Rathbone's Ramblin'

[rathbone]

It was two o’clock in the morning and Mrs. R. was restless. Eventually she got up. I assumed that she was off for a comfort break, but it wasn’t that. I could hear her moving about downstairs and then she was on the ‘phone. That was fine then, she was ‘phoning her sister in Australia. I drifted back to sleep, barely disturbed by the waft of bold air under the duvet as she returned to bed.

Then just as it was getting light she was up again and getting dressed. That was unusual because I usually have to remind her to get up at least twice before she musters up enough motivation to go to work.

By the time I had washed and dressed she was almost finished her coffee.

It turned out that in the small hours she had realiseded that she couldn’t recall putting her wallet back in her bag after she had been at Sainsbury earlier in the day. She had gone down stairs and looked in her bag and it wasn’t there. She had gone through the sainsbury bags and it wasn’t there. She had gone out to the car and it wasn’t there either. Nor was it in her coat pocket.

In it was her driving licence, her debit card, our cheque books for Lloyds and Santander, the pass book for the Halifax, £300 that she had withdrawn from Lloyds. What made it worse was she had also gone to pay the telephone bill and the folded up utility bill was also tucked in there. Enough information for someone to open another account and clean out our savings.

The ‘phone calls had been to the Banks to cancel the card and put holds on the accounts. The early start was to get to Sainsbury when it opened up at seven.

We were the first in. The woman on the customer service till was very understanding. She went through all of the drawers and cupboards on her desk, but there was nothing there. She went up and down the row of deserted check-outs but there was noting there either. She took our details and said she’d give us a ring if anything turned up. We didn’t hold out much hope.

So it was off to the Police station, which unlike Sainsbury, didn’t open until eight. It also, conveniently, has no public parking spaces outside. We sat for half an hour in an ‘authorised permit holder only’ space waiting to be reprimanded. When it did open, the duty officer took down the details, offered a little advice about not keeping all your details in one place. He asked us to give him a ring if anything turned up. We didn’t hold out much hope.

Back at home we were waiting for the banks to open at nine so we could go in to arrange to set up new accounts, just to be on the safe side, when the ‘phone rang. It was Sainsbury. Someone had handed in the wallet, with all of its contents intact, including the debit card and the £300. No, they didn’t know who the person had been, but we could go over to collect it.

So off we went. When we got there the security staff asked for proof of identification, which Mrs. R. didn’t have because it was all in the wallet. Fortunately the woman from the customer service desk swore that this was the right woman and they handed it over.

And the moral is................

[rathbone]

I’m always fascinated by the way that viruses mutate.

The latest example is the bad cold that my daughter has been suffering from over the last week or so. Her facebook status has been full of reports on how bad this cold has been. The cold from hell in fact.

Now that she has given it to me it has mutated into the much less deadly man flu. According to Mrs. R. I am obviously exaggerating the symptoms. My throat can’t be as bad as all that. This muscle ache is just something you have to expect in someone of my age. Surely overdosing on strepsils and ibuprofen is overdoing it a bit.

Why has Men's ability to turn a sniffle into flu and a headache into a migraine now become the default position? When I was younger a cold was a cold, not some sort of mythological subject of ridicule. Anyway it turns out that man flu may not be a myth after all thanks to research showing that men really are the weaker sex.

Researchers appear to have found that women have a more powerful immune system than men thanks to their hormones. The study showed that oestrogen boosts the immune system's first line of attack against bacteria and other invaders.

The research focused on an enzyme in oestrogen called caspase-12. It raises susceptibility to infection by blocking the inflammation the body uses to fight bacteria and other unwanted bugs. Experiments showed that the oestrogen kept immunity high. The results demonstrate that women have a more powerful inflammatory response than men. The finding raises the possibility of using oestrogen-based drugs to shore up the male body's defences.

So I agree with the Rathbonette that this is the cold from hell, and I will continue to lie back here on the couch with my strepsils and ibuprofen while Mrs. R. rushes out for the oestrogen supplements. Holland and Barrett do do oestregen supplements, don’t they?

[rathbone]

I was rummaging around in the elder Rathbonette’s old bedroom trying to work out how to fix the wardrobe door, which has fallen off again (don’t ask), when I came across a couple of books I haven’t read for decades. One was Muriel Spark’s ‘The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie’ and the other ‘Blood And Guts In High School’ by Kathy Acker. Inevitably, I have now re-read them. Both about young girls going to school in big cities. Both about lies deception and sex. One is an incredible work of literature. One is a brilliant piece of plagiarism.

If you live in Edinburgh and have never read Miss Jean Brodie, then shame on you. If you live anywhere else and haven’t read it, the same applies. Apart from being really funny and really easy to read, the writing is almost perfect. There isn’t a word or a comma which hasn’t been thought about and placed with a jeweller's precision. And it’s all done so modestly and quietly. Take the following: “ All of the Brodie set, save one, counted on its fingers, with accurate results, more or less.” Doesn’t that ‘more or less’ speak volumes?

The last thing that Kathy Acker could be called is modest and quiet. She rode in on the back of punk and I first read Blood and Guts in High School when it came out in 1984.

Blood and Guts in High School describes the plight of Janey Smith, a ten-year-old girl who is spurned by her father, with whom she is sexually involved, when he takes a new lover. Fleeing to New York, she joins a gang and is kidnapped by a Persian slave trader who locks her away. When Janey develops cancer, she is released and travels to Tangiers, where she wanders the desert with Jean Genet until they are imprisoned.

Unlike the clarity of Miss Jean Brodie, it seemed like a jumbled mess of largely plotless narrative progressing through disjointed, jump-cut sequences that incorporated fantasy, personal statement, and the juxtaposition of excerpted texts from various sources. Nearly thirty years later it still seems like that. In fact, because it is now stripped of its post-punk radical feminist context it can’t even fall back on some sort of ideology to give it merit.

At the time Acker was hailed as breaking through the barriers of literary form. I wasn’t convinced then and I’m less convinced now.This is an exercise in juvenile and moderately pointless self indulgence with a little bit of crap porn thrown in.

To give her her due, she was prolific, with over thirty books published before her death in 1997. It’s just a pity that most of them are like this.

[rathbone]

As someone with no real need for them, I’ve always had a strange fascination for hair styling products, none more so than Black And White Hair Grease.

Black and White started life in Memphis Tennessee in 1922, so it is now in its ninetieth year. It became popular in the american black community because of its ability to ‘tame the frizz’. In this country it started being imported in the sixties by barbers in traditionally afro-caribbean areas such as Brixton and Dalston.

It was virtually unknown in this country before the 1980s, when it was picked up by guys trying to emulate the then trendy rockabilly revival. No self respecting quiff could hold its own in a sweaty club without the assistance of a dollop of B&W. The 90’s saw Black & White go from strength to strength, with the high accolade of being included in The Times ‘Top 40 Products of All Time’.

As its adverts say, Black and White Genuine Pluko is not for the faint hearted. The thing about B&W was the fact that it is waterproof and so keeps building up in your hair until your coiffure takes on a life of its own. To get rid of it you have to buy Black and White’s special deep cleansing shampoo. In 2001 B&W Lite was introduced, which is easier to manage.

