Racism and black footballers.
In Channel Four's fascinating programme about the emergence of black footballers in British football we were reminded harshly of the dreadfully appalling advent of violent racism in English football and how it came to deface and disfigure the game for most of the 1970s and, quite certainly, the 1980s. For some of us it began to look like a nasty epidemic that refused to go away and couldn't be stamped out however much society and the FA did their utmost to 'Kick Out Racism', now very much a symbolic attempt to remove this vile stench.
Back in the early 1970s my team West Ham United unveiled one of the first black players in the modern era to tread the old First Division boards. Clyde Best, although apparently barrel chested and stocky, became one of the most popular and much loved of players ever to join the East London club.
Of course he looked big but there was always something of the muscular boxing heavyweight about Best that instantly endeared himself to the Upton Park crowd. Best was tireless, always chasing lost causes and could always be relied on to score a considerable number of goals. Best was always in the right place and the right time to pick up the loose ends and could hit the target with some frequency.
Sadly though, Best would also become the unwitting victim of ugly racism and prejudice, a player now victimised, laughed at and ridiculed because of the colour of his skin. There were the familiar banana skins, the disgraceful monkey noises and the constant shadow of hatred and intolerance. Best was though bigger than that and rose above the moronic chants, allowing both his head and feet to do all the talking for him.
Over the last two nights Channel Four have endeavoured to show in some graphic detail some of those ghastly images, sights and sounds which provided an almost humiliating backdrop to Britain's back street and inner city culture during the 1970s. Introduced by prolific and former Arsenal striker Ian Wright, some of the many black players who so illuminated the old First Division and then, more recently the Premier League, were wonderfully highlighted, players with genuine talent, an eloquent turn of phrase and a lightning burst of pace.
In the first programme Paul Canoville, the old Chelsea striker came under the spotlight. Canoville could never be compared to some of his illustrious predecessors such as Jimmy Greaves, ironically a Chelsea favourite at the start of his career. Nor was Canoville a Tommy Lawton, Dixie Dean nor a Gary Lineker. But he did know where the goal was and scored quite regularly for Chelsea, eventually winning over the racists, cynics and those who were never entirely sure about Canoville.
Perhaps the most disturbing commentary behind Canoville's debut was the one that the Chelsea fans had reserved for him on his Chelsea debut. Booed viciously and vilified senselessly by the Stamford Bridge Canoville must have felt like a pariah or some alien with green horns sticking out of his head.
Later on in the programme there was Vince Hilaire, unquestionably one of the cleverest, most original and elusive wingers in the English old First Division. In the red and blue stripes of Crystal Palace was an overnight sensation, a player of blistering pace, incomparable ball control and a player with the capacity to bring the Palace crowd to life. Hilaire was fast, direct, always demanding the ball rather like the kid in the playground and always running, darting, weaving and turning in equal measure.
When the then manager Malcolm Allison first saw Hilaire he knew that the boy would wear an England shirt. The only obstacle though that Hilaire would have to overcome was the ever present racism still poisoning the English game. And yet coming as he did from the West Ham catchment area Hilaire knew that even the West Ham supporters could instantly recognise an outstanding player when they saw one and Hilaire ticked all the right boxes.
At Nottingham Forest Brian Clough was assembling one of the most meticulously crafted teams in the top flight and then there was Viv Anderson. Anderson was leggy, athletic, adventurous, confident and black. Soon Anderson would reach the very pinnacle of the game with promotion to the England side. Anderson was assured, always galloping into space, gobbling up the ground in long, purposeful strides and never afraid to try his luck with a goal or shot or two.
Almost immediately, the Forest fans the City ground fell in love with Anderson's hugely progressive style. Anderson told the amusing story of the time when, after some of the less desirable of the away fans had pelted him with oranges, bananas, apples and pears, Clough had ordered Anderson to get him some fruit for him. When Anderson made his England debut, a whole nation greeted him with all the warmth and adulation that was long overdue.
Throughout both episodes of Out of the Skin, one player featured most prominently and tragically. Cyrille Regis, a West Bronwich Albion player through and through affectionately became known as one of the Three Degrees, a reference to the all girl, black soul group from the 1970s. Regis who died most prematurely, was a broad shouldered, powerful, thick thighed, bustling, barging and vastly intelligent striker who had everything in his CV. Regis was another cruiserweight who could well have given Mike Tyson a run for his money had he felt so inclined.
In one incredible First Division match toward the end of the 1970s Regis was just one of the three stormtroopers who would eventually destroy and embarrass Manchester United at a mud bath of a pitch at Old Trafford. Alongside the equally as talented, fleet of feet and twinkle toed Laurie Cunningham, a superlative winger of frightening speed, Brenda Batson mopping up unfussily at the back for West Brom and Regis bearing down on the United goal like a wrecking ball, West Brom came through with a stunningly comfortable 5-3 victory. It was Regis at his most fluent and lethal. None would ever forget it.
Last night it was Paul Ince's to explain what it meant to be the first black England captain, a notable accolade and honour that Ince was at pains to emphasise. Ince who began at West Ham and then moved onto a big money signing at Manchester United, pointed out how good it must have felt to not only pull on the England shirt but bring up his children in a society that had now fully accepted him. Ince was seen playing football with his son in the family and it must have represented, you felt sure, the ultimate recognition and a deeply satisfying moment in his career.
Then of course during the 1980's there was John Barnes, a magnificent and supremely well balanced winger who, for a number of years through that decade, became untouchable, unplayable and unfathomable if only because helpless defenders had not a clue where Barnes was going. Barnes drifted over the muck and brass that was an old English pitch like a floating cloud in the sky, carrying the ball for what seemed a lifetime and then swotting aside players as if they were still in the dressing room.
John Barnes was a footballing academic, full of footballing degrees, Bachelor of Arts degrees, Bachelor of Science degrees and the most learned of graduates. Barnes was born to be a footballer, a player of slinky movement, lovely body swerve, cultured feet and glorious originality. Barnes glided, danced and then finished off those damaging runs with goals to remember. There was an air of footballing deception about Barnes, a secretive, stealthy manner that none could quite figure out.
In 1984, Barnes was single handedly responsible for breaking into a Brazilian defence in the old Maracana Stadium and completing surely one of the best goals ever scored by an Englishman in Brazil. This was a friendly match but for Barnes this was a goal par excellence, a magnum opus of a goal, a goal picked from the most expensive jewellery box of English international football.
Picking the ball up from way out on the touchline, Barnes moved onto the ball before executing some of the most elegant waltzes ever encountered in an England shirt. In fact Strauss would have been enormously flattered had he seen it. Barnes, slowly gathering pace and momentum, stepped in and out of trailing legs, dribbling with unreasonable ease, then jinking in between the yellow Brazilian shirts, rounding the goalkeeper and slotting the ball into the net as if he'd practised the same move every day in training.
Two years later Barnes was this time very much the life and soul of the party, the catalyst, the engine room, the sparking plug who would entertain, excite and then electrify the English fans. In the 1986 World Cup held in Mexico Barnes, accompanied bravely by Peter Reid, Trevor Stephen, Gary Lineker and Peter Beardsley, came on as a substitute against Argentina when it may have been too late. Barnes cross to the far post was converted but Argentina, who had led through a criminally illegal goal from Diego Maradona and a brilliant second, won the game narrowly.
So it was that in more recent times that Ashley Cole would become one of the most consistently safe and dependable of England full backs. Capped 100 times Cole, who began his career with Arsenal, was rightly or wrongly accused of becoming greedy, obsessed with the tag of being one of the wealthiest players in the Premier League, a player only concerned with feathering his own nest and disregarding the rest.
After winning three Premier League titles with Chelsea and a Champions League medal or two as well as the FA Cup, Cole would be forgiven for feeling very smug and vindicated. Cole now lives in America and the citizens in Los Angeles who supported him as an LA Galaxy can only be grateful that a heavily capped England player was in their ranks.
For those who were brought up in the era when black footballers gave so much enthusiasm and energy to the game, Channel Four's Out of Their Skin underlined again the sterling contributions they have made to English football. Talking of which the end of the programme was devoted to one Raheem Sterling, a delightful touch player if perhaps given to clumsy blunders and clod hopping aberrations.
When Sterling was also hounded out by the boo boys the gun tattoo on his ankle was rightly misinterpreted. But the Liverpool player was just one of the many impressive players to have shone so brightly in this year's World Cup in Russia. They say black is beautiful and how true that statement is.
Thursday 29 November 2018
Tuesday 27 November 2018
Tina Turner- the singer of soul and feeling.
Tina Turner- the singer of soul and feeling.
The words and sentences may be more measured now but Tina Turner has always been the soul singer with heart, passion and soul, a woman of red blooded intensity, vocal ferocity and irrepressible power. Now though might be the right time to slow down, smell the roses perhaps, sit back and luxuriate on a mammoth and phenomenal career which started as a trainee nurse and ended up in one of the most turbulent relationships - marriage with a man called Ike.
Last night on BBC1's excellent documentary and life story of the one and only Tina Turner we were taken on a whistlestop tour of Turner's painfully harrowing if ultimately triumphant life. Turner was thoughtful, but assured, happy yet regretful, searingly honest and sometimes bittersweet into the bargain. She didn't blame anybody as such but did give a very moving account of how life's initially smooth progress was tragically stalled before dropping through the trapdoor of a disastrous downward spiral. But then she clambered her way back into daylight and it all came right.
The programme featured, quite obviously, Turner's almost constantly abusive and explosive relationship with husband Ike which must have driven her to the edge of the precipice. But then the feisty and superbly resilient Turner came back once again and proved that life without Ike could indeed be both beneficial and ultimately successful. In fact when Turner eventually split with Ike it may have been one of the greatest days in her life.
Starting out on life training to be a nurse, Turner one day decided that a life in a clinical hospital ward wasn't for her. Turner wanted to become one of the most famous soul singing divas the world had ever seen. We would soon be introduced to one of the most rasping, husky and unforgettable voices in the history of pop and soul music. Turner was like a stick of dynamite, her voice blasting out across the vast concert stadiums and echoing across borders and continents with a dynamism and force that spanned the 1960s and then the following decades.
Now living in Switzerland with her new partner, Turner talked revealingly about the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations, the emotional minefield which threatened to blow up with quite the most serious consequences and then more about the destructive Ike. There was the violent Ike, the aggressive Ike, the flare ups, the friction, the fights and battles that came to characterise their marriage from hell. It soon became clear that Turner had to get out of this toxic husband and wife alliance. She was throwing her career away because a troubled man couldn't control his anger.
After her debut single 'It's Gonna Work Out Fine' with Ike had broken into the American charts, Tuner found that maybe the song did have an appropriate resonance. Clearly, both Ike and Tina looked as though they were ideally suited to each other, that it could work out in the long term. Then there were the ugly quarrels, the drink problems, the traumatic days and months when nothing seemed to go right. They fell out wildly, fought like cat and dog and then discovered that things couldn't continue in the way they had been.
Turner quite candidly admits that Ike made her feel like a prisoner, stifling her, cramping her style, confining her to a bit part in the partnership. Maybe there was a part of Tina that might have privately suspected that had she carried on with Ike then a blossoming career would just sink without trace. But then Turner must have found the keys to unlock her from this living hell. And then both Ike and Tina met up with a man called Phil Spector.
Spector was an ingenious, speculative, inventive and pioneering record producer with a treasure chest of new sounds and markedly different approaches to pop music. Spector gave us the 'Wall of Sound', a truly remarkable approach to music and its content. River Deep Mountain High would become one of the most defining, iconic, groundbreaking songs the 1960s would ever know.
River Deep Mountain High would be the dramatic launching pad for Tina and Ike Turner. Suddenly the backing track for a hit single would sound like something from a big budget Hollywood film. A big orchestral instrumental production would change Ike and Tina's life for ever more. It was rather like admiring a three dimensional piece of art work where all the surfaces and textures of the record would take the breath away.
By the end Tina Turner was on her own after kicking Ike into touch and leaving him to dwell on what might have been. There followed the Tina renaissance, a reinvention of the singer she used to be but now in a new environment and a much more positive place in her life. She would single handedly write out one of the most classical rags to riches stories America would ever witness. She may have been on her own but the life of a solo singer had to be preferable to an utterly dysfunctional one with Ike.
So it was that we had I Don't Wanna Fight, Private Dancer, Steamy Windows, Let's Stay Together and What's Love Got to Do With It and who could ever forget The Best, Simply the Best. Turner had burst out of her prison cell, thrown off the shackles, busting the chains of torment and heartache that might have trapped her forever. Turner was the liberated soul, free to go where ever she wanted and do whatever she liked, released from what must have been the terrifying ordeal that was being with Ike.
With those still thick red pouting lips, frizzy hair that seemed to bounce buoyantly on her head and a voice that still crackles with energy, Turner is now relaxed, totally confessional, even more frank and determined to let the whole world know that she could still belt out a song from the heart. The overwhelming pressures, stresses and anxieties that may have pulled her down were no longer in evidence. She'd battled back from the brink, forgotten the wretched Ike and now just wanted to concentrate on the more important priorities that life would have in store for her.
Turner married for the second time her German record company executive and, for all the world, appeared as though the weight of the world had been yanked from her tired shoulders. The aches and pains were still there but when all was said and done, Tina Turner had come through the bad times, fought against the dire predicaments, survived the vices and just got on with it when the critics just wanted their pound of flesh.
Nowadays Turner lives in Switzerland, perhaps one of Europe's safest and most neutral havens where nobody can disturb her domestic idyll. In the final minutes of last night's warts and all Tina Turner life story, she reflected perhaps sadly on the America she'd grown to love while she was growing up but an America that had now lost its way. Of course America would always be there for her and the sense of nostalgic yearning for her birthplace had to be recognised. But this was a new chapter, a clean page.
But Switzerland is where the soul singing legend wanted to be and besides who wouldn't want to be subjected to the sound of those famous cuckoo clocks on a chilly November evening? Simply the Best may sound like the most gross exaggeration but then again she can still deliver a song and of that there can never be any doubt.
The words and sentences may be more measured now but Tina Turner has always been the soul singer with heart, passion and soul, a woman of red blooded intensity, vocal ferocity and irrepressible power. Now though might be the right time to slow down, smell the roses perhaps, sit back and luxuriate on a mammoth and phenomenal career which started as a trainee nurse and ended up in one of the most turbulent relationships - marriage with a man called Ike.
Last night on BBC1's excellent documentary and life story of the one and only Tina Turner we were taken on a whistlestop tour of Turner's painfully harrowing if ultimately triumphant life. Turner was thoughtful, but assured, happy yet regretful, searingly honest and sometimes bittersweet into the bargain. She didn't blame anybody as such but did give a very moving account of how life's initially smooth progress was tragically stalled before dropping through the trapdoor of a disastrous downward spiral. But then she clambered her way back into daylight and it all came right.
The programme featured, quite obviously, Turner's almost constantly abusive and explosive relationship with husband Ike which must have driven her to the edge of the precipice. But then the feisty and superbly resilient Turner came back once again and proved that life without Ike could indeed be both beneficial and ultimately successful. In fact when Turner eventually split with Ike it may have been one of the greatest days in her life.
Starting out on life training to be a nurse, Turner one day decided that a life in a clinical hospital ward wasn't for her. Turner wanted to become one of the most famous soul singing divas the world had ever seen. We would soon be introduced to one of the most rasping, husky and unforgettable voices in the history of pop and soul music. Turner was like a stick of dynamite, her voice blasting out across the vast concert stadiums and echoing across borders and continents with a dynamism and force that spanned the 1960s and then the following decades.
Now living in Switzerland with her new partner, Turner talked revealingly about the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations, the emotional minefield which threatened to blow up with quite the most serious consequences and then more about the destructive Ike. There was the violent Ike, the aggressive Ike, the flare ups, the friction, the fights and battles that came to characterise their marriage from hell. It soon became clear that Turner had to get out of this toxic husband and wife alliance. She was throwing her career away because a troubled man couldn't control his anger.
After her debut single 'It's Gonna Work Out Fine' with Ike had broken into the American charts, Tuner found that maybe the song did have an appropriate resonance. Clearly, both Ike and Tina looked as though they were ideally suited to each other, that it could work out in the long term. Then there were the ugly quarrels, the drink problems, the traumatic days and months when nothing seemed to go right. They fell out wildly, fought like cat and dog and then discovered that things couldn't continue in the way they had been.
Turner quite candidly admits that Ike made her feel like a prisoner, stifling her, cramping her style, confining her to a bit part in the partnership. Maybe there was a part of Tina that might have privately suspected that had she carried on with Ike then a blossoming career would just sink without trace. But then Turner must have found the keys to unlock her from this living hell. And then both Ike and Tina met up with a man called Phil Spector.
Spector was an ingenious, speculative, inventive and pioneering record producer with a treasure chest of new sounds and markedly different approaches to pop music. Spector gave us the 'Wall of Sound', a truly remarkable approach to music and its content. River Deep Mountain High would become one of the most defining, iconic, groundbreaking songs the 1960s would ever know.
River Deep Mountain High would be the dramatic launching pad for Tina and Ike Turner. Suddenly the backing track for a hit single would sound like something from a big budget Hollywood film. A big orchestral instrumental production would change Ike and Tina's life for ever more. It was rather like admiring a three dimensional piece of art work where all the surfaces and textures of the record would take the breath away.
By the end Tina Turner was on her own after kicking Ike into touch and leaving him to dwell on what might have been. There followed the Tina renaissance, a reinvention of the singer she used to be but now in a new environment and a much more positive place in her life. She would single handedly write out one of the most classical rags to riches stories America would ever witness. She may have been on her own but the life of a solo singer had to be preferable to an utterly dysfunctional one with Ike.
So it was that we had I Don't Wanna Fight, Private Dancer, Steamy Windows, Let's Stay Together and What's Love Got to Do With It and who could ever forget The Best, Simply the Best. Turner had burst out of her prison cell, thrown off the shackles, busting the chains of torment and heartache that might have trapped her forever. Turner was the liberated soul, free to go where ever she wanted and do whatever she liked, released from what must have been the terrifying ordeal that was being with Ike.
With those still thick red pouting lips, frizzy hair that seemed to bounce buoyantly on her head and a voice that still crackles with energy, Turner is now relaxed, totally confessional, even more frank and determined to let the whole world know that she could still belt out a song from the heart. The overwhelming pressures, stresses and anxieties that may have pulled her down were no longer in evidence. She'd battled back from the brink, forgotten the wretched Ike and now just wanted to concentrate on the more important priorities that life would have in store for her.
Turner married for the second time her German record company executive and, for all the world, appeared as though the weight of the world had been yanked from her tired shoulders. The aches and pains were still there but when all was said and done, Tina Turner had come through the bad times, fought against the dire predicaments, survived the vices and just got on with it when the critics just wanted their pound of flesh.
Nowadays Turner lives in Switzerland, perhaps one of Europe's safest and most neutral havens where nobody can disturb her domestic idyll. In the final minutes of last night's warts and all Tina Turner life story, she reflected perhaps sadly on the America she'd grown to love while she was growing up but an America that had now lost its way. Of course America would always be there for her and the sense of nostalgic yearning for her birthplace had to be recognised. But this was a new chapter, a clean page.
But Switzerland is where the soul singing legend wanted to be and besides who wouldn't want to be subjected to the sound of those famous cuckoo clocks on a chilly November evening? Simply the Best may sound like the most gross exaggeration but then again she can still deliver a song and of that there can never be any doubt.
