Confucius really did say that nothing gives one greater pleasure than watching a friend fall out of an apple tree.
That is the only explanation for a series of unpleasant plays on the private hells of some of our finest comedy actors which have been getting universal praise from TV critics. I had much rather remember the pleasure they gave me than gloat over the mess they all seemed to make of their private lives.
The most recent was an exposure of Hughie Green. To know that odious man was to loathe him but I was furious at the portrayal of his sometime friend Jess Yates as a drunken bum of little talent.
The ITV show Yates devised, wrote, produced and presented, “Stars on Sunday”, was watched in its two-year run by 3,500 million viewers. It inspired a series of imitations, Harry Secombe’s “Highway” and “Songs of Praise”. Yet it is still the only “Godspot” which had more viewers than “Top of the Pops” and produced fan mail of 2,000 letters a week.
The Pope agreed to appear on the programme and gave it his blessing.
ITV boasted:
“Stars On Sunday has succeeded in fulfilling its aims. And more! Today, it attracts a regular viewing audience of 15,000,000, which on occasions has reached 17,000,000, and it never falls far short of the 10,000,000 mark, even in the summer months. In January 1972, when it completed its centenary programme, it celebrated the event by becoming the first ever religious programme to enter the television viewing charts. And during its first year in 1969, over 250,000 requests were received. That figure has well and truly exceeded the 500,000 mark today.
“But probably the strongest testimonial for Stars On Sunday is the list of stars and distinguished people who have appeared on the programme. It includes the Archbishops of York and Canterbury, the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Dame Anna Neagle, Raymond Burr, James Mason, Raymond Massey, Gerald Harper and Bill Simpson -- who have all been featured regularly reading extracts from the Bible. Miss Gracie Fields, Miss Violet Carson, Anita Harris, Moira Anderson, Eartha Kitt, Shirley Bassey, Nina, the Beverley Sisters, Sandie Shaw, Harry Secombe, Cliff Richard, Lovelace Watkins, Norman Wisdom, Roy Orbison, Bobby Bennett, Howard Keel and the Poole Family, are just a few of the star names who have graced the programme and added their own interpretations to many well-loved songs.
“Yorkshire Television's Stars On Sunday has now carved a unique place for itself in television history“.
And none of the stars was paid more than £40 for a day’s work from the shows£1,000 budget.
The elaborate sets - a palace, a ruined abbey and a country house library - were all borrowed. Yates’s secret was that he had noted the way tape inserts were used in news bulletins. For “Stars” he taped eight songs or religious readings by every star that appeared, using songs from their repertoire which did not need rehearsal, and then scattered the tapes through a season of programmes.
Despite its success, the Religious Panel of the Independent Television Authority hated the show and tried to censor it. They even tried to have it taken off air. They became so desperate that in the end they used a savage newspaper campaign based on half truths to wreck the show and destroy Yates.
The campaign was inspired by Hughie Green, who cuckolded Yates and in a final spiteful jibe from the grave boasted that he was the father of Yates’s daughter, Paula.
Thirty years ago I was brought in to help Yates beat the mental block which was preventing him from writing his autobiography. The book I wrote for him was never published but during the summer of 1976 I had long interviews with him and access to the blistering correspondence with the ITA.
I have been growing increasingly angry at the way Hughie Green, his son and now Yates’s ex-wife have told their story blackening Yates character. The play was the last straw. So, at 79, I have decided to write yet another book. This one will tell his story and I hope vindicate a man who was one of the most creative programme makers in TV’s history; the “father” of “Come Dancing” and “Miss World”.
He was a brilliant organist who played in West End cinemas; a producer who in addition to “Stars on Sunday” devised “Come Dancing”, “Junior Showtime” and “Choirs on Sunday” and turned Miss World from a mediocre publicity stunt in the Sunday Dispatch into a glittering international TV success; a pageant organiser who created the shows which launched premieres of Hollywood films in the Fifties.
************************************************************
My attitude to people who buy bottles of water for purposes other than calming whisky can be judged by spelling Evian backwards.
By the same token I never had any difficulty in becoming a teetotaller. I did it most weeks; twice if conditions were especially favourable.
So I am getting tired of reading those articles by recovering alcoholics which fill the Sunday papers. A recovering alcoholic is someone who is getting over a hangover. Besides, I have spilt more drink down my shirt than most of these pious people have swallowed. The chap for me was one who took antibuse tablets to see how many he could swallow before drink made him sick.
I remember an interview I had with a Dr Madden of the Deva Clinic in Chester. He was one of Britain’s great authorities on the sauce and its abuse.
“What do you drink?” he said.
“What have you got?” I asked.
“How much do you drink?” he demanded.
“How much have you got?” I countered, cunningly.
“Do you find you reach for a drink in moments of stress?”
“No,” I replied firmly.
“A good sign,“ he remarked.
“Not really. I have usually already got one in my hand,” I said.
“I have just described to you the classic pattern of the alcoholic.“ he told me.
“You have just described everyone I know,” I said.
The best head waiter in history was my friend Jimmy Godwin who left the Blossoms Hotel in Chester in high dudgeon when he was asked to slice a Stilton cheese. As everyone but a barbarian knows, Stilton should be scooped.
Jimmy had a heart attack and when the doctor asked him what he drank he said gin and tonic.
“That’s what’s doing it,” said the doctor, so Jimmy gave it up. He changed to whisky and tonic and had another heart attack. “I know what’s doing it,” he told the doctor. “It’s the tonic.”
We drunks all know that booze is the cause not the effect. You can choose not to if you don’t want to drink, whatever proselytising alcoholics tell you. I was only an alcoholic between 6 pm and 8 pm.
On the other hand, drink helped me emerge blinking from a two-year depression that turned the world into grey mist. It had nothing to do with the fact that the BBC dropped me and I had to sell my dogs, my library and put my collection of paintings on the market. Or that my bloodhound Amy died of a stress related disease. In my life I have been in prison, unhappily married and been sacked more times than a potato harvest. Never bothered me.
Depression is chemical, like the desire for booze which corrects a chemical deficiency. So why is it I have suddenly lost the taste for the stuff and wouldn’t thank you for a bucket of g and t?
If I continue to feel well in the morning I will have to consult my doctor.
Ends
OBIT
Christian Victor Charles Herbert was born in 1904, the youngest son of Col. E.W. Herbert of Orleton Hall, Shropshire, and a great-grandson of the 2nd Earl of Powys, who remodelled Powys Castle before being fatally mistaken for a pheasant by one of his sons out shooting.
FROM MY CUTTINGS BOOK;
One motorist has offered what must be a unique reason why he should keep his licence.
Mohammed Anwar said a ban would make it difficult to commute between his two wives and fulfil his matrimonial duties.
His lawyer told a Scottish court the Muslim restaurant owner has one wife in Motherwell and another in Glasgow - he is allowed up to four under his religion - and sleeps with them on alternate nights.
Airdrie Sheriff Court had heard that Anwar was caught driving at 64mph in a 30mph zone in Glasgow, fast enough to qualify for instant disqualification. Anwar admitted the offence, but Sheriff John C. Morris accepted his plea not to be banned and allowed him to keep his licence.
Instead, he was fined £200 and given six penalty points.
ENDS
And for two more good reads try
http://www.northtrek.co.uk
and
http://www.gentlemenranters.com
Saturday, 12 April 2008
Saturday, 5 April 2008
Jeepers and Creepers
Many years ago in the early morning in the reporters’ room of the News of the World, smelling the ghosts of ancient chips, surrounded by mugs of cold tea, waste paper and egg stained supper plates, another reporter called Mike Friend and myself worked out what we would most like to own.
We dismissed yachts and stately homes. We decided we could manage without vintage cars and Savile Row suits, beats on the Test, hunters and a river in the garden. The one truly indispensable thing, we finally agreed, was a fountain pen that worked in those pre-Biro days when the pencil was king.
In the course of a lucky life - and richly underserved - I have fished the Test, hunted with the Cheshire, rented and lived in two country houses with rivers in the grounds, squired titled ladies, leased a racehorse and eaten in the finest restaurants in Europe. I have yet to own a reliable working fountain pen. My two favourite possessions have been a duffle coat and a Series One Land Rover.
I am still the proud proprietor of a duffle coat but my Land Rovers are, alas, fond memories. As is the Lada I bought for transporting my bloodhounds, which still shines among the best, most reliable motors I have owned.
But the Land Rovers reign in my heart. Supreme over the Lagonda LG6 and the MGTD, the BMW, the VX490, the Jaguar and all the other follies I have owned. We used to call them Anglesey Rolls Royce because they were developed from a Willis jeep by two Anglesey farming brothers who were also directors of Rover Cars. The brothers are buried on the island in a village called Dwyran and the last time I looked their grave was shamefully overgrown.
I wonder what they would think of the furore their 4 x 4 inspiration has caused. Present day owners of 4 x 4s are mocked because they don’t use their motors across country. I owned a Series One and a lightweight air portable which had toughened glass for arctic motoring and a special radiator grille and fan to deflect sand in desert conditions. My son-in-law pointed out scornfully that these were affectations because I only used the vehicle to go to the pub. I did not tell him I had no idea how to operate the four wheel drive.
That wasn’t the point.
Behind the wheel I was Walter Mitty, Mark 2. I was Billy the Liar Recividus, every fantasist except Geoffrey Archer, because there are limits. I came embarrassingly near to buying a pair of camouflage trousers so carried away was I with my dream life.
The attraction of toys for grown up boys - and I include fishing and other field sports - is the thrill of dressing up in special clothes. Any fisherman worth the name has got more kit than he could possibly use. It isn’t necessary to wear a red coat to go hunting and the toy ducks and whistles and curiously carved walking sticks you find in many a gun room give the game away.
