The Long, the Short and the Vertically challenged.

Neil Fingleton 7"7"

Hey! 100,000 hits since I started this blog; when compared with web sites who have millions it's nothing, I know, but I'm impressed. So thank you for reading this and thanks also if you read it on a regular basis; there is an email mailing list and it automatically goes out on Twitter but I'm very pleased.

Now!!

I heard someone use the expression the other day 'vertically challenged' – what he meant was 'short.' I have to say that that's a bit much isn't it? Either you are short or tall, big or small and I'm sure that short people don't mind being called short or tall people tall.

That is politically correctness gone mad; I'm not saying that we should say all the offensive words that were used years ago but words like actress, spastic, Oriental and a lot of other words are being taken out of the English language by a kind of fascism.

I'm not very tall in fact compared to some of my tall mates I am quite short and they would think of me as short – or even small. I remember saying to one of my tall pals one day that I'd seen Noel Edmunds and I said he was quite small. He looked at me strangely as if I'd thought somehow that I wasn't short and was eliminating myself, conversationally, from being one of the short guys but Noel Edmunds is very short; he came up to my shoulder and it's quite a surprise when you see someone like that and they are shorter than you think - but Noel Edmunds wasn't challenged; nobody challenged him “Oye you! I'm challenging you; you're short!!”

But if you look up Noel Edmunds on the IMDb you will see that he's 5'8” which is about level with the top of my head not my shoulder; they have me down as 5'9” and I know at least two people who are exactly the same height as me – number one is Sylvester Stallone and number two is Steve Railsback. I was in a film with Steve and not only is he the same height as me, but all his other measurements are the same too – well the ones we can see, anyway.

I have seen Stallone a few times and he wears lifts or high heels and looks a lot taller than he is.

Now what is this thing about being closer to the sky?

I saw Richard Branson on TV in America; he was on a late night talk show and the host, Jimmy Kimmel, was sitting in a chair higher than Branson's; so Branson mentioned it and sat on the back of the chair so that he, Richard Branson, could be closer to the roof; he sat there like a perched parrot on heat. I think that about sums him up; that, and the time he cheated at Monopoly on TV when he was invited on to celebrate an anniversary of the game. The people he was playing with accused him of cheating.

“What does it matter?” he said “It's only a game.”

Only a game.

I don't know what the insecurity is about size.

Last year I worked with the tallest man in Britain, Neil Fingleton, who is 7'7” - isn't he vertically challenged. I would imagine more people ask him his height than ask me mine, in fact that's the first thing I asked him. I was probably the twentieth or thirtieth person who asked him that day!!!!

Tony Benn

When Kenny Everett chanted a little ditty of a poem about Margaret Thatcher I remember the words 'you will vote for her again/cos you won't vote for Tony Benn; and now he is dead.

He was an intellectual of the highest order, make no mistake, and an aristocrat to boot; for those that don't know this, he renounced his title so he could become an MP; he was a good MP for 50 years or so and when he retired, mainly because of his wife's illness, he said he was retiring to concentrate on politics.

A lot of people didn't like him – they hadn't met him, by the way – but it would be his politics that people didn't like. He was a socialist and because he was a committed socialist and a conviction politician he didn't stand a chance.

People would steal things from his garbage to see what they could get on him but they didn't find much.

In the Wilson Government of the sixties he was the technology wizz kid and during all those years he dictated a diary – he espoused none personality politics but his diaries reveal lots of personalities and big names.

He was a war time pilot in the RAF and his brother was killed in the same campaign; he went from Viscount Stansgate, to Anthony Neil Wedgwood-Benn and finally to Tony Benn – he wanted to be as 'common as muck' but if you look at some of the photos of him as a young man he looks like an upper class twit.

Look at this:

Looks a bit like Kenneth Williams!!

An amusing fact I found here - His great-uncle, the Rev Julius Benn, was murdered with a chamber pot by his son, who on release from Broadmoor fathered the actress Margaret Rutherford.

No matter how much controversy he created or how much trouble he might have caused, if he was ever at a party children gathered around him; children from babes in arms to teenagers. Even children who were only children at heart would gather around to listen to his stories and in his later years he actually toured a 'one man show.'

His failures in trying to spread his ideas to everybody, his trying to influence the Labour Party were probably our failures. We were probably worried about him trying to take our posh houses away or taking our posh cars or our rights but you know . . we don't have any rights.

In Britain (believe this America) we have to pay our cell phone (mobile) companies to use an 800 number, have to pay premium rates to vote for a contestant on a TV show and lots of other diabolical liberties so what were we worried about?

