6th June 2003, 18:45

I'm watching a TV programme about an air show at Duxford, and it occurs to me to wonder why so many people cock up the pronunciation of the German plane maker, Messerschmidt - they will say "Meschersmidt". They all do it, even Douglas Bader did it. And when the hell did the word "strafe" get turned into "strayfe"?

Did anorexia exist in war time (referring to WWII, with its meagre rationing)? Somehow I don't think so...

28th May 2003, 18:00

Winston Churchill once famously said of the Labour Party that they weren't fit to run a whelk-stall. In their defence let me say that I am convinced that they are fit to run a whelk-stall.

With their Leader fervently believing in the myths and prejudices of a tribe of shepherds who thought the world was flat - anything more would be quite beyond them.

27th May 2003

Well, the sing-song was fun. Wasn't it? (You were out of tune - wanna do Eurovision next year?) It's been a while but I've been busy. I have no idea why I've been busy, but I do wonder how I ever had time to go to work. Anyhoo...

Name-drop time. That fine actress and mother of Vanessa, Corin and Lynn Redgrave, Rachel Kempson died last Friday. I met her once... It was backstage at the Lyceum in London: Vanessa and Corin had organized a fund-raising thrash for their loopy Workers' Revolutionary Party, and my boss at the time, the wonderful Madeline Bell, had been persuaded to do a short set - so I had to be there too. Standing in the wings I found myself talking to a little old lady, stooped and grey, with a cardigan draped around her shoulders like a shawl. I had no idea who she was, until we heard the announcement from the stage "... Rachel Kempson!" Before my eyes, she grew about 12" in height and her stooped back straightened. She thrust her cardigan into my hand as though I was her dresser, and strode majestically onto the stage. Some transformation!

I never saw her again, but you don't forget an experience like that. And no, Madeline was not a supporter of their party - just too damn nice to say no.

On another subject altogether - did you know that John (3rd Rock From The Sun) Lithgow was the first choice to play Frasier Crane, in Cheers? Neither did I...

9th May 2003

I know -- let's have a sing-song... I'm sure you know how this one goes. Altogether, now!

She was poor, but she was honest, Though she came from humble stock,
And an honest heart was beating, Underneath her tattered frock.

But the rich man saw her beauty, She knew not his base design,
And he took her to a hotel, And bought her a small port wine.

Chorus:
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Ain't it all a bloomin' shame?

In the rich man's arms she fluttered, Like a bird with a broken wing,
But he loved her and he left her, Now she hasn't got no ring.

Time has flown, outcast and helpless, In the street she stands and says,
While the snowflakes fall around her, "Won't you buy my bootlacés?"

Chorus:
It's the same the whole world over,
It's the poor what gets the blame,
It's the rich what gets the pleasure,
Ain't it all a bloomin' shame?

Standing on the bridge at midnight, She says "Farewell, blighted love".
There's a scream, a splash -- Good Heavens! What is she a-doing of?

So they dragged her from the river, Water from her clothes they wrang.
They all thought that she was drownded, But the corpse got up and sang:

Chorus:
It's the same the whole world over,
It's the poor what gets the blame,
It's the rich what gets the pleasure,
Ain't it all a bloomin' shame?

Whose round is it? Yours? Good...

1st May 2003

Voting day; also garbage day, but then that happens every week - nothing significant in that. Or is there? (No, there isn't.)

This election is for local Council members. I flirted for a while with the idea of voting for the Independent candidates, but on re-reading the blurb shoved through my letter box, discovered that they seem to favour the amusingly named "Traffic Calming", so that was their lot as far as I was concerned. I've no rooted objection to speed cameras and properly assessed speed limits (a friend who is a Parish Council member in Oxfordshire told me that they had a recommendation for a 30 miles-per-hour limit to be placed on what turned out to be a stream - the assessors had never actually visited anywhere, and didn't read maps too well). But humps and cushions cause pollution, damage to property and vehicles, and impede the emergency services, thus probably endangering life. And as for those pinch points that force all traffic, in both directions, into the same lane...