Nowadays you can buy it from Boots. It’s worth it for the smell of coconuts alone.

[rathbone]

I do enjoy it when the kids think that they have discovered something new and I can quietly and smugly sit there thinking: ‘been there before you’.

With the youngest, she and her mates have found Camden Market and are enthusing about it much in the same way as I did in 1972.

At that time the stalls had a good mix of retro clothing, bootleg tapes, handmade jewellery and bric-a-brac. Over the next few years some of the stall holders like Katharine Hamnet and Red Or Dead, became so fashionable that they went mainstream and made a fortune. There were a handful of stalls in Inverness Street and a bunch around the canal lock under the railway viaduct.

Now Camden is alleged to be the fourth most popular visitor attraction in London, with about half a million people passing through it every week. There are xxxx stalls, around the lock, in the Stables, Along Buck Street and Inverness Street and filling up the Electric Ballroom.

The Lock still focusses on handmade jewellery, clothes and second hand books. The Stables (which is where the horses who towed the barges along the canal used to live) is mostly second hand furniture, though tucked in there are specialised stalls of which my favourite is Cyberdog with a bizarre range of pvc and rubber wear.

Buck Street is mostly clothes and Inverness Street started off as fruit and veg but is now a real mix, a bit like a traditional street market. When the Electric Ballroom is not being used for gigs, it tends to be taken over by name designers and imported clothes.

To be honest much of it is basic tat, but yesterday I stopped to rummage through patchwork flares, CDs, model cars and bicycles made out of drinks cans, soapstone buddhas, leather bags, cheap silver jewellery, Indonesian batik, stone sculptures from Africa, cassette tapes from Latin America, hand-painted plant pots and glassware, custom-made soaps of various technicolour designs by the slice, tarot readings, alternative therapy, henna tattoos and piercings, toy boats, painted lightbulbs, didgeridoos, back massagers and hammocks, art prints, furry bags, bongo drums, mosaic mirrors, bean bags, Afghan and Turkman rugs, wax jackets and green wellies, fake fur coats for £9, wig and hair extensions, 1950s cats'-eyes sunglasses and old BOAC bags, US licence plates and reproduction posters from Jimi Hendrix concerts, old Dinky toys, 1950S children's annuals, masonry dislodged from St Paul's Cathedral during the Blitz (allegedly) and all that within the first half hour. Everywhere there are stalls selling food from all over the world at really good prices.
The Camden Market motto is :Being Unique Can Seriously Improve Your Life.

Nice to know the kids have discovered it at last.

[rathbone]

I was working my way along the aisles in Sainsbury when I began to wonder just when we started being inundated with crap drinks.

There was a time when the epitome of sophistication was a babycham, or, if you were really trendy, a snowball. Now there are rows and rows of multicoloured concoctions all claiming to be the next best thing in intoxication.

Maybe it was those early, pre-mixed bottles of egg nog. In my mind I can only trace it back to the Eighties when you started to see people ordering things in bars like a mixture of white wine and lemonade with just a hint or orange brandy. Clubs started making up names just to embarrass their customers. “ I’ll have a Slow Comfortable Screw and a Tibetan Monkey’s Gonad for the lady.

So it was perhaps inevitable that the drinks industry would start putting the stuff in bottles and selling it through their off-licences. Then we started being able to buy Bezique, Mirage and Taboo in the supermarkets.

Bezique was rum lemon and lime.
Mirage was much more exotic. It combined Vodka, pineapple, lemon and strawberry.
Taboo was white wine and vodka, which was used as a mixer with anything else you wanted to add.

Then the alcohol industry started experimenting. What we ended up with was a process where they produced a fermented base of beer from malt and other brewing materials. This is then treated using a variety of processes in order to remove the malt character from the base. They remove the colour, bitterness, and taste generally associated with beer. This leaves a base product to which is then added a small amount of distilled spirit such as rum or vodka, various flavours and colouring, and, voila, we have the alcopops: Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Breezer, WKD and the rest.

Just walking along the aisle, I counted twenty different types, all looking as if they were selling well. Not bad for a brewery industry con.

[rathbone]

I’ve finally thrown out my filofax. It has been sitting in the bedside cabinet gathering dust for some time now.

Initially it was superseded by a little Palm hand organiser, which in turn was pushed out of the way by the smart ‘phone and then the i-pad.

When I first bought the thing back in the eighties I was in the first flush of being a Director. Everybody in our boardroom made a point of publicly flaunting their personal organiser. It made a change from penis envy.

Filofax turned what had been little pocket diaries into a highly visible compilation of must sees, must dos, business meetings and power brunches. Soon we were carting our whole lives around in spring loaded leather containers.

In its heyday mine held my personal details, separate calendars for work, home and holidays, my diary, my address book, note pages in at least six different colours, an electric calculator, my credit cards, a pen, a clear plastic ruler and a map of the London underground. (Just like my i-pad)

Now, should I be upgrading my i-pad, or is that just the current equivalent of penis envy?

[rathbone]

Continuing the penile allusion: Last year our local hospital was shut down, ‘rationalised’ with the one two towns away. As a result all of the services were moved an inconvenient fifteen miles down the road. With it went the clap clinic. As a result the doctors are now reporting an increase in young people presenting themselves at our surgery with chlamydia. These kids quite openly say that they are not prepared to make a thirty mile round trip to the clinic and don’t understand why the local one was closed down. Apart from anything else, they can’t afford to go to the hospital to get it treated. The fear is that chlamydia will rise as a result of the extortionate bus fares.

Like most places, Chlamydia is the currently fashionable STD round this neck of the woods. Fashions in sexually transmitted diseases do change. In my young day it was ‘the clap’ with all of the associated myths surrounding how you could and couldn’t catch it.

Then, in the 70s, it was Herpes which was reputedly designed to ruin your sex life for ever because once it was in your system you had it for life and it could keep popping up at the most unexpected times. And no, you couldn’t catch it from a lavatory seat. The so-called Herpes epidemic turned out to be typical sensationalist tabloid hype. The actual number of people with genital herpes turned out to be very low and the rest up us were being unnecessarily guilty about having cold sores.

Everything was overshadowed by the great Aids hysteria, which taught us all to avoid body fluids, only engage in safe sex, or, better still, don’t engage at all. And no, you couldn’t catch it from a toilet seat. The last thing that I would do is underplay the impact of Aids. For the last decade I have been working a couple of months a year in an orphanage for kids who parents have died of the disease and I know first hand the devastating effect it has had on the culture and economy of places like Kenya and Uganda. But in this country it was managed well and is effectively under control. Despite Edinburgh being demonised as the Aids Capital of the world I know at least three HIV positive people who have been living with the disease for over 25 years. Retrovirals can work wonders.

We’ll pass quickly over Hepatitis and Trichomoniasis, both of which briefly hit the headlines in the nineties. The current disease is chalmydia, which, regrettably, most of the kids interviewed by our local rag seemed to think was no big deal. Getting to and from the clinic was more worrying for them. The biggest concern for both boys and girls was not the possibility of contracting an STD, but their body image and why they didn’t look like the people in the magazines they bought.

