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.

Christy Sullivan; Dublin Barber.

Well there he is at the top of the page; my dad – Chris Sullivan and if he had lived he would be 100 years old today March 9^th 2013.

Here he is again with me and my brud - brud on the left with me on the right:

and again on the left with the full family – except that's not my mother; that's my aunt; my mother took the picture. I'm the one next to my aunt:

( See bottom for the original picture.)

He always kidded that he would live till he was 92; whenever the gypsies came to the door to sell pegs and tell his fortune he would say “I know I know; I'm gonna live till I'm 92” but he didn't; he popped his clogs 22 years ago yesterday, March eighth; it was quite pathetic on the morning after his death to see the birthday cards arrive in the mail to wish him a happy birthday when he wasn't there to celebrate. It was a very quick death so it didn't bother him much but, like all quick deaths, it left the rest of the family devasted and shocked.

He came across to England during the war to help with the war effort and earn money at the same time. He went to Liverpool, Manchester and eventually settled in Birmingham where he stayed till he retired and then bought a bungalow in Northampton which is where he died.

Originally he was a barber in Dublin but business was never too good; he would sit my mother in the chair where he would pretend to cut her hair trying to make the shop look busy. I had a similar kind of job when I was about 14 when I worked in a café as a dishwasher and potato peeler and sat in the window eating sausage, egg and chips to try and attract customers; might sound attractive but there is nothing so base as a wet tea towel when you're trying to dry the delf and nothing so rough and horribly oderous as rotten potatoes (that's where the 'e' comes in, Dan) when you're trying to peel them! 

The skinflint of a café owner would buy the cheapest potatoes full of frost bitten brown bits and eyes and I was supposed to put them into a potato peeler. That was a big barrel with sharp sides which were supposed to take the peel off but never touched the eyes or the brown bits so when he wasn't looking I threw the really bad ones up to the top of his garden.

Later on my brud took the job and threw his bad potatoes in to the same place; the owner saw them one day and said “I was disappointed to see a load of potatoes in the garden” - “I thought someone planted them” I wish I'd have said; that's where the saying l'esprit d'escalier(*) came from, I suppose.

There were certain places in England called Rowton Houses; these were essentially working men's hotels and were established by a philanthropist called Lord Rowton. The first one, I believe was built in Vauxhall, London in 1892 and the one in Birmingham was built in 1903 and could house over 800 men @ the cost of 6d per night. That is 2½p in today's money.

“The Birmingham Rowton was later renamed the Highgate Hotel but conditions for the residents declined considerably. By 1973, the hostel offered 500 beds at 65p per night and its clientele included a large number of Irish building workers. Subcontractors picked up men from the establishment and took them off to building sites all over the Midlands for which they (the subcontractors) were paid from £4 to £7 for a 12-hour shift, cash in hand with no tax or national insurance.

In September 1978 the Sunday Times reported that 'in this depressing five storey pile there were only nine baths for the 450 inmates. The WCs lacked doors and seats, and no toilet paper was provided. The corridors were dark and cavernous. Bedsheets were discoloured, and a 25p fine was imposed for bedwetting.'

In the mid-1990s, the building was refurbished as a modern hotel. Rooms now (2007) cost £100 per night compared to 6d. a century ago!” (Wikipedia)

Last year Equity, the actors union, held their Annual Representative Conference in Birmingham and delegates were put up at The Rowton House; I have to say I heard many complaints about the conditions.

My dad stayed there for a little while during the war and also joined the Home Guard as his job on the Railway was considered essential so he didn't qualify for the call up - conscription or the draft. 

In the home guard he joked that the only battle he took part in was the battle of Kingsbury Range; I would go to Kingsbury Range later to fire the Lee Enfield .303 rifle which was the same weapon they used during the Second World War.

So here we are 100 years after his birth remembering my dad who went on to be the boss of Lawley Street Railway Goods Depot; when I first went to work for the post office, before I went on the motor bikes, I had to deliver the telegrams by foot – well not deliver by foot I would hand them over by hand – and I heard talk in the office of a 'Lawley' and wondered what that was. It turned out to be the longest walk for any telegram to be delivered from head office and a dreaded task, especially if the weather was bad. The telegrams themselves were just confirmations and were thrown into a pile at the end of the long walk.

