The politics of indifference. Part one: why nothing matters.

Once upon a time, not long before school, when I was still tiny enough for my father to carry me to bed, I’d nod off on the sofa in the evening while he’d watch endless news and current affairs programmes. I remember thinking that all those people in suits on television seemed preoccupied with something I thought for years was called ‘polytex.’ It sounds like something you use to paper over the cracks. Well, insert your own shrewd social observation here. 

Politics never fascinated me as a career choice, an active profession. The Seventies were dominated by overweight middle-aged men in ill-fitting suits and wayward hairstyles — seriously, no exaggeration, do a Google search — or Mrs Thatcher and Shirley Williams. These people were never going to be lifestyle icons to the switched-on supercool hipcat I thought I was, evidently, and I suspected the conversation would be limited and dull. It all came over as so grown-up, so earnest. 

By the time I was a teenager, politics for me had social currency, but really only by way of being the main target of derision of so many ‘alternative’ acts in that most fecund of decades for stand-up comedy. It may seem hard to believe that Ben Elton was funny in those days, given his poor showings on more recent TV, but he was, yes indeed, ladies and gentlemen. Funny, quick-witted, impassioned and if he seemed a bit preachy from time to time… well, maybe I needed a little of that too. Margaret Thatcher in Elton’s hands became ‘Mrs Thatch’, indivisible from her coruscatingly insane, bouffanted and vulture-faced Spitting Image puppet, surrounded by hopeless eunuchs or equally insane wannabes. Like practically everyone my age, I got behind all the alternative comedians and their largely left-wing invective because it was cool, it was happening and it seemed to annoy the older generation, not least the stand-up variety acts — or at least those who lacked the courage to accept that things had moved on, socially speaking, and moreover felt their livelihoods were threatened. Comedy had indeed become the new rock’n’roll. Yet, still I was skirting around discussing any real politics, actual matters of Parliamentary policy. I didn’t know much about politics, but I knew for certain what I didn’t like. 

This vague, contrary conviction hardened up a little by the end of my time at school, when a number of my chums joined their local Young Conservatives Club. My grasp of Tory party policy was tenuous, but considering I’d spent the best part of the decade laughing at the contemptible Conservatives and their monstrous leader, I found this determination in my colleagues to vote for the designated bad guys (once they were of legal age, remember) baffling at least. It’s entirely possible that they were encouraged to join a social club that met with parental approval, the better to meet girls and be out of the house for a few hours — but all that besides, they really were, in my eyes, the most pathetic specimens in the Sixth Form: one of their number had the nickname ‘Square’ in recognition of his achievements in the dullest aspects of mathematics and the other, it was well-known, had embarked on a weird insect torturing-and-killing spree after being dumped by a girlfriend of four days. Not exactly ideal poster boys for the Blue team I’m sure you’ll agree — but interestingly, none of this made me want to vote Labour by way of contrast, either. I had a sneaking suspicion their shindigs would be populated by Red Flaggers just as inept, awkward and boring. 

The situation became more intriguing at college where I witnessed firsthand the active abuse of politics by individuals for personal ends. I’m talking about sex of course — it seemed so blatant to me that shaking a tin to raise money for a campaign to stop atrocities in Bosnia (this should date my time at University for you all) was done less out of sympathy for the people of the former Yugoslavia and mostly to get that redheaded Student Secretary for Social Justice into the sack. I have alluded to this before (here) and should point out instantly that I was as much a party to this hypocrisy as anyone. Believe me, my desire to attend a ‘die-in’ at Trafalgar Square in the mid-Nineties was motivated more by a shapely pair of pins and long blonde hair (neither my own, I hasten to add) than any previously apparent (or indeed subsequent) outrage at French Pacific Nuclear Testing. Apparently Greenpeace is 80% female membership, you know. However, as surely as I recognise this hypocrisy in myself, I’ve always been doubtful, in my dealings with people, of the motives in making their political affiliations overt.

Having said ALL of this, I find as I get older that my genial fence-sitting of old to be frankly rather spineless and increasingly feel the need to make a decision. After all, no-one’s truly apolitical, are they? It’s all just a question of whether an issue affects you, and/or if you allow it to do so. So, I’ll leave you with the promise that I have a countering essay lined up to argue this drivel. 

In the meantime, allow me to tell you a brief story of political terrorism that I perpetrated during my time at College. 

