A final 'unsuitable' role model - Fred Dibnah

Fred was an iconic figure for Brits of my generation, an ordinary bloke improbably catapulted to fame on national TV. 

He was a steeplejack from Lancashire, who made a particular speciality of demolishing Victorian factory chimneys. He complained that he didn't get much of this work, because he was much more expensive than standard demolition by dynamite, but he found a niche for himself because his more old-fashioned method - knocking a hole in the base of the structure and building a huge bonfire in it - could drop a chimney with pinpoint accuracy, and no risk of collateral blast damage if there were other buildings nearby. In very confined spaces where it was not practicable to topple a chimney at all, he would knock them down, as he said, "a brick at once", building a scaffold platform around the the top of the chimney and painstakingly knocking out one layer of bricks after another with a hammer.

It was fascinating to watch him go about this work, partly for the vicarious thrill of being so far above the ground and the spectacular views this afforded. However, what was even more compelling was the absolute mastery of his trade that Fred displayed, and the evident passion that he felt for it. It helped that he was also an intelligent man, deeply knowledgeable about and respectful of the central role his area of the country had played in the Industrial Revolution. And his hobby was restoring vintage steam engines! That alone might have landed him a TV series, even if his day job hadn't involved working at such giddying heights. [His own engine, the beauty below, recently sold at auction for nearly a quarter of a million pounds.]

Fred's almost childlike enthusiasm and his wry wit made him a natural for TV. A brief interview on local news had brought him to the attention of a documentary maker, who made him the subject of a 50-minute-long programme on the BBC in about 1978. That was such a success that a year or two later it was followed up with a six-part series. Others followed. And in his later years, he became a presenter, fronting several series on BBC2 about Britain's industrial history.

He was a bit of a stereotype of the northern working man - more than fond of a pint of beer, speaking with a broad Bolton accent, a flat cap permanently on his head as if welded there (and so impregnated with grime and grease from his beloved steam engine that he once joked it had a dangerously low flash point), he even kept a whippet, I think - but this too was rather engaging, because entirely unaffected. There was never any suspicion that he was playing to the cameras. This rollicking, genial man-child was who he was.

Fred was possibly the most enviable man I've ever seen: supremely self-confident, utterly at ease with himself. His shows were a pure joy to experience, because he so obviously loved his job, and loved his life. That's not something we encounter often enough, on TV or anywhere else.

Here's a clip from a tribute to Fred made after his death a few years ago, including the famous chimney toppling scene from the climax of that first documentary about him.

Bon mot for the week

"Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it."

Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968)

I have been tempted to enrol Ms Bankhead among my 'Fantasy Girlfriends' over on Froogville, but my attraction to her has only bloomed relatively late in my life, and is based upon what I have learned of her personality rather than her looks - although she was rather striking in her appearance, and she did have an imposing and distinctively husky voice. (I must have seen her in Hitchcock's 1944 film Lifeboat when I was a boy, but that encounter left no enduring impression on me.)

A flamboyant personality, and extravagant in all her appetites, she delighted in flaunting her many vices: she was an outrageous vamp, a chain smoker, a heavy drinker - and completely unrepentant about any of it. In the 1920s, while working on the London stage, she caused consternation in British government circles through rumours that she was sexually corrupting boys from the nearby Eton College, the country's most exclusive private school. On leaving hospital after suffering near-fatal complications from a dose of venereal disease, she quipped to reporters, "Don't think this has taught me a lesson." Her dying words - many years later - were supposedly, "Codeine... bourbon!"

Rather than calling her a 'Fantasy Girlfriend' (to be frank, I think her sexual rapacity would have terrified me!), I think I should add her to the ranks of my 'Unsuitable Role Models' here on The Barstool.

Here's a good brief biography of her. And this fan site includes a complete recording of one of her '50s radio shows, which gives a nice demonstration of her wonderfully 'lived in' voice, and her fine comic delivery.

An entirely suitable 'Role Model'

Talking of dear old Keith Floyd the other week reminded me of another of my TV heroes, Les Hiddins - the 'Bush Tucker Man'. Hiddins is a former Australian Army officer who saw service in Vietnam, and is an expert on wilderness survival. Starting from the late 1980s, he made three series of the show Bush Tucker Man for Australian TV, demonstrating how the Aboriginal peoples live off the land in the Outback. I think the programmes didn't show up on British TV until the early or mid-90s, but I became a big fan, and would love to watch them again. They were breathtakingly photographed; and Les was a TV natural: unassuming and down-to-earth yet completely authoritative, and plainly loving the austere environments he was navigating.

