continuity person on the shoot so we tried to do that ourselves and it showed; so he would re-do that for me then he would put it onto video tape and send it to me.

Later he came into London and we used the film school attached to the Royal College of Art in Kensington; that was fun!!

What we would do was go to the Royal College of Art at around ten thirty in the evening and go in and see someone leaving the cutting copy of the film. Then we would go the pub for a couple of pints and go back to the Royal College of Art having left a back door open and then we would work through the night without their knowledge.

I know we were breaking some kind of law but we didn't do any damage (honestly gov) and in any case I think the statute of limitations has passed.

Then we showed the film in the bad state it was, with no effects, fades or anything to a distribution company and they liked it; they liked it so much that they let me have use of their cutting room which was at their office – it even had, besides the Steenbeck, a Moviola!!

Now I needed to do a fine cut and a sound edit and a dub and, according to the editor, some post-syncing as he didn't like the sound in one of the scenes.

All this spelled money so I went to the bank and asked them to increase my overdraft and they did.

By then I had lost my partner – the DP – and the editor who didn't live in London in any case.

The bank agreed to back me in the production of the film and I paid the bill at Rank, which was at around $5,000 and I paid about $3,000 to my former partner to reimburse him for anything he might have spent.

Next time I will write about the post production and trying to sell the film and the idea for a series in Cannes.

By the way: I just re-cut the movie and put it on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpWmesv5nVA

Chris.
December 24th 2014

The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone.

It looks as if I won't have time to write a proper post this week as I'm rehearsing my play again; it sure is a 'work in progress' and maybe next year it will be ready – but there again is something ever really ready?

I'm due to do it at The Bossanyi Studio, 22 Field End Road, HA5 2QL; if you're in the neighbourhood or planning to head to it, put the post code into your Sat Nav and I hope to see you. I believe it will cost £8.

This will be a few times that it is to be produced; it started life at Santa Monica Playhouse for 3 nights in June 2011; then I tried it out at The Lord Stanley in Camden the night that Amy Winehouse died in July 2011; she lived just around the corner from The Lord Stanley and on the night she died the streets were blocked off by the police whilst they made their enquiries.

After that there was a 3 week run at The Edinburgh Festival where it attracted great reviews and then last year I entered it into the 'Solo Festival' at the Lord Stanley again and it won best play – who knows where it will lead?

I look forward to seeing you at about 8:00 pm. Oh I didn't give you the date, did I? Saturday June 8^th 2013.

The Men Who Run Hollywood.

There we are above – the men who run Hollywood. On the left, wearing a baseball hat, and red shirt, is a film director; he has directed, among many other things, quite a few episodes of the TV series Star Trek, The Twilight Zone and many movies.

The next one across the back with the white hair is me – and you know me; Hollywood actor and novice novelist - and to my left, wearing sun glasses and the inevitable baseball cap, is a Hollywood agent. He has represented many of the actors you may have heard of and seen work throughout your life.

Then we have a writer: he writes screenplays and is wearing the aqua marine zipper jacket, the baseball hat and a big smile. He has written many movies, which have been produced, and a couple of books and, as you can see, is about to get stuck into that breakfast we were all enjoying a couple of Sundays ago.

In the background you will see The Pacific Ocean and yes that is a man wearing a cowboy hat playing a guitar behind the bullet proof glass; click on the photo if you want to see it large.

Oh the girl? She is a guest of one of the above. She was telling us that she has started to make guitars.

As you can see, we have the best table at the Fig Tree Restaurant and on the right, by the door, is our security 'back up' in the white trousers. He is talking to someone and getting them to bring the limo around with our bikes and making sure the paparazzi are kept out!

The girl taking the photograph is Angelina Jolie, by the way, but we didn't take one of her.

Of course there are other people who think they run Hollywood: people like Tom Cruise, agents like CAA and the rest of them – but as you can see they don't have the best table at The Fig Tree and we do.