Sunday 25 November 2018
42nd Street- a West End musical tour de force.
42nd Street- a West End musical tour de force.
You walked among the richly imposing paintings and marbled splendour of the Drury Lane theatre. Here in London's seething, teeming, hip hopping, break dancing West End you marvelled at London's glittering history and tradition. It was simply breathtaking but then you've always known that to be the case anyway so nothing has changed.
You then cast your eyes at the stunning statues in the foyer, taken aback by their ever present and uncompromising beauty. Your eyes felt quite honoured because this is the way it's always been and always will be hopefully. It was the very heartbeat of the West End and that old pulmonary system with all of its surrounding nerve endings and arteries, is in the rudest health. Once again the world of show business was alive and well, its musical heritage maintained quite brilliantly.
For what seemed the best part of just over two hours, 42nd Street, undoubtedly one of the glitziest, chintziest and glamorous of all musicals did the trick once again. Of course those long running musicals which have so captured the public's imagination for much longer than 42nd Street are now festively festooned around the West End like the glinting jewels in a thousand crowns.
Outside in the glorious Covent Garden piazza a million lights twinkled around the whole of the old fruit and vegetable market stalls, Christmas trees firmly planted in comfortable corners of the huge square. It was the perfect night for watching one of those delightfully old fashioned West End musicals that never seem to lose their lustre. Somehow the West End always makes you feel good, re-affirming all the good things in life and never disappointing.
So it was that my wife and I settled down to watch 42nd Street, quite the most astounding, outstanding, showbiz oriented extravaganza, a magnificently theatrical joy ride, a spectacular musical journey into the world of old time vaudeville, charming cabaret and drama queen histrionics. But above all this was all about tap dancing, tap dancing galore and tap dancing that seemed to get progressively faster with every second.
This was mesmerising tap dancing at its most extraordinary, a whole cast of naturally gifted tap dancers who couldn't help but enjoy themselves and knew they were creating something pretty special. This was a clattering, chattering, stomping, stirring, pulsating, unbelievably perfect tapfest. For much of the performance you were reminded of a hundred typewriters, as straight backed legal secretaries finished those final letters of the day.
The story is a simple one. A whole troupe of ambitious dancers and vast egos compete for a place in the Pretty Lady Broadway show to end all shows. They pout, pose, leap into the air, the men flirting playfully and outrageously and the women teasingly returning the favour. They fall out, argue endlessly, make up constantly, engage in interminable slanging matches and then find themselves consumed with jealousy when one thinks the other is getting far more publicity than the other.
Undoubtedly the most familiar face in 42nd Street is Bonnie Langford, a child star and now model showbiz role model, all vividly oozing red lipstick and a woman of a thousand dresses. Langford is deliciously pretentious, full of prima donna strops, moody tantrums and eternally beaming smiles that seem to illuminate the whole of the Drury Lane stage with the most dazzling panache.
Langford, who first came to our notice on a late 1960s children's TV programme in Britain called Junior Showtime, has now blossomed into a performer of star quality. She went on to appear in Just William and threatened to scweam and scweam if she didn't get her way. Now though Langford is the finished article, a figure of perpetual motion, swaying and pirouetting on the most nimble feet elegantly and terribly light heartedly without a care in the world.
After many a rehearsal we were then treated to all of the 42nd Street classics such as 'I Only Have Eyes for You' covered most lovingly by Art Garfunkel during the 1970s, the mercenary, money grabbing 'We're in the Money' and the all conquering, sweepingly joyful 'Lullaby of Broadway'. Smartly suited men with dapper scarves and women in the most flowing of dresses floated and swirled through well disciplined routines of tapping and variations on more tapping.
This was quite the most remarkable cavalcade of tap dancing, row upon row of high kicking, barely believable sequences. On the stage three staircases of feet pounded away furiously and frenetically, a whirlwind of flying feet in perfect harmony. Then all you could hear were what sounded like a factory of shoes and feet, pittering and pattering away energetically like that industrious typing pool.
By the end the Regency Club, which had now become the ideal setting for these tap dancing geniuses, finally celebrated the Pretty Lady box office Broadway blockbuster they must have known it would be. On the show went sounding like that relentless Morse Code of messages across the stage, tapping and rapping, tripping the light fantastic, never stopping and never pausing for breath.
42nd Street is one of those legendary musicals that remain a timeless treasure trove of the early 20th century American songbook. It's full of showbiz tongue in cheek, funny, impossibly facetious at times and then full of thrilling exhibitions of effortless tap dancing. How could you resist 42nd Street particularly on a nippy, chilly but still pleasant Saturday evening towards the end of November? Go on indulge yourself in the ultimate of showbiz musicals. The West End will embrace you with welcoming arms. It'll make your heart sing.
You walked among the richly imposing paintings and marbled splendour of the Drury Lane theatre. Here in London's seething, teeming, hip hopping, break dancing West End you marvelled at London's glittering history and tradition. It was simply breathtaking but then you've always known that to be the case anyway so nothing has changed.
You then cast your eyes at the stunning statues in the foyer, taken aback by their ever present and uncompromising beauty. Your eyes felt quite honoured because this is the way it's always been and always will be hopefully. It was the very heartbeat of the West End and that old pulmonary system with all of its surrounding nerve endings and arteries, is in the rudest health. Once again the world of show business was alive and well, its musical heritage maintained quite brilliantly.
For what seemed the best part of just over two hours, 42nd Street, undoubtedly one of the glitziest, chintziest and glamorous of all musicals did the trick once again. Of course those long running musicals which have so captured the public's imagination for much longer than 42nd Street are now festively festooned around the West End like the glinting jewels in a thousand crowns.
Outside in the glorious Covent Garden piazza a million lights twinkled around the whole of the old fruit and vegetable market stalls, Christmas trees firmly planted in comfortable corners of the huge square. It was the perfect night for watching one of those delightfully old fashioned West End musicals that never seem to lose their lustre. Somehow the West End always makes you feel good, re-affirming all the good things in life and never disappointing.
So it was that my wife and I settled down to watch 42nd Street, quite the most astounding, outstanding, showbiz oriented extravaganza, a magnificently theatrical joy ride, a spectacular musical journey into the world of old time vaudeville, charming cabaret and drama queen histrionics. But above all this was all about tap dancing, tap dancing galore and tap dancing that seemed to get progressively faster with every second.
This was mesmerising tap dancing at its most extraordinary, a whole cast of naturally gifted tap dancers who couldn't help but enjoy themselves and knew they were creating something pretty special. This was a clattering, chattering, stomping, stirring, pulsating, unbelievably perfect tapfest. For much of the performance you were reminded of a hundred typewriters, as straight backed legal secretaries finished those final letters of the day.
The story is a simple one. A whole troupe of ambitious dancers and vast egos compete for a place in the Pretty Lady Broadway show to end all shows. They pout, pose, leap into the air, the men flirting playfully and outrageously and the women teasingly returning the favour. They fall out, argue endlessly, make up constantly, engage in interminable slanging matches and then find themselves consumed with jealousy when one thinks the other is getting far more publicity than the other.
Undoubtedly the most familiar face in 42nd Street is Bonnie Langford, a child star and now model showbiz role model, all vividly oozing red lipstick and a woman of a thousand dresses. Langford is deliciously pretentious, full of prima donna strops, moody tantrums and eternally beaming smiles that seem to illuminate the whole of the Drury Lane stage with the most dazzling panache.
Langford, who first came to our notice on a late 1960s children's TV programme in Britain called Junior Showtime, has now blossomed into a performer of star quality. She went on to appear in Just William and threatened to scweam and scweam if she didn't get her way. Now though Langford is the finished article, a figure of perpetual motion, swaying and pirouetting on the most nimble feet elegantly and terribly light heartedly without a care in the world.
After many a rehearsal we were then treated to all of the 42nd Street classics such as 'I Only Have Eyes for You' covered most lovingly by Art Garfunkel during the 1970s, the mercenary, money grabbing 'We're in the Money' and the all conquering, sweepingly joyful 'Lullaby of Broadway'. Smartly suited men with dapper scarves and women in the most flowing of dresses floated and swirled through well disciplined routines of tapping and variations on more tapping.
This was quite the most remarkable cavalcade of tap dancing, row upon row of high kicking, barely believable sequences. On the stage three staircases of feet pounded away furiously and frenetically, a whirlwind of flying feet in perfect harmony. Then all you could hear were what sounded like a factory of shoes and feet, pittering and pattering away energetically like that industrious typing pool.
By the end the Regency Club, which had now become the ideal setting for these tap dancing geniuses, finally celebrated the Pretty Lady box office Broadway blockbuster they must have known it would be. On the show went sounding like that relentless Morse Code of messages across the stage, tapping and rapping, tripping the light fantastic, never stopping and never pausing for breath.
42nd Street is one of those legendary musicals that remain a timeless treasure trove of the early 20th century American songbook. It's full of showbiz tongue in cheek, funny, impossibly facetious at times and then full of thrilling exhibitions of effortless tap dancing. How could you resist 42nd Street particularly on a nippy, chilly but still pleasant Saturday evening towards the end of November? Go on indulge yourself in the ultimate of showbiz musicals. The West End will embrace you with welcoming arms. It'll make your heart sing.
Friday 23 November 2018
Another year older.
Another year older.
There must come a point in our lives when our birthday fails to capture your imagination in the way it might have done 20 or 30 years ago. It just seems like the passing of another year, that moment of transition when the significance of the day doesn't quite hold the same fascination that it should. Still, it'll be lovely to see my loving and supportive family and tonight a quiet Shabbat evening with very close family will have a special resonance.
Long gone though are those days of youthful merriment when all of your school friends or people you grew up would lavish you with presents and games thickly wrapped in veritable rainforests of paper whereupon mum and dad would rush into the living room, gather up all of your mates and decide quite emphatically that this would be the ideal moment to play Pass the Parcel or Musical Chairs.
Then the ropiest of record players would boom out of the tiniest of speakers and a spontaneous outburst of raucous laughter and ear splitting screaming would follow almost naturally. All of the kids would frantically scramble around for the most advantageous position equipped with nothing more than an uncontrollable urge to create merry hell and havoc. Was it always the way with children? They love to be the centre of the attention, hogging the limelight, good naturedly excitable but still a lovable nuisance.
But now at the ripe old age of 56 these are the years of proud parenthood, reflecting fondly on those halcyon days when we were kids, caught up in the throes of joyful curiosity and discovery, when life was all about blowing out candles on birthday cakes and the children's entertainer would blow up balloons, pulling rabbits out of hats, performing yet another set of magic tricks and then producing silk handkerchiefs out of nothing. Then if you came from Kensington and Chelsea you would probably get tea and scones with tiny sandwiches shaped in small triangles. Oh for the joys of the privileged classes.
Nowadays birthdays are much more elaborate occasions than perhaps they used to be. Now of course the children of today not only expect better looking presents they will undoubtedly demand them. In our day it was the traditional Lego or Meccano, that wonderfully intriguing mix of coloured bricks and in later years, electrical mechanisms that would light up without any prompting.
In the earliest of years it was the good old fashioned, tried and trusted box set of clay or plasticine followed later on in life with the ingenious Etch A Sketch, an object which would immeasurably enhance your artistic capabilities to such a point that some of us may have thought that by our eighth birthday we must have felt that we were ready to become accomplished graphic designers.
Then we were confronted with Ker Plunk and Frustration which in their varying ways were solely designed to send us into a mild state of panic, bewildered children who didn't quite know what we were supposed to do with such strange kids toys.
Frustration was fun in its way but hardly intellectually stimulating in as much that you weren't sure why you were given these quaint looking counters and then clearly instructed to move those counters around a plastic board. Then by some miracle of science you would be eventually acclaimed as winner if you'd managed to land all of the said counters in a straight row, the number six taking a prominent role in your victory.
Ker Plunk seemed to pass me by but having been subjected to innumerably repetitive TV advertising campaigns at roughly this time of the year, it still seems to be shrouded in the thick mists of mystery that never really lifted. What is this weird piece of plastic with miniature slides or chutes where weird and wonderful things happen when sticks are withdrawn from the heat of action and general mayhem ensues?
Now of course maturity and adulthood mellows the soul. Books have always been an enduring source of pleasure and the acquisition of book tokens or money for books has never lost that very personal appeal. Music also provides something that is uplifting and although vinyl is no longer as accessible as it used to be and Spotify seems to be the only resource for those with a musical ear, I can though still find great delight in the You Tube platform.
The mind travels back blissfully to my barmitzvah when the entire family would surround you with those pre- birthday surprises that still send a tickle of amusement through your body. What you have to remember here is that it was 1975, the economy was in a familiar state of stagnant meltdown and all Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister could do was smoke his comforting pipe or turn up devotedly to his beloved hometown football club Huddersfield Town every so often.
Meanwhile back in downtown Ilford, Essex some of us were reciting our barmitzvah piece on the Saturday morning before raving the day away on the Sunday in frilly ruffed shirts, platform shoes and drainpipe trousers. It was a seminal moment in my young life and one of those formidable rites of passage when yours truly would have to make the most awkward adjustment to adolescence.
Then the barrage of presents came winging their way towards me unexpectedly and totally without any consultation or any kind of real understanding of what it all meant. Suddenly there were hundreds of fountain pens, the new and very voguish calculators and for whatever reason, clothes valets. At this point something inside me wanted to complain and complain vehemently.
Still, years later you begin to look back on special anniversaries or birthdays with a wistful smile and a sense that it was indeed just a passing phase. Birthdays are now numerical landmarks rather than vitally important excuses for wild parties and loads of booze. Birthdays are now that rather charming set of ornaments on your mantelpiece, that distant throwback to a simpler time when we could once again jump onto our bikes, hurtle around street corners with gaping red bruises on our knees and then do the same thing all over the time. Birthdays- how we long for them and may the enjoyment they've always brought never dim. Happy Birthday me!
There must come a point in our lives when our birthday fails to capture your imagination in the way it might have done 20 or 30 years ago. It just seems like the passing of another year, that moment of transition when the significance of the day doesn't quite hold the same fascination that it should. Still, it'll be lovely to see my loving and supportive family and tonight a quiet Shabbat evening with very close family will have a special resonance.
Long gone though are those days of youthful merriment when all of your school friends or people you grew up would lavish you with presents and games thickly wrapped in veritable rainforests of paper whereupon mum and dad would rush into the living room, gather up all of your mates and decide quite emphatically that this would be the ideal moment to play Pass the Parcel or Musical Chairs.
Then the ropiest of record players would boom out of the tiniest of speakers and a spontaneous outburst of raucous laughter and ear splitting screaming would follow almost naturally. All of the kids would frantically scramble around for the most advantageous position equipped with nothing more than an uncontrollable urge to create merry hell and havoc. Was it always the way with children? They love to be the centre of the attention, hogging the limelight, good naturedly excitable but still a lovable nuisance.
But now at the ripe old age of 56 these are the years of proud parenthood, reflecting fondly on those halcyon days when we were kids, caught up in the throes of joyful curiosity and discovery, when life was all about blowing out candles on birthday cakes and the children's entertainer would blow up balloons, pulling rabbits out of hats, performing yet another set of magic tricks and then producing silk handkerchiefs out of nothing. Then if you came from Kensington and Chelsea you would probably get tea and scones with tiny sandwiches shaped in small triangles. Oh for the joys of the privileged classes.
Nowadays birthdays are much more elaborate occasions than perhaps they used to be. Now of course the children of today not only expect better looking presents they will undoubtedly demand them. In our day it was the traditional Lego or Meccano, that wonderfully intriguing mix of coloured bricks and in later years, electrical mechanisms that would light up without any prompting.
In the earliest of years it was the good old fashioned, tried and trusted box set of clay or plasticine followed later on in life with the ingenious Etch A Sketch, an object which would immeasurably enhance your artistic capabilities to such a point that some of us may have thought that by our eighth birthday we must have felt that we were ready to become accomplished graphic designers.
Then we were confronted with Ker Plunk and Frustration which in their varying ways were solely designed to send us into a mild state of panic, bewildered children who didn't quite know what we were supposed to do with such strange kids toys.
Frustration was fun in its way but hardly intellectually stimulating in as much that you weren't sure why you were given these quaint looking counters and then clearly instructed to move those counters around a plastic board. Then by some miracle of science you would be eventually acclaimed as winner if you'd managed to land all of the said counters in a straight row, the number six taking a prominent role in your victory.
Ker Plunk seemed to pass me by but having been subjected to innumerably repetitive TV advertising campaigns at roughly this time of the year, it still seems to be shrouded in the thick mists of mystery that never really lifted. What is this weird piece of plastic with miniature slides or chutes where weird and wonderful things happen when sticks are withdrawn from the heat of action and general mayhem ensues?
Now of course maturity and adulthood mellows the soul. Books have always been an enduring source of pleasure and the acquisition of book tokens or money for books has never lost that very personal appeal. Music also provides something that is uplifting and although vinyl is no longer as accessible as it used to be and Spotify seems to be the only resource for those with a musical ear, I can though still find great delight in the You Tube platform.
The mind travels back blissfully to my barmitzvah when the entire family would surround you with those pre- birthday surprises that still send a tickle of amusement through your body. What you have to remember here is that it was 1975, the economy was in a familiar state of stagnant meltdown and all Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister could do was smoke his comforting pipe or turn up devotedly to his beloved hometown football club Huddersfield Town every so often.
Meanwhile back in downtown Ilford, Essex some of us were reciting our barmitzvah piece on the Saturday morning before raving the day away on the Sunday in frilly ruffed shirts, platform shoes and drainpipe trousers. It was a seminal moment in my young life and one of those formidable rites of passage when yours truly would have to make the most awkward adjustment to adolescence.
Then the barrage of presents came winging their way towards me unexpectedly and totally without any consultation or any kind of real understanding of what it all meant. Suddenly there were hundreds of fountain pens, the new and very voguish calculators and for whatever reason, clothes valets. At this point something inside me wanted to complain and complain vehemently.
Still, years later you begin to look back on special anniversaries or birthdays with a wistful smile and a sense that it was indeed just a passing phase. Birthdays are now numerical landmarks rather than vitally important excuses for wild parties and loads of booze. Birthdays are now that rather charming set of ornaments on your mantelpiece, that distant throwback to a simpler time when we could once again jump onto our bikes, hurtle around street corners with gaping red bruises on our knees and then do the same thing all over the time. Birthdays- how we long for them and may the enjoyment they've always brought never dim. Happy Birthday me!
Wednesday 21 November 2018
From Bob Paisley at Liverpool and Keith Burkinshaw at Spurs comes the new kid on the block Eddie Howe
From Bob Paisley at Liverpool, Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest and Keith Burkinshaw at Spurs comes the new kid on the block Eddie Howe.
Forty years ago the old English first division counted among its ranks some of the richest managerial talents the country would ever see. There was the inimitable Brian Clough, a straight backed, hard-hitting and forcefully forthright Nottingham Forest manager who, seemingly overnight, guided a completely unfashionable and mediocre Nottingham Forest side from the middle of the old Second Division to the dizzy, showbiz heights of First Division League Champions and then followed it up for good measure with two successive European Cups against Malmo of Sweden and then afro haired Kevin Keegan's Hamburg.