The UK Government has been concentrating its road safety efforts into the simplistic "Speed Kills" campaign since the early 1990s. The main effect seems to have been to reverse the downward trend in road fatalities. It's INAPPROPRIATE speed that matters, not speed per se.

I also object to the pejorative term "rat run" to describe the legitimate use of by-roads by drivers forced to abandon main routes by sheer volume of traffic. They aren't rats, and it's not their fault that the roads are inadequate.

Sorry, Independents. No vote!

23rd April 2003, 18:00

It's the day of England's patron saint, St George: it's the day when all good Englishmen demonstrate their superiority to other denizens of the British Isles by doing sweet sod-all to mark it. Let the Welsh have their daffodils and leeks, the Scots their haggis and thistles and the Irish their parades, held with an excess of green coloration, 3,000 miles away in the US - we shall continue haughtily to ignore the whole embarrassing business. It's like the stamps - we're above such vulgarisms as the emblazoning of the country's name on them.

Who are you calling "smug"?

17th April 2003, 18:00

For no particular reason I want to remind the world of a comedian who died over sixty years ago. He's almost unknown today but the echoes of his work can still be heard in the work of today's performers.

Billy Bennett (1887-1942) presented a raucous, beery, ill-dressed caricature of an "artiste". With his hair plastered across his sweating brow, his walrus moustache, a truly dreadful tailcoat, grubby dickey and trousers that were sometimes too short, sometimes too long, but never, never right - and below it all a large pair of army boots, he was the quintessential low comedian. He produced inspired nonsense, often in the form of parody - the popular monologue "The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God" became "The Green Tie on the Little Yellow Dog" for example. The sheer daftness of my all-time favourite title, "A Sailor's Farewell to his Horse", is breathtaking. He struck a surprisingly modern note in "My Mother Doesn't Know I'm On The Stage": to hide the awful truth about his career from his mother, he tells her the stuff on his coat is not face powder - it's alright, it's only cocaine...

Here's a taster of his parody style - from "The Shooting Of Dan McGrew":

Billy Bennett originated the "Boom, boom!" finish to a gag, still heard today (he sometimes actually played it on a small drum, which he carried hooked on a woman's stocking suspender.) He is also said to have originated the phrase "Not worth blacking up for" when describing a poor audience - and that is still heard today, too. I have transcribed a complete monologue, entitled Mandalay from one of the many records he made, starting in the late '20s.

12th April 2003, 12:15

In the years I spent playing saxophones and sundry other things, I only ever collected one autograph. Well, two to be precise, but they were both on the same page.

The occasion was the end of the woefully short London run of a musical produced by Ned Sherrin and entitled "Only In America". The musical director was a chum, Geoff Westley, and he roped me in to re-create the King Curtis saxophone solos on such arias as Charlie Brown and Yakkety-Yak. As time became very short before the opening, I also took on some of the orchestration. The band was a first-class collection of experienced younger studio musicians, and a good time was had by all! The score was made up from songs by the legendary Lieber & Stoller, composers of Hound Dog, Spanish Harlem, I(Who Have Nothing), Is That All There Is? - the list goes on and on... Mike and Jerry signed copies of a book about their careers for each member of the orchestra - and you can see what they wrote in mine.

In case you are wondering, "Chicken-scratch" refers to that style (!) of tenor saxophone playing heard on the recordings of Duane Eddy, The Coasters, Junior Walker and Boots Randolph - I have no idea why... But I'm still very proud of that autograph.

10th April 2003, 18:00

I transcribed the following from a recording made by Gillie Potter, "The Sage of Hogsnorton", that was played on a BBC record programme recently. It was made in the days of Savoy Hill, so dates from the early 30s. I think it's funny - but then I was brought up on this kind of thing on what we called the wireless...

"This is Gillie Potter, speaking from Hogsnorton. Tonight I am to tell a wondering world the truth about the BBC.