Perhaps next year we will move on to Molluscum Contagiosum

[rathbone]

What pops out your mouth when you are asked to name the greatest living writer in the English language? In my case it was James Kelman. At least it was when I was asked that question last night. I’m sure that Kelman would quibble about ‘english’ language, but there you go.

For a brief flicker Agnes Owens had passed across the synapses, but she was the only other contender.

So what brought those two to my mind? Probably the fact they they rarely leave it. For me a indication of great writing is if it stays with me, locked away in my subconscious, to come back, usually unbidden, and illuminate my current thinking.

To give two specifics, there are short stories by Agnes Owens and James Kelman which I frequently think about. The Agnes Owens one is called ‘Bus Queue’. It’s about people standing at a bus queue when a young lad is stabbed to death by another two. The people in the queue don’t take any notice, oblivious to the gratuitous violence going on around them. It finishes: “ Someone peering out of the back window said “There’s a boy hingin ower the fence. Looks as if he’s hurt bad.” “Och they canna fight for nuts nooadays. They should be in Belfast wi’ ma son.” “True enough”. The boy was dismissed from their thoughts. They were glad to be out of the cold and on their way.”

When I first read the five pages that make up Bus Queue I was devastated by its impact. This is ordinary death and ordinary response and it’s an inditement on us all. It was years later that I read an interview with Alice Owens in the Scotsman and discovered that her youngest son had been murdered. "He was stabbed," said Owens. "It was just before Christmas, 1987. He was 19. It took all your time just to get through the day. You weren't ill, no, and you never became ill, but you would have loved to have died." It take courage to translate that into art.

The Kelman short story is called “Acid”. It’s the shortest of short stories. A single paragraph of nine sentences made up of 140 words, yet they have stayed with me since I first read them in 1983. In a factory a father sees his son accidentally falling into a vat of acid and, grabbing a pole, pushes him, screaming, under the surface to more quickly end his suffering. It is haunting in its straightforwardness and its brevity.

What made Kelman come out of my mouth first, however, was the whole volume of his work. He is not an easy read, not because of the prose style, but because of the things he writes about. There is nothing sensational in Kelman. It is all so ordinary that its is verging on boring, but it compels us to confront the brutality and the banality of the common life that we all lead. There are times when his grasp of humanity is breathtaking. ‘Greyhound For Breakfast’ and “A Disaffection” are well night perfect. ‘Kieran Smith Boy’ is perfect. The best piece of writing I have read this side of the millennium.

[rathbone]

I was reading an article about computer animation in the paper the other day and it was accompanied by a photograph of Max Headroom. Remember him?

Max was the world’s first computer generated TV host. How we gasped in admiration at the technical skill which went into the production. Those rotating wire frame cube backgrounds were quite something, and as for Max himself ..... This was in the days when pac-man was the most advanced computer graphic that you could find outside NASA. How we empathised when the sound track and the image went out of synch. How we envied the pair of Ray-ban Wayfarers which Max wore. You couldn’t get hold of those for love nor money in Cockburn Street.

Once he had had his fifteen minutes of fame, the novelty had worn off and the ratings were dropping, it all came out. Max wasn’t computer generated at all.

Max was an actor called Matt Frewer who had to undergo four and a half hours of prosthetics and make-up. The wire frame cubes had been nowhere near a computer and were produced by standard cartoon cel animation. Even the stutters and sticking of the soundtrack were all carefully scripted.

What a swizz. I have never trusted computer animations since.

[rathbone]

There was an article in this week’s Observer by Ed Vulliamy about losing his record collection in America. He was moving from London to Tucson, Arizona. In transit a number of his belongings were destroyed, including 3,000 books and 1,600 LPs.

The article was a touching account of what the records meant to him and how he preferred analogue to digital. He was equally touching about how friends have given him their copies of old LPs to get his collection going again. Then there was the saga of scouring those records shops I know so well : the Record Exchange in Notting Hill Gate, Record and Tape at Westbourne Grove ...... but it was at this point that my suspicions were raised, because he started going on about value. £298 for Axis Bold As Love. £200 for Live At Leeds. He ended up with a list of his 10 most wanted, with the clear implication that he would like you, the reader, to find these for him.

In reality it was a shameless use of his position on the paper to try to get people to give him replacements. But not just any old replacements. He was quite specific. The Hawkwind ‘In Search Of Space’ had to be the first United Artist pressing. Trees ‘The Garden of Jane Delawney’ had to be the orange label CBS. The Dylan ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ had to be the first UK pressing. The Son House ‘Blues From The Mississippi Delta’ had to be the Folkways original. Now I could let him have all of those, but I’m not going to because I am a music fan and he is a record collector.

By all forms of reckoning I have a ridiculously large collection of music. 4155 vinyl LPs, 4867 CDs, 64,628 MP3 downloads. I play them all the time. (As I write, ‘Bleed American’ by Jimmy Eat World on CD). I acquired them because I love music, not because of the value of the records, so it doesn’t really matter to me if they are CBS Orange Label, or a Folkways Original. That is just incidental. But it clearly matters to Ed Vulliamy. Ergo he is more interested in the artifact than the music.

Coincidently, the May edition of Record Collector magazine has a five page feature on ‘Please Please Me’ alone. It goes into minute (and, frankly, tedious) detail about the differences between various pressings, mother and stamper codes, slight differences in the colours of the inks used on the labels and minute discrepancies in the typography between print runs of the cover. To get what this means, the difference between a Black/Gold Label ‘Please Please Me’ and a Black/Yellow Label is about £2,000. If you can find a mint copy Black/Gold with all of the other key feature, well one sold on e-bay in April 2011 for £10,500. With its 49 years worth of scratches my own Black/Yellow label copy is worth about 25p.

I wish Ed Vulliamy well in recreating his collection, but I fear he is in it for the money, not the music.

[rathbone]

I first caught the National Theatre of Brent at the Edinburgh Festival in 1981 when they performed Zulu, the legendary incident at Rourkeis Drift and the Zulu war enacted in its entirety. This was quite something given that the entire cast was two somewhat manic and dishevelled men who argued all the time. Rumour had it that during their debut the previous year (The Charge Of The Light Brigade) an audience participation section saw the entire audience of three getting up on the stage.

The following year saw the whole dreadful story of the Indian Mutiny, in its entirety, performed at the Drill Hall in Forest Road. Then there was Wagner’s Ring Cycle, four magnificent operas in 1 hr 15 minutes. 1983 saw them on television with The Messiah

By 1993 they were performing the complete works of Shakespeare in one evening. By 1998 it was Love Upon The Throne, the Charles and Diana story as done by two men. 2004 saw The Complete and Utter History of the Mona Lisa and in 2007 The Arts And How They Was Done. Most recently (September 2011) saw the production of Giant Ladies That Changed The World, the complete and utter story of the Suffragettes in its entirety.

The leading light and mainstay is Desmond Olivier Dingle, who has been ably assisted over the years by Wallace, Bernard and, currently, Raymond Box. Desmond used to be entertainments officer on a third-rate cruise liner, organising deck quoits and the fancy-dress parade, but he’s also interested in history and art, and is hugely pretentious. Box, who sports a hypnotically unconvincing toupee, is Dingle’s long-suffering stooge. When he’s not performing (unpaid) for the National Theatre of Brent, he works at the World of Foam in Croydon.