Two hundred-mile-an-hour sports cars in a country where the speed limit is not much more than a quarter of that?
I have been amazed at the useless things I have collected, as hobby succeeded hobby. Guns, rods, LPs of every Shakespeare play, four desks and a library that filled three rooms. But the biggest fantasy for me was playing the countryman with my Land Rover and my gum boots.
I am particularly fond of gum boots and surprised that no-one has written a sonnet about them. They are the most comfortable items of footwear in my wardrobe. I can stomp about in them for hours like some overweight Paddington Bear. In their own clumsy way they are dashing and evoke the 18th century and the Great Duke of Wellington who made them fashionable.
Wearing gum boots is an unalloyed joy. Getting them on without outside aid is another matter. Goodness knows, socks are bad enough but at least they are malleable. When the Princess finally comes round with a crystal gum boot seeking the hand of the foot that fits it, I hope the Head Ferret is at home. Otherwise the pumpkin carriage will remain a dream.
There was a time when I could not reach my ankle. Now the calf is Terra Incognita. My belly is the last unconquered summit. The arm cannot climb over it and God, whose design abilities you may recall I do not admire, has so constructed that luckless limb that it is just too short to go round it. It may be his idea of a celestial joke but the only way to grip the gum boot is to stand on one leg with the other at the high port. This involves much spirited hopping and is deeply undignified.
For this service alone the Head Ferret is worth every penny of the three half crowns she cost me all those years ago.
A Land Rover encourages altogether nobler aspirations. It carries you high enough to look over hedges and down at other road users. Odd that the more expensive the motor, the greater the servility. So low is the driver of the Lamborghini, he almost slithers along the road.
Mulling over this essay, I recalled that my Noble Friend, as a 90th birthday present, has bought himself a quad bike and is currently roaring round his estate terrifying the peasantry. What fun, I thought, to commemorate my 79th birthday in May by buying myself a Willis Jeep. After all, I had never paid more than £100 for my Land Rovers. With the help of friends I tracked a number down.
Alas, the Willis Jeep is in such demand that prices for them start at £4,000 and since my next reincarnation cannot be all that far off I don’t think I can justify spending £4,000 on a whim.
AH WELL………………………………..
*****************************************************************
My work as an Army PRO was praised only once. I had written a feature about a Catholic Retreat Centre the army opened in the country home of the German Distiller Steinhager. It appeared in the Catholic newspaper The Universe, where it was seen by Cardinal Griffin, at that time Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, who liked it and told my boss, a Field Marshall, what a clever chap I was.
My reward was a trip to Brussels with a photographer to cover a world motor cycle championship race in the Parc de Centenaire in which two soldiers were taking part. Everyone was delighted except my driver, a bad tempered Gordon Highlander who thought he should go to Brussels too, because he had driven us to the Retreat. In protest, he went absent without leave on the day we left for Brussels and did not return for several days. It fell to me to put him on a charge and march him in front of the camp commandant, a Cheshire regiment major called Latimer.
His defence brought tears to the major’s kindly eyes.
“You may have been aware, sir, that Sergeant Skidmore has recently been honoured by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. Very properly he was sent in reward to Brussels and I wanted to honour him in my own small way.
“The unit jeep was sorely in need of a re-spray but Workshops couldn’t do it in time to get it back before his return. So at my own expense I took it to a German civilian garage and had it re-sprayed. Naturally, sir, since it was WD property, I could not leave it unguarded in former enemy civilian hands. So I stayed with it.”
I thought the major was going to burst into tears. He pulled himself together and with what sounded suspiciously like a sob found my driver not guilty, ordering me to stay after he was marched out.
The nub of the dressing down I got from that old warrior was that he was sick of National Service NCOs bullying soldiers who had fought with him in the desert. Soldiers who were trying in their simple way to demonstrate pride in their unit.
When he had finished, I asked him to look out of his window at the motor park where the HQ’s olive green regimental jeeps were drawn up in lines.
“Mine,” I said, “is the only one that is Pea Green and if you go near it you will find it has been hand-painted with a wide brush.”
MY DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
Well not mine actually. This comes from reader Revel Barker who published my book “Forgive Us Our Press Passes” and is offering it at £9 post free, if you have Paypal, on;
revelbarker@waldonet.net.mt
A New Zealand man who claimed he was raped by a wombat and that the experience left him speaking with an Australian accent has been found guilty of wasting police time.
Arthur Cradock, 48, from the South Island town of Motueka, called police last month to tell them he was being raped by the marsupial at his home and needed urgent assistance.
Cradock, an orchard worker, later called back to reassure the police operator that he was all right.
A wombat like that allegedly involved in the incident
"I’ll retract the rape complaint from the wombat, because he’s pulled out. Apart from speaking Australian now, I’m pretty all right you know. I didn’t hurt my bum at all."
He pleaded guilty in Nelson District Court to using a phone for a fictitious purpose and was sentenced to 75 hours’ community work.
Police prosecutor Sergeant Chris Stringer told the court that alcohol played a large role in Cradock’s life.
Judge Richard Russell said he was not sure what had motivated Cradock to make the extraordinary claim. In sentencing Cradock, he warned him not to do it again.
ends
And for two more good reads try
http://www.northtrek.co.uk
and
http://www.gentlemenranters.com
We dismissed yachts and stately homes. We decided we could manage without vintage cars and Savile Row suits, beats on the Test, hunters and a river in the garden. The one truly indispensable thing, we finally agreed, was a fountain pen that worked in those pre-Biro days when the pencil was king.
In the course of a lucky life - and richly underserved - I have fished the Test, hunted with the Cheshire, rented and lived in two country houses with rivers in the grounds, squired titled ladies, leased a racehorse and eaten in the finest restaurants in Europe. I have yet to own a reliable working fountain pen. My two favourite possessions have been a duffle coat and a Series One Land Rover.
I am still the proud proprietor of a duffle coat but my Land Rovers are, alas, fond memories. As is the Lada I bought for transporting my bloodhounds, which still shines among the best, most reliable motors I have owned.
But the Land Rovers reign in my heart. Supreme over the Lagonda LG6 and the MGTD, the BMW, the VX490, the Jaguar and all the other follies I have owned. We used to call them Anglesey Rolls Royce because they were developed from a Willis jeep by two Anglesey farming brothers who were also directors of Rover Cars. The brothers are buried on the island in a village called Dwyran and the last time I looked their grave was shamefully overgrown.
I wonder what they would think of the furore their 4 x 4 inspiration has caused. Present day owners of 4 x 4s are mocked because they don’t use their motors across country. I owned a Series One and a lightweight air portable which had toughened glass for arctic motoring and a special radiator grille and fan to deflect sand in desert conditions. My son-in-law pointed out scornfully that these were affectations because I only used the vehicle to go to the pub. I did not tell him I had no idea how to operate the four wheel drive.
That wasn’t the point.
Behind the wheel I was Walter Mitty, Mark 2. I was Billy the Liar Recividus, every fantasist except Geoffrey Archer, because there are limits. I came embarrassingly near to buying a pair of camouflage trousers so carried away was I with my dream life.
The attraction of toys for grown up boys - and I include fishing and other field sports - is the thrill of dressing up in special clothes. Any fisherman worth the name has got more kit than he could possibly use. It isn’t necessary to wear a red coat to go hunting and the toy ducks and whistles and curiously carved walking sticks you find in many a gun room give the game away.
Two hundred-mile-an-hour sports cars in a country where the speed limit is not much more than a quarter of that?
I have been amazed at the useless things I have collected, as hobby succeeded hobby. Guns, rods, LPs of every Shakespeare play, four desks and a library that filled three rooms. But the biggest fantasy for me was playing the countryman with my Land Rover and my gum boots.
I am particularly fond of gum boots and surprised that no-one has written a sonnet about them. They are the most comfortable items of footwear in my wardrobe. I can stomp about in them for hours like some overweight Paddington Bear. In their own clumsy way they are dashing and evoke the 18th century and the Great Duke of Wellington who made them fashionable.
Wearing gum boots is an unalloyed joy. Getting them on without outside aid is another matter. Goodness knows, socks are bad enough but at least they are malleable. When the Princess finally comes round with a crystal gum boot seeking the hand of the foot that fits it, I hope the Head Ferret is at home. Otherwise the pumpkin carriage will remain a dream.
There was a time when I could not reach my ankle. Now the calf is Terra Incognita. My belly is the last unconquered summit. The arm cannot climb over it and God, whose design abilities you may recall I do not admire, has so constructed that luckless limb that it is just too short to go round it. It may be his idea of a celestial joke but the only way to grip the gum boot is to stand on one leg with the other at the high port. This involves much spirited hopping and is deeply undignified.
For this service alone the Head Ferret is worth every penny of the three half crowns she cost me all those years ago.
A Land Rover encourages altogether nobler aspirations. It carries you high enough to look over hedges and down at other road users. Odd that the more expensive the motor, the greater the servility. So low is the driver of the Lamborghini, he almost slithers along the road.
Mulling over this essay, I recalled that my Noble Friend, as a 90th birthday present, has bought himself a quad bike and is currently roaring round his estate terrifying the peasantry. What fun, I thought, to commemorate my 79th birthday in May by buying myself a Willis Jeep. After all, I had never paid more than £100 for my Land Rovers. With the help of friends I tracked a number down.
Alas, the Willis Jeep is in such demand that prices for them start at £4,000 and since my next reincarnation cannot be all that far off I don’t think I can justify spending £4,000 on a whim.
AH WELL………………………………..