First then, what is the BBC? The BBC is an august body, July elected in September, which meets each year on April the first and, after a meat tea, makes a thorough search of the cellars under the House of Lords, after which they wait to see whether Oxford or Cambridge wins, and then go home for another year or up till the following Tuesday according to the Weather Report and the state of their finances.

Next: where is the BBC? The BBC is in London, at a place called Savoy 'ill, so named after that Duke of Savoy who was never really well. It is a large building entirely surrounded by alleys, which enable the officials to escape censure, and the vaudeville artistes to escape arrest. There are two ways in: the principal entrance is reminiscent of St Marks at Venice, without entirely losing sight of the signal box at Chipping Sodbury. Through this portico enter the brains and beauty of the BBC. Round the corner from this splendid gateway, under an arch and up an alley, is another door outside which stand three dustbins and two detectives. Need I say that by this door enter all the vaudeville artistes? If we return we shall be in time to see the cattle being driven in to be valued by the announcer who gives us the Fat Stock Prices at tea-time.

Throughout the building, large arrows direct one to the bar, and the fact that these arrows point in every direction makes them none the less useful, for the BBC building is ideal in that all roads lead to the bar. The bar is a spacious room, half a mile or more long but not any too large for its purpose, as it is invariably crowded; indeed, the quickest and surest way of interviewing anyone at the BBC is to go straight to the bar. Rows of bottles containing costly liquors are marked 'For Announcers Only', while at one end a large churn of milk is labelled 'Reserved for Henry Hall and his Band'. And it is a moving sight, to see the tired trombone or the exhausted euphonium gazing enviously at the announcers' alcohol but nobly demanding a double Alderney with a dash of Jersey. At the end of the bar is a small, Hole of Calcutta-like chamber with sawdust on the floor, illuminated by means of a candle stuck in a flower-pot. Need I state that this is labelled 'Reserved for Vaudeville Artistes'?"

6th April, 11:54

I really must commend the BBC on at last getting something as nearly right as it could be. I am hopelessly addicted to BBC7, the final BBC digital radio channel to go to air. It goes on (on my TV, via the SKY satellite) in the morning and stays on until about 15:00, during which I hear a miscellany of old and new comedy and drama. Some of it takes me back to the years of my youth; Paul Temple dashing around post-war London and the Home Counties, Goon Shows, Take It From Here (promised for the coming week). I've heard things I missed when they were first transmitted, like King Street Junior and Old Harry's Game. Dramatized who-dunnits (amazing how many police detectives have been played by Philip Jackson, known for Insp. Japp in the Poirot TV series), Le Carrê novels, I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and old editions of The News Quiz - wonderful!

It's a pity that they back comedy snippets and interviews with a truly doom-laden music track, but that's a minor niggle. BBC7 is a treasure-trove, and should be listened to! Gat a DAB radio or tuner, or turn to SKY channel 922, and get hooked! I know I have...

23rd March 2003, 12:01

This is a war-free zone. Not because I want to make a protest, and not because I am against anything. On the one hand there is a fool lost in a fog of religious myths and prejudices, and on the other a dictator who cynically uses religion as a protective cloak. War is an inglorious and loathsome human failing; but the anti-war compaigners don't come up with any solution. In fact, to demonstrate against it is to tacitly accept the continuation of the murder and torture that Saddam H has been doling out to his people - never has a national leader so hated his own, as far as I can see.

Being bombed isn't fun - I know a little about it, having survived the Blitz in WWII. Oh well, this is a war-free zone.

I've never got dancing... I mean the awkward jigging and wriggling that breaks out at social functions whenever the band plays... or, in these more moronic times, when the DJ sees fit to kill all conversation stone-dead with his wretched bash-trash. Darcey Bussell, Fred Astaire - they're fine. I don't really know what they are doing, but they do/did, and it's well done. And to think I once toured with an act that taught the Twist! Conclusion: Dancing is what people do to music instead of listening to it. And music that isn't worth listening to isn't worth playing. So why don't they shut up?