You can catch their collected works on You Tube. There’s also a typically atrocious web site where you can enter their fascinating virtual world simply at the push of a number of buttons and experience the very best in inter-global interweb macrobiotic cybertechnology on a scale virtually unparalleled probably on any of today’s virtual global byways.

[rathbone]

Having had their planning application for a second shopping mall in our town, less than a mile away from their existing store, turned down Tesco have said that they are not going to appeal. It made me wonder if this is an indicator that the shopping mall bubble has burst on the sharp point of austerity.

One of the biggest and most insidious cultural changes over the last twenty years has been the rise of shopping as an ‘experience’. First we had out of town supermarkets (Tesco led the way) and then ‘retail parks’ then those parks were roofed over and called malls. You can trace that development through from the utilitarian Arndale Centre in Manchester in the late seventies to huge malls like Bluewater and Lakeside in the past few years.

I can remember Brent Cross opening. It was hailed as cutting edge. Now it looks pretty banal and a little tatty. It was soon overtaken by the rise of shopping fantasy, with themed designs. The Metro Centre in Newcastle was essentially a fun fair when it first opened. Our local mall was originally decked out as an Egyptian temple. A year or two ago it was given a makeover and is now covered in stars like the inside of a planetarium.

It was the world of make believe being built with make believe money combining to encourage a carnival of dreamlike consumption superimposed on a vision of a free market future where there was nowhere else to go but the shops. It was the panacea for all modern ills. There was nothing that couldn’t be cured by a bit of retail therapy. All you had to do was spend.

Now we don’t have the ability to spend. I accept that through the nineties and naughties most people were spending fantasy money they didn’t have. They no longer have access to that fantasy.

We also seem to have reach saturation level. Take Maryhill. Last christmas Tesco Express opened near the top of Queen Margaret Drive, just minutes from the door of the 24 hour Maryhill superstore that opened in late 2010 and the arrival of another, smaller Tesco Express opposite the Community Central Halls on Maryhill Road. While I can understand competing with your rivals, it seems a bit odd to be competing with yourself.

Back at our mall a good third of the shops are closed. The town centre, which it devastated, has over half of its shops closed. No wonder Tesco are having second thoughts about investing in yet another retail paradise.

(I notice from the letters page of yesterday’s Observer that someone else came to exactly the same conclusion that I did about Ed Vulliamy’s record collection....... to avoid any confusion, I am not Ken Ward of Crewe)

[Sceptic]

The main reason for city centre stores closing is parking. It costs to take your car into town, park and shop. Today, one can drive to, say, Fort Kinnaird, park just outside the shop you want to go to and walk that few inches and you are there. In addition, online shopping means that from the comfort of your armchair, you can peruse the vast online catalogue and wait for your mountain to come to Mahommed.

The in thing just now is recycling, when one used to bin something that did not fit, or had something read, obsolete etc, now one recycles, where? In the local charity shops, of course. Portobello High Street is full of them.

You know, I still miss Ian Tait's butcher's shop. Joe Findlay comes close, but..........

[rathbone]

Ah, real butchers. It’s been years since I’ve seen a real butchers. The ones that you had to join the queue which went out the door and along the front of the window on the Saturday. Every cut of meat displayed with pride........

Talking of meat, I was watching Jules Dassin’s film ‘Night And TheCity’, at the centre of which is a wrestling match between Gregorius and The Strangler. It reminded me of how much I missed my mother-in-law and her saturday afternoon wrestling.

Mrs. R.’s mum was the archetypal little white haired lady who enjoyed nothing more than shouting ‘Rip his head off’ at some big hulk in a leotard. When she used to come and stay with us we would go off on Saturday afternoon to the wrestling. She was in good company. There is considerable documentary evidence that the Queen is an avid wrestling fan.

When I was growing up there was wrestling every Saturday afternoon on television, dominated by people like George Kidd, Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo and covered by the dulcet tones of Kent Walton. “Greetings grapple fans”.

There is a good chance that Kent Walton holds a unique position in British television. He was the sole commentator on televised wrestling for the entire thirty three years that it ran on the box. Despite popular belief to the contrary, he always maintained that none of the bouts were fixed and kept to that position until his death in 2003.

My Dad used to claim that he knew George Kidd, which might be true. They were both about the same age and came from Dundee. Kidd was a serious wrestler and for a time Scottish lightweight champion, then British lightweight champion, European lightweight champion and finally World lightweight champion, a title he successfully defended for twenty years.

McManus made his name as the man you loved to hate. His speciality was fighting dirty. He would take things as close to the edge of being disqualified as he could. He was only defeated twice, once allegedly throwing the match himself because it was becoming apparent that he couldn’t win against Peter Preston, and the second time when he hilariously submitted to Gary Catweazle Cooper after Catweazle started to tickle him!

Jackie Mr. TV Pallo was McManus’ great rival. He was probably the first to create a distinct image for himself. Bleached hair, a pigtail tied with a velvet ribbon, and what were then seen as outlandish striped trunks meant that he couldn’t be missed. The rivalry between the two started in 1962 when Pallo ran to the ringside and challenged McManus during a live televised match. While the in-ring hatred was pure hype, there was professional competition between them as they vied for the top of the bill.

In 1988 professional wrestling disappeared from our TV screens because advertisers considered it to be irretrievably down market and stopped sponsoring it. Some went on record to say that it was a sport watched only by the working class who didn’t have the money to spend on what was being plugged during the commercial break.

Perhaps it deserved to go. Wrestling always lacked substance and the demise of such TV favourites as Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo meant that it had also long lacked style. Even my mother in law would ask how many times could you watch Big Daddy beat Giant Haystacks just by sitting on him?

[Sceptic]

You mean Big Daddy knocked the stuffing out of Giant Haystacks!

Sofa so good!

[rathbone]

Thanks Sceptic. There’s nothing I like better than a bad pun!

I took your earlier point about charity shops being the contemporary response to recycling. So are car boot sales.Everyone needs to be pro-active with recycling nowadays. You cannot get a more basic form of recycling than a car boot sale. Things that one person no longer needs are just what somebody else is looking for, allegedly.

Locally, our car boot sale used to take place on the field behind the leisure centre, but was not always a success. Typical turnout was nineteen cars, a burger van and a bouncy castle. Usually it was the burger van which made the trip worthwhile. The sale moved last year to the multi-storey car park at the shopping mall, where it runs between 7a.m. and 11a.m. on a Sunday morning. It’s all much the same, except the burger van isn’t allowed in the multi-storey car park.

At some point in the 80s car boot sales took over from jumble sales. They are ideal if you have a spare fiver and urgently need a pair of platform boots, or are an avid collector of Gary Numan albums or Osmond annuals. If you want to go a little higher up the collecting hierarchy, there is usually also a nice line in Star Wars figurines.