Most of the other 'role models' I've celebrated on here were distinguished by their heavy drinking as well as other nobler and more creative qualities. I have no idea if Les is much of a drinker (although, being an Aussie, he's almost certainly fond of the odd beer now and again), but he is manifestly a thoroughly good bloke. And I just discovered that it was his birthday a few days ago: he turned 66 on Monday. Happy Birthday, Les!

Quite a lot of his show is uploaded to YouTube now - here's a sample of an early episode.

More on Les can be found here and here; and on 'bush tucker' here and here.

A culinary 'Unsuitable Role Model'

How time flies! It's nearly three years since the great Keith Floyd passed on, and I've been meaning to do an Unsuitable Role Models post in his honour ever since - and continually forgetting to get down to it.

Floyd was one of the great British eccentrics, an intermittently successful restaurateur who, in early middle age, fortuitously found his ideal milieu on television. Long before cooking became hip - essential, unavoidable - on our screens, he had one of the first really successful TV cookery shows in the UK, starting in the early or mid-80s (round about the time I started at university) and continuing for a decade or more. He amply conveyed his passion for food - and drink - but with a sincerity and an absence of pretension that few of his successors have been able to match.

He played up to his reputation of being an avid drinker, almost invariably having a glass of wine in hand when on camera and making it a running joke that he favoured recipes which called for a glass or two, so that he would have an excuse to glug the rest of the bottle himself while he cooked. On more than a few occasions, he appeared to become significantly stotious during the filming of a sequence - although he may have been play-acting just a bit.

The other distinctive feature of his shows was that he shunned the studio, choosing instead often rather challenging outdoor locations: half-way up a windswept Welsh mountain, a barbecue pit in the middle of the jungle, the galley of a storm-tossed trawler. And there didn't seem to be too much of the 'cheating' that we now regard as inevitable in such shows: the cooking was filmed in extended takes, and 'mistakes' were left in (his teasing monologues with his never-seen-or-heard cameramen ["Clive", "Richard"], constantly chivvying them to try to keep up with things in these hectic and demanding environments, was another of his endearing trademarks). It was seat-of-the-pants stuff, almost always a bit chaotic and occasionally threatening to spiral out of control; but the food always looked pretty damn good at the end of it all. For sheer bloody entertainment value, I don't think there's been a better cookery show before or since.

I hardly watched any TV in my late teens and early twenties, but Floyd was essential viewing for my generation. He was a terrific populariser of good eating, and he was the epitome of joie de vivre.

Here he is cooking up some beef...

And here making a fruity cocktail...

He had good taste in music, too. As the theme tune for his series on the BBC he chose The Stranglers' demented instrumental Waltzinblack.

When he died in September 2009, The Guardian rounded up a nice selection of tributes to the great man from today's celebrity chefs.

Another extreme 'Role Model'

Arguably an even more dangerous example, an even more unlovely reprobate than Father Jack Hackett, Rab C. Nesbitt was a comic character created by Ian Pattison and memorably brought to life by the actor Gregor Fisher. Originally appearing in an '80s BBC2 skit show called Naked Video, he soon graduated to his own sitcom which ran through most of the '90s (and I've just learned that, after a lengthy hiatus, the show was revived a couple of years ago). Rab was a stereotypical Glaswegian drunkard, irascible, unreasonable, occasionally violent, and a neglectful father and husband. However, as with that other great fictional pub regular Terry Collier, there was a basic decency that shone through, a genuine love of family and loyalty to friends, and also a warped sort of idealism - he was almost able to persuade you that dole-sponging was a rational and even noble life choice!

This might well be his first-ever appearance...

The show was notable for tackling darker and more serious subjects than typical sitcoms, albeit in a blackly comic and sometimes rather surreal way. (There was obviously no way that Rab's lifestyle was sustainable, either economically or in health terms. In one episode it was claimed that his liver had literally exploded while he was drinking, leaving an indelible blood splatter on the ceiling of his local boozer. But he miraculously recovered from this 'setback' and had soon returned to his old ways.)

