Another Eddie Review 2

I am being very lazy and I am putting up another review - there are about five (I think) and I'll put one up each day till they're done. This one is from an online mag called Remotegoat which reviews plays etc:

Review of The two sides of Eddie Ramone

"play performed with uncanny reality" by Aline Waites for remotegoat on 27/07/16

Eddie Ramone is a comedian, rather past his best. He has played London New York Las Vegas in his career, now he is appearing at a pub somewhere.

His jokes may be a bit old, but he tells them with his usual assurance.

At first, we think Chris Sullivan is playing himself or someone with a similar life pattern. Then we realise that this is a well written play, performed with uncanny reality by the author.

The play starts in low key with Sullivan as Eddie doing a stand up with very little response from the audience. He breaks off to start telling of his real life – so different from the one he is presenting to the audience. He tells of his devoted wife and his beloved daughter = a beautiful girl who he has put through drama school at Bristol to get her acting diploma, introduced her to influential friends to get her work in theatre and eventually taking her to Hollywood where she gets a role in a sitcom. Shian Denovan, as the girl herself appears to tell her own story ~The two never meet on stage but each is spotlighted in turn as they tell their version of the truth. The story gathers emotional momentum as the story is gradually revealed And the revelation is surprising and unexpected.

It is an interesting way to tell a story and it is excellently performed by the two actors.

What is very strange for me as audience and reviewer is to watch this play in the presence of the author's real life wife and daughter who are entirely difference from the ones portrayed in the play.

It is directed by the author and performed with one microphone on a bare set with minimal settings.

This is a fascinating way to build a story and is extremely effective – I hope and expect this production to go further.

The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone: a review

There are reviews for my play, not all in yet, but this one is interesting:

TUESDAY, 26 JULY 2016

Review The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone

The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone

by Chris Sullivan

A Comedian's Wake

http://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/

Poor old Eddie - you have to feel for him. Like some latter dayCharon, he's left standing on a boat, in his words, going "into auto pilot". A stand-up comedian on a North Sea cruise ship ploughing its way through choppy seas from and to Hull - just one vowel away from the other place.  

In this way Eddie (Emmerdale and Bergerac veteran Chris Sullivan) starts his act in The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone. Dressed in the colours of a prelate, red jacket and black silk shirt, he takes the usual place under the spotlight in front of the microphone with a routine minted before television voraciously devoured years of jokes honed on the musical hall and club cricuit and spat them out all in one night.

Both written and directed by Dublin-born Sullivan, Eddie,  an Irishman with (his stage surname Ramone presumably taken from  the famously divided punk pioneers) used to be something big on the telly, a quiz show host. Part of a perfect family with a wife and talented daughter, convent educated Katie (Shian Denovan) who, with help from her Dad, went straight into a sitcom after drama school.

The play sprang into life as a one-man show in Santa Monica and then had a moderately successful run at the Edinburgh Festival.

Now developed as a two-hander, it does indeed capture something of the seriousness, not just in the plotting, but the single-mindedness coupled with vulnerability needed for the successful comedian. 

The tragic tale of Eddie and his daughter can be taken at face value as a family melodrama. But it also explores the  intersection between celebrity, family, sex, the paparazzi and reality TV. Plus the new digital television environment (the sub editor in me did wonder whether this was why the title had "2" in figures instead of the word "Two"), drugs, booze, prostitution and, with an extremely light touch, politics and agents.

The performances are skilful and the drama draws together throughtfully the threads of our modern age. Sullivan shows his chops as a seasoned actor, although occasionally at the beginning, there was a tendency to drop his voice a little too confidentially and inaudibly in filmic style. Donovan is impressive as his daughter Katie, in the garb of a medieval nun, in whom past, present and future meet. 

At the same time, the balance between stereotypical dramatic tropes and the all-too common causes of true-life celebrity downfall  is a delicate one to maintain. The pacing sometimes sags and we did wonder what the eye of a separate director would bring out in the subtle interlacing of themes where literature becomes intertwined with life. 