Then there was the equally as direct and pragmatic Keith Burkinshaw who at Spurs sprinkled gold-dust, icing sugar and a fair dollop of honey onto a Tottenham team wrapped up with the prettiest Argentinian bows in the shape of Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricardo Villa. With a flick of the finger, Spurs became a magical fantasy world of short passing, sweeping gloriously from back to front with football that was bewitching and beguiling, all ebbing and flowing, dainty delicacy that lit up the British game.
At Liverpool of course things had never really changed since the giddy days of Bill Shankly. After Shankly died, a vast majority of the Anfield Kop were convinced that the empire had fallen, the columns had come crashing down and nothing would replace it. Then there was Bob Paisley, an Englishman with a thick slice of homegrown reality and perspective. Paisley had been under no illusions about the size of the task because none thought Liverpool would ever be the same again.
But they were wrong. Paisley maintained the status quo at Liverpool, cautiously moulding, fashioning and designing a new set of fabrics with much the same material. In came the likes of Ray Kennedy, Terry Mcdermott, Graham Souness, Kenny Dalglish and a whole squadron of troops and red cadets fully equipped with the tools necessary to play the game Paisley preached. Liverpool were gloriously simple, beautifully pleasing to the eye, an aesthete's dream, pure, unblemished, quick and incisive on the ball, neatly precise in possession.
So it is that the mind turns to the current breed of English football managers desperate to leave their indelible impression on not only their club but the international scene. There's Eddie Howe, surely one of the most engaging, amiable and deeply thoughtful managers in club football. Howe is manager of Bournemouth, a team who, only twenty years ago, were going nowhere in particular apart from the bargain basement category of football's lowest point.
But a couple of seasons later Howe, accompanied by a clear thinking and progressive coaching staff at Bournemouth, gave the whole of this seaside town a sharp injection of hope, pride and confidence from which they have never looked back on since. From the hollow depths of the lowest of divisions Bournemouth dragged themselves forcefully up by the boot laces and soared to the summit of the Premier League like a seagull serenely floating near the Boscombe promenade.
What makes Howe's emergence so astonishing is the manner in which he seems to be conducting himself. There is none of the well intentioned bluster and infectious humour of a Clough, none of the down- to earth honesty of a Bob Paisley, nor the directness of a Keith Burkinshaw. Eddie Howe, in both the voice and manner of West Ham's Sir Trevor Brooking, has certainly got what it takes. Howe is a well educated footballing man, a man of finely articulated vowels, a positive approach to the game and splendid principles, a man doing things his way.
In that black track suit with the familiar cherry crest for all to see, Howe chews his gum, analysing and absorbing, taking everything in, noting all of the most important details and checking everything thoroughly just in case the players may have forgotten his team talk. Howe has just produced Bournemouth's first England player Callum Wilson, a striker of quick turns and darting pace, a player with a natural touch and goal- scoring pedigree.
The chances are that because the likes of Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool and Mauricio Pochettino at Spurs are monopolising the big time headlines, Howe must feel as if the rest of the footballing community are simply taking him for granted. Why on earth is he bothering to manage a football club that plays its football by the English seaside when he could be leading out a team who play their football next to an upper class country estate?
And yet it does seem to be working for this humble and self effacing man who just gets on with his job. He keeps learning his trade as if totally unaware of the fuss and well earned adulation around him. Howe is a manager of huge intelligence, wisdom that defies his age and an exceptionally well rounded attitude towards football management that sets him well and truly apart from the rest.
At the moment Bournemouth are once again baffling the sceptics, proving themselves most commendably in a footballing bear pit where only the fittest will survive. Howe is calm, polite, unassuming, yet to be seen dropping out of a nightclub at three in the morning, clean and fresh faced. Howe, to quote the most tired cliche, takes every game as it comes and there is none of the pompous bombast of a Mourinho although Jose would undoubtedly deny such a foul accusation.
Howe is sensible, goes to bed early, quite obviously sprightly and fit, a man full of the dynamism and super charged exuberance of a manager who wants to win things and preferably now rather than later. Eddie Howe represents the cutting edge of football management technology, always receptive to new ideas and fully implementing all of the new methods and strategies.
Meanwhile there is Sean Dyche at Burnley who last season performed miracles with a newly promoted Burnley team who still seemed stuck in a LS Lowry painting. Burnley were a team of matchstick men who clocked out of the factories and mills with black soot on their faces. They were hard working, oozing efficiency and no little skill.
Last season Burnley were like a team revitalised and refreshed. Suddenly, the team in claret and blue who played their game at Turfmoor wore the most impeccable pin striped suits and well ironed City trousers with perhaps a dapper top hat for good measure. Burnley played like a team transformed, reformed, swiftly moving the ball between themselves without feeling socially awkward. The critics though thought they were mere just flash in the pan artists rather than genuine ball playing artists.
There is still a school of thought that Burnley, although well balanced and firmly built, do have design faults and architectural flaws. Sean Dyche would probably insist that Burnley are no Barcelona or Real Madrid and that this season may become much more of a painstaking struggle than perhaps he thought it would be. Still, the season has much to offer and surprise us and Dyche remains both upbeat and optimistic which has to be a good thing.
So it is that the Premier League season, after its last international break before the end of the year, returns to the fun and games that invariably surface when the temperatures drop and the businesslike nature of its money crazy mentality dictates to all. We must hope that the likes of Eddie Howe will continue to promote football in its most favourable light, passing with their carnival of passes, rotating and interchanging rather like those Hungarian Magyars who once swept away England at Wembley in 1953. Football needs men like Eddie Howe because football appreciates managers who try to do the right things at the right time. Let's hear it for the man at Bournemouth football club.
Forty years ago the old English first division counted among its ranks some of the richest managerial talents the country would ever see. There was the inimitable Brian Clough, a straight backed, hard-hitting and forcefully forthright Nottingham Forest manager who, seemingly overnight, guided a completely unfashionable and mediocre Nottingham Forest side from the middle of the old Second Division to the dizzy, showbiz heights of First Division League Champions and then followed it up for good measure with two successive European Cups against Malmo of Sweden and then afro haired Kevin Keegan's Hamburg.
Then there was the equally as direct and pragmatic Keith Burkinshaw who at Spurs sprinkled gold-dust, icing sugar and a fair dollop of honey onto a Tottenham team wrapped up with the prettiest Argentinian bows in the shape of Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricardo Villa. With a flick of the finger, Spurs became a magical fantasy world of short passing, sweeping gloriously from back to front with football that was bewitching and beguiling, all ebbing and flowing, dainty delicacy that lit up the British game.
At Liverpool of course things had never really changed since the giddy days of Bill Shankly. After Shankly died, a vast majority of the Anfield Kop were convinced that the empire had fallen, the columns had come crashing down and nothing would replace it. Then there was Bob Paisley, an Englishman with a thick slice of homegrown reality and perspective. Paisley had been under no illusions about the size of the task because none thought Liverpool would ever be the same again.
But they were wrong. Paisley maintained the status quo at Liverpool, cautiously moulding, fashioning and designing a new set of fabrics with much the same material. In came the likes of Ray Kennedy, Terry Mcdermott, Graham Souness, Kenny Dalglish and a whole squadron of troops and red cadets fully equipped with the tools necessary to play the game Paisley preached. Liverpool were gloriously simple, beautifully pleasing to the eye, an aesthete's dream, pure, unblemished, quick and incisive on the ball, neatly precise in possession.
So it is that the mind turns to the current breed of English football managers desperate to leave their indelible impression on not only their club but the international scene. There's Eddie Howe, surely one of the most engaging, amiable and deeply thoughtful managers in club football. Howe is manager of Bournemouth, a team who, only twenty years ago, were going nowhere in particular apart from the bargain basement category of football's lowest point.
But a couple of seasons later Howe, accompanied by a clear thinking and progressive coaching staff at Bournemouth, gave the whole of this seaside town a sharp injection of hope, pride and confidence from which they have never looked back on since. From the hollow depths of the lowest of divisions Bournemouth dragged themselves forcefully up by the boot laces and soared to the summit of the Premier League like a seagull serenely floating near the Boscombe promenade.
What makes Howe's emergence so astonishing is the manner in which he seems to be conducting himself. There is none of the well intentioned bluster and infectious humour of a Clough, none of the down- to earth honesty of a Bob Paisley, nor the directness of a Keith Burkinshaw. Eddie Howe, in both the voice and manner of West Ham's Sir Trevor Brooking, has certainly got what it takes. Howe is a well educated footballing man, a man of finely articulated vowels, a positive approach to the game and splendid principles, a man doing things his way.
In that black track suit with the familiar cherry crest for all to see, Howe chews his gum, analysing and absorbing, taking everything in, noting all of the most important details and checking everything thoroughly just in case the players may have forgotten his team talk. Howe has just produced Bournemouth's first England player Callum Wilson, a striker of quick turns and darting pace, a player with a natural touch and goal- scoring pedigree.
The chances are that because the likes of Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool and Mauricio Pochettino at Spurs are monopolising the big time headlines, Howe must feel as if the rest of the footballing community are simply taking him for granted. Why on earth is he bothering to manage a football club that plays its football by the English seaside when he could be leading out a team who play their football next to an upper class country estate?
And yet it does seem to be working for this humble and self effacing man who just gets on with his job. He keeps learning his trade as if totally unaware of the fuss and well earned adulation around him. Howe is a manager of huge intelligence, wisdom that defies his age and an exceptionally well rounded attitude towards football management that sets him well and truly apart from the rest.
At the moment Bournemouth are once again baffling the sceptics, proving themselves most commendably in a footballing bear pit where only the fittest will survive. Howe is calm, polite, unassuming, yet to be seen dropping out of a nightclub at three in the morning, clean and fresh faced. Howe, to quote the most tired cliche, takes every game as it comes and there is none of the pompous bombast of a Mourinho although Jose would undoubtedly deny such a foul accusation.
Howe is sensible, goes to bed early, quite obviously sprightly and fit, a man full of the dynamism and super charged exuberance of a manager who wants to win things and preferably now rather than later. Eddie Howe represents the cutting edge of football management technology, always receptive to new ideas and fully implementing all of the new methods and strategies.
Meanwhile there is Sean Dyche at Burnley who last season performed miracles with a newly promoted Burnley team who still seemed stuck in a LS Lowry painting. Burnley were a team of matchstick men who clocked out of the factories and mills with black soot on their faces. They were hard working, oozing efficiency and no little skill.
Last season Burnley were like a team revitalised and refreshed. Suddenly, the team in claret and blue who played their game at Turfmoor wore the most impeccable pin striped suits and well ironed City trousers with perhaps a dapper top hat for good measure. Burnley played like a team transformed, reformed, swiftly moving the ball between themselves without feeling socially awkward. The critics though thought they were mere just flash in the pan artists rather than genuine ball playing artists.
There is still a school of thought that Burnley, although well balanced and firmly built, do have design faults and architectural flaws. Sean Dyche would probably insist that Burnley are no Barcelona or Real Madrid and that this season may become much more of a painstaking struggle than perhaps he thought it would be. Still, the season has much to offer and surprise us and Dyche remains both upbeat and optimistic which has to be a good thing.
So it is that the Premier League season, after its last international break before the end of the year, returns to the fun and games that invariably surface when the temperatures drop and the businesslike nature of its money crazy mentality dictates to all. We must hope that the likes of Eddie Howe will continue to promote football in its most favourable light, passing with their carnival of passes, rotating and interchanging rather like those Hungarian Magyars who once swept away England at Wembley in 1953. Football needs men like Eddie Howe because football appreciates managers who try to do the right things at the right time. Let's hear it for the man at Bournemouth football club.
Monday 19 November 2018
A day to remember - the annual ex Jewish servicemen's remembrance ceremony.
A day to remember - the annual ex Jewish servicemen's remembrance ceremony.
The day was heavy with sadness, reverence, remembrance and sombre commemoration. Above Whitehall in the heart of London, a helicopter whirred ominously and insistently around the brightest and clearest of blue skies. As a homage to the ex Jewish servicemen and women who had given everything during the Second World War, it was a fitting metaphor for a Sunday afternoon in the middle of November in the heart of London.
In perhaps one of the mildest of autumns in recent history, Whitehall was dutifully mournful, deeply respectful and admirably reflective. Occasionally, the rustling brown leaves could be heard quite clearly, chasing each other, scurrying and scampering towards some unknown destination. But then there was the eerie and moving silence, a silence that almost had its very own eloquence, needing no explanation whatsoever and if anything was perfectly self explanatory.
They gathered in their solemn multitudes, heads covered in a thousand shades of Jewish kipot, berets in yet more shades of maroon or most appropriately black. They came from France, all four corners of London and then yet more arrivals. They'd travelled from Ilford, Edgware, Hendon, Leeds, Nottingham, Liverpool and Manchester. They'd crossed continents, flown in from distant shores and came because they had to be there, expressing their innermost feelings and heartfelt emotions.
They were the men and women whose unstinting sacrifice and dedication to duty through the War had maintained morale, who'd fought in the trenches, who'd protected each other in the gravest moments of crises, who'd bandied together and rallied together heroically when adversity and defeat might have seemed the only option. They were the ones who'd taken shelter in London Underground Tube stations as the bombs and bullets blasted and thudded out their horrible sounds of discordance and ugly destruction.
But 73 years after the end of hostilities over the landing grounds and beaches of Churchill's noble Britain, we came to mark again their wonderful contributions in a way that could never ever be faulted. There was a lingering sense of honourable gravitas about yesterday afternoon in Whitehall, a sense that for all the heartache and tragedy that had gone before the human spirit is alive and well and flourishing.
Of course it was a difficult day because these days have to be and it would have been perfectly understandable if a million tears were privately shed. This was a day for quietness, strength of character, humbling sincerity, global integrity, for being true to ourselves, solitary reminiscence, bowing the head on innumerable occasions, for standing still, for trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, wrestling with the ghastly facts, figures and statistics of wartime fatalities.
At Horseguards Parade, the men and women in impeccably smart coats and uniforms held onto their standards, slowly filling the ground with their nostalgic thoughts, a cheery joke or two to lighten the sullen mood. It was all so long ago and yet it wasn't because minds were still scarred with grotesque sights and images, the bloody stains of trauma and death. These were the lovely men and women who were huddling together in warm harmony, still together, still united, giant hearts that could never ever be broken.
Undoubtedly they were still traumatised by the horrific and obscene losses of life, the battles, the separations, the rat a tat of those brutally, cacophonously deafening bullets. They were here to recall the families that had been broken irreparably, the children who were torn away from sobbing parents. It had all been a dreadful loss of life and the most horrendous crime against humanity. The ex Jewish servicemen and women were here to pray and plead for eternal world peace, to chant their hymns in the most fervent hope that none should ever pick up a gun or destroy a city ever again.
We looked up from our prayer books at the greyness of the buildings, the timeless respectability of government buildings, the arched windows and the solid impregnability of white brickwork. But then the white started fading unmistakably when the sun went in and daylight was replaced by inevitable early evening. It was almost as if the whole of Whitehall was trying to tell us something we couldn't possibly hear.
For the best part of the service there was a ten minute spell when you felt helpless, overwhelmed by the momentousness of it all, the immensity of grief, the cutting callousness of mindless murder, the depth of contemplation in every single mind. We walked uprightly towards Whitehall, to the enduring Memorials, the Unknown Soldiers, the cluster of carved black soldiers with rifles in their hands and tears in their eyes from the senseless futility of War.
It was now that you became painfully aware of your surroundings. In the distance you could still hear the distant echo of Sunday traffic, the sweet whistling of birds, trees, now naked and bare but still melodious, yellowing leaves whispering their deferential notes. There was a regimented uniformity about the day and yet it still felt as though all of the ceremony and formality was so important and essential.
Shortly, we would all line up in all our orderly columns and formations. Now the whole occasion took on a rather too serious complexion. Beautiful flowers and wreaths were laid at the memorial, men dressed in military uniform shook gentle hands and then spoke in softly soothing tones. More prayers were said before the men and women set off once again on their final walk of the day. All the while they kept thinking and kept thinking back, utterly dignified figures, heroes one and all but never coveting attention for a single moment.
And then finally there were the men and women in their thick black coats, vivid red poppies securely tied to their lapel and pride swelling quite noticeably by the minute, smiling their warm acknowledgements and weeping the smallest of tears. It had been a day none of us would ever forget because we knew exactly how they must have been feeling.
We were the 21st century generation peering over the shoulders of the 20th century and finding that although history had told us a bitterly cautionary tale we would never ever overlook they who had given us such whole hearted heroism and bravery. November afternoons in Whitehall should always be warmly cherished . Lest we ever forget.
The day was heavy with sadness, reverence, remembrance and sombre commemoration. Above Whitehall in the heart of London, a helicopter whirred ominously and insistently around the brightest and clearest of blue skies. As a homage to the ex Jewish servicemen and women who had given everything during the Second World War, it was a fitting metaphor for a Sunday afternoon in the middle of November in the heart of London.
In perhaps one of the mildest of autumns in recent history, Whitehall was dutifully mournful, deeply respectful and admirably reflective. Occasionally, the rustling brown leaves could be heard quite clearly, chasing each other, scurrying and scampering towards some unknown destination. But then there was the eerie and moving silence, a silence that almost had its very own eloquence, needing no explanation whatsoever and if anything was perfectly self explanatory.
They gathered in their solemn multitudes, heads covered in a thousand shades of Jewish kipot, berets in yet more shades of maroon or most appropriately black. They came from France, all four corners of London and then yet more arrivals. They'd travelled from Ilford, Edgware, Hendon, Leeds, Nottingham, Liverpool and Manchester. They'd crossed continents, flown in from distant shores and came because they had to be there, expressing their innermost feelings and heartfelt emotions.
They were the men and women whose unstinting sacrifice and dedication to duty through the War had maintained morale, who'd fought in the trenches, who'd protected each other in the gravest moments of crises, who'd bandied together and rallied together heroically when adversity and defeat might have seemed the only option. They were the ones who'd taken shelter in London Underground Tube stations as the bombs and bullets blasted and thudded out their horrible sounds of discordance and ugly destruction.
But 73 years after the end of hostilities over the landing grounds and beaches of Churchill's noble Britain, we came to mark again their wonderful contributions in a way that could never ever be faulted. There was a lingering sense of honourable gravitas about yesterday afternoon in Whitehall, a sense that for all the heartache and tragedy that had gone before the human spirit is alive and well and flourishing.
Of course it was a difficult day because these days have to be and it would have been perfectly understandable if a million tears were privately shed. This was a day for quietness, strength of character, humbling sincerity, global integrity, for being true to ourselves, solitary reminiscence, bowing the head on innumerable occasions, for standing still, for trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, wrestling with the ghastly facts, figures and statistics of wartime fatalities.
At Horseguards Parade, the men and women in impeccably smart coats and uniforms held onto their standards, slowly filling the ground with their nostalgic thoughts, a cheery joke or two to lighten the sullen mood. It was all so long ago and yet it wasn't because minds were still scarred with grotesque sights and images, the bloody stains of trauma and death. These were the lovely men and women who were huddling together in warm harmony, still together, still united, giant hearts that could never ever be broken.
Undoubtedly they were still traumatised by the horrific and obscene losses of life, the battles, the separations, the rat a tat of those brutally, cacophonously deafening bullets. They were here to recall the families that had been broken irreparably, the children who were torn away from sobbing parents. It had all been a dreadful loss of life and the most horrendous crime against humanity. The ex Jewish servicemen and women were here to pray and plead for eternal world peace, to chant their hymns in the most fervent hope that none should ever pick up a gun or destroy a city ever again.