The World Wide Web.

Now who are these two very attractive fellas? One of them created the world wide web and the other one said he did; one of them is famous in America but hardly known in Britain and the other one isn't well known at all – really – but he changed all of our lives.

The one with the full head of hair is Al Gore and believe it, people of Britain, that once upon a time he was the Vice President of the United States of America, and could have been the President instead of George W Bush had he not been too proud to ask for help as he thought Bill Clinton was morally beneath his holier than thou just scrubbed and washed Christian self. He also won an Academy Award for his Global Warming Documentary Film.

The other fella is Tim Berners-Lee – he actually did create the world wide web – the Internet. He is in the news today because it is 25 years to the day since he presented the first paper on the Internet.

He is hardly known at all in America but here in Britain, where he is just about known, he celebrated the 25^th anniversary with a call for a 'magna-carta' of the web. He realises, now, like Oppenheimer who invented the Atom Bomb (or led the team), that he gave birth to a monster.

Now that we have the Internet our lives, instead of being made simple, have become more complicated. Without the Internet I wouldn't be able to write this blog, wouldn't have access to a lot of knowledge, wouldn't be able to go to the best web page of them all – YouTube – which gives me access, at the touch of a button, to some of the greatest, funniest and clever films clips, old records by some great pop and rock singers and, it must be said, access to a load of crap!!

The latest nuisance to me is a series of emails I am receiving from 'sexy' girls who send me links to their web sites/cams so they can show me their sexy bodies – so they say – and what I have done about this in the past is to put them on my spam list or junk list, when I would receive them. The problem this time is that the emails arrive in my box from ME!! Yes, would you believe it. So if I put them in to the junk box I am actually putting myself in there. You see when you send an email there are a few things you can put next to the To/ address line: you can put cc – which means carbon copy and sends a copy to people and they see each other; you can put bcc – which you should do if you are sending an email to a lot of people; or you can put reply to: and that is how these emails come to me.

So if I reply and tell them to go away I am replying to myself – anybody can do it if they know someone's email addy. I will figure out how to get rid of Jessie – which is the name of the person who sends most of these emails – and I have an idea.

Here's a clip from PC World which tells you what Tim Berners-Lee is calling for:

Tim Berners-Lee, credited with inventing the underpinnings of the World Wide Web, has called for a digital-age “Magna Carta”—new rules to protect Internet users from government interference.

Berners-Lee told The Guardian Tuesday that he believes the web now requires legalized protection. “We need a global constitution—a bill of rights,” he told the paper. The interview was conducted to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, which hits that milestone today.

He'll be lucky – it's too late!

Desert Island Discs.

Roy Plomley.

 

I often listen to Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 here in the good old UK – for those not in good old, it's a programme where a well known person chooses eight records (songs etc) that they would take to an imaginary desert island if they were stranded.

I suppose the reason why the figure is eight is that when records were played on an automatic record player, there was a maximum of eight records you could pile up.

The show has run here in the good old since 1066 and is quite popular – well some time in the 50s to be exact.

When it first started, it was devised and presented by a certain Roy Plomley (I think that was his name – still no Internet just a brief daily visit to Starbucks so can't look him up), and the guests were interviewed in the bowels of the BBC by the aforesaid 'Mister P' and later on he, 'Mister P', would edit the interview and play just a part of each song.

Michael Parkinson said that when he was the guest, it wasn't any fun at all. There have been a few presenters since the original Mister P was washed up to meet his maker, and one of them was the aforementioned Mister Parkinson – another 'Mister P'; there have been two presenters since Parkie and it has evolved so they actually play all the songs all the way through, for the guests at the recording, and then edit the whole show later; so the more they speak the less of their music is played. These days the guests enjoy being on the show because of this.

At the end they are asked which one of the discs they would take if they could only save one; the mind boggles at how a real ship wreck would work with people looking for their records in the crush; then they are asked which one book they would take (they are given a Shakespeare Complete Works (I think) and The Bible) – look at that two loads of brackets – parenthesis in America – and then they get get to choose an item of luxury; well not necessarily an item of luxury more like an ordinary every day item.

A lot of very famous people have been guests – Michael Caine, Dustin Hoffman, Julie Andrews – recently they had a couple 'double acts' like Torvill and Dean, if you can count them as a double act and a couple called Ant and Dec who were as entertaining as an episode of Andy Pandy.

And they take some of the strangest things - quite a few guests take, as a so called luxury item, a pencil; others their favourite chair or even a favourite teddy bear but some push their luck and ask for things like a rowing boat - but those items are against the rules of the exercise.