Anyone who does know what it's all about, and why people do it - please explain it to me.

5th March 2003, 18:20

Elton John once made an album called Honky Château. It was recorded at Strawberry Studios, which was (and probably still is) in France, and among the tracks were Rocket Man, Salvation, Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters - and one called Honky Cat. The personnel consisted of Elton John's regular rhythm team at that time, Nigel Olsson, Dee Murray and Davey Johnstone, plus a section of French wind players. It was decided to release Honky Cat as a single, and that meant an appearance on BBC's Top Of The Pops programme. PROBLEM: At that time the Musicians' Union regulation was that if you were seen in vision, you had to be the one heard. You couldn't just ask musicians to mime to someone else's playing. (Quite right too!)

The solution was for me to take down the brass and saxophone parts from the recording and, with the three guys I usually booked, to re-record the wind parts onto spare tracks. These could then mixed down with the rhythm and vocal tracks - and there was the sound for Top of the Pops. The Union rep (AKA Doctor Death) attended the session, and he was as happy as he ever got (which wasn't very).

Rehearsals over, we adjourned to the local, for a leisurely pint or two. On our return to the dressing room - neatly laid out for us there were - four mouse suits... My blokes and I were completely unrecognisable in our mouse outfits, so the exposure did us no good at all! Elton and the rhythm guys were dressed as cats by the way. We did tape a version without the mice and cats, for use if the record was a hit - but it wasn't. Sad, really. Still, the champagne in EJ's dressing room was very welcome.

I haven't a picture of Elton John, or, come to that, of me dressed as a mouse - so, just because I like it, I've used another shot of the beauteous Aishwarya Rai. Well, it brightens up the page. Any excuse...

2nd March 2003, 11:00

I am typing this after, at last, visiting the nearby archaeological dig. It's not a proper working day, I was told, but they, or rather he (the sole person on site at he time), was able to show me round the one trench at present opened, and to introduce me to a mysterious sherd of pottery, very finely decorated, which no-one has so far been able to identify. About mid-day I will return, and he'll show me more artifacts and the method of registering them. Another trench will be opened once the tarmac has been removed - it was laid to give hard-standing for contractors vehicles during works in the village, and they have to be chased to remove it as agreed.

I have already experienced the thrill of handling an article that was part of the everyday life of people living here so many centuries ago - before Magna Carta, before the Norman Conquest, before the English language had evolved. Before Pop Idol...

In the mean time, the local foxes prance around in the moonlight in the trench, leaving innumerable pug marks in the soft soil.

(Later) When I went back just after 12 noon, a digger had turned up and had tidied up the trench. Now the only trace of the foxes was their attempts to burrow into the wall of the trench - oh, and their droppings around the outside. Nice.

21st February 2003, 18:28

Something I really hate; the moment in a movie - usually a Western - where the hero, hitherto grubby and unkempt, cleans himself up (big symbolic moment) during the course of which he shaves. Naturally he has recourse to the Badger to whip up a good creamy foam, which he plasters lavishly around his heroic mug. He scrapes away with a cut-throat razor, and just as he finishes, something else heroic must be dealt with. So does he rinse off? Does he bog-roll! He picks up a dry towel and wipes off most of the remnants of the soap - and as a wet shaver I can tell you that that will start to sting and generally irritate in a very short time. Nobody, but nobody, would do that in real life. Aaarghh! Sticky!

15th February 2003, 16:20

The desire to believe in the mythical, the nonsensical and the just plain daft is rampant. At the end of January I saw a piece in London's sole remaining evening paper, The Standard, in which a TV presenter told how her baby had suffered from eczema from months, while she 'tried in vain' to find a 'natural' cure.