Hollywood is run by agents, actors and writers and there we are – we even have a guest who makes guitars but I have told you that already.

Actually I am a guest too, these days, as I now live in London where I am pursuing my career of trying to run London; but there is no one to run it with me yet. My wife isn't interested; she's far too sensible.

We used to meet each Sunday, as above, and report to each other the comings and goings, happenings and shenanigans of our busy week; they still do that – I don't. s are spring chickens.

The Beatles.

I know very little about Frank Sinatra; I know a bit more about Elvis Presley because he's nearer to my time but The Beatles really clashed with my time line; I know what there is to know about them and where they came from, what influenced them and what was influencing me at the same time. People coming to The Beatles afterwards and maybe, even though they were great fans, loved the music and got to know everything about them, still wonder what the fuss was about.

Sinatra was one of the greatest voices of the century; I got to know how he breathed, how he held a phrase, when others might have 'pointed' the note and how he let half a bar go through, sometimes, before coming in with the next note. We could feel those high notes paining him or was it the emotion in the lyric? – Set 'em up Joe – whatever the case he was a 'one off' – but he could only do one take when acting in a movie.

John Frankeheimer said he had to leave a scene, which was out of focus, in the movie The Manchurian Candidate because 'old blue eyes' couldn't do the same performance again.

I sat in the same town as Sinatra, Los Angeles, watching the same local TV stations going out, seeing someone on there, who had run in to hard times, someone who needed money for surgery, or a funeral or a trip somewhere to save their life and I got to know that someone somewhere in Los Angeles called up the TV Station, found out who needed the money and I eventually got to know that the anonymous donor, the guy who came up with the big bucks was Frankie Boy himself – Sinatra.

Terrible things have been written about him; a bag man for the Mafia and all the other stories of his dubious associations but I know nothing about that; I know about The Beatles.

When a novelist or a great artist paints something or writes a novel they start with the first mark and finish with the last one and The Beatles were started the day John Lennon picked up that first guitar and finished with . . . . finished with what?

Finished with four beats on the drums by Ringo and a cymbal crash on the day they made their first LP – that was the day we lost our virginity – 'between Lady Chatterley and the Beatles First LP!' - to paraphrase Philip Larkin.

The Beatles were three working class lads and a posh one – a middle class one; the middle class one – the posh one - was John Lennon and he was the one who, ironically, eventually wrote Working Class Hero – but that was when it was all over and it was all over the same year it started; 1963; fifty years ago.

I saw The Beatles three times live and those three performances summed up their progress. There were two performances at a small dance hall in King's Heath Birmingham and one as a support act for Tommy Roe and Chris Montez; The Beatles closed the first half of that show and when they had finished their act a third of the audience left. That show was sandwiched in between the two shows at the aforementioned ballroom.

The first show at the dance hall was magnificent; most of the audience were men; well 18 to 25 age group men – about the same age as The Beatles - and not that many girls. This meant that nobody screamed and we could hear them. Ringo still had the Teddy Boy hair cut and had bits of tape wrapped around his sticks. My brother walked up the stairs with him and in the bar afterwards John and Paul played around with the photographers and tried to get Ringo and George to come out and take part and people, who were with us, were included in the photos.

Not us; we were cool dudes propping up the bar, on the look out for girls and eventually when Ringo and George came George was wearing a fur coat right to the ground.

George looked to be the hard man even though John hit the headlines a few weeks later when he got into a drink induced fist fight with one of their roadies.

The difference between the two 'dance hall' performances was huge. They were tired the second time, we'd just found out John Lennon was married and the girls screamed too loud and, even though we could just about hear them that night, nobody heard them again.

I realise the many people who saw The Beatles in their live performances over the years, right up to their final performance at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, had to make do with seeing them in a huge stadium and not being able to hear them at all, but when we saw them they were less than 20 feet from us and they sang all the songs they sang on their first LP the first time and a variation of that the second time.