The end of the Spring Term of my first year at College coincided with the election of a new President for the Student Union and several ancillary positions on the Student Council. This was relatively exciting as I happened to know several of the candidates who went up for these posts. There was a tall, handsome, long-haired and cheerful chap called Wayne and his ever-present mate, Matty, who contrasted pleasingly enough by being shorter, fatter and bald, if no less jovial. There was another skinny, blandly earnest chap and a rather enthusiastic girl taking the number of Presidential Candidates up to four. Memory fails me on their names, but let’s call them, er, Phil and Clare. 

We had the hustings one lunchtime, where the four candidates stood up and stated their suitability. Phil came across as the crushingly mediocre kind of chap to run the Union like a business. He’s probably doing something tedious but well-paid in the City these days, in his forties like me. Clare sadly hadn’t really thought out her strategy but had been clearly put up for the job by being harmless, approachable and energetic. We won’t hear any more from her. But Matty and Wayne had the proceedings sewn up. Wayne outlined his plans to get bigger indie acts to play at the end-of-term College Ball — the rock’n’roll President card. Matty promised better funding for outdoor events, Extreme Sports Societies and other healthy fun. Both came off to the kind of applause a headline act normally gets at a gig. They were gonna give the people what they wanted

That evening I realised that Matty and Wayne had played their parts in the hustings almost as a double act. My feelings on who actually got voted in was secondary to my feeling that something didn’t seem right. I got out a pad of post-it notes and wrote on one of them, using block capital letters and writing upside-down, the better to hide my left-handedness further:

A VOTE FOR MATTY IS A VOTE FOR WAYNE.

I wrote on a second note: 

A VOTE FOR WAYNE IS A VOTE FOR MATTY.

My dormitory was part of the same building as the College refectory (it was a Catholic Convent, fascinatingly enough). An easy enough task to sneak downstairs in the wee small hours in stockinged feet, in near-darkness, and place the post-its respectively on Matty and Wayne’s candidacy posters on prominent display in the refectory lobby. I snuck back to my room and even destroyed the underlying post-it notes on the pad I’d written. Then went to sleep. The refectory opened at 8am the following morning. 

I padded downstairs at about 9am to considerable hubbub. It was hardly V For Vendetta, but I felt a thrill nonetheless as I queued for my breakfast to have one of my friends remark despairingly to me, “…but it’s sabotage!” and I nodded sagely. Oh, how I nodded sagely. Feigned ignorance. And felt mildly, deliciously naughty.  

Do you know, I think Wayne got voted in on a landslide majority. But I had expressed my pointless point of view.

I have never told anyone I did this until now. So feel honoured! 

PM

Now listening:

Radio 3 as standard. And lots of Maria Callas. 

Now watching: 

Monty Python And The Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, 1975) 

Monty Python's Life Of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979)

Doctor Who: The Ark In Space (BBC, 1975) — Top-form Tom Baker. Indomitable. 

Ashes To Ashes: series two and three (BBC 2009, 2010): after some wobbles in the first series the characters hit their marks and the plots are more engaging in the last two series, with a genuinely elegaic ending to round things off. Splendid and satisfying. 

Rant-wank for 2013.

It has to be said upfront, if the title of this essay didn’t convince, that your generally gentle and hopefully genial correspondent is not enjoying his 2013 so far. This time last year I wrote an article that expressed my fears for the future of HMV. It was hardly the most adroit piece of prophecy, but the news of past weeks still arrived with a degree of shock and suddenness; finally, this most eminent and estimable of music retail institutions is going into administration, its outcome uncertain. My main fear, voiced last year as now, is that without worthy shopping establishments and the opportunities they afford people to venture out into the Big Wide World and Deal With Other People (Possibly Strangers), we will find instead that the West End — the very heart of London for many — will become a deader place to inhabit. Sure, they could always open another restaurant on the site, but that’s all it will be — another restaurant.  

I’m reminded of a sketch Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie performed on their supreme Nineties TV show A Bit Of Fry & Laurie which involved a discussion about the then-burgeoning broadcast deregulation legislation that inaugurated the Satellite television era: the fear expressed was that while the acquisition of dozens more channels would offer more choice, and a break from the perceived ‘tyranny’ of the UK’s terrestrial televisual tetralogy (BBCs 1&2, ITV and Channel 4. We only had four channels on telly in those days. Yep, four. All terrestrial) we would be getting less quality overall as the new channels would be full of shit, to put it… er, much as it turned out. The corollary, as Fry & Laurie imagined, would be analogous to asking a waiter in a posh restaurant to exchange a single, dirty, solid silver spoon for a bin filled to the brim with thin plastic coffee stirrers. They may be all crap, so the punchline went, but at least you’ve got choice, haven’t you?