*****************************************************************
My work as an Army PRO was praised only once. I had written a feature about a Catholic Retreat Centre the army opened in the country home of the German Distiller Steinhager. It appeared in the Catholic newspaper The Universe, where it was seen by Cardinal Griffin, at that time Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, who liked it and told my boss, a Field Marshall, what a clever chap I was.
My reward was a trip to Brussels with a photographer to cover a world motor cycle championship race in the Parc de Centenaire in which two soldiers were taking part. Everyone was delighted except my driver, a bad tempered Gordon Highlander who thought he should go to Brussels too, because he had driven us to the Retreat. In protest, he went absent without leave on the day we left for Brussels and did not return for several days. It fell to me to put him on a charge and march him in front of the camp commandant, a Cheshire regiment major called Latimer.
His defence brought tears to the major’s kindly eyes.
“You may have been aware, sir, that Sergeant Skidmore has recently been honoured by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. Very properly he was sent in reward to Brussels and I wanted to honour him in my own small way.
“The unit jeep was sorely in need of a re-spray but Workshops couldn’t do it in time to get it back before his return. So at my own expense I took it to a German civilian garage and had it re-sprayed. Naturally, sir, since it was WD property, I could not leave it unguarded in former enemy civilian hands. So I stayed with it.”
I thought the major was going to burst into tears. He pulled himself together and with what sounded suspiciously like a sob found my driver not guilty, ordering me to stay after he was marched out.
The nub of the dressing down I got from that old warrior was that he was sick of National Service NCOs bullying soldiers who had fought with him in the desert. Soldiers who were trying in their simple way to demonstrate pride in their unit.
When he had finished, I asked him to look out of his window at the motor park where the HQ’s olive green regimental jeeps were drawn up in lines.
“Mine,” I said, “is the only one that is Pea Green and if you go near it you will find it has been hand-painted with a wide brush.”
MY DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
Well not mine actually. This comes from reader Revel Barker who published my book “Forgive Us Our Press Passes” and is offering it at £9 post free, if you have Paypal, on;
revelbarker@waldonet.net.mt
A New Zealand man who claimed he was raped by a wombat and that the experience left him speaking with an Australian accent has been found guilty of wasting police time.
Arthur Cradock, 48, from the South Island town of Motueka, called police last month to tell them he was being raped by the marsupial at his home and needed urgent assistance.
Cradock, an orchard worker, later called back to reassure the police operator that he was all right.
A wombat like that allegedly involved in the incident
"I’ll retract the rape complaint from the wombat, because he’s pulled out. Apart from speaking Australian now, I’m pretty all right you know. I didn’t hurt my bum at all."
He pleaded guilty in Nelson District Court to using a phone for a fictitious purpose and was sentenced to 75 hours’ community work.
Police prosecutor Sergeant Chris Stringer told the court that alcohol played a large role in Cradock’s life.
Judge Richard Russell said he was not sure what had motivated Cradock to make the extraordinary claim. In sentencing Cradock, he warned him not to do it again.
ends
And for two more good reads try
http://www.northtrek.co.uk
and
http://www.gentlemenranters.com
Saturday, 29 March 2008
IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED
I have conducted my life in obedience to two maxims passed on to me by my
Noble Friend
The first;
“ It only costs a little more to travel first class”
The second ;
“The best is barely good enough”
In Biblical times codes of conduct were, it is alleged, dramatically handed down
witten on stone to an eager Moses. Nowadays the internet performs the function. Two
stories I collected from the ether also contain valuable lessons on getting to
grips with life (preferably round the throat);
The first;
A philosophy professor filled a jar with rocks, His students agreed it was full..
He poured pebbles into the jar and they rolled into the open areas between the
rocks. The students again agreed it was full. The professor poured sand into the
jar and it filled every space. "Now," said the professor, "I want you to recognize
that this is your life."
"The rocks are the important things -- your family,your spouse, your health, your
children -- things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full."
"The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car.
The sand is everything else. The small stuff.
If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the
rocks."
"The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small
stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you."
"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your
children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing.There
will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and do the
garden. Take care of the rocks first -- the things that really matter. Set your
priorities. The rest is just sand."
A student took the jar and poured in a glass of beer which filled the remaining
spaces.
Which proves: that no matter how full your life is, there is always room for a beer.
The second;
A husband and wife were dining at a restaurant when this absolutely
stunning young woman gives the husband a big open mouthed kiss. The
wife says, "Who the hell was that?"
"Oh, "she's my mistress."
"Well, that's the last straw, I want a divorce!" "I can understand
that," replies her husband, "but remember, if we get a divorce it will
mean no more shopping trips to Paris, no more wintering in Barbados, no
more summers in Tuscany. no more yacht club. ."
A mutual friend enters the restaurant with a curvaceous blonde
"Who's that woman with Jim?" asks the wife.
“His mistress," says her husband.
"Ours is prettier," she replies
Being a Night News Editor was easy, just so long as you managed to stay awake. I kept sleep at bay by spending most of my shift in the pub.,
On this one night though in the eraslry days of the Sunday Mirror in Manchester,I ws intrigued by a series of paragraphs our free-lances
Were phoning in from all over Yorkshire.
Freelance economics dictated that they send over tempting paragraphs rather than complete stories, because the news desks would always ring back for more details and that meant they were paid for them whether the stories were used by the papers or not, whereas a submitted story was only paid for if it was used.
These paragraphs were all sightings of Charlie Chaplin in various towns in the county.
The Chief Sub Editor was a Scot called Bob Johnstone, a veteran of the China Post and a kind of genius, the only man I knew who drank whisky by osmosis. If he stood next to a bottle it emptied miraculously.
The paper had booked him into a hotel near the office but he went there so rarely, when he did go the proprietor’s dog, confused by this stranger, bit him.
From then on when his shirt was dirty he sent a messenger out to buy a new one and threw the old one into a waste paper basket.
Clutching the paragaphs he came over to the news desk. He said
“ Chaplin is obviously visiting the theatres he knew as an unknown comic. Logically the next one will be Doncaster. When we are finished here lets take a taxi over to Doncaster and do a feature for the Daily Mirror.
We called a cab and pausing only to buy Bob two bottles of whisky for the journey ( two because he might have dropped one) we set off for the Danum Hotel in Doncaster. The journey took two and a half hours and we arrived at around 2.30 am to find an American reporter already waiting. He told us that Chaplin was only going to give on interview the next morning and he had booked it.
Bob said to me “ Go and find a bed and leave this Yank to me”
The hotel was full but I tipped the night porter and he found me an empty bath where I slept fitfully.
Bob meantime plied the American reporter with so much whisky, he passed out. Whereupon Bob woke me and I took the American’s place at breakfast with Mr Chaplin who was charming.
Between the whisky and the fitful night it wasn’t the best interview I have ever done but I rembembere when I said “ But you haven’t any luggage with you” he pulled out a well filled wallet.”
“ In life,” he said “ that is the only luggage you need”
Which is another lesson I have carried with me over the years…
FROM MY DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
From Last week’s Times
“ Sir,
It was never possible to travel from Bradford to Blackpool entirely by tram (letters March 17) The journey would have involved three breaks between tram termini totaling more than 20 miles (Hebden Bridge-Summit, Blackburn-Preston and Preston-Lytham)
With just one eight mile break (Hebden-Bridge to Summit) it was however possible to travel from Wakefield to Liverpool
Yrs etc
John Cundill,
London SW15 “
Noble Friend
The first;
“ It only costs a little more to travel first class”
The second ;
“The best is barely good enough”
In Biblical times codes of conduct were, it is alleged, dramatically handed down
witten on stone to an eager Moses. Nowadays the internet performs the function. Two
stories I collected from the ether also contain valuable lessons on getting to
grips with life (preferably round the throat);
The first;
A philosophy professor filled a jar with rocks, His students agreed it was full..
He poured pebbles into the jar and they rolled into the open areas between the
rocks. The students again agreed it was full. The professor poured sand into the
jar and it filled every space. "Now," said the professor, "I want you to recognize
that this is your life."
"The rocks are the important things -- your family,your spouse, your health, your
children -- things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full."
"The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car.
The sand is everything else. The small stuff.
If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the
rocks."
"The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small
stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you."
"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your
children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing.There
will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and do the
garden. Take care of the rocks first -- the things that really matter. Set your
priorities. The rest is just sand."
A student took the jar and poured in a glass of beer which filled the remaining
spaces.
Which proves: that no matter how full your life is, there is always room for a beer.
The second;
A husband and wife were dining at a restaurant when this absolutely
stunning young woman gives the husband a big open mouthed kiss. The
wife says, "Who the hell was that?"
"Oh, "she's my mistress."
"Well, that's the last straw, I want a divorce!" "I can understand
that," replies her husband, "but remember, if we get a divorce it will
mean no more shopping trips to Paris, no more wintering in Barbados, no
more summers in Tuscany. no more yacht club. ."
A mutual friend enters the restaurant with a curvaceous blonde
"Who's that woman with Jim?" asks the wife.
“His mistress," says her husband.
"Ours is prettier," she replies
Being a Night News Editor was easy, just so long as you managed to stay awake. I kept sleep at bay by spending most of my shift in the pub.,
On this one night though in the eraslry days of the Sunday Mirror in Manchester,I ws intrigued by a series of paragraphs our free-lances
Were phoning in from all over Yorkshire.
Freelance economics dictated that they send over tempting paragraphs rather than complete stories, because the news desks would always ring back for more details and that meant they were paid for them whether the stories were used by the papers or not, whereas a submitted story was only paid for if it was used.
These paragraphs were all sightings of Charlie Chaplin in various towns in the county.
The Chief Sub Editor was a Scot called Bob Johnstone, a veteran of the China Post and a kind of genius, the only man I knew who drank whisky by osmosis. If he stood next to a bottle it emptied miraculously.