Still it's a detailled performance from Sullivan with Denovan successfully portraying the younger generation and the uncredited lighting following a trajectory of its own with a hint at one point of early filmmaking. 

The play runs until Saturday, July 30 and with a rousing yet elegaic Joycean ending going back to Eddie's music hall roots coming over crystal clear, this was a thought-proving 70 minutes with a pleasing delivery. So it's an amber light from your very own TLT reviewing double-act.  

POSTED BY TRAFFIC LIGHT THEATREGOER AT 17:14 

LABELS: CHRIS SULLIVAN, JERMYN STREET THEATRE, SHIAN DENOVAN, THE 2 SIDES OF EDDIE RAMONE

Eddie Ready? nearly.

I'm having a really good time with my play – you know what it is – all together: The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone.

My daughter is played by Shian Denovan and there we are above having the read through – or pretending to have the read through.

There are not many seats booked in advance but you never know – people may walk in.

Whatever happens I have to use the old phrase 'the play's the thing.'

It's a very strange genre of theatre to market. I have loads of those kinds of contacts both with audience and critics. It's not the usual type of critic it's the bloggers we are after. They review the play on the way home, it goes on line and that's where your potential audience is as that's the way the play gets spread by Twitter and Twitter is the main means of communication in the theatre.

I looked at a lot of the 'off west-end' twitter pages and noticed which reviewers were getting re-tweeted and contacted those critics and I have a few coming on the opening night – so we'll see.

But as I say, when I said the play's the thing, that that is the most important thing about it. When you rehearse you learn a lot about the play and it's the most exciting part of the creative process. As I wrote this play I didn't think I would learn much – but I did; a helluva lot. (and that's a word, would you believe – helluva).

You'd be surprised what little nuggets you find in the text – but I wrote it, I hear you say, but it's true.

Shian is a brilliant actress and I knew straight away when I met how good she potentially was and she has proved it. She found little nuggets there, asked the right kind of questions and generally helped towards the production.

She even brought in two jam doughnuts for me today – and this poor old computer can't spell doughnuts.

I, on the other hand, have gone my usual way of learning things at the last minute; it's just the way I work, I suppose, and a pain in the arse when I'm working with other people but this is like two, one person plays. Or a one-man-show and a one-woman-show as we hardly meet on stage at all. And the only time we do our eyes never meet.

So tomorrow I finish of my study of the role, put some music cues on to a memory stick, mark the script for sound and lighting cues for the tech on Sunday (tech is the technical rehearsal) when we will also decide on Shian's costume etc.

We have to go from cue to cue making sure we are in our light so the audience can see us.

By the way – I did raise some money through crowdfunding but wouldn't recommend it to anybody. I think you've really got to be obnoxious or at least persistent – it's a bit like American hard sell – a bit like Trump as he raises billions and, as we have arrived at the door of politics, is the most dangerous individual in the world.

Come and see the play if you're in town it's called . . . . . .

http://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/two-faces-eddie-ramone/

Cupid.

Here is a little tale for you; if you look at the bottom of the page to the comments you will see that various people contribute; sometimes I know who the people are who write in and sometimes I don't. I don't take any of the comments down, unless they are advertisements, or edit them, so what you see is what has been written.

I get some comments emailed directly to me too; sometimes hostile and sometimes not so but there is always something to say and I always reply – someone fell out with me recently because he didn't like what I said about politics; this was someone on the same side as me politically, but sometimes there are certain people on your side which you wouldn't want – I mean maybe the miners would have won their strike in the 80s without Arthur Scargill – he was a great nemesis for Thatcher; if he hadn't have been around maybe they would have invented him; maybe they did.

Some time ago someone, who wrote comments on a regular basis, asked me if I would let them know the name and contact details of one of the other contributors. Well of course I couldn't do that without the permission of the other contact. The first one, who enquired, was a woman, and the one I wrote to for permission was a man. 

It so happened I had worked with the man when I used to ride a motor-bike for the post office years ago, so I did, indeed, have his email address.