Someone asked to take the Wimbledon Centre Court and – they were granted it!

The reason I mention this is that in my last post, I asked you to think which one item you would take from your home should you have to leave within one hour – as happened in Chernobyl.

I also said that I didn't like what conclusion I came to as I was thinking of a real situation.

It came about because there is a novel that's just been published, set in Chernobyl, and one of the men, who were asked to bring the one item, brought a door. As I said in my last post he did this because the door was used to lay out members of his family when they died.

So I sat and thought about what I would take; and I'm afraid it would be my lap top.

What else would I take? My guitar? My collection of harmonicas? I would be able to buy them anywhere. Some photos? They're on my lap top! My bank details? On my lap top – it's a no brainer isn't it!!

Various people have been on Desert Island Discs and I have my favourites and they are the people who chose the songs that I like; you know, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran etc – tell you what I'll put my eight discs, which I don't know yet, at the bottom of the page.

These days I listen to the conversation more than the music and I find their conversations fascinating. The retiring Governor of the Bank of England chose a song about Aston Villa – his favourite football team (and mine it has to be said) – a song that you cannot buy.

Others, like politicians and show business celebrities, have chosen what would benefit them politically or make them look good and trendy – which is a shame, really. One of my favourites was David Putman – I could have chosen all of his songs, which have gone out of my head now as it was years ago.

Okay here we go, I'll see if I can come up with eight now:

1. Peggie Sue, by Buddy Holly – I could, and do, listen to the greatest guitar break ever, from one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time, over and over again.
2. Wild Thing, by The Troggs – for some reason this is 'our song' – it seems the lead singer's voice is similar to mine!!!!
3. You Were On My Mind, by Crispian St Peters – this is a great song with, I believe, a rising fifth (like My Way) which makes it a hit.
4. Lay Lady Lay, by Bob Dylan – I find this hypnotic and have been known to play it over and again at people's parties – but not since I was a young Turk.
5. Girl Of My Best Friend, by Elvis Presley – I just love this song and I love all sings with the C, Am, F and G chord sequence and this is one of them. When it came out I knocked about with a mate and his girl friend and we kind of (me and the girl) cuddled and one day she gave me a French kiss and, to save my embarrassment, I said 'hello' during it.
6. Move Over Darling, by Doris Day – a very sexy song by one of the great virgins of cinema, which probably adds to the sexuality of the record.
7. I've Told Every Little Star, by Linda Scott – this is another three chord song and I just love it.
8. Born Too Late, by The Poni Tails - when I was sixteen I was in love with a fourteen year old girl but she was too young; she was born too late.

I suppose this list would change if I did it again tomorrow – no Beatles, I'm afraid, and, after all that, no Eddie Cochran or Bobby Vee - not much since then but each of these songs do strange things to my memory.

My Favourite Smell.

My film, by the way, has been submitted to the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival and The Edinburgh Film Festival so wish me luck – there's a still from it, above.

I am on the Internet in Starbucks, by the way, as we have moved to a new apartment and our wi-fi doesn't start till next Wednesday – now:

If I was to ask you what your favourite smell was – what would you say? Your favourite after shave lotion? Some expensive scent like Chanel? 

Let's think of something else like the smell of rain; smells good doesn't it but what if it was from an aerosol!! The smell of lavender from a fabric softener!! What about the smell of shit from an aerosol. Smells just as good to me as anything from an aerosol like rain or lavender.

When I was a student I worked as a milkman for a short while and oh how it sent me round the twist. I worked at a dairy in Wellington, Shropshire; I had to cycle on a old bike for half an hour every morning at the crack of dawn, get to the bakery, load my van and go out to deliver milk.

It was an electrically controlled vehicle powered like the dodgem cars at a fairground which I have written about before on here. It had two pedals, like an automatic car, but we used our left foot on the brake with the right on the accelerator which is not recommended in cars.

Each house I delivered milk to had its own smell; I delivered to the big posh school, in Wellington, and that had it's own smell too; the masters and mistresses and the professors lived 'in house' and when I delivered I discovered my favourite smell, a welcoming smell the greatest smell in the world . . . .. well bear with me, indulge me for a little while and see where this goes. Believe me I don't know at the moment which, I think, is the reason I write this blog, which is to discover what's going on in my mind.

By the way this Wellington School is not the famous public school but it certainly looked like one.

After I delivered to the school – which was to various staff members as well as the place where they cooked for the pupils – I went to private houses and as usual I formed impressions of each of them.

 

I could kind of tell who were the clever people, the people who were newly rich (the nouveau riché), the pretentious, the thoroughbreds, the educated and the people I envied.