The paper had booked him into a hotel near the office but he went there so rarely, when he did go the proprietor’s dog, confused by this stranger, bit him.
From then on when his shirt was dirty he sent a messenger out to buy a new one and threw the old one into a waste paper basket.
Clutching the paragaphs he came over to the news desk. He said
“ Chaplin is obviously visiting the theatres he knew as an unknown comic. Logically the next one will be Doncaster. When we are finished here lets take a taxi over to Doncaster and do a feature for the Daily Mirror.
We called a cab and pausing only to buy Bob two bottles of whisky for the journey ( two because he might have dropped one) we set off for the Danum Hotel in Doncaster. The journey took two and a half hours and we arrived at around 2.30 am to find an American reporter already waiting. He told us that Chaplin was only going to give on interview the next morning and he had booked it.
Bob said to me “ Go and find a bed and leave this Yank to me”
The hotel was full but I tipped the night porter and he found me an empty bath where I slept fitfully.
Bob meantime plied the American reporter with so much whisky, he passed out. Whereupon Bob woke me and I took the American’s place at breakfast with Mr Chaplin who was charming.
Between the whisky and the fitful night it wasn’t the best interview I have ever done but I rembembere when I said “ But you haven’t any luggage with you” he pulled out a well filled wallet.”
“ In life,” he said “ that is the only luggage you need”
Which is another lesson I have carried with me over the years…
FROM MY DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
From Last week’s Times
“ Sir,
It was never possible to travel from Bradford to Blackpool entirely by tram (letters March 17) The journey would have involved three breaks between tram termini totaling more than 20 miles (Hebden Bridge-Summit, Blackburn-Preston and Preston-Lytham)
With just one eight mile break (Hebden-Bridge to Summit) it was however possible to travel from Wakefield to Liverpool
Yrs etc
John Cundill,
London SW15 “
Saturday, 22 March 2008
Touchline torment and frenzied bird feeders
I was glad I was not living in Wales in rugby winning week. Even in North Wales which is not greatly given to rugby. Most north Walians support Manchester City, whilst allegedly disliking the English.
Apart from the BBC and the Taffia, the faux middle class graduates, I never experienced this legendary hatred from anyone. I think it was because I was a drunk and drunkenness is a nationality.
Certainly there is no sense to the anti-English feeling. I am told that it dates from the invasion of Wales by Edward I. That is very odd because, although he led an army of 15,000 when he invaded North Wales, 11,000 of them were Welshmen. South Walians at that. And they really hate each other.
When I first went to Wales I thought that “Gog” and “Honddu” were swear words, the way they were spat out. In fact it’s the Welsh for North and South Wales. Another odd thing is that most of the dyed-in-the-wool Welshmen I met hated Welsh Nationalists. Welsh speakers and patriots to a man (or woman), they could not understand the Welsh language of the bills they got from the Utilities, nor the official Welsh of broadcasting, which had been forced on the country by academics.
Brynsiencyn, the Anglesey village in which I spent so many happy years, was a daily joy. It could not have been more Welsh. A friend, a retired preacher, spent his days translating Tacitus, the Roman historian, from Latin into Welsh and another chum, a retired diplomat called Cedric Maybe, translated the great Chinese poets, Li Po and Tu Fu, into Welsh and such splendid Welsh poets as Dafydd ap Gwyllim into Mandarin. Not to be read by anyone. Just for the joy of it.
My neighbour Glyn was half Welsh and half Indian and was known as Glyndustani. Another neighbour could never believe I worked for the BBC after I proved unable to repair his portable radio.
There was a youngster in the village who had a Blue in eating. I know of five houses where he went regularly for his Christmas dinner. One year when the prisons were full, his brother, a frequent offender, was locked up in the cells under Wrexham police station. I thought it would be nice if our guest wished his absent kin a Merry Christmas. So I rang the custody sergeant and asked him to bring Trefor to the phone.
He was furious. “Have you no sense,“ he said, “ringing up like this? He’s not had his pudding yet. Ring back in an hour.”
I took the Coronation Street writer John Stevenson to dinner on the mainland. On the way back I stopped to ring Glyn, our local bobby. I thought John was going to explode when I explained I was a bit p’’’’ed and was going to ask Glyn to collect me. He made me put the phone down, but when I told Glyn, he was furious. “It’s people like that who cause accidents,” he said.
******************************************************
Our postman has brought me a whole bundle of my favourite reading, the mail order catalogue. I especially enjoyed the offer of a birdy whirler feeder, although bird terrifier might be a more accurate description. I am going off birds. I water and feed them all year long; all they do in return is eat my seeds. So I cannot wait to install the feeder on which this happens:
”As the bird lands on one of the four feeding baskets the feeder rotates slowly to give a windmill effect.........”
You don’t have to be David Attenborough to know what that would do to the neighbourhood sparrow. You would be the talk of every tree for miles.
“God knows what he’s soaking his bird seed in these days. One beakful and the whole damned feeder starts to go round....I reckon it’s Indian hemp. I’ve a good mind to report him.......”
Stand on me. Chuckling into his drawing board somewhere is an animal-hating inventor. Would you believe, the same magazine is offering a lockable cat flap? Lockable? I could never train our Draculacat not to dispose of mice on my bed let alone get her to use a key. Anyway, she would be sure to forget it when she went out and she’d be hammering on the locked cat flap at all hours of the night.
Not even fish are safe from the demented drawing board:
“...An attractive and realistic Mallard duck and drake in rugged plastic to give life to your garden pool.........”
You can imagine it, can’t you?
“What the hell is that he’s put up there on the surface? Oh hell, it’s ducks. Quick! Get under that stone.”
Three months later....
“Haven’t they gone yet? I can’t stay here for ever, I’ve got pins and needles in my fin.”
Just the thing to send your goldfish screaming for their psychiatrist.
And you will be going with them if you are tempted by the key ring that reacts to your voice. According to the magazine, if you call out “Where are you, ring?” it whistles to you.
I can just see the Head Ferret reaching for the two doctors. ”I’m a bit worried about my hubby. He has taken to hiding his key ring under the cushions on the sofa. Then he goes round the room talking to it.”
Thinking back to the cat flap makes me wonder, would the key ring react to miaows, do you think?
From My Dangerous Cuttings Book:
A Vicar walked out of a course for Church of England clergy when he was asked to hold a conversation with a bread roll. Martin Dudley and his 17 colleagues attending a “Workshop on Worship” aimed at improving their services sat round a communion roll.
Mr Dudley said: “We were asked ‘Is there anything you would like to say to the bread? Or do you want to give it a voice? Do you want to hear the bread speak?’ Someone asked, ‘Does it hurt when you are broken?’
The bread protests. ‘I am not only the humdrum and the ordinary. I am special. What have you to do with me?’”
Mr Dudley said that one woman, a diocesan official, threw a £10 note at the bread, asked about the money that had been paid for it and asked about the symbolism of bread in a cash economy.
Other extraordinary activities at the course, organised by clergy in the Oxford diocese, included asking participants to draw around their feet, colour in the shoes and then write on them their feelings about the week.
Apart from the BBC and the Taffia, the faux middle class graduates, I never experienced this legendary hatred from anyone. I think it was because I was a drunk and drunkenness is a nationality.
Certainly there is no sense to the anti-English feeling. I am told that it dates from the invasion of Wales by Edward I. That is very odd because, although he led an army of 15,000 when he invaded North Wales, 11,000 of them were Welshmen. South Walians at that. And they really hate each other.
When I first went to Wales I thought that “Gog” and “Honddu” were swear words, the way they were spat out. In fact it’s the Welsh for North and South Wales. Another odd thing is that most of the dyed-in-the-wool Welshmen I met hated Welsh Nationalists. Welsh speakers and patriots to a man (or woman), they could not understand the Welsh language of the bills they got from the Utilities, nor the official Welsh of broadcasting, which had been forced on the country by academics.
Brynsiencyn, the Anglesey village in which I spent so many happy years, was a daily joy. It could not have been more Welsh. A friend, a retired preacher, spent his days translating Tacitus, the Roman historian, from Latin into Welsh and another chum, a retired diplomat called Cedric Maybe, translated the great Chinese poets, Li Po and Tu Fu, into Welsh and such splendid Welsh poets as Dafydd ap Gwyllim into Mandarin. Not to be read by anyone. Just for the joy of it.
My neighbour Glyn was half Welsh and half Indian and was known as Glyndustani. Another neighbour could never believe I worked for the BBC after I proved unable to repair his portable radio.
There was a youngster in the village who had a Blue in eating. I know of five houses where he went regularly for his Christmas dinner. One year when the prisons were full, his brother, a frequent offender, was locked up in the cells under Wrexham police station. I thought it would be nice if our guest wished his absent kin a Merry Christmas. So I rang the custody sergeant and asked him to bring Trefor to the phone.
He was furious. “Have you no sense,“ he said, “ringing up like this? He’s not had his pudding yet. Ring back in an hour.”
I took the Coronation Street writer John Stevenson to dinner on the mainland. On the way back I stopped to ring Glyn, our local bobby. I thought John was going to explode when I explained I was a bit p’’’’ed and was going to ask Glyn to collect me. He made me put the phone down, but when I told Glyn, he was furious. “It’s people like that who cause accidents,” he said.
******************************************************
Our postman has brought me a whole bundle of my favourite reading, the mail order catalogue. I especially enjoyed the offer of a birdy whirler feeder, although bird terrifier might be a more accurate description. I am going off birds. I water and feed them all year long; all they do in return is eat my seeds. So I cannot wait to install the feeder on which this happens:
”As the bird lands on one of the four feeding baskets the feeder rotates slowly to give a windmill effect.........”