I wrote to him.

I never use names on this blog so I will not be giving personal details or backgrounds – a back story, as they say today, instead of history.

I'm pretty sure I started this blog in 2009 and this will be my 392^nd post; they are usually between 500 and 1200 words each - this one is just 641 - so you can work out that I have written enough words for a book – maybe 392,000. I'm sure the posts are not all good but I like a lot of them and when I have the time I'll edit what I have and publish.

Apart from this being my 392^nd post I have had over 140,000 hits – that's people reading them; it could be the same person reading it 140,000 times – but I doubt it and it can't be me because my hits don't count.

Look:

After writing to the fella, he answered by saying I had his permission to pass on his email address; which I did. 

This blog goes all around the world – USA, Europe, Russia and Australia – all over the world and many other places; tout le monde.

So I passed on the email address from person B to person A and low and behold they lived within a mile or two of each other.

The chances of that happening must be a million to one –  even more tout le monde to nothing – to miss quote Shakespeare!

That's a bit like Leicester City winning the Premiere League last month – at the beginning of the season they were something like 50,000 to one. A few people took it but when the season was nearly over I believe most of the punters cashed in their winning for a percentage – that is one thing I would never do; that's why I'm an actor – I never give up.

So person A met up with person B in a Starbucks and got on very well.

I met person B when I came back from America in a Starbucks (again) in Watford.

Cutting to a short story, this coming Friday we are travelling up to Solihull in the West Midlands to their wedding; so maybe I am Cupid after all.

New boots.

I went to Margate a couple of months or so ago; I wrote on here about it. On the day I wore a new pair of boots but after a while I noticed, or my feet did, that I was taking two steps and the boots would only take one. Also they were hurting as it was like picking up weights with my feet. This led to me being knackered with very little of the day gone.

The 'day out' to Margate was a last minute decision as I wanted to go to the Turner Centre to see the place – it is a wonderful looking building and to look at it from the train station it looks magnificent; I can't say I liked the art though but I've said that before.

As I looked at it from the short distance it seemed miles away when it is probably no more than half a mile. The more I walked the more my feet hurt and the boots, the further I walked, the heavier they became.

This spread pain to the rest of my body and pretty soon I was walking like an old man; I stopped at a shop window and could see my reflection; I am an old man!! Why didn't anyone tell me?

So I went in to the store, which is called Peacocks, and browsed around looking for a pair of thermal socks – to keep my feet warm and to keep the boots on.

Oh yes of course – the weather outside was about 40º and dropping.

I found the thermal socks peg and bought two pairs; after struggling in the middle of the aisle to get them on, you can imagine the delight and relief that I felt as a I swaggered along the street; an old man no more.

The boots as you will see, above, are very comfortable and I wore them, with the socks, on many occasions since but there was one thing I didn't notice when buying the socks: they were two different shades of grey; one a lot darker than the other.

I noticed this as I sat on the tube, one day, as I looked down and noticed: grey on my left foot and dark on my right - almost black.

I called my wife and said one of my socks is grey and the other one black.

She said “that's funny. You have another pair at home like that!”

By the way: I have no idea why some of the text is larger or a different font in some places - but I have an idea and will rectify it before the next post. Isn't the word rectify rather like the word rectum - I wonder why?

The Carrington Event.

I hope you are getting satisfaction from the Internet and find it useful; I do and I freely admit it. I do my banking, pay bills, buy from Amazon and, in fact, buy from anywhere using Paypal: I even bought a pair of shoes on line and had to pick them up from the store. 

Much better than buying things personally as I just hate shopping.

A friend of mine, Ron, would go on line but didn't trust it; he would amuse himself by looking at the Red Sox statistics, fixtures and historical results; would search on line for nothing in particular but he would never use it for anything like banking, buying something or anything which would involve buying anything or using his credit card.

I remember buying things for him on my computer – but his credit card – as if it were somehow safer.

His point was that he wouldn't put things on to the computer in case the whole system broke down and everything would be lost. It never did in his life time. 