Sigh.

If truth be told, I wasn’t enjoying 2013 even before it had arrived. It’s strictly personal, not stuff I’m prepared to discuss, I’m afraid, as much as I suspect it would unburden me to do so. Please take my assurance that I have resolved, beside my New Year Resolutions, not to wallow in past problems and try to take this year as I find it.

As to the matter of those pesky Resolutions, I confess I did not make it easy for myself this year. Two this time around: no messing, no philosophy, both tangible and publicly achievable ventures. The first was simple in its unambiguity: Drink No Alcohol Throughout January. You may appreciate that the weeks leading up to and including Christmas involved a prodigious amount of jovial cavorting and carousing, to the extent that I presume my liver never caught so much as a whiff of a day of unqualified cleanness and sobriety throughout. All this Bacchic revelry ended, not with a bang but with a bit of a pop, on the evening of January 1st 2013, with the last of the inaugural bubbles and a valedictory cup of mead.

But now — it’s February and I have completed my task. Only on one day over the whole of the previous month did I imbibe, and since this was due to a friend’s birthday celebration — a day I had predetermined I would allow before I even embarked on this crazy venture — I can consider myself clean and sober for just over five weeks. Boy, were they long weeks. During the first fortnight on the wagon I would have told you that out of all my attempts at a health drive, this one was a right fucker and no mistake. Richard Harris once memorably referred in interview to the ‘fourteen boring years’ he spent on the Temperance Train and in some small way, I received an insight into how that felt. That sinking feeling that descended each and every time I realised that a particularly bad day at work could not be mitigated with a pint at lunchtime or several afterwards. The prospect of a sociable lubricant on a congenial Friday or Saturday night with friends — gone. I found myself spending more evenings in at home in January than I probably spent in the previous three months put together — and with that, a comcomitant insularity. Fortunately, I had Mrs M as my guardo camino, my co-traveller on the road to purity. I have to say that she seemed to operate as evenly and as sweetly-natured as ever she did, with none of my fuss and mithering — for which I was not only grateful, but quietly impressed. She is evidently a tougher cookie than I am, and a better person for all that too.

As for any physiological effects, well, I admit I did look forward with a morbid — albeit undeniably excited — trepidation to the prospect that I may wake shaking in tremulous delirium of a morning several days in. This has not happened. There have been two notable changes in my bodily function. First off, I have visibly lost some weight, mainly in my face, hands and about four inches off my waist. My double chin has receded to the point where I appear to have a discernible jawline. This has been a few years in remission, so it was a strange feeling, upon trimming my beard, to notice parts of my face that go in where previously they went out. I have knucklebones instead of dimples on my hands, and my fingers closely resemble those of my octogenarian mother, a detail pointed out to me by Mrs M and one I find delightful and reassuring.

The second change has been in my sleeping pattern. Whereas I used to be a strict 7am riser irrespective of workdays or weekends, I have found that I lie in dozing much as I last did as a teenager, and if left unchecked of a Saturday morning will awake some time after 9am. On more than one occasion I’ve not set foot on bedroom carpet before 10.30am, and frankly this appalls me. There aren’t enough hours in my spare time as it is. However, it has shown me that my main motivation in getting up was mostly dictated by hangover — and that’s not a good reason to spring out of bed prematurely. I do like my sleep, in its place.  

Anyway, while this hasn’t exactly been the most exciting thing in my life at the moment, I thought it would prove to be quite a useful thing to chronicle, given that it’s not been lost on me these past weeks that my announcement to undertake a month off the sauce was greeted in most camps with incredulity and a distinct whiff of scepticism. Before I took this on, I wouldn’t class myself as pathologically addicted to drink. Well, now I know for certain that I am not. It seems I have simply not tried hard enough in my alcoholic efforts. Well, good-oh for that.

Oh, my second New Year Resolution: learn to read and write music. It may come as a surprise to some of you that I have about as much technical aptitude in music as a spoon knows the taste of soup. As a child I remember learning the road signs depicted in The Highway Code. The colours and graphics fascinated me, but clearly not so much as to make me take up driving. Well, it’s time I learned how to navigate the High Cs, if you’ll forgive me. I’ve been crotchety of late, but now I’m positively quavering with anticipation. I used to stop at the pub and now I’m going to rest at the end of a bar. You’re not paying extra for these tortuous musical puns, you know.

Thank you, you’ve been kind. I’ll go now. 

But first, a drink.

PM

Now listening:

Lots of Radio 3. Like, lots of Radio 3.

