The Ruling Class, Chavs and Stagflation.

There we are – a picture from Monty Python's Twit of the Year contest. Now that is what a lot of upper class people aspire to be.  In the sketch they are trying to walk along a straight line; I'm sure the upper class twits in real life have seen this sketch (who hasn't?) and yet they carry in being a twit.

Prince Harry is not an upper class twit in fact he, like his dad, would laugh at the sketch; twits have been a figure of fun on TV here for years and yet upper class twits still exist.

It was very hard to describe to my American friends just what the class system here is; in America there is no real class system and they don't have an upper class. They associate class with money whereas here the upper classes would never be so vulgar.

For example you would never see the upper classes buying furniture – they inherit it.

But the class system here goes right from the top to the bottom – to the under class.

The middle classes definitely look down on the working classes – even these days.

A lot of the working classes have become middle class and some of the middle classes don't like it so they have invented another class – the Chav.

The Chav, a few years ago, was called a casual or a Sharron, if you were a girl, or a Kevin, if you were a boy.

There is a Chav Test, rather like the 'U ' and none 'U' test which tested people to see if they were upper class or not. You could not be upper class if you were in trade or had to actually 'earn' money – that would never do.

The Chav has to drink cold lager, shop at certain shops, wear Burberry, track suits, shell suits, trainers, American baseball hats and – sounds a bit like an American here – maybe wear a hoodie.

The word Chav. I believe, is Romany for Boy – so you can't call a girl Chav a Chav!

The dictionary definition is informal , derogatory  ( Southern English ) “a young working-class person whose tastes, although sometimes expensive, are considered vulgar by some.”
By some!!!

It is just an excuse for snobbery. One part of society looking down on another part. The English are very good at it. Of course there is snobbery in America but it's more get up and go there; if you have the talent they don't care where you're from; as long as you don't live in a trailer park!!

And people here are not all snobs – there is just this 'class' system.

If you turned up at Buckingham Palace in a shell suit to meet the Queen and the Duke I'm sure 'Phil the Greek' would slip out and put a track suit on to make you feel comfortable.

But look at the experts who are running this country – just look at them. Do people have confidence in a Chancellor of the Exchequer who issues a ridiculous budget and then goes back on some of the things he felt so strongly about a few weeks ago?

What kind of confidence does that give people who want to invest here? Not much but money is flowing in to the country from Greece and Spain at the moment so what are the experts doing with it?

Here are the experts by the way, when they were boys and at the same school. Eton, of course, the famous public school:

(1) the Hon. Edward Sebastian Grigg, the heir to Baron Altrincham of Tormarton and current chairman of Credit Suisse (UK); (2) David Cameron, Prime Minister; (3) Ralph Perry Robinson, a former child actor, designer, furniture-maker. (4) Ewen Fergusson, son of the British ambassador to France, Sir Ewen Fergusson and now at City law firm Herbert Smith. (5) Matthew Benson, the heir to the Earldom of Wemyss and March. (6) Sebastian James, the son of Lord Northbourne, a major landowner in Kent.(7) Jonathan Ford, the-then president of the club, a banker with Morgan Grenfell. (8) Boris Johnson, the-then president of the Oxford Union, now Mayor of London. 9) Harry Eastwood, the investment fund consultant.

This one is from 1992, there are eight famous faces:

(1) George Osborne, now the Chancellor of the Exchequer; (2) writer Harry Mount, the heir to the Baronetcy of Wasing and Mr. Cameron’s cousin; (3) Chris Coleridge, the descendant of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the son of Lloyds’ chairman David Coleridge, the brother of Conde Nast managing director Nicholas Coleridge; (4) German aristocrat and managing consultant Baron Lupus von Maltzahn; (5) the late Mark Petre, the heir to the Barony of Petre; (6) Australian millionaire Peter Holmes a Cour;(7) Nat Rothschild, the heir to the Barons Rothschilds and co-founder of a racy student paper with Harry Mount; (8) Jason Gissing, the chairman of Ocado supermarkets.

Gawd help us!!

Now a word about my last post; I had an email about stagflation. I said it was another story.

Stagflation is when high unemployment coincides with high inflation. According to Keynes, if I remember correctly, it can't happen if Keynesian economics are adhered to correctly but when it did happen, in the 70s, under Keynesian policies, they called it stagflation; someone made up the word: a cross between stagnation and inflation.

It seriously damaged the Keynes economic philosophy and turned people back to Adam Smith. 
But Adam Smith was from the 18^th century and he believed that free market economies are more productive and beneficial to their societies. Did he mean beneficial in terms of profit or beneficial in quality of life. Did he mean it looks after the poor and weak with regards to health care, welfare, education or did he mean it will make a profit for the country and the people making the profit can throw the scraps to the hungry?
I think he meant in the world of profits.
He felt that an invisible hand had a control over markets and I often wonder what his answer to the world economic crisis in 2008 would have been.
But back to stagflation: I remember reading in The Guardian in 1976 (yes I have that kind of memory) that as two million men lost their lives in the first world war there was no baby boom as in 1945.
Sixty years after The Somme, there was no mass retirement in the work force so those millions of vacancies in the job market didn't arise so they had high inflation and high unemployment.
I think the current government here are using Adam Smith's economics and trying to reduce the deficit that way whereas the Americans under Barack Obama are using Keynesian economics and spending their way out of the recession.
And in any case – what's the deficit?
Answers on a postcard to 10 Downing Street.

When we lived there (America) unemployment was over 11% and the economy was on its way out – now unemployment has reduced drastically and the economy is growing; so which is the best way austerity or growth?