You don’t have to be David Attenborough to know what that would do to the neighbourhood sparrow. You would be the talk of every tree for miles.
“God knows what he’s soaking his bird seed in these days. One beakful and the whole damned feeder starts to go round....I reckon it’s Indian hemp. I’ve a good mind to report him.......”
Stand on me. Chuckling into his drawing board somewhere is an animal-hating inventor. Would you believe, the same magazine is offering a lockable cat flap? Lockable? I could never train our Draculacat not to dispose of mice on my bed let alone get her to use a key. Anyway, she would be sure to forget it when she went out and she’d be hammering on the locked cat flap at all hours of the night.
Not even fish are safe from the demented drawing board:
“...An attractive and realistic Mallard duck and drake in rugged plastic to give life to your garden pool.........”
You can imagine it, can’t you?
“What the hell is that he’s put up there on the surface? Oh hell, it’s ducks. Quick! Get under that stone.”
Three months later....
“Haven’t they gone yet? I can’t stay here for ever, I’ve got pins and needles in my fin.”
Just the thing to send your goldfish screaming for their psychiatrist.
And you will be going with them if you are tempted by the key ring that reacts to your voice. According to the magazine, if you call out “Where are you, ring?” it whistles to you.
I can just see the Head Ferret reaching for the two doctors. ”I’m a bit worried about my hubby. He has taken to hiding his key ring under the cushions on the sofa. Then he goes round the room talking to it.”
Thinking back to the cat flap makes me wonder, would the key ring react to miaows, do you think?
From My Dangerous Cuttings Book:
A Vicar walked out of a course for Church of England clergy when he was asked to hold a conversation with a bread roll. Martin Dudley and his 17 colleagues attending a “Workshop on Worship” aimed at improving their services sat round a communion roll.
Mr Dudley said: “We were asked ‘Is there anything you would like to say to the bread? Or do you want to give it a voice? Do you want to hear the bread speak?’ Someone asked, ‘Does it hurt when you are broken?’
The bread protests. ‘I am not only the humdrum and the ordinary. I am special. What have you to do with me?’”
Mr Dudley said that one woman, a diocesan official, threw a £10 note at the bread, asked about the money that had been paid for it and asked about the symbolism of bread in a cash economy.
Other extraordinary activities at the course, organised by clergy in the Oxford diocese, included asking participants to draw around their feet, colour in the shoes and then write on them their feelings about the week.
Friday, 14 March 2008
PUBLISHED AND BE BANJAXED
I have not found it easy to hate Napoleon since I learned he shot a publisher. Chap named Palme and I must say I found the symbolism of an outstretched palm, peculiarly apt.
Stitching words onto paper has been a lifetime activity for me and with very rare exceptions I have not warmed to the publishing industry (which is the last word I should use to describe them). One publisher took ten years to publish a book he had commissioned; another has been six years and I am still waiting.
The worst moment was when I wrote for a publishing house run by two partners. One said of my manuscript, “I thought the first half was vivid and exciting but the last half completely lost me. Can you have another go at it?” His partner wrote in the same post, “I thought the conclusion of your book was dramatic and superb but I am afraid the first half needs extensively rewriting.”
I had my copy retyped without alteration and sent it to them and they both congratulated me on a much improved narrative.
When I started writing books nearly half a century ago the thing publishers did best was have lunch. At that they were expert. Usually their lunches lasted for four hours. One publisher would read his mail before lunch and answer it in the brief space between returning from lunch and going home. By that time he had forgotten what the original letter was about so his replies never made sense.
I have had two publishers sell my books to American publishers without telling me. Another took my books on a sales trip to the U.S. When he returned he rang me to say what hell it had all been: meetings, meetings, meetings. Unfortunately his wife was a well known newspaper columnist and I had just read her column in which she talked of the twenty-seven parties they had attended in a three-day visit to the States.
There used to be a tradition in the industry of paper accounting, a term which described the figures you got scrawled on the back of an envelope when you asked about royalties, and as works of fiction qualified for the Booker Prize. Much more sophisticated nowadays. Random House owes me royalties on books of mine which they put on tape and published in the States. They say they cannot pay me until I get an import certificate. I cannot get an import certificate without a valid passport and I do not have a passport in case my wife tries to lure me abroad.
Apart from nepotism, the best qualification for getting a book published is celebrity. I had no difficulty getting twenty-two of my books published but now that I am no longer a celebrity I have acquired a bushel or so of rejection slips for the last four, which include two of the best books I have ever written.
There has only been one exception.
Twenty-five years ago I wrote a comic biography “Forgive Us Our Press Passes”. It was a literary success. I read it on Radio 4 and BBC Wales; it was twice repeated on the World Service and had the highest listening figure of any book read on air that year. The Daily Post said flatteringly that I was the successor to Tom Sharpe and my friend and favourite actor Ian Carmichael described it as a comic masterpiece. You can buy a copy on the internet. A friend tells me that one is offered at £17.99, the next £74.86, another £75.07 and the last one £76.06.
Under the circumstances I would have thought the publishers, Gomer Press, could have managed to sell more than 200 copies.
Bored out of my skull a year ago, I asked my chum Revel Barker, for many years a Head Honcho in the Mirror Group and a fine reporter, how to launch a blog. In gratitude for his help I sent him a copy of “Forgive Us” and the mss of its sequel “Forgive Us More Press Passes” which had been rejected by several publishers.
Something of a polymath and, I fancy, a little bored with retirement in Malta, he suggested he might have a go at publishing the two books in an omnibus edition. That was in December. This Friday, barely three months later, the book was published and I am prouder of it than any I have ever done. New and splendid art work, designed by his wife Paula; very professional publicity material, with pictures, sent to every media outlet in Chester, Liverpool, Leeds, North Wales and East Anglia. A wonder to behold. I expect any day now Revel will mount a takeover for Random House.
I must say that Age Concern was right when it urged pensioners to put down their memories as a pleasant task in old age. My life has been a series of comic disasters with a star cast including Hugh Cudlipp, Charlie Chaplin, President Eisenhower, Harold Macmillan, the Queen and a number of my Lordly Friends. It includes my inglorious military memoirs, my downwards hurl, the Drowning of Flook as recounted by my chum the Great Vince Mulchrone.
Revel has even fixed the booksellers. You can buy it for £9.95 (and that includes the one that would otherwise cost you up to £70). He has even given me the Waterstones website and they are offering it post free.
http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6190890
My Noble Friend had some interesting relations, in one of whom I refused to believe. His Lordship said he had a cousin who was a Show Girl on the West End stage in the Twenties. During the run of one show she was conscious of the same man, in the same seat of the orchestra stalls, at every performance. Eventually at a party she met him.
“What a coincidence,” she said.
“No coincidence,” he told her. “I have been going to every party in London where I might conceivably meet you.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I am madly in love with you and I want to marry you.”
“Marry me? You don’t know me.”
“Doesn’t matter. But there is no hurry. Will you at least have lunch with me? I will send my car.”
On the appointed day a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce drew up at her flat. Her swain handed her in but she noticed with alarm they were speeding out of London.
“Where are we going?” she cried in alarm.
“To my home, of course. Where else would I entertain my future bride?”
They drew up outside an imposing country house. The staff was lined up before the Portico and her host introduced her.
“This is the lady who will one day be your mistress,“ he said.
During an exquisite luncheon, served by the butler, her host proposed three times. “Oh all right,” she said finally, “I will marry you if you buy me an aeroplane.”
He didn’t propose again and the girl thought that was the end of it. But in her dressing room that evening there appeared a bouquet of roses and the keys to a light aircraft.
Years later I was a guest at the Lord’s second wedding in Buckingham Palace Gate. “There is someone I want you to meet,” he said.
It was the show girl. Alas, the world of high society and highballs had dealt hardly with her. She still looked like a Queen. But it was Tenniel’s Queen of Spades.
End
My Dangerous Cuttings
(Not mine but collected by Donald Sinden from the Whitley Bay Guardian about a British Rail clerk who failed in love and death).
“At 7.30 I had a drink and walked into the sea, but it was so wet I turned my back, went home and by 9.15 I had wired up an easy chair to the mains. However, each time I threw the switch the power fused. Following this I broke my mirror and tried to cut my wrists, yet somehow the slashes were not deep enough. After that I tried to hang myself from the banisters, unfortunately the knot was improperly tied. Finally I surrounded myself with cushions and set them on fire. This method was too hot. So I jumped out of the window and telephoned the Samaritans but they were constantly engaged……………………”
Stitching words onto paper has been a lifetime activity for me and with very rare exceptions I have not warmed to the publishing industry (which is the last word I should use to describe them). One publisher took ten years to publish a book he had commissioned; another has been six years and I am still waiting.
The worst moment was when I wrote for a publishing house run by two partners. One said of my manuscript, “I thought the first half was vivid and exciting but the last half completely lost me. Can you have another go at it?” His partner wrote in the same post, “I thought the conclusion of your book was dramatic and superb but I am afraid the first half needs extensively rewriting.”
I had my copy retyped without alteration and sent it to them and they both congratulated me on a much improved narrative.
When I started writing books nearly half a century ago the thing publishers did best was have lunch. At that they were expert. Usually their lunches lasted for four hours. One publisher would read his mail before lunch and answer it in the brief space between returning from lunch and going home. By that time he had forgotten what the original letter was about so his replies never made sense.
I have had two publishers sell my books to American publishers without telling me. Another took my books on a sales trip to the U.S. When he returned he rang me to say what hell it had all been: meetings, meetings, meetings. Unfortunately his wife was a well known newspaper columnist and I had just read her column in which she talked of the twenty-seven parties they had attended in a three-day visit to the States.
