Monday 4 April 2011
Rich Heathens
My grandmother was a Catholic. She came from a simple background. This is a euphemism for poor and uneducated. That combination made her a particularly devout Catholic. It's seems odd to me that the people with the least seem to be the most vocal in thanking God for it. Anyway, she was largely responsible for looking after me from the ages of two to seven since my parents both had to work. I think she must have taken the Jesuit maxim of 'Give me the boy till he's seven and I will give you the man', as she dragged me off to Mass at every available opportunity, no doubt in the hope that I wouldn't grow up into a faithless pagan like her son, my father.
I had mixed feelings about Mass. Though I liked the ceremony I didn't have the Latin so much of it was lost on me. This gave me a lot of time to study the Stations of the Cross of which our church had a fine set. I grew to realize that religion is essentially morbid, much given to the fetishization of pain and suffering, and even at a young age I began to question it's healthiness. And while I appreciated the priest's imprecations for us children to be good, I couldn't go along with the more way out stuff like transubstantiation, where the wafer and the wine ACTUALLY turn into the body and blood of Christ (where? I used to think. In my mouth, my oesophagus or my stomach?) or indeed, Heaven and Hell. Grandmother, being a simple woman (poor, ill-educated etc.) I now believe sniffed out this latent atheism in me and was determined to stamp it out.
I remember one morning coming out of church and, in the entrance, seeing a particularly vivid picture of Hell on a pamphlet. Think Hieronymous Bosch on acid. "There" said Grandma, "I told you there was a Hell." I spent many sleepless nights after that considering an eternity in that ghastly place being too young at the time to spot the flaw in her reasoning. That some proof outside the walls of our Catholic Church would be altogether more compelling.
The priest had a slight edge over Hell in the terror department as far as I was concerned and his occasional visit to our house (which I now know was in an attempt to get my parents to remarry in the Church of Rome, their Methodist wedding not being recognized) filled me with a nameless dread. His bright pink sausage fingers and watery, whiskey soaked eyes, his pompous patrician manner (remember he was God's direct representative in our 'hood) all gave me butterflies and of course in the light of subsequent revelations who knows what desperate alarms where instinctively going off inside me. Something I didn't want him doing!
As I grew older my skepticism ripened and I began to challenge this up-bringing even more. Despite the ghetto nature of the place where I lived, (solid Irish Catholic), they couldn't hide from me for long that other people in the world had different beliefs, a fact so well hidden that when I first discovered that not everyone was a Catholic, I felt dizzy.
I turned to my in-house spiritual guide and expert on all things religious. Grandma. "But what about all these other people of which I am starting to hear, nan? They are presumably decent folk and they aren't Catholics" Her logic was impeccable, her faith, unshakeable. "Well, son," she started and looked upon me with an indulgent smile. She may have stroked my shining, freshly washed hair, I can't remember. "There's a lot of people in this world will do anything for money!" Ah, it all made sense. Somewhere an evil cadre was lavishing material wealth on the peoples of the middle and far east and all they had to do in return was to feign belief in these pretend religions, and all just to piss off the Pope! How could I have been so blind?
Like so much of my contact with the religion of my forefathers this left me with a bizarre image of the world that it took me years to shake off. I imagined a third world of Hindus and Muslims and Sufis, morally bankrupt and living high on the hog, coining it in, and lying through their gold-capped teeth.
Despite all this I was fond of Grandma. A warm, loving woman who let me eat biscuits in bed and would show me my christmas presents early if I asked. Not like Grandma Sperring. But her tale is for another day.
I had mixed feelings about Mass. Though I liked the ceremony I didn't have the Latin so much of it was lost on me. This gave me a lot of time to study the Stations of the Cross of which our church had a fine set. I grew to realize that religion is essentially morbid, much given to the fetishization of pain and suffering, and even at a young age I began to question it's healthiness. And while I appreciated the priest's imprecations for us children to be good, I couldn't go along with the more way out stuff like transubstantiation, where the wafer and the wine ACTUALLY turn into the body and blood of Christ (where? I used to think. In my mouth, my oesophagus or my stomach?) or indeed, Heaven and Hell. Grandmother, being a simple woman (poor, ill-educated etc.) I now believe sniffed out this latent atheism in me and was determined to stamp it out.
I remember one morning coming out of church and, in the entrance, seeing a particularly vivid picture of Hell on a pamphlet. Think Hieronymous Bosch on acid. "There" said Grandma, "I told you there was a Hell." I spent many sleepless nights after that considering an eternity in that ghastly place being too young at the time to spot the flaw in her reasoning. That some proof outside the walls of our Catholic Church would be altogether more compelling.
The priest had a slight edge over Hell in the terror department as far as I was concerned and his occasional visit to our house (which I now know was in an attempt to get my parents to remarry in the Church of Rome, their Methodist wedding not being recognized) filled me with a nameless dread. His bright pink sausage fingers and watery, whiskey soaked eyes, his pompous patrician manner (remember he was God's direct representative in our 'hood) all gave me butterflies and of course in the light of subsequent revelations who knows what desperate alarms where instinctively going off inside me. Something I didn't want him doing!
As I grew older my skepticism ripened and I began to challenge this up-bringing even more. Despite the ghetto nature of the place where I lived, (solid Irish Catholic), they couldn't hide from me for long that other people in the world had different beliefs, a fact so well hidden that when I first discovered that not everyone was a Catholic, I felt dizzy.
I turned to my in-house spiritual guide and expert on all things religious. Grandma. "But what about all these other people of which I am starting to hear, nan? They are presumably decent folk and they aren't Catholics" Her logic was impeccable, her faith, unshakeable. "Well, son," she started and looked upon me with an indulgent smile. She may have stroked my shining, freshly washed hair, I can't remember. "There's a lot of people in this world will do anything for money!" Ah, it all made sense. Somewhere an evil cadre was lavishing material wealth on the peoples of the middle and far east and all they had to do in return was to feign belief in these pretend religions, and all just to piss off the Pope! How could I have been so blind?
Like so much of my contact with the religion of my forefathers this left me with a bizarre image of the world that it took me years to shake off. I imagined a third world of Hindus and Muslims and Sufis, morally bankrupt and living high on the hog, coining it in, and lying through their gold-capped teeth.
Despite all this I was fond of Grandma. A warm, loving woman who let me eat biscuits in bed and would show me my christmas presents early if I asked. Not like Grandma Sperring. But her tale is for another day.
Friday 1 April 2011
Well... D'uh!
Gorillas are wonderful creatures that speak to our deeps. When most people see one in the flesh or even in a photograph they usually take a moment, however brief, to reflect on their own humanity. After all, we share 97 per cent of our DNA with the Great Apes and are descended from the same ancestors. We are closely related.
So when I saw a picture of a family of Lowland Gorillas at play in a Canadian magazine I started to read the article. It concerned the inhabitants of Toronto Zoo. Every Zoo has, as a star attraction, along with the Big Cats, a couple of Gorillas or in the bad old days of London Zoo one very lonely one, in that case called Guy. Toronto has seven.
Leaving aside the whole question of Zoos and their right to keep wild animals for the moment, and leaving aside my own personal views since the great Silverback at LA Zoo threw one of his own turds at me (completely uncalled for, I had been nothing but respectful), the article concerned some troubling trends with the world's captive Gorillas. It seems that in every zoo their populations are becoming obese. Rolls of fat hanging round their torsos (the pot-bellies it seems are perfectly natural which I personally took great comfort from). Not only that but a behaviour, not seen in the wild, is becoming endemic. That is, the voluntary re-gurgitation and re-eating of their food.