 

There was a big house called 'Mad-hatters' another called 'Karjohn' and it became obvious to me that Karen and John had named the latter and didn't have much of an imagination – okay, okay they couldn't call their semi-detached 'Grey Gables' or anything like that but why not leave it just to its number?

 

Mad-hatters had my favourite smell and every time I went there I could tell that they were a warm family – and indeed they were – with their multitude of children (or what seemed a multitude) and great taste in cars, clothes, furniture and the very building itself.

 

Each time I opened their gate, carrying three bottles of Jersey Cream milk (in one hand I venture to add) the smell would hit me the closer I got to the kitchen – of course you know what it is by now!

 

As this Wellington was in Shropshire, which is in the West Midlands, and where sterilised milk is/was also available, meant the people who bought it didn't have a fridge or were brought up in a household who didn't have a fridge and if you have never tasted sterilised milk you have never suffered.

 

Of course if you haven't tasted Jersey Cream Milk you've never tasted milk.

By the way everything in America is homogenised; you get skimmed, semi-skimmed and full cream milk but it's all - - - homogenised!

 

But that's America; let's go back to Wellington: there was a big house on the corner of a very big street – in fact I think it was actually on a roundabout; it had a wide gateway, which was surrounded by a high privet, and I could drive the van – hang on it was called a milk float – I could drive the milk float and the drive had enough room for me to get in and turn around quite easily. 

 

Living in this house was a very tiny woman with a very high squeaky voice. I don't know what kind of house it was but there were loads of teenagers hanging around all the time and sometimes I could smell dope – yes I knew the smell of dope I was at drama school even though I never smoked any. 

I think, in retrospect, that it might have been some kind of half way house with the tiny woman working for some kind of rehab organisation; I had to deliver all kinds of milk to them, apart from the expensive kind, and I figured that the inhabitants were from broken homes and dysfunctional families, because of the amount of sterilised – or sterra as they called it – they bought. Okay so I generalise but sociology generalises too otherwise sociologists would never have anything to write about!

On Friday evenings I had to collect money from the customers which meant calling around at their houses; some people would leave their money on the doorstep, in the mornings, but one particular man would invite me in to his house; as soon as I went in it was quite obvious he was anticipating my visit. I followed him to the back part of his house and in to a tiny room. In this room there was a table with nothing but an exercise book laid open to a particular page. Next to the page was a little bit of money; enough money for the seven pints of milk he had in the week; I had to take the money but not before I signed for it. After that he walked me to his door and got on with his oh so busy life – I don't think!!!!

Now let me ask you this – I was going to write this post today about something else. 

When the nuclear accident happened in Chernobyl the population were told that they had to leave- every single one of them. They were told they could only take one thing away with them and the people scurried around to choose and find, find and choose and take it to their new life wherever that might be. One man chose a door – a single door; the door had been used to lay out members of his family when they died. . . . and I got to thinking what would I take – what would it be? I thought about it for some time and was disappointed at my choice – what would yours be?

But back to my favourite smell – bacon. The smell of cooking bacon and indeed the smell of cooking and food when going in to people's houses is so welcoming that any attempt to cover it with aerosols or fresh air is to be discouraged.

Laters!!

So far . . . .

A bit of a gap since my last post so I apologise for that – if you have fervently followed me of late you will know that I have been working on a film all by myself which has been taking my time.

My aim – my experiment – is to edit it on MovieMaker, which is free software from Windows. I am also making it on a very reasonably priced camera from Sanyo and on Monday the film will go to the Edinburgh Film Festival, The Los Angeles Film Festival and the Brooklyn Film Festival. That will be it for now and after this I will probably get Final Cut Pro or one of the other cheaper downloads; I think Avid, which is what most editors use over here, will be too expensive for me.

Everything has been going quite well but the one thing, when you do everything yourself – and I mean everything from the music to the sound editing, acting, shooting and writing – you have some mishaps. What I do is to put the camera on the tripod, get on to my mark and then, to make sure, I look through the lens with a mirror. I also record the sound on a separate sound system (with a film called SoundZ the sound has to be good) so I usually start that, then do the bit with the mirror and start the camera.

The other day I was doing a fairly close shot of me sitting in a chair and I had to step over the microphone lead. The camera was on a tiny tripod on a book which was on the desk. As I stepped over the cable, I touched the book which knocked the camera on to the floor.

This hurt the focus and the rest of the shots from that day were out of focus. That is the problem with the small cheap camera – if it had have been a camera with a lens I would have been able to see the focus but it wasn't till I transferred it to the computer that I could see it properly.

