Singer, songwriter, performer, poet and sometime monk, Leonard Cohen defies expectations… even for those who have loved his words and music for decades. The opening night of his UK tour in Bournemouth last night (Monday August 26) was a magical affair that left the capacity audience dizzy with admiration. They’d been expecting an exceptional concert but this was something else.
Jayd Johnson, David Morrrissey and Katherine Kelly in the BBC One 1980s set newspaper drama The Field of Blood
For all its flaws I thoroughly enjoyed the gritty Glasgow newspaper set TV drama The Field of Blood. It may have had some excruciating dialogue and a pulp-fiction plot but it was set in the early 1980s in a world that I instantly recognised. I spent much of the 70s and 80s working in newspaper offices just like the one portrayed on-screen as The Glasgow Daily News. When I first stepped into a newspaper office 42 years ago ( I can’t quite believe it either!) I entered a smoke-filled, booze-fuelled environment populated by a splendid assortment of grizzled old newsmen and keen young hacks.
Matt Smith says his time’s up but who will regeneration reveal?
So who’s Who? The impending revelation of the actor chosen to play the 12th Doctor Who has got the blogosphere in a right old two and eight. A bizarre list of names, seemingly based on a combination of wishful thinking, wild speculation and perhaps some very deliberate misinformation, has been being bandied around for months.
Will the new Doctor be a woman? Will he or she be black? Will they be young or old? Such questions seem to be of extraordinary importance to the obsessive Whovians following everything and anything that might offer a clue as to the identity of the latest incarnation of their time-travelling hero.
All will be revealed this evening when the BBC broadcasts a programme unveiling the identity of the actor who will replace departing Doctor Who Matt Smith when he regenerates at the end of this year’s Christmas Special.
Jimmy Powell and The Five Dimensions with their young vocalist Rod Stewart. Picture: Ron Howard
OK, confession time! I rather enjoyed Alan Yentob’s Rod Stewart documentary Can’t Stop Me Now. It’s been accused of being an unashamed piece of hagiography. Well perhaps it did veer towards the uncritical. But it did the trick and it told a kind of truth. So I can’t help feeling that the claim from the man at Metro that Stewart had Yentob “slobbering all over him like an overheated spaniel” was perhaps just a little unfair.
Well you can dream! I really thought the Rolling Stones at Glastonbury were going to be special. In fact, despite the endless reviews claiming it to be one of the greatest live shows ever, it was actually something of a disappointment.
Yes OK, I know that it was probably an amazing experience if you witnessed it live but it actually wasn’t the concert it could have been. It was certainly a grand production but at times the music was patchy and poorly paced, the vocals were haphazard and Keith Richards – once universally acknowledged as the coolest man on the planet – looked like Andy Capp in a borrowed bandana. Unfortunately his reinvention as a pot-bellied granddad in skinny jeans seems to have coincided with a noticeable decline in his guitar playing. We’ll put it down to a bad night but frankly it looks like the turning of the tide to me. Continue reading “Smoke and mirrors: It’s NOT only rock ‘n’ roll and I don’t like it.”
It has not been a good week. I won an award and £150 from the National Union of Journalists the other day. Under normal circumstances this would have seen my mood swing from fair to sunny. Unfortunately the barometer of fate deemed otherwise.
That’s me on the right with my award and a cheque for £150 in my pocket. Not for long though…
First I was stricken with laryngitis – not good when a significant part of your working day is spent talking to people. All I could do was croak in a hoarse, rasping whisper which at best made me sound as though I was being strangled and at worst gave me the voice of a demented psycho killer. It was not good for business. Then, as I wallowed in my misery, dosing myself with a cocktail of honey and lemon, Ibuprofen and Strepsils, my computer – good as gold for the past three years – suddenly packed in. It didn’t just crash, it died. The hard-drive literally clattered to a halt with a series of pained clicking noises. My trusty iMac – sleek, proud and beautifully designed – appeared to have ended its life with a death rattle that sounded like a swarm of cockroaches trapped in a biscuit tin. Continue reading “The trauma (and cost) of clicking computer death”
Morris men in full flight in Wimborne on Saturday 8th of June. Picture Hattie Miles
It was Sir Thomas Beecham who issued the following cautionary advice: “You should try everything at least once…except incest and morris dancing.” Setting aside the inconvenient fact that Beecham has been dead for more than half-a-century, one can’t help feeling that the notoriously cantankerous conductor would not have been amused had he somehow contrived to be in Wimborne Minster at the weekend.