Before The Beatles, pop singers in the UK covered American songs that hadn't been released in the UK; songs such as Rubber Ball (Bobby Vee/Marty Wilde), Tower of Strength (Gene McDaniels/Frankie Vaughan), 100 pounds of Clay (Gene McDaniels/Craig Douglas) and many others. The British covers are the second artist mentioned above after each song title.

In those days, covers were covers and revivals were called revivals which are called 'covers' today. In those days not many singers wrote their own songs; they concentrated on their voices so everybody was what they would call today a 'cover band' – although we didn't call them bands. The bands in those days were bands - big bands with trombones, trumpets saxaphones: Joe Loss, Ted Heath  – going back to Glenn Miller.

The Beatles were a group who sang mostly other artists' songs – these days called covers.

They sang Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry songs, mainly and they also sang a lot of the black girl singers' songs: The Shirelles, The Marvelettes etc. The last time I saw them they opened their act with Paul McCartney singing the Tony Orlando version of Beautiful Dreamer – note for note from the phrasing to the screaming wows!

Each time I saw them they finished their act with John Lennon singing Twist and Shout – an old Isley Brothers song. John Lennon ruined his throat the day he recorded it for their first LP, album, whatever you want to call it and that LP was called Please Please Me!

There is a lot of confusion about Ringo's status as the drummer; the fact remains that he was and still is, a better drummer than Pete Best; he is a better drummer than most rock drummers who used to bore the pants off us in those days with their fifteen minute drum solos. Ringo was left handed (on the drums) and The Beatles wanted him to join the group because they knew him from Germany where he played with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and, more importantly, he knew them.

The great thing about their first LP was that they recorded it in one day; they showed up at Abbey Road Studios at about ten in the morning and Lennon finished his famous Twist and Shout shortly before midnight – although I'm told it was more like 8:45 pm. At lunch time the workers went to lunch but 'the lads' stayed behind and rehearsed A Taste of Honey – which was one of the few 'over dubs' on the LP – and the rest were recorded in single takes; I don't mean one take per song but complete takes till it was right.

And that was it – The Beatles had done it! As soon as Ringo joined the others and they made that recording it was the beginning of the end; all the hard work had been done and the business plan, the publicity plan, the image controllers and publicity men took over and that innocent day February 11 1963 would never be repeated.

We were lucky enough to see them on February 15^th (so I am told) just four days after they made the Please Please Me! LP.

The LP is as close as you can get to their live act and is their best. Oh you can worship Sergeant Pepper and The White Album, the changing sound of pop music with John Lennon's Tomorrow Never Knows but the innocence of the Please Please Me LP and the sound of the group that day would never be repeated. Four beats on the drums by Ringo, a cymbal crash and it was all over.

Out of touch with my banjo.

I decided not to take my lap top to Los Angeles and as I don't have a 'smart phone' – just a regular mobile/cell –  I was 'out of touch.' I was out of touch for all the time I was there. I could have used the computer at the house where I was staying but hot mail didn't think it was me when I used it so they wanted to send me a text. That would have been okay if I'd have been in Yiggieland*, which is there my phone works, but I wasn't in Yiggieland I was in La La Land**.

The first thing I discovered was that I didn't know my wife's cell phone number in Yiggieland; it was in my address book on my mobile; I hadn't bothered to remember it didn't even know any of the numbers – I know it now. Why? Because I had to. In my head I have all the numbers I had to remember – all the PINs, my national insurance number from Yiggie, mine and my wife's social security numbers from America, bank account numbers, sort codes and the rest of the access numbers, favourite name of first pet, mother's maiden name and the rest.

It got me thinking – if we never have to remember numbers and other things we save to machines maybe we will stop being good at it. Now you may ask why we want to remember those things for when we can have it done for us with the fine fine super fine technology of today and you may be right but if we get out of the habit of having to learn and remember things our brains may turn into grey matter – well they are already grey matter but you know what I mean.