I looked on the Internet but couldn't find the same type of camera; I saw some, but they weren't what I wanted. I eventually found that lots of the shots are now in focus as long as I don't use the zoom – today out of 24 shots one was out of focus so that's not bad; I can live with that. The zoom, by the way, when shooting yourself, is only to save moving the camera closer as you would never show a zoom shot in a drama – maybe some of the movies of the 80s but not now.

Having said that there is an excellent series on the BBC here – first episode last night – called Line of Duty where the director used a few zoom shots; when that happened I was reminded of the old series here The Avengers.

The other mishap on my movie – which happened yesterday when I couldn't shoot anything because of the horrendous weather – was that I broke the computer!!!! Yes I broke it. I previously wrote on here that I had problems saving stuff on High Definition; I know what is causing it and it is the background programmes that run and take up a load of space – you know useless things to me like Instant Messenger and the like.

So I got rid of some programmes and one of them I got rid of was something that ran the computer – I don't know what it was but it ran Windows the system that runs the whole shooting match – so when I put it back on I couldn't open anything. BOIIINNNGGG!!! It went; like a great clanking iron bar banging on my head; just like the character in my movie!!!!

So here I am on my lap top typing away whilst my computer bloke (computer guy to all my American friends) mends the big one.

And isn't the weather terrible.

SoundZ

Wow it's been a week or two since I wrote anything on here; I've been busy making a film – that one above. Now don't get too excited out there as it's only a short one – although it gets longer by the day like Pinocchio's nose each time I work on it – but the idea is to get the movie in to the Edinburgh Film Festival in June which means it has to be ready for February 28.

I am getting on well with it especially as the object of the exercise is to do everything myself and make it for less than – well, what can I say? Less than £100 which is about $150; okay let's say less than $100 – although I might be pushing it at that as I'll have to buy blank DVDs.

I'm writing, editing and shooting as I go along. I've done a lot of the sound editing and music and the only thing I am having a bit of trouble with is rendering on to HD!!! In English that is saving the film in High Definition. My computer keeps telling me that it's running out of memory even though I did bigger projects with my music videos before Christmas.

So if anybody out there has any ideas?

You know where to find me.

Here is a still from the film, by the way:

 

which looks more like the reaction I had to the first listening of my love song for Valentine's Day, I Love You. (still on YouTube).

The other thing I have to do is to not make it look like a vanity project but I suppose that is what it is; the same with the one man shows I have done in the past. One was the Irish show and the other my one man play.

The Irish show I did from the year 2000 to 2010 in Los Angeles; not all the time, you understand, just on St Patrick's Day, a few colleges and the Irish Fair at Santa Anita Racetrack; I would say it was very successful as it played to full houses but it didn't really work in London – there we are.

When the time came to do any of these shows I would get on with it but in the hiatus, if I thought of them at all, I would wonder at the gall I had to actually get up and do them; I'm not thinking of that now I am working at getting the film completed – tomorrow I have to learn more lines.

Now you may wonder how I can do a one man film – or a one person film to be boringly politically correct – without making it look barmy or even talking to the camera but there are loads of devices and techniques that have been used in movies over the years and I'm using some of those.

There is a trailer which was on You Tube for a couple of days but I've taken it down as the film itself has not to be on the Internet before the festival – if you missed it sorry!!

So wish me luck and if you have a solution to my little problem of rendering let me know.

Oh and here is another still from the film where I am looking a bit more intelligent.

The Golden Globes.

2 of the funniest people on earth.

 

Do I ever miss Los Angeles? All the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, the weather, palm trees, Schwarzenegger cycling along the beach – me cycling along the beach? Me waving at Schwarzenegger – Schwarzenegger giving me the finger!!! No he would always wave back and sometimes he would wave first but do I miss all that? Well I would be a liar if I said I didn't. I know some people don't like sunshine for 12 months a year but we did have seasons of a sort; very hot, hot and not so hot! And I loved it, never missed Britain at all – just the family.

When you visit LA, you might cycle along the beach and think it great but we did it nearly every week. Now all that has gone and I am back in cultured London with the cultured theatre – the last show I saw was Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage; now what could be more cultured than that – he/she is a phenomenon – a legend – but what I really miss about Hollywood are the award ceremonies.

Yesterday it was The Golden Globes; now The Golden Globes are nothing really, they are nominated and chosen by such a small group of journalists that they can't mean much. These journalists are the Hollywood Foreign Press; journalists from newspapers and other journals from the rest of the world. The reason it is well attended by movies stars and the like is that it is a huge fantastic party; what they would call over here a big piss up. And even though they don't mean that much I miss them and when the academy awards are announced this week I will miss those too.