But it did once upon a time.

It happened in 1859; in those days (doze daze) electricity was hardly used as it hadn't been harnessed so it wasn't noticed by a lot of people. It was noticed, however, by a man called Carrington and how do I remember this? Because there was a teacher in our school called Mr Carrington. In those days (doze daze) teachers' first names were Top Secret! We would look at the initial and try to guess it; there was another teacher called S.G. White – what could that have been?

Back to Carrington the solar storm spotter of 1859: the storm he noticed came during solar cycle 10 and if it happened today it would cut all Internet activity, electrical usage – you name it – and prove Ron right.

The most recent solar storm of similar magnitude was in 2012 – but this didn't strike the earth.

By the way the Carrington I am referring to was Richard C. Carrington (I just looked it up on Wikipidia) and the storm was also noticed by someone called Richard Hodgson independently.

Here's what it says on Wikipedia:

From August 28 to September 2, 1859, numerous sunspots were observed on the Sun. On August 29, southern aurorae were observed as far north as Queensland, Australia. Just before noon on September 1, the English amateur astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson independently made the first observations of a solar flare. The flare was associated with a major coronal mass ejection (CME) that travelled directly toward Earth, taking 17.6 hours to make the 150 million kilometre (93 million mile) journey. It is believed that the relatively high speed of this CME (typical CMEs take several days to arrive at Earth) was made possible by a prior CME, perhaps the cause of the large aurora event on August 29, that "cleared the way" of ambient solar wind plasma for the Carrington event.

Here is a link if you want to read the lot:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859 

and be careful where you leave your stuff; don't trust that cloud!

To be or not to be . . .

. . . that is the question. And why shouldn't it be? This weekend marks the 400^th anniversary of both Shakespeare's birth and death. 

It is presumed he was born on the 24^th as he was baptised on the 26^th.
He died on the 23^rd.

There are lots of myths about him; the silliest being that he didn't write any of the plays. It is silly because the people who think this, say that he didn't go to a University so how could he know so much– well neither did Alan Ayckbourn, Ben Johnson and loads of others.

However he did go to Stratford Grammar School from 6am to 6pm for 6 days a week for years.

Oh, they say, he didn't write anything after he retired; no autobiography or anything like that – well who did in the 17^th Century? 

Some did, I know, but there were no book shops in those days and no television or talk shows so you could sell your book!

To be or not to be is arguably the greatest speech ever written and a lot of people will say that Hamlet, which it comes from, is the greatest play ever written.

The speech, itself, has been crucified, vilified and even been ignored, in some productions, I believe. 

For some reason some actors want to do the speech differently from other actors as if that's the point.

A well known critic wrote recently that he likes to learn something new about Shakespeare's plays when he sees a new production – well how can we know what he doesn't know?

Later in Hamlet, Shakespeare himself, through one of the characters, says Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. In other words be it but don't overdo it.

And that about sums it up; it's a famous speech (To be) about a man who is considering suicide – To be or not to be . . so why do it any differently? Just feel it.

In London this week there is a celebration of Shakespeare's and the picture at the top of the page speaks for itself.

The other night I watched the movie My Darling Clementine; it's one of my favourite films and it was directed by John Ford.

Of course it's a western and in it a a strolling player – an actor – arrives in Dodge City to perform recitations and poetry. 
The Clanton gang capture him and put him on to a table in their saloon where he recites; the gang shoot glasses away from his feet and nearly make him dance.

Alan Mowbray plays Granville Thorndyke a true thespian (on the right above) and when he starts to be or not to be he forgets some of it and he looks in to the crowd where Victor Mature, playing Doc Holliday, stands as he has just entered the saloon to quieten things down.

Thorndyke looks at him and plaintively says 'Sir! please help me' and Mature finishes off the speech with such sensitivity it brings a lump to your throat. He was an actor who tried to join a golf club in Los Angeles, once, and was told that they didn't take actors as members; he replied, 'I'm not an actor – and I've got 64 films to prove it!'