Baby Boomers.

Elvis Presley.

As John Lennon said 'he started it.'

Yes that's right! Baby Boomers; who are they? Well they seem to be mentioned in America more than over here. In fact the man in the street here wouldn't know what the various generations are called; and why would they.

The Baby Boomers were that generation born after the war – yes the 2^nd world war – up to 1964; so that is between the years 1945 and 1964. The war was over, the troops came home and all those children were born. 

And what did they create? Nothing.

They think they did; they think they're special but you look at the people who actually changed the world. The tremendous amount of people born in 1926 – The Queen, Marilyn Monroe, Mel Brooks, Andy Griffith, Don Rickles, Jerry Lewis, David Attenborough, Hugh Hefner, Chuck Berry, Kenneth Williams, Eric Morecambe, Leonard Rosseter, my pal Aubrey Morris and many more.

Now if you haven't heard of all of them or appreciated their talent you are the one who is 'missing out.'

What ever happened in 1925 or the first few months of 1926 to produce such a unique and talented lot might be worth looking into. 

They were born eight years after a whole generation died in the first world war – two million, in fact, never came back to the UK, from the war to have kids who would create jobs fifteen to twenty years later and leave four to six million vacancies in the jobs market when they retired in the seventies.

That was the real cause of stagflation – but that's another subject!

Now I don't fall into the category of a Baby Boomer – I'm not too young I'm too old. I was a war baby; just like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. They were the ones who followed the pioneers – people like Elvis Presley, Woody Allen, John Cazalle and the subject of one of my posts Jerry Lee Lewis.

Those were the people who started Rock'n'roll as it became. There might have been something else beforehand but Little Richard, Jerry Lee and Elvis are the ones who started it; The Beatles built on to that with the Stones.

Then in the seventies it all went wrong, musically, which we have seen recently with the excellent TV series here in Britain called The Seventies.

People like James Taylor, Crosby Stills and Nash ruined everything with their savourless songs with no beat and very little melody; it's no wonder that in the late seventies punk came along.

The Ramones.

Great band but all dead now.

Punk Rock was originally supposed to have started with garage bands or groups. People have always said it started near where they used to live; well it probably did. They were all influenced by the same people – The Kinks, The Kinsmen and main stream rock 'n' roll – but the people who made it famous – really famous – were The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and The Clash.

Punk Rock went back to the three chord basic guitar playing – 'C' 'G' and 'F' – sometimes throwing in an A minor chord for good measure but it was back to basics like the fifties.

These punk rockers were the late Baby Boomers and they disappeared when their time came unlike the early ones.

So now the Baby Boomers will be retiring – the first ones retired here last year (aged sixty five) and over the next twenty years they will be dying.

If you want to invest in the future – go into the funeral business.

Hollywood agents.

The  I. M. Pei Building in Beverly Hills.

 

One or two people have asked me about the agents in Hollywood; the theatrical agents that is. The people that actually run the place.

Yes they are very powerful and one or two can't compare to any agency in London. They are CAA – (Creative Artists Agency); William Morris Endeavor, ICM (International Creative Management) and United Talent Agency.

CAA are the big ones and were the super agents in the 90s. A few agents headed by Michael Ovitz, who actually assumed power, broke away from ICM and started up on their own in 1975. Their first office was rented, they had 2 cars between them, folding card tables for desks and the agents' wives were the receptionists.

They went from humble beginnings to running the world; they had the top stars, the top writers, directors, producers and they put packages together – that is what I mean when I say they ran the world; and still do.