It was also famously uncompromising in its use of authentic Glasgow accents and dialect. Many viewers in England complained that they never could get the hang of it, and requested sub-titling. I found that I warmed up to it pretty well after an episode or two, but there were always a few things I failed to comprehend; and I worry that, after so long without seeing the show now, I would struggle to get tuned in to its language again. 

My first group of students here in China were bound for a Scottish university, and I wanted to show them some of Rab to alert them to the fact that not everyone in the UK spoke with my 'Received Pronunciation', that there would be some special difficulties for them in understanding the local people where they were going. There was no YouTube in those days, so I was relying on friends back home to send me a DVD or a videotape, and no-one came through for me. Perhaps it's just as well: it would have scared the bejesus out of my poor charges!

I was once compared - by a lady friend! - to Rab's invariable hanger-on, a whiny, manipulative would-be lounge lizard named Jamesie Cotter. I think she intended it as flattery of a kind: Cotter was marginally better looking, dressed 'sharp' (by comparison to Rab!), and hence, in this sordid milieu, was something of a ladykiller. He was, however, utterly selfish and amoral, with none of Rab's redeeming virtues, a completely despicable character. 

I would far rather be associated with Rab - eternally downtrodden but pugnaciously resilient, an impassioned stream-of-consciousness philosopher, a dependable friend. These are qualities worth admiring.

A very poignant anniversary

Brian O'Nolan - the Irish literary genius better known by his aliases Brother Barnabas (under which he began his writing career doing funny pieces for student magazines at University College, Dublin), Myles na gCopaleen (under which he wrote the wonderful Cruiskeen Lawn column in the Irish times for more than 25 years across the middle of the 20th century), and Flann O'Brien, under which he published a number of sui generis comic novels - was born 100 years ago today.

Brian O'Nolan was the very first of my 'Unsuitable Role Models' here on The Barstool (it was a toss-up for that honour between O'Nolan, Tom Waits, and Jeffrey Bernard). He's been a great favourite of mine for over 25 years. I regret that I did not discover him sooner; although I suspect that I would not have 'got' him when still a boy. I had in fact read a short anthology of pieces about his character 'The Brother' when I was barely 10 years old, but had subsequently all but forgotten him again, and didn't seek out or fortuitously unearth anything else of his until around ten years later, when I was at university. Although I recall a few moments of snorting-liquids-out-of-the-nose hilarity in my first encounter with those stories of 'The Brother', I suspect the Dublin colour quite passed me by at such a tender age, and I became devoted instead to the more immediately accessible rib-tickling of O'Brien's near-contemporary J.B. Morton ('Beachcomber', of the long-running  By The Way humorous column in the UK's Daily Express). When I chanced to pick up a Best of Myles collection in Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford, circa 1985, I think I can fairly describe that as a life-changing moment for me. And when I first read The Third Policeman four or five years later - the best of his novels, I think, and one I have returned to re-read several times since - I realised that he was not just side-splittingly funny and dauntingly clever but one of the best, one of the very best writers I have ever read.

I have just learned that there was a centenary conference - 100 Myles - to celebrate his life and work a little while ago, back in July.  I am very sorry to have missed it - it was held in Vienna!  There's another, Flann 100, rather more appropriately hosted by Trinity College, Dublin, at the end of next week. That one, I suppose, I could just about make. I am mighty tempted, mighty tempted.

There have been tributes a-plenty already - from Mark O'Connell in The New Yorker last month, from Declan Kiberd on the Totally Dublin blog, and from Kevin Myers (the best written and most thorough appraisal I've yet found, though unduly sour in some respects, and harsh in its final verdict) in the Irish Independent at the end of last week. I daresay there will be others today, and over the coming weekend. I will update with any more worthwhile links I find.

I am gratified to learn that the great man has just been honoured by the inclusion of his visage on a new stamp from the Irish Post Office, while the Irish Times seems to be campaigning, not wholly tongue-in-cheek, for a statue of him to be erected (the Irish artist David O'Kane has produced the rather striking concept below, where discreet floodlighting projects a giant silhouette of the statue on to a wall displaying the text of one of O'Nolan's Cruiskeen Lawn pieces).