People will have to think for us; people being the people who make the computers, invent the programmes, apps and the other stuff. They will be the only people who speak the special language and be able to read it too and the rest of us (well you, I will be dead by then) will have to believe what they say. Just like when only the church people could read and the plebs had to believe what they said. This is why they didn't really want the plebs to be able to read – just like these days when they (the magic 'they' who rule us) don't really want the plebs to be educated.

So I did a bit of work in Los Angeles and the other things I had to do by visiting my old haunts – Chili Johns, The Farmers' Market – and pick up my banjo which I had left with a friend.

I wasn't sure if the banjo had go as a 'special' item or not, on the flight back, so I decided to get it packed properly and checked it in and the greatest news is that there is no story about it getting broken or smashed to smithereens and there is the picture to prove it at the top of the page. And if you want to hear my banjo and me playing on some of the tracks copy and paste this http://tinyurl.com/bpyerf2

* Yiggieland - England

** La La Land - Los Angeles. 

Oh by the way. The other good thing about my trip was that I could get a decent cup of coffee and here I am drinking it in Chili Johns.

Citizen Kane's Thatcher and Gertie Ford . . .

Well I didn't say anything about Margaret Thatcher did I? And why would I when the name Thatcher was on the TV wall to wall 24 hours a day. I don't think even Winston Churchill was mentioned that much when he died but there again they didn't have cable and 24 hour news channels in those days.

What I thought was a bit below the belt was the fact that politicians 'cashed in' on her death and the funeral to make political points: we're all Thatcherites now!! I don't think so. Before the Conservatives had anything to do with the railways you could buy a ticket and jump on a train. Not now – now you have to pay a lot of money for a relatively short journey unless you book well in advance.

But it's all gone into history and it's time to move on.

I remember the name Thatcher as being one of the characters in Citizen Kane – I can't remember what he was but I remember what the fella looked like who played him.

A strange film, I have always thought; dark and mysterious and then when I grew up I found people saying it was their favourite film and then finding out that they hadn't even seen it.

I appreciate some things about the film; the fact that it was shot in long focus and that there were ceilings in the shots. Doesn't mean a thing these days does it as a lot of films and TV shows have ceilings in and because of television there has to be 'close ups' in movies or the TV companies wouldn't show them – so much for 'long focus.'

Some of the old films are a bit frustrating to watch when there are no close ups; it's because we're used to them these days and you can't see the facial expressions and images a couple of inches high from your sofa.

Another film everybody goes on about is Battleship Potemkin; great editing on the Odessa Steps sequence but I remember at a lecture the lecturer pointing out that soldiers were walking down the steps but up the screen they seemed to be walking up hill from the bottom to the top; how clever, I thought!!

That was when I did a film studies O/A level Course and I have to say it was harder than other subjects; maybe because they were my own opinions and not necessarily those of the teaching staff.

So off I go to Los Angeles for ten days and I'll write some news here when I get back – I might even write from over there but I'm going to be busy so maybe it'll be in May before I write.

In the meantime look me up on Amazon and buy my novel – Who Was Gertie Ford?

Red Dawn.

It's a funny old world isn't it? Art copies life and life copies art.

A few years ago I did some work in the movie remake of Red Dawn; in the original movie the Russians invade a small town in the USA and some school kids get together, get some weapons and fight them off saving the town and the good old USA from the evil Ruskies. It was a piece of jingoism and, even though it was made by a talented writer/director it was a load of rubbish.

In the new version they changed the nationality of the enemy to the Chinese and at the start of the film, around the time of the titles, there is a film montage with footage of world leaders, including Barack Obama, getting on and off aeroplanes, giving press conferences and the like, and the section has the quality of a newsreel. I was the voice of a British reporter and there were other voices from various countries too.

I often wondered what had happened to the film and if it would ever get a release then some time ago the producers decided they didn't want to offend the Chinese, as they were doing deals with them, so they changed the enemy to North Korea.

It opened in the USA last year and last month it opened in Britain. What's that? You missed it? Oh dear! 