I finally said farewell to my hair a few days ago. After realising that my increasingly thinning barnet was beginning to look like a kind of candyfloss comb-over, a pathetic piece of tonsorial tumbleweed clinging to my sparsely covered dome, I instructed my hairdresser to “either shave it all off or crop it really short.” He chose the latter, reasoning that it would probably look OK without going for a fully shaven head. I’m sort of glad he did. We’ve been together for a very long time, my hair and me. To lose it all in one go might have been a bit much.
My mother tells me that when I was born the nurses on the maternity ward called me ‘The Poet’ because I arrived in the world with long black shoulder-length hair. It took me years to realise that far from being a luxurious rock star hairstyle my “shoulder-length hair” was made up of little more than a few straggly strands that almost instantly dropped out and were gradually replaced by a mop of slowly darkening golden brown curls that would serve me well for the next few decades. Back in the 1960s and 70s my long, flowing locks were a vital part of my visual identity.
In recent years however my hair has gradually turned grey, become thinner and in the past year or two has clearly given notice to quit completely. So it was that that a few days ago Antonio my Italian hairdresser, scissors and clippers in hand, delivered the coup-de-gras. Having finished he admired his handywork before explaining with a flourish in his inimitable Italian accent: “I have done a number two on your ‘ead” Seeing my raised eyebrow, Antonio was anxious to reassure, telling me. “Maybe I’ll do a number one next time.” I’m not often speechless but….
The beautiful and rugged coast of Cornwall’s Penwith Peninsula. Photograph by Jeremy Miles
I am so looking forward to this. Have just booked our regular cottage in St Ives for a week’s holiday on the gorgeous Penwith Peninsula later this year. We’ve been staying in the same place, on and off, for more than 20 years now and it really does feel like a home from home. Nothing like a week of fresh-air, bracing walks, good food and some quality writing time to recharge the batteries. Anyhow in the time-honoured manner of Blue Peter and countless DIY and cookery programmes the picture above is one we did earlier.
We went to an incredibly smart dinner not too long ago (at someone else’s expense I’m delighted to say). It was a black-tie do. Country mansion, Michelin stars, five course banquet that kind of thing. I dug out my seldom worn dinner-jacket for the occasion. It looked incredibly suave. To complete the illusion I needed to add my most stylish black shoes. Sadly they had worn out long ago but, as luck would have it, were still to be found in residence at the bottom of my wardrobe. Polished to within an inch of their lives they looked the business even though the soles were completely worn through. Our table of six included a well-known Tv presenter, one of the wealthiest women in the land , two concert pianists and us. We had a great time. I enjoyed talking to the multi-billionaire sitting on my left happy in the knowledge that she need never know that I was literally on my uppers.
I was much impressed last night by Creative Cow Theatre Company’s new version of that perennial favourite Charley’s Aunt. Stripped back just enough to slip seamlessly into a 21st century mindset, the original blockbuster show which wowed the West End in the 1890’s retained its essential and timeless charm and, once it actually got going, fair romped along. I should explain. There was a considerable delay but it had absolutely nothing to do with the theatre company. Ironically perhaps for a fast-moving farce that relies on an ‘old lady’ to wrong-foot the proceedings, the opening night at Poole’s Lighthouse was held-up for nearly half-an-hour after an elderly disabled woman became stuck in a lift that was attempting to lower her and her wheelchair to a suitable front-row position in the venue’s Studio Theatre. Five minutes after the official curtain-up time a stagehand appeared to apologise for “a technical problem”. Ten minutes later he returned and admitted that the problem in question involved a member of the audience stuck in a lift. The unfortunate lady was eventually extricated, found a suitable vantage point and the play went ahead – 25 minutes late. During the interval she was heard telling fellow audience members that her ordeal had been quite an adventure.