Khovanshchina by Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881). Exotically orchestrated Russian opera, written by a gifted man frustrated by his day job and consequently driven to drink. Well, aren’t we all?

Now watching:

Doctor Who: The Reign Of Terror (BBC, 1964) — The magical, mercurial William Hartnell as the original Time Lord, in a story set in Revolutionary France and featuring two episodes restored with stylish animation.

Doctor Who: Legacy Boxset (BBC 1979, 1993) — A fascinating odds-and-sods collection of documentaries and all extant footage of the ‘legendary’ unfinished Who story, 1979’s Shada, with the magnificent and unmatchable Tom Baker as the Doctor.

Life On Mars: series one and two (BBC 2006/2007): splendidly pungent and frequently hilarious 1970s procedural cop/time travel drama, with Philip Glenister’s immense portrayal of non-PC DCI Gene Hunt a standout creation.

Ashes To Ashes: series one (BBC 2008): the not-as-good but still-worthy sequel to Life On Mars.

Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool (1971-1988): Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry canon. Seemed appropriate after all that Gene Hunt.

Ivor Novello’s piano — a slim tale from the Green Room.

In the summer of 1997 I landed a job running the Classical Record department of my local Virgin Megastore. Whisper it quietly, but according to my line manager I was the first person in the history of that now sadly defunct chain to be hired specifically for my Classical music knowledge. Previous incumbents in the Classical Departments of Virgin stores nationwide presumably landed the job as a short straw duty option, or only made their knowledge of Classical music manifest after working in other departments — but I really don’t know. I still find it rather hard to believe, but anyway, that is what I was told.  The following eighteen months saw me increase sales of Classical music in the local area by an alleged 25% but much more importantly, forge some lasting friendships. A full account of our rousing antics is worth an entire blog entry all to itself. But not today, as the late, great Bob Holness would no doubt have said.

All of this is largely irrelevant detail but I include it because when I was eventually sacked from my position in the spring of 1999 (Yes, sacked. Yes, yes, another time, I promise), I spent the following months in abject freefall. I never knew I had a work ethic until the framework upon which to apply one was suddenly taken from me. My parents greeted the news of my sudden ‘career’ halt entirely not as I’d anticipated, meeting it less with anger or argument, but mostly with a sense of puzzlement and denial. Then again, they were both of over pensionable age and had probably not expected their youngest son to be of any more trouble to them. They could have done without my woes.

My girlfriend of six years had left me several months earlier, although as often with these things, the relationship had, retrospectively, wound down to a grind rather than reach a decisive crunch point. At this stage in proceedings I still felt I could keep in touch. I remember her precise words to me, over my friend Rich’s brand-new mobile phone that he’d kindly lent me for the purpose: “You lost your job? What’s that got to do with me?” To be fair to her, she could also have done without my woes for some time, too. 

I can’t quite describe the stomach-dropping and deeply depressing sensation that followed me around like a pestilential storm cloud for the following five months. Depression is a far-too-casually bandied-about word in conversation and I am wary of using the term on myself. During this period, I sought help from my doctor who told me that I wasn’t ‘painting a picture’ of clinical depression. I believed him, but it was of small comfort. Besides, the depth of my despair had started to run to the pathological, as over the course of the coming months, I visibly lost weight; a considerable amount of weight — about four to five stone — which on a chap my height was severely noticeable and a source of concern among my long-term friends who had known me as an amiably rotund person at the best of times. I don’t recall deliberately not eating, as such, but then again, nor do I remember eating all that often either. No, my days were spent skulking sulkily about the family home, smoking the ever-appetite-suppressing cigarettes and the odd joint in my bedroom, only venturing out to draw my dole, buy more ciggies and make occasional forays to the pub, where my friend Rich would buy me scotch and cokes and try to keep me laughing. He was particularly worried for me. One time I borrowed a three-quarter-length jacket from him and I remember the evident shock on his face as I buttoned it up as neatly as he could do on his own, notably slender frame. 

As my waking hours had become miserable, so my sleeping ones, perhaps through a slightly stoned, subconscious instinct for self-preservation, became wondrous. Sleep became my favourite activity — easily achieved, and oddly, of as high a quality and duration as any I’ve ever enjoyed in my life. Indeed, waking every morning brought the grudging realisation that my perceived nightmare was facing reality. I never quite wanted to die — but I remember reasoning to myself, with baleful calmness, that nor did I particularly enjoy being alive. 