I will miss the arguments and discussions with people who don't agree with me and I will know that they don't mean anything either; just fun.

There is no way you can say what the best film is or the best actor or actress (actrice); the difference between the two ceremonies is that the Academy nominations will be more realistic.

So I miss all that; the crowds of people in Rock 'n' Roll Ralphs (the supermarket) buying pizza and beer for their parties on award days, the endless TV shows – the pre award show, the post award show, the after party, the Mayor's party, the Governor's Ball, the Elton John party and all the glamour – watching all the glitz and the jewellery from the comfort of our modest apartment and throwing cushions at the TV screen when Day-Lewis gets it again!!!!

But we are back here and things are swinging along with me and my sandwich.

I love the joke the director told at the ceremony yesterday – the director of Gravity said he thanks Sandra Bullock who didn't walk (float?) off the set when he offered to give her herpes; the poor fella is from Mexico and his accent made it sound like that when he was really offering her an ear piece.

Here are some photos – I wonder what the poor people are doing?

Michael Holmes

The killer wields a knife near the canal in Venice in Nic Roeg's Don't Look Now.

A lot of the great capital cities in the world have a river running through them; I hasten to add that one of my favourite cities, Los Angeles – yes I know it's fashionable to hate it and it's not a capital – has The Los Angeles River which is usually dry. Well you know that from the scenes in Grease where Travolta and a few of his mates raced their hot rods.

In real life, of course, kids play down there in the dry but when a storm comes, and when it rains it really rains in LA, some of those kids end up under six feet of water and are swept away. I've lost count of the number of live rescues I've seen on TV.

Of the capital cities, I think firstly, of course, of Dublin where The River Liffey runs between the north and the south side; it's the same in London with the River Thames separating the north from the south but because they named New York twice (as in the words of the song) they have two rivers: The East River and The Hudson River – Paris has the River Seine, Rome The Tiber and so on.

A lot of those cities are proud of their rivers especially the Dubs who swear that the Guinness is made from Liffey Water.

A friend of mine recently sent a link to a video about Birmingham; it's on You Tube and it's called More Canals than Venice. First of all when I lived in Birmingham I never went near the canal; I'll explain later but it has always amazed me that a lot of Brummies carry this information; that Birmingham has more canals than Venice and the other thing they usually follow up with is that Venice smells.

There is nothing wrong with Birmingham, it's a fine place with a good football team (Aston Villa) but why the perpetual comparison to Venice. Venice is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

It is one of the most visited cities because of its architecture and large collection of renaissance art and to cap it all one of my favourite films was shot there – Don't Look Now (above) by Nicholas Roeg.

So I am going to stop there, hoping I haven't offended the good people of Birmingham, with the comparisons because the people of Venice don't care how much canal water is in Birmingham and, even though the beautiful city only has a wooden base, I bet the people of Venice wished there were no canals there at all.

When I was a boy, I had a friend called Michael Holmes; we went to Clifton Road School in Balsall Heath, which is a neighbourhood in Birmingham. We were in the same class when we both went up a year and into Mr Hennessey's class. I know his first name it was Fred; he was 5'3” tall, a Yorkshire man and a Communist; so there we have straight away three things against him!!! Sorry Yorkshire folk, my little joke.

How would I know him to be a communist? Well I didn't; it only comes clear to me now. I think I have written about him before on here so forgive me if you remember.

The first thing he showed us eight year old kids on the first day was his cane; it was a short cane with a knob on one end; he said “don't worry I won't be hitting you with the knob end; that's for me to hold.”

Then he swished it.

You could feel the sting of it as the little fella swung it through the air; he was in his element; he was in charge of some people smaller than he was – although there was one girl, Lavinia Smith who was taller and she pushed him one day and he nearly fell over.

“If I give you the stick” he said “there's no good complaining to your moms and dads and trying to take me to court – it won't work; it's been tried before. The courts always come down on the side of the school master.”

He did give the cane on occasions to my fellow eight year olds and it was not pleasant to watch. Some of the kids, even at 8, just sneered at him after the smack. A shock would come over the whole class room followed by silence; the little man had won again!!

One day in the art class he told us to draw a picture; I did and it was of a house – two windows downstairs and two windows up; you know the one – with a door in the middle.

Walking up the path I drew the postman. He had just delivered letters to the house and he had a broad smile on his face.

Hennessey hovered close by then picked up my picture and took it out front; I thought it was because it was good - but no!