Toronto Zoo has been at the forefront of research into these areas and has come up with a solution. Gorillas are vegetarian, browsing animals (unlike chimpanzees) who in the wild spend most of the day eating low energy, high fibre food. Bark, leaves and grass with the occasional treat of berries when they can be found. But in zoos they are fed a brick of much higher energy grains called Gorilla Biscuit and the floor of their enclosures are scattered with fruits like, apples, bananas and oranges for them to rummage through, all high in sugars and energy. The result is that their diet is a rich one (hence the obesity) and they can get all the nutrition they need in a short feeding time leaving the rest of the day free for them to twiddle their opposing thumbs. Many zoos give them toys to play with, which on the whole the Gorillas tend to shove into a corner and pretend aren't there, preferring instead to bring up their food so they can have the pleasure of eating it again.
Toronto's solution? To give the animals A SIMILAR DIET TO THE ONE THEY HAVE IN THE WILD! Really? D'ya think? The Gorillas have shed between 15 and 20 pounds each over the last few months and are some of the healthiest in North America. There is even a plan afoot to purchase some land to grow the type of trees they like so that their diet is completely sustainable.
While the zoo at Toronto is to be congratulated (It is completely privately financed and has one of the most progressive breeding programs in the world) I was amazed that in this day and age a feeding regime like that was not common practice everywhere. I was equally surprised that it would take so much time, research and presumably money to come up with, what might seem, such an obvious solution.
But then perhaps not. Man is a simple creature who takes time to work out things that come naturally to the higher order mammals... Like Gorillas.
So when I saw a picture of a family of Lowland Gorillas at play in a Canadian magazine I started to read the article. It concerned the inhabitants of Toronto Zoo. Every Zoo has, as a star attraction, along with the Big Cats, a couple of Gorillas or in the bad old days of London Zoo one very lonely one, in that case called Guy. Toronto has seven.
Leaving aside the whole question of Zoos and their right to keep wild animals for the moment, and leaving aside my own personal views since the great Silverback at LA Zoo threw one of his own turds at me (completely uncalled for, I had been nothing but respectful), the article concerned some troubling trends with the world's captive Gorillas. It seems that in every zoo their populations are becoming obese. Rolls of fat hanging round their torsos (the pot-bellies it seems are perfectly natural which I personally took great comfort from). Not only that but a behaviour, not seen in the wild, is becoming endemic. That is, the voluntary re-gurgitation and re-eating of their food.
Toronto Zoo has been at the forefront of research into these areas and has come up with a solution. Gorillas are vegetarian, browsing animals (unlike chimpanzees) who in the wild spend most of the day eating low energy, high fibre food. Bark, leaves and grass with the occasional treat of berries when they can be found. But in zoos they are fed a brick of much higher energy grains called Gorilla Biscuit and the floor of their enclosures are scattered with fruits like, apples, bananas and oranges for them to rummage through, all high in sugars and energy. The result is that their diet is a rich one (hence the obesity) and they can get all the nutrition they need in a short feeding time leaving the rest of the day free for them to twiddle their opposing thumbs. Many zoos give them toys to play with, which on the whole the Gorillas tend to shove into a corner and pretend aren't there, preferring instead to bring up their food so they can have the pleasure of eating it again.
Toronto's solution? To give the animals A SIMILAR DIET TO THE ONE THEY HAVE IN THE WILD! Really? D'ya think? The Gorillas have shed between 15 and 20 pounds each over the last few months and are some of the healthiest in North America. There is even a plan afoot to purchase some land to grow the type of trees they like so that their diet is completely sustainable.
While the zoo at Toronto is to be congratulated (It is completely privately financed and has one of the most progressive breeding programs in the world) I was amazed that in this day and age a feeding regime like that was not common practice everywhere. I was equally surprised that it would take so much time, research and presumably money to come up with, what might seem, such an obvious solution.
But then perhaps not. Man is a simple creature who takes time to work out things that come naturally to the higher order mammals... Like Gorillas.
Wednesday 30 March 2011
Nations Divided
Dividing my time as I do between Europe and North America I am constantly reminded of the wisdom of the phrase 'Britain and America, two nations divided by a common language.' I don't know who coined it but he certainly knew his onions. When we first travel to the colonies we are armed with a few well chosen examples, usually of the fast food variety. We know that our chips are French Fries and that their chips are crisps. They don't have a crisps. We know that our sweets are their candy and they don't have a sweets. We have a candy, but it's floss that they call cotton which is interesting because that's what they make floss from. For your teeth. They call biscuits, cookies which we try to clear from our computers, to be on the safe side, when we are getting rid of our search histories before the wife comes home. You've just got that straight when, driving through the Mid-West you will see a sign for biscuits and gravy. Being of an inquisitive nature and trying to get everything sorted, you drop in and order a plate to find out just what these biscuits are. When you've got over the fact that the gravy, far from being a deep brown, red wine jus to adorn a traditional English Roast is in fact a paste with the colour and consistency of phlegm, you discover that a biscuit is in fact a scone which has no business being under sputum, whether it is masquerading as gravy or not.
While talking of food, a word to the wise. When visiting a Canadian cafe be very careful when ordering a 'breakfast crepe', because while there's nothing you could actually do them for under the trades descriptions act, except maybe the lettuce which has no place in any breakfast, they are a little scattergun in their approach. While eggs, dry cured bacon and maple syrup are all technically breakfast food, taken all together they have a taste it needs a certain culinary abandon to acquire.
It's surprising how often these differences can have a certain sexual frisson. While shopping in New York some years ago I asked the cab driver if I could put something in his boot. After a quick glance to his footwear he eyeballed me as if I were a burlesque transvestite. I have made similar errors. Recently while being fitted for a suit in Canada the tailor asked me if I would put on suspenders. Now I'm as racy as the next man but I keep it for the home, not bespoke clothes shops in the suburbs of Toronto. I should have known that one because I once went to a gentleman's outfitters in LA and asked for some braces only to be directed to the Dentist.
Australia can also prove a little treacherous in this department. I was once on a beach in Sydney when I saw a girl searching the sand. Asking if I could help, she told me she'd lost a thong. I enthusiastically joined in the search, this being one of my favourite articles of a woman's attire. I soon discovered she meant a flip flop. Which is not.
In the late seventies when I first went to New York I was still a smoker and finding myself without cigarettes at a posh do on the Upper West Side I asked the host if I could 'bum a fag'. I found myself, minutes later, on the street, in the pouring rain, thinking how brittle these people were. While we are in a homo-erotic vein, I still sometimes take the long way round so I can pass a gay sex shop in West Hollywood that has the glorious neon sign in the window declaring 'Parking in Rear". Childish I know, but I am more to be pitied than censured.
There is a story some years back of a group of young Irishmen on the tear in New York sporting green T-shirts emblazoned with the legend 'Tommy's stag weekend. In New York and looking for crack' they were arrested and thrown in Jail. This is probably apocriphal but I hope not. A problem I have had in New York is perhaps more to do with the US education system than anything else. It has happened that on more than one occasion I have been ordering meats from a Deli and will ask for, amongst other things, a couple of slices of mortadella or pastrami or what have you. When going to the counter to pay, the person serving has said something like... "You said a couple, so I gave you three. Is that alright?" New York friends have tried to persuade me that 'a couple' has a less rigid interpretation on the Eastern Seaboard but does that mean I am missing a certain libertarian undercurrent when at American weddings we toast the happy couple?