They went from rented offices in Century City to hiring the world famous architect. I. M. Pei to design a very striking building on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills; it cost $25 million and that was in 1989.
Things kind of cooled in the 90s when Ovitz went to work for Disney but they are still up there. They represent Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Stephen Spielberg and many more and according to Wikipedia In March 2009 Fast Company named CAA among the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World, alongside Apple, Google and others, noting that "in Hollywood, there's CAA and then there's everybody else." Fortune named CAA "the entertainment industry's most influential organization.
If you start to make it in the business they will approach you – no need to contact them.
The other agencies above do packaging too but at the moment CAA have 10 movies in development, 14 in production and 94 past films. But they don't produce them they are the 'sales representatives'.
Apart from the agents mentioned above there are other agents – some good, some not so good and they are known as boutique agencies; those are the ones people like me have to approach to be represented – and it isn't easy.
To get an agent in Hollywood you have to be introduced by someone in the business and that doesn't mean they will take you on.
If you are my age they look at your résumé to see if you have worked with any of the Hollywood casting directors – in other words have you been in ER, Friends, LAPD Blue or even New York casting directors who do Law & Order etc.
If you don't know any of the casting directors through work the agent will not take you on. It doesn't matter if you have been working with the Royal Shakespeare Company or The National Theatre of Britain, they will pass; 'great reel' they say and show you the door.
They don't want anybody my age with no Hollywood credits; if they take you on it means they will have to work.
I did have a few agents over there. The first one I called up asked me to send her a head shot. I did and she took me on on the strength of it. I asked why and she said the casting directors only go on head shots – so she was prepared to work.
She asked me to get some more head shots taken which I did. She wanted to see all the proofs so I sent them to her and she picked one she liked.
No one else liked it. They said it just wasn't 'me.' That was her problem – she had never met me so she didn't really know me.
But she got me my first job on TV – it was the only TV job I did there.
After a few months I decided to leave her and go to a manager – a manager in Hollywood takes 15% - agents are only allowed to take 10%.
Sometimes if you get a job for scale the producers pay your agency commission so it's 'scale + 10%.'
I did one commercial with the management company and then my first agent called me one day and asked how things were going – I said not too good that I'd only worked in one non-union commercial (I wasn't a SAG member then ) and she asked me if I'd like to go back with her.
It was an unusual request so I said yes.
A couple of days later she called and said she had an audition for me in the movie Titanic. She had seen that they were after Irish and English actors which is why she called me and fair play to her for that.
It didn't work out – I got a 'call back' but that was it.
The Hollywood actor usually has 2 agents: a theatrical one and a commercial one.
The theatrical agent, by the way, wouldn't be for jobs in the theatre, like in London, but would be for TV and movies.
After I did a play at Santa Monica Playhouse, my friend, whom I met there, suggested me to his Commercial Agent who took me on that's how I managed to do voice work on movies.
After a few theatrical agents I went my own way and the movies I got in to, which were usually low budget and which I'd got myself, were arranged by my commercial agent; but they wouldn't take any commission. I'll say that again an agent wouldn't take commission.
When I did a commercial through them I went for the audition, got a call back and was then kept waiting for 2 hours. I told them about it and they invoiced the advertising agency who eventually sent me about $400 for being kept waiting – some of that was for late payment – and when I went in to their office (the agents) to give them their 10% they wouldn't take it. They said they were not entitled to it – I actually made them take it and buy lunch.
So agents are not all that bad.
I actually did a movie called Father Joe Blow with my agent – he played father Joe and I played a randy college professor.
One agent I called on the phone for representation told me to come in to see him; this was a boutique agent called Capital Artists on Wilshire Blvd; no big deal.
I arrived and waited in the waiting room; he was a stout young kid of about 30 and his assistant showed me in to see him; he took one look at me and realised I wasn't in the age group he wanted; I was too old. Obviously I sounded younger on the phone.
I sat down in his office and waited for him to finish his phone call. When he did he made another call. We made very little small talk but it became obvious to me what the score was.
When I left the shit bag didn't even shake hands – I asked him if I should call and he said yes.
Of course when I called he wouldn't come to the phone and in fact every agent I went to see who passed on representing me wouldn't come to the phone either; so what does that say about them?
The guy from Capital went on my shit list but you know what – I've forgotten his name.

Our Garden, the Fox and Boris.

There's a little mouse who lives in our garden; it lives under an old dilapidated shed, which has a couple of trees between it and our back door. Each day, I put a few nuts down at the bottom of a little wall, and the mouse comes out of his home, runs along a smaller wall, drops down to the ground and up to where the nuts are; then it takes one and scurries back home to its family.

This takes it about five minutes as it must do something to the nut before making the journey back for more. Sometimes one of the squirrels will take all the nuts in one go and then when the mouse returns it finds that they've disappeared.

Poor old mouse aye?

Some days it manages to take them all before the squirrels have their fill. There are plenty of other nuts for the squirrels and the pigeons but they like to take the ones which aren't theirs because they don't know any better.

The birds, robins, dunnocks and the black birds, have another pile of food we put out: wild bird seed, crumbs and suet, all mixed together, and as soon as I come back inside the robin lands within seconds of me closing the door.

When the little dunnock comes over for some food, the robin flies up to about four inches from the ground and makes itself as big as possible by flapping its wings and the dunnock flies away; but it doesn't starve – it comes back later.

The birds, squirrels and mice live in this wild world where they would starve without using their wits. They wouldn't starve without us and it probably makes us feel a lot better than it does them, but they are living in the world where the stronger survive.

Sometimes all the birds, squirrels and mice disappear and the garden is quiet; we look out and it usually means a cat is crossing the garden. Our cat would look at the goings on through the window just as we do but he never went out. 

 

The cat that crosses the garden is the King, at that point, but once in a while, the fox comes in and that cat is nowhere to be seen.

The fox lives between some trees and bushes nearby and she comes in to the garden every day to see what she can eat.

I have put a little video for you to view at the top; my voice sounds a bit breathy as I had to run up the stairs to use the camera and I have also described her as a male; sorry Foxie!

You should be able to see the little wall where the mouse lives too.

It's nice to look at nature once in a while but these animals and birds are nuisances to a lot of other people so they would probably not be very pleased with me for encouraging them.

But that's me.

I look at those animals and I think of how we would survive; most of us can't do that at all. We have big strong people who tread over weaker ones and take from them what they can.

For those who read my last post, who do not live in the UK, Boris the buffoon won the election and stays on as the mayor of London. I didn't vote for him as he doesn't appear, to me, to know what is going on. He has been elected totally because he is a buffoon. 

 

I have seen him in debate and I get the impression that he probably wears big hard brogues and treads over the things he doesn't see and, because he walks and doesn't look down, he does a lot of damage – and that is metaphorically speaking.

When I lived here before, there was no mayor of London and there are no mayors in the rest of the country. There were elections in other cities, the other day, to see if they wanted to have a mayor and only one other city, Bristol, have voted to have one; I'm with the cities who rejected them.

The election in London was a personality contest between two big hitters and a few smaller ones. Boris won by a small majority over Ken Livingstone; Boris is a Conservative and Ken is Labour.

The election of Boris has gone against the national trend as there has been a huge swing to Labour in the local elections.

The Conservatives are making the usual excuses saying that this is a natural thing half way through an administration and in a way they are right. But they are a minority government to start with so where will they end up.

There is also a swing to the left in France and Greece as the people there don't like the austerity policies either. This word austerity is associated with the word asceticism which is a philosophical school of thought which means self-discipline, self-denial, non indulgence. 