“Put your brushes down” he said “look at this!”

He held up my painting for all to see.

“Look at this” he said pointing at the mail bag of my postman “ US Mail!”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“US Mail!!! This is not America, young man – it should say Royal Mail – or the GPO – but not US Mail. We're not Americans, you know, and we never will be – you'll see!! You'll see when the Russians come, you'll see then; then we'll see about the US Mail.” And he really articulated the US Mail and because of his Yorkshire accent it sound like a US Meal!!

Then he tore up my painting, took it over to the waste paper basket, which was right by his stick, screwed it up and dumped it.

I looked at that stick and so did he,

I was eight years old and he was 5'3”.

Sorry about my little couplet; I couldn't resist.

He didn't hit me. I played in the playground with Michael but can you imagine why I might think now that he was a communist?

He was wrong though wasn't he; the Americans did take over with their butchery of the English language, their Starbucks, Amazon, Google and McDonalds but we love them don't we?

Hennessy died young – maybe of bitterness – who knows; but that was later.

Michael came to my house to play on occasions; we lived on the Moseley Road in a little lane or alley called South View Terrance – you remember me telling you this – and on the first day he came, my mother asked him in. It was only a tiny place but I remember him pausing as he crossed over the threshold - “come in son” my mother said.

He saw that in the minuscule kitchen, my mother had fitted a Hoover Washing Machine and on the floor in the sitting room we had carpets; he looked very closely at these and there was something about Michael's reaction which told me he didn't have these things where he lived. I never got to find out exactly where that was so I never pushed it.

He had come straight from school in the days before I became a latch key kid; my mother gave us refreshments, we played for a bit and off he went.

One day we had a new girl come to our class called Ann; Hennessey looked at the class and said “we have a new girl who has just started” - as if we hadn't noticed. He said “Ann – if you want to go to the lavatory just go.”

With that Michael jumped up out of his seat and disappeared through the door; Hennessey shouted after him “where do you think you're going?”

He thought Hennessey had said 'and if you want to go to the lavatory . . .” and ran out; it made me laugh as I thought he said 'and' too.

A week or two later Michael didn't come to school; nobody missed him, I don't suppose they'd have missed me if I hadn't come in - “gone back to Ireland” they would say.

We were always going to Ireland at that age.

Then one day, one of the kids in the playground said “Do you know why Michael Holmes hasn't been to school? He fell in the canal and drowned.”

And it was true – he died a week after his mother and that's all I ever knew.

So when I hear about the canal in Birmingham, I think about Michael and I sometimes wonder what he would have been like; how he would have grown. He was the very first friend I had who died. I told my parents and they remembered him - “poor little fella” my mother said.

I was in Birmingham two years ago at a reunion; I couldn't find the way to the venue so parked at a place called The Mail Box and caught a cab. On the way back, a doorman called a cab for me and asked me where I was going; when I told him he said “That's ten minutes walk along the canal”

I looked in the direction of where I would go and it was pitch black; not for me, I thought and caught the cab.

Maybe I would have seen the spirit of Michael rising from the evening darkness; the little boy in scruffy short trousers who jumped at the chance of going to the lavatory just to get an extra five minutes out of class.

Great Movies - what happened??

Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver

I remember in 1978, I was in Scotland filming a Shakespeare for the BBC; we were in Glamis Castle which is mentioned in the play Macbeth, and, to use a phrase, I was the only person in the cast that I'd never heard of.

The cast was peppered with famous actors from the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company), who were mostly very nice to me apart from one or two who thought they were God's gift to the theatre and to acting – in fact if you look up the play on YouTube - As You Like It (1978) Helen Mirren - you should see me sword fighting in the first few shots which is followed by a piece of very bad acting and sweating.

By the way 'As You Like It' is known to some people in the profession, namely casting directors, as 'as you' – it saves them saying the 'like it' part!! I kid you not!!

One of the members in the cast was David Prowse who had, fairly recently, played Darth Vader in the movie Star Wars; this didn't mean much to us as most of us hadn't seen the film but one day, a load of kids found out we were filming and came up for autographs.

The RSC actors sharpened their pencils, so to speak, but the kids wanted David. They knew what he looked like beneath the mask as he was well known in Britain as the Green Cross Code man which he had played in a series of road safety films on TV; he was surrounded and the rest of us kicked our heels.

We got on quite well – me and David, well Dave, you know how it is - in fact I gave him a lift in my car one day and, whilst I can't remember where we went or came from, I recall the car leaning over sideways when he got in, as he was, and is, a huge man.

What we were witnessing, and we didn't realise it at the time, was a new world order in movie making, pop music and general technology.

