Month: September 2019

It Was Fifty Years Ago Today…

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, 1980s, The Beatles

Abbey Road is 50 years old.

Despite such a confident opening statement I must confess that, until about three weeks ago when Radio 2 first started banging on about the anniversary, I’d never even realised that The Beatles had taken their studio name for the title of their last album.

In the interests of full disclosure: my ignorance runs a lot deeper than that. I went through the entire seventies almost entirely unaware of ‘the Fab Four’. I knew the name Paul McCartney, but only because of Wings’ Mull of Kintyre and his being arrested for possession of pot in an episode of John Craven’s Newsround. I didn’t know him as one of The Beatles; and I went nine and a half years without ever hearing the name John Lennon.

The first time I heard of him was, again, an edition of Newsround, in December 1980, and the story’s high placing in the bulletin clearly marked him out as being somebody pretty famous (even though I’d no idea who he was). A few weeks later, when Imagine topped the charts, I remember thinking how sad it was that he should have been killed just before his new record came out – clearly, I’d also gone the best part of a decade without coming across the notion of a mercenary/commemorative reissue in the wake of a celebrity death. (I can only assume I’d slept through Way on Down’s five weeks at number one during Jubilee year.)

As the 1980s rolled on, I filled at least a few gaps. Thanks to the efforts of my Art and Music teachers, who between them taught us When I’m 64 and Michelle, I became aware of The Beatles as an ensemble. And, through their ongoing solo careers, I became more aware of Paul McCartney (because of The Frog Chorus) and of George Harrison (because of Stuck On You) and of Ringo Starr (because of, erm, Thomas the Tank Engine).

So anyway, with my credentials established, and to recap in case you’ve come in late, the final album by The Beatles, which was called Abbey Road, was released 50 years ago. Radio 2 has made, I think it’s fair to say, quite a big thing of it, with a separate ‘pop-up’ station, a host of special programming, and various regular shows broadcasting for the occasion from Abbey Road itself. I’m not convinced anything was added to the breakfast show’s traffic reports by having them delivered from outside by the zebra crossing but that’s showbiz for you.

There is, for all my ignorance on the subject, something about The Beatles. In their most ‘famous’ stuff (by which I really mean their most successful singles, I’ve never listened to any of their albums) there is almost a poet’s or a journalist’s sense of commentary and observation, the detail of life, its minutiae. Yes, they did their fair share of perfectly acceptable ‘my baby loves me’ songs, but it’s little character sketches, insights like Lady Madonna, or Eleanor Rigby, or Penny Lane that seem especially unique and distinctive.

Mind you, nobody’s perfect. Hey Jude is a beautiful song, apparently simple but somehow deeply moving – but then when they run out of actual song it carries on for what feels like forever in a drunken sprawl of sound. I can’t help thinking a more judicious editor might just have smiled politely and then cut it off the master tape when the boys weren’t looking. (All You Need Is Love similarly runs out of song before it actually stops, although you’ve got to admire the cheek of putting a snatch of their own She Loves You into its long fadeout.)

Fifty years on from their last album (last recorded, but not last released so Wikipedia has just told me, but anyway…) and we’re still talking about The Beatles, still listening to their music. So I think we can tentatively begin describing it as timeless, and not just an exercise in nostalgia. Some of it is of its time, but some of it doesn’t sound like a particular era or even a particular genre, it just does its own thing.

It could have been recorded… Yesterday.

Number Ten, Number Nine

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in BBC, Brexit, Doctor Who, Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, TV

As if things weren’t bad enough, now David Cameron has a book out.

I can’t imagine how tedious a book it is, presumably part misplaced-smugness, part retrospective justification for his actions – arguably the only time when it might get insightful is when Brexit kicks off, but of course that happens after he’s already sodded off so presumably the book ends just when things might be in danger of getting interesting.

Not only that, it would seem he can’t even be trusted to keep his mouth shut and has been happy to blab all about supposedly confidential discussions. The minute I saw the headline, of his revealing details of private conversations between him and the Queen, I thought he’d get into trouble for it. (I’m pleased to say that very shortly after, he did.)

Maybe I’m being too hard on him; or maybe a man who, to be frank, was happy to hold a referendum regardless of any damage it might do, not out of any principle but simply to make sure he won an election, deserves not to be especially well-regarded. To make it worse, the moment it all blows up in his face he is able to swan off entirely scot-free, with no recriminations and not even an offer to help sort out the mess he’s left behind. Through gritted teeth, let me say that the final insult is that not only has he got away with it, he’s also secured a no doubt six-figure book deal out of it.