Maybe we should start living like monks, growing our own food, and if we can't do that maybe someone will come along and throw us a few nuts and hope that the fox doesn't come along and eat us.

Strange isn't it that in 2008 some top bankers in America were calling home and telling their loved ones to go to the ATM and withdraw as much money as possible as the system was going to break down – this is true as I have heard them say it in interviews; Henry Poulson for one said it.

The problems with the sub-prime mortgages, derivatives and all the other commission at every stage swindles, caused a world financial crisis with the major powers throughout the world and that is what the Conservative Government here have inherited – so it wasn't just the Labour Party's fault.

But the USA have gone from the brink of a total collapse into growth and that is due to spending their way out of the recession just as John Maynard-Keynes advocated and just as the Labour Party would have done if they'd have been re-elected.

And the animals in the garden have no idea of what is going on in the world; neither have the young children who will be denied education because of the austerity measures but do you know something – children cannot wait for their education it has to come at a certain time in their lives so in twenty years time, when those children cannot find jobs and can't pay their taxes, when they are living on welfare it will be this government’s fault; just as Thatcher's children are experiencing now.

News from Britain and Hollywood.

Let me just tell the people of the world what is happening here in Great Britain; the people of the world who read this, of course.
We know what is happening in Hollywood because it's in all the papers. The world famous, and comparatively recently built, Kodak Theatre, the place where they hold The Academy Awards, is to have a name change. I'm afraid Kodak has gone bankrupt and so the sponsorship has been withdrawn and it will be known, for the time being, as The Former Kodak Theatre.
This will go on for a while till the new sponsor, Dolby, has its name added to the illustrious place and then it will be known as The Dolby Theatre.
Of course who is Dolby? Is it Thomas Dolby the rock'n'roller who wrote many a soundtrack to a movie or, to be more precise, had some of his music used in movies.

Thomas Dolby sued the mighty Dolby Corporation and won. What he sued them for is unknown to me – I suppose I could look it up but – as they say here – I can't be arsed!!
Now, before we skip on to things happening here, what do the Dolby Corporation do? And why should they have their logo on the former Kodak Theatre?
Well they, Dolby, specialise in sound; originally it was called Dolby Stereo and they specialised in putting sound on to 35mm film which gets used on movies – even today with films being shown and edited in a digital format.
I can't get technical as I want to move on (and I'm not technical) but here is a shot of a frame of 35mm film print

featuring all four audio formats (or "quad track")- from left to right: SDDS (blue area to the left of the sprocket holes), Dolby Digital (grey area between the sprocket holes labelled with the Dolby "Double-D" logo in the middle), analog optical sound (the two white lines to the right of the sprocket holes), and the DTS Time Code (the dashed line to the far right.) 
Did you get that? Oh! 
So back to Blighty, which is where I started this post – back to Britain.
Today, Thursday May 3^rd, is election day. Not the general election but local authority elections and also the London Mayoral election.

In London there is a Mayor; at the moment it is a buffoon called Boris Johnson – here he is and what a prat he looks:

there is no need to say anything else; the picture tells it all.
London is the only city in Britain that has a mayor. The rest have leaders of the council or the city, or whatever, and have a non-elected Lord Mayor who is only some kind of figurehead. He is the man who meets a VIP visitor to the city or town and opens supermarkets and shopping centres. Here is the picture of a Lord Mayor:

Does he look as silly as Boris with that silly hat? It's debatable. And that chain??
What will be debatable, soon, is whether other towns and cities here should have a proper Mayor and not just a Lord Mayor.
At the moment we just don't know as they have to talk about it.
Oh and another thing: Britain is in a drought and there is a hose pipe ban; people cannot use hosepipes to wash their cars or do the garden and do you know what? It has been the wettest April since records began and still we are in a drought and cannot use the hosepipe.
Apparently it is the wrong kind of rain. That's what the experts have said The Wrong Kind of Rain.
Birmingham, a city in the west midlands, sold some water to a county in the south recently; it took the water, from where it was storing it, put it into a river, and down south the county took that water, when it reached them, from the river and paid the City of Birmingham for it; that's trust isn't it?
And who did I vote for in the Mayoral election? Not Boris. You can't trust people with white hair . . . oops!!

Cry Gawd for Harry, Snooker and Saint George.

Snooker player using a 'rest.'

Today is Saint George's Day and Saint George is the patron saint of England.

In countries like Ireland, where their patron saint is Saint Patrick, their day is a public holiday - in fact till the 1970s the pubs were closed on Saint Patrick's day.

Saint Patrick's Day is also a public holiday in Newfoundland, Labrador and Montserrat – bet you didn't know that did you?

Saint Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and Saint Andrew's day is also a public holiday there.

Saint Andrew, by the way, is also the patron saint of Greece, Romania, Russia and Ukraine and in Germany they celebrate Saint Andrew's Night - Andreasnacht – in Poland they celebrate Saint Andrew's Prayer.

All that celebrating so you would think they would observe their day here in England, Saint George's Day, and we 'd see celebrations, with the singing of Land of Hope and Glory, the wearing of the red white and blue but do we see it? To use a phrase from Billy Connolly – not a jot!

The only celebrations will be those toasting the 'bard;' his birthday was always thought to be St George's Day but it now seems it has been changed to April 26th - well that was the day he was baptised - and he died on St George's Day - Shakespeare I'm talking about!!