Often, of course, American usage is more English than the English, being a vestigial remnant of the Elizabethan tongue they took with them. Fall, for autumn, being the most obvious example. But the line must be drawn somewhere and I suggest it is their appropriation of the word Football. You see my contention is that our game, that they refer to as soccer, is a game... played with a ball... using mainly the feet! Employing the same linguistic standards, their game should be called Chuck-crunch-ball. But I am a lone voice.
Finally a friend of mine from Los Angeles' Compton district called a while back to ask if I would like to come and see his 'Sick whip'. Unsure if his dog was under the weather or he was asking me to see a particularly degenerate new sex toy I drove down. Turns out it was a brand new expensive motor car.
Now that's wicked.
While talking of food, a word to the wise. When visiting a Canadian cafe be very careful when ordering a 'breakfast crepe', because while there's nothing you could actually do them for under the trades descriptions act, except maybe the lettuce which has no place in any breakfast, they are a little scattergun in their approach. While eggs, dry cured bacon and maple syrup are all technically breakfast food, taken all together they have a taste it needs a certain culinary abandon to acquire.
It's surprising how often these differences can have a certain sexual frisson. While shopping in New York some years ago I asked the cab driver if I could put something in his boot. After a quick glance to his footwear he eyeballed me as if I were a burlesque transvestite. I have made similar errors. Recently while being fitted for a suit in Canada the tailor asked me if I would put on suspenders. Now I'm as racy as the next man but I keep it for the home, not bespoke clothes shops in the suburbs of Toronto. I should have known that one because I once went to a gentleman's outfitters in LA and asked for some braces only to be directed to the Dentist.
Australia can also prove a little treacherous in this department. I was once on a beach in Sydney when I saw a girl searching the sand. Asking if I could help, she told me she'd lost a thong. I enthusiastically joined in the search, this being one of my favourite articles of a woman's attire. I soon discovered she meant a flip flop. Which is not.
In the late seventies when I first went to New York I was still a smoker and finding myself without cigarettes at a posh do on the Upper West Side I asked the host if I could 'bum a fag'. I found myself, minutes later, on the street, in the pouring rain, thinking how brittle these people were. While we are in a homo-erotic vein, I still sometimes take the long way round so I can pass a gay sex shop in West Hollywood that has the glorious neon sign in the window declaring 'Parking in Rear". Childish I know, but I am more to be pitied than censured.
There is a story some years back of a group of young Irishmen on the tear in New York sporting green T-shirts emblazoned with the legend 'Tommy's stag weekend. In New York and looking for crack' they were arrested and thrown in Jail. This is probably apocriphal but I hope not. A problem I have had in New York is perhaps more to do with the US education system than anything else. It has happened that on more than one occasion I have been ordering meats from a Deli and will ask for, amongst other things, a couple of slices of mortadella or pastrami or what have you. When going to the counter to pay, the person serving has said something like... "You said a couple, so I gave you three. Is that alright?" New York friends have tried to persuade me that 'a couple' has a less rigid interpretation on the Eastern Seaboard but does that mean I am missing a certain libertarian undercurrent when at American weddings we toast the happy couple?
Often, of course, American usage is more English than the English, being a vestigial remnant of the Elizabethan tongue they took with them. Fall, for autumn, being the most obvious example. But the line must be drawn somewhere and I suggest it is their appropriation of the word Football. You see my contention is that our game, that they refer to as soccer, is a game... played with a ball... using mainly the feet! Employing the same linguistic standards, their game should be called Chuck-crunch-ball. But I am a lone voice.
Finally a friend of mine from Los Angeles' Compton district called a while back to ask if I would like to come and see his 'Sick whip'. Unsure if his dog was under the weather or he was asking me to see a particularly degenerate new sex toy I drove down. Turns out it was a brand new expensive motor car.
Now that's wicked.
The Meaning of Life
Those who know me best will tell you that I am a big fan of Physics. And I don't mean schoolboy Physics, the Physics of secondary school. You know the sort of thing, copper-plating iron rods, or collapsing oil tins under a vacuum or trying to get Trevor Rimmington to drink the Potassium Bromide, all for no apparent reason except making Rimmington drink the chemicals because that was fun. Nor am I talking about the Physics of Fulcrums and Levers and Weights, that impenetrable world of engineering and mechanics.
No. I am talking about the Physics of the very big stuff. The Big Bang, Galaxies and Relativity, etc... and the Physics of the very small stuff. Photons, Baryons and the really esoteric head swimming stuff like Quantum Loop Gravity.
Why? Well I suppose when I first got wind of all this it seemed incredibly exciting. The idea that you could look up at the night sky and begin to have a vague notion of how to make sense of it all seemed like too good a chance to miss. I suppose this is why some people turn to religion. But for me when I hear the question "What's it all about?" answered by "God", I can't help feeling a little short changed. If the answer starts, "Well, as Werner Heisenberg stated at the seventh Solvay Conference.." I get the feeling that someone has taken the question seriously and given it some thought.
I know that many are put off the so called 'New Physics" by it's sheer bizarreness. Quantum mechanics is SO counter intuitive that some are disinclined to even contemplate it. Take Quantum tunnelling for example. It appears that a photon (a particle of light) can pass through an otherwise impenetrable object by popping up in one of it's possible states on the other side of the barrier. Of course mention this in passing to people over dinner and they start measuring you for the strait jacket. But would you expect the Universe to be explained by anything less exotic. Even the religious claim that their explanation moves in mysterious ways.
It's strange to me that folk still try to de-bunk Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, the two theories at the heart of the very big and the very small. Because in many real, tangible ways they both affect everyday modern life. When the military where developing the GPS system that so many of us now rely upon in our cars, they would not believe that they had to build relativistic compensations for the satellites that serve it.
Relativity describes Space and Time. Put simply, the faster you move in Space, the slower Time passes for you. Even with the comparatively slow speeds of the GPS satellites, without relativistic compensation their atomic clocks would soon be out of synchronisation and the entire Global Positioning System collapse.
Equally, without the advances that have been made in our understanding of Quantum Mechanics, your fast computer or game machine could not exist. And the next time you admire the rainbow reflection on the back of a CD or DVD remember you are seeing an actual Quantum Phase effect.
And for most of this we have Albert Einstein to thank. In 1905 he produced three scientific papers. One dealt with Special Relativity and another (on the photoelectric effect) formed the basis for modern Quantum Physics. It was for this paper that he won the Nobel Prize ten years later which is ironic given that by then he opposed Quantum Mechanics and despised its probablistic nature. As he famously said, "God does not play dice." Sorry Albert, but if He exists, it appears he does.
So I leave you with the magnificence of the Universe. No one has summoned it better than Eric Idle in his sublime 'Galaxy Song'. There, in perfect meter and rhythm he lays out the mind-boggling dimensions of the Universe. And I join him in the hope he conjours in the last line of that song...
"And you better hope
There's intelligent life
Out there in Space
'Cause there's bugger all
Down here on Earth."
Right on Eric.
No. I am talking about the Physics of the very big stuff. The Big Bang, Galaxies and Relativity, etc... and the Physics of the very small stuff. Photons, Baryons and the really esoteric head swimming stuff like Quantum Loop Gravity.