Sometimes people can be quite enterprising. I have always treasured this story from
North Lanarkshire in 2008, where it was reported that cut price holidays were being sold at a car boot sale:

Mrs. Eileen McCormack, of Airdrie, said: 'Aye, give us a fiver, and you can spend a week in the boot of our Renault Megane. No extras, no hidden costs, just a nice wee break from it all. We'll make it eleven days, if you dinnae make any noise.'The holidays include free transport from Edinburgh, a free medical check-up in nearby Coatbridge, and a free weight-loss programme. 'Why spend a fortune going to a health farm', Mrs. McCormack said, 'when you can get all that they offer and more in the boot of my car? Gie's us a light, pal.'

Travel experts Thomson's were considering copying this new holiday idea, and managing director Eddie Thompson said: 'We're considering it, though our cheap weekend chalet breaks in Norfolk are basically the same as this, except without all the comfort and warmth.'
Our friends in Norfolk, LIz and Dave, can testify to that.

[Sceptic]

Talking of recycling, I see Portobello Guides are doing their bit for recycling on Saturday. They are having a Jumble sale in St. James' Church Hall 10.00am to 12.00am.

[rathbone]

It was lucky that I saw Jack down the underpass. Or, more correctly, lucky that I heard him talking to Sandra. I last wrote about Jack and Sandra back on page 5 of this thread. ( Incidentally, Wangi, I’ve noticed that lots of those early posts look as if they have become corrupted, with chunks of them missing).

When I went down the underpass it was obvious that it had become flooded by the torrential rain that we have had over the last week. Sandra had clearly stopped Jack at the water’s edge, but he would have had no way of knowing why she did it.

I explained to him that the underpass was flooded. He responded that he suspected as much. He had heard the splash when he dropped his keys. It turned out that he had been standing there in the rain for the last quarter of an hour waiting for someone to come past so he could ask them to retrieve his keys for him. I fished around in the water, found them and gave them back to him. He said that in future he would have to remember not to put them into the same pocket as his handkerchief.

We walked back up the ramp and crossed over the road to the town centre. Both he and Sandra were wearing their fluorescent yellow jackets and the cars stopped to let us over.

We went for a coffee and a chat. I’ve spoken with Jack many times in the past, but never really broached the subject of his disability. (A fear on my part of sounding patronising.) But the incident in the underpass had raised fundamental issues about being blind. I said that I was concerned about his vulnerability in that kind of situation.

He responded that it was a daily occurrence and he was used to it. There were always things which were a problem. Some of them were embarrassing, like using public conveniences. He had no way of telling which cubicles were vacant other than trying the doors, which frequently led to choice language from those in use.

Bigger problems were shopping and using cash machines. Just when he had memorised where things were on the supermarket shelves, they shuffled them around. None of the items had braille on their labels, so he constantly had to ask people to get things for him. The sequences at Cash machines were all different at different banks, which meant that he had to ask for assistance with them, which left him and his money vulnerable. Even when he had the money, it was not always easy to distinguish between bank notes.

At home, his two biggest problems were setting the alarm on his clock when the clocks changed in the spring and autumn, and pouring a cup of tea. He was now used to having a scalded thumb as he used it to gauge when he had reached the top of the cup .

Jack has been blind from birth. I asked him what was the most frustrating thing for him. His reply was straightforward. Not knowing what colour was. It reminded me of the remark in Diderot when he asked a blind man if he would have liked to see the moon and the man replied no, but he wished he could touch it.

[rathbone]

One of the most irritating aspects of aging is the memory thing. Things pop in to your head uninvited and won’t go away. Sometimes things will not allow themselves to be accessed no matter how hard you try.

I wasted a lot of time yesterday trying to remember the surname of the brothers in The Jesus and Mary Chain (Jim and William Reid ) with the result that my reputation as a pop pundit was well and truly dented.

At the same time adverts from yonks ago were coming back with total recall. Specifically I couldn’t get rid of Shake ‘n’ Vac, Nat West’s pinball wizard cash point ad and the guy washing his Levi’s in the launderette. Each of those pockets of my memory could have been more usefully filled.

How many brain cells does it require to store “ Do the shake ‘n’ vac and put the freshness back.” But beyond that how many more does it take to store the accompanying video of that woman sprinkling her powder and vacuuming it up again. Then there are the storage costs. That particular gem has been hiring houseroom in my brain since 1980. Most frighteningly of all, why, out of the millions of adverts I have seen in my life did my brain decide to file this one, and why is it bringing it back into my consciousness?

I can understand why I would want to retain the Nat West ad. From 1988, this is the one where the guy goes to the cash point and puts his card into the machine. Instantly the whole bank facade turns into a pinball machine with different parts lighting up as he enters his pin number. Beautifully done.

Same for the Nick Kamen Levi 501 advert. How many washing machines were ruined by people emptying bags of chuckies into them in order to get that stone-washed look? Allegedly Levi sales increased by 800% after that advert. Then Carling Black Label produced the spoof ad which was almost as good, with Mark Arden and Stephen Frost going even further by removing their boxer shorts. Two more loads of brain cells locked up in dubious commercial promotions.

I wonder how much else is filed away in there? Now, what is Lady Gaga’s real name? That’s a bit of info worth retaining.

[rathbone]

I was trawling the net for something on Ray Petri when I came across an interview that Mark Hooper conducted with Judy Blame in 2004.

If you haven’t come across him, Judy Blame is definitely worth seeking out...... rubber bands, feathers, champagne corks, pill bottles, stamps......

Judy Blame used to be called Fred Poodle. Before that he was Chris Barnes from Leatherhead. He is classic example of how to transform yourself. If you were to make a movie of his life, it would definitely be a trashy, low-budget affair. In the late 70's and early 80's, London was the centre of the night-life world, and Blame, who ran away from the Devonshire countryside at 17, penetrated its core. “Well, if you’re talking about attitude, I ran away from home when I was 17. This was ’77. I didn’t know what running away entailed. It started with the music and the visuals of punk rock. I just saw people with pink hair playing in mad bands and just went for it.”

'' I couldn't afford a new outfit every week, so I had my David Holah chemise -- a long
plain muslin dress -- and just used to make a new piece of jewellery each week. When I hadn't got the money, I had to use my imagination. I used to go and scavenge around the River Thames. I didn't have any fear about using something that wasn't classic jewellery material.'' As time went by, these jewels became increasingly over the top -- and so did their creator. Blame took to transforming himself, from ghostly pale aesthete (a latter-day Jean Cocteau, all beret and pan-stick makeup) to a wild, hairy Buffalo Bill character.
As the host of his own nightspot called Cha Cha's, he wasn't so much a party animal as a party monster: a catty hard act with a forte in withering looks and lines to match, fueled by a cocktail of amphetamines and ''All About Eve'' repartee. Part diva, part demon, he was also the creator of divine accessories that had the New Romantics swooning.

Thirty years later, Blame's personal appearance is tamer, but his creative ingenuity and irreverent attitude are still going strong. In essence, his designs are little more than a muddle of everyday objects. ''It doesn't have to be diamonds and gold or bling,'' he says. ''I see beauty in everything.'' Everything has included industrial chains, rubber, ropes and a Coca-Cola can run over by a car. ''One necklace when I first started I literally made out of string. Just a ball of string dyed in different colours with a few wooden beads in it.''
I suppose I first became aware of his work through the pages of iD. He seemed able to take anything..... cigarette packets, bits of string, coat hangers, wrapped chains, buttons, badges, drinks labels, brown paper bags ..... and make something magnificent from them.
Last year he was one of the judges of the Scottish Style Awards, which struck me as a little ironic because, as he says, “Me and the general public have always had quite a dodgy relationship.”