I have heard that there is a Saint George's Day Parade in Birmingham today and that there was one in Manchester yesterday – but it isn't a public holiday; everybody has gone to work and I haven't heard anything on the radio.

A few years ago the Welsh Assembly voted to make Saint David's Day a public holiday there but they had to apply to the Prime Minister's Office of Tony Blair and they turned it down.

The only big event in London was The London Marathon yesterday; it was marred by the death of one of the competitors, a 30 year old woman, who collapsed near the end of the race. It didn't have the same affect as the 2 horses that died in The Grand National last week (yes it was only last week).

Prince Harry was at the marathon and he seems a friendly kind of fella – very kind of blokey – unlike his brother; he doesn't have that awful South Kensington accent like his dad and Uncle Andrew or the half estuary accent like his Uncle Edward so I say good luck to him in his cage.

The other big thing that started yesterday was The World Snooker Championship; this will dominate the television for the next few weeks.

It's held in The Crucible Theatre, Sheffield and it is a big big business. The thing about snooker, as opposed to pool, is that it is a pondering game of enormous skill.

It was invented by army officers in India in the late 19th century; it was adapted from billiards, as pool was, and has now overtaken billiards in popularity, as pool has and is very popular the world over – except America.

The Americans called in snucker rhyming the 'U' sound with how you would say butcher.

The word snooker is also a state of play in the game itself: it's when a ball cannot be seen clearly by the cue ball and the only way to hit it is to cannon onto it via the cushion or by swerving the cue ball.

The difference between pool and snooker is that the table for snooker is 12 feet by 6 feet and the pool table is 7 feet by 3 and a half feet.

That's the big difference – it's a huge table so when you try to break the balls at snooker and you have to break them gently and not 'leave' anything on for your opponent; in pool you hit the ball as hard as you can as you are bound to get one in a pocket and then you are away.

But let us go back to the marathon and that girl that died. She died in Birdcage Walk a few minutes from the finish. She had been sponsored by friends and relatives and the object of her charity this time was the Samaritans.

She had climbed mountains and worked wonders for charity in the past and this morning the amount sponsored stood at around £5,000 – at the moment it is up around £81,000 and growing. This is what she was doing for charity; it seems such a moment when the giving to charity is all in the news because of the limits that are being put on the tax relief rich people are getting for their donations; unless they get tax relief they won't contribute.

Claire Squires wasn't claiming any tax relief for her donation; there she is below; spare a thought.

Claire Squires

The Marathon at Bird Cage Walk.

The Grand National

The Grand National

with eventual winner in yellow on the right

There are a few things in Britain which are unique to the place a few things which happen and when you live here you take them for granted.

There is the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race (on the River Thames), The Derby, The Eurovision Song Contest and The Grand National.

The Eurovision Song Contest is a song contest between the European Countries – although Israel won it one year – the Boat Race is only peculiar to Britain but the Grand National is the greatest steeple chase in the world.

If you remember there was a movie about it called National Velvet which was one of the earlier films of Elizabeth Taylor.

The audience figures for the National go into many many millions as it is transmitted all over the world and as it is transmitted by the BBC it is the best uninterrupted coverage you can expect.

There are bookies on every corner in Britain – some would say too many – and it is the bookies greatest day of the year. The Derby would be the only other contender for this but usually nearly everybody will have a bet.

If they don't have a bet people will probably belong to a sweepstake at work where the name of a horse is drawn from a hat and if you are drawn the winner you take all.

You know which horse you have drawn before the race, of course, so you can follow it on the TV.

These days you can also follow it at the bookies on huge screens and there is quite an atmosphere in the betting shops.

Betting shops are usually miserable places as gamblers are not usually full of personalities. They keep themselves to themselves and some pretend they know something – something they got from the horses mouth. Others pretend they understand the form book but most pretend they win most of the time.

About 20 years ago there was a 10% gambling tax in Britain and you could either pay on your stake or on your take. If you won, obviously, it would be better to pay on your stake but most gamblers would pay on their take. I asked a few why they did this, as I always paid on my stake, and they said they lost most of the time.

But now there is no tax on gambling at all and no vigorish, like in America; the bookie has to work out by the amount of money that is being wagered on each horse to work out the odds and that is how they make their profit. If a favourite wins it is a bad day for the bookies. But they don't have many bad days – I mean have you ever seen a bookie or a farmer on a bike?

So on Grand National Day – and Derby Day – the miserable, scruffy, smelly, fag smoking gamblers cram in to the corners of the betting shops to make way for the flutterers, flitterers and first time gamblers.

Many years ago – in fact in 1961 when I was working on the motor bikes at the post office – there was a sweepstake at work and I drew a horse called Nicholas Silver – a grey.

I think it cost me a shilling which – for the youngsters out there – was one twelfth of a pound; in other words 5p or 5 pence.

I don't think a grey had ever won the National but in any case I went to the bookies, which were illegal in those days, and put a bet on. I put a whole pound which was about a sixth of my wages; it was a big bet as I was a fool.

The bookies was in a suburb of Birmingham called Selly Oak and I had to go up an alley to find the place.

As I've mentioned before, I had to wrap my pound note into a piece of paper and on the paper I wrote Nicholas Silver £1 win and handed it to a man standing in a door way.

The horse won at 33-1; so I won the sweep at work and also a lot of money from the bookies. On the piece of paper was my nome-de-plume and I had to quote this when I went to the bookies and he handed me £34; £33 for the odds and my £1 stake back.

This was a great deal of money to me back then and I wasn't really old enough to gamble but as it was an illegal bookies in any case what does it matter?