We looked up from our prayer books at the greyness of the buildings, the timeless respectability of government buildings, the arched windows and the solid impregnability of white brickwork. But then the white started fading unmistakably when the sun went in and daylight was replaced by inevitable early evening. It was almost as if the whole of Whitehall was trying to tell us something we couldn't possibly hear.
For the best part of the service there was a ten minute spell when you felt helpless, overwhelmed by the momentousness of it all, the immensity of grief, the cutting callousness of mindless murder, the depth of contemplation in every single mind. We walked uprightly towards Whitehall, to the enduring Memorials, the Unknown Soldiers, the cluster of carved black soldiers with rifles in their hands and tears in their eyes from the senseless futility of War.
It was now that you became painfully aware of your surroundings. In the distance you could still hear the distant echo of Sunday traffic, the sweet whistling of birds, trees, now naked and bare but still melodious, yellowing leaves whispering their deferential notes. There was a regimented uniformity about the day and yet it still felt as though all of the ceremony and formality was so important and essential.
Shortly, we would all line up in all our orderly columns and formations. Now the whole occasion took on a rather too serious complexion. Beautiful flowers and wreaths were laid at the memorial, men dressed in military uniform shook gentle hands and then spoke in softly soothing tones. More prayers were said before the men and women set off once again on their final walk of the day. All the while they kept thinking and kept thinking back, utterly dignified figures, heroes one and all but never coveting attention for a single moment.
And then finally there were the men and women in their thick black coats, vivid red poppies securely tied to their lapel and pride swelling quite noticeably by the minute, smiling their warm acknowledgements and weeping the smallest of tears. It had been a day none of us would ever forget because we knew exactly how they must have been feeling.
We were the 21st century generation peering over the shoulders of the 20th century and finding that although history had told us a bitterly cautionary tale we would never ever overlook they who had given us such whole hearted heroism and bravery. November afternoons in Whitehall should always be warmly cherished . Lest we ever forget.
Friday 16 November 2018
Oh what a farce? Government ministers fall like a deck of cards.
Oh what a farce? Government ministers fall like a deck of cards.
You could hardly make this one up. We have now entered the realms of farce, parody and music hall comedy, a throwback to the days when Victorian circus acts would parade around the ring as horses and elephants pranced around with wild abandon. Then for those who were interested there was the fairground outside where an entranced public would look at strange, distorted faces of themselves while staring at huge mirrors. Then there were strongmen flexing their muscles, the clowns with their amusing red noses, the fire eaters, the jugglers and then the incredible plate spinners. For the good, old fashioned circus read the English Government.
Oh yes. Ladies and Gentlemen it's time to present the British Government, a fine, upstanding body of men and women who have now fallen into the darkest pit of humiliation. It somehow beggars description. How on earth have we come to this? What on earth have we done wrong? This has to be some kind of sweet revenge for some pathetic indiscretion, some wounding retribution for something that we must have done but can barely remember.
Yesterday the entire British Cabinet ganged up on Prime Minister Theresa May and bullied her quite mercilessly, called her names, poked their malicious tongues at her and threatened to tell their teacher for something they may or may not have said. Then the nation watched aghast as the headmaster or headmistress pulled out the slipper and cane before reprimanding them. Ouch, that really did hurt Theresa? How could you do that and yet they did? She went back on her word and that's something that couldn't be tolerated.
One by one they came and went, falling on their swords, quitting and resigning, generally playing up like spoilt kids creating havoc on a school trip to the Science Museum. They dug out their catapults, released their childish stink bombs and flung paper aeroplanes at the teacher behind their back, noisy and unfeasibly disruptive children who were just asking for suspension. They shout and scream in the most shameful act of rebellion, jumping onto desks, slamming their desks for attention and then just making a terrible racket.
They followed each other in fairly quick succession. There were the junior ministers Suella Braverman and Shailesh Vara who were then joined by Work and Pensions secretary Esther Mcvey and, more importantly, the Brexit secretary Dominic Raab who must have thought this was some kind of cheap joke, a left over Tommy Cooper piece of magic and silliness that had gone terribly wrong. But it happened and one week in the middle of November begins to feel like the coldest and darkest day at the start of January. British politics seemed to hit rock bottom, the lowest common denominator, a foul stain on a tempestuous political landscape.
This is the morning after the night before and some of us are just emotionally exhausted by the fall out from the draft agreement for Brexit, a term now so annoyingly repetitive that we may have to refrain from using the worst of all Anglo Saxon expletives. When next we listen to our radios or cast a critical TV eye we may have to exercise self restraint. Sometimes you just wish you could lock them all away in some dark, empty room, send them to bed without any supper and tell them not to come out until they behave with some semblance of propriety, just a hint of politeness.
So let me give you another rundown on the latest list of rebels, mavericks, non conformists, turncoats, back stabbers, poison pen letter writers and ya boo sucks merchants. They stalk the back alleyways, creep along dimly lit streets, shifty and resentful, bitter and twisted figures. They wallow blithely in each other's misfortune and then put in an afternoon shift at the House of Commons. Some hunt in packs while others prefer their own company, always scheming and suspicious. Then they pounce on their unwitting victim before tearing them to shreds. It was ever thus in the House of Commons or should that be the House of Commoners.
Against this sinister backdrop of dark plots and Machiavellian, mischievous machinations there lie those skulking, slouching and shambling politicians with their thick coats and trilby hats tightly perched on their head. They light their cigarettes, a purple and blue puff of smoke drifting through the misty night air, cupping their hands for warmth. All hell has broken loose in the late night lobbies at the House of Commons.
Outside Westminster, the streets have emptied and the eerie silence is broken by a Route Master bus or rumbling cars that flash and then blink their headlights. It was widely assumed that the boys and girls who constitute the English parliament had made up their minds. Sadly, we were all mistaken because Brexit is still a work in progress and it looks as if things will remain in a state of complete confusion for ever more. We may have to put our lives on hold for as long as it takes Boris Johnson to brush those golden blond locks of hair.
Now there's a man who must be revelling in all this monstrous running commentary of accusation and counter accusation, pathetic posturing, piffling platitudes and absurd name calling. Boris Johnson, to all outward appearances, always looks as though his blond hair is beyond redemption, admittedly a wondrous intellect and the very model of eccentricity. He is now desperately trying to bring down a Prime Minister who probably knows that he hates her anyway.
We all know that Boris Johnson has delusions of grandeur, that the clearly egotistical in him would give anything for the keys to 10 Downing Street. Johnson has kept out of the limelight recently, presumably waiting for that opportune moment when Theresa May is at her most vulnerable. He'll then jump out shockingly from some some rain washed bush and insist that he is the man who should be running the country.
Johnson will drag his unsuspecting victim into a quiet cafe, demand that the terms for Brexit be dramatically tweaked and tampered with and do it his way. Because Boris's way is, quite obviously, the right way and you'd better believe it is. We always privately suspected that Boris was power hungry, relentlessly ambitious and determined to get his way. Now that he is no longer associated with the Cabinet Boris seems to be at his happiest. Boris now thinks that the coast is clear and he can say whatever he likes with utter impunity without fearing the consequences.
This has been a clever cloak and dagger almost military operation from all of those ex and serving Cabinet ministers because this is the time to attack the current Prime Minister and then try to knock her over like a set of skittles in a bowling alley. Boris Johnson is still mumbling and muttering under his breath, cursing and sneering, somehow all knowing and maybe deludedly superior to the rest of his ex Tory colleagues.
Johnson could be that loose cannon, that simmering volcano of jealousy perhaps, whimpering and wailing, gnashing his teeth, holding back the fury, that seething disapproval, a man with that Etonian sense of moral outrage, a supercilious grin and that epic hair with a mind of its own so to speak. Another Johnson from the pages of literary history said quite memorably that when a man is tired of London he is tired of life but there are no Boswells around so perhaps Boris Johnson does indeed have a soft spot for London and the rest of the world.
The likes of David Davis and Michael Gove have quite possibly said their piece and it's hard to tell whether neither knows what they want for the future welfare of the British people. Davis quit recently but still felt he had something worthwhile to offer the country and Michael Gove reminds you of one of those sixth form school prefects who knows everything and studies encyclopedias in his spare time.
But here we are back at the same drawing board and not really knowing how to react to anything in particular. We stare blankly at our TV screens, watch the latest well meaning outbursts on BBC's Question Time and pretend that it isn't really happening. We have to be imagining all of this, it'll just vanish one day and we'll all be left in a state of relieved euphoria. And yet when we woke up this morning it was still there, still bubbling away, boiling over rather like one of those old kettles in our kitchen that kept whistling away and lasted for goodness knows how long.
Eventually though some very considerate soul will take pity on us one day. One day we'll be spared this rackety, tiresome news story and political hot potato that looks less appetising by the day. Soon we may have to build shelters at the bottom of our garden just to escape from this constant blathering, this ear blasting cacophony of sound and noise, this idiotic ranting, this appalling abuse of power, these shameful verbal outpourings, this complete political mess.
One of these days we'll all wake up and it'll all have gone away, a seemingly eternal nightmare of bawling, bellowing voices and patronising playground insults now no more than a memory. We shall sit down to watch the early evening news, confident in the knowledge that no harm will come to our besieged ear drums.
There will be life after Brexit and one day next year in early April we'll wonder what all the fuss was about. We'll fling open the curtains or blinds, indulge ourselves in the biggest bowl of muesli or marmalade on toast, drink our first cup of Cappuccino and then prepare ourselves for a day free from the voices of anger, angst and hostility. The days of soft and hard Brexiteering, Irish backstops and front gardens, herbaceous borders and Custom Houses will be a thing of the past. If only.
Finally we can forget first referendums and second referendums, of in fighting and out fighting, personal grudges, mad temper tantrums and niggly irritations. Over two years have now passed since that fateful day when the good people of Great Britain said, quite categorically, that they wanted out of the European Union, to leave Europe for good, to rid ourselves of European bureaucrats and faceless law makers who just kept hindering our progress.
No longer would they have to be bound by Brussels red tape, the stifling laws imposed from on high. Britain wanted global recognition, more room to manoeuvre, space to breathe, the opportunity to trade and barter with the Far East, those tropical islands in the sun but then you probably knew that anyway. It's time to set sail into that big, wide world and time for Britain to conquer new lands and territories. It's so good to be healthy and alive. Oh for another discussion on Brexit. Please anything but.
You could hardly make this one up. We have now entered the realms of farce, parody and music hall comedy, a throwback to the days when Victorian circus acts would parade around the ring as horses and elephants pranced around with wild abandon. Then for those who were interested there was the fairground outside where an entranced public would look at strange, distorted faces of themselves while staring at huge mirrors. Then there were strongmen flexing their muscles, the clowns with their amusing red noses, the fire eaters, the jugglers and then the incredible plate spinners. For the good, old fashioned circus read the English Government.
Oh yes. Ladies and Gentlemen it's time to present the British Government, a fine, upstanding body of men and women who have now fallen into the darkest pit of humiliation. It somehow beggars description. How on earth have we come to this? What on earth have we done wrong? This has to be some kind of sweet revenge for some pathetic indiscretion, some wounding retribution for something that we must have done but can barely remember.
Yesterday the entire British Cabinet ganged up on Prime Minister Theresa May and bullied her quite mercilessly, called her names, poked their malicious tongues at her and threatened to tell their teacher for something they may or may not have said. Then the nation watched aghast as the headmaster or headmistress pulled out the slipper and cane before reprimanding them. Ouch, that really did hurt Theresa? How could you do that and yet they did? She went back on her word and that's something that couldn't be tolerated.
One by one they came and went, falling on their swords, quitting and resigning, generally playing up like spoilt kids creating havoc on a school trip to the Science Museum. They dug out their catapults, released their childish stink bombs and flung paper aeroplanes at the teacher behind their back, noisy and unfeasibly disruptive children who were just asking for suspension. They shout and scream in the most shameful act of rebellion, jumping onto desks, slamming their desks for attention and then just making a terrible racket.
They followed each other in fairly quick succession. There were the junior ministers Suella Braverman and Shailesh Vara who were then joined by Work and Pensions secretary Esther Mcvey and, more importantly, the Brexit secretary Dominic Raab who must have thought this was some kind of cheap joke, a left over Tommy Cooper piece of magic and silliness that had gone terribly wrong. But it happened and one week in the middle of November begins to feel like the coldest and darkest day at the start of January. British politics seemed to hit rock bottom, the lowest common denominator, a foul stain on a tempestuous political landscape.
This is the morning after the night before and some of us are just emotionally exhausted by the fall out from the draft agreement for Brexit, a term now so annoyingly repetitive that we may have to refrain from using the worst of all Anglo Saxon expletives. When next we listen to our radios or cast a critical TV eye we may have to exercise self restraint. Sometimes you just wish you could lock them all away in some dark, empty room, send them to bed without any supper and tell them not to come out until they behave with some semblance of propriety, just a hint of politeness.
So let me give you another rundown on the latest list of rebels, mavericks, non conformists, turncoats, back stabbers, poison pen letter writers and ya boo sucks merchants. They stalk the back alleyways, creep along dimly lit streets, shifty and resentful, bitter and twisted figures. They wallow blithely in each other's misfortune and then put in an afternoon shift at the House of Commons. Some hunt in packs while others prefer their own company, always scheming and suspicious. Then they pounce on their unwitting victim before tearing them to shreds. It was ever thus in the House of Commons or should that be the House of Commoners.
Against this sinister backdrop of dark plots and Machiavellian, mischievous machinations there lie those skulking, slouching and shambling politicians with their thick coats and trilby hats tightly perched on their head. They light their cigarettes, a purple and blue puff of smoke drifting through the misty night air, cupping their hands for warmth. All hell has broken loose in the late night lobbies at the House of Commons.
Outside Westminster, the streets have emptied and the eerie silence is broken by a Route Master bus or rumbling cars that flash and then blink their headlights. It was widely assumed that the boys and girls who constitute the English parliament had made up their minds. Sadly, we were all mistaken because Brexit is still a work in progress and it looks as if things will remain in a state of complete confusion for ever more. We may have to put our lives on hold for as long as it takes Boris Johnson to brush those golden blond locks of hair.
Now there's a man who must be revelling in all this monstrous running commentary of accusation and counter accusation, pathetic posturing, piffling platitudes and absurd name calling. Boris Johnson, to all outward appearances, always looks as though his blond hair is beyond redemption, admittedly a wondrous intellect and the very model of eccentricity. He is now desperately trying to bring down a Prime Minister who probably knows that he hates her anyway.
We all know that Boris Johnson has delusions of grandeur, that the clearly egotistical in him would give anything for the keys to 10 Downing Street. Johnson has kept out of the limelight recently, presumably waiting for that opportune moment when Theresa May is at her most vulnerable. He'll then jump out shockingly from some some rain washed bush and insist that he is the man who should be running the country.
Johnson will drag his unsuspecting victim into a quiet cafe, demand that the terms for Brexit be dramatically tweaked and tampered with and do it his way. Because Boris's way is, quite obviously, the right way and you'd better believe it is. We always privately suspected that Boris was power hungry, relentlessly ambitious and determined to get his way. Now that he is no longer associated with the Cabinet Boris seems to be at his happiest. Boris now thinks that the coast is clear and he can say whatever he likes with utter impunity without fearing the consequences.
This has been a clever cloak and dagger almost military operation from all of those ex and serving Cabinet ministers because this is the time to attack the current Prime Minister and then try to knock her over like a set of skittles in a bowling alley. Boris Johnson is still mumbling and muttering under his breath, cursing and sneering, somehow all knowing and maybe deludedly superior to the rest of his ex Tory colleagues.
Johnson could be that loose cannon, that simmering volcano of jealousy perhaps, whimpering and wailing, gnashing his teeth, holding back the fury, that seething disapproval, a man with that Etonian sense of moral outrage, a supercilious grin and that epic hair with a mind of its own so to speak. Another Johnson from the pages of literary history said quite memorably that when a man is tired of London he is tired of life but there are no Boswells around so perhaps Boris Johnson does indeed have a soft spot for London and the rest of the world.
The likes of David Davis and Michael Gove have quite possibly said their piece and it's hard to tell whether neither knows what they want for the future welfare of the British people. Davis quit recently but still felt he had something worthwhile to offer the country and Michael Gove reminds you of one of those sixth form school prefects who knows everything and studies encyclopedias in his spare time.
But here we are back at the same drawing board and not really knowing how to react to anything in particular. We stare blankly at our TV screens, watch the latest well meaning outbursts on BBC's Question Time and pretend that it isn't really happening. We have to be imagining all of this, it'll just vanish one day and we'll all be left in a state of relieved euphoria. And yet when we woke up this morning it was still there, still bubbling away, boiling over rather like one of those old kettles in our kitchen that kept whistling away and lasted for goodness knows how long.
Eventually though some very considerate soul will take pity on us one day. One day we'll be spared this rackety, tiresome news story and political hot potato that looks less appetising by the day. Soon we may have to build shelters at the bottom of our garden just to escape from this constant blathering, this ear blasting cacophony of sound and noise, this idiotic ranting, this appalling abuse of power, these shameful verbal outpourings, this complete political mess.
One of these days we'll all wake up and it'll all have gone away, a seemingly eternal nightmare of bawling, bellowing voices and patronising playground insults now no more than a memory. We shall sit down to watch the early evening news, confident in the knowledge that no harm will come to our besieged ear drums.
There will be life after Brexit and one day next year in early April we'll wonder what all the fuss was about. We'll fling open the curtains or blinds, indulge ourselves in the biggest bowl of muesli or marmalade on toast, drink our first cup of Cappuccino and then prepare ourselves for a day free from the voices of anger, angst and hostility. The days of soft and hard Brexiteering, Irish backstops and front gardens, herbaceous borders and Custom Houses will be a thing of the past. If only.
Finally we can forget first referendums and second referendums, of in fighting and out fighting, personal grudges, mad temper tantrums and niggly irritations. Over two years have now passed since that fateful day when the good people of Great Britain said, quite categorically, that they wanted out of the European Union, to leave Europe for good, to rid ourselves of European bureaucrats and faceless law makers who just kept hindering our progress.
No longer would they have to be bound by Brussels red tape, the stifling laws imposed from on high. Britain wanted global recognition, more room to manoeuvre, space to breathe, the opportunity to trade and barter with the Far East, those tropical islands in the sun but then you probably knew that anyway. It's time to set sail into that big, wide world and time for Britain to conquer new lands and territories. It's so good to be healthy and alive. Oh for another discussion on Brexit. Please anything but.
Wednesday 14 November 2018
Joe Cole- the complete article, a footballer of genuine quality.
Joe Cole- the complete article, a footballer of genuine quality.
You can always tell when a footballer has something special about him, something indefinable but, quite certainly, tangible. Joe Cole, who announced his retirement from competitive football today, was one such player, a vastly talented, hugely improvisational and multi layered midfield player who almost fell directly into the lap of an excited West Ham United team whose reputation for producing such players could be traced right back to the 1960s when the famous Three Musketeers Bobby Moore, Sir Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters adorned the wide green acres of the Boleyn Ground.
Back then of course a gentleman who went by the name of Wally St Pier spotted both Moore, Hurst and Peters and with the most brilliant perception knew he had something he could work with. St Pier was West Ham's shrewd and sagacious scout, a man who knew a diamond when he saw one and did his utmost to nurture and guide all three players to that chandelier lit day when England won the World Cup and West Ham were declared the official club representatives who had made that day possible.