But, if you’re struggling to spend that spare five thousand quid you have lying around you could do worse than.........pearls, wooly pompoms, stars, shells, plastic six-pack holders, teddy bears.......

[rathbone]

Talking of Judy Blame, there used to be a wet fish shop in London’s Beak Street. It was taken over by Chris and Sue Brick, who renamed it Demob. Overnight it became the leading outlet for Northern Soul fashion, particularly the really baggy kind of casual wear., black denim workwear jeans and check anoraks.
Sensibly, they kept most of the shop interior intact. The clothes looked great against the old tiled walls. If you’re ever in a charity shop and see a garment with a diamond logo with the lettering XLNT on it, snap it up. It’s by Willie Brown and worth a bob or two.

Personally I used to visit Demob because it did a good line in tailored suits, dungarees and checkerboard shirts. At least once I gave their in-house hairdressers, Demop, a major challenge by going in with my extremely tonsorially challenged barnet and saying :”What can you do with that?” Not a great deal as it happened.

In March 1987 Demob burned down, casting its young designers, Stephen Linnard, Willie Brown, Elaine Oxford and Richard Ostell literally out in the street. The fire sale held in Camden Market was quite something. A thousand check hooded jackets went in the first morning.

Willie Brown is still producing quality stuff. He’s now based in Norfolk and produces about 50 hand made garments week. XLNT.

[rathbone]

URBAN MYTH 1 ( with acknowledgments to Craig Charles and Russell Bell)

Arriving back from a holiday in India, a man was still suffering from the Delhi Belly which had dogged him on the flight back to Heathrow. He managed the train journey to Waverley without too much trouble, but once he was waiting for his connection to Linlithgow, Ghandi’s revenge struck. He rushed into the gents, but just a little too late.

Seeing that he had soiled his chinos, he rushed up Waverley steps and into the nearest clothes shop where he grabbed a pair of trousers in his size, gave them to the assistant to wrap, handed over his money and dashed back to the station just in time to catch the train.

As they rumbled off towards Haymarket he locked himself in the toilet, removed his trousers and, deciding that they were ruined, threw them out the window in the tunnel. Then he reached into the bag and pulled out a rather nice cashmere jumper. In his rush he had picked up the wrong bag in the shop.

[Sceptic]

If you'll pardon my French, I think that comes under the term "s%$t and perdition"!

[rathbone]

Stuck for something to watch last night I dug out Mona Lisa, which I haven’t watched for years. What a great film.

If you haven’t seen it “Mona Lisa” is the story of George (Bob Hoskins) a small time crook that just got released from prison. Once he’s released he travels to meet his old boss Mortwell (Michael Caine). George expects to be compensated for his silence while he was in prison but Mortwell keeps giving him the brush off. George’s persistence forces Mortwell to give George a job as the driver for one of his “tarts”, Simone (Cathy Tyson).

The film explores the dirty and disgusting underworld of pornography and sex and it gives you a queasy and unsettling feeling as we watch George wallow the depths of London’s filth to search for a young girl that Simone needs to find for reasons which we’re not told. Mortwell tells George to stop searching for the girl and problems arise when George becomes overly protective of Simone and doesn’t stop searching.

Michael Caine turns in a great performance. He plays a character that is sadistic and very underwhelming, with a lot of subtext. Caine glides in and out of scenes so perfectly. We are told so little, but we are shown so much. He’s a master at this sort of thing, and this film brilliantly displays it.

It’s Bob Hoskins, however, who gives the performance of his career in this film. He brilliantly portrays a man who has lost touch with society – and is trying to find his way in this strange and turbulent world that he’s been thrown back into. He has an extreme dark side that seeps out but we don’t see to the climactic ending. Maybe it’s because he has the look of someone with a heart of gold underneath.

So, how did a squat, balding man with a resonant London accent and an ability to nut people become a star? By standing at a theatre bar minding his own business. At the age of 25, having garnered a lifetime's worth of unusual experiences, Hoskins got into acting. It started because a friend was into amateur dramatics. They were on the way to a party one night and his friend said: ‘Do you mind if we stop somewhere because I have to do an audition?’ Hoskins waited for him in the bar and this guy came up and said: ‘Right your turn.’ Hoskins did the audition and they gave him the lead in the play.

Having left school at 15, he worked as a porter, lorry driver and window cleaner, as a Covent Garden porter, a member of the Norwegian Merchant Marines, a steeplejack, plumber's assistant, banana picker, circus fire-eater, trainee accountant, and even spent time working on a kibbutz in Israel.

My favourite story about Bob Hoskins was one he told himself: “People don’t actually see me as a celebrity, they think they know me. I had a bloke come up to me and say: ‘I’m glad I met you, you’ve got to talk to my Maureen, she’s well out of order.’ And he asks me. ‘Could you could go round and give the girl a proper talking to?’ Then he realised he’s never met me before and says: ‘Ooh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ And I’m like: ‘That’s OK, where’s Maureen? Let’s go and find her.’ “

[rathbone]

In the build up to the cup final, there was someone on the radio the other day talking about football fanzines, by which he meant ‘Match’ ‘Shoot’ and ‘ Four Four Two’. Those aren’t fanzines. Those are industry rip-off magazines.

Now ‘When Saturday Comes’, ‘Off The Ball’, ‘Not The View’ and ‘Elmslie Ender’ were the real McCoy.

‘Off The Ball’ and ‘When Saturday Comes were probably the first to use the old pop fanzine format to discuss the problems of football. And with football there is always much to discuss: Asset stripping, the squalid facilities outside the premier league, professional fouls, racism, dodgy haircuts and the indifference of the football authorities to all of this.

What was quickly apparent as football fanzines started to spring up at almost every club was just how many grass root fans there were who had the necessary intelligence, irreverence and wit to make these things both relevant and worth reading.

In their heyday there were an estimated 200 football fanzines being churned out every week. Some of them, like Celtic’s ‘Not The View’ had a circulation of over 10,000. Some, like Wealdstone’s (Vauxhall Opel League) ‘Elmslie Ender’ something under a hundred. (Elmslie Ender achieved the distinction of being banned by the FA for publishing a defamatory article about Dagenham prior to a match between the two and thereby inciting violence.) Strangely, the sales of Dulwich’s ‘Champion Hill Street Blues’ often exceeded their attendance figures.

Football Fanzines, like so much else, have been overtaken by the internet. Most of them have now long gone, but if you are prepared to google, you will find that they are still alive and well, but now masquerading as on-line sites with such wonderful names as ‘hibeesbounce’ and QPReport. (You can surmise which teams I follow)

And, of course, ‘When Saturday Comes’ can still be found at www.wsc.co.uk.