O'Nolan's legacy of cracked brilliance continues to inspire as well as entertain: a few years ago, I saw a superb musical comedy paying tribute to his work at the Edinburgh Fringe, Improbable Frequency (written for and first performed by Dublin's Rough Magic theatre company); more recently, the improbably named Ergo Phizmiz has created a multimedia work he calls a 'neuropera' based on The Third Policeman; and I just turned up an Irish humour blog (source of the fine photograph at the head of this post) which - though apparently rather short-lived - sought to keep the O'Nolan spirit alive with some splendid new offerings in his 'Keats & Chapman' genre of elaborately contrived puns.

There will be many people around the world enjoying a laugh over one of O'Brien's books today, and raising a glass in his memory on this Myles Day. (A pity I can't join them because I'm still on the wagon! Darn!)

[In my years of Myles idolatry on my two blogs, I have offered up numerous posts on him, including a celebration of the opening of his The Third Policeman as one of my very favourite first paragraphs in any novel, an attempt of my own at a 'Keats & Chapman' tale, and an account of how I have become convinced of the truth of his 'atomic theory of bicycles'. I've also reviewed his novels The Third Policeman and At Swim-Two-Birds on The Book Book. I've even found myself tapped up to contribute an article about O'Nolan's attitude to religion for an Irish Catholic magazine (I said 'No', not all that politely).]

Yet more anniversaries

Freddie Mercury would have been 65 on Monday. Yugong Yishan celebrated with a (little advertised!) tribute show on Sunday night, with Los Crasher, Kick Ass, and Bad Mamasan each adding a few Queen covers to their 30-minute sets. It was a fun show, although the shortcomings of the original material were inevitably rather highlighted by juxtaposition with the classic Queen hits. However, Los Crasher (who I hadn't seen before, but will now look out for) and Kick Ass (seemingly breaking in a new guitarist, but none the worse for it) are both distinguished by having frontmen who can really sing (and sing in English, at that), which, until recently, was a real rarity on the Chinese rock scene... practically unheard of!

This is the first time I've ever heard any Queen in China. I recall The Weeble telling me that Hong Kong diva Faye Wong has been known to cover (er, murder) Bohemian Rhapsody in concerts, but I think that might be the sum total of China's exposure to the band. I have never heard their stuff played in a bar (other than 12 Square Metres, of course, where we regularly have a little early evening headbang to Bo Rap), on the radio or in a CD shop, being attempted by one of the aspirant guitarists in the numerous musical instrument stores on Gulou Dongdajie or covered by a Chinese band, and certainly not manifesting an influence in any Chinese band's music; not a trace of them - one of the greatest bands of all time - anywhere, ever. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I fear they somehow passed China by, and are almost completely unknown here... at least until now. I hope we'll start hearing a lot more of this kind of stuff from Chinese bands in the future.

And - on a loosely thematically related note - I am indebted to The Dissolute Choirboy for forwarding me a link the other day to this tribute to Flann O'Brien (real name Brian O'Nolan, the first of my 'Unsuitable Role Models' celebrated on this blog) from last Saturday's Irish Times, extracted from the latest edition of the Dublin Review, which invited several of Ireland's most distinguished living writers to share their personal responses to their country's greatest humourist. It will be the centenary of his birth on October 5th. I shall probably write something more on him then.

An extreme 'Role Model'

For the week of St. Patrick's Day, who better to add to my roll call of strangely inspiring pissheads than the ultimate stereotypical drunken Irishman, Father Jack Hackett?

Father Jack, of course, was the oldest of the three disgraced Irish Catholic priests banished by the Church to share a house in the remote and desolate parish of Craggy Island - in Channel 4's surreal cult sitcom of the mid-90s, Father Ted. He was a thoroughly scary loon, a wild-eyed, wild-haired senile alcholic who spent most of his time slumped in a catatonic stupor - the only motivating force in his life being his singleminded pursuit of the booze. Indeed, "Drink!", his signature demented battlecry, was just about the only word in his vocabulary; he rarely said anything else, other than "Feck!" (a term popularised by the show as a would-be inoffensive variant on fuck) - and, occasionally, "Arse!" or "Girrls!!" (I wonder how Frank Kelly, the distinguished Irish character actor who played him, feels about being best remembered, after such a long and diverse career, for this one rather limited role.)

Darn it! Blogger is still without a working picture upload. And the Channel 4 folks seem to have been ruthlessly efficient in disabling embedding from all the many clips of the show on YouTube - so you'll just have to follow this link to Father Jack's finest moment: a plane full of priests seems about to crash; amiable do-gooder Father Ted organises an essay competition to decide who should get the two parachutes on board; Father Jack in the meantime takes matters into his own hands....