Takes a great actor to say that – he was superb in all his films and his performance in After the Fox with Peter Sellers is a beaut; he sends himself up wonderfully, as a Hollywood star who is after a role in a movie that the character Peter Sellers plays is about to direct.

There are a few excerpts from bits of Shakespeare performances in movies and I think my favourite is also someone quoting from Hamlet.

In Withnail and I Richard E Grant, just after this shot (above), goes through What a piece of work is a man? from Hamlet and it is the best rendition of the speech I have ever heard – he has lost his friend and it is so moving as he recites it in the rain. The Purple Rain – let's sit and wonder if Prince's work lasts even half the amount of time that Shakespeare's did; RIP, in any case.

sOUNDz

Hi folks: I'm a little busy this week working on my play so don't have time to fill your day with any of my witticisms or wise cracks.
So have a look at my movie - it lasts 20 minutes and even though it's for sale on Amazon.com it isn't available on Amazon.co.uk. I am told it is something to so with licensing.
Let me know if you like it and turn up the volume.

YES I HAVE JUST AMENDED MY SPELLING MISTAKE - NAUGHTY ME!

And as you can see you have to click on to the 'play on vimeo' bit.

This edit is placed here on June 8^th 2024, a few years after I wrote the original piace.

No idea why it's blocked but as you've come so far, go to YouTube where you can view the little movie here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dKxBVhpTpw&t=42s&ab_channel=JustMaximumPublicity

sOUNDz from CHRIS SULLIVAN on Vimeo.
 

138,000, still counting and the MV Agusta.

A small post today - I've been writing this since 2009, or so, and today I noticed that there are 138,000 hits; that's nothing when you look at sites like YouTube who have that many per minute uploads of material or popular bloggers getting in to the millions; usually teenagers telling their readers about their life, you know, 'got up this morning and I look awful.'
I'm not surprised maybe you should get out more.
Anyway we are still at it, or at least, I am, and the photo above was taken when I was a teenager: I'm the one at the very back in the middle, when my hair was black; I still remember those fine gentlemen.
Dave on the left, then Bill; Freddie in the front of me and then Johnny on the right.
Freddie and Johnny both died: Freddie about seven years ago and Johnny about twenty years ago.
I hope they are resting peacefully and visiting their loved ones in their loved one's dreams because that is where heaven is.
Dave, I still see when I get to Birmingham and I don't know where Bill is.
This is a picture of something we all worshiped in those days;

The MV Agusta: I took that photograph outside a place called Paradise Cove which is on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu California. A restaurant on the beach where they used to shoot some of the episodes of my favourite TV series The Rockford Files.

OJ and me, cocaine and Postie

Orenthal James "O. J." Simpson

On the flight to Los Angeles in 1994, I sat next to a girl; we had a ten hour chat and her name was Lori; she told me lots of information about what to expect in LA and the words I should never say as I wouldn't be understood: they included queue, brolly, fortnight, spanner and many more.

In fact one person I asked what a fortnight was said it was something from Shakespeare!!

Lori also told me about OJ Simpson; this was around a month after the killing of Nicole Simpson and at the time OJ was on remand having been involved in the slowest car chase in television history.

Living there for seventeen years I got to seeing loads and loads of them; car chases I mean, and not necessarily on TV. 

First of all you see in the sky helicopters hovering, like flies around the inevitable, then when you got close you see a file or two of cop cars and people on the streets waving at the car being chased when they slowed to come off the freeways.

One chase passed our apartment and, as we were watching it on TV, we nipped out onto the balcony, watched the chase pass by and nipped back inside.

They could easily have trapped them there and then as they came up from Franklin Avenue and turned left onto our street, Hillside Avenue.

Another time I was on Sunset Blvd when a chase came passed and I could see the driver closely that time and he was behaving as if he was out on a Sunday afternoon spin in his car.

So when Lori told me how famous OJ was and what a chase was I had no idea.