Now of course, you must not trouble yourself with thoughts of compassion, or at least not for too long. In truth I was idle and wasteful with the hours to myself I had suddenly acquired and my job-seeking lacked, shall we say, not as much rigor or consistency as my smoking and drinking at the time. Nonetheless, the summer of 1999 saw me sorely vexed, rattled to my very foundations as events in my life thus far had failed to do quite so perniciously. I was unemployed and worse, I felt unemployable. In the weeks to come I started to have panic attacks, episodes of shooting pains across my chest and down my arms, breathlessness — indeed everything, it seemed to me, symptomatic of incipient heart failure. I ended up in hospital after one specially harrowing sensation alone at home. A trip in the ambulance to Casualty, while getting high on pure oxygen, culminated in having my disturbingly scrawny chest wired up to the ECG and subsequently X-rayed. The doctor gave me a gentle smile, a flimsy copy of the image of my immaculate-looking ribcage, a bottle of glycerin tablets and the rather un-medical (I thought) advice to “just calm down.” I was left sat alone on the gurney in the X-ray suite, semi-naked and sobbing profoundly with a mixture of relief, and extreme guilt at all the kind, serious attention I had clearly wanted — and got. I never opened the glycerin bottle. I learned to recognise my (admittedly real-feeling) symptoms as mere panic, nothing more. The hospital could also have done without my woes, that was for sure. 

Fortunately, I had two friends in particular who spent the next several months ‘looking after’ me. I use this term quite precisely as there were times when I was of the distinct impression that I had been placed under some kind of low-level ‘suicide watch,’ and who’s to say my self-destructive behaviour didn’t suggest otherwise, outwardly, even if I really didn’t feel quite so fatal, so final, myself. The redoubtable Rich you already know. The other was my ex-Virgin colleague Sarah, who had been so outraged by my sacking that she sent me a card expressing her sorrow and anger — and offered to buy me some drinks. Sarah wore her hatred for her job like a big, bright badge with a snarling face on it, but outside of work hours or in briefly snatched staff room conversations she was convivial, witty, and of similar outlook. She lived in a house in South London that she shared with several people, nearly all of whom I can’t recall with much clarity, save for Sara (don’t get confused), who was a delightful — and delightfully shapely — Northern lass who dispensed cheerful informalities along with an endless supply of cigarettes from one of those self-rolling devices. Sara was great fun just to talk and drink with: chatty, sympathetic, complimentary, unflappable, with an endless line in salty stories, filthy jokes and encouragement. She was probably about only half-a-dozen or so years older than me, a woman in her mid-thirties but she seemed untouchable and magnificent to me, which is a real shame now, looking back. 

Sara worked in London theatres, although I’m afraid I don’t remember the precise details. I think she was someone in Stage Management, but her work ran all the way from basic admin to dealing with the ‘talent’ and even painting the odd background flat. She knew of plenty of short-term work going, so it was that in the June/July of 1999 I found myself helping out backstage at the Peacock Theatre in Holborn. It was part of the Sadlers Wells group and so I felt I was in the environs of a genuine theatrical institution, even if the Peacock was nowhere near as famous as its parent venue. 

My job involved repainting the dressing room and there seemed to be endless cups of tea on the go at any given moment. So far, so straightforward. Sadly, my previously dormant asthma, coupled with my receding, but still ongoing panic attacks, rendered me useless at the job within an hour or two of arrival. Sara was briskly attentive, spiriting me out of the building and down Holborn way to get me something a little stronger along with a ciggie (yeah, like that’ll soothe the chest pains...) and a sit down. I was subsequently given some other tasks involving handling the lights onstage for the rest of my stint, which also afforded me the opportunity when quiet to stand up front, gaze out at the vast expanse of seating in the auditorium, imagine a full house and ‘have a moment’...

Thanks to Sara, the Peacock Theatre provided me with gainful part-time employment for several weeks, enough to stand a round or two for the pair of us in the pub after work. It was a splendidly sunny and warm summer, the kind worth staying out in, until late. One evening, after several drinks in Theatreland and with the pubs close to chucking-out time, Sara suggested we continue the frolics to a members club she knew. Sounded good to me. 

Good Lord, The Green Room. I didn’t know it then, but of course I’ve since learned of its preeminent status as one of the most prestigious clubs for anyone in the theatrical profession in London, with a highly illustrious roll-call of members over the decades, both renowned onstage and backstage (for all the right reasons). It has since closed (and reopened) several times in several places since I entered the door of the Georgian town house of its most famous location, on Adam Street, off the Strand and ventured into the basement with Sara. At the time, I merely thought it was somewhere open into the wee small hours and that was fine enough with me.