All the dialogue that mentioned the Chinese was taken out and the words Korea or Pyongyang replaced China and Beijing. 

Now I had to look up Pyongyang as I presume you might have had to do, if only for the spelling, but it seems strange to me that a country we know so little about is threatening to blow America out of the water for no good reason.

There is a mad man in charge of the place called (and here I go again looking it up) KIM Jong Um; he is the chief of state. There are other people in charge too for example CHOE Yong Rim who is the head of government and then there are vice premiers.

Who these people are and what they do is beyond me and why the first name that is written down is in block capitals and what you would call them if you met them in a bar is beyond me and also beyond me is why they want to blow up the world!

KIM Jong Um is the son of KIM Jong-il who was also mad at the world.

Recently the famous basketball player Dennis Rodman was seen with Kim Jong Um at some kind of sporting fixture.

Dennis Rodman, as you can see above, is a very sensible fella much the same as David Beckham who is a good role model for the kids of today but what he was doing with such a monster is also beyond me.

But what can we do in this kind of situation apart from moan?

They have weapons and soldiers, tanks and fighter planes – even nuclear weapons (WMD? - that's where they were) ready to destroy everything we know and what can we do?

Already Dave the Rave is on his way to Scotland to check that Trident is still there and he will be wondering what to do with it if Scotland ever leave the union with the rest of Britain. What will it be called then? The Ununited Kingdom? Nearly Greater Britain?

 Trident.

Britain's deterrent WMD.

Very Important People.

Window Cleaner - great job!

Who is the most important person on earth? Who has the most important job? You will notice that I didn't say on the planet, which drives me up the wall, or even on this planet, which isn't so bad, but it's something I have often wondered. I wonder this because as an actor other people don't think my job is important at all. Sometimes I hear 'oh we all need entertaining' as if I am some kind of court jester, but generally it's not taken seriously. The newspapers here call us 'luvvies' – even the broadsheets – and the Trades Union Council seem to treat us as some kind of joke.

I remember years ago when I did my first commercial, pals of mine, not in the business, would wonder why it took a day – a whole day – to shoot a 30 second commercial; they would wonder why I got paid so much and why I was paid repeat fees. A chippy (a carpenter) friend of mine asked why he shouldn't get paid every time someone walked through a door he had made; my answer, whatever it was, didn't satisfy him at all.

But who does have the most important job on earth? Is it the doctor? The President of the United States? The Pope or even The Archbishop of Canterbury?

If the Prime Minister lands at Northolt Airfield all traffic is stopped for his journey in to London as if he is the most important man in the country. I remember walking along Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, California, one dark evening, on my way to a bar after doing a show at the theatre there, when suddenly all traffic was stopped from coming out of the side streets and the traffic lights were cancelled. The next thing I knew a speeding limo came passed at about 70 mph – Bill Clinton: the President of the United States leader of the free world, as they call him over there, was passing through.

When Bill was sitting in the back of that limousine he must have felt important just like David Cameron must feel when all traffic stops so he can come through and . . . . and what?

Do his job! That's what! That's what everybody is waiting for; him to do his job. The most important job on the planet!!

If you were stranded in a desert or maybe a forest who would you sooner be stranded with? A Prime Minister? A Pope?

It is said that there are only two jobs that have any importance and they are a farmer and a poet; now there is no argument about that at all. 

The main reason to work is to feed yourself – put food on the table, to use the old cliché, so it doesn't matter what you do.

If a surgeon has to give priority he always gives it to the 'breadwinner' of a family; this is what they do, and they assume the breadwinner is the man and if he is in his mid forties he is priority as it is assumed, also, that there will be children depending on him but what if the other person in this fantasy of a dilemma is the 92 year old Duke of Edinburgh or the 86 year old Queen?

Col Needham's Story.

There he is – the man himself: one Col Needham; the man a lot of people aspire to be.