Official gambling in those days was only by credit; you had to have an account with the bookies and you paid your bill at the end of the month or whatever – and you were usually posh.

On Saturday the race was won by a grey again and this was the first time a grey horse has won since Nicholas Silver in 1961 and guess what the price was. 33-1.

And did I back it? No!

I watched the race on TV and kicked myself when Neptune Collonges came in first; there he is, above, in the yellow with the Irish jockey on his back; in fact most of the jockeys here are from Ireland.

It was one of the most exciting races I can remember and it took a photo finish to determine the winner.

I did fancy a horse called Sea Bass, which was ridden by a woman (from Ireland, of course) and it came in 3^rd making her the highest placed female in Grand National History.

The big tragedy was that they had to put 2 horses down. It is the price we, or the horses, have to pay for such an exciting and unique event and we have to ask ourselves if it's worth it.

The decision to put the horses down is not made lightly. If a horse breaks a leg or a fetlock they have to be destroyed as there is no way you can 'contain' a horse so they kill the horse before they are in any real pain - and it's heartbreaking.

The people that usually complain about this don't usually have anything to do with horses and the people that put them down are usually the people who look after them like members of the family every day of the year.

William Shakespeare - did he or didn't he?

Bill the Shake.

Let's go along with this post and see where it goes . . . .

As regulars readers will know, I am not an expert on anything, so to take on the argument as to whether William Shakespeare actually wrote the plays he is credited with writing, is a tall order for me but when has that put me off?

I have appeared in a few Shakespeare plays and been paid for it as well as doing one when I was at drama school. I must say that I liked it very much. I have a problem watching Shakespeare sometimes with some of the over playing and lack of realism but that's just me.

I remember Jonathan Miller in Beyond the Fringe speaking lines like an Olivier influenced Shakespearean actor which showed up just how ridiculous some of the Shakespearean acting really was; and still is I'm sorry to say.

I remember years ago, Enoch Powell pontificating about William Shakespeare and saying that Shakespeare couldn't have written all the plays – in fact he said he had written none of them and that it was some aristocrat writing them in secret. He said how could he have known all the workings of the court to be able to write in such detail about it?

Like everything else Enoch Powell said, I disagree with him. He was a very clever fella but like a lot of clever people who are nearing genius their brain only has so much it can take in. This is why the absent minded professor or genius mathematician can't do mundane things such as boil eggs.

There has always been a school of thought that agrees with Powell but I have to ask why, after 400 years, would they bother?

Their argument is that Shakespeare wouldn't know the workings of the court or that he wasn't educated enough. Wasn't educated enough????

He went to Stratford Grammar School!! Isn't that enough.

You see because he didn't go to university they don't like the idea that he could write so many plays.

For the record he wrote 38 plays.

Alan Ayckbourn, the modern equivalent of Shakespeare, has written 73 full length plays all professionally produced – and he didn't go to university either.

He came from the theatre where plays are produced, where you learn what is acceptable and what isn't – and if you are a genius, which is what Shakespeare was, it is easy peasy.

One of Shakespeare's contemporaries was Ben Johnson and, even though he went to a posh school, he didn't go to university either. In fact after Westminster School he was a brick layer.

But why do people always question genius? It seems that every now and then they change their minds as to who wrote Shakespeare's plays apart from the great man; it also seems as if they would accept anybody apart from Shakespeare himself!

At one time it was supposed to be Francis Bacon but that went out of fashion then Christopher Marlowe was supposedly the author of the bard's work; he was murdered mysteriously so the theory was that he didn't die at all but that he pretended to be dead – like Elvis, Martin Bormann and Jim Morrison – and Shakespeare was 'his front' and lately it is supposed to be Edwards de Vere, 17^th Earl of Oxford.

The theory with de Vere is that he had access to the court, he knew the goings on there and he must have written the 37 plays – all by himself.

Forget the fact that he died in 1604, 12 years before Shakespeare and 9 years before Shakespeare stopped writing.

Why did he stop writing they say. What does anybody stop doing anything?

People are judging Shakespeare by modern standards when writers retire and write their memoirs – did they do that then?

William Shakespeare died a few days short of his 52^nd birthday; as we all get to find out that when you reach your mid forties something happens to the eyes; the rods and cones start to go haywire and you need glasses so maybe he couldn't see too good so for the last 3 years of his life he didn't write.

When Bob Dylan came on to the scene in the 60s people questioned whether he wrote all he was purported to have written – the same with The Beatles.

Anyway it is Shakespeare's birthday in a couple of weeks; he died on Saint George's Day – the patron saint of England – and in the next week there will be a lot of coverage on the BBC about Shakespeare; make a change from all the programmes on Charles Dickens and The Titanic!!

Easter Uprising, 1st World War and my Grandad,

The Proclamation to the people of Ireland.

During the first world war there was an insurrection in Dublin and Pádraig (Patrick) Pearse, one of the leaders, declared independence for Ireland on the steps of the General Post Office. There is the proclamation above.

The British, who ruled Ireland at the time, attacked the insurgents with their 'long range guns' and ever since, the rebellion has been commemorated in Dublin each Easter.

The date was actually Easter Monday 23^rd April 1916, it was organised by the Irish Republican Brotherhood and called The Easter Rising (in Irish Éirí Amach na Cásca).

Apart from knowing their catechism, the Irish know the names of all the heroes from that Easter week, and the names of the fifteen men who were executed by firing squad very soon afterwards.

Pearse was one of the first to be executed on May 3^rd 1916; 9 days after the start of the insurrection.