She resisted her husband's advice to take the child to the doctor, because "like many other mothers I know I am concerned about filling my children's bodies with drugs and chemicals". In other words, she places the un-tutored opinions of other woo-woo bimbos above those of the trained physician. Notice the buzz-words; "natural," "drugs" and "chemicals". She said that her two sons have been denied the protection afforded by inoculation because she doesn't believe in "overloading their immune systems".

Long story short - she finally took the baby to the doctor, and then didn't follow the advice he gave - "you hear about the side effects of steroid creams". Presumably from those other mothers worried about drugs and chemicals... She went to two different homeopaths and a Chinese herbalist, and rubbed in all the junk they provided. She cut wheat out of her own and the childs diet. because she vagely knew that eczema can be "linked to the food we eat". Nothing worked - surprise, surprise. Meantime of course the baby was suffering, scratching all night.

Eventually a specialist was consulted, and a steroid cream prescribed and what do you know, it worked almost instantly. "I don't regret exploring all the alternative treatments", she said. I have news for you, lady - "alternative" in this context means that the "treatment" is un-tested, and has not been proved to work. And probably won't, as the baby learned to his cost.

People must be free to believe whatever they want to - but I must be equally free to say that the mythical "secrets of the ancients", the elixir made from a receipt whispered by a dying hermit in a Thibetan cave, the crystals and the power of prayer to heal have no real place in real life - they should be relegated to the same sphere as all the other dungeons and dragons; pure entertainment. They should not be used to prolong a baby's suffering in the name of alternate medicine.

13th February 2003, 18:20

I am seriously considering a campaign to bring back the gallows, the rack, hanging drawing and quartering and the bastinado for the low-lives who decide that at the end of a television programme the credits should be shrunk to the size of a postage stamp while at least half the screen is devoted to a trail for the next wretched programme on the agenda. Sod the next programme, I haven't finished with this one yet. When I have been sitting for two hours wondering what the name of that actress is - it's on the tip of my tongue - know I've seen her before - charging over to the screen, groping frantically for my reading glasses - the screen resolution will ensure that it's a waste of time anyway - is not what I am looking forward to doing.

These verminous louts are displaying contempt for you and me, and for the actors and actresses whose names they so casually obliterate. May their armpits and other nooks and crannies be infested with the fleas of a thousand camels, and may the Bird of Paradise poop all over their birthday cakes.

12th February 2003, 07.50

Yesterday I drove to Old Windsor, to deposit a cheque in the bank, and then across the meadows at Runnymede. Wherever I went there were policemen and/or women. Several were on horseback, most standing in pairs in the gentle rain that seemed to go on all day. All wore day-glo jackets. What was happening? Some Royal Progress through the village?

They were policing the flight-path to/from London Heathrow airport, and, according to the Daily Telegraph were mostly to be seen in this village, althoughI have to say they were very thick on the gound in Datchet, too. Vans and 4x4s were being stopped and checked, and 'car parks and lay-bys along the A30 between Windsor and Staines' - they must mean the A308, the A30 doesn't go anywhere near Windsor - were sealed off 'to prevent drivers stopping'. I finally found somewhere I could post a letter. Thing is - I had no idea we had so many police officers in this neck of the woods. Usually they are completely invisible... I wonder who was doing the regular duties? Not that I'm complaining - security operations make me feel generally more comfortable about my life.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: 'We have a number of security checks operating in the area, but we cannot disclose any specific details'. (Daily Telegraph)

30th January, 2003 18:10

Well, I said on Monday that snow was forecast for Thursday - and just before 10:00 a blizzard enveloped us. It only lasted for about six minutes, but the air was so full of snow I couldn't see across the road. I had to turn on my desk lamp to see what I was working on. That kind of accuracy is spooky!

I also said on Monday that it was warm - it turned out to be the UK's warmest January day ever recorded, with outside temperatures reaching 17°C.

Later in the day: the wretched stuff settles. I learn that it is drifting in some parts of Eastern England. Yippee. I really dislike snow...