The small bar room was famously described by Sir Peter Ustinov as a place where giving an after-dinner speech to a capacity crowd was “like addressing sailors in a submarine,” but was empty enough at 1.30am on a weeknight as we found it. Here and there were several expensively dressed individuals, sat at small round tables as if waiting for a cabaret act, clearly soaked to the eyeballs and enjoying the calm tolerant atmosphere in which to be so. Sara knew the barman and as they chatted she introduced me as someone who was musical and could play a bit of the piano. I found this odd as I don’t think Sara had ever seen me address the ivories. I should point out, if I’ve not done so in a previous blog, that my piano playing technique is dubious, more of a fight between me and the keys, and one I only occasionally win. Nonetheless, the barman was a genial and accommodating chap and offered me a free pint of Guinness if I were to give the assembled patrons a tune. I sipped my current, paid-for pint of the Black Stuff and said, “Maybe later!” He added, as if by way of incentive, that the piano belonged to Ivor Novello, the legendary actor, singer and composer — and the invitation was not bandied about willy-nilly. I brightly promised to knock out a ditty for them all before I left, thinking the incident would be forgotten and I’d be able to drink in peace. 

However, after a pint of two more of the Sauce, and with the conversation flowing, I felt magically encouraged and emboldened, until eventually I indicated to our host that I was ready to have a bash. I was hustled over to the piano, which was a marvellously battered old upright on a dais. After a short announcement to the rare few in the room at such a long hour, the bartender let me have it. I announced apologetically that my repertoire was slender and unconventional and that the best thing I had on me was a rather frantic and tricksily percussive piece I had composed myself. This won me some polite, smattered applause. 

I then forget the next three minutes. Entirely. The only part I remember was some slightly more enthusiastic applause at the end and a pint of Guinness appearing magically beside me. I’d done all right. As I returned to the table and Sara, one of the elderly, floridly-sozzled chaps sat adjacently continued to applaud a little longer, but I noticed that his was the sarcastic, slow handclap of derision, of disapproval. He continued until his rheumy eye caught mine. He smiled joylessly. 

“You play like Béla Bartók,” he offered.

A stunning, disproportionate comparison. I suspect I gasped. “Why, thank you, that’s very kind of you to say so!”

“I loathe Bartók.” he concluded with coddled conviction, continuing to smile thinly.

“I’m sorry,” I said, all too delighted, “but that’s a compliment. I’m having that!”

Never was I insulted so fulsomely!

Due to an administrative cock-up at the Peacock, I didn’t get paid for the majority of my employment there for a couple of months afterwards, by which time I had secured a decent full-time job and glad to do so. The money I earned was barely more than my dole, but acquired more agreeably. In the middle of all the craziness I experienced in the summer of 1999, I never expected that I would ever end up in The Green Room, playing Ivor Novello’s piano, for beer — and it was in tune. 

Sara — if you ever happen to read this, thank you ever so much, you were awesome. 

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and I wish you happiness in the New Year. 

PM

Currently listening:

Lots of medieval and Renaissance Christmas music — too many to mention individually. 

Currently watching:

The eight Harry Potter films. The winsome, racy and charming magic of the early years gives way to something grittier, greyer and possibly taking itself far too seriously. But that’s enough about me, the films are pretty good.

Red Dwarf X (Dave, 2012) resurrected series, back by popular demand and almost back to basics too, with less emphasis on effects-driven high concepts and more of the snippy dialogue and hilariously embarrassing situations that endeared it to millions originally. It’s like they never left. Not the dizziest heights of Dwarf yore, perhaps, but still excellent post-pub viewing.

Retcon artists.

When I first created this blog, like many people undertaking this sort of caper, my primary desire was simply to entertain, write regularly and enthusiastically on things in my life that I enjoy and things I hate — essentially, the spectrum of my ongoing involvement with Planet Earth, its denizens and what we share therein. It still is my raison d’écrire, and I can’t think of any worthier raisons.

Those who know me would also believe that a detailed Star Wars article would inevitably rear its multiple heads. However, I never thought that my first article on the subject would consist of an exposé on the provenance of a single, specific sound effect heard in one of the films (my last article) — I mean, that’s pretty nerdy. Nor did I think I’d follow it so hot-footedly with this one — which is going to be a bit of a moan about the franchise. I thought I’d at least start by writing something a trifle breathless on why I like it all so much — but I guess criticism is a more prolific mother of literary invention than mere praise. How negative of me.