The original stage and screen production of Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party caught the zeitgeist so perfectly that it is impossible to take it out of 1977.
What this revival by co-producers, Theatre Royal Bath and Chocolate Factory, achieves is a stunning re-reading of Leigh’s searing observation of the aspirations, hopes and lost dreams of suburban life.
Mike Shepherd as Albert and Dean Nolan as Harold in Steptoe and Son
Steptoe and Son: Lighthouse, Poole
Anyone who lived through the sixties will have absorbed something of Steptoe and Son into their entertainment DNA. You mess with that kind of thing at your peril.
Creating an intriguing and affectionate adaptation of the classic Ray Galton and Alan Simpson sitcom was a brave move by director Emma Rice. It was also a clever move because it works rather well. I know because I went to see it at Lighthouse in Poole last night.
One of the main strengths of this co-production from long-time collaborators Kneehigh and West Yorkshire Playhouse is that it steers well clear of imitation. Scheming and manipulative rag and bone man Albert Steptoe and his dreamer of a son Harold played here by Mike Shepherd and Dean Nolan are significantly different from the hapless pair as portrayed by Wilfred Brambell and Harry H. Corbett on BBC TV.
The cor blimey Londoners from Oil Drum Lane, Shepherds Bush, now have a light West Country brogue and an indeterminate geographical location. No matter. You still get two fine actors who combine striking physical performance and adept stagecraft to deliver a comedy drama that plumbs the very essence of the original show. With Kirsty Woodward as mother, lover, doctor, dancer and occasional object of passing fantasies – Rice has used four original Galton and Simpson scripts to explore the desperate plight of the Steptoes.
An impressive set and a musical backdrop that takes in, among others, Elvis, Cliff Richard and the Rolling Stones marks both their passage through time and the increasing hopelessness of their situation, Albert and Harold – scarred by war and battered by circumstance – are locked in a dance of doom, trapped in their junkyard world forever.
The result is a strange mix of tragedy and comedy. As Emma Rice herself commented after reading the original Galton and Simpson scripts: “The work is deeper, darker and more intricate than I’d ever realized, watching as a child.”
I had the privilege of discussing this production with Galton and Simpson themselves a few months back. They admitted they were excited at the prospect of Albert and Harold getting a new theatrical outing. Rice and Kneehigh were, they said, worthy temporary custodians of the Steptoe legacy.
The pair, now 82 and 83, respectively still seem a little bewildered at their good fortune when they talk of the chapter of accidents that originally brought Steptoe to the screen more than 50 years ago.
They had just split from Tony Hancock and the BBC, horrified at the prospect of losing their comedy dream team, came calling cap in hand. “It was extraordinary,” recalled Galton. “Basically the guy in charge of humour told us: ‘You can do what you like, write what you like, cast who you like, you can even be in it if you want. Just write something new for us.’ We thought ‘Hello, he’s gone bonkers!’ Anyway, we started working on this Comedy Playhouse piece The Offer about two rag and bone men.”
Rather than use comedy actors, the piece starred Shakespearian actor and exponent of experimental theatre Harry H. Corbett and jobbing character actor Wifred Brambell. It worked a treat and the BBC instantly offered Galton and Simpson the chance to turn The Offer into a series.
Tired and jaded after years of scripting Hancock and others, the pair tried to turn the BBC’s proposition down. “We really didn’t want to do a series,” said Galton. “We said no for six months and eventually we just ran out of excuses. To be honest we weren’t particularly worried because we reckoned that if we asked Harry and Wilfred – who were straight actors – if they’d be in it, they’d certainly say no. We couldn’t have been more wrong. They jumped at it.”
Ironically the comedy gold that was Steptoe and Son would lead to bitterness and misery for Corbett and Brambell who gradually came to loathe each other. Brambell was a curmudgeonly gay alcoholic desperately trying to hide his sexuality from the public. While Corbett was an unhappy womaniser trapped by his own success and frustrated by a professional partner who would frequently forget his lines after drowning his sorrows with too much gin. They ended up as dependent on each other as Albert and Harold but off stage or off set could barely bring themselves to speak to each other.