7th February, 2003 18:15

We, in this sceptered isle, have had railways longer than anyone else. I mean we've had them longer - they are in fact shorter than most people's... The point is the things were invented here, after all, along with the vocabulary that describes them. They are part of our national consciousness. Children whose parents have never ridden behind a Class N2 tank locomotive, or got smuts in their eyes by defying all common sense, and putting their heads out of the window, these sprogs are still being told that "It's a choo-choo train, darling!" Not much, you may have noticed, goes "choo-choo" on an Intercity or a Eurostar "puffer-train".

But that's by the way (the permanent way, natch). This is another of my little niggles about demotic speech. What the L.M.S. happened to that useful and euphonious appelation, "RAILWAY STATION"? On every side one hears the ugly "train station". The rhythm of it is wrong - no flow at all. It isn't English, that's the trouble, it's quasi-American, and we don't need it, any more than I need McDeadDogs and their Tasteekrap Burgers. Now... where was I?

We have guard's vans, not cabooses, and our sleepers are not cross-ties. Oh well, must go - I'm off to the bus-station...

27th January, 2003 18:05

This morning a wasp was flying around in my bedroom. This is January in England - the depths of winter - not wasp weather. Where had it been until now? Asleep somewhere? I put him/her/it (how do you tell with a wasp?) out of the window, and watched it fly away. To where? No idea. I went out, lightly clad for the time of year, and sweated like a - well, like some very sweaty beast. I don't think pigs sweat, do they? On my return to The Hovel, the thermometer in the living room was showing 32°C. Today is Monday - the forecast is for snow by Thursday. In between I suppose it'll be monsoon, tsunami, drought and hail. No wonder we Brits still talk about the weather all the time - it's the endless succession of surprises it throws at us.

20th January, 2003 17:51

Musing - I like a good muse - on the work of the departed Spike Milligna, I was reminded of another Irish purveyor of, among other things, wonderful nonsense. He had at least three names - Brian O'Nolan, Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen - and wrote the column 'Cruiskeen Lawn' in the Irish Times. Sometimes he wrote in Irish, sometimes in English or Latin. At other times he would write in what looked like Irish but was really English with Irish spelling... A sample of the kind of whirlwind invention that links him in my mind with the likes of Spike, is the following paragraph, in which he is sending up the somewhat chaotic status of Irish in the middle of the 20th Century, when a word would be translated differently by each and every expert:

"Cur, g. curtha and cuirthe,m. - act of putting, sending, sewing, raining, discussing, burying, vomiting, hammering into the ground, throwing through the air, rejecting, shooting, the setting or clamp in a rick of turf, selling, addressing, the crown of cast-iron buttons which have been made bright by contact with cliff-faces, the stench of congealing badger's suet, the luminance of glue-lice, a noise made in an empty house by an un-authorised person, a heron's boil, a leprechaun's denture, a sheep-biscuit, the act of inflating hare's offal with a bicycle pump, a leak in a spirit level, the whine of a sewage farm windmill, a corncrake's clapper, the scum on the eye of a senile ram, a dustman's dumpling, a beetle's faggot, the act of loading every rift with ore, a dumb man's curse, a blasket, a 'kur', a fiddler's occupational disease, a fairy godmother's father, a hawk's vertigo, the art of predicting past events, a wooden coat, a custard-mincer, a blue-bottle's 'farm', a gravy flask, a timber-mine, a toy craw, a porridge-mill, a fair-day donnybrook with nothing barred, a stoat's stomach-pump, a broken --" Apparently some of those meanings were real! Ah, but which..?

14th January, 2003 18:16

What's your favourite kitchen gadget? Corkscrew? Little thing for making a paper-chain out of a cucumber? It's one of those questions that crops up time and time again in magazine articles. Mine would be my bread machine, or 'bread maker'. That sounds too much like a job description to me, so I'll stick with bread machine.