The people I gave the telegrams to didn't know that I was the son of their boss. These days there are no such things as telegrams and the messages I would be taking from Birmingham city centre to Lawley Street so long ago would be sent electronically.

A lot of strange things have happened, been invented and developed since my old pot and pan was born 100 years ago – not all good I have to say. Both world wars, man on the moon, the birth of the computer and the popularity of the dreaded private motor car. He popped off before 9/11 but he missed the London Olympics which he would have loved and he didn't see any of his great granchildren - but that's life.

This week we had an addition to the family in Dublin where my cousin's son welcomed another son into this world three days short of my dad's centenary and one wonders what range of delights and wonderment the new fella will witness over the next 100 years; here's to that thought.

* L'esprit de l'escalier or l'esprit d'escalier (literally, staircase wit) is a French term used in English that describes the predicament of thinking of the perfect comeback too late – as you pass on the stairs.

This is the photo as I found but I repaired it when I had nothing to do one day (the life of an actor).

Misogynistic Academy Awards?

                                        Stephen Fry

          Seth MacFarlane

Thank you for the emails about the Oscars; I always get the same complaint about not being able to put a comment on the site and I am, as usual, at a loss for the answer. I can put a comment on my mate Jim's blog easily enough, and when they ask me who I am, or I have to sign in, I put my Gmail email address and it seems to work.

Well I got a few right didn't I? I put Joaquin Phoenix down for best actor as it was the one performance that I found hard to picture myself doing but I think the hardest one of the bunch would be by Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook; believe me, and actors may or may not back me up, it's harder to be Tom Cruise or George Clooney than any of the character actors.

Lots of critics over the years have said that Cary Grant was the greatest screen actor because he made it look so easy and I know what they mean. I really like Sean Penn but he failed miserably in The Interpretor and The Game. I also like Gary Oldman but he has to be different in each role.

A word about Daniel Day Lewis; when he does the things he has to do which enable him to give the performances he gives (with me so far?) the things he has done (before he even starts work) should be seen on the screen.

In other words when Robert de Niro put all the weight on to play Jake La Motta we could see what he had done – the same when someone learns to box (Day-Lewis did this so did de Niro), dance or even play tennis. But to spend months talking like Lincoln, being carried to the set and being spoon fed by the crew in My Left Foot, I don't see the need; what did Olivier say? Try acting! Who knows whether he said that or not? But there again, as I've said before, it could be professional jealousy on my part; but what I wouldn't like to see is a young actor starting out thinking all those things need to be done.

I don't suppose they stood for it when he was in Gandhi or The Bounty.

Anyway back to the Oscars – The Academy Awards: It doesn't mean anything. As I said before, the best actor is your particular favourite. If you don't like Daniel Day-Lewis it won't matter how many Oscars he wins you won't like him.

But the difference between the Academy Awards here in the UK (the B.A.F.T.A.s or as they have started calling them the Baftas) and the ones in Los Angeles (the Oscars) is a matter of taste.

The BAFTAs show was a lot funnier than the bits I saw of the Oscars; the difference was more literal. Stephen Fry is funnier and cleverer than the fella in Los Angeles. A lot of people don't like either of them: Fry because he's too clever and the other guy because he's . . . I don't know; why don't they like him? Not clever enough? Not funny enough? Bit of a slob?

Some people do like him but what does that say about them?

Stephen Fry is more like a modern day Oscar Wilde – nobody liked him either; well not many people. Professional jealousy again; just like me!

The BAFTAs were, at least, in good taste as opposed to the misogynistic bits that I saw in Los Angeles; We Saw Your Boobs wasn't anything whether the actresses went along with it or not but it was boring! And all the lip-syncing again!

It's not supposed to be taken seriously - it's a party; parties can't be boring!

I only hope they don't do another movie about Ted Bundy and offer the role to Daniel Day-Lewis!!

The Unexpected Man.

David Dim Bum Bum at St Paul's Cathedral.

I was sitting on the tube the other day and sitting opposite me was a very small man. If he stood up he might have been taller than me but he was tiny in every other aspect. Tiny head, tiny shoulders, tiny thin legs and such a small face. The smallness of his face was exaggerated by the turban he was wearing as he was a Sikh even though his beard had been trimmed and was well kempt. 