I’ve never quite got to the bottom of my precise fascination with George Lucas’ epic space-fantasy, although the simplest explanation is that, like most chaps of my generation, it gave me lots of exciting Boy’s Stuff to look at and listen to at the exact age I needed it most, and as such its effect on me was formative. That’ll do for now. Unlike Doctor Who, the other great piece of ‘genre’ I love, Star Wars has already achieved a global appeal that has made the characters of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, R2-D2 et al into iconic images and individuals, introductions unnecessary, familiar to people who may not have seen the films for decades — if even at all. However, there are conditions, limits to my love for Star Wars and these are subtle and far-ranging, but I can pin most of them down to a single, sweeping statement: I dislike other Star Wars fans.

Now, before I go any further, I want to clear something up. Contrary to popular belief, I generally detest getting into detailed discussion of Star Wars. Writing about it, fine — because here I can quantify, evaluate and crystallise my thoughts on the matter without getting into a tiresome exchange. A Star Wars conversation with another fan only really ever goes one way: how well do you know Star Wars? How boring. There’s a terrier-like tenacity about their need, on learning you are also a fan, to blether on about the films, to offer up their knowledge of all aspects of the toys, the endless spin-off novelisations and the smallest snippet of news on the on-off TV series — as high marks of social distinction. As a reasonably intelligent and hopefully sophisticated individual, whose tastes can run from subtle all the way to gross, I would dearly wish not to be defined solely as ‘the Star Wars guy.’ To that end, I prefer not to bring up the films in casual conversation until I’m asked directly. Really — ask yourself the last time I mentioned them unsolicited. There are many more inclusive conversational gambits.

I can say with confidence that my interest in Star Wars runs to slightly more than casual. My degree thesis contained a great deal of recourse to the original trilogy of films, though it’s not something I’m particularly proud of — especially when you consider the fact that my dissertation claimed me the lowest mark of all work I undertook for my BA. Trust me, I can sing the first three Star Wars films like they’re opera but I have no desire to impress you by proving this. I know it isn’t impressive. Merely obsessive. And that rhymes, you know. Star Wars is the ne plus ultra of geek topics if you ask me — although for the most part, I’m as glad as you that you don’t. Better to keep the faith inwards, contemplative, loving, tranquil — and on a strictly need-to-know basis. Believe me, a Star Wars convention, rather than being a place to enjoy chewing the filmic fat with other like-minded Lucas freaks, is in actuality quite my idea of hell.

Speaking of conventions, my friend Brother JCC recently attended a Film and Comic convention and related gleefully his chance encounter with an actress guesting at the event: she had played a regular and memorably shapely character in a well-known and widely syndicated sci-fi TV series some years back. Additionally he asked me if I'd heard of a Star Wars actor who also attended. I hadn't, so suitably intrigued by this possible lacuna, I looked him up. It turned out he played an uncredited member of the entourage of the galactic slug-gangster Jabba the Hutt in Return Of The Jedi. 

For those of you who haven’t seen Return Of The Jedi, the final instalment of the Star Wars Saga, I’ll say this much with wagging finger aloft: seriously, if you’ve not seen it, I recommend you do so — it ill behoves anyone intelligent to affect lofty, studied ignorance of a phenomenon that’s impossible to neglect in any reasonable discourse on popular culture. People will just think you square, stubborn and possibly even smelly. The Star Wars Saga — particularly the three released between 1977 and 1983 — contain many stylistic, literary and visual tropes that are essential vocabulary in any conversation about the cinematic arts. Grab an opportunity to add the original trilogy of films to your discursive repertoire. Besides, Return Of The Jedi is, as I believe the Mods used to say in the early Sixties, a right flashkick of a flick, mostly — and it’s not even the best of the Saga.

I have a point to make coming up, don’t worry, but please allow me to digress briefly and precis the first half hour or so of Return Of The Jedi as crisply as I can. It concerns the heroic, wisecracking hotshot pilot Han Solo (Harrison Ford) — last seen in the previous film in dire peril, frozen in suspended animation and delivered as a macabre prize to the villainous, oleaginous and aforementioned Jabba the Hutt — and the stealthy, measured plan by Solo’s friends to rescue  him. To this end, they infiltrate the gangster’s compound and inveigle their way by any means available into the complacency of his entourage. This done, they unfreeze and retrieve the hapless Han Solo and proceed to unleash hell upon the slimy crime-lord and his cronies at the precise moment our heroes appear to be in greatest danger — being dangled above the doom-laden jaws of a giant monster mouth, no less. They then get the hell outta Dodge sans ado, destroying everyone and everything around them in the process with considerable panache, just to be certain. Jabba the who? We’ll say no more about him. They really do pack in a lot in under thirty-five minutes.