For Joe Cole though the rise to star struck prominence more recently was equally as noticeable and stark. When Tony Carr, another of West Ham's most distinguished talent spotters of modern times, told Harry Redknapp, the then West Ham manager that he had gold dust in his possession we knew we were about to witness one of the most naturally gifted and artistic players the English game would ever see.
From a very early age Cole seemed to possess all of those intrinsically beautiful ball skills which Upton Park fans at West Ham had once been presented with in the shape of one Sir Trevor Brooking and another Alan Devonshire during the heady 1970s. Once again, Cole was almost a prototype of the midfield exhibitionist who breathed style, creativity and class every time he touched the ball.
Cole always had something of the street artist and bohemian about him that was very distinctive and eye catching, capturing the mood of a game completely with something that maybe lesser mortals couldn't quite match. Cole always seemed to have time on the ball, pausing for precious seconds, waiting for the right moment to thread that sumptuously threaded pass that landed almost inevitably right at the feet of his colleagues.
Joe Cole gave us five star demonstrations in footballing art galleries, a well mannered and measured player, judging games, taking the temperature of important games and then controlling the centre of the midfield with easy and then seemingly, miraculous passes into spaces with either long, short or diagonal balls that would just slice open opposition's defences.
When a teenage Joe Cole signed on the dotted line for the club before a League match with his father beside him, West Ham could hardly contain their excitement. Cole was a West Ham player, a player of refinement, an impressive footballing intellect, a passionate love for the game's finer nuances and above all, a player who just wanted to express himself in a way that some of us thought we would never set eyes on again.
Cole, of course was only part of what would become known as the Golden Generation of West Ham players who knew that one day their ability would be rewarded with a lasting place in the England side. Cole would be joined by Michael Carrick, Rio Ferdinand and Jermaine Defoe who could also strike fear into the hearts of any defence with his speed and lethal finishing skills.
But then Cole, in tandem with Carrick, Ferdinand and Defoe were seduced by the temptations of bigger theatres and footballing stages. In the summer of 2003 Cole eventually signed for Chelsea as a result of the very persuasive silver tongue of Claudio Ranieri, today ironically appointed as the new Fulham manager.
Cole would go on to win a whole succession of Premier League titles, FA Cups, trophies galore and international honours that almost became a logical sequence of events. Cole stroked the ball, caressed the ball as if it were something that had great sentimental value. Cole had timing, cunning, a player of the keenest observational powers rather like an astronomer seeking the answers to the mysteries of the universe. Cole was precise, deeply imaginative in his use of the first time pass, almost years ahead of his contemporaries in thought and deed.
During the 1960s Ron Greenwood once described Martin Peters as a player ten years ahead of his time and the parallels could have been made with Joe Cole. Peters was a stately galleon whose navigational powers on a football pitch could never be argued with. But when the ship set sail Peters was renowned for those far post headers and that clever ghosting into space to meet with the ball.
Cole of course was the complete all rounder, full of deceptive tricks, flicks, subtlety and magical turns and twists out of the tightest of predicaments. He could also run with the ball with an admirable ambition and enterprise that none who tried to stop him, could ever achieve. He would weave his way through open gaps, dropping shoulders deliberately, dragging back the ball with damaging frequency and then stepping over the ball as if the circus had come to town.
Above all Cole was a player of delightful simplicity, never over elaborating where none was required and only adding pretty embellishments when the occasional demanded. Cole's one moment of crowning glory was almost destined to be played out at the ultimate of all international tournaments.
During a World Cup group qualifying match against Sweden in 2006, Cole was covered in the most purple of all robes with quite the most stunning goal of any World Cup in recent years. Trapping the ball with his chest a considerable distance from the Swedish penalty area, Cole jumped briefly to control the ball before swinging his kicking foot and then releasing a gorgeously struck volley that dipped over the Swedish keeper. A stick of dynamite had suddenly gone off in the Swedish net and Cole was mobbed by a mass of incredulous red England shirts.
With the passing of years Cole's all round game seem to lose much of the effectiveness and potency that was always seen at its best at Chelsea. Cole returned to West Ham but the moment had gone for both Cole and West Ham. There were the brief flashes of inspiration but time had moved on for the young prodigy who West Ham had so gratefully discovered. Cole went through the motions before moving on to Aston Villa where the claret was never of the same vintage. The taste and bouquet was different and you'd have been hard pressed to find any vineyards in Birmingham.
In the last couple of years or so Cole ventured into American soccer fields but although the feeling for the game was unmistakably there, this was not the age of the Tampa Bay Rowdies or the New York Cosmos.The memories of George Best, Rodney Marsh and Bobby Moore could still be fondly retold but Cole had probably had enough and retirement beckoned.
Yesterday, Joe Cole retired from football at the ripe old age of 37 and another one of English football's most treasured showboaters hung up his boots. Comparisons with previous members of this most exclusive club such as the aforesaid Rodney Marsh, Tony Currie, Alan Hudson and Stan Bowles are patently obvious. Cole though was the kind of player English football would always pick out from the often frantic urgency of the modern game, a midfield playmaker of glorious, game changing authenticity, the mark of brilliance.
For those of us who follow the team from the London Stadium this is the story of what might have been and if only Cole had changed his mind before signing for Chelsea. West Ham fans may never know. But there can be no regrets or bitterness for Joe Cole can take his rightful place in the football Hall of Fame.
Cole lifted us out of our seats, compelled us to believe that anything was possible if you could only put your mind to it. Cole played his football in a way that was easily identifiable, never afraid to try the impossible and treating a football with an enduring love and affection. If only we could find more like him although Gareth Southgate can never be accused of not trying. Happy retirement Joe.
You can always tell when a footballer has something special about him, something indefinable but, quite certainly, tangible. Joe Cole, who announced his retirement from competitive football today, was one such player, a vastly talented, hugely improvisational and multi layered midfield player who almost fell directly into the lap of an excited West Ham United team whose reputation for producing such players could be traced right back to the 1960s when the famous Three Musketeers Bobby Moore, Sir Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters adorned the wide green acres of the Boleyn Ground.
Back then of course a gentleman who went by the name of Wally St Pier spotted both Moore, Hurst and Peters and with the most brilliant perception knew he had something he could work with. St Pier was West Ham's shrewd and sagacious scout, a man who knew a diamond when he saw one and did his utmost to nurture and guide all three players to that chandelier lit day when England won the World Cup and West Ham were declared the official club representatives who had made that day possible.
For Joe Cole though the rise to star struck prominence more recently was equally as noticeable and stark. When Tony Carr, another of West Ham's most distinguished talent spotters of modern times, told Harry Redknapp, the then West Ham manager that he had gold dust in his possession we knew we were about to witness one of the most naturally gifted and artistic players the English game would ever see.
From a very early age Cole seemed to possess all of those intrinsically beautiful ball skills which Upton Park fans at West Ham had once been presented with in the shape of one Sir Trevor Brooking and another Alan Devonshire during the heady 1970s. Once again, Cole was almost a prototype of the midfield exhibitionist who breathed style, creativity and class every time he touched the ball.
Cole always had something of the street artist and bohemian about him that was very distinctive and eye catching, capturing the mood of a game completely with something that maybe lesser mortals couldn't quite match. Cole always seemed to have time on the ball, pausing for precious seconds, waiting for the right moment to thread that sumptuously threaded pass that landed almost inevitably right at the feet of his colleagues.
Joe Cole gave us five star demonstrations in footballing art galleries, a well mannered and measured player, judging games, taking the temperature of important games and then controlling the centre of the midfield with easy and then seemingly, miraculous passes into spaces with either long, short or diagonal balls that would just slice open opposition's defences.
When a teenage Joe Cole signed on the dotted line for the club before a League match with his father beside him, West Ham could hardly contain their excitement. Cole was a West Ham player, a player of refinement, an impressive footballing intellect, a passionate love for the game's finer nuances and above all, a player who just wanted to express himself in a way that some of us thought we would never set eyes on again.
Cole, of course was only part of what would become known as the Golden Generation of West Ham players who knew that one day their ability would be rewarded with a lasting place in the England side. Cole would be joined by Michael Carrick, Rio Ferdinand and Jermaine Defoe who could also strike fear into the hearts of any defence with his speed and lethal finishing skills.
But then Cole, in tandem with Carrick, Ferdinand and Defoe were seduced by the temptations of bigger theatres and footballing stages. In the summer of 2003 Cole eventually signed for Chelsea as a result of the very persuasive silver tongue of Claudio Ranieri, today ironically appointed as the new Fulham manager.
Cole would go on to win a whole succession of Premier League titles, FA Cups, trophies galore and international honours that almost became a logical sequence of events. Cole stroked the ball, caressed the ball as if it were something that had great sentimental value. Cole had timing, cunning, a player of the keenest observational powers rather like an astronomer seeking the answers to the mysteries of the universe. Cole was precise, deeply imaginative in his use of the first time pass, almost years ahead of his contemporaries in thought and deed.
During the 1960s Ron Greenwood once described Martin Peters as a player ten years ahead of his time and the parallels could have been made with Joe Cole. Peters was a stately galleon whose navigational powers on a football pitch could never be argued with. But when the ship set sail Peters was renowned for those far post headers and that clever ghosting into space to meet with the ball.
Cole of course was the complete all rounder, full of deceptive tricks, flicks, subtlety and magical turns and twists out of the tightest of predicaments. He could also run with the ball with an admirable ambition and enterprise that none who tried to stop him, could ever achieve. He would weave his way through open gaps, dropping shoulders deliberately, dragging back the ball with damaging frequency and then stepping over the ball as if the circus had come to town.
Above all Cole was a player of delightful simplicity, never over elaborating where none was required and only adding pretty embellishments when the occasional demanded. Cole's one moment of crowning glory was almost destined to be played out at the ultimate of all international tournaments.
During a World Cup group qualifying match against Sweden in 2006, Cole was covered in the most purple of all robes with quite the most stunning goal of any World Cup in recent years. Trapping the ball with his chest a considerable distance from the Swedish penalty area, Cole jumped briefly to control the ball before swinging his kicking foot and then releasing a gorgeously struck volley that dipped over the Swedish keeper. A stick of dynamite had suddenly gone off in the Swedish net and Cole was mobbed by a mass of incredulous red England shirts.
With the passing of years Cole's all round game seem to lose much of the effectiveness and potency that was always seen at its best at Chelsea. Cole returned to West Ham but the moment had gone for both Cole and West Ham. There were the brief flashes of inspiration but time had moved on for the young prodigy who West Ham had so gratefully discovered. Cole went through the motions before moving on to Aston Villa where the claret was never of the same vintage. The taste and bouquet was different and you'd have been hard pressed to find any vineyards in Birmingham.
In the last couple of years or so Cole ventured into American soccer fields but although the feeling for the game was unmistakably there, this was not the age of the Tampa Bay Rowdies or the New York Cosmos.The memories of George Best, Rodney Marsh and Bobby Moore could still be fondly retold but Cole had probably had enough and retirement beckoned.
Yesterday, Joe Cole retired from football at the ripe old age of 37 and another one of English football's most treasured showboaters hung up his boots. Comparisons with previous members of this most exclusive club such as the aforesaid Rodney Marsh, Tony Currie, Alan Hudson and Stan Bowles are patently obvious. Cole though was the kind of player English football would always pick out from the often frantic urgency of the modern game, a midfield playmaker of glorious, game changing authenticity, the mark of brilliance.
For those of us who follow the team from the London Stadium this is the story of what might have been and if only Cole had changed his mind before signing for Chelsea. West Ham fans may never know. But there can be no regrets or bitterness for Joe Cole can take his rightful place in the football Hall of Fame.
Cole lifted us out of our seats, compelled us to believe that anything was possible if you could only put your mind to it. Cole played his football in a way that was easily identifiable, never afraid to try the impossible and treating a football with an enduring love and affection. If only we could find more like him although Gareth Southgate can never be accused of not trying. Happy retirement Joe.
Monday 12 November 2018
Neo-Nazism rears that ugliest of heads once again.
Neo Nazism rears that ugliest of heads again.
They told us that it would never happen again in anybody's lifetime. And yet with the most repulsive motives it has. They look at their news bulletins and, hanging their heads with absolute horror, they see exactly why the abominations of yesteryear, so graphically illustrated in yesterday's Remembrance services across the world, have so offensively intruded upon our consciousness just as we thought they would never ever surface again.
Today, two members of the Neo-Nazi National Action were thankfully convicted in a court of a law of the most despicable of violent racism, white supremacists who have unforgivably attached themselves to vile nationalism and extremism while sneering, sniggering and smiling arrogantly in front of millions. Truly, this could not be made up. We know your names and you have now been publicly exposed but somehow the hideous faces of anti-semitism have reared their heads once again.
Just when you thought such disgraceful and utterly pernicious behaviour could ever be spewed up so blatantly on any TV evening news agenda it quite clearly has and you'd be forgiven for thinking that some of us are ever so disillusioned and dreadfully deflated. It's now well over 70 years since the end of the Second World War and the cancer of terrorism and hate crime has yet to be eliminated, completely wiped off the face of the world here and now.
Still we are faced by a young couple and their baby proudly holding up the filthily abhorrent and disgusting Swastika, convinced in their own twisted minds that the Nazis failed to complete the job and that now seemed the most opportune moment to resurrect their sick ideologies and nationalist allegiances.
And just to make sure that things could not get any worse they emphasise all the gory details. The child now goes under the name of Adolf Hitler and insult has well and truly been added to severely damaged injury. How on earth have we come to the point where two people, hitherto regarded as intelligent and rational thinking, have not the only poisoned the clear waters of decency and civilised opinion, have also left the foulest stench behind them? It is the most obnoxious smell and it is, quite obviously, intolerable.
Then they proceed to reference the Klu Klax Klan, that revolting band of cult followers who throw that most ghastly set of white robes over themselves and can only be seen through the narrowest of eye slits. Surely, this has to be a time when society has to take the most decisive action and put its feet down firmly and quickly.
For too long now we have tolerated the murderous thought processes of these appalling individuals with no concept of history, no appreciation of the horrendous savageries of the Nazi regime and very little in the way, seemingly, of any semblance of commonsense. How to explain the mindset of two people whose minds have been brutally brainwashed and revoltingly indoctrinated by forces that may have thought to be beyond their understanding.
But the truth is that once again the evils and depravities that once infected the smallest minority, are now dripping through the drain like the dirtiest of sewage water. In a world still affected by the volatilities and instabilities of a broken society, today once again underlined the very obvious. Racism of any kind and degree is still spreading and seeping into all corners of the globe and is now bubbling over into the latest news narrative of the day.
One day we will wake up and find that racism and its monstrous impact will simply cease to exist, that a rampantly deadly disease will be snuffed out for ever more. Under the circumstances this does seem the right moment to be both reactionary, furious and passionate. It is indeed the right time to rise up as one and express our fierce condemnation, our blistering anger and red blooded opprobrium because this cannot be allowed to flourish in any law abiding community, country or city. A line has to be drawn in the sand and the sooner the better.
We can only rub our eyes with disbelief and amazement. We find ourselves surrounded by a young couple whose belief systems have now been strangled to death, young minds whose minds must have been so distant in school history lessons that maybe they should have been forced to listen even if they had no desire to do so whatsoever.
And so we get on with the business of living, haunted by the day's rather unsavoury turn of events. Underneath the undercurrents of our everyday living is still that nagging anxiety about today's horrific developments. There are some out there who would willingly turn back the clock to a time that is still mentally raw and fresh in the minds of those who suffered and kept on suffering until it became unbearable.
Once again it is time to stand up against the deeply toxic forces of racism, to declare our utter revulsion in the face of anti-semitism, to say once again that enough is enough. The presence of Neo Nazism is both worrying and deeply troubling to some of us. For those of us who are grandchildren of Holocaust survivors it is time to remove this bleeding wound once and for all, this painful gash, this deeply ingrained hurt, this rotten canker that can never be healed unless we can sleep in the knowledge that it may never be mentioned at any time in a news bulletin.
There have to be discussions at the highest level, a collective determination to stamp out this most potentially lethal of all devastating illnesses. The very image of a Swastika is still one that evokes the most powerful emotions. It hardly seems believable that even though peace was officially announced in May 1945 there are those who would undoubtedly advocate yet more global destruction, yet more widespread slaughter of the innocent and the imminent outbreak of World War Three. Oh never, never never ever again.
Now is the time to show once again that the horrors of war and terrorism have to be ripped out, crushed into the dirt, never seen again and banished to a yellowing page in history. Neo Nazism has to be killed on the spot and in the light of what we've seen today, buried in the muddiest hole history can found.
I'm sure I speak on behalf of everybody here when I say that we must never be subjected to the lead story on today's BBC News. A cold shiver of fear briefly attacked my nervous system, a rising swell of resentment that came right from the pit of the stomach. We trust that we will never find that the name of Adolf Hitler will ever resound across the nation and that the atrocities he committed most disgracefully against the human race will never be repeated.
As the world gathers its final thoughts on the centenary of the World War's conclusion it is time to ask whether he can finally rid ourselves of racism, prejudice and unspeakable terror. Yesterday at 11.00 in the morning, a hollow but deeply respectful hush fell sombrely over Whitehall. We remembered of course of the hundreds and thousands of soldiers who sacrificed everything on the bloody battlefields of the First World War. We bowed our heads reflectively and prayed that the two wars that so scarred and traumatised so many would never ever be re-enacted. Never again should we ever hear the deeply chilling messages that Neo Nazism had so sharply reminded of us again. It has to be time to stop now and immediately. Peace has to be restored and preserved for ever more.
They told us that it would never happen again in anybody's lifetime. And yet with the most repulsive motives it has. They look at their news bulletins and, hanging their heads with absolute horror, they see exactly why the abominations of yesteryear, so graphically illustrated in yesterday's Remembrance services across the world, have so offensively intruded upon our consciousness just as we thought they would never ever surface again.
Today, two members of the Neo-Nazi National Action were thankfully convicted in a court of a law of the most despicable of violent racism, white supremacists who have unforgivably attached themselves to vile nationalism and extremism while sneering, sniggering and smiling arrogantly in front of millions. Truly, this could not be made up. We know your names and you have now been publicly exposed but somehow the hideous faces of anti-semitism have reared their heads once again.
Just when you thought such disgraceful and utterly pernicious behaviour could ever be spewed up so blatantly on any TV evening news agenda it quite clearly has and you'd be forgiven for thinking that some of us are ever so disillusioned and dreadfully deflated. It's now well over 70 years since the end of the Second World War and the cancer of terrorism and hate crime has yet to be eliminated, completely wiped off the face of the world here and now.
Still we are faced by a young couple and their baby proudly holding up the filthily abhorrent and disgusting Swastika, convinced in their own twisted minds that the Nazis failed to complete the job and that now seemed the most opportune moment to resurrect their sick ideologies and nationalist allegiances.
And just to make sure that things could not get any worse they emphasise all the gory details. The child now goes under the name of Adolf Hitler and insult has well and truly been added to severely damaged injury. How on earth have we come to the point where two people, hitherto regarded as intelligent and rational thinking, have not the only poisoned the clear waters of decency and civilised opinion, have also left the foulest stench behind them? It is the most obnoxious smell and it is, quite obviously, intolerable.