[P.S. I've managed to circumvent Blogger's galling 'no photos' glitch by reverting to the old 'compose' interface. Sigh. A low-tech and rather unsatisfying 'solution', but you have to go with whatever works.]

My new hero

While doing some research this afternoon on national drinking habits (for work, honestly!), I happened to turn up this story on the Malaysian Pen-Tailed Tree Shrew (Ptilocercus Iowii).  It seems it was all over the worldwide media around the end of July 2008, but it passed me by somehow (I was probably a bit distracted by all the Beijing Olympics brouhaha).  Apparently, this little critter lives exclusively on nectar from the buds of the bertam palm - but this stuff naturally ferments, attaining an alcoholic content of up to 3.8% ("one of the highest alcohol concentrations ever recorded in a natural food"), comparable to what we'd call a 'light beer' in the West, and a smidge stronger than most of the local beers here in China.  And despite guzzling continuously for hours at a time, and clocking up blood alcohol percentages that would have most of us talking to God on the Big White Telephone.... this tiny tough-guy mysteriously shows "no sign of intoxication".

Respect, little fella.

A Black Day - in a good way

Today would have been the 78th birthday of the late, great JR Cash - or Johnny, as he became known to the world. (His given name - which, I think, usually appears on his song lyric copyrights and so on - was simply JR. Apparently, his parents couldn't agree on names for him, so just gave him the two initials.... as happened with BJ Hunnicutt in M.A.S.H.)

Today also sees the release of the second (and, it would seem, probably last) posthumous collection of songs from the fabulous series of recordings he made during the last decade of his life with Rick Rubin's American Recordings label - American VI: Ain't No Grave.


I began listening to music - playing records for myself - when I was little more than a toddler, left alone for hours at a time to amuse myself with my parents' venerable Pye Gramophone and their big collection of (mostly) 45rpm singles. Their tastes were very, very middle-of-the-road (absolutely NO rock'n'roll, not even any Beatles), so Johnny's Live At San Quentin album was a decidedly outré component of the collection - but one that had a deep impact on me. I don't think they had anything else of his, though; and my musical tastes developed in other directions. It wasn't until I went to law school in the mid-90s that I began listening to him again, but I assuredly became a convert. These days, I think I'd align myself with Kid Rock, who said of him: "As far as I'm concerned, his face should be on Mount Rushmore."

Johnny himself once said of his output: "I love songs about horses, railroads, land, Judgment Day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And Mother. And God."

I can live without the strong Christian undercurrent in his work, but it's hard to argue with the rest of that list. He would, in fact, make a fine, inspiring addition to my 'Unsuitable Role Models' hall of fame. He had some major problems with drink and drugs, especially early in his career, but he got them under control - while continuing to write and sing about that experience with a charisma and conviction that can send shivers down the spine. Here's his quietly devastating version of Trent Reznor's Hurt, from the American IV album, recorded late in his life.

And to honour the memory of The Man In Black, we are all being encouraged to wear black today. I wear black most of the time anyway, but I've been holding off all week, just to make today a little special. I wonder how many other people in Beijing will be joining the tribute.

[I notice that Johnny's ominous, 'Book of Revelations'-inspired When The Man Comes Around - also from the fantastic American IV album - has spawned a large number of video tributes on YouTube. All of them, naturally, are fairly grim viewing; but this, I think, is one of the best.]

Madder music

Blog friend JES the other day reminded me of this, and it seemed so appropriate to this blog. Dowson, in fact, can probably be counted as another of my 'Unsuitable Role Models': a tremendous poet, but he drank himself to death with wine and laudanum in his early thirties. Madder music and more wine, indeed! Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine; And I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat, Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay; Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet; But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, When I awoke and found the dawn was gray: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng, Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind; But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, all the time, because the dance was long: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine; And I am desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)

Why we play pool

I bought myself a copy of The Hustler up in Harbin a year ago, but I only just got around to watching it again.

I suppose "Fast Eddie" Felson might rank as one of my 'Unsuitable Role Models'.

Here's his great - inspirational - speech about how he feels when he's playing the game.