There used to be a tradition in the industry of paper accounting, a term which described the figures you got scrawled on the back of an envelope when you asked about royalties, and as works of fiction qualified for the Booker Prize. Much more sophisticated nowadays. Random House owes me royalties on books of mine which they put on tape and published in the States. They say they cannot pay me until I get an import certificate. I cannot get an import certificate without a valid passport and I do not have a passport in case my wife tries to lure me abroad.
Apart from nepotism, the best qualification for getting a book published is celebrity. I had no difficulty getting twenty-two of my books published but now that I am no longer a celebrity I have acquired a bushel or so of rejection slips for the last four, which include two of the best books I have ever written.
There has only been one exception.
Twenty-five years ago I wrote a comic biography “Forgive Us Our Press Passes”. It was a literary success. I read it on Radio 4 and BBC Wales; it was twice repeated on the World Service and had the highest listening figure of any book read on air that year. The Daily Post said flatteringly that I was the successor to Tom Sharpe and my friend and favourite actor Ian Carmichael described it as a comic masterpiece. You can buy a copy on the internet. A friend tells me that one is offered at £17.99, the next £74.86, another £75.07 and the last one £76.06.
Under the circumstances I would have thought the publishers, Gomer Press, could have managed to sell more than 200 copies.
Bored out of my skull a year ago, I asked my chum Revel Barker, for many years a Head Honcho in the Mirror Group and a fine reporter, how to launch a blog. In gratitude for his help I sent him a copy of “Forgive Us” and the mss of its sequel “Forgive Us More Press Passes” which had been rejected by several publishers.
Something of a polymath and, I fancy, a little bored with retirement in Malta, he suggested he might have a go at publishing the two books in an omnibus edition. That was in December. This Friday, barely three months later, the book was published and I am prouder of it than any I have ever done. New and splendid art work, designed by his wife Paula; very professional publicity material, with pictures, sent to every media outlet in Chester, Liverpool, Leeds, North Wales and East Anglia. A wonder to behold. I expect any day now Revel will mount a takeover for Random House.
I must say that Age Concern was right when it urged pensioners to put down their memories as a pleasant task in old age. My life has been a series of comic disasters with a star cast including Hugh Cudlipp, Charlie Chaplin, President Eisenhower, Harold Macmillan, the Queen and a number of my Lordly Friends. It includes my inglorious military memoirs, my downwards hurl, the Drowning of Flook as recounted by my chum the Great Vince Mulchrone.
Revel has even fixed the booksellers. You can buy it for £9.95 (and that includes the one that would otherwise cost you up to £70). He has even given me the Waterstones website and they are offering it post free.
http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=6190890
My Noble Friend had some interesting relations, in one of whom I refused to believe. His Lordship said he had a cousin who was a Show Girl on the West End stage in the Twenties. During the run of one show she was conscious of the same man, in the same seat of the orchestra stalls, at every performance. Eventually at a party she met him.
“What a coincidence,” she said.
“No coincidence,” he told her. “I have been going to every party in London where I might conceivably meet you.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I am madly in love with you and I want to marry you.”
“Marry me? You don’t know me.”
“Doesn’t matter. But there is no hurry. Will you at least have lunch with me? I will send my car.”
On the appointed day a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce drew up at her flat. Her swain handed her in but she noticed with alarm they were speeding out of London.
“Where are we going?” she cried in alarm.
“To my home, of course. Where else would I entertain my future bride?”
They drew up outside an imposing country house. The staff was lined up before the Portico and her host introduced her.
“This is the lady who will one day be your mistress,“ he said.
During an exquisite luncheon, served by the butler, her host proposed three times. “Oh all right,” she said finally, “I will marry you if you buy me an aeroplane.”
He didn’t propose again and the girl thought that was the end of it. But in her dressing room that evening there appeared a bouquet of roses and the keys to a light aircraft.
Years later I was a guest at the Lord’s second wedding in Buckingham Palace Gate. “There is someone I want you to meet,” he said.
It was the show girl. Alas, the world of high society and highballs had dealt hardly with her. She still looked like a Queen. But it was Tenniel’s Queen of Spades.
End
My Dangerous Cuttings
(Not mine but collected by Donald Sinden from the Whitley Bay Guardian about a British Rail clerk who failed in love and death).
“At 7.30 I had a drink and walked into the sea, but it was so wet I turned my back, went home and by 9.15 I had wired up an easy chair to the mains. However, each time I threw the switch the power fused. Following this I broke my mirror and tried to cut my wrists, yet somehow the slashes were not deep enough. After that I tried to hang myself from the banisters, unfortunately the knot was improperly tied. Finally I surrounded myself with cushions and set them on fire. This method was too hot. So I jumped out of the window and telephoned the Samaritans but they were constantly engaged……………………”
Sunday, 9 March 2008
START THE NEXT WAR WITHOUT ME AND WIN
The army was nothing if not determined. Despite my bravura display of incompetence in losing bespectacled soldiers they persisted in the childlike belief that I had in me the golden qualities of an officer. This was despite an incident in which a squad of men I was drilling too quietly did not hear my command to “halt” and marched right off the barrack square, narrowly missing a captain quartermaster who ever after snickered nervously when he saw me. On the outdoor shooting range I not only missed the bull; I came within inches of hitting a cow.
They were deaf to reason...
They had tried to post me to a camp in Elgin, Morayshire, which trained potential officers for the Highland Division. I arrived at 6pm and at 8pm after a hurried meal I was on my way to Aldershot and a new posting to a unit which trained officers for the Royal Army Service Corps. I have always assumed the Kilted Ones must have heard of my cavalier way with valuable soldiers and lost their collected nerve. I further assume the Service Corps was very short of officers.
The Service Corps foolishly sent me to a War Office Selection Board designed to spot putative generals. It was even held in Saighton Camp in Chester, the scene of my earlier incompetence. Like Caesar, they ignored the augurs.
In those class-conscious days potential officers had to be socially acceptable. So there was a reception in the officers' mess where The Board assessed our social skills. At meal times a careful watch was kept on the way we handled knives and forks. I was criticised by another cadet, the son of a general, for holding my knife like a pen, I must stress that Hackett was a very decent chap who wanted to make sure I did not lose marks over it. Had he known that I came from a background where the underpant was the garment of cissies, I doubt he would have spoken to me. I know he was troubled that I went for a bAth rather than a BaRth. I have never felt more alien than I did amongst those public school boys, though I am bound to say that to a man they treated me as a friend.
But if the social mores were alien, the tests the board devised were from another galaxy. We were marched into an examination room and confronted with trays on which were round pegs and boards with square, triangular and round holes and a puzzling collection of Bakelite, metal and wire, which was obviously electrical.
“Right,” said a brisk major. “Assemble me a domestic light fitting from the parts before you.”
I had this sudden picture of a battlefield and myself commanding the remains of a platoon which had been under constant fire for days. A staff officer appears and draws a rudimentary map in the sand. Grimly he points:
“To the left of us are units of the Seventh Panzer Division. In the hills to the right is a division of Italian mountain troops. Immediately ahead, a battery of heavy artillery and a squadron of tanks is blocking off our rear.”
Through tightened lips, his eyes mere slits, he says, “There is only one thing to do.”
“What is that, noble officer and commander?” we chorus.
“Assemble me a domestic light fitting.”
From that moment in that classroom I found it very difficult to take the army seriously. As the years went by it became increasingly my attitude to life.
The odd thing was that I always got on well with officers, especially the aristocratic ones. Indeed, as a member of the working class since the 17th century when my ancestors slipped down the social ladder I always found the aristocrat easier to get on with than the old middle class which has everything to lose and clings pathetically to its world of residential grammar schools. I think that is because in the working class we have nothing to lose and in the upper class they have nothing to gain. The Middle Class clings to a position it never seems quite sure it should be maintaining. The Kwa Hais, as they were known in India.
My oldest friend, the 9th Baron Langford, was my commanding officer on the Air Lift, days he recalls with a well bred shudder which he first used when I set up a comfortable home in a giant packing case that had brought an aero engine to the base at Fassberg.
The Colonel has two precepts, “It Only Costs a Little More to Travel First Class” and “The Best Is Barely Good Enough”, and it was he who observed at 90, after beating cancer and sundry other ills, “Growing Old Is Not for Cissies”.
He is certainly not a cissy. When Singapore fell he escaped the Japanese by sailing a battered
dhow across the Bay of Bengal to Ceylon. It took a month and involved sailing through the Japanese Invasion Fleet.
More recently he was taking me on a tour of his stables at his home near Rhyl when a stallion bit him. Almost by reflex, he bit it back. And when I once drove him exuberantly into the path of an oncoming lorry he could only manage to reprove me with, “Do think of the death duties.”
.
He was hacking through a village in the Cwm near his home. A motorist who had been delayed in overtaking him called, “Anyone would think you owned this village.”
“As a matter of fact, madam, I do,” he said, raising his hat.
Being superior came early to him. As a young man he was complaining about an item he bought in Fortnum and Masons, grocers to the gentry. An elegant giant in faultless morning dress bore down on him. “Is something amiss, sir?” it enquired.
“And who might you be?” asked the Colonel.
“I am in charge of this floor,” the giant replied.
“Then I should get it swept. It’s filthy,” he was told.
FROM MY DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
Cambridgeshire fire brigade is at a loss to know what to do about a freelance fireman who has been turning up to emergencies with his own fire engine.
Ian Bowler bought his fire tender, complete with flashing lights, after completing a community fireman’s course run by the local council.
“A group of us felt we had been sat on the shelf after training so we formed our own unit,” he says. Bowler and his eight fellow amateur fire fighters have now promised that they will not attend any fires until asked by the authorities, but this may not be enough to satisfy the local fire brigade, which describes the matter as “a very strange case which we are still investigating.”