Why? Well I suppose when I first got wind of all this it seemed incredibly exciting. The idea that you could look up at the night sky and begin to have a vague notion of how to make sense of it all seemed like too good a chance to miss. I suppose this is why some people turn to religion. But for me when I hear the question "What's it all about?" answered by "God", I can't help feeling a little short changed. If the answer starts, "Well, as Werner Heisenberg stated at the seventh Solvay Conference.." I get the feeling that someone has taken the question seriously and given it some thought.
I know that many are put off the so called 'New Physics" by it's sheer bizarreness. Quantum mechanics is SO counter intuitive that some are disinclined to even contemplate it. Take Quantum tunnelling for example. It appears that a photon (a particle of light) can pass through an otherwise impenetrable object by popping up in one of it's possible states on the other side of the barrier. Of course mention this in passing to people over dinner and they start measuring you for the strait jacket. But would you expect the Universe to be explained by anything less exotic. Even the religious claim that their explanation moves in mysterious ways.
It's strange to me that folk still try to de-bunk Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, the two theories at the heart of the very big and the very small. Because in many real, tangible ways they both affect everyday modern life. When the military where developing the GPS system that so many of us now rely upon in our cars, they would not believe that they had to build relativistic compensations for the satellites that serve it.
Relativity describes Space and Time. Put simply, the faster you move in Space, the slower Time passes for you. Even with the comparatively slow speeds of the GPS satellites, without relativistic compensation their atomic clocks would soon be out of synchronisation and the entire Global Positioning System collapse.
Equally, without the advances that have been made in our understanding of Quantum Mechanics, your fast computer or game machine could not exist. And the next time you admire the rainbow reflection on the back of a CD or DVD remember you are seeing an actual Quantum Phase effect.
And for most of this we have Albert Einstein to thank. In 1905 he produced three scientific papers. One dealt with Special Relativity and another (on the photoelectric effect) formed the basis for modern Quantum Physics. It was for this paper that he won the Nobel Prize ten years later which is ironic given that by then he opposed Quantum Mechanics and despised its probablistic nature. As he famously said, "God does not play dice." Sorry Albert, but if He exists, it appears he does.
So I leave you with the magnificence of the Universe. No one has summoned it better than Eric Idle in his sublime 'Galaxy Song'. There, in perfect meter and rhythm he lays out the mind-boggling dimensions of the Universe. And I join him in the hope he conjours in the last line of that song...
"And you better hope
There's intelligent life
Out there in Space
'Cause there's bugger all
Down here on Earth."
Right on Eric.
Tuesday 29 March 2011
Losing It
Oh My God! I am going bald! Now I know I shouldn't react like that. After all I can think immediately of four close friends who are bald. They have all done so gracefully and none of them have resorted to any of the disastrous coping strategies that can afflict The Bald Man. I refer of course to those transplants that look as though they were performed with a spudgun. The weaves that bring back of the lost art of thatching. The sprays that look like decorative snow-in-a-can, past it's sell-by date and discoloured with age or the dreaded comb over. It goes with out saying that none of them posses a wig for anything but formal occasions. But I have good reason.
First let me explain how I noticed it. I was in the chair at work having the old Barnet done by Paul our hairdresser. I may have mentioned I am playing tough, authoritative Police Commissioner Kyle Kilpatrick in my latest job here in Toronto so I went for something quite butch. A jaunty upthrust to the hair which requires no little coaxing on Paul's part. Liberal use of an industrial paste and the blow dryer set to 'Windtunnel'. Though I cut quite a dash during filming, after a day under the lights, I am looking more like Dennis the Menace or Oor Wullie than the head of Boston's finest.
Once back in the apartment I went to the bathroom to freshen up before hitting Toronto's night spots when I noticed it. At first I put it down to this terrible modern habit of fitting out bathrooms with between six to eight overhead motorcar headlights. But my pate has withstood that kind of scrutiny in the past. Here now my dome was revealed in all it's horror. The thinning hair on the front of my scalp disappearing under the nuclear glare of the Halogen lamps and my hairline being reminiscent of nothing so much as a contemporary portrait of the ageing Queen Elizabeth the First. Trust me to have 'Seventeenth-Century-Royal Female Pattern Balding".
So why am I so concerned given my own friends' easy transition from hirsute to sute? I will tell you. Rick's head is smooth and sensuous. Ian's is like an attractively bronzed egg. Malcolm's wrinkles like waves on a millpond when he laughs and David's makes him look like he has two brains, which is ironic if you know David. In short their skulls suit follicular nudity.
I am afraid mine does not. How do I know this? I will tell you. For my last performance at Drama School I was entrusted with the role of Sir John Falstaff in Henry the V parts one and two and as a skinny nineteen year old I needed all the help I could get. So in an attack of method acting which thankfully has never flared up since... I shaved my head. The job done, I looked in the mirror and the razor fell from my lifeless fingers. I lifted a shaking hand to my blood-speckled head and ran my palm over the offending contours.
In that moment it all became clear that in my desperate desire to leave childhood, the infant me had gritted his teeth and put on a spurt of growth that had slammed my fontanelle shut with such force that, like a mountain range rising between converging tectonic plates a bony ridge had thrust itself skyward from my cranium, giving me the look of the last remaining specimen of Homo Stegosaurus on the planet.
In the millennia to come, when they excavate that part of the seabed which was once Chiswick and they uncover my perfectly fossilised skeleton, uniquely preserved in a bizarre septic tank accident, they will look upon me and say...
"Rewrite the history books. Spielberg was right. Man and Dinosaur truely did co-exist."
I need a good Trichologist and I need him now.
First let me explain how I noticed it. I was in the chair at work having the old Barnet done by Paul our hairdresser. I may have mentioned I am playing tough, authoritative Police Commissioner Kyle Kilpatrick in my latest job here in Toronto so I went for something quite butch. A jaunty upthrust to the hair which requires no little coaxing on Paul's part. Liberal use of an industrial paste and the blow dryer set to 'Windtunnel'. Though I cut quite a dash during filming, after a day under the lights, I am looking more like Dennis the Menace or Oor Wullie than the head of Boston's finest.
Once back in the apartment I went to the bathroom to freshen up before hitting Toronto's night spots when I noticed it. At first I put it down to this terrible modern habit of fitting out bathrooms with between six to eight overhead motorcar headlights. But my pate has withstood that kind of scrutiny in the past. Here now my dome was revealed in all it's horror. The thinning hair on the front of my scalp disappearing under the nuclear glare of the Halogen lamps and my hairline being reminiscent of nothing so much as a contemporary portrait of the ageing Queen Elizabeth the First. Trust me to have 'Seventeenth-Century-Royal Female Pattern Balding".
So why am I so concerned given my own friends' easy transition from hirsute to sute? I will tell you. Rick's head is smooth and sensuous. Ian's is like an attractively bronzed egg. Malcolm's wrinkles like waves on a millpond when he laughs and David's makes him look like he has two brains, which is ironic if you know David. In short their skulls suit follicular nudity.
I am afraid mine does not. How do I know this? I will tell you. For my last performance at Drama School I was entrusted with the role of Sir John Falstaff in Henry the V parts one and two and as a skinny nineteen year old I needed all the help I could get. So in an attack of method acting which thankfully has never flared up since... I shaved my head. The job done, I looked in the mirror and the razor fell from my lifeless fingers. I lifted a shaking hand to my blood-speckled head and ran my palm over the offending contours.
In that moment it all became clear that in my desperate desire to leave childhood, the infant me had gritted his teeth and put on a spurt of growth that had slammed my fontanelle shut with such force that, like a mountain range rising between converging tectonic plates a bony ridge had thrust itself skyward from my cranium, giving me the look of the last remaining specimen of Homo Stegosaurus on the planet.