[rathbone]

It turns out the the Olympic flame will, literally, pass the end of our street. In the run up to the Olympics I’ve been thinking about who my favourite olympian has been. It’s not easy to make a choice, particularly with Mohammad Ali being in there, but in the end I think I’m opting for Carl Lewis.

Lewis was first picked for the Olympics in the days when they were still genuinely amateur. That was the 1980 Moscow games. At that time he was an accountant by day and a sprinter by night. His father had been a sprinter before him and his mother a hurdler. Unfortunately those were the Olympics that the USA decided to boycott, so he didn’t compete.

It was not until Los Angeles in 1984 that he could show what he he was made of. He won the 100 metres in a convincing 9.9 seconds. Then he took gold in the long jump. His third gold medal came in the 200 metres and a fourth in the 4x100 relay, setting a new world record.

Then at Seoul in 1988 he was beaten in the 100m final by Ben Johnson. However Johnson tested positive for drugs and was stripped of his medal. The Gold was give to Lewis. By that time he had won the long jump gold again, and silver in the 200m.

At Barcelona in 1992 he again won gold in the long jump and set a new world record to take another gold in the 4x100 m relay.

Finally at Atlanta in 1996 he again won the long jump gold, becoming the first athlete to win gold at four successive olympics. He retired from track and field after the games

Tot that record up: He was member of five American Olympic Teams, winning 10 medals, nine of them gold. With unsurpassed talent in the long jump and speed in the sprints, he has gone places where no other track and field athlete has ever visited.

(To be fair, I suppose that has to be balanced against his admission in 2003 that he had taken drugs 3 times in the run up to the 1988 games and his stated ambition that he only wanted to be a millionaire and didn’t ever want a real job.)

[rathbone]

With all the hype which surrounds Irvine Welsh (and yes, Skagboys is a good read), Martin Millar has slipped into the shadows. Which is a great pity. ‘Milk, Sulphate and Alby Salvation’; ‘Lux The Poet’; and ‘Ruby and the Stone Age Diet’ did it for the neds and schemies long before Irvine put pen to paper.

I can remember my cool factor rising noticeably with the Rathbonettes when they started getting into Jamie Hewlet and Tank Girl and they realised that the novelisation was by Martin Millar and that there were lots of Martin Millar books on our shelves.

Part of the problem may be his predilection for introducing fantasy, which, regrettably, pushes him into a niche which a lot of people find nerdy. In the early books there were moments of magic realism and those just grew until he was writing fantasy novels. (There are parallels here with Iain Banks). “Two fairies were sleeping peacefully on his bed. Dinnie was immediately depressed. He knew that he did not have enough money to see a therapist.” The title of 1999’s “Lux And Alby Sign On And Save The Universe” more or less captures it all. In 2002 he won the World Fantasy Award for ‘Thraxas’ and that probably cut off a whole audience who think that fantasy is beneath them. He began publishing the fantasy novels under the name Martin Scott (again parallels with Iain M. Banks)

I’m tempted to read ‘Kalix, la loup-garou solitaire’ in the french translation, just to see how they managed it.

Personally I believe we have a partisan duty to support good Scottish writers, so check him out. Martin has a good website (www.martinmillar.com) with an interesting blog which frequently gets interrupted by his incessant games playing, and he regularly tweets:“I sit and feel lonely. Sitting and feeling lonely is something I am a spectacular success at. I can do it for hours. Everyone is good at something.”

[rathbone]

URBAN MYTH 2

A young couple from Craigentinny went out on the town one night, leaving their dog to look after their flat. They had a nice time and arrived back about midnight. They were shocked to discover the dog in the lobby having a choking fit.

Fortunately the vet had an emergency out-of-hours number. They rang it and the duty vet agreed to see the dog despite the lateness of the hour. They get the dog in the car and round to the surgery asap. After inspecting the dog the vet said that there was an obstruction in its throat and he would have to operate to release it. The dog would have to be kept in the surgery to recuperate afterwards, so he advised them to go home and he would ‘phone them if there was any complication.

So they went back to their flat. They were no sooner in the front door when the ‘phone rang. It was the vet. He told them to get out the flat as soon as they could. When they protested he told them he had already called the police. As they were going back down the stairs the police arrived.

It turned out that the dog’s throat had been blocked with two human fingers, one still wearing a gold ring. When the police searched the house they found a burglar hiding in the kitchen cupboard, unconscious from the loss of blood from his missing fingers.

[rathbone]

Talking of dogs and missing fingers, whatever happened to Pit Bull Terriers?

There was a time when every other ned in this town paraded the streets with his designer pooch. Of course the underlying motive was blatant. Pit Bulls were fighting dogs and the hope was that their owners would gain a similar reputation by association. The archetypal image was that Peter Howson painting called ‘The Patriots’ which used to be in the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art and is now, I think, in Kelvingrove.

To return to the urban myth for a moment, Pit Bulls were allegedly genetically modified (‘bred’ to you and me) to develop a job which clamps shut and just won’t let go. The story has it that an american police sergeant attacked by a pit bull shot the dog eight times, but even dead the dog’s jaw would not relinquish its grip and the policeman’s leg had to be amputated to get the dog off.

Of course, ownership of Pit Bull Terriers was banned through the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, but the problem was that the Act did not definitively state what a pit bull terrier actually was. It referred to ‘ a pit bull terrier type dog’. All such dogs had to be immediately neutered, microchipped and tattooed and it was illegal to breed the dog (which, given the compulsory neutering, was going to be a bit difficult anyway.) Above all, it was also illegal to keep it unless you had done all of the above.. It was also illegal to sell the dog, give it to anyone else as a gift or abandon it, so your options were pretty slim.

Because of resulting confusion in the courts the Government then issued a guidance note, which didn’t clarify things. It said that cross breeds and mongrels could also be considered as pit bull terriers. The law also put the burden of proof on the dog owner to prove that their dog was not a pit bull terrier type. Consequently, because the police said it was, the courts accepted their view and, as far as I am aware, no-one ever successfully won a case. In some cases DNA tests subsequently proved the dogs were not pit bulls, nor even pit bull mixes. Not that it mattered; these dogs were still prohibited because they retained the ‘appearance’ of a pit bull.

What happened, inevitably, was that pit bull terriers went underground. You can buy them on the internet if you google ‘pure american staffs’. Things come up like: "Blue brindle, blue fawn, pure American staffs sired by clashes buster blue import mother blue fawn 2 boys 3 girls really nice pups big and chunky will be 22/23 inch when adult very athletic type personal protection dogs will be real head turners the real old tyme type not the usual rubbish not to be missed deposits now being taken no withheld numbers please." Current going rate is £525 per pup.

[rathbone]

Today is voting day in the Scottish album of the year award 2012 so get along to sayaward.com and cast your vote.

The Long List includes such worthy efforts as King Creosote & John Hopkins “Diamond Mine”, We Were Promised Jet Packs “ In The Pit Of The Stomach”, Mogwai’s “ Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will” and Tommy Smith’s “Karma”. More importantly, it also has Edinburgh’s own Fudge Fingas with “ Now About How”.