Curiously enough, another book came out the exact same day, another autobiography. Unlike Cameron’s, though, I’d actually like to read Christopher Eccleston’s book – although I suspect it would be hard to convince anybody that I’m not just interested in the Doctor Who stuff.

That’s not to say there isn’t still a fascination in discovering, or deciphering, just what happened, just what went wrong in 2004 that he left Doctor Who after just one year. You could draw the parallel that he too left just as things were getting interesting – but in Chris Eccleston’s case he left things in a healthier state than he’d found them, and since then has shown nothing but tact, discretion and dignity.

The tantalising hints and tidbits that have emerged over the years suggest a falling-out, artistic or personal or both, from which the production team’s relationships never really recovered; with the situation then being made worse by the BBC’s extraordinarily clumsy response when the news broke that Eccleston had already left the show, after only one of his thirteen episodes had aired.

I feel weirdly conflicted whenever I hear Christopher Eccleston talk, even obliquely, about that time. There’s an understandable frustration and resentment on his part at being, in effect, cold-shouldered and hung out to dry by the Beeb, even as his performance was giving them a hit show. I love Doctor Who, the BBC too for that matter, but that affection makes me feel disloyal to a man who inspires loyalty. No, not loyalty exactly – it’s more that in every interview I’ve seen or read of him, he comes across as a man of high standards, of fierce and unbending integrity. And with that comes, somehow, the implicit challenge to try and match up.

An insightful friend, years ago, wrote on a forum that he thought Christopher Eccleston might be like Patrick Troughton – in that, it wouldn’t be until a whole generation later that he would begin to realise how much he meant to us. Now he’s emerged from the silence which has surrounded his time as the Doctor; and at last, it seems, he is becoming aware of, and coming to terms with, the great regard and fondness in which he is still held.

Mind you, I don’t think the book is about Doctor Who as such, it’s much more his life story, his struggles and demons and relationships. Not like Cameron, not looking to justify his actions or put a good spin on his legacy; but to say, plainly and truthfully, here I am, this is me, I don’t always find it easy.

He really does sound like one of the good guys.

Fantastic, even.

I Am He As You Are He As You Are Me…

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Confused, Gender

Sam Smith has confused me.

After reading this https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-49688123 I foolishly googled gender, so it’s my own fault really. I’m not so out of touch that I wasn’t prepared to discover there are more than two – but I was still taken aback at just how many more than two there (allegedly) are.

This isn’t one of those “there were only two in the old days, modern life is silly, bloody snowflakes, etc” trips, and I’m not going all “fings ain’t what they used to be” either. But when one site is listing twenty or more genders (the BBC is citing “more than a hundred”) I’m left scratching my head in bewilderment.

Actually, though, you know what, that’s fine. It’s fine. I mean, don’t we all just want to be allowed to get on with our lives in peace? So, if Sam Smith wants to be a ‘they’ from now on, that’s fine. Up to a point.

It’s both a very easy and a very difficult move for somebody in the entertainment industry, in the public eye. I’m not saying Smith walking up the red carpet in high heels wouldn’t attract some comment, but it would be less inflammatory than some chartered accountant doing the same thing at the annual Hemel Hempstead Dinner Dance. So that’s easier.

On the other hand, given that the announcement has made the news in a way that a random tweet from an unknown home counties bean counter wouldn’t, it’s a brave move. Because if anybody now uses the wrong pronoun in respect of Sam Smith, chances are that it is deliberate rather than accidental. Meaning every time, the decision on whether or not to call people out on it. Sounds exhausting.

But…

Smith is quoted as saying, “I’m not male or female” and “I do think like a woman sometimes” but… how can Smith possibly know that? Surely we only ever feel what we feel. It’s like debating the colour of a post box – we all call it pillar box red, but we can’t ever be certain that we are all seeing the same colour. Similarly, how can anybody know that what they’re feeling is ‘different’ to feeling like a ‘normal’ male or female?

Depending on your point of view, I’m lucky or uninformed or just plain dull, in that I’m male in both anatomy and inclination and, in as far as I would ever feel the need to use this sentence (which is never so far) I identify as male. But I can’t definitively say that what I feel when I say I feel male, is what anybody else would call male if they felt it.

There’s another, niggling element to this. You can only have a vast range of genders on the spectrum IF at either extreme you have ‘full male’ and ‘full female’. We’ve spent I-don’t-know-how-many decades striving for equality, evangelising that women can go out to work and drink in pubs and that men can look after babies and cry at musicals. But you can’t agree with that AND have a strict ‘this is what it means to be male/female’ as a benchmark on the gender scale… and if you don’t have that, if being male (or female) can be anything from a boxer to a flower arranger, then you don’t need any other genders.