Adding to his smallness was a large Crombie bluish looking overcoat which swamped his appearance apart from a knitted tie, which was tied in a Windsor knot, and a silk scarf that lined the border of the V shape of the overcoat aperture. 

It looked as if he would be able to move around quite easily leaving the overcoat where it was.

He was reading from a Kindle and whatever he was reading was attracting all of his attention as his eyes never left the page apart from the very odd blink.

I would say his age was around 25-30 and the reason the Kindle didn't look too small between his hands was they, like his feet, were of normal size; whatever normal size is.

One of the things that attracted me to that man was the intense look in his eyes; was it nervousness? Fear? Or maybe he was reading a horror story or some kind of eerie ghost story?

I asked myself if the Kindle was in Punjabi, for that is the language of the Sikhs and then again I wondered if Punjabi had the same writing system as the west and was used in the Kindle – or was it like this? بھارتی جن-سنکھیا گننا انوسار ہے۔ اس دا پرشاسکی مکھ دفتر.

Then I had a thought; he could be reading one of my novels; they're both on Kindle! Maybe even in Punjabi which is the 2^nd most popular language in the UK.

Maybe I should travel on the tube with a little business card which would say 'Read “Who Was Gertie Ford” by Chris Sullivan' and slip it onto their page as I pass?

There is a play called The Unexpected Man by Yasmina Reza – in fact I should say by Yasmina Reza and Christopher Hampton as he translated it from French to English – which I saw at the Edinburgh Festival in 2002. I also saw it in Los Angeles a couple of years ago with a friend of mind in it and he was excellent.

It's set on a train and is a two hander; one man and one woman. In the version I saw in Edinburgh they used chairs as the set and had train sound effects but in LA they went for the full Monty and had a train carriage, flashing by countryside and sound FX too.

He is a world famous author and she is reading a book called The Unexpected Man which he wrote. He sees what she is reading and she notices him.

The journey is from Paris to Frankfurt and during the journey they have plenty of time to ponder and philosophize – I thought about that play as I looked at my Unexpected Man. Movies about trains always make the journey look luxurious – even if they're documentaries - but when it's icy cold outside and the tube keeps stopping and flinging the sliding doors open at each stop it's a different story.

Keep with this whilst I change the subject – there is a programme on TV here called Question Time. It has a panel of pundits each week made up of a couple of politicians, a journalist and a well known person who has political opinions – as we all do. 

The audience ask stupid questions and the panel is supposed to answer them. The politicians don't, of course, the journalists do and the well known person usually struggles. I don't know why I watch it but I do. It is introduced by David Dim Bum Bum. 

Jonathan Dim Bum Bum (only known picture).

His brother, Jonathan Dim Bum Bum, hosts a show on the radio called Any Questions and they are usually the same questions as on Question Time.

The Dim Bum Bum name is big at the BBC; they have the Dim Bum Bum Lecture each year and the Dim Bum Bum's father was a stalwart of the BBC years ago and his name was Richard Dim Bum Bum; he is acknowledged as being the greatest broadcaster who ever lived; in fact he is the Daniel Day Lewis of broadcasting and it's a wonder they didn't call the BBC the DBB after them.

Last week's episode was recorded at Saint Paul's Cathedral and one of the questions was 'should a woman who has 11 children be given a council house?' - or words to that affect or even effect. The politicians didn't answer it in case they got into trouble with their party leader, the well known personality, who was the former Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, The Rev. Giles Fraser, answered it and so did the bellicose journalist but nobody mentioned that it was a stupid question; not even Dim Bum Bum.

I won't tell you what answers they gave but believe me you won't be any the wiser if I did.

In the audience at the recording was my Unexpected Man; the man from the train this time without the overcoat; he was still wearing the same shirt and tie and looking very suspiciously at someone but as small as ever. Here he is:

The Unexpected Man.

Oscar Predictions.

Richard Burton

A truly great actor - never won an Oscar.