If you get the chance to look at the original Star Wars you will see that a lot of the technology in that movie was old hat by the time the second movie came out and because of the technology Star Wars and the like were discovering and using, the great movies of the early seventies – The Godfather (I & II), Taxi Driver and dozens of others - were on the way out only to be replaced by children's films.

Now you might not think they are children's films but what else would you call super hero movies? Films adapted from comic strips? Graphic novels?

There are those that have asked what happened to the movie business, what happened to the business after those great movies of the 70s – there's only Woody Allen still going in the same way, I mean look at these films:

  1. The Godfather - (1972, Francis Ford Coppola) (Marlon Brando, Al Pacino)
  2. The Godfather part II - (1974, Francis Ford Coppola) (Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro)
  3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - (1975, Milos Forman) (Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher)
  4. Apocalypse Now - (1979, Francis Ford Coppola) (Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall)
  5. Chinatown - (1974, Roman Polanski) (Jack Nicholson, John Huston)
  6. A Clockwork Orange - (1971, Stanley Kubrick) (Malcolm McDowell, Patrick MaGee)
  7. Star Wars - (1977, George Lucas) (Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford)
  8. Jaws - (1975, Steven Spielberg) (Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss)
  9. Taxi Driver - (1976, Martin Scorsese) (Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster)
10. The Deer Hunter - (1978, Michael Cimino) (Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken)
11. Annie Hall - (1977, Woody Allen) (Woody Allen, Diane Keaton)
12. Network - (1976, Sydney Lumet) (Peter Finch, William Holden)
13. Rocky - (1976, John G. Avildsen) (Sylvester Stallone, Carl Weathers)
14. Patton - (1970, Franklin J. Schaffner) (George C. Scott, Karl Malden)
15. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - (1977, Steven Spielberg) (Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr)
16. M*A*S*H - (1970, Robert Altman) (Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland)
17. The Exorcist - (1973, William Friedkin) (Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair)
18. American Graffiti - (1973, George Lucas) (Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss)
19. The French Connection - (1971, William Friedkin) (Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider)
20. Mean Streets - (1973, Martin Scorsese) (Harvey Keitel, Robert DeNiro)

There will be some people – and I have no idea who they might be – who will not like any of the above  but I'll bet your favourite is amongst them – I think I love them all apart from you know what.

But the 70s wasn't the only decade of great movies; look at the 60s:

 1. Lawrence of Arabia - (1962, David Lean) (Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness)
  2. Psycho - (1960, Alfred Hitchcock) (Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh)
  3. Dr. Strangelove... - (1964, Stanley Kubrick) (Peter Sellers, George C. Scott)
  4. 8 1/2 - (1963, Federico Fellini) (Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale)
  5. 2001: A Space Odyssey - (1968, Stanley Kubrick) (Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood)
  6. Once Upon a Time in the West - (1968, Sergio Leone) (Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson)
  7. To Kill a Mockingbird - (1962, Robert Mulligan) (Gregory Peck, Mary Badham)
  8. Midnight Cowboy - (1969, John Schlesinger) (Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight)
  9. Bonnie and Clyde - (1967, Arthur Penn) (Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway)
10. La Dolce Vita - (1960, Federico Fellini) (Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee)

Only ten there but that's because I didn't want to fill the page with charts – I love all those movies and nearly in that order so what happened?

I have nothing against Star Wars but it's a kids' film – the same as Dr Who; it's for children; I have yet to see an episode but again, I have nothing against it.

But look at them – look at those movies; the film business will never be the same again it out technologised itself (I know – no such word).

I know they tried to make Batman weird or more grown up but watching it you have to buy in to the fact that the hero walks around in a bat suit – come on!!!!!

I know it's technology gone mad but when other innovations were invented they died down a bit after they'd got use to it.

When talkies started every movie seemed to be a musical; coloured movies gave a kaleidoscope of colour as happened on TV later and the zoom lens left a lot to be desired in some of those great 70s films above but they got used to it and this time it doesn't appear to be ironing itself out.

Will we ever see the likes of Lawrence of Arabia again? I doubt it.

One of the biggest flops in 2013 was The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp; it was a huge budget but back in the 40s and 50s directors like Raoul Walsh used to knock out cowboy movies like that in a matter of weeks.

The Lone Ranger series on TV was made for the price of the parking fees on the new one so what is going wrong? Why would The Lone Ranger cost so much money – maybe because they like to use a Lone Arranger these days?

The same happened to pop music with the invention of the boring over technologised stadium super groups . . . but that's another story!

Happy New Year!!