In the millennia to come, when they excavate that part of the seabed which was once Chiswick and they uncover my perfectly fossilised skeleton, uniquely preserved in a bizarre septic tank accident, they will look upon me and say...
"Rewrite the history books. Spielberg was right. Man and Dinosaur truely did co-exist."
I need a good Trichologist and I need him now.
Monday 28 March 2011
The Secret Blogs
In writing a blog or a diary or a memoir for that matter one often calls on those stories from life that have instructed or amused listeners in the past. My blogs are no different. But though some people might regard every event from their past as fair game, I will not include myself among these blaggards. There are some tales which, though perfectly appropriate for the snug of the saloon bar, should never be put into literary form and cast upon the internet's waters.
The reasons for this unaccustomed bashfulness on my part are many fold.
Some stories are best left untold to save a friend or loved one embarrassment. Others should retain their seven veils to protect the innocent. Others still, denied the oxygen of infamy merely to evade prosecution.
Every life has its' grubbier moments and mine is no exception. Like so many before me there have been escapades, almost exclusively hatched under cover of darkness, which are simply too unsavoury for human consumption in the cold light of day.
Having said that I am reminded of a very interesting if slightly tasteless evening in the early eighties while walking home with a friend from a pub in Shepherd's Bush. It must have been very early in the eighties because the Police where still a popular beat combo at the time and my friend had taken to wearing an air-force surplus one-piece khaki jumpsuit in homage to his hero Sting. As we were passing the church on the Uxbridge road he was suddenly taken with a fit of stomach cramps brought about by an immoderate consumption of Guinness over the previous five hours and a very ill-advised meat pie from the hot shelf which to my certain knowledge had been there since the previous Thursday. Gripped, as he was, with abdominal spasms, time was of the essence and to hop over a gravestone and perch behind the western nave was with him, the work of a moment. My first intimation of anything untoward was hearing the sound that Tom makes when Jerry drops an anvil on his foot. It appears my friend had improvised his intimate tissues with a hastily grasped handful of leaves which turned out to be ten percent nettle. To my eternal shame I refused point blank to find and apply a doc leaf to the resultant swelling no matter how heartfelt his pleas. This, however was not the end of his troubles. Now I don't know how these fighter pilots manage it in the thick of a dog-fight but when lowering a jump suit to perform ones ablutions accuracy is paramount. Given the levels of Guinness in my pals blood stream accuracy was at this moment not his strong suit and it seems he got his angles wrong. The upshot was, when he returned to the vertical and pulled his jump suit up it acted like a catapult and sent the entire contents of his lower bowel cascading over his head. Oh, how I laughed. He walked home alone.
This story aside, on the rest I am mute, though I will attempt not to tease, by giving some flavour of a small cross-section of my own darker corners by listing the titles under which they might appear should I be a little less of a gentleman.
1. The Broken Candle
2. Meeting a Filmstar on a Difficult Morning.
3. Never Pull a Nylon Ribbon
4. The Log-Jam at the Snooker Hall
5. The Keys and the Underpants
And perhaps my favourite, and certainly not for the squeamish,
6. Who's Pet is it Anyway?
Watch this space.
The reasons for this unaccustomed bashfulness on my part are many fold.
Some stories are best left untold to save a friend or loved one embarrassment. Others should retain their seven veils to protect the innocent. Others still, denied the oxygen of infamy merely to evade prosecution.
Every life has its' grubbier moments and mine is no exception. Like so many before me there have been escapades, almost exclusively hatched under cover of darkness, which are simply too unsavoury for human consumption in the cold light of day.
Having said that I am reminded of a very interesting if slightly tasteless evening in the early eighties while walking home with a friend from a pub in Shepherd's Bush. It must have been very early in the eighties because the Police where still a popular beat combo at the time and my friend had taken to wearing an air-force surplus one-piece khaki jumpsuit in homage to his hero Sting. As we were passing the church on the Uxbridge road he was suddenly taken with a fit of stomach cramps brought about by an immoderate consumption of Guinness over the previous five hours and a very ill-advised meat pie from the hot shelf which to my certain knowledge had been there since the previous Thursday. Gripped, as he was, with abdominal spasms, time was of the essence and to hop over a gravestone and perch behind the western nave was with him, the work of a moment. My first intimation of anything untoward was hearing the sound that Tom makes when Jerry drops an anvil on his foot. It appears my friend had improvised his intimate tissues with a hastily grasped handful of leaves which turned out to be ten percent nettle. To my eternal shame I refused point blank to find and apply a doc leaf to the resultant swelling no matter how heartfelt his pleas. This, however was not the end of his troubles. Now I don't know how these fighter pilots manage it in the thick of a dog-fight but when lowering a jump suit to perform ones ablutions accuracy is paramount. Given the levels of Guinness in my pals blood stream accuracy was at this moment not his strong suit and it seems he got his angles wrong. The upshot was, when he returned to the vertical and pulled his jump suit up it acted like a catapult and sent the entire contents of his lower bowel cascading over his head. Oh, how I laughed. He walked home alone.
This story aside, on the rest I am mute, though I will attempt not to tease, by giving some flavour of a small cross-section of my own darker corners by listing the titles under which they might appear should I be a little less of a gentleman.
1. The Broken Candle
2. Meeting a Filmstar on a Difficult Morning.
3. Never Pull a Nylon Ribbon
4. The Log-Jam at the Snooker Hall
5. The Keys and the Underpants
And perhaps my favourite, and certainly not for the squeamish,
6. Who's Pet is it Anyway?
Watch this space.
Friday 25 March 2011
Stardust
The death of Elizabeth Taylor on Wednesday arguably leaves only one of the great Hollywood Legends left alive. I count an actor in this category if they were starring in movies from the 30's to the 50's, the heyday of the big Hollywood studios.
This set me thinking how old I really am because when I was starting out at Drama school in the early seventies, most of them were still around. Some of them were still making movies, albeit in most cases of dubious quality.
Bogart, Cooper and Gable has of course gone to comparatively early deaths but I saw James Stewart in a terrible disaster film with Jack Lemmon, who went on to make a great one with Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas called The China Syndrome based on the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island and he continued to make films into the nineties. My all time favourite actor James Cagney came out of a twenty year retirement in 1982 to make Ragtime with his old pal Pat O'Brien. Cary Grant didn't make films but was active in business and laterly took to touring a one man show. Gene Kelly directed his last film Xanadu in the early eighties. Orson Welles played the vile Louis XVIII in Waterloo opposite the King of OTT Rod Steiger who was still active into the 21st Century.
I personally had the great pleasure of meeting James Mason in 1983 who was strangely dressed from head to foot in denim. Glenn Ford turned up as Superman's earthly father while Tony Curtis had turned to painting. John Houseman and Don Ameche were fabulous as the amoral old bankers in Trading Places and Ameche went on to star in the Cocoon films. John Wayne didn't win his Oscar until 1970 for True Grit. Robert Mitchum got to appear in Scorcese's remake of his earlier Cape Fear and Charlton Heston even appeared in Friends and if that isn't bestriding the generations I don't know what is.
The story of the female Hollywood greats is altogether different. They tended to hang up their wigs and gowns in their thirties. I guess that particular brand of tinsel town glamour did not lend itself to ageing. Apart from Marilyn Munroe as a famously early casualty, (she died at 36), there were Marlene Deitrich and Greta Garbo vying for the role of most famous recluse. Joan Crawford lived till 1977 and she had been a star of the silent era. Wonderful starlets of the great MGM musicals like Ginger Rogers and Eleanor Powell all lived till ripe old ages and my favourite actress Bette Davis proved to be one of the exceptions by continuing to perform and make regular appearances till she was 80 as did Katherine Hepburn who turned up in On Golden Pond with Henry Fonda.