"I just had to show those creeps and those punks what the game is like when it's great, when it's really great. You know, like anything can be great. Anything can be great. I don't care; bricklaying can be great, if a guy knows... if he knows what he's doing and why, and if he can make it come off. When I'm goin', I mean, when I'm really goin', I feel like a... like a jockey must feel. He's sitting on his horse, he's got all that speed and that power underneath him, he's coming into the stretch, the pressure's on him, and he knows... just feels... when to let it go and how much. 'Cause he's got everything working for him: timing, touch. It's a great feeling, boy, it's a real great feeling - when you're right and you know you're right. It's like all of a sudden I got oil in my arm. The pool cue's part of me, you know; it's... the pool cue, it's got nerves in it. It's a piece of wood; it's got nerves in it! Feel the roll of those balls. You don't have to look, you just know. You can make shots that nobody's ever made before."

And, of course, immediately after that, his kooky girlfriend Sarah, suitably impressed, comments, "You're not a loser, Eddie. You're a winner. Most men never get to feel that way about anything."

It's a great, great film. And, while not being anything like the player that "Fast Eddie" was (nor half the player that Paul Newman was, either), I do know that feeling.

Great Drinking Songs (14)

I posted a bit of Tom Lehrer over on Froogville for Christmas/Hanukkah/whatever - but I'm feeling in need of some more already.

I suppose dear Tom should really be one of my 'Unsuitable Role Models' too. I first encountered his wonderfully warped comic songs (no-one was ever better at torturing a rhyme) in the '70s BBC Radio show Frank Muir Goes Into...., in which that venerable comedy writer and raconteur would introduce a selection of classic comedy clips from the archives, themed around a different subject each week. Tom Lehrer was pretty much a weekly fixture (as were the marvellous early stand-up routines of Woody Allen - something I only managed to acquire my own recording of a couple of years ago), and I was immediately inspired by his playfully louche persona, and the wickedly non-conformist, often downright surreal viewpoints he espoused on love, death, religion, drink, drugs, and sex. For years I had supposed that mine was an isolated enthusiasm, freakishly rare; but at university I discovered that an affinity for Lehrer was, though by no means universal, not so very uncommon either; and I soon began to recognise this as a key indicator of suitability for friendship. Ah yes, many's the time that I have seen closing time at the Oxford Union bar celebrated (or rather, protested against) with renditions of We Will All Go Together When We Go or The Old Dope Peddler.

Given the direction which this reminiscence has taken, I suppose the most appropriate example of Mr Lehrer's oeuvre for me to now share with you would be his Bright College Days. There's no video with this, unfortunately (there seems to be very little performance footage of him at all), but it is the live version from the brilliant An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer album, which includes the most perfectly timed pause after the infamous 'razor blade' analogy - magnificent!

Another unsuitable role model - Terry Collier

The Likely Lads was a popular but short-lived BBC sitcom of the mid-60s, written by the great comic partnership of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. I wasn't around to see the original, but they revived it in the early '70s as Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? and that show became one of my earliest favourites, one of the most resonant memories of my childhood.

It was a touching study of a friendship, of the bond between two young northern working class lads who'd known each other all through their schooldays. It was not always an easy relationship: it was something of an attraction of opposites, with Bob Ferris (played by Rodney Bewes) being meek, neurotic, earnest, ambitious, conforming, while his mate Terry Collier (James Bolam) was an indolent, curmudgeonly ne'er-do-well. But they were both fond of a beer or several, and this was probably my first introduction to the cosy camaraderie of pub culture.

At the outset of the revived series, it was revealed that Bob had signed up for the army on a wild impulse (perhaps after being dumped by a girl?), and Terry, not wanting to be separated from his lifelong friend, had followed suit; alas, Bob was rejected for having flat feet, while Terry found himself trapped in the army. Terry, we learned, had taken to life in the forces for a while, and while stationed in Germany had fallen for a German girl and got married. The marriage had foundered, and he returned to his hometown (it was supposed to be Newcastle, although I don't think there was any location filming until the later feature film version) and, after several years out of touch, resumed his often fractious but extremely warm friendship with Bob.