They were deaf to reason...
They had tried to post me to a camp in Elgin, Morayshire, which trained potential officers for the Highland Division. I arrived at 6pm and at 8pm after a hurried meal I was on my way to Aldershot and a new posting to a unit which trained officers for the Royal Army Service Corps. I have always assumed the Kilted Ones must have heard of my cavalier way with valuable soldiers and lost their collected nerve. I further assume the Service Corps was very short of officers.
The Service Corps foolishly sent me to a War Office Selection Board designed to spot putative generals. It was even held in Saighton Camp in Chester, the scene of my earlier incompetence. Like Caesar, they ignored the augurs.
In those class-conscious days potential officers had to be socially acceptable. So there was a reception in the officers' mess where The Board assessed our social skills. At meal times a careful watch was kept on the way we handled knives and forks. I was criticised by another cadet, the son of a general, for holding my knife like a pen, I must stress that Hackett was a very decent chap who wanted to make sure I did not lose marks over it. Had he known that I came from a background where the underpant was the garment of cissies, I doubt he would have spoken to me. I know he was troubled that I went for a bAth rather than a BaRth. I have never felt more alien than I did amongst those public school boys, though I am bound to say that to a man they treated me as a friend.
But if the social mores were alien, the tests the board devised were from another galaxy. We were marched into an examination room and confronted with trays on which were round pegs and boards with square, triangular and round holes and a puzzling collection of Bakelite, metal and wire, which was obviously electrical.
“Right,” said a brisk major. “Assemble me a domestic light fitting from the parts before you.”
I had this sudden picture of a battlefield and myself commanding the remains of a platoon which had been under constant fire for days. A staff officer appears and draws a rudimentary map in the sand. Grimly he points:
“To the left of us are units of the Seventh Panzer Division. In the hills to the right is a division of Italian mountain troops. Immediately ahead, a battery of heavy artillery and a squadron of tanks is blocking off our rear.”
Through tightened lips, his eyes mere slits, he says, “There is only one thing to do.”
“What is that, noble officer and commander?” we chorus.
“Assemble me a domestic light fitting.”
From that moment in that classroom I found it very difficult to take the army seriously. As the years went by it became increasingly my attitude to life.
The odd thing was that I always got on well with officers, especially the aristocratic ones. Indeed, as a member of the working class since the 17th century when my ancestors slipped down the social ladder I always found the aristocrat easier to get on with than the old middle class which has everything to lose and clings pathetically to its world of residential grammar schools. I think that is because in the working class we have nothing to lose and in the upper class they have nothing to gain. The Middle Class clings to a position it never seems quite sure it should be maintaining. The Kwa Hais, as they were known in India.
My oldest friend, the 9th Baron Langford, was my commanding officer on the Air Lift, days he recalls with a well bred shudder which he first used when I set up a comfortable home in a giant packing case that had brought an aero engine to the base at Fassberg.
The Colonel has two precepts, “It Only Costs a Little More to Travel First Class” and “The Best Is Barely Good Enough”, and it was he who observed at 90, after beating cancer and sundry other ills, “Growing Old Is Not for Cissies”.
He is certainly not a cissy. When Singapore fell he escaped the Japanese by sailing a battered
dhow across the Bay of Bengal to Ceylon. It took a month and involved sailing through the Japanese Invasion Fleet.
More recently he was taking me on a tour of his stables at his home near Rhyl when a stallion bit him. Almost by reflex, he bit it back. And when I once drove him exuberantly into the path of an oncoming lorry he could only manage to reprove me with, “Do think of the death duties.”
.
He was hacking through a village in the Cwm near his home. A motorist who had been delayed in overtaking him called, “Anyone would think you owned this village.”
“As a matter of fact, madam, I do,” he said, raising his hat.
Being superior came early to him. As a young man he was complaining about an item he bought in Fortnum and Masons, grocers to the gentry. An elegant giant in faultless morning dress bore down on him. “Is something amiss, sir?” it enquired.
“And who might you be?” asked the Colonel.
“I am in charge of this floor,” the giant replied.
“Then I should get it swept. It’s filthy,” he was told.
FROM MY DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
Cambridgeshire fire brigade is at a loss to know what to do about a freelance fireman who has been turning up to emergencies with his own fire engine.
Ian Bowler bought his fire tender, complete with flashing lights, after completing a community fireman’s course run by the local council.
“A group of us felt we had been sat on the shelf after training so we formed our own unit,” he says. Bowler and his eight fellow amateur fire fighters have now promised that they will not attend any fires until asked by the authorities, but this may not be enough to satisfy the local fire brigade, which describes the matter as “a very strange case which we are still investigating.”
Saturday, 1 March 2008
It is NOT the thought that counts
I was delighted when the Independent gave away booklets explaining in simple language the theories of the world’s philosophers. The only philosopher I had met was Bertrand Russell and he was barking mad. Now I can confirm what I have long suspected; philosophers talk rubbish. Plato and Locke have both suggested forms of government they believed would increase human happiness. Both have been tried in the last century with disastrous results.
Plato’s Republic was made manifest in Fascism with a seasoning of Nietzsche; its iron discipline was realised in Hitler and Pol Pot. The quest for racial purity inspired the Holocaust. Locke believed we should elect a monarch and hand to him absolute power. That gave us Stalin and Attila the Hun.
The only philosophy which has been used universally is Muddle. My chum Bengy Carey Evans is Lloyd George’s grandson. As a boy he met all the leading statesmen of Europe. He told me they were pretty second rate: surprisingly ordinary men and not all that bright. Any reading of our history over the past century confirms that.
Most of our troubles stem from the mess we made when the Ottoman Empire fell and Britain and France sought to grab Arabia. “Statesmen” led us into the totally unnecessary World War One which began the destruction of Western civilisation and into its continuation in Spain, Ethiopia and World War 2. That Second World War was made inevitable by the reparations demanded in Versailles at what has been called “The Peace that Passeth All Understanding”. When, incidentally, America stepped shyly onto the world stage with its “14 points”.
But that is all Olde Worlde. In the Brave New World of the 21st century America has taken the helm more confidently. Americans see themselves as new Romans and have copied their political structures and architecture from that greedy Empire, of which Dr Johnson said, “When they were poor they robbed each other and when rich looted the world.”
America has failed as a World Leader. She makes costly and embarrassing mistakes and, heavily in debt to her enemies, she is pursued by a new band of Apocalyptic Horsemen: Brazil, Russia., India and China.
They have resisted the temptation to patch up their economies by introducing credit cards - those poisonous blooms only flower in the profligate West. Worse than that, they are supplying the goods we are buying with our cards. Between them, those four countries hold 3.6 trillion dollars of foreign currency reserves, two thirds of the global total, and they account for half of the world’s GDP.
It is some years since Gore Vidal warned that America was in hock to China. The Chinese government bought huge quantities of dollar assets - about $200 billion worth in 2004, and possibly as much as $300 billion worth this year. This is economically perverse. China, a poor country where capital is still scarce by Western standards, is lending vast sums at low interest rates to the United States.
These dollar purchases by China and other foreign governments have temporarily insulated the U.S. economy from the effects of huge budget deficits. Money flowing in from abroad has kept U.S. interest rates low despite the enormous government borrowing required to cover the budget deficit.
And how is America spending its borrowed money?
According to the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglist, the Iraq War has cost America three trillion dollars, which is 200 times more than Bush said it would cost. One sixth of that figure would fund social security in the U.S. for 75 years.
America is spending 12 million dollars a month on the war. It gives Africa 5 billion dollars a year in aid, which is the cost of 8 days’ fighting in Iraq. China is pouring resources into that dark continent.
For me, the worst statistic to surface from this economic cesspool is that for the cost of two weeks’ fighting in Iraq we could banish illiteracy from the planet.
Talking of expense, I have been upset by the news that G.P.s were paid over a hundred thousand pounds salary per year. Then my practice nurse explained that out of that they have to pay the cost of the surgery and its contents, the running costs of the practice, the wages of the staff and all other expenses. They are also subject to constant re-examination of their work.
A recent peer, the lowest kind apart from life renters,, recently criticised nurses. My nurse tells me that one of the practice district nurses recently burst into tears in the staff room because she could not keep up with her appointments. That day she had 42.
A reader doubts that I could have been asked to leave the Black Watch (RHR) twice. Indeed I was - and the second time I was a civilian.
Ancient readers will remember that in the early fifties National Service soldiers were required to return to their regiments for further training.
Unwisely the Black Watch (RHR) called me to the colours at Fochabers, in Morayshire, a tented camp for a territorial battalion.
Unfortunately I was not able to make it on the day they suggested and, when I did go, I thought I might as well break my journey in Edinburgh to see my Uncle Jimmy, who was my family favourite by a mile.
When I finally reached Fochabers, I was somewhat shocked to discover they had started training without me. An act of ill manners the C.O. compounded by putting me on a charge, which was a sad way to mark the return of a prodigal son.
Alas, that meant I missed the C.O.’s Parade with which he started the proceedings. On reflection, that might have been why he was so upset.
Actually he should have been grateful because he did not exactly cover himself with glory.
Officers in Highland regiments can easily make themselves look ridiculous but this one had a special talent. He carried a cromach (a shepherd’s crook) which senior officers often affected. This was puzzling because it is unlikely there would be unruly sheep on a battlefield.
To make matters worse, the cromach was the burlier of the two and the C.O. looked rather like a standard lamp, the shade of which had slipped to the middle. His kilt lacked only a fringe.
His choice of image was not of the happiest.
“Chaps,” he began, and 1400 hundred Glasgow keelies looked at him in disbelief. “Chaps” were what cowboys wore and they wondered if they were improperly dressed.