Then they proceed to reference the Klu Klax Klan, that revolting band of cult followers who throw that most ghastly set of white robes over themselves and can only be seen through the narrowest of eye slits. Surely, this has to be a time when society has to take the most decisive action and put its feet down firmly and quickly.
For too long now we have tolerated the murderous thought processes of these appalling individuals with no concept of history, no appreciation of the horrendous savageries of the Nazi regime and very little in the way, seemingly, of any semblance of commonsense. How to explain the mindset of two people whose minds have been brutally brainwashed and revoltingly indoctrinated by forces that may have thought to be beyond their understanding.
But the truth is that once again the evils and depravities that once infected the smallest minority, are now dripping through the drain like the dirtiest of sewage water. In a world still affected by the volatilities and instabilities of a broken society, today once again underlined the very obvious. Racism of any kind and degree is still spreading and seeping into all corners of the globe and is now bubbling over into the latest news narrative of the day.
One day we will wake up and find that racism and its monstrous impact will simply cease to exist, that a rampantly deadly disease will be snuffed out for ever more. Under the circumstances this does seem the right moment to be both reactionary, furious and passionate. It is indeed the right time to rise up as one and express our fierce condemnation, our blistering anger and red blooded opprobrium because this cannot be allowed to flourish in any law abiding community, country or city. A line has to be drawn in the sand and the sooner the better.
We can only rub our eyes with disbelief and amazement. We find ourselves surrounded by a young couple whose belief systems have now been strangled to death, young minds whose minds must have been so distant in school history lessons that maybe they should have been forced to listen even if they had no desire to do so whatsoever.
And so we get on with the business of living, haunted by the day's rather unsavoury turn of events. Underneath the undercurrents of our everyday living is still that nagging anxiety about today's horrific developments. There are some out there who would willingly turn back the clock to a time that is still mentally raw and fresh in the minds of those who suffered and kept on suffering until it became unbearable.
Once again it is time to stand up against the deeply toxic forces of racism, to declare our utter revulsion in the face of anti-semitism, to say once again that enough is enough. The presence of Neo Nazism is both worrying and deeply troubling to some of us. For those of us who are grandchildren of Holocaust survivors it is time to remove this bleeding wound once and for all, this painful gash, this deeply ingrained hurt, this rotten canker that can never be healed unless we can sleep in the knowledge that it may never be mentioned at any time in a news bulletin.
There have to be discussions at the highest level, a collective determination to stamp out this most potentially lethal of all devastating illnesses. The very image of a Swastika is still one that evokes the most powerful emotions. It hardly seems believable that even though peace was officially announced in May 1945 there are those who would undoubtedly advocate yet more global destruction, yet more widespread slaughter of the innocent and the imminent outbreak of World War Three. Oh never, never never ever again.
Now is the time to show once again that the horrors of war and terrorism have to be ripped out, crushed into the dirt, never seen again and banished to a yellowing page in history. Neo Nazism has to be killed on the spot and in the light of what we've seen today, buried in the muddiest hole history can found.
I'm sure I speak on behalf of everybody here when I say that we must never be subjected to the lead story on today's BBC News. A cold shiver of fear briefly attacked my nervous system, a rising swell of resentment that came right from the pit of the stomach. We trust that we will never find that the name of Adolf Hitler will ever resound across the nation and that the atrocities he committed most disgracefully against the human race will never be repeated.
As the world gathers its final thoughts on the centenary of the World War's conclusion it is time to ask whether he can finally rid ourselves of racism, prejudice and unspeakable terror. Yesterday at 11.00 in the morning, a hollow but deeply respectful hush fell sombrely over Whitehall. We remembered of course of the hundreds and thousands of soldiers who sacrificed everything on the bloody battlefields of the First World War. We bowed our heads reflectively and prayed that the two wars that so scarred and traumatised so many would never ever be re-enacted. Never again should we ever hear the deeply chilling messages that Neo Nazism had so sharply reminded of us again. It has to be time to stop now and immediately. Peace has to be restored and preserved for ever more.
Saturday 10 November 2018
A solemn weekend and the Lord Mayor's Show.
A solemn weekend and the Lord Mayor's Show.
On this most solemn weekend of mourning, remembrance and commemoration it might be as well to point out that today saw that most traditional of street processions. For as long any of us can recall the Lord Mayor's Show, during the second week of November, has always confirmed London's place as the centre of national attention, a carnival of colour and much civic pride. The capital city always knows how to put on a street party in the closing weeks of the year and today was no different.
It remains one of the most symbolic days in the English social calendar when the pomp and pageantry of the Lord Mayor's Show decorates the whole of the City of London with those vivid paint brushes of colour that gives it its distinctive character. If only Dick Whittington had known that, hundreds of years after his passing, his status as the first Lord Mayor was still be being rousingly celebrated, then maybe this is right time to show our appreciation once again for the man who occupied so exalted a role.
This morning at the heart of the financial powerhouse that is the Bank of England, the City of London played host to yet another parade of old livery companies, age old crafts, the whole spectrum of all those respectable professions who have served their country for so many years, decades and centuries with a modest understatement and quiet dignity.
There were the huge floats, significant representatives from the worlds of commerce and trade with warm homages to those hard working men and women who dedicate so much of their lives tirelessly and unstintingly to their industries and their locally unsung skills. There were the men and women in their joyfully hilarious costumes, the inflatable St Paul's Cathedral and Big Ben outfits, smiling and waving to families and children with almost barely repressed delight and more incessant cheering.
At the beginning of the parade of course the yearly rites are observed. The new Lord Mayor Peter Estlin sipped his satisfying tot of rum and so it was that the Lord Mayor's Show began that happy-go-lucky journey from the Bank to its fabled destination of the Mansion House. Behind, a fresh faced, well scrubbed formation of Royal Marines cadets, immaculately suited and booted, stood to attention most respectfully and made their disciplined way onto those first moments of a famous mile walk to kick off the festivities.
Above the Royal Marines a similarly well regimented group of seagulls squawked loudly and clearly, boisterous birds who may have felt privately privileged to be a part of today's Lord Mayor's Show. It almost felt like their very own act of duty and deference on a day when the world thought of those who had lost their dearly beloved and when a century after the end of World War One everything assumed a raw, emotional poignancy.
And then it all started. There were the smartly attired marching bands, the drummers merrily swirling their obedient drum sticks, rifles tightly perched on straight shoulders. Then there were the resounding bagpipers adding that very unique blend of Scottish melody and verse. And all the while there were more floats, a vast cornucopia of everything England and Britain holds so dear, the Worshipful company of Solicitors, chartered accountants, the basket weavers with their delicately woven creations, twisted wicker resulting in the most perfect basket.
You couldn't help but notice that the London skyline provides quite the most unique of any backdrops to any Lord Mayor's Show. It was hard to believe now that the landmarks that the tourists had always flocked to in their droves were now witnessing something of a major change. For almost as long as any of us can remember London has always had its Embankment, the BT Tower, formerly known as the Post Office Tower, the clearly visible House of Commons and until recently a Big Ben before it was dressed up in hideous scaffolding. This had everything to do with this wonderful timepiece needing a radical wash, clean and brush up as well as important maintenance work that will take years to complete.
This morning though the London landscape now looks almost unrecognisable from those days of yesteryear. There are those classically designed buildings which, although very striking, sometimes look almost surreally ornamental. The Walkie Talkie does indeed resemble that crucial means of communication, the Cheese Grater may look far more at home in the domestic kitchen and the Shard looked like one of those modern architectural wonders that may take some time to get used to.
Meanwhile, back on the ground the City of London was having a ball. There were ancient steam engines hooting and honking, clearly announcing themselves as steam engines; trumpets and bugles blaring away determinedly and with surging conviction. The Worshipful Company of Solicitors joined in as well with a prominent nod to the future as space age men and women swirled and swayed from side to side, a fine, upstanding organisation full of impressive flourishes.
There were those familiar sounding fairground organs, the Salvation Army ladies in their tambourine shaking pomp and the women's suffragette movement reminded us all how the struggle for female equality would always be marked. And then the British Army of Paras, cloaked in brown military khaki, the Paratroopers who swooped from great heights during the fiercest of conflicts and never shirked for a single moment when it all looked too overwhelming for everybody concerned.
Then there were the children in the crowd standing closely next to their families cheerfully waving their flags and making that Hooray sound as if the innocence of youth would never leave them. Suddenly, the farming industry made its welcome appearance and the world of agriculture had been instantly recognised. Huge combine harvesters and, quite possibly, a number of tractors trundled past, the swelling crowds singing, you felt sure, the praises of wheat, barley and innumerable crops.
By now the Lord Mayor's Show was beginning to wind itself down to a close carefully and gently as it always seems to have done. The new mayor Peter Estlin acknowledged the applause of those who had lined the streets of the City of London so patiently. He took off his feathered red hat , thanked everybody for being there and then undoubtedly enjoyed a hearty lunch at the Mansion House with the lady Mayoress wife.
Another Lord Mayor's Show had passed into history once again and the grey November skies never really looked as though they would open up with torrents of rain. We all know that 100 years have now come and gone, the thunder of the guns still echoing around the heartbroken graves of the soldiers who quite literally gave blood, sweat and tears.
For a while though this morning, the blessed visitation of peace has fallen over the land. The world is not quite the one some of us might have been hoping for, the sense of anger, violence, war and upheaval an ever present threat. But at the centre of a thriving City of London, the Lord Mayor's Show, with all its amusing and light hearted themes, continued to raise the spirits of those who may think that society is doomed and we may just as well give up now. So Peter Estlin. May your year of mayoralty be as successful as the one Dick Whittington may well have had. Sadly, though the pantomime season is not quite with us so this is not the time to boo and hiss. Three cheers for the new Lord Mayor of London. Hip Hip Hooray!
On this most solemn weekend of mourning, remembrance and commemoration it might be as well to point out that today saw that most traditional of street processions. For as long any of us can recall the Lord Mayor's Show, during the second week of November, has always confirmed London's place as the centre of national attention, a carnival of colour and much civic pride. The capital city always knows how to put on a street party in the closing weeks of the year and today was no different.
It remains one of the most symbolic days in the English social calendar when the pomp and pageantry of the Lord Mayor's Show decorates the whole of the City of London with those vivid paint brushes of colour that gives it its distinctive character. If only Dick Whittington had known that, hundreds of years after his passing, his status as the first Lord Mayor was still be being rousingly celebrated, then maybe this is right time to show our appreciation once again for the man who occupied so exalted a role.
This morning at the heart of the financial powerhouse that is the Bank of England, the City of London played host to yet another parade of old livery companies, age old crafts, the whole spectrum of all those respectable professions who have served their country for so many years, decades and centuries with a modest understatement and quiet dignity.
There were the huge floats, significant representatives from the worlds of commerce and trade with warm homages to those hard working men and women who dedicate so much of their lives tirelessly and unstintingly to their industries and their locally unsung skills. There were the men and women in their joyfully hilarious costumes, the inflatable St Paul's Cathedral and Big Ben outfits, smiling and waving to families and children with almost barely repressed delight and more incessant cheering.
At the beginning of the parade of course the yearly rites are observed. The new Lord Mayor Peter Estlin sipped his satisfying tot of rum and so it was that the Lord Mayor's Show began that happy-go-lucky journey from the Bank to its fabled destination of the Mansion House. Behind, a fresh faced, well scrubbed formation of Royal Marines cadets, immaculately suited and booted, stood to attention most respectfully and made their disciplined way onto those first moments of a famous mile walk to kick off the festivities.
Above the Royal Marines a similarly well regimented group of seagulls squawked loudly and clearly, boisterous birds who may have felt privately privileged to be a part of today's Lord Mayor's Show. It almost felt like their very own act of duty and deference on a day when the world thought of those who had lost their dearly beloved and when a century after the end of World War One everything assumed a raw, emotional poignancy.
And then it all started. There were the smartly attired marching bands, the drummers merrily swirling their obedient drum sticks, rifles tightly perched on straight shoulders. Then there were the resounding bagpipers adding that very unique blend of Scottish melody and verse. And all the while there were more floats, a vast cornucopia of everything England and Britain holds so dear, the Worshipful company of Solicitors, chartered accountants, the basket weavers with their delicately woven creations, twisted wicker resulting in the most perfect basket.
You couldn't help but notice that the London skyline provides quite the most unique of any backdrops to any Lord Mayor's Show. It was hard to believe now that the landmarks that the tourists had always flocked to in their droves were now witnessing something of a major change. For almost as long as any of us can remember London has always had its Embankment, the BT Tower, formerly known as the Post Office Tower, the clearly visible House of Commons and until recently a Big Ben before it was dressed up in hideous scaffolding. This had everything to do with this wonderful timepiece needing a radical wash, clean and brush up as well as important maintenance work that will take years to complete.
This morning though the London landscape now looks almost unrecognisable from those days of yesteryear. There are those classically designed buildings which, although very striking, sometimes look almost surreally ornamental. The Walkie Talkie does indeed resemble that crucial means of communication, the Cheese Grater may look far more at home in the domestic kitchen and the Shard looked like one of those modern architectural wonders that may take some time to get used to.
Meanwhile, back on the ground the City of London was having a ball. There were ancient steam engines hooting and honking, clearly announcing themselves as steam engines; trumpets and bugles blaring away determinedly and with surging conviction. The Worshipful Company of Solicitors joined in as well with a prominent nod to the future as space age men and women swirled and swayed from side to side, a fine, upstanding organisation full of impressive flourishes.
There were those familiar sounding fairground organs, the Salvation Army ladies in their tambourine shaking pomp and the women's suffragette movement reminded us all how the struggle for female equality would always be marked. And then the British Army of Paras, cloaked in brown military khaki, the Paratroopers who swooped from great heights during the fiercest of conflicts and never shirked for a single moment when it all looked too overwhelming for everybody concerned.
Then there were the children in the crowd standing closely next to their families cheerfully waving their flags and making that Hooray sound as if the innocence of youth would never leave them. Suddenly, the farming industry made its welcome appearance and the world of agriculture had been instantly recognised. Huge combine harvesters and, quite possibly, a number of tractors trundled past, the swelling crowds singing, you felt sure, the praises of wheat, barley and innumerable crops.
By now the Lord Mayor's Show was beginning to wind itself down to a close carefully and gently as it always seems to have done. The new mayor Peter Estlin acknowledged the applause of those who had lined the streets of the City of London so patiently. He took off his feathered red hat , thanked everybody for being there and then undoubtedly enjoyed a hearty lunch at the Mansion House with the lady Mayoress wife.
Another Lord Mayor's Show had passed into history once again and the grey November skies never really looked as though they would open up with torrents of rain. We all know that 100 years have now come and gone, the thunder of the guns still echoing around the heartbroken graves of the soldiers who quite literally gave blood, sweat and tears.
For a while though this morning, the blessed visitation of peace has fallen over the land. The world is not quite the one some of us might have been hoping for, the sense of anger, violence, war and upheaval an ever present threat. But at the centre of a thriving City of London, the Lord Mayor's Show, with all its amusing and light hearted themes, continued to raise the spirits of those who may think that society is doomed and we may just as well give up now. So Peter Estlin. May your year of mayoralty be as successful as the one Dick Whittington may well have had. Sadly, though the pantomime season is not quite with us so this is not the time to boo and hiss. Three cheers for the new Lord Mayor of London. Hip Hip Hooray!
Wednesday 7 November 2018
Bobby Moore- the greatest central defender of all time.
Bobby Moore- the greatest central defender of all time.
In Matthew Lorenzo's superb film Bobby, the story of Bobby Moore, undoubtedly one of the greatest footballing central defenders of all time, we are given a guided tour around the only player from the 1960s generation who always left you speechless and dumbfounded at the sheer excellence of his passing, the calmness and composure with which he consistently conducted himself and the alertness of his brain. Moore's impeccable manners, his unfailing courtesy and natural ability were just some of the many qualities which distinguished him from so many of his peers.
Moore was the complete gentleman, a man of honesty, exemplary fashion sense and a remarkable intuition on the pitch which led so many of us to believe that Moore was just the perfect role model. Moore could sense danger almost immediately, snuff it out without thinking about it and then carry the ball out of either a West Ham defence or, more pertinently, an England back four.
But Bobby the film was much more than a simple documentary about the life and times of Bobby Moore. It was a warts and all tale, often sharply truthful account and retrospective of a man who visibly and tragically wilted away before falling into the darkest pit of illness, obscurity and, sadly, death. This was no ordinary story because it was quite extraordinary. It is a story of criminal neglect, rejection to a large extent and above all ignorance. It is about that feeling of complete alienation we get when nobody wants to know us anymore.
Still, Bobby was uplifting and positive, happy-go-lucky and gently innocent at first. There was Moore's meeting with the Tina, the woman who would become his adoring wife. You could hardly fail to be enchanted by the warmth and intimacy that developed between the two. When Bobby met Tina at the Ilford Palais in the early 1960s, that whole period of early Motown and the Beatles summarised perfectly the contagious rhythms of England and its groovy manifestations.
Moore of course came rolling off the West Ham academy at a very young age and for a club that was renowned for producing its homegrown products at the time it seemed that everything was happening at the right time and the right place. After being roundly praised to the skies by Malcolm Allison, who once donned the claret and blue of West Ham, Moore made the most meteoric progression to the first team.
And so it was that a star was born. Moore became the most outstanding leader of men, a figure of immense authority, a model of assurance and re-assurance at the the back. He was an almost erudite reader of a game, a player of regal poise, imperturbable, unfazed by chaos and commotion, oblivious to the cares and troubles around him, very rarely affected by the stresses and anxieties that football could throw up from time to time and punctuality personified if indeed time was ever his foremost consideration.
Moore's first years of marriage to Tina now seem idyllic, the fairy tale love between a man and a woman who simply wanted to embrace the intensity of the feelings they quite obviously held for each other. Bobby shows the couple on holiday, holding each other's hands, seemingly dancing along the seaside promenade, Bobby showing off, pulling faces as he emerged from hotel swimming pools and smiling for the camera as he swept sea water from those golden blond locks of hair.
Now firmly ensconced in their new home in Chigwell, Essex, Bobby had everything he could possibly have wished for: comfortable domesticity, a wife he deeply loved, financial stability and above all personal contentment. He'd broken into the West Ham first team where he would meet the colleagues who would inspire him, galvanise him, thrill him and then provide him with the kind of companionship that never faded. They were on his side, faithful and loyal friends, men with football on their minds, glory on their minds and maybe even trophies.
In 1964 Moore would achieve one of his boyhood ambitions. With the able assistance of the likes of Brian Dear, Johnny Sissons, Ronnie Boyce, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst, West Ham won what was at the time as their first meaningful trophy. In 1923 they had been denied by stampeding horses and the most ridiculous of football matches. But now Moore and West Ham had won the FA Cup and victory had been clinched by literally the last header of the game and the final kick of the game. West Ham beat Preston North End 3-2 and young Bobby was acclaimed as the all conquering hero in claret and blue.
The following year West Ham, now automatically elevated to the European Cup Winners Cup, were once again led by a hungrily ambitious Bobby Moore. At the end of the 1965 season West Ham made it to the European Cup Winners Cup where their opponents would be TSV Munich 1860. Wembley seemed the most suitable settings for Moore who by now must have been thinking of even grander stages. West Ham beat Munich that night and the world could hardly wait for future events to unfold.