Bob had by this time got himself a steady, boring job and had married an attractive but very strait-laced, social-climbing, slightly shrewish girl called Thelma. Terry lapsed into the life of a bum, a shiftless scrounger apparently surviving mostly on the dole, and devoting his days to fishing, drinking beer in pubs, and having a regular flutter on the horses. He was in many ways disturbingly reminiscent of the archetypal working-class slob Andy Capp (a character also played by Bolam some years later, in a short-lived TV adaptation of the famous comic strip). I would never nominate the loathesome Capp as one my 'role models', however; as Homer Simpson once remarked of him, he was essentially just a "wife-beating drunk", and almost completely devoid of any positive qualities. Terry, on the other hand, could be very sweet-natured, and was affectionate and fiercely loyal to his family and friends - even to his apparent nemesis, Thelma (beneath their superficial dislike for each other, there was a grudging respect - and also, on occasion, a frisson of sexual attraction). He was also something of a barroom philosopher, railing passionately and convincingly against many of the ills of the modern world. And he was, of course, an ultimate exemplar of the 'bad influence', the catalyst of good times who tempts his more staid friend into reckless indulgence and bizarre adventures; though more often, perhaps, his role was to be the terrible object lesson that serves as a warning reminder to Bob and keeps him mostly on the straight-and-narrow. I fear I occupy a similar position in the lives of many of my friends (particularly uptight Indian medic, The Egregious Dr P); they like to exaggerate my wanton excesses because they are secretly envious, and take some pleasure in living a wilder life vicariously through me. If there is one person, one character I could blame for the path my life has taken, it is Terry Collier. No, 'blame' is harsh: I'm not really complaining.

The other secret of the show's appeal was that it fairly oozed nostalgia - an aching regret both for the loss of the more carefree life of childhood and early adulthood, and more generally for the loss of a simpler way of life in the past (Bob and Thelma's bland bungalow and their drab middle-class lifestyle represented all that was worst in the shallow materialism of modern consumer society; and Terry, I think, can be seen as obstinately, desperately trying to maintain an old-fashioned sense of family and community in the face of an accelerating fragmentation of society: these themes were underlined by the opening credit sequence which showed the monstrous concrete housing blocks that had replaced the quaint redbrick neighbourhoods where the boys grew up).

Also, the show had the most wonderfully mournful theme song, with some brilliant lyrics:

Tomorrow's almost over, today went by so fast;

Now the only thing to look forward to's the past...

The YouTube clip below has that song in its entirety (never heard like this in the show itself, I don't think); it is accompanied not by the original opening credit sequence, but by a montage of photos of Bob & Terry.

Great Drinking Songs (8)

And another Unsuitable Role Model - I've somehow never particularly become a fan of Keef; but it's hard not to admire his cool, his dedicated hedonism, his unashamed ravagedness..... and the enormous respect he inspires in fellow musicians everywhere.

This YouTube video is a great montage of photos of The Great Man and my all-time No. 1 musical hero, Tom Waits, accompanying the song That Feel, which they composed and sang jointly on Tom's fabulous Bone Machine album - a fine singalong affair, slightly maudlin yet rousingly triumphant. [Well, the original video I posted had pictures of the pair of them; but that, of course, got deleted. This replacement just has pictures of Tom.]

Bluto - the most "unsuitable" of all 'Role Models'

John "Bluto" Blutarsky - the late, great John Belushi's signature role in National Lampoon's Animal House, definitely one of the funniest films ever made.

I first learned of it through Barry Norman's late-night BBC film preview programme - I suppose in the late '70s, when it first came out. It never came to my smalltown cinema, and I would have been too young to appreciate it then anyway. One moment lodged in my adolescent brain: the bit near the end where a young boy is sneaking a look at Playboy in his bedroom when a curvaceous bunny-girl is improbably catapulted through the window on to the bed beside him, and he looks up to the ceiling and cries, "Thank you, God!"

I didn't get to see the film until I went up to Oxford some years later. It was one of the first of the then regular series of Monday evening video screenings at the Union Society in my opening term. Yep, I had been at University only a week or two when I encountered this life-changing vision of how much fun my student days could be. Well, I think I would have figured it out for myself anyway, but this was certainly an inspiring - corrupting? - example. I often say that I have never looked forward since that day......

And at the centre of all the high-spirited (and mostly alcohol-fuelled) mayhem is, of course, Bluto - the ultimate 'animal' in the determinedly disreputable "Animal House" fraternity. However gross he is ("That boy is a P-I-G, pig."), it's impossible not to love him: he has such a fierce loyalty to his friends, such an admirable intolerance of bullshit, such an irrepressible joie de vivre.