So it transpired that the actor Brother JCC saw was a background extra in the closing minutes of this first act. He had no speaking part and his face and body were hidden under piles of latex, foam rubber and fake hair. Furthermore he has done no other film work of note to date and thus you would pass him in the street and never know. I’m certainly not begrudging this gentleman’s right to be at the convention, nor the pleasure his presence must have given to many people — for there’s no denying his involvement in the film — but I'm willing to bet his character wouldn't be remembered by anyone but for two facts:

a) the majority of his scene was cut from the film, but the stills survived to generate fannish speculation and lend mystique.

b) the action figure made of his character is highly collectable and commands huge sums of money due to it being made in smaller quantities than its counterparts.

Fan fiction and spin-off novelisation has often retroactively imbued such characters with character, furnishing them with a name and an impressive backstory. It’s called retroactive continuity, or ‘retconning‘ — the act of lending some detail or person in a series a degree of significance it never had at the time of production, usually due to subsequent plotlines increasing fan interest in the character or event for some reason.

In the case of Return Of The Jedi, a short story anthology was published several years later called Tales From Jabba’s Palace, and featured the fictional accounts of numerous alien persons seen in the films as background extras. I’ll spare you the need to read this risible publication — all the stories end pretty much the same way: that nondescript green-skinned critter onscreen for five seconds turns out to be some master criminal who absconds with some money/important documents/etc when Jabba’s little enterprise goes bye-bye 35 minutes into Return Of The Jedi. It’s all crap. Every scar has to tell a rousing story. Every character has to have amazing lineage — or grew up witnessing all sorts of key moments in the narrative history, like a veritable army of George Lucas’ very own Zeligs. It all really annoys me. It seems that no-one in the Star Wars universe could ever simply be called Colin and work in a garage or something. No-one is allowed the right to be unremarkable, to be prosaic. Remember that mission: get inside the lair, rescue the good guy, serve the bad guys with a writ of pure whup-ass and get the melonfarming flip out of there. Job done. So did anyone really die in the huge explosion in the closing seconds? It seemed pretty fatal, fiery and final to me — but apparently no — they all live out their deeply interesting and interconnected lives according to Tales From Jabba's Palace. Did Luke's plan fail? Cheapened in fact, just so someone could write up a poor story about that kewl-looking critter in one shot who wibbles about in the middle background? To quote the villain in The Incredibles again: when everyone’s super…no-one will be.

The trouble with all of this, I find, is that while it can be trivial and playful on the surface, it betrays a deeper, sad and somewhat pathetic aspect of the human condition: that some people simply can’t accept sometimes the stark truth that when certain things go, they’re gone. Gone forever. No coming back. When did we start assuming we always have a say in the matter? Sometimes, that’s just the way the real world works. It’s tough, it’s harsh, sure, but sometimes…that can also be all right.

Anyway, speaking sidewards, there I was the other day, discussing forthcoming films and such with Mr Hickey — he who writes the marvellous blog Hickey’s House Of Horrors, which you must visit — and he mentioned several proposed TV series, spinning off from well-known feature films. The Bates Motel was one such mooted title — I’m imagining a kind of creepy, sadistic, ultra-violent Fawlty Towers week in, week out — obviously set long before Janet Leigh checked in with a suitcase full of hot cash and a pressing need to freshen up. Also, Mr Hickey spoke of a show concerning the earlier career of FBI Agent Clarice Starling, the plucky and dogged heroine of Silence Of The Lambs and Hannibal fame, and still another featuring the younger, saner, less anthropophagous days of Dr Hannibal Lecter himself — working alongside his future nemesis, Will Graham.

I have no doubt all of these ventures will work a reductive spell on the original source material, retconning them into something so much less than the promise it had before it was forced into existence. Again, undisciplined fanboy over-thinking is what causes everything to have a prequel or a sequel now. Whatever happened to ‘happily ever after’ — or better still:  ‘never to be seen again’? 

I quote my friend Mr Hickey again: “It's probably especially true when it comes to horror. Horror is scary because you don’t really know everything. Fear of the unknown is the most potent. So telling us where Freddy [Krueger] bought the knives for his glove and what grade he got in metalwork just diminishes his air of menace.”

Don’t you wish I could have put it that succinctly?

PM

Currently listening:

100% (Ginger Wildheart, 2012)

Everything by the Neil Cowley Trio. 

Currently watching:

The Alien ‘Quadrilogy’ — hideous branding neologism hides an entertaining — albeit variable in quality — collection of films.

The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) — accept no substitute.