At one time everybody wanted to be Clark Gable then other movie stars or pop singers of the day; I wanted to be Elvis, Steve McQueen or James Dean then later Robert De Niro and then James Joyce. Of course as a child I wanted to be Superman, Roy Rogers and then Geoff Duke!!

Women wanted to be the female equivalent - shall we say Marilyn Monroe, then Marilyn Monroe again, then Gertrude Stein.

Others wanted to be sports figures like Joe DiMaggio, George Best and now David Beckham but that man above has taken over; and who is he? He is Col Needham?

Col was born in Manchester on January 26^th 1967; I don't know if his birth name is Colin but he is known as 'Col' and he is one of the hand full of multi-billionaires who have made their fortune by accident, out of a hobby or a convenience they invented. I don't mean a public convenience, like a public lavatory, I mean something they made or adapted or, in the case of Col, wrote a computer programme for.

I made a movie in the 90s in the north of England and next to the place where we shot the scenes, there was a young man listing every film he had ever seen; he was entering the titles, the stars, the directors and the writers and he was filing them away. This was in Cheshire and I often wondered if that was Col; the time line seems to fit.

Because that's what Col, himself, says he was doing around that time!

He wanted the information for easy reference when he wanted to find something. Just the fella to meet at a party eh?

Rather like the driver who always has spare bulbs, spare tyres, a full petrol can in the boot so that when he breaks down he can look rather smugly at everybody else. The last time I had a puncture it was a 'double blow out' in Los Angeles when my two off side wheels went down a sharp pot hole; so my spare was no good as I needed two and to make matters worse, I had just watched a documentary on TV which said that two tyres blowing out in pot holes in Los Angeles was very common after huge downpours of rain!!

Back to Col; he was doing all this stuff before the advent of the world wide web so he invented a little data base to share with friends and to make easy access to it he wrote the computer programme.

When the Internet started someone contacted him and said his site was great but needed writers' details as well so that particular person was asked to put the writers information in; then someone said the site needed composer information and that someone was recruited too.

Of course this led to the giant Internet Movie Data Base which is what it is now – the IMDb – or the imdB (whatever).

In 1998 he sold it to Amazon but he still runs the company and is the CEO or the Managing Director – he runs it with a staff of between 100 – 200 from his office just outside Bristol.

I want to ask one question: why would Amazon want to buy it? Why did Ebay buy everything from Paypal to Skype? Why did Google buy YouTube? Why do they want so much power.

I know why Amazon bought Love Film, because they couldn't buy Netflix; Netflix was started by a couple of computer geeks from Silicon Valley in Northern California (computer guy again) who returned a DVD back to Blockbusters and had to pay a $40 late fee so decided to start his own little business with a partner and what a little business it turned out to be. It's now one of the biggest companies of its kind anywhere in the world – all because he kept Apollo 13 too long and Blockbusters were too greedy. That's the one I'm really pleased about and I'm glad they didn't sell it to the man.

One mistake may I point out to Netflix – you didn't design your envelope too well as you had to put that little sticker to keep the DVD in the packet. You can't see it in the picture but there's another sheet of paper you have to tear off before returning the DVD.

 But back to Mister Needham the IMDb boss: casting was always run by people in the business and records kept by people like The Academy Players and Spotlight but now the casting directors in Los Angeles use the IMDb and that might happen in the UK soon who knows? It'll mean the British actors will have to put their head shots up on there like they do in the USA.

Before I close I have to thank all those who sent emails to me following my last post commemorating my dad's centenary – it was appreciated and I'm glad you liked it.

But who was the guy keeping all the film records if it wasn't the Col?

My second novel has just been published in paperback and is available from Amazon – here we are - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Who-Gertie-Ford-Chris-Sullivan/dp/1482691973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363609040&sr=8-1 that's for the UK and this is for the USA:

http://www.amazon.com/Who-Gertie-Ford-Chris-Sullivan/dp/1482691973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363613415&sr=8-1&keywords=who+was+gertie+ford%3F You'll have to copy and paste.