Oscar weekend this week, folks. Not that it means anything but people raise money for films on the strength of people winning Oscars and it always gets mentioned but it means nothing because the best actor is – your favourite. Every time.
They say that all the James Bonds will be there at the Oscar ceremony this year but it has also been denied so who knows? Who knows if the show will be as good now that I no longer live around the corner – or near enough – from the theatre.
And who is the new smart Alec introducing it? It will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for him to surpass either Billy Crystal or Hugh Jackman in that job!
I haven't seen all the films and even if I was an Academy member I would still vote; I mean people vote for their governments after only seeing the name of the person they have just voted for for the first time.
So here are my predictions which I am putting down here for a bit of fun. I am not going to put Daniel Day-Lewis even though I think he will probably get it for best actor. This is because I am a professional actor and I'm sure there is or must be a certain amount of professional jealousy in me; apart from knowing how he does it and know he presses the right buttons rather like a girl wearing a push up bra and a V necked tee shirt when the rest of the girls wonder how fellas fall for it. I know how Joaquin Phoenix does it too but I wouldn't want to go through that or what Sean Penn did when he played Harvey Milk – just too good and too real – I like a bit of pizazz.
I'm not going through every award – don't forget this is only a bit of fun – you can have a go at me if you like!!!
Best Actor – Joaquin Phoenix (THE MASTER)
Best Actress – Emmanuelle Riva (AMOUR)
Best Supporting Actor – Christoph Waltz (DJANGO UNCHAINED)
Best Supporting Actress – Anna Hathaway (LES MISERABLES)
Best Director – Michael Haneke (AMOUR)
Best Original Screenplay – Quentin Tarantino (DJANGO UNCHAINED)
Best Adapted Screenplay – Chris Terrio (ARGO)
Best Film: well as there are so many and the James Bond film SKYFALL hasn't even been nominated I'm putting 2 choices and they are:
ARGO or LES MISERABLES.
Also – they never put a comedy in for either best actor or best film so, as usual, there is no comedy in the best film category but I do hope Alan Arkin gets it for ARGO.
But it'll be a great day in Los Angeles with all the parties, the busy pizza delivery workers and bar tenders, hookers & pimps, drug addicts and pushers fans and the boys of West Hollywood all around.

Sad story of an actor!

Henry Irving

The first actor to be knighted but nothing to do with this little story.