I bought mine at least six years ago, and I haven't bought a loaf of bread since. You really should give one a try... And unlike almost any kitchen aid you care to mention, it doesn't take longer to clean than it does to use. The loaf comes out of the pan cleanly, and you just have to leave a little water in the bottom for a few minutes before wiping out the bits that stick to the mixing paddle. Easy-peasy. Any strong flour will do, though I have started to use Carr's, which gives me the best results I have ever had. The machine is made by our chums at Panasonic, and cost under £130 - as far as I know the price hasn't risen since then and the machines now have more functions. Hmmm - I'm getting peckish - it's that fresh bread smell...

28th December 2002 10:17

More bitching from me about linguistic incompetence... I have just seen a TV commercial for some kind of small sewing machine. The woman speaking on the sound-track - not, I fancy, the woman to be seen on the screen - told us breathlessly that it came with a "foot pedal". My question: what other kind of pedal is there? A pedal is a lever to be operated by the foot (being, according to Thomas "Fats" Waller, your "pedal extremity"). So a foot pedal would be a foot foot lever... tautologous twits!

And while I'm in ranting mode, what kind of comb isn't a "tooth-comb"? All combs have teeth: it's what being a comb is all about. (Except honey-combs, I suppose.) No, he said, thumping his tub, the phrase at the nub of this connerie is "with a fine-tooth(ed) comb".

I think I feel better now.

22nd December 2002 12:35

My Sunday newspaper has a featurette today on a film actress who has long graced my PC screen as, forgive me, wallpaper. I last went to a cinema in around 1983, I think. It was the films that got small... and with them the soi-disant stars. Brought up on Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Gary Cooper et al, and films that didn't rely on explosions, woo-woo mysticism or plain old-fashoned hype and hokum, PLUS the chopping up of cinemas into claustrophobic little shoeboxes with conference centre decor, the Electric Moving Kinema no longer worked its magic for me. It still doesn't.

I cannot think of a single Hollywood star of the present day who is as beautiful or as talented as the lady in my picture, and in the Sunday Telegraph's 'Foreigh Bodies' column - Aishwarya Rai. While channel-hopping a while ago, I came across a Hindi language film on Channel 4, I think, and was mesmerised by this woman. Still pictures do not do her justice. Miss World in 1994, she surprised the world by not sinking without trace once the crown had been passed on, but instead becoming a star actress, singer and dancer (although I could be wrong about the singing!) in Bollywood films, including the biggest blockbuster of them all, Devdas.

Hmmm. Now that's what I'd like for Christmas... (silly old sod...).

15th December 2002 19:07

Yesterday I offered my services as a find-washer to the local Archaeological Group, who have, for the past 28 years, been excavating a Saxon settlement which was the origin of our village ... today I found myself sitting in primitive conditions, bored out of my skull, in my own living room, as a result of a power failure. Mind you, I did well, finding the candles and matches and the necessary flashlight in a matter of a couple of minutes. It happened while I was working on a web page for someone's site, and I have no idea what stage I had reached. Oh well. It lasted about an hour and a half, and when the lights came back on I had fallen asleep, like a parrot with a cover over its cage... How did our ancestors manage? I'll hope to find out on the dig.

12th December 12:18

I read today of the death of the bass player, Arvell Shaw, on December 5th. He was the last remaining member of Louis Armstrong's Allstars, the group that Louis led from 1947 until his death.

Fifty years ago we didn't hear American musicians in this country: the American Federation of Musicians, led by a Mr Petrillo, and our own Musicians' Union had maintained reciprocal bans for some time. Finally, a limited exchange system was set up - and the first fruit for the jazz lover was the tour of Louis Armstrong and the Allstars. And I was there...