During the 1980s I wrote, illustrated, edited and published a fanzine called Bimbo which ran for 21 issues. One day, through the post, I received a fully pasted, four sheet art work for a another fanzine called Bimboid and a polite request that I publish it, so I did. The request came from a wee schoolboy called Gavin Sutherland. He followed it up with Bimboid 2 six months later and then things dried up. The next I heard of Gavin, he had grown up and become the keyboard player in Found.

A couple of years ago he struck out on his own as Fudge Fingas fusing house and techno. His latest album is “Now About How”. (Ironically, Found are also on the list with “Factorycraft”.)

Far be it from me to suggest where you should place your vote, but if you enjoy music, and particularly if you want to support scottish bands, give them a listen (they all deserve at least that) and then vote for one of them. It only needs a simple click.

But hurry, voting can only take place today and closes at midnight. Do it now on sayaward. com

[rathbone]

I saw a Sinclair C5 yesterday! The first time I have ever spotted one in the flesh, as it were. Presumably owned by some nerd at the University, it was creeping slowly up the hill towards the Campus. It was definitely struggling.

There was a time when Clive Sinclair was being hailed as the apotheosis of British technological enterprise. Up in the loft I still have my Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer which gave me many endless hours of enjoyment, plugged into the back of the tv while I tried to feed it data from a cassette recorder.

The C5 remarkably sold nearly 20,000 at £399 a time. It had a top speed of 15 mph and, if you were going flat out, the battery tended to overheat ( which is more than could be said for the occupant.) A couple of years ago I remember reading about someone who managed to beef one up with a honda motorbike engine and reached the giddy speed of 40 mph.

Production lasted only ten months before the press laughed it into receivership. I’m surprised that it was never relaunched as a mobility scooter which, in hindsight, it basically was.

Looking at the feeble little machine fighting its way up the hill just underscored the mixture of madness and brilliance that was Clive Sinclair. How he could every have convinced himself that this thing would revolutionize traffic and travel is beyond belief.

[rathbone]

I don’t smoke, but I do have a thing for Zippo Lighters.

Let’s face it, the Zippo is an authentic piece of Americana which has survived the passage of time and technology.

It is the lighter of fantasy. Just imagine you are Humphrey Bogart: Late night at the bar you see these two attractive women who step out on the balcony. You strike up a small conversation with them. After a while one of them pulls out a cigarette. you say "Can I give you a light ? "... she says, "oh do you want a cigarette".. You say “no, I don't smoke, but I believe a man should always carry a lighter, in case he meets a woman who smokes"... she says "Really? wow I admire a man like that, you are a gentleman!"... You pull out the zippo and light her cigeratte.. she says "Oh and you have a zippo too? thats totally cool".. to which you respond "You know those guys who carry a cheap Bic, I dont want to be that kind of Guy” and she responds "No, you sure are not..." .........

I know that it has a tendency to leak, making you smell faintly of petrol stations and putting you in danger of spontaneous combustion. And there is the annoying tendency to rub its way out of the back pocket of your Levi 501s.
There are cheaper, more reliable, less messy alternatives, but that isn’t the point. From lighting up a cigarette to starting a camp fire you cannot do better than a zippo.

If you ever happen to be passing 932 Zippo Drive, Bradford, Pennsylvania, there is the world Zippo museum. (Ironically, it’s non-smoking), with the world’s largest collection of Zippo lighters. Or, if you are musically inclined, sing along to Phil Kline’s ‘Zippo Songs, Airs of War And Lunacy”, CD. For the really adventurous, you could drive there in your Nascar 200, which is a jeep wrangler modified to look like a giant Zippo Lighter.

As for me, just the ideal of calling something ‘Zippo’ in the first place gets my vote.

[rathbone]

Mrs. R. and I were in a queue for coffee the other week when the couple behind us started talking in a manner which meant that everyone else had to pay attention. It turned out to be Andrew Logan and Zandra Rhodes.

It’s hard not to miss either of them. She always has bright pink hair and he is about nine feet tall and lanky. Both of them are just the right level of bonkers to appeal to my sense of the bizarre.

Having said that, I’ve never really rated Andrew Logan’s sculpture much. A bigger contribution to the culture had come from the Alternative Miss World competitions which he has run, on and off, since 1972.

Alternative Miss World is a competition for everybody - housewife, teacher, taxman and vicar; whether gay or straight; whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, anybody, or anything, can have a shot at the title. Previous winners have included a 75 year old Russian woman – (hobbies: smoking, drinking and dancing), and a robot.

The running order is loosely based on a normal beauty contest with the usual categories of daywear, swimwear and evening wear with what Logan calls the "oh-so-important interview" (“What I really want is world peace…”), but rather than measuring the contestants on their vital statistics and where they are on the fake-tan richter scale, the whole thing is judged on just three elements: poise, personality and originality. The contestants just arrive. The stage is already set, and they just walk on and do their thing.

David Hockney judged the first one, David Bowie couldn’t get into the second and Derek Jarman won the third. Costumes have been designed by the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Mary Quant and Grayson Perry.

The reigning Alternative Miss World is a man who called himself ‘Miss Secret Sounds of Sunbird Rising'. For his evening wear he had on this dress with a big cage with live birds in it and he sang falsetto. The luck winner was presented with his voucher for a one-night stay in a caravan at South Shields by Amanda Barrie.

They don’t happen every year, only when Andrew Logan can be bothered to set it up. Hopefully there will be one this year.

[rathbone]

Writing about Andrew Logan reminded me of Leigh Bowery. I first came across him when he had a stall in Kensington Market selling glamorous concoctions and glitzy accessories.

A few years later Mrs. R. and I started frequenting productions by Michael Clark’s dance company, for whom Bowery was designing the costumes. Then I got heavily into The Fall and discovered that it was Bowery who was all over the videos. At 6ft. 3 in and 17 stone, he often emphasised his size with viciously cinched corsets and enormous gaffer taped 'cleavages', finishing the 'look' by popping on a fake vagina that made it impossible for him to urinate all night.

At the Taboo Club he regularly tottered about the premises in anything from baby-doll nighties, elephant ear collared disco shirts, kilts with frilly underwear, blouses and tights, above multi-coloured patent leather platform-soled shoes. There were always extremes of makeup, wigs and hats, from a curly yellow-blonde coiffure with face painted in huge red polka dots, to a tiny policeman's helmet perched above a face made up to resemble a herpes scab infestation. Making the most of his very oversize girth and height, Bowery shaved his head, poured black molten wax over it, wore two-inch white false eyelashes, and painted his face and cheeks in grotesque imitation of a kewpie doll.

All of this culminated in him becoming the ‘face’ of Pepe jeans in t.v. commercials..

No wonder the world couldn't decide whether Leigh Bowery was a genius or a prat.

Now he is mostly known as Lucien Freud’s fat model. Working for Freud introduced a strange dichotomy into the Leigh Bowery oeuvre. Up till then he had displayed this bizarre, camp, construction which most people assumed was homosexual at base. However, that analysis had to incorporate his wife Nicola who, quite literally, was often incorporated into his current outfit. Freud presented him as he was, tall, bald, fat and with legs like tree trunks.

That probably suited Leigh Bowery down to the ground. After all his art was all about contradiction, outrage and challenging the idea of the normal.