My wife came over with me in January 1995 and left me there in the hotel with no job, no real money and nowhere to live.

On the first night I went into a bar next to the hotel and had a few drinks. Friendly people in LA especially when they hear the accent. I got to talking to some kind of postmaster and an actor, who he'd introduced me to, told me my first stop was to go to Samuel French Film and Theatre Bookshop on Sunset Blvd which I did the next day.

When the actor left us, the post office guy said he was expecting someone and whilst he got the drinks in a went to the loo.

I was washing my hands when he bustled in with a young fella with a very red face; red faces are usually tourists but this was no tourist; he handed postie a packet and postie gave him some money; they shook hands and the red faced fella left.

'Do you want some cocaine?' said postie. 

'No' I said!

'Well do you have something I can shove some up my nose with?'

I searched my pockets; nothing.

'I got my Harrow Library card' I said.

'Your what . . . hey give it me, real quick.'

I did.

He took my card, put some cocaine on to it and shoved it up his nose; then he put a bit more on and shoved that up the other nostril.

Wow! Here I am in LA, I thought, and I'm offered a trip on the great white way on the first night.

We went back to the bar and I could see that the red faced fella was talking to someone else and as we passed the bar tender, who was collecting glasses, he noticed the white powder on Postie's nose!

He just flicked it off as he went passed and he gave me a look too or, should I say, he looked at my nose.

We got back to the bar and after a few minutes I went back to the loo, took my Harrow Library card and tore it to bits, flushing it down the loo before going back to the bar.

Three weeks or so later I found somewhere to live in a place called Silverlake in Maltman Avenue just off Sunset Blvd; a soap opera queen called Marilyn owned the house and there was an older actor there who kind of took a shine to me. He had retired from something and came to Hollywood to get in to a TV series; his girl friends had told him he was good looking and he should come; so he came; eejit.

He would drop me into various places – as long as I wasn't going after a job, I found out later – and I remember him saying one day that he had to get back as F. Lee Bailey was due to speak in court.

The opening statements in the trial started on my brother's birthday, January 24^th, and the trial ended on my mother's birthday on October 5^th.

By the time the trial finished we really got to know everybody concerned and within hours of the verdict people were selling The Juice is Loose tee shirts outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre. 

In fact Graumans changed to Mann's and back to Grauman's again during this period but you can look it up on Wikipedia – with enormous respect, of course.

At the moment there is a drama series on television in America and in Britain about the OJ case. 

It brings it all back to me; the glove that didn't fit; the blood on the Bronco; Marcia Clark; Bob Shapiro – all household names by the time the trial was over.
'If the glove don't fit, you have to acquit!' 

The white people thought he was guilty and the black people thought he wasn't.

Lori on the plane had told me how famous OJ was but I didn't figure; we arrived in LA about five in the evening and she told me she would like to take me up to Carmel later in the week and gave me her number. 

An air hostess had also given me her number: she said her neighbour was James Woods' manager and if I gave her a call and she would get me his number – I did call her but could never get hold of the manager and as to Lori? 
No I didn't go – I was tempted to go down the greasy path to debauchery and sin twice but decided to leave all that alone with no regrets. 

As I got off the plane that day - even whilst we were still in flight - I knew I was landing in the land of opportunity - I had a girl friend if I wanted one, a manager if I could find him and later a drug buddy if I wished to live that kind of life.
I saw Johnny Cochran a few times as he went to the same movies as me a few times.

Here are some photos of the people who were so familiar to me that long hot summer (from January to October, would you believe was sunny) all those years ago, and the people who portray them in the series -  The People v O.J. Simpson:

Obama in Cuba and the Chevy.

This is not political at all so don't let me frighten you away but there is a map above and, as you can see, it's of Cuba. If you look down the south east corner you will see the dreaded and disgusting Guantanamo Bay. That was left to the USA under some kind of treaty around 1903. Cuba feels that the USA are there illegally – and why wouldn't they?

As you will know it has been used as a detention centre since the Iraq invasion and none of the people there have been tried or convicted of anything so I suppose it could be called a concentration camp.