 
This is a sad story about an actor I once knew. There are plenty of sad stories about actors as we can be sad sometimes; sad through the frustration of the business we are in when we can't do the things we want to do; sad because we're not working or getting the wrong kind of work. I have known very good looking and talented actors who have committed suicide because they were judged by their looks and not their talent. It's no coincidence that movies stars are in Hollywood and not here – movie stars with movie star looks that is.
I had three dealings with this particular actor; he wasn't especially talented, in fact, in some ways, he wasn't talented at all. He wasn't my type of guy, we weren't particularly friendly but I always remembered him. There will be no names here apart from one or two people who have nothing to do with him.
When I first went to drama school there was one student there who was the son of an actor; and that is the actor this little story is about. This student was so good looking he was pretty – so it was irrefutable that he wasn't going to make it here in the land of the nitty gritty drama of Z Cars, Mike Leigh, Tony Garnett et al.
I think a lot of the girls fancied him but he had one problem; he could not say the 'R' sound; I wrote about Jonathan Ross recently - well this fella was 100 times worse.
He may have been tongue tied, I don't know; there are so many people who go through life tongue tied and never get to know it. I don't know if this had a psychological effect on him but . .. well read on and we might see.
I remember he spent hours trying to say an R but his tongue just wouldn't do it for him; his parents should have been horse whipped for letting this situation develop; it is possible to correct when they're young enough; R sounds and lisps – stammering and stuttering need experts, I should think, but when you're an actor you study speech and some people at drama school went on to be speech therapists.
The one big thing we knew about this student was that his father was an actor. It was so important to us; we didn't know where he worked or what kind of work he was doing but he was what we aspired to be; an actor.
In the second year of drama school we were expected to put on plays for the public; these were usually rehearsed for the whole ten week term and performed at the end of it. Not like in the professional theatre where the rehearsal time is a lot less. One play we were doing had the said student in it and everybody knew that his dad would be along. Afterwards students were asking 'what did his dad think?' “what did he say?” I wasn't in that play so I don't know. 
The student once said to me when I asked him what he would do when we left and went in to the big wide world “I'll be all right" he said "I'll sell my arse!”
I don't know whether he did that or not, when the time came, but he was serious.
Going to drama school can be a shock for a lot of people. Some can be knocked down a peg or two as they were the life and soul of the party at the office they worked in but when they arrive at the college they find everybody else is the same – they're all jokers, or rebels or Marlon Brando/James Dean clones. 
Most are a little shocked too by the revelations that some people are gay – it's always been an honest profession as far as that is concerned but at that age it is a shock.
Maybe about five years after I left drama school I was working in a play called An Inspector Calls by J B Priestley. I played the role of the son of a northern industrialist and the role of the industrialist was quite big; we didn't know who was going to play it, then one day the director told us who it was and it was the father of the student I have referred to; I thought the name was familiar.
On the first day of rehearsal he turned up knowing half his lines already; you may think this is promising but during the rehearsal period and the run of the play it never got any better. The truth is that he wasn't an actor at all; he was a conjurer – a magician; that's how he got his equity card.
All his credits – his resumé, his curriculum vitae – were from Rhodesia (which didn't exist at the time although that's what he called it) and were from obscure places; it became quite clear that he had talked his way in to the job and couldn't do it. We helped him, we had to we were working with him, but it was impossible.
Sometimes it felt like we were in the middle of a bull ring with the crowds around toying with us, and we were trying to get out alive. We kind of covered for him on his lines, suggested clues to his next one and some people were getting frustrated. We played to full houses every night and it was quite a big theatre so you can imagine. One time the director asked him what was going on and he said he would take his script home that evening - take his script home!!!!
All the trouble he was causing was going over the top of his head as his friends would come along and 'celebrate' with him; we didn't; we were nervous wrecks. 
It was unbelievable that he would leave his script at the theatre.
I spoke to him about his son, of course; he couldn't remember me from drama school, why would he, and he told me he was in Rhodesia. Zimbabwe, I said and he nodded. It seems his son was a big star there and the next day he brought in some Zimbabwe magazines; they were the very expensive kind and each one had pictures and stories about his son. He was a continuity announcer on television. He sometimes had his own show, I think, and the photos were very glamorous ones and showed him living in luxury. He was proud of him and when his wife came she made herself known to me and we spoke of her famous child and all the things he got up to and how famous he was.
When the play ended I have to say it was a relief to see him go; people in the cast got their sanity back and we carried on to the next play.
Five years or so later his son made the national newspapers in Britain. He had joined a religious cult and he was what some people might call a Jesus Freak. He and another man had seen the devil in some woman and kicked her to death. This happened in England; he was described as an actor and there was a photo of him and his cohort in the press; no mistake.
It was a shock – I spoke to one or two people about it who had known him and eventually it went from my memory until one day I was working for ATV in a situation comedy. We were due to go to Nottingham to film and we rehearsed at the Pineapple Dance Studios in South Kensington. It was a terrible place to hear what we were saying whilst rehearsing as everything echoed and one day one of the old actors complained about it. He was the man who was in Fawlty Towers who played the man with the twitch, Allan Cuthbertson; he would play colonels and he said he couldn't understand the director as he 'doesn't have a consonant in his head.'
Yes you needed to be there!!!!
He was playing a colonel in this particular show and when we went to Nottingham to shoot it, there were plenty of old army colonel types in his scene and one of the extras was the actor; the actor that this piece is about. He was a broken man; the one person he was proud of in his life turned out to be a murderer. I made myself known to him but he couldn't remember me, couldn't remember the play and couldn't remember being in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe or even the continent of Africa; in fact he could hardly speak.

Great plot for a movie . .

. . . a character or maybe even a TV series!! There he is, above – Jasper Maskelyne stage magician; he was born in 1902 and died in 1973, and that's who the film or TV series would be about. It would run for years on TV but would be an equally good film.

Some writers, ideas men, producers, etc, get their ideas in certain ways. They sit in cafés watching how people eat, how they talk to each other and how they generally behave. I don't do any of that; I'm an actor - I go to the zoo but I 'people watch' all the time; I very rarely read when I'm out as I like to see what's going on. If I have an idea for a story it kind of comes to me; I don't write scripts all the time and I suppose if I had to rely on it I might change my MO; but I write this all the time - good or bad.