It now seemed inevitable that 1966 was destined to be Moore's year of years. A hat-trick of footballing victories and trophies was almost fated to be. After the toils and struggles of the goal -less draw against Uruguay in their opening match, England discovered a higher gear against Mexico who were also beaten and beaten by a thunderous Bobby Charlton shot before shaking off France with a Gallic shrug.
Then in the quarter finals Moore and company would encounter one of the nastiest, illegal and physically intolerable opponents they would ever come up against in any World Cup. Argentina, a volatile, spiky, edgy almost anarchic international team, made their intentions abundantly clear. England and Argentina would play out one of the most horrendously brutal of World Cup matches.
Four years earlier in Chile, both Italy and Chile almost went to war. Players squared up to each other, punches were childishly thrown and the bad blood was only stemmed by the glorious referee Ken Aston, tall, no nonsense and the quietest of pacifists. In 1962 Moore was still young and wet behind the ears, still finding his feet. Little could he have known then that four years later in a 1966 World Cup quarter final against Argentina the same referee would be pulling apart Antonio Rattin before Rattin had had a chance to explode. Rattin, quite naturally, was sent off and Moore could sense that this was his time.
On a warm day at Wembley Moore and England did overcome Argentina and then a semi final against Portugal where the magical Eusebio followed hot on the heels of the Argentina fracas. That evening Moore gave every indication that nothing would ever get past him and that victory would be something that was now to be expected. Moore was handsome once again, supremely commanding and admirably self aware. He glided over the pitch nobly, aristocratically, artfully and patriotically. Nobody could ask for more. England beat Portugal 2-0, Eusebio wept openly but the skies didn't and England were through to the World Cup Final where they would face West Germany.
And yet Moore was privately suffering before the Final against West Germany. A swelling on his testicles had been diagnosed as testicular cancer but the rest of the world had no idea whatsoever. Behind the scenes Moore must have been terrified, fearful perhaps that not only his life was in jeopardy but also a burgeoning career that would culminate happily in Moore holding aloft the 1966 World Cup.
The day did though arrive and in one of the most dramatic and powerfully moving of World Cup Finals, Moore fulfilled all of the job specifications. The red England shirt was ironed thoroughly, the hair brushed to a kind of polite perfection and everything was ready. Walking out of the Wembley tunnel that famous day, Moore was the epitome of all that was pure and virtuous about the man. Moore looked trim, athletic, upright, upstanding, confident and absolutely convinced that England would win the World Cup. How right he was.
From the moment that he quickly looked up to find Geoff Hurst completely unmarked in the German penalty area for England's equalising goal, Moore was perceptive, treating the ball with the utmost respect and strategically picking out his man at the right moment. From that well flighted free kick Geoff Hurst's downward header levelled up the 1966 World Cup Final.
After West Ham colleague Martin Peters had joyfully thumped home England's second goal from a brief penalty area scramble, Moore and England were still in placid waters and heading inexorably towards their place in sporting history. Or seemingly so. Right at the end of the game the white shirts of West Germany streamed forward for one last throw of the dice. Another free kick plopped harmlessly into the English penalty area and as if the game had suddenly and deliberately slowed down West Germany broke our hearts, as they would often do in later years against England. It was now 2-2 but Moore stood next to his utterly impassive and emotionless manager Sir Alf Ramsey.
Moore, with all the bravery and heroism of a Horatio Nelson, rallied his troops, picking up drooping chins and sagging morale as his England team went for the West Germans again in extra time. Always pointing his fingers and gesticulating wildly for his colleagues to move forward, Moore was indeed a Colossus, a towering beacon, a lighthouse in dark, raging waters. But Moore would not be beaten, never surrendering and always on the front foot.
When Geoff Hurst scored that now almost mystical third goal, which still leaves many of us dithering and questioning, Moore settled all nerves, controlled the ball, trapped the ball on his chest and just chilled out as they say in the modern vernacular. With minutes to go and England clinging desperately onto their narrow lead, Moore did something that, under any other set of circumstances would have been regarded as a complete breach of protocol and utterly disgraceful.
Picking the ball up inside his own penalty areas and with German attackers surrounding him. Moore paused, considered and might just have analysed. Yards away Jack Charlton and George Cohen must have been horrified. What on earth do you think you're doing Bobby? Just get rid of the ball. Which Moore did but only after much persuasion.
Moore then raised his head, dwelt on the ball briefly and could see quite clearly that Geoff Hurst had the freedom of Wembley Stadium to explore. Moore lofted the ball beautifully over the top of a now invisible West German defence. Hurst ran and ran and ran, dragging the ball with him pleadingly as if desperate to finish off the job. A now bobbling ball would finally obey Hurst's commands and his shot rippled the West German net. The World Cup had now been won and Moore went up to collect the Cup from the Queen.
As was somehow typical of the man Moore never did things by half measures. What happened next was truly amazing. Walking up to Her Majesty the Queen, Moore momentarily stopped for a second or two, wiped his hands on the most purple of cloths and removed any residual dirt he might have thought still existed.
The sight of Bobby Moore being cradled by Martin Peters, Geoff Hurst, Alan Ball, Jack and Bobby Charlton as well as Gordon Banks is now firmly lodged in the memory bank. Then there was the seemingly endless lap of honour, Nobby Stiles jigging and skipping to his heart's content and then there was Bobby. The smile on Moore's face was as wide as the River Thames. It was the smile of a man who always knew, always believed and never doubted for a moment.
So it was that Moore was a World Cup winner. And yet everything that now followed descended into the most sour anti climax. For years afterwards he thought he'd done everything he could possibly do at West Ham. During the early 1970s Moore was wanted by Brian Clough at Derby and a whole host of suitors. But when that didn't materialise Moore seemed to lose his way, becoming almost stale and static.
When Moore was appallingly accused of having stolen a bracelet during the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, his reputation had been severely damaged and things would never be the same. In 1973 Moore's sloppy back pass to the England keeper in a World Cup qualifier led to a goal for Poland that left him deflated and disenchanted with the game.
A year later Moore was part of the England team that would be deprived of a World Cup appearance in the 1974 World Cup Finals to be held in West Germany. In quite the most bizarre of World Cup qualifying games in the return fixture against Poland at Wembley, England threw the kitchen sink at the Polish defence but could not break Polish resistance. England would not qualify for the 1974 World Cup.
The sight of Moore wrapping a sympathetic arm around the shoulders of Norman Hunter who'd done exactly the same thing as Moore in Poland, fixed itself properly in our consciousness. Moore's international career as well as Sir Alf's as manager were now effectively over. Moore had only a limited career left in his tank and Sir Alf, in a white raincoat, slumped forward dejectedly into the tunnel only to find himself sacked.
In 1975 Moore enjoyed one last footballing swansong. After fleeting interest from Graham Taylor's Watford, Moore joined Alan Mullery at Fulham. That year Fulham, most surprisingly, reached the FA Cup Final where Moore would be poignantly re-acquainted with his old West Ham team mates. West Ham beat Fulham 2-0 that day but Moore's old zest for football had dwindled away like a flickering flame. The fire in Moore's belly was no longer there and that special day in 1966 seemed like ancient history.
After an almost shamefully brief period at non League football at Oxford City and a final big pay day out in America, where English football had barely made itself known, Moore was now at a loose end. Several business ventures didn't quite work out for Moore in the way he would have liked and after that now celebrated appearance in the wartime film 'Escape to Victory' where he lined up with Sylvester Stallone and Sir Michael Caine, Moore disappeared from public view.
The fact that Moore was so unforgivably forgotten and neglected is in itself one of England's many insoluble mysteries. Moore may well have become in time an England manager of the highest order, maybe even boss of his childhood club West Ham. But Bobby was left to his own devices, never utilised as a respected coach or manager at either club or international level.
In 1993, Bobby Moore was once again diagnosed with cancer and one of the most majestic skippers English football had ever produced passed away heartbreakingly. Moore was only 51 and the world of football mourned deeply because they knew that here was a man who should have been bestowed with much more that the game could offer.
Still, the voices of team mates such as Harry Redknapp, Brian Dear, Rob Jenkins, the physio, Martin Peters and Sir Geoff Hurst could be heard, waxing lyrical about Moore, awe stricken by the man, almost worshipping the ground he stood on. Bobby Moore was a man of humanity, civility, modest charm and a humbling humility that may never be seen again. Somehow the lad from Barking was meant to be immortalised on film, a knight of the realm quite certainly. Arise Sir Bobby. Now that would have sounded most fitting and right.
In Matthew Lorenzo's superb film Bobby, the story of Bobby Moore, undoubtedly one of the greatest footballing central defenders of all time, we are given a guided tour around the only player from the 1960s generation who always left you speechless and dumbfounded at the sheer excellence of his passing, the calmness and composure with which he consistently conducted himself and the alertness of his brain. Moore's impeccable manners, his unfailing courtesy and natural ability were just some of the many qualities which distinguished him from so many of his peers.
Moore was the complete gentleman, a man of honesty, exemplary fashion sense and a remarkable intuition on the pitch which led so many of us to believe that Moore was just the perfect role model. Moore could sense danger almost immediately, snuff it out without thinking about it and then carry the ball out of either a West Ham defence or, more pertinently, an England back four.
But Bobby the film was much more than a simple documentary about the life and times of Bobby Moore. It was a warts and all tale, often sharply truthful account and retrospective of a man who visibly and tragically wilted away before falling into the darkest pit of illness, obscurity and, sadly, death. This was no ordinary story because it was quite extraordinary. It is a story of criminal neglect, rejection to a large extent and above all ignorance. It is about that feeling of complete alienation we get when nobody wants to know us anymore.
Still, Bobby was uplifting and positive, happy-go-lucky and gently innocent at first. There was Moore's meeting with the Tina, the woman who would become his adoring wife. You could hardly fail to be enchanted by the warmth and intimacy that developed between the two. When Bobby met Tina at the Ilford Palais in the early 1960s, that whole period of early Motown and the Beatles summarised perfectly the contagious rhythms of England and its groovy manifestations.
Moore of course came rolling off the West Ham academy at a very young age and for a club that was renowned for producing its homegrown products at the time it seemed that everything was happening at the right time and the right place. After being roundly praised to the skies by Malcolm Allison, who once donned the claret and blue of West Ham, Moore made the most meteoric progression to the first team.
And so it was that a star was born. Moore became the most outstanding leader of men, a figure of immense authority, a model of assurance and re-assurance at the the back. He was an almost erudite reader of a game, a player of regal poise, imperturbable, unfazed by chaos and commotion, oblivious to the cares and troubles around him, very rarely affected by the stresses and anxieties that football could throw up from time to time and punctuality personified if indeed time was ever his foremost consideration.
Moore's first years of marriage to Tina now seem idyllic, the fairy tale love between a man and a woman who simply wanted to embrace the intensity of the feelings they quite obviously held for each other. Bobby shows the couple on holiday, holding each other's hands, seemingly dancing along the seaside promenade, Bobby showing off, pulling faces as he emerged from hotel swimming pools and smiling for the camera as he swept sea water from those golden blond locks of hair.
Now firmly ensconced in their new home in Chigwell, Essex, Bobby had everything he could possibly have wished for: comfortable domesticity, a wife he deeply loved, financial stability and above all personal contentment. He'd broken into the West Ham first team where he would meet the colleagues who would inspire him, galvanise him, thrill him and then provide him with the kind of companionship that never faded. They were on his side, faithful and loyal friends, men with football on their minds, glory on their minds and maybe even trophies.
In 1964 Moore would achieve one of his boyhood ambitions. With the able assistance of the likes of Brian Dear, Johnny Sissons, Ronnie Boyce, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst, West Ham won what was at the time as their first meaningful trophy. In 1923 they had been denied by stampeding horses and the most ridiculous of football matches. But now Moore and West Ham had won the FA Cup and victory had been clinched by literally the last header of the game and the final kick of the game. West Ham beat Preston North End 3-2 and young Bobby was acclaimed as the all conquering hero in claret and blue.
The following year West Ham, now automatically elevated to the European Cup Winners Cup, were once again led by a hungrily ambitious Bobby Moore. At the end of the 1965 season West Ham made it to the European Cup Winners Cup where their opponents would be TSV Munich 1860. Wembley seemed the most suitable settings for Moore who by now must have been thinking of even grander stages. West Ham beat Munich that night and the world could hardly wait for future events to unfold.
It now seemed inevitable that 1966 was destined to be Moore's year of years. A hat-trick of footballing victories and trophies was almost fated to be. After the toils and struggles of the goal -less draw against Uruguay in their opening match, England discovered a higher gear against Mexico who were also beaten and beaten by a thunderous Bobby Charlton shot before shaking off France with a Gallic shrug.
Then in the quarter finals Moore and company would encounter one of the nastiest, illegal and physically intolerable opponents they would ever come up against in any World Cup. Argentina, a volatile, spiky, edgy almost anarchic international team, made their intentions abundantly clear. England and Argentina would play out one of the most horrendously brutal of World Cup matches.
Four years earlier in Chile, both Italy and Chile almost went to war. Players squared up to each other, punches were childishly thrown and the bad blood was only stemmed by the glorious referee Ken Aston, tall, no nonsense and the quietest of pacifists. In 1962 Moore was still young and wet behind the ears, still finding his feet. Little could he have known then that four years later in a 1966 World Cup quarter final against Argentina the same referee would be pulling apart Antonio Rattin before Rattin had had a chance to explode. Rattin, quite naturally, was sent off and Moore could sense that this was his time.
On a warm day at Wembley Moore and England did overcome Argentina and then a semi final against Portugal where the magical Eusebio followed hot on the heels of the Argentina fracas. That evening Moore gave every indication that nothing would ever get past him and that victory would be something that was now to be expected. Moore was handsome once again, supremely commanding and admirably self aware. He glided over the pitch nobly, aristocratically, artfully and patriotically. Nobody could ask for more. England beat Portugal 2-0, Eusebio wept openly but the skies didn't and England were through to the World Cup Final where they would face West Germany.
And yet Moore was privately suffering before the Final against West Germany. A swelling on his testicles had been diagnosed as testicular cancer but the rest of the world had no idea whatsoever. Behind the scenes Moore must have been terrified, fearful perhaps that not only his life was in jeopardy but also a burgeoning career that would culminate happily in Moore holding aloft the 1966 World Cup.
The day did though arrive and in one of the most dramatic and powerfully moving of World Cup Finals, Moore fulfilled all of the job specifications. The red England shirt was ironed thoroughly, the hair brushed to a kind of polite perfection and everything was ready. Walking out of the Wembley tunnel that famous day, Moore was the epitome of all that was pure and virtuous about the man. Moore looked trim, athletic, upright, upstanding, confident and absolutely convinced that England would win the World Cup. How right he was.
From the moment that he quickly looked up to find Geoff Hurst completely unmarked in the German penalty area for England's equalising goal, Moore was perceptive, treating the ball with the utmost respect and strategically picking out his man at the right moment. From that well flighted free kick Geoff Hurst's downward header levelled up the 1966 World Cup Final.
After West Ham colleague Martin Peters had joyfully thumped home England's second goal from a brief penalty area scramble, Moore and England were still in placid waters and heading inexorably towards their place in sporting history. Or seemingly so. Right at the end of the game the white shirts of West Germany streamed forward for one last throw of the dice. Another free kick plopped harmlessly into the English penalty area and as if the game had suddenly and deliberately slowed down West Germany broke our hearts, as they would often do in later years against England. It was now 2-2 but Moore stood next to his utterly impassive and emotionless manager Sir Alf Ramsey.
Moore, with all the bravery and heroism of a Horatio Nelson, rallied his troops, picking up drooping chins and sagging morale as his England team went for the West Germans again in extra time. Always pointing his fingers and gesticulating wildly for his colleagues to move forward, Moore was indeed a Colossus, a towering beacon, a lighthouse in dark, raging waters. But Moore would not be beaten, never surrendering and always on the front foot.
When Geoff Hurst scored that now almost mystical third goal, which still leaves many of us dithering and questioning, Moore settled all nerves, controlled the ball, trapped the ball on his chest and just chilled out as they say in the modern vernacular. With minutes to go and England clinging desperately onto their narrow lead, Moore did something that, under any other set of circumstances would have been regarded as a complete breach of protocol and utterly disgraceful.
Picking the ball up inside his own penalty areas and with German attackers surrounding him. Moore paused, considered and might just have analysed. Yards away Jack Charlton and George Cohen must have been horrified. What on earth do you think you're doing Bobby? Just get rid of the ball. Which Moore did but only after much persuasion.
Moore then raised his head, dwelt on the ball briefly and could see quite clearly that Geoff Hurst had the freedom of Wembley Stadium to explore. Moore lofted the ball beautifully over the top of a now invisible West German defence. Hurst ran and ran and ran, dragging the ball with him pleadingly as if desperate to finish off the job. A now bobbling ball would finally obey Hurst's commands and his shot rippled the West German net. The World Cup had now been won and Moore went up to collect the Cup from the Queen.
As was somehow typical of the man Moore never did things by half measures. What happened next was truly amazing. Walking up to Her Majesty the Queen, Moore momentarily stopped for a second or two, wiped his hands on the most purple of cloths and removed any residual dirt he might have thought still existed.
The sight of Bobby Moore being cradled by Martin Peters, Geoff Hurst, Alan Ball, Jack and Bobby Charlton as well as Gordon Banks is now firmly lodged in the memory bank. Then there was the seemingly endless lap of honour, Nobby Stiles jigging and skipping to his heart's content and then there was Bobby. The smile on Moore's face was as wide as the River Thames. It was the smile of a man who always knew, always believed and never doubted for a moment.
So it was that Moore was a World Cup winner. And yet everything that now followed descended into the most sour anti climax. For years afterwards he thought he'd done everything he could possibly do at West Ham. During the early 1970s Moore was wanted by Brian Clough at Derby and a whole host of suitors. But when that didn't materialise Moore seemed to lose his way, becoming almost stale and static.
When Moore was appallingly accused of having stolen a bracelet during the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, his reputation had been severely damaged and things would never be the same. In 1973 Moore's sloppy back pass to the England keeper in a World Cup qualifier led to a goal for Poland that left him deflated and disenchanted with the game.
A year later Moore was part of the England team that would be deprived of a World Cup appearance in the 1974 World Cup Finals to be held in West Germany. In quite the most bizarre of World Cup qualifying games in the return fixture against Poland at Wembley, England threw the kitchen sink at the Polish defence but could not break Polish resistance. England would not qualify for the 1974 World Cup.
The sight of Moore wrapping a sympathetic arm around the shoulders of Norman Hunter who'd done exactly the same thing as Moore in Poland, fixed itself properly in our consciousness. Moore's international career as well as Sir Alf's as manager were now effectively over. Moore had only a limited career left in his tank and Sir Alf, in a white raincoat, slumped forward dejectedly into the tunnel only to find himself sacked.
In 1975 Moore enjoyed one last footballing swansong. After fleeting interest from Graham Taylor's Watford, Moore joined Alan Mullery at Fulham. That year Fulham, most surprisingly, reached the FA Cup Final where Moore would be poignantly re-acquainted with his old West Ham team mates. West Ham beat Fulham 2-0 that day but Moore's old zest for football had dwindled away like a flickering flame. The fire in Moore's belly was no longer there and that special day in 1966 seemed like ancient history.