“Some of you,” he went on, “will resent being torn from civilian life. But do not feel that way. Look on this as a return to your Club.”
Again the keelies knew only of one kind of club. That was used for defensive purposes in the Gorbals and had been left at home in the belief the army supplied weapons. Was this omission a chargeable offence, wondered the more nervous?
But the C.O. went on. “Perhaps you will meet old friends. Soldiers you have not seen since St Valery.”
St Valery was a battle in World War Two but, to the eighteen-year-olds assembled, the name had a Papist whiff and Protestants in the ranks were deeply offended. It was Hearts ‘v’ Hibs, Celtic ‘v’ Rangers all over again, and blood wobbled dangerously on the edge of spilling.
Then the C.O.made his Grand Gesture, clearly the result of long rehearsal.
He stepped forward until he was level with the front rank. Peering down from his immense height, he smiled at the nearest squaddie, a small and excessively dirty soldier who had only been in the battalion for a day but had already cut his tam–o-shanter down so that it looked like a sailor’s hat and stuck in it an Indian Red Hackle of enormous size, also against dress regulations. His trousers were folded over his gaiters, weighed down with the heavy metal chains which could readily be turned into weapons. His fists were turned up at the wrists. All the marks of a hard man and the wrong man for the C.O. to greet with, “For instance, I seem to recognise your face.”
The little man looked up from his 5ft 3 ins, the maximum allowed for living in Glasgow. “Ah’ve nivir seen ye in ma bliddy life, Jock,” he said.
The week went from bad to worse and I fear I behaved as badly as anyone. Foolishly the C.O. sentenced all who misbehaved to extra days in the camp after the battalion had gone home.
We heard the pipe band playing the “Black Bear” and getting fainter and fainter. “Right wee men,” one of our number said, “that’s us for the toon.”
I thought the officer who had been left in charge was going to cry. So we crept away and left him to his misery.
A few days after I returned home I got a letter from the C.O. suggesting that I might be happier in another regiment. I wrote back saying I had decided against joining any regiment and that was the last I heard. So in the next war they are on their own.
*******************************************
My Dangerous Cuttings Book
First hand experience of the trials and tribulations experienced by a pea when it is frozen will soon be on offer to visitors in the Science Museum it was announced yesterday.
The chance to pass through a pea freezer, modified for use on humans, will be available in a new permanent gallery due to open at the museum this autumn.
“We are going to let visitors feel what it is like inside a blast freezer and imagine what it is like to be a pea,” Miss Jane Bywaters, project manager, said.
Ends
Plato’s Republic was made manifest in Fascism with a seasoning of Nietzsche; its iron discipline was realised in Hitler and Pol Pot. The quest for racial purity inspired the Holocaust. Locke believed we should elect a monarch and hand to him absolute power. That gave us Stalin and Attila the Hun.
The only philosophy which has been used universally is Muddle. My chum Bengy Carey Evans is Lloyd George’s grandson. As a boy he met all the leading statesmen of Europe. He told me they were pretty second rate: surprisingly ordinary men and not all that bright. Any reading of our history over the past century confirms that.
Most of our troubles stem from the mess we made when the Ottoman Empire fell and Britain and France sought to grab Arabia. “Statesmen” led us into the totally unnecessary World War One which began the destruction of Western civilisation and into its continuation in Spain, Ethiopia and World War 2. That Second World War was made inevitable by the reparations demanded in Versailles at what has been called “The Peace that Passeth All Understanding”. When, incidentally, America stepped shyly onto the world stage with its “14 points”.
But that is all Olde Worlde. In the Brave New World of the 21st century America has taken the helm more confidently. Americans see themselves as new Romans and have copied their political structures and architecture from that greedy Empire, of which Dr Johnson said, “When they were poor they robbed each other and when rich looted the world.”
America has failed as a World Leader. She makes costly and embarrassing mistakes and, heavily in debt to her enemies, she is pursued by a new band of Apocalyptic Horsemen: Brazil, Russia., India and China.
They have resisted the temptation to patch up their economies by introducing credit cards - those poisonous blooms only flower in the profligate West. Worse than that, they are supplying the goods we are buying with our cards. Between them, those four countries hold 3.6 trillion dollars of foreign currency reserves, two thirds of the global total, and they account for half of the world’s GDP.
It is some years since Gore Vidal warned that America was in hock to China. The Chinese government bought huge quantities of dollar assets - about $200 billion worth in 2004, and possibly as much as $300 billion worth this year. This is economically perverse. China, a poor country where capital is still scarce by Western standards, is lending vast sums at low interest rates to the United States.
These dollar purchases by China and other foreign governments have temporarily insulated the U.S. economy from the effects of huge budget deficits. Money flowing in from abroad has kept U.S. interest rates low despite the enormous government borrowing required to cover the budget deficit.
And how is America spending its borrowed money?
According to the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglist, the Iraq War has cost America three trillion dollars, which is 200 times more than Bush said it would cost. One sixth of that figure would fund social security in the U.S. for 75 years.
America is spending 12 million dollars a month on the war. It gives Africa 5 billion dollars a year in aid, which is the cost of 8 days’ fighting in Iraq. China is pouring resources into that dark continent.
For me, the worst statistic to surface from this economic cesspool is that for the cost of two weeks’ fighting in Iraq we could banish illiteracy from the planet.
Talking of expense, I have been upset by the news that G.P.s were paid over a hundred thousand pounds salary per year. Then my practice nurse explained that out of that they have to pay the cost of the surgery and its contents, the running costs of the practice, the wages of the staff and all other expenses. They are also subject to constant re-examination of their work.
A recent peer, the lowest kind apart from life renters,, recently criticised nurses. My nurse tells me that one of the practice district nurses recently burst into tears in the staff room because she could not keep up with her appointments. That day she had 42.
A reader doubts that I could have been asked to leave the Black Watch (RHR) twice. Indeed I was - and the second time I was a civilian.
Ancient readers will remember that in the early fifties National Service soldiers were required to return to their regiments for further training.
Unwisely the Black Watch (RHR) called me to the colours at Fochabers, in Morayshire, a tented camp for a territorial battalion.
Unfortunately I was not able to make it on the day they suggested and, when I did go, I thought I might as well break my journey in Edinburgh to see my Uncle Jimmy, who was my family favourite by a mile.
When I finally reached Fochabers, I was somewhat shocked to discover they had started training without me. An act of ill manners the C.O. compounded by putting me on a charge, which was a sad way to mark the return of a prodigal son.
Alas, that meant I missed the C.O.’s Parade with which he started the proceedings. On reflection, that might have been why he was so upset.
Actually he should have been grateful because he did not exactly cover himself with glory.
Officers in Highland regiments can easily make themselves look ridiculous but this one had a special talent. He carried a cromach (a shepherd’s crook) which senior officers often affected. This was puzzling because it is unlikely there would be unruly sheep on a battlefield.
To make matters worse, the cromach was the burlier of the two and the C.O. looked rather like a standard lamp, the shade of which had slipped to the middle. His kilt lacked only a fringe.
His choice of image was not of the happiest.
“Chaps,” he began, and 1400 hundred Glasgow keelies looked at him in disbelief. “Chaps” were what cowboys wore and they wondered if they were improperly dressed.
“Some of you,” he went on, “will resent being torn from civilian life. But do not feel that way. Look on this as a return to your Club.”
Again the keelies knew only of one kind of club. That was used for defensive purposes in the Gorbals and had been left at home in the belief the army supplied weapons. Was this omission a chargeable offence, wondered the more nervous?
But the C.O. went on. “Perhaps you will meet old friends. Soldiers you have not seen since St Valery.”
St Valery was a battle in World War Two but, to the eighteen-year-olds assembled, the name had a Papist whiff and Protestants in the ranks were deeply offended. It was Hearts ‘v’ Hibs, Celtic ‘v’ Rangers all over again, and blood wobbled dangerously on the edge of spilling.
Then the C.O.made his Grand Gesture, clearly the result of long rehearsal.
He stepped forward until he was level with the front rank. Peering down from his immense height, he smiled at the nearest squaddie, a small and excessively dirty soldier who had only been in the battalion for a day but had already cut his tam–o-shanter down so that it looked like a sailor’s hat and stuck in it an Indian Red Hackle of enormous size, also against dress regulations. His trousers were folded over his gaiters, weighed down with the heavy metal chains which could readily be turned into weapons. His fists were turned up at the wrists. All the marks of a hard man and the wrong man for the C.O. to greet with, “For instance, I seem to recognise your face.”
The little man looked up from his 5ft 3 ins, the maximum allowed for living in Glasgow. “Ah’ve nivir seen ye in ma bliddy life, Jock,” he said.
The week went from bad to worse and I fear I behaved as badly as anyone. Foolishly the C.O. sentenced all who misbehaved to extra days in the camp after the battalion had gone home.
We heard the pipe band playing the “Black Bear” and getting fainter and fainter. “Right wee men,” one of our number said, “that’s us for the toon.”
I thought the officer who had been left in charge was going to cry. So we crept away and left him to his misery.
A few days after I returned home I got a letter from the C.O. suggesting that I might be happier in another regiment. I wrote back saying I had decided against joining any regiment and that was the last I heard. So in the next war they are on their own.
*******************************************
My Dangerous Cuttings Book
First hand experience of the trials and tribulations experienced by a pea when it is frozen will soon be on offer to visitors in the Science Museum it was announced yesterday.
The chance to pass through a pea freezer, modified for use on humans, will be available in a new permanent gallery due to open at the museum this autumn.
“We are going to let visitors feel what it is like inside a blast freezer and imagine what it is like to be a pea,” Miss Jane Bywaters, project manager, said.
Ends
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