I hear that producers of the upstairs downstairs TV series Downton Abbey have agreed to give extras working on the fourth series of the hit ITV show a higher rate of pay.
The multi-faceted career of Jonathan Miller has long been a source of fascination to the media. Doctor, satirist, author, sculptor, TV producer, populariser of science and director of theatre, film and opera – there seems no end to his talents but call him a Renaissance man at your peril.
It’s hard to believe that June Whitfield is in her eighties. For even though she was a pioneering performer during the golden age of radio and TV comedy working with everyone from Wilfred Pickles and Arthur Askey to Tony Hancock and Morecambe and Wise, she has managed to remain a constant presence on our screens. What’s more she’s bright, witty and razor-sharp.
I’ve long admired the work of the German artist Kurt Schwitters but had not fully realised how shabbily we treated this extraordinarily creative man when he sought wartime refuge in Britain from the Nazis.
This is made abundantly clear in the new exhibition Schwitters in Britain (Tate Britain until May 12) and shows how his pioneering work born out of European Dadism and a profound influence on future artists was largely ignored.
Ken Livingstone on stage with interviewer Bill Heine at Guildford last night. Photo Hattie Miles
Some felt it was like marching into the lion’s den. ‘Red Ken’ Livingstone taking his new on-stage talk-show to true-blue Guildford. What could he be thinking of?
In fact An Audience With Ken Livingstone went down a storm. Not only did the former London Mayor emerge from the town’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre unscathed but he did so with rapturous applause ringing in his ears.
Age plays curious tricks on us. A few years ago I wasn’t much bothered about watching detective dramas on telly. Even the admittedly wonderfully crafted Inspector Morse was of scant interest while its rather contrived spin-off Lewis left me cold.
Yet last night I was really rather sad to see Kevin Whately’s Inspector Robbie Lewis finally hang up his truncheon saying farewell to trusty sidekick DS James Hathaway (Laurence Fox) and heading off for a romantic retirement with pathologist Dr Laura Hobson. Typical! Just as I’ve started to enjoy the programme they’ve pulled the plug on it. Admittedly Whately is now 62-years-old and bit long in the tooth to be racing around murder scenes.
So it’s a sad farewell to Reg Presley who has died at the age of 71. He was one of life’s great characters, an inextricable part of popular music history and a presence in my life too. Our family were not only living in Andover when The Troggs rose to fame but the band used to practise at guitarist Chris Britton’s girlfriend’s house which just happened to back onto our garden.
Reg Presley and me. Picture by Hattie Miles
They also rehearsed in a room over The Copper Kettle tearooms opposite my dad’s office in the High Street. By the time Wild Thing hit the charts we’d heard it played at least a hundred times. It only later occurred to me that had I had the forethought to get a tape-recorder and hang a microphone over the garden fence I might now be in possession of a particularly interesting bootleg.
A unique insight into the work of one of the most radical painters of the 19th century and the creative circles of Parisian society in which he moved is offered in Manet: Portraying Life, the first major UK exhibition to showcase Edouard Manet’s portraiture.
Edouard Manet: The Railway, 1873 The National Gallery of Art, Washington.
The show, which highlights Manet’s portraiture, opens at London’s Royal Academy of Arts on Saturday (Jan 26. It examines the relationship between his portrait painting and his scenes of modern life and is already set to break records. By casting his sitters as actors in his genre scenes, Manet guaranteed the authenticity of the figures that populate his paintings and asserted a new, more potent relationship between Realism and Modernity.
Manet: Portraying Life includes over 50 paintings spanning the career of this archetypal modern artist together with a selection of pastels and contemporary photographs. It brings together works from both public and private collections across Europe, Asia and the USA.
I was sad to learn that the inimitable Wilko Johnson has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The former Dr Feelgood and Blockheads guitarist discovered he had inoperable cancer of the pancreas just before Christmas.