So who is left. Well there was a clue earlier when I mentioned his son making an appearance with Henry Fonda's daughter in The China Syndrome. It is of course the mighty and magnificent Kirk Douglas who was ninety four last December.
Oh damn. I forgot Ernest Borgnine! But let's face it, he wasn't Spartacus.
This set me thinking how old I really am because when I was starting out at Drama school in the early seventies, most of them were still around. Some of them were still making movies, albeit in most cases of dubious quality.
Bogart, Cooper and Gable has of course gone to comparatively early deaths but I saw James Stewart in a terrible disaster film with Jack Lemmon, who went on to make a great one with Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas called The China Syndrome based on the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island and he continued to make films into the nineties. My all time favourite actor James Cagney came out of a twenty year retirement in 1982 to make Ragtime with his old pal Pat O'Brien. Cary Grant didn't make films but was active in business and laterly took to touring a one man show. Gene Kelly directed his last film Xanadu in the early eighties. Orson Welles played the vile Louis XVIII in Waterloo opposite the King of OTT Rod Steiger who was still active into the 21st Century.
I personally had the great pleasure of meeting James Mason in 1983 who was strangely dressed from head to foot in denim. Glenn Ford turned up as Superman's earthly father while Tony Curtis had turned to painting. John Houseman and Don Ameche were fabulous as the amoral old bankers in Trading Places and Ameche went on to star in the Cocoon films. John Wayne didn't win his Oscar until 1970 for True Grit. Robert Mitchum got to appear in Scorcese's remake of his earlier Cape Fear and Charlton Heston even appeared in Friends and if that isn't bestriding the generations I don't know what is.
The story of the female Hollywood greats is altogether different. They tended to hang up their wigs and gowns in their thirties. I guess that particular brand of tinsel town glamour did not lend itself to ageing. Apart from Marilyn Munroe as a famously early casualty, (she died at 36), there were Marlene Deitrich and Greta Garbo vying for the role of most famous recluse. Joan Crawford lived till 1977 and she had been a star of the silent era. Wonderful starlets of the great MGM musicals like Ginger Rogers and Eleanor Powell all lived till ripe old ages and my favourite actress Bette Davis proved to be one of the exceptions by continuing to perform and make regular appearances till she was 80 as did Katherine Hepburn who turned up in On Golden Pond with Henry Fonda.
So who is left. Well there was a clue earlier when I mentioned his son making an appearance with Henry Fonda's daughter in The China Syndrome. It is of course the mighty and magnificent Kirk Douglas who was ninety four last December.
Oh damn. I forgot Ernest Borgnine! But let's face it, he wasn't Spartacus.
Thursday 24 March 2011
Corpse
(In the following Blog I will use only the protagonists' initials to protect the innocent)
One of the scaliest problems ever to afflict me during the course of my affairs has reared it's fearful head once again. I refer to the actor's nightmare. Corpsing! The uncontrollable fits of giggles that overcome most actors at some time or another during their careers, either before the camera or on stage. I have found this an all too recurrent theme in my work.
The first time I can really remember it being a huge problem was at drama school in the dress rehearsal of George Bernard Shaw's "St Joan". During the trial scene, we, the non-speaking roles were encouraged to shout out and comment in an improvisational manner in order to give the scene pace, verite and a general ooomph which the director felt it otherwise lacked. Unfortunately, in a lull, my sole voice rang out, making the very unShavian interjection, in reference to the rather loquatious prosecuting council, "the man's a tit!". The run ground to a halt as the entire cast wept tears of uncontrollable joy. Not assisted by the fact that the director, the late, great, K McB decided to deal with the situation by coming to the front of the stage and adopting a "schoolmarm" face. Advice to all young directors presented with a group of actors giggling like a schoolgirl outing to a nudist colony... This approach does not work. The soothing tone and a twenty minute break is the only cure.
Much later I was in the Terry Johnson play "Dead Funny" at the West End's Savoy Theatre. SK and I found that the merest sight of each others performance would reduce us to pools of molten mirth and our leading ladies' irritation only fuelled the flames. But we actors are a resourceful bunch and we instinctively re-blocked the play so that even the most intimate moments were played by both of us staring wistfully into opposite wings of the theatre, resolutely back to back.
The separate eye-line approach was readopted by KB and I in a TV movie about Earnest Shackleton's voyage to cross the South Pole. In one poignant scene, we had to toast each other in his cabin, commiserating that our ship had become trapped in the pack-ice. One of us, I can't remember who now, had to clink the other's glass and give breath to the, in retrospect, perfectly reasonable phrase, "Damned Ice!". For some reason we were unable to get even close to this line without doubling up, eyes filled with tears like two men who had just received a firm boot to the testicles. The final cut of the scene has us both toasting each other in spirit while staring out of separate port-holes.
TE, in a 1980's Granada mini series found my performance as an ex-alchoholic football genius SO ludicrous that even the sound of my stockinged feet, softly padding down a thickly carpeted staircase would reduce him to a choking consumptive. In that case staring at our feet seemed to help us, if not the director.
Corpsing is not only confined to ones fellow actors. The director and now big-shot Hollywood TV producer IT felt that my portrayal of SAS hard-man Johnny Donahue in "The Contract", pulling a gun on a Soviet spy in a field in Yorkshire was so rib-ticklingly hysterical that the first assistant director suggested he turned his back on the scene. This only seemed to exacerbate the situation. Eventually he was banished to an adjacent meadow with a megaphone where an assistant director would shove him under a bush after he shouted "Action!'. He never managed "Cut!"
My present trouble involves myself and CE. The star of my new pilot "P" for WB and ABC. Everything was going swimmingly for him in his finely tuned performance, one of wit, charm and dexterity until I showed up. He instantly became a five year old, seeing one of the better Punch and Judy shows for the first time with me as the string of sausages.
Oh well, give it time. I am sure we will both find somewhere to look!
One of the scaliest problems ever to afflict me during the course of my affairs has reared it's fearful head once again. I refer to the actor's nightmare. Corpsing! The uncontrollable fits of giggles that overcome most actors at some time or another during their careers, either before the camera or on stage. I have found this an all too recurrent theme in my work.
The first time I can really remember it being a huge problem was at drama school in the dress rehearsal of George Bernard Shaw's "St Joan". During the trial scene, we, the non-speaking roles were encouraged to shout out and comment in an improvisational manner in order to give the scene pace, verite and a general ooomph which the director felt it otherwise lacked. Unfortunately, in a lull, my sole voice rang out, making the very unShavian interjection, in reference to the rather loquatious prosecuting council, "the man's a tit!". The run ground to a halt as the entire cast wept tears of uncontrollable joy. Not assisted by the fact that the director, the late, great, K McB decided to deal with the situation by coming to the front of the stage and adopting a "schoolmarm" face. Advice to all young directors presented with a group of actors giggling like a schoolgirl outing to a nudist colony... This approach does not work. The soothing tone and a twenty minute break is the only cure.
Much later I was in the Terry Johnson play "Dead Funny" at the West End's Savoy Theatre. SK and I found that the merest sight of each others performance would reduce us to pools of molten mirth and our leading ladies' irritation only fuelled the flames. But we actors are a resourceful bunch and we instinctively re-blocked the play so that even the most intimate moments were played by both of us staring wistfully into opposite wings of the theatre, resolutely back to back.