Which is your favourite Belushi moment in this wonderful, wonderful film? Is it the dying fly dance from the end of 'Shout!', smashing the hippy romeo's guitar, chugging the bottle of Jack Daniel's, or "My advice to you is to start drinking heavily!"? It's all there on YouTube. Well, nearly all of it - I couldn't find the cafeteria sequence, alas.

However, I think this is surely Bluto's finest hour - his rousing 'battle speech' before the film's climax.

God, I love this film!

Great Drinking Songs (7)

And another Unsuitable Role Model, too - we haven't had one for a while! Ah, Dino.... He could sing, he could act, he could dance, he could do comedy, he could pull the girls...... and he could do it all while drunk. Well, in truth, I rather think he was just very good at acting drunk on stage, which is something rarely pulled off well. I don't doubt that he was a pretty dedicated drinker offstage, but I like to think that he had it well under control. His public persona always seemed admirably unruffled and serene, and nicely self-mocking, too. And he dressed so damn sharp!

I grew up on all those crazy comedies he made with Jerry Lewis back in the '50s, and then a little later developed a great weakness for the Matt Helm series of spy spoofs in the late '60s (I hasten to point out that this is when they appeared on British TV in the '70s and the '80s!): he was cooler than Bond, funnier than Flint, and he had more and better eye-candy than either of them. Happy memories!

Anyway, here's the great man in later life (1983, I believe) performing his 'theme song', Little Ole Wine Drinker Me. I believe that was one of the many classic middle-of-the-road singles in my parents' record collection, with which I spent many, many happy hours as a small child - I wonder how that may have influenced my subsequent development?? [Alas, that video got pulled from YouTube; but here's Dino's original recording, accompanied by a montage of stills from his many drinking moments in the movies.]

A Classical 'Unsuitable Role Model'

It's been a little while since we had a 'Role Model' - so how about this?

This is a wonderful piece of frivolity from the Classical scholar and poet, A.E. Housman (who was endeared to me by the passionate enthusiasm of my favourite teacher at school), one of the great poems about drink - and its merits, relative to poetry, as a consolation or a depressant - concluding with his take on the story of Mithridates, the King of Pontus (the sixth of that name, if memory serves; I'm sure The Swordsman will correct me if I'm wrong) who gave the Romans a heap of problems in the early days of their Empire at the beginning of the 1st Century B.C.E. He is, as you shall see, a fine advertisement for the benefits of imbibing little and often.

"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time,
Moping, melancholy, mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh, many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh, I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie god knows where,
And carried half-way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer.
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigh-ho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet;
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure,
Luck's a chance but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt
- I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.


A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

Getting Lost (the suavest Role Model)

My new blog-friend (blog-fiend?) "Keith Tolstoy" posted this exquisite video of the great jazz trumpeter/singer Chet Baker in his youth last week.

That, of course, led me to wandering around YouTube for an hour or two checking out the other clips of Chet. I think this is perhaps my favourite. It's not a performance video but a montage of (mostly black & white) still photographs. Chet was perhaps more photographed than any of the other jazz greats - because he was such a handsome rogue in his youth (albeit in a rather angular, ugly-handsome kind of way), possibly even more dazzling than last week's 'Role Model', Errol Flynn; but then those film-star good looks of his withered dramatically with years of drug abuse, and the ravaged face of his later years is compelling in a different way. This is a great set of pictures, and a fabulous song too.

The suavest Role Model

I started the week with a celebrated quotation from the great Errol Flynn, and that got me to thinking that I really should induct him formally into the 'Unsuitable Role Models' Hall of Infamy. I mean, the man was buried with six bottles of whisky in his coffin - how hardcore is that?!

His autobiography, the splendidly titled My Wicked, Wicked Ways, is apparently still in print, and is a fantastic read. He says at one point, I think in reference to a meeting with Clark Gable:

"People ask, 'What do two actors talk about when they meet?' The answer is themselves."

My favourite line about him comes from his great friend and 'partner in crime', David Niven:

"You always know where you stand with Errol. He always lets you down."

A stats-freak aside: this, by the way, was Post No. 500 on the Barstool. I really never thought we'd get this far. We're also rapidly closing in our 7,000th visitor. Great oaks from little acorns....