Wilko Johnson flanked by bandmates drummer Dylan Howe (left) and bassist Norman Watt Roy
Having been told that even without treatment he may have several months of reasonable health, the 65-year-old musician has announced that he has chosen not to receive chemotherapy and says he will keep performing as long as he can.
Wilko is currently in Japan. A statement from his management says: “on his return we plan to complete a new CD, make a short tour of France, then give a series of farewell gigs in the UK. There is also a live DVD in the pipeline, filmed on the last UK tour.
“Wilko wishes to offer his sincere thanks for all the support he has had over his long career, from those who have worked with him to, above all, those devoted fans and admirers who have attended his live gigs, bought his recordings and generally made his life such an extraordinarily full and eventful experience.”
Known for his manic stage persona and machine-gun style of guitar playing, a curious combination of rhythm and lead, Wilko rose to fame in the mid 1970s with the legendary Southend-based R&B band Dr Feelgood. He left the Feelgoods in 1977 and later joined Ian Dury and The Blockheads. He has also enjoyed a successful ongoing solo career.
Many people will recognise Wilko more readily as the mute executioner Ilyn Payne in hit TV series Game Of Thrones. He landed the acting role after appearing in the award-winning Feelgoods documentary Oil City Confidential.
Director, actor and playwright Steven Berkoff knows a thing or two about the East End. He was born there 75 long years ago, a mere barrow boy’s shout from the chic Thames-side studio that is now his artistic base.
Yes the East End has changed and so too has Berkoff who fought his way from unpromising beginnings as the son of a Russian Jewish tailor to produce a radical body of theatrical work that has brought him both widespread acclaim and a certain degree of notoriety.
These days he’s recognised as a creative giant of the theatre, equally at home producing hard-hitting avant garde drama, adapting Shakespeare, Kafka and Sophocles or writing his own critically acclaimed original plays. He also has a parallel career as a Hollywood movie actor of course having appeared in a curious mixture of movies that include A Clockwork Orange, Octopussy, Rambo, Beverly Hills Cop and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
It’s all a long, long way from the now lost world that Berkoff grew up in. Happily when he was just 11-years-old and kicking around the streets of Stepney someone gave him a camera. It sparked a lifelong interest in photography and a few years later when he acquired an enlarger and learnt how to print his own pictures, he was ready to go.
Armed with a second-hand Rolleiflex, Berkoff started photographing the people and places of the old East End – the markets, the street sellers, the potpourri of cultures brought to the area by immigrants.
By the 60s and 70s it became all too apparent that the bagel-sellers, chicken-slaughterers and other colourful characters that were the life and soul of East End London were slowly but surely disappearing. Berkoff’s photographs captured the last gasp of an era. “I felt I had to record it before it vanished forever,” he says.
Happily the pictures – now so historically important – have survived and have just been publishing in the book East End Photographs. There is also an exhibition of his prints which is currently showing at Lucy Bell Fine Art in East Sussex.
You can see ‘Steven Berkoff – East End Photographs’ at Lucy Bell Fine Art, St Leonards-on-Sea, until 21 Feb 2013. For book sales: www.lucy-bell.com
Who says that the cult of celebrity is a thing of the past? As Hobbit fever sweeps the cinema-going world someone with far more money than sense has bid £50,000 for JRR Tolkien’s old fireplace.
It is among items salvaged by the boss of the demolition company that pulled down the Lord of the Rings author’s old bungalow in Poole four years ago.
The joke is that Tolkien only lived in the house for three years from his retirement in 1968 until the death of his wife Edith in 1971.
What’s more he didn’t even like the place. A career academic, he would have much rather have stayed in his beloved Oxford.
However the success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings meant he was constantly bothered by fans beating a path to his door.
The couple finally moved to the south coast to escape unwanted callers. They chose the seaside location partly because of Edith’s failing health butalso because for many years they had spent summer holidays at The Mirimar Hotel in nearby Bournemouth.
By all accounts Tolkien didn’t like it much there either, complaining that it was difficult to find someone to have a stimulating conversation with.