The separate eye-line approach was readopted by KB and I in a TV movie about Earnest Shackleton's voyage to cross the South Pole. In one poignant scene, we had to toast each other in his cabin, commiserating that our ship had become trapped in the pack-ice. One of us, I can't remember who now, had to clink the other's glass and give breath to the, in retrospect, perfectly reasonable phrase, "Damned Ice!". For some reason we were unable to get even close to this line without doubling up, eyes filled with tears like two men who had just received a firm boot to the testicles. The final cut of the scene has us both toasting each other in spirit while staring out of separate port-holes.
TE, in a 1980's Granada mini series found my performance as an ex-alchoholic football genius SO ludicrous that even the sound of my stockinged feet, softly padding down a thickly carpeted staircase would reduce him to a choking consumptive. In that case staring at our feet seemed to help us, if not the director.
Corpsing is not only confined to ones fellow actors. The director and now big-shot Hollywood TV producer IT felt that my portrayal of SAS hard-man Johnny Donahue in "The Contract", pulling a gun on a Soviet spy in a field in Yorkshire was so rib-ticklingly hysterical that the first assistant director suggested he turned his back on the scene. This only seemed to exacerbate the situation. Eventually he was banished to an adjacent meadow with a megaphone where an assistant director would shove him under a bush after he shouted "Action!'. He never managed "Cut!"
My present trouble involves myself and CE. The star of my new pilot "P" for WB and ABC. Everything was going swimmingly for him in his finely tuned performance, one of wit, charm and dexterity until I showed up. He instantly became a five year old, seeing one of the better Punch and Judy shows for the first time with me as the string of sausages.
Oh well, give it time. I am sure we will both find somewhere to look!
Tuesday 22 March 2011
Seven Letters
My life, at the moment, is ruled by seven letters. They are, alphabetically, B,C,D,I,M(twice) and T. Less cryptically they are TCM and IMDB. I fill much of my down time here in Toronto watching classic movies on the wonderful Turner Classic Movie channel. But it is taking me, on average, three hours to watch a ninety minute film. The reason for this is obvious and is a symptom of that most modern complaint.... information overload. No sooner am I settling into the plot of one of Holywood's Golden Age greats than I recognise an actor from countless other movies and simply have to know his name. The film is paused and IMDBpro opened. The name retrieved I need to remind myself of the other films he has been in and catch a glimpse of a familiar face along the way and start to investigate her. Fifteen minutes later I find myself trying to discover exactly how many kangaroos played Skippy and I have to start the movie over.
Of course this random fact gathering indicates an obsessive behaviour. Which has it's roots, in my case, from having left school early. Train spotters and stamp collectors are all in the same boat. I imagine people who completed their education successfully do not have such grasshoppper minds. My bedside table is littered with half read books on subjects ranging from Cosmology to Evolution, covering such esoterica as Quantum Loop Gravity and Devonian Rock formation.
Stephen Fry once told me that he could tell I had an incomplete education just by the fact that I read such books. Anyone who has gone through a university education would never willingly pick up such stuff again. Of course, my lack of education also makes me prone to a sort of mawkish sentimentality. I can be frequently found, late at night, sobbing uncontrollably, reading IMDB, with TCM on pause, as I discover that the fresh faced beauty smiling at me from "The Public Enemy" or "Bombshell" died at the tragically young age of 26 (Jean Harlow in 1937). Equally tragic will be the discovery that the chirpy young songbird, warbling her way through 'Oh, You Beautiful Doll" was to leave films in 1953, join a convent , then marry Fred MacMurray (June Havers) only to live till the age of 80 and pass away in 2005 before I had a chance to love her talent.
But it isn't all wasted youth and missed opportunity. Occasionally you learn of something wonderful.
Luise Rainer won two Oscars, back to back, 1937 and 1938 before retiring from public life. The second of her Oscars, was for a wonderful film called "The Good Earth" in which she starred with the great Paul Muni. This film was recently restored and will be shown at the TCM film festival in Hollywood this April. The first showing of the picture will be introduced by... Luise Rainer herself. She will be 100 years old.
Of course this random fact gathering indicates an obsessive behaviour. Which has it's roots, in my case, from having left school early. Train spotters and stamp collectors are all in the same boat. I imagine people who completed their education successfully do not have such grasshoppper minds. My bedside table is littered with half read books on subjects ranging from Cosmology to Evolution, covering such esoterica as Quantum Loop Gravity and Devonian Rock formation.
Stephen Fry once told me that he could tell I had an incomplete education just by the fact that I read such books. Anyone who has gone through a university education would never willingly pick up such stuff again. Of course, my lack of education also makes me prone to a sort of mawkish sentimentality. I can be frequently found, late at night, sobbing uncontrollably, reading IMDB, with TCM on pause, as I discover that the fresh faced beauty smiling at me from "The Public Enemy" or "Bombshell" died at the tragically young age of 26 (Jean Harlow in 1937). Equally tragic will be the discovery that the chirpy young songbird, warbling her way through 'Oh, You Beautiful Doll" was to leave films in 1953, join a convent , then marry Fred MacMurray (June Havers) only to live till the age of 80 and pass away in 2005 before I had a chance to love her talent.
But it isn't all wasted youth and missed opportunity. Occasionally you learn of something wonderful.
Luise Rainer won two Oscars, back to back, 1937 and 1938 before retiring from public life. The second of her Oscars, was for a wonderful film called "The Good Earth" in which she starred with the great Paul Muni. This film was recently restored and will be shown at the TCM film festival in Hollywood this April. The first showing of the picture will be introduced by... Luise Rainer herself. She will be 100 years old.
Cold War Memoirs
I won the Order of Lenin. Well nearly. Let me explain. During the eighties, working actors were divided into two camps. Half were in India making lavish films about the Empire, and the other half were wandering around Europe making slightly cheaper TV films and series about the Cold War. I fell into the latter group. Starting with the now forgotten "Enigma" starring Martin Sheen and Sam Neill I soon progressed to starring in a three parter as a retired SAS man sent deep under cover to rescue a Physicist from the East. We shot in Duisberg and Berlin in the summer of '86 and it was here that I suffered one of the hairier moments of an eventful career. Visiting East Berlin as I loved to do during my breaks I was returning via Alexander Platz station when I saw the Trans Siberian Express steaming up to start it's journey to... well Siberia I guess. This famous, exotic train in the impressive architecture of the old Wehrmach era station seemed a photo opportunity too ripe to miss. Sadly I was forgetting the travellers Golden Rule when in hostile territory, that it is unwise to photograph anything you can bomb and within seconds of taking the picture I was hauled off to an interrogation hut by three uniformed Stazi to have the film ripped from my camera and after a nerve-wracking twenty minutes was sent on my way a wiser and slightly more right-wing man. To this day I feel my photo of the Brandenburg Gate could have been an award winner.
Which all reminds me of the highly amusing time that me and my mate Bernard were filming in Israel and hired a Jeep. We got lost in the hills above Eilat and were stopped by a soldier in a shiny silver hat carrying a sub machine gun. He asked us where we thought we were, which seemed a tad patronising until he informed us we had wandered into Egypt without the required stop at border control. Worse still the particular part of Egypt we had wandered into was an Air Force base and off limits even to Egyptians. Luckily he took the broad view and gave us three minutes to turn around the way we had come before he started firing.