One of those shot was the poet Joseph Mary Plunket who was suffering from consumption, at the time, and was married in the prison chapel just before his execution. He didn't write any poems, as far as I'm aware, about the insurrection (maybe he didn't have time) but some of his poems have a feeling of death about them.

His father was a Papal Count which is why his Christian names are of a saint; one male and one female as is the custom for Papal Counts.

W. B. Yeats wrote the poem 16 Dead Men which dealt with the executions (the 16^th man was Sir Roger Casement who smuggled arms into Ireland) and his masterpiece of a poem Easter, 1916.

I asked my mother one day what grandad did in the uprising and she said “Ah – he was away getting gassed. Fighting for the British.”

She said it as if the sole purpose for going to France was to be gassed. But that's what happened. I asked my grandad what he knew about the Easter Uprising and he said very little.

He said the officer called him to one side and told him that there was a bit of trouble in 'your country.'

Thousands of Irish men were away fighting with the British whilst their comrades were at home fighting against them. It is the dichotomy the Irish have found themselves in over and over again - for example I believe they were on both sides during the American Civil War.

The 'bit of trouble in your country' was followed by the civil war and when independence was finally won, a movement of Unionists wanted the north to be partitioned away from the south and stay colonised by Britain. It is generally called Ulster but Ulster is made up of nine counties and there are only six in the so called Northern Ireland – a phrase my mother never used, by the way; she called it The North of Ireland.

If the whole of Ulster was to stay British it might have meant a majority of Catholics so they dropped Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan and left them in the Republic: talk about Gerrymandering. So the north were left with one Catholic county – Derry.

There is a pub in the San Fernando Valley called the 32 Counties - that's how many counties there are in the whole of Ireland so you know where their sympathies lie.

If you are wondering how this all started, and how there were, or are, so many protestants in the north, you have to go right back to the time of King James I, who sent a contingent of Scottish protestants to the north of Ireland. This was called The Jacobean Plantation of Ulster and a significant amount of land was set aside for Scottish courtiers and servants.

I don't know how many were sent over but it was about the same number who went on The Mayflower to America a short time later. I think the population of America speaks for itself but Catholicism still dominates most of Ireland.

However, The Jacobean Plantation of Ulster is recognised as the biggest ever real estate rip off.

But back to 1916; back to my grandad fighting with the British in the trenches; an Irishman aged about 20 when he went off in 1916. He was a married man with at least 2 children – my mother born in 1914 and her brother Tom – and was finding it hard to manage so he joined up.

I didn't ask him much about it, as I wasn't that interested in that war back then, but I pressed further about the atmosphere he found in Dublin upon his return from the Great War. He said he didn't get on well with his brother who had fought on the other side in Dublin.

He would go to the pub with his two brothers and the three of them were from different organisations; one was in the IRA the other in the IRB and my grandad was an ex (gassed) British soldier as far as they were concerned; it didn't stop them drinking with each other though.

My grandad would tell me of the days before he went away and he would say that the owl-ones (women) would stand on the street with their long frocks and pee in to the drains; you knew when this was happening, he said, as you could see them opening their legs slightly and standing for a few minutes – very handy for them too, now I think.

Here we are 96 years after the Amach na Cásca; Ireland, Southern Ireland, the Irish Republic, is ruled from Dublin but the country is still partitioned. The people up there call themselves Irish but they are still under the jurisdiction of London.

The Irony of Thatcher, Reagan and Easter.

It's a funny old thing isn't it; irony. Pronounced like that, by the way with the 'r' used; I heard so many mispronunciations when I was in America such as using the first two syllables like you would say iron – the thing that comes with the ironing board.

Some people say that the Americans don't know what irony is but the ones I knew did and in fact I'm not sure if I know for sure as the dictionary explanation says the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning.

I mean that's sarcasm isn't it?I mean isn't it?

Irony to me is when someone tries to do some bad deed to somebody and . . . . well let's invent a little plot.

Let's say that a man is so poor that he mugs someone on the street.

He waits around a corner and pretty soon a little man with a funny hat comes along so he jumps on him and beats him up; injuring him very badly. But when he goes through the man's wallet he finds that there is nothing of any value in there; just some papers and cards. In a rage he tears the papers and throws the wallet into the river.

So he has beaten the man up for nothing.

But when he gets home, feeling miserable and a failure, he finds his wife jumping for joy for she has found that her late father's collection of baseball cards could be worth a lot of money; he has always known this but it's always been one card short.

She tells him a man with a funny hat is coming around with the missing card and they will all be rich.

That to me is ironic – the meaning in the dictionary is wrong.

Those kinds of things happen in real life and the story of Christ is the same; it's always been known as the greatest story ever told which is what it is and which is why a lot of people believe it and other stories have been written based upon it.

A great movie called Cool Hand Luke is a kind of Christ story complete with miracles, (the eggs), a crucifixion (he gets shot) and he rises from the dead in the shape of his photo being put back together with the shape of a cross across it and the prisoners worship his memory.

In real life President Ronald Reagan emptied the mad houses of America and, I am told, stopped funding research in to Alzheimer's Disease – he ended up with the disease himself.

Margaret Thatcher did the same in Britain and she has ended up with dementia.

And the Christ story; well his father, the father he had on earth, Joseph was a carpenter; he made all kinds of things and Jesus's brothers - yes he was supposed to have had brothers – ran the family business.

One of the things they made were crosses.

I think those stories are ironic?

Happy Easter and Passover.

Stupid Government in Britain.

Petrol Pump Chaos in Britain Yesterday.