The promotors obviously had little faith in the ability of the great Satchmo to attract and hold an audience on his own - they provided support in the form of a one-legged tap dancer - I kid you not - a man called Peg-Leg Bates. They also billed a fat woman singer, Velma Middleton, to sing with the band, and to jump up and down, which she did with great verve. The venue for this bizarre programme was the Empire Pool, Wembley, where the acoustics were exactly what you would expect. Oh, and just to make everything perfect, the band was set up on a revolving stage, that spun slowly throughout. The place was packed with eager jazz fans, hungry for their first experience of the real thing, and they had to sit through a one-legged tap-dancer and see the Allstars used as a backing band for a pogo-ing blimp in a pink frock... but when Louis's horn sounded its first call to arms, it was all worth it! I can't remember who was on trombone now, but Albert Nicholas was the clarinet player, Barrett Deems was on drums, Billy Kyle on piano - the now late Arvell Shaw was the bass man. And now they are all gone. RIP Arvell.

8th December 2002 10:31

I've had a SKY satellite dish for six months now. Before that I had the dreaded ONDigital box, but when the company (ITVDigital) went bust for having promised large sums they couldn't pay to soccer teams I didn't want to watch, I caved in and went for the mini-dish. As it turns out, the technology is streets better. And there is nothing like it for making you realise what a foetid pile of televisual ordure is served up by channels like BBC1 and ITV. There is, of course, the occasional diamond on the dung-heap or at the very least a rhinestone - but for the most part one is offered a joyless vista of game shows, "reality" shows and people playing with balls. With my satellite service I get to see all sorts of repeats of things I didn't have the chance to see when they were first transmitted, or saw once and wanted to see again. Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple and now I'm glued to Roy Marsden as Adam Dalgliesh in the P D James mysteries. A Metropolitan Police detective (a Commander, no less) who writes and publishes poetry... coo.

Our library here in the village (a container that visits on Mondays and Saturdays) seems a little short of P D James - either that or her books are permanently out, like Lolita in the Tony Hancock show about The Last Page. I shall persevere. I can't afford to buy any books now, as I have so many that there just isn't any room for them. Throwing some away is not an option!

1st December 2002 10:49

Today's Sunday Telegraph quotes the following from The Sun: BRAZIL is to build the first landing strip for aliens after the mayor of Bocaiuva do Sul said that they asked him for "authorised entry".

29th November 2002 10:25

I don't know if this happens in languages other than English: Many Americans will say, and write "I could care less" about something. This implies that the speaker isn't actually devoid of interest. We Brits say "I couldn't care less." That seems to get the job done. Conversely you will hear speakers of UK English saying "It went down like a lead balloon", which only makes sense if you are implying that something "went down" very well indeed! US speakers say that "it went over" like the balloon in question. Now that makes sense...

27th November 2002 12:15

Last night I watched a BBC Horizon programme on Homeopathy. I knew in advance that it would feature the "arch-sceptic" (their words, not mine) James Randi, a stage magician and escapologist, who has devoted a great dealt of time to exposing charlatans and frauds, purveyors of quack "cures" and con-men who prey on the recently-bereaved by pretending to contact the spirits of their departed loved ones - you get the picture. He doesn't seemed to have aged in the thirty years since I last met him, which is the only spooky thing about him.

Last night homeopathy was tested to destruction. Randi designed the protocols, and independent scientists carried out the procedures. And the results? Exactly what you would expect - from blind chance. The James Randi Educational Foundation's one million dollars, offered for anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal phenomenon or power, remain safe. But don't expect to see the "medicines" vanish from the High Street stores any time soon. You can't confuse a believer with facts - and they will still want to pay out for sugar pills on which drops of pure water have been dripped. It's natural, in'nit? Bound to be better than all those tested drugs and medicines that can be proved to work... naturally!

19th November 2002 11:45

A letter today from my boyhood friend Keith, mailed from his home in Durban. He's just spent three weeks in Zimbabwe, and sounds very happy to be back in South Africa. He says that Mugabe has brought the country to its knees, there's no food and inflation is rampant. Keith and I were at school together, but I lost contact with him when we went our separate ways into the arms of HM Forces. He became a Tea Planter (shades of Big White Carstairs), and it was only recently that I was able to trace him - his brother and sister both have entries on the excellent Friends Reunited site, and were able to give me his address.