I like quiz shows; I like Mastermind, University Challenge and I am trying to like Eggheads – these are all shows in the UK. When I lived in Los Angeles I would never miss Jeopardy. Apart from anything else it kept my mind working.

When you buy a computer you look for RAM (random access memory) and that's why I liked Jeopardy. The quiz-master, Alex Trebeck, would give an answer in a particular category and the contestant would have to press a button and give you the question.

Lots of times I could answer before the contestant – but I didn't have to press a button!!

I didn't mind if I didn't know it in the first place but if I knew the answer I would try and bring it to the front of my mind quickly – my random access memory.

The other week on Eggheads the question was 'who invented the coin operated lavatory?'

Now the trouble with Eggheads is that they show you 3 answers so it's multiple choice and I guessed the right answer – a magician; in fact it was Jasper Maskelyne whose picture is at the top of this page.

Magicians, conjurers and illusionists are a mystery to scientists – the clever people, the neuroscientists (I think that's what they are) are fascinated by them.

A magician does something with one part of his body which make everybody who is looking at them look at that part of the body whilst they trick you with the part of their body they are distracting you from seeing. It's amazing what they do.

An American act, Penn and Teller, actually show you how they do their tricks and you still can't figure it out. The 3 cup and balls trick is one of them, and they use see through cups at some point in their act and still fool you.

However, one of them, never speaks; he stands there like Harpo Marx and performs the tricks and on one of the TV shows he was being profiled by a clever fella who filmed him. On one of the takes they hid the magician's face (Penn or Teller) and we could see how he did the trick. It was something he was doing with his face that was distracting us.

Which brings me back to the main point of this post with Jasper Maskelyne – the inventor of the coin lavatory. I have never seen a coin operated lavatory in America, by the way, so my pals over there will just have to believe that they charge you for a pee over here.

During the Second World War, there was a double agent operating in Britain called Eddie Chapman whose code name was agent zigzag. In order to satisfy his German handlers, whom he was supposedly working for too, he had to bomb the De Havilland Aircraft Factory in England.

So the powers that be enlisted the help of Jasper and he made the factory look, from the air, that it had, in fact, been blown up by Mister Chapman.

He did this as an illusion; in fact that wasn't the only thing he did during the war.

The powers that be, of course, was MI5 and after the war they denied all knowledge of his deeds when in fact he virtually worked wonders and shit miracles.

After the successful bombing of the De Havilland Factory he was sent to the Western Desert where he formed the 'Magic Gang' which consisted of an analytical chemist, a cartoonist, a criminal, a stage designer, a picture restorer, a carpenter – oh and one soldier to fill out the military paper work; I mean talk about 'The A-Team.'

Churchill praised their deeds which included building fake submarines, Spitfire aeroplanes, dummy tanks and trucks and at one time they actually hid part of the Suez Canal using a system of revolving mirrors.

They also helped win the battle of El Alamain with magic illusions and tricks; they convinced Rommel that the British counter attack was coming from the south as opposed to the north.

In 1942 they built 2000 dummy tanks and constructed a false pipe line to water the bogus army. This convinced Rommel that progress with the counter attack was slow so he went home for a month and Britain attacked whilst he was away.

Some of the exploits of Jasper Maskelyne are now coming to light but he is dead now and died in Africa where he ended up as a drunken driving instructor; another interesting character.

These pictures are of the De Havilland Factory, then some dummy heads and then dummy tanks.

The movie Argo is getting its just praise and is about something similar – it's about the springing of the American hostages that were trapped in the Canadian Embassy during the Iranian Revolution. They were sprung in the pretence that they were film makers setting up a film.

Not as good as the movie After the Fox, which was directed by Vittoria de Sica, where Peter Sellers played the leader of a gang of thieves who, under the pretence that they are making a movie, persuade the population of a village to be in their film and actually help unload the 'Gold of Cairo' – he plays a Fellini type of Italian film director and there is also a great performance from Victor Mature who sends himself up wonderfully.

Of course the film they make turns out to be a masterpiece when shown in court at the end.