Barack Obama has tried to close the camp since he became president but keeps running in to objections from Congress; they just won't let him close the place. The objections have to do with where they would put the current inhabitants: would they send them home to their own countries or put them into prisons in America.

Obama is now on the island of Cuba and you will know it is the first visit of a serving president for eighty odd years.

The thing is I've always wanted to go to Cuba – I mean look at it:

Now that the Americans have an embassy there and have lifted a lot of the restrictions I don't think Cuba will look like this for very long. I just love those cars and if you even try to compare them to the cars being built today there is no comparison.

I used to drive a Chevy Nova when I lived in Los Angeles; it was a 1973 and was a sedan (saloon) and was like a tank. I also drove a Dodge Dart, which belonged to someone I knew and my pal had a 1963. Here they are – or should I say here are the models (not mine or my pals who would call his 'Betsy').

Some of the other cars on the island can be seen in these pictures:

But look at the island in the other pictures; who wouldn't want to go there?

If you have ever seen The Godfather II – one of the best films ever made – you will, more or less, know the history of Cuba. The Mafia ran the place and the President, Batista, was in their pocket. The island was inundated with the mob with their casinos and Fidel Castro and the rebels were sick of it so they did something about it.

Castro was the hero of Cuba and America told the Americans that he was a heathen and a communist and a threat to America. He went to America after his revolution and they turned him (Cuba) away so he went to the Soviet Union. The people in Cuba worship him – he got rid of the crooks. What he did then is not good as he put opponents in prison and nobody can condone that but the refugees who went to America wanted and want the island to return to its former state. The Mafia??

I would still like to go there; we were forbidden when we lived there when it wasn't that far away; I think USA citizens are fined something like $800 if they visit there.

I hope Obama enjoys his time there but his time as president is running out and gawd knows what the future holds for the place.

There is a lot of Obama publicity at the moment; on Saturday he was heavily featured in The Guardian magazine on Saturday and there is a documentary series on BBC2 Inside Obama's White House.

It's a wonder he achieved what he did; when Nancy Pelosi (the speaker of the house when Obama was elected) asked the Republicans what they would help them with to get through she was told 'we ain't helping you at all.'

moral dilemma

Montgomery Clift

Do you know I was thinking, on this day that the wonderful George Martin died, that there are other things bigger than the law and religion and that's just being good, using moral judgement, be your own man or woman and follow your own rules.

There is an item in the news at the moment about a certain cell phone in America that the FBI would like the mighty Apple Corporation to open to see if there are any clues on there to see if the people that terrorised San Bernardino had contacted others and conspired with others; Apple said it was against their rules of confidentiality to reveal how to unlock the phone.

Now what do I think about that?

I don't really want the FBI coming to me and looking at my call records even though I have nothing to hide. But why did this go public in any case?

Why didn't the FBI and Apple conspire together in one of the many conspiracies they are reputed to be doing all the time? From planning the attack on 9-11 to Hurricane Katrina!

There was a very good movie called I Confess which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starred everybody's favourite actor Montgomery Clift; Monty (above) played a priest and a man confessed to a murder during confession but because he was a priest he (the priest) had to follow his moral code of confidentiality and keep it to himself.

It's a moral dilemma and that kind of dilemma should be restricted to fiction.

Another thing – and this will come together, I hope – Jimmy Savile was a very religious man. He was so religious that he thought if he confessed his terrible sins he would go to heaven in spite of them.

But think of it if Jimmy Savile's priest knew about the terrible things he did with children of both sexes wouldn't it be his duty (the priest's) to put a stop to it by letting someone know – like the cops. That's a moral dilemma and I hate to even think about how many children he rapes could have been saved with a word from Savile's priest.

It's pronounced Savell, by the way, for my American friends who have probably never heard of the worm.

It doesn't matter whether you believe in God or not those children could have been spared the knowledge of that vile man's body.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-2-sides-of-eddie-ramone/x/1434435#/