But all this is digression. The point I am trying to make is that in 1989 I was offered a role in a TV movie on the life of Stalin. Robert Duvall was to play the eponymous role and I was to bring to life the character of Kirov. He of ballet fame and, in the nineteen twenties, the communist party's blue-eyed pin-up boy till he was shot in the back of the head by one of Stalin's henchmen.
We were due to start filming in August when Boris Yeltsin occupied the Parliament building in Moscow and Michael Gorbachov was under virtual house arrest in his Dachau on the Black Sea. This Coup d'Etat made for a politically volatile situation and filming was postponed.
A year later the dust had settled. The Wall was down and the Evil Empire was no more. Half of equity was soon to be out of work or forced to find jobs in posh films on the Indian subcontinent. It was while I was filming the murder of Kirov in the bowels of the Kremlin that the Russian actor playing my assassin dealt the devastating blow. He commiserated with me on the delay we had suffered starting filming. It seemed that had we made the film the previous year, I, like all actors playing a Hero of the Union would have been brought to the Kremlin in great pomp and awarded the Order of Lenin. I was devastated. I had, in my opinion, been overlooked by London's theatre establishment for years in the gong department and now a cruel twist of fate had robbed me of the Soviet Union's greatest prize.
I returned home numb.
In retrospect I must have banged on a little about this tragedy over the years because finally in 2006 my good friend Beth bought the medal online and gave it to me. It now takes pride of place, by my bed, along with my Cycling Proficiency Certificate (1966) My RADA Gold Medal ('75) my Blue Peter Badge ('07) and a National Socialist Party Member Pin from one of my Nazi films.
So things didn't turn out too badly.
Which all reminds me of the highly amusing time that me and my mate Bernard were filming in Israel and hired a Jeep. We got lost in the hills above Eilat and were stopped by a soldier in a shiny silver hat carrying a sub machine gun. He asked us where we thought we were, which seemed a tad patronising until he informed us we had wandered into Egypt without the required stop at border control. Worse still the particular part of Egypt we had wandered into was an Air Force base and off limits even to Egyptians. Luckily he took the broad view and gave us three minutes to turn around the way we had come before he started firing.
But all this is digression. The point I am trying to make is that in 1989 I was offered a role in a TV movie on the life of Stalin. Robert Duvall was to play the eponymous role and I was to bring to life the character of Kirov. He of ballet fame and, in the nineteen twenties, the communist party's blue-eyed pin-up boy till he was shot in the back of the head by one of Stalin's henchmen.
We were due to start filming in August when Boris Yeltsin occupied the Parliament building in Moscow and Michael Gorbachov was under virtual house arrest in his Dachau on the Black Sea. This Coup d'Etat made for a politically volatile situation and filming was postponed.
A year later the dust had settled. The Wall was down and the Evil Empire was no more. Half of equity was soon to be out of work or forced to find jobs in posh films on the Indian subcontinent. It was while I was filming the murder of Kirov in the bowels of the Kremlin that the Russian actor playing my assassin dealt the devastating blow. He commiserated with me on the delay we had suffered starting filming. It seemed that had we made the film the previous year, I, like all actors playing a Hero of the Union would have been brought to the Kremlin in great pomp and awarded the Order of Lenin. I was devastated. I had, in my opinion, been overlooked by London's theatre establishment for years in the gong department and now a cruel twist of fate had robbed me of the Soviet Union's greatest prize.
I returned home numb.
In retrospect I must have banged on a little about this tragedy over the years because finally in 2006 my good friend Beth bought the medal online and gave it to me. It now takes pride of place, by my bed, along with my Cycling Proficiency Certificate (1966) My RADA Gold Medal ('75) my Blue Peter Badge ('07) and a National Socialist Party Member Pin from one of my Nazi films.
So things didn't turn out too badly.
Monday 21 March 2011
Closed
I was talking about prime numbers to a friend the other day, in reference to on-line internet security when they put up their hands and said "Not listening. Numbers! They are a turn off!" I have heard this before. And my answer is this. What if the number was 555-647-8931 hastily scrawled on a wrap of cocaine and surreptitiously passed to you under a table by your favourite film star at the Vanity Fair post-Oscar Party? Huh? Right! Not so bloomin' innumerate now are we?
I suppose the point I am driving at is I hate a closed mind. This may be to do with the fact that I suffered from them so much in my youth. Whether it was my parents not allowing me to drink at family gatherings, that hot new director unable to see that I was the ideal choice for his groundbreaking new movie or that dazzling girl at the bar completely resistant to the idea of going home with me, I have been dogged for decades by the intransigence of others.
In the interests of fairness I should mention the exception that proves the rule. For many years I believed there was no such thing as tone deafness. I considered this to be a closure of the mind on behalf of the apparent sufferer brought about by low self esteem and a lack of confidence fostered by a poor musical education. However, exposure to bright, confident young people in the world's karaoke bars who seem unable to be dragged from the mike or to carry the simplest of tunes has taught me that it is indeed an illness which requires major financing by the government to eradicate.
To further this spirit of fairness and honesty I must admit to my own black spots. I am one who, when meeting you for the first time will gladly hear your tales of pets' illness or bizzare dreams and listen attentively, remembering every detail. But tell me your name and my mind shuts down after the first syllable. Thus, on second meeting, a Jonathan can become a Jim, a Beverly can become a Bill and god help a Cuthbert. Experience has taught me a woman is darling and a bloke is mate.
Directions. Same thing. When my SatNav lets me down as it does frequently there is no point pulling over to ask the nearest native how to get to the civic hall. The moment their brow furrows, their eyes look off into the middle distance and their arms raise in helpful semaphore all sound is suppressed under my brains MP3 version of the last five minutes of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.
These exceptions aside a closed mind is life's anathema. Strange I should find my own forgivable but other's... abhorrent. Perhaps I need to open my mind. Nah!!!
I suppose the point I am driving at is I hate a closed mind. This may be to do with the fact that I suffered from them so much in my youth. Whether it was my parents not allowing me to drink at family gatherings, that hot new director unable to see that I was the ideal choice for his groundbreaking new movie or that dazzling girl at the bar completely resistant to the idea of going home with me, I have been dogged for decades by the intransigence of others.
In the interests of fairness I should mention the exception that proves the rule. For many years I believed there was no such thing as tone deafness. I considered this to be a closure of the mind on behalf of the apparent sufferer brought about by low self esteem and a lack of confidence fostered by a poor musical education. However, exposure to bright, confident young people in the world's karaoke bars who seem unable to be dragged from the mike or to carry the simplest of tunes has taught me that it is indeed an illness which requires major financing by the government to eradicate.
To further this spirit of fairness and honesty I must admit to my own black spots. I am one who, when meeting you for the first time will gladly hear your tales of pets' illness or bizzare dreams and listen attentively, remembering every detail. But tell me your name and my mind shuts down after the first syllable. Thus, on second meeting, a Jonathan can become a Jim, a Beverly can become a Bill and god help a Cuthbert. Experience has taught me a woman is darling and a bloke is mate.
Directions. Same thing. When my SatNav lets me down as it does frequently there is no point pulling over to ask the nearest native how to get to the civic hall. The moment their brow furrows, their eyes look off into the middle distance and their arms raise in helpful semaphore all sound is suppressed under my brains MP3 version of the last five minutes of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.
These exceptions aside a closed mind is life's anathema. Strange I should find my own forgivable but other's... abhorrent. Perhaps I need to open my mind. Nah!!!
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