Once you have a hundred labels for something they start to become meaningless. Not to mention nonsensical. If I was a teenage girl with a picture of Sam Smith, the object of my teenage affection, on my bedroom wall, then this time last week I’d have been comfortable in my heterosexuality. But now, suddenly, I fancy somebody who isn’t male. Does that mean I’m now something else too…? No. Of course not. Because, sorry, but that’s clearly nonsense.

If I’m honest it makes my head spin just trying to get a handle on it all. The only real certainty is that it’s very, very complicated. So who knows, maybe the BBC is right. Maybe Sam Smith is right too.

I think they are wrong.

The New Season

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Childhood, Moaning, TV

September is the cruellest month.

On this point, TS Eliot and I disagree. On the other hand, I sometimes invite the dogs for an evening walk with a, “Let us go then, you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherised upon a table” so it’s not all bad. (And yes, that was just a transparent attempt to make far more of my A Level English than is warranted. Now it’s done and I’m glad it’s over.)

Perhaps my problem with September is the hype. That’s not September’s fault, of course, it’s mine. I always think of it as my favourite month of the year, I always look forward to it coming around… but then, every time, when it finally arrives, it lets me down.

It’s got a lot to recommend it, as a month. There’s the pale salmon skies as the evenings gather in, and the first breath of an invigorating chill to the morning air. The gradual change of colour on the trees, the first scatterings of crisp new leaves along the pavement.

As a child, of course, it heralded the start of the new school year, and although I wouldn’t want anybody to think I was one of those kids who actively looked forward to going back after the Summer holidays, I will admit that by the end of the first day I would already be back into the swing of it, with the holidays a distant memory.

The start of the school year meant the beginning of the climb towards Christmas – darkening evenings, half-term, the changing of the clocks, fireworks, and then on into December and the home straight, often accompanied by Blue Peter Bring & Buy Sales, School Carol Concerts and the like.

But it was more than that even, because September also brought new shows on TV. Growing up, ours was very much a BBC house (with the notable exception of Crossroads naturally) so my associations are with the new season on the Beeb, and especially in the late-80s, new runs of Doctor Who, meaning we would continually hang around after the end of whatever we’d just been watching in case a trailer should be gifted to us.

All those delights are still there I suppose – new TV (Bake Off and QI already), beautiful evenings with gorgeous sunsets, falling leaves, even a faint Christmas buzz already. But every year, as I anticipate it, I forget that September always lets me down.

Or brings me down, rather. Without fail, somehow September always brings with it a gloom and a lethargy that isn’t really tied to any specific thing. We’re not yet into cold Winter days, which might justify or at least explain the struggle to get up off the chair and do something. And it’s not SAD because there’s still daylight aplenty at the moment.

I’ve been reading Joyce Grenfell’s War Memoirs recently (entertaining our troops, not fighting the other side’s). According to the copyright date I’ve had the book for the best part of 30 years before actually reading it, and if I’m honest it’s a bit hard-going in places. But I’ve just reached December 1944, and she writes about a gloom, a deep self-doubt that comes over her friend and pianist: “she suddenly vanishes behind a blank wall and it’s very hard going to get through to her at all”.

That’s what it feels like. As if I’m viewing September at a distance, from behind a wall, and quite unable to shake that sense of separation. Along with it comes a dreadful torpor which isn’t much use for the old 9-5.

But, of course, we go on. No doubt my wretched mood will lift, sooner or later. If nothing else, eventually it’ll be October instead, which will take the blame off September. And, as with every year, I remain hopeful that it will go as suddenly as it came, this mood, and that I can still enjoy at least some of my favourite month.

I suppose I’m hoping that, as it was when I was a child, September will be magic again.

(On this point, Kate Bush and I disagree…)

Terrance Dicks, R.I.P.

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Doctor Who, FICTIONAL!!

Terrance Dicks has died.

I caught the news just in a passing comment, just as it broke, on my Twitter feed at lunchtime – and by the time I returned to the internet at teatime, there was tribute after tribute to a man who, in no small way, encouraged a generation (my generation) to become readers. People recalling the first book of his they’d read, or a particular episode of Who he’d written, or an occasion when they’d met and spoken to him.