I have experienced lots of things in Britain; lots of crazy things that you wouldn't think a government capable of; it's great that it's not a banana republic or has a dictator in charge but that is no excuse for stupidity.

I lived through the Thatcher years when they abolished rates on property and introduced the Community Charge, the so called Poll Tax, the dismantling of the railway system in to a group of separate businesses that own various part of the rail network, like Virgin (try and get a train easily in the UK now), and saw the privatisation of many nationalised companies, but nothing can be prepared to what is going on here at the moment.

For people who do not live here there is a tax called Valued Added Tax – VAT or just vat – which is a kind of sales tax which is common in America. From now on I'm going to call it tax for the purposes of what I am talking about here.

Last week the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered his budget to the House of Commons; this is the government's plan of fiscal action for the next 12 months.

This is where the government raises and decreases taxes and traditionally it's where they raise the price of booze, cigarettes, petrol and road tax. Road tax is the same as the tags you have to put on your car in America.

The budget was a bad budget for seniors and a good one for top earners; they have increased the tax for some pensioners who work and reduced the tax for the so called top earners. Top earners pay 50% of their income on the slice of their income over 150 or 250 grand; the Chancellor lowered that to 45% and paid for it with the pensioners tax increase.

That's by the by.

The VAT – the sales tax – is also applied to hot food and if you buy fish and chips you have to pay tax on the food – because it's hot.

The Chancellor has extended the tax to pasties, and other hot food sold over the counter, when they're hot so when you go to a deli and buy a hot pastie you have to pay the tax. If the pastie goes cold, whilst it's behind the counter waiting to be sold, no tax is applicable – I don't have to comment on that it's stupid; you can see that.

Then last week a cabinet minister went on TV and suggested that people stock up with petrol in case the tanker drivers go on strike. He said as well as filling your fuel tanks you should fill a spare can too.

This has resulted in all the filling stations in the country running out of fuel; lines of cars are queuing in the streets and causing traffic jams; police have had to close some of them because of the disruption to traffic.

It was on the news that the army is being trained to deliver the tankers to the petrol stations in case of an emergency because they don't want to see essential services such as hospitals being affected.

And guess what!!

There is no strike planned; the union for the tanker drivers are talking to the managements about the health and safety of actually delivering petrol – they are in talks; nothing more.

I hope we don't go to war with this lot running the country if those are the tactics they would use – they didn't think that a statement such as 'fill you cars just in case' would panic the country.

I rest my case.

American/British TV writing.

Fawlty Towers title card.

There is a big difference in attitudes between America and Britain; it is said that when you come up with an idea in Britain and talk to people about it they try and talk you out of it; if you want to do a comedy about crooks, for example, they'll say 'what about Bonnie and Clyde?' whereas the attitude in America is that when you come up with an idea they try and find a way of doing it. They will say about the comedy crooks idea 'a new take on Bonnie and Clyde; I like it.'

It's not a bed of roses over there where everything gets made as many a writer has found out; over there you have to learn to pitch an idea to the studios and if you're no good at pitching your script doesn't get looked at.

If your pitch is good and the script is good it still doesn't mean anything till a studio takes it on. There is such a thing over there called the black list. Now the black list in this case is not a bad thing; the black list is a list of the best scripts that haven't been bought by somebody – somebody important that is who are going to actually make the film.

There is also a big difference in the way a TV series is written; in Britain one person, or team, writes all the episodes of a TV series. Julian Fellowes wrote all the episodes of Downton Abbey and his latest hit Titanic; Dennis Potter wrote all the episodes of The Singing Detective; John Cleese wrote every episode of Fawlty Towers with his then wife Connie Booth.

On The Sopranos, in America, they had 12 writers, on Lost they had 23 writers (no wonder the plot went haywire) and on Cheers they had 36.

Sometimes the American series run in to hundreds of episodes so maybe a team of writers is understandable but some of the series in Britain, for example Till Death Us Do Part went in to 53 episodes and all of them written by Johnny Speight; it's interesting that when Till Death Us Do Part was remade in America under the title All In the Family they had 50 – one of them Johnnie Speight.

However the Americans make their series for years and Till Death Us Do Part is a good example of the difference in how long series run in the 2 countries. If the ratings drop in America the series gets dropped; not in the UK.

So what's the better way? The Americans will like their way and the British will like theirs.

However when it came to the greatest situation comedy ever the prize would go to Fawlty Towers even though they only made 12 episodes. 12 classic episodes and the writing team of Cleese and Booth said they couldn't write any more.

Before the days of popular videos pirate video tapes of Fawlty Towers were being sold for hundreds of pounds.

There is a series on television at the moment on both sides of the Atlantic called Homeland (12 writers) and I believe it's wonderful. It's everything I would want to see in a series as I have always been interested in the subject matter.

One of my favourite films is The Manchurian Candidate; I can't remember how many times I have seen it but the last time was in Los Angeles with the guy who directed it, John Frankenheimer, and one of the stars, Angela Lansbury.

That's what Homeland is about but the reason I won't watch it is because I really liked Lost when it first came on but because it was so successful they made hundreds of episodes and lost the plot; by the time it finished we were all bored with it and disappointed by the outcome.

That is why The Singing Detective (the TV series not the movie) was better than The Sopranos and Fawlty Towers was better than Cheers – in my opinion anyway.

There's a very interesting page about Fawlty Towers on Wikipedia which gives a few insights into the writing, the submission (the first episode was rejected by the BBC) and the difference between what would would have happened if the Americans tried to make it – here it is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawlty_towers you may have to copy and paste.