After an almost shamefully brief period at non League football at Oxford City and a final big pay day out in America, where English football had barely made itself known, Moore was now at a loose end. Several business ventures didn't quite work out for Moore in the way he would have liked and after that now celebrated appearance in the wartime film 'Escape to Victory' where he lined up with Sylvester Stallone and Sir Michael Caine, Moore disappeared from public view.
The fact that Moore was so unforgivably forgotten and neglected is in itself one of England's many insoluble mysteries. Moore may well have become in time an England manager of the highest order, maybe even boss of his childhood club West Ham. But Bobby was left to his own devices, never utilised as a respected coach or manager at either club or international level.
In 1993, Bobby Moore was once again diagnosed with cancer and one of the most majestic skippers English football had ever produced passed away heartbreakingly. Moore was only 51 and the world of football mourned deeply because they knew that here was a man who should have been bestowed with much more that the game could offer.
Still, the voices of team mates such as Harry Redknapp, Brian Dear, Rob Jenkins, the physio, Martin Peters and Sir Geoff Hurst could be heard, waxing lyrical about Moore, awe stricken by the man, almost worshipping the ground he stood on. Bobby Moore was a man of humanity, civility, modest charm and a humbling humility that may never be seen again. Somehow the lad from Barking was meant to be immortalised on film, a knight of the realm quite certainly. Arise Sir Bobby. Now that would have sounded most fitting and right.
Monday 5 November 2018
Bohemian Rhapsody.- Queen, the finest of all 1970s rock bands.
Bohemian Rhapsody. - Queen, the finest of all 1970s rock bands.
One was studying to be an electrical engineer, another wanted to be an eminent doctor or something to do with astrophysics and we were never quite sure what the other one wanted to do with his life. But the other, most famously of all, was an airport baggage handler. He would become Freddie Mercury.They would go on to become one of the most legendary and monumentally epic rock bands the 1970s would ever produce. They were simply electrifying, explosive, prodigiously prolific and astoundingly creative, boiling over with an outrageous lyricism the like of which will never be seen again.
Bohemian Rhapsody was not only the story of Queen. It was the most painful and revealing insight into the life of Freddie Mercury, the son of a family from Zanzibar and a man whose tortured soul would be cruelly and forensically exposed by a global media desperate to break Mercury's raging ego before finally discovering that the rock star had fallen victim to the stigma almost horribly attached to homosexuality and then dreadful homophobia.
The story of Bohemian Rhapsody, now a most eagerly awaited movie, starts in the quiet and unfashionable back streets of London suburbia where four young men are eventually thrown together in the toughest of pubs and clubs before gigging, giggling, gossiping and then falling out with each other almost immediately when the young Freddie is told that he'll never get anywhere with those teeth. Then, in one of the most miraculous strokes of good fortune, Queen reached the most royal heights of fame and celebrity. And then it all blossomed into life.
The irony of course is that for all of his wildly decadent excesses and promiscuous gay relationships , Freddie Mercury almost married a woman At the start Mercury had fallen head over heels with his first love Mary Austin and there must have come a point during those heady periods in his life when he would indeed marry the girl his doting family had always dreamed of. But this was just an optical illusion and in a passionate kiss with one of his many male hangers on, Mercury would overnight find the life of a gay man an altogether more desirable proposition.
But against the stormiest and most turbulent of backgrounds, both Mercury, John Deacon, Brian May and Roger Taylor would strike out into that big wide world, conquering firstly the USA, then as graphically illustrated in the film, the rest of the world. There were furious arguments with management, hissy fits of pique and slammed doors. There were the hundreds of bottles of booze and whatever else Freddie could get his hands on.
Of course the underlying theme quite predominantly was the formation and development of Bohemian Rhapsody, a single so stunningly exquisite to the ears that Britain must have thought it had stumbled on some remarkable art movement. Bohemian Rhapsody was, and will perhaps always remain, one of the most unforgettable rock anthems ever to caress the ears of rock fans and connoisseurs of rock music, a vast, sprawling musical tapestry that broke all records and boundaries.
And so it was that Bohemian Rhapsody was born, conceived and executed in a remote Welsh farmhouse completely cut off from all civilisation. In the most basic but well furnished of recording studios, Queen, led by the strutting and stomping Mercury, went to work on Night at the Opera followed in no time at all by A Day at the Races, both Marx Brothers films from the very early 20th century.
It was in their secret Welsh hideaway that Bohemian Rhapsody would take shape. A small corner of Wales would become the fertile breeding ground of so many more hit singles and truly evocative lyrics that would roll off their screeching guitars and pounding drums. With almost eye popping wizardry the whole concept of Bohemian Rhapsody would be carefully pieced together like the most complex of puzzles. Operatic voices would be allowed to fade in and out and all manner of technical jiggery pokery followed.
Eventually, after the fiercest of verbal punch ups with the most arrogant looking of all record producers, Freddie proudly stubbed out his cigarette onto a pile of the producer's paperwork. Mercury was now utterly smug and satisfied, that sense of triumphant vindication almost etched on his face. Mercury had insisted that Bohemian Rhapsody would be released pronto and so it was in the winter of 1975.
Visiting Capital Radio station in London, Mercury persuaded hilarious DJ Kenny Everett Bohemian Rhapsody into taking the single and playing it at once. Everett would play it every day for the duration of that year and the rest, as they say, is history. It was the most victorious conversion service ever performed between a rock star and a bubbly disc jockey. The cynics came out of the woodwork and roasted Bohemian Rhapsody. It would never work and Mercury was just a day dreaming idealist with delusions of grandeur.
But to this very day Bohemian Rhapsody continues to be hummed, chanted and was cross pollinated into another blockbusting film, forever more nostalgically remembered as one of the most incredible of all rock songs. Of course it defies any logical translation or understanding but for those who want to believe that it is rock meets grand opera then so be it. The meaning and context of the words in the song seem to assume a poetic symmetry even though Galileo and Fandango are almost inexplicable.
Still from Bohemian Rhapsody, there followed the amiable 'You're My Best Friend', the rousing We Are The Champions, the ferociously ambitious I Want to Break Free, the audience participation driven 'We Will Rock You', the tongue in cheek 'Radio Ga Ga', the yearning and aching 'Somebody to Love' and packed stadiums seething with Queen hysteria. At the very beginning there was the very introductory Seven Seas of Rhye and Killer Queen. It was almost as if Freddie, John, Brian and Roger were collectively dipping their toes into the the hottest waters.
Behind it all there was the almost heartbreaking decline of Freddie Mercury a man now so torn and chronically unsure of himself that even the loving support of the rest of the band couldn't soften the blows that had been rained down on him almost constantly. There was the relationship with a girl he could never possibly commit himself to and the procession of boyfriends who were always waiting in the wings ready to satisfy all of Freddie's cravings and needs.
Now there were the riotous parties, the champagne lifestyle and the adulation of his male lovers, Mercury being carried across a room like some Roman emperor feted with grapes and wine until the small hours of the morning. His life had one been one drunken orgy, a hedonistic feast that seemed to go on for ever, devilish debauchery and ecstatic extravagance in every conceivable corner of Mercury's house.
Then, after much celebrating, carousing and cavorting, Mercury once again alienates the rest of his Queen colleagues and hitherto friends. Mercury had been given one last chance and the ultimate ultimatum. You either do it the way the band want to do it or that would be the end of Queen. So it was that Freddie Mercury jumped back onto the bandwagon and, inspired by the fans he'd always respected, made one last final appearance before the personal curtain came down on him.
During the 1980s, AIDS, a fatal, sexually transmitted disease that would claim the lives of millions, would sweep the world with a rampant mercilessness that showed no signs of letting up. Freddie Mercury, after innumerable liaisons with men of his own age, would be diagnosed with AIDS and the fans who had travelled around the world with Queen were shocked into a stupefied silence.
In 1985 it was announced that on a June afternoon at the old Wembley Stadium, the cream of the rock and pop fraternity would gather together for the biggest and boldest of live concerts of all time. A severely conscience stricken Bob Geldof, the lead singer of the punk band The Boomtown Rats wanted Queen to be one of the main headline acts. This was Live Aid, a concert on the behalf of the dying and criminally starved. It was horrific and to all intents unforgivable, a crime against humanity and something Mercury could easily identify with.
Without any hesitation at all Mercury, rather like a wounded animal, roared back into the limelight he'd always attracted and never rejected. He pulled on that now iconic white vest and with moustache bristling, lips pouting like Mick Jagger, Wembley Stadium would become Freddie's domain, his empire and his place of rock knighthood. Nobody could now stop Freddie Mercury. It was somehow meant to be.
So it was that Mercury swaggered, stomped again around the stage almost categorically as if none should ever come anywhere near him and then the microphone would go on its most intriguing of journeys. The hips would be thrust one way and then quite brazenly the other. The piano keys would be hammered with an almost bitter animosity and heartfelt intent. The eyes would close and the thousands who had crowded into Wembley that day were sent into the most hypnotic trance.
But when Live Aid was all over and Freddie Mercury had left the stage for good, some of us felt almost dumbfounded. The man who once bestrode the grandest stages of rock music, the man who was so determined to seal his place in the history of his profession and the man who had given everything was now dying.
And yet our minds went back pleasantly to that memorable winter just before Christmas 1975 when a supposedly crazy piece of rock -cum-opera was launched upon our young, unsuspecting ears. We didn't know it at the time but we were about to witness a defining moment in our adolescence. It was a moment when a wonderful disc jockey named Kenny Everett showed an unwavering faith in a six minute single that none of us could have imagined for a minute would have the devastating impact it did.
Bohemian Rhapsody reached Number One in the charts and would remain there for so long that it had to be physically hauled away from the top spot. Besides, the spring tulips were beginning to appear and the roses had to be pruned. But Bohemian Rhapsody had secured its place in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame and there were poor boys from a poor family who could hardly believe what they were hearing. Now their lives had assumed a new wealth and affluence because Freddie Mercury had said so.
When Freddie Mercury died on the 24th November 1991, a small part of us briefly thought that they would never hear a pop song quite as unchallengeable in its magnificence. so glowing in its brilliance, a piece of music that transcended any genre, deserving to be recognised for ever more, always playing on every radio station and somehow belonging in the realms of rock music nobility.
It hardly seems like 27 years since Mercury's passing but we will never forget the airport luggage handler who totally transformed the landscape of rock music. We will recall those mad, staring eyes, that all pervasive stage presence, the way he commanded that stage and above all his love of life, love of music and above all the way he seized every day of that life. There will never be anything remotely as good as Bohemian Rhapsody and of course nothing really matters to us. Rock on Queen!
One was studying to be an electrical engineer, another wanted to be an eminent doctor or something to do with astrophysics and we were never quite sure what the other one wanted to do with his life. But the other, most famously of all, was an airport baggage handler. He would become Freddie Mercury.They would go on to become one of the most legendary and monumentally epic rock bands the 1970s would ever produce. They were simply electrifying, explosive, prodigiously prolific and astoundingly creative, boiling over with an outrageous lyricism the like of which will never be seen again.
Bohemian Rhapsody was not only the story of Queen. It was the most painful and revealing insight into the life of Freddie Mercury, the son of a family from Zanzibar and a man whose tortured soul would be cruelly and forensically exposed by a global media desperate to break Mercury's raging ego before finally discovering that the rock star had fallen victim to the stigma almost horribly attached to homosexuality and then dreadful homophobia.
The story of Bohemian Rhapsody, now a most eagerly awaited movie, starts in the quiet and unfashionable back streets of London suburbia where four young men are eventually thrown together in the toughest of pubs and clubs before gigging, giggling, gossiping and then falling out with each other almost immediately when the young Freddie is told that he'll never get anywhere with those teeth. Then, in one of the most miraculous strokes of good fortune, Queen reached the most royal heights of fame and celebrity. And then it all blossomed into life.
The irony of course is that for all of his wildly decadent excesses and promiscuous gay relationships , Freddie Mercury almost married a woman At the start Mercury had fallen head over heels with his first love Mary Austin and there must have come a point during those heady periods in his life when he would indeed marry the girl his doting family had always dreamed of. But this was just an optical illusion and in a passionate kiss with one of his many male hangers on, Mercury would overnight find the life of a gay man an altogether more desirable proposition.
But against the stormiest and most turbulent of backgrounds, both Mercury, John Deacon, Brian May and Roger Taylor would strike out into that big wide world, conquering firstly the USA, then as graphically illustrated in the film, the rest of the world. There were furious arguments with management, hissy fits of pique and slammed doors. There were the hundreds of bottles of booze and whatever else Freddie could get his hands on.
Of course the underlying theme quite predominantly was the formation and development of Bohemian Rhapsody, a single so stunningly exquisite to the ears that Britain must have thought it had stumbled on some remarkable art movement. Bohemian Rhapsody was, and will perhaps always remain, one of the most unforgettable rock anthems ever to caress the ears of rock fans and connoisseurs of rock music, a vast, sprawling musical tapestry that broke all records and boundaries.
And so it was that Bohemian Rhapsody was born, conceived and executed in a remote Welsh farmhouse completely cut off from all civilisation. In the most basic but well furnished of recording studios, Queen, led by the strutting and stomping Mercury, went to work on Night at the Opera followed in no time at all by A Day at the Races, both Marx Brothers films from the very early 20th century.
It was in their secret Welsh hideaway that Bohemian Rhapsody would take shape. A small corner of Wales would become the fertile breeding ground of so many more hit singles and truly evocative lyrics that would roll off their screeching guitars and pounding drums. With almost eye popping wizardry the whole concept of Bohemian Rhapsody would be carefully pieced together like the most complex of puzzles. Operatic voices would be allowed to fade in and out and all manner of technical jiggery pokery followed.
Eventually, after the fiercest of verbal punch ups with the most arrogant looking of all record producers, Freddie proudly stubbed out his cigarette onto a pile of the producer's paperwork. Mercury was now utterly smug and satisfied, that sense of triumphant vindication almost etched on his face. Mercury had insisted that Bohemian Rhapsody would be released pronto and so it was in the winter of 1975.
Visiting Capital Radio station in London, Mercury persuaded hilarious DJ Kenny Everett Bohemian Rhapsody into taking the single and playing it at once. Everett would play it every day for the duration of that year and the rest, as they say, is history. It was the most victorious conversion service ever performed between a rock star and a bubbly disc jockey. The cynics came out of the woodwork and roasted Bohemian Rhapsody. It would never work and Mercury was just a day dreaming idealist with delusions of grandeur.
But to this very day Bohemian Rhapsody continues to be hummed, chanted and was cross pollinated into another blockbusting film, forever more nostalgically remembered as one of the most incredible of all rock songs. Of course it defies any logical translation or understanding but for those who want to believe that it is rock meets grand opera then so be it. The meaning and context of the words in the song seem to assume a poetic symmetry even though Galileo and Fandango are almost inexplicable.
Still from Bohemian Rhapsody, there followed the amiable 'You're My Best Friend', the rousing We Are The Champions, the ferociously ambitious I Want to Break Free, the audience participation driven 'We Will Rock You', the tongue in cheek 'Radio Ga Ga', the yearning and aching 'Somebody to Love' and packed stadiums seething with Queen hysteria. At the very beginning there was the very introductory Seven Seas of Rhye and Killer Queen. It was almost as if Freddie, John, Brian and Roger were collectively dipping their toes into the the hottest waters.
Behind it all there was the almost heartbreaking decline of Freddie Mercury a man now so torn and chronically unsure of himself that even the loving support of the rest of the band couldn't soften the blows that had been rained down on him almost constantly. There was the relationship with a girl he could never possibly commit himself to and the procession of boyfriends who were always waiting in the wings ready to satisfy all of Freddie's cravings and needs.
Now there were the riotous parties, the champagne lifestyle and the adulation of his male lovers, Mercury being carried across a room like some Roman emperor feted with grapes and wine until the small hours of the morning. His life had one been one drunken orgy, a hedonistic feast that seemed to go on for ever, devilish debauchery and ecstatic extravagance in every conceivable corner of Mercury's house.
Then, after much celebrating, carousing and cavorting, Mercury once again alienates the rest of his Queen colleagues and hitherto friends. Mercury had been given one last chance and the ultimate ultimatum. You either do it the way the band want to do it or that would be the end of Queen. So it was that Freddie Mercury jumped back onto the bandwagon and, inspired by the fans he'd always respected, made one last final appearance before the personal curtain came down on him.
During the 1980s, AIDS, a fatal, sexually transmitted disease that would claim the lives of millions, would sweep the world with a rampant mercilessness that showed no signs of letting up. Freddie Mercury, after innumerable liaisons with men of his own age, would be diagnosed with AIDS and the fans who had travelled around the world with Queen were shocked into a stupefied silence.
In 1985 it was announced that on a June afternoon at the old Wembley Stadium, the cream of the rock and pop fraternity would gather together for the biggest and boldest of live concerts of all time. A severely conscience stricken Bob Geldof, the lead singer of the punk band The Boomtown Rats wanted Queen to be one of the main headline acts. This was Live Aid, a concert on the behalf of the dying and criminally starved. It was horrific and to all intents unforgivable, a crime against humanity and something Mercury could easily identify with.
Without any hesitation at all Mercury, rather like a wounded animal, roared back into the limelight he'd always attracted and never rejected. He pulled on that now iconic white vest and with moustache bristling, lips pouting like Mick Jagger, Wembley Stadium would become Freddie's domain, his empire and his place of rock knighthood. Nobody could now stop Freddie Mercury. It was somehow meant to be.
So it was that Mercury swaggered, stomped again around the stage almost categorically as if none should ever come anywhere near him and then the microphone would go on its most intriguing of journeys. The hips would be thrust one way and then quite brazenly the other. The piano keys would be hammered with an almost bitter animosity and heartfelt intent. The eyes would close and the thousands who had crowded into Wembley that day were sent into the most hypnotic trance.
But when Live Aid was all over and Freddie Mercury had left the stage for good, some of us felt almost dumbfounded. The man who once bestrode the grandest stages of rock music, the man who was so determined to seal his place in the history of his profession and the man who had given everything was now dying.
And yet our minds went back pleasantly to that memorable winter just before Christmas 1975 when a supposedly crazy piece of rock -cum-opera was launched upon our young, unsuspecting ears. We didn't know it at the time but we were about to witness a defining moment in our adolescence. It was a moment when a wonderful disc jockey named Kenny Everett showed an unwavering faith in a six minute single that none of us could have imagined for a minute would have the devastating impact it did.
Bohemian Rhapsody reached Number One in the charts and would remain there for so long that it had to be physically hauled away from the top spot. Besides, the spring tulips were beginning to appear and the roses had to be pruned. But Bohemian Rhapsody had secured its place in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame and there were poor boys from a poor family who could hardly believe what they were hearing. Now their lives had assumed a new wealth and affluence because Freddie Mercury had said so.
When Freddie Mercury died on the 24th November 1991, a small part of us briefly thought that they would never hear a pop song quite as unchallengeable in its magnificence. so glowing in its brilliance, a piece of music that transcended any genre, deserving to be recognised for ever more, always playing on every radio station and somehow belonging in the realms of rock music nobility.
It hardly seems like 27 years since Mercury's passing but we will never forget the airport luggage handler who totally transformed the landscape of rock music. We will recall those mad, staring eyes, that all pervasive stage presence, the way he commanded that stage and above all his love of life, love of music and above all the way he seized every day of that life. There will never be anything remotely as good as Bohemian Rhapsody and of course nothing really matters to us. Rock on Queen!
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