In recent years, he had become a delightful presence as interviewee on the Doctor Who DVD range, sometimes making the self-effacing claim that his only goal as script-editor was to ensure the BBC had something to show instead of the testcard for 25 minutes on a Saturday afternoon. I’m sure that’s not quite true, but even if it is it almost goes without saying that Terrance, was far too professional to have ever let that happen.

Other than that, I don’t really know what to say. It would be absurd of me to claim floods of tears for a man I’ve never even met; but on the other hand, to know that suddenly he isn’t around anymore feels like a very sad thing indeed.

A few years ago, I put together a series of spoof/‘What If…’ Production Notes, taking Russell T’s famous post-millenium column in the Doctor Who Magazine, and imagining that it had been around back in the days of the classic era too. For the November 1983 issue of DWM, as the show reached its twentieth anniversary, I reasoned that while the BBC was celebrating Doctor Who, Doctor Who ought to be celebrating Terrance Dicks!

So, if only to prevent WordPress having to show the testcard in order to fill up the rest of this page, here it is…

Thank You For Being A Friend

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1990s, Confused, Family, Friends, TV

Quick disclaimer: it’s not about the sitcom, sorry. (Not this time anyway.)

For the record, though, I’m currently eight seasons in, so just two more to go before Netflix pulls the plug at the end of the year. It seems to have become fashionable in some quarters to proclaim how rubbish it is, but all I can say is that I’m still enjoying it. In fact the pen-penultimate season eight episode (it could have been called, but isn’t, The One Where Rachel Will Do Anything, And I Mean Anything, To Induce The Baby) made me laugh out loud – a lot. (Is LOL-AL a thing?)

As it happens, though, Friends is a good example (oh! maybe it is about the sitcom after all) of the ‘group of friends’ scenario (hence the name of the show, obviously) which is so beloved of TV and film makers. Since I wouldn’t want anybody to think that all I do is watch fondly-remembered television comedies from the nineties, let me say that yesterday evening, in a dramatic change of pace I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral which is an entirely different kettle of fish. (It’s a fondly-remembered FILM comedy from the nineties).

Four Weddings, like Friends, like How I Met Your Mother (another favourite), revolves around a group of (mostly) unrelated but closely connected friends, who seemingly do everything together to the exclusion of anybody else. So, for example, the six friends always meet at Monica’s for Thanksgiving rather than, which I suspect would be far more likely in the real world, independently visiting their various families.

It’s an unrealistic set-up but devilishly appealing, this idea of a miscellaneous group of friends so closely-knit that they would do anything for each other. We don’t really need a detailed explanation of James Fleet’s comment that “nansy’s in residence, might knock us up a plate of eggs and bake over a late-night scrabble” to get the sense of its warm, comfortable, laugh-filled fellowship. Mr Curtis pulls the same trick (but, spoiler alert, not as well) in the not-quite-a-sequel Notting Hill which is nevertheless worth a watch even though you may find yourself pining for a wedding partway through. (Or a funeral.)

Making closer-than-close friendships seems all very easy in delightfully-mannered British films, or in fondly-remembered US comedies – or in Primary School, where you could pretty much form a lasting bond of friendship simply by asking, “do you want to be friends?” It’s far more complicated as a grown-up.

Or maybe that’s just me. Almost certainly, I suspect, in that I do find it a bafflingly elusive thing to do, forming friendships as an adult. That’s not to say that I’m unfriendly, at least I don’t think I am, but that’s not quite the same as being, and as being able to be, friendly.

My wife, on the other hand, she is willing and able to be friendly with anyone. On reflection, I’m concerned that the previous sentence sounds like a bitter euphemism for ‘slut’ so let me clarify, and quickly. It’s almost impossible for us, for example, to pop out to the shops without Mrs C sparking up a conversation with some passing stranger: often about dogs; sometimes about the difficulties, and the graphically described side-effects, of being lactose-intolerant; and occasionally about how annoying her husband is.

It’s (presumably) lovely to be so out-going and, yes, friendly. And although I’m not, I’m fortunate enough when we’re out together that I seem friendly by association. It’s a bit like David Duchovny’s comment on his character in The X Files that Scully is Mulder’s ‘human credential’, making his seeming lack of humanity or friendliness acceptable. So I suppose my wife and I are like that, she’s the human face to my awkwardness, like Mulder and Scully but without the official label of sexiest woman in the world and minus the passionate obsession with mysterious alien hybrid/government conspiracy shenanigans.

Goodness knows, really, how my wife puts up with me (assuming she still does after being variously labelled a slut and NOT the sexiest woman on the planet, in recent sentences).

I guess she’s just a really good friend.