Some 20 years ago I was listening to the radio in the car as it played Young Girl by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. When it finished, Tony Blackburn remarked along the lines of 'Jimmy Savile's favourite song, you know' and moved on to the next record.
That's what it was like. Knowing comments, little winks, comments along the lines of 'he's a one isn't he.'
Everyone knew. His colleagues, many of the public and certainly the press. Savile's relationship with journalists was good, partly because he made himself available.
At The Sun in the late eighties, you could ring the porter's office at the Leeds hospital known as 'Jimmy's' and Savile would answer. You'd ring him asking for a quote about a pop star in the news or some other trivial matter and after introducing yourself and before asking a question he'd say 'I never touched her.'
It was a big joke and a line he used every time, particularly when my colleague Phil Dampier - who, for some reason he called Claude - would ring him.
Occasionally, a paper would send journalists and photographers out to follow him after a phone call to the desk telling us he'd been picking up young girls.
He would deny it and when anyone tried to speak to an alleged victim, they would not talk to the press or clammed up. The feeling was they'd been 'got at.'
The press tried, hard, to pin something on him. They couldn't. Most of the tales were about him picking up young women, but not necessarily underage girls. He was rumoured to spend hours wandering around Regent's Park in London chatting up nannies who used to push the babies of wealthy locals around in Silver Cross prams.
But occasionally there were rumours of reform schools and children's homes. If anyone got too close there would be a lawyer's letter or, more commonly, a very positive story about his charity work would come out.
The reputation of the tabloid press may be one of a cavalier attitude to the law but they did not expose Savile because they didn't have proof. And they didn't want to spend millions on libel cases. They also worried that readers would be so pro-Savile they would turn against the paper. Imagine the row over privacy if they had published a story and then lost a libel case.
If the press got wind of it, there's a fair chance that everyone he worked with knew. Even in his own autobiography he told how the police came into a club when he was a young DJ asking him to look out for a runaway girl, aged around 15. He said he would bring her in if he found her but not until the next morning. And guess what, she came into the club that night, spent the night with him and he took her in the next morning. He admitted it in his autobiography but the police did nothing. Savile had that kind of influence.
He wasn't the only one. Jonathan King was a well known peruser of the charms of young boys and even the sainted John Peel admitted that he spent some time in San Francisco in the sixties getting blow jobs off 13-year-old girls and had a short lived marriage to a 15-year-old. He claimed she had lied about her age.
Perhaps it was something in the culture of radio DJs. If any were appalled by Savile's behaviour, they didn't say so publicly. You have to wonder if they said anything privately either. Savile, it is said, was such a moneyearning major figure at the Beeb that they may have worried it would be their word against his and he would prevail. Not one, it seemed, turned round to their boss and said 'I'm not working with that paedo.'
Esther Rantzen has since said she had her suspicions. Did she at any time tell her BBC bosses that if they did not do something about it, she would refuse to sign the next multi-million pound contract to do That's Life? Doesn't seem like it. But she did go on to found Childline. Oh, the irony.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Those of us from Ilford know Savile as the man who invented the disco. During the mid-50s he was manager of the Ilford Palais, then a dancehall which went on to become one of the area's premier shitholes though it also featured in the video for The Kinks' Come Dancing.
At the time, such places had live bands for people to dance to, with a DJ playing records in between as the band had a break.
One night the band turned up and demanded a pay rise or they wouldn't play. Savile sacked them on the spot. As the crowds turned up he played records, continuously, on an early form of a twin turntable so there were no gaps.
The public danced - to Bill Haley or Elvis or whoever. It was immensely popular and much cheaper than hiring a band. So Savile made it a regular feature. The idea took off and, hey presto, became the first disco. In the world.
How's about that then....Solly
Wednesday 3 October 2012
Monday 10 September 2012
No Khan Do
More than 2,000 people have complained about BBC's sitcom-by-numbers Citizen Khan. If I was Muslim I'd complain too. Because it's simply not funny. And that's what makes it offensive more than the badly-drawn characters in their cartoon Pakistani accents overacted for zero comic effect.
I think I first heard a Brit-based foreigner complain about 'bloody immigrants' to get a laugh in Mind Your Language in the 1970s and it wasn't that funny then. But even though I've only seen one episode of Citizen Khan, guess what? The dad lamented all those bloody foreigners again. Oh how we laughed.
But that's not offensive in itself. What's offensive is making a trendy, supposedly ethnically-friendly comedy that does not raise a laugh. Why? Because it does not have to be like that.
Every religion, every minority, every ethnic group is perfectly capable of laughing at itself in a way that neither offends those it is laughing nor alienates those outsiders looking in.
I bet we all know Catholics or have Irish friends who think Father Ted is hilarious, Indians who get Goodness Gracious Me, Scots who love Billy Connolly and so on. I even know a black man who thinks Lenny Henry's funny but he's the only person of any colour who does, as far as I can tell.
You don't have to be Jewish to like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks (who else can make Hitler funny) and it's not being anti-semitic if you laugh at Old Jews Telling Jokes. Though anyone who so much as smirks at Adam Sandler, the world's unfunniest Jew (present company excepted) should be shot.
But the point is, Jewish humour is based on stereotypes, often exaggerated, that we all recognise. And as long as they are funny they are not offensive.
Even when they're not funny, they are not necessarily offensive, if the character is rich and colourful and not a one-dimensional caricature. Shylock, Fagin, Dr Legg. Okay, maybe not the latter.
The Sopranos had one Jewish character of note, a crim who lent money to Tony but his Jewishness and the fact he was a moneylender were both noted with dry sarcasm within the plot. The only Jew I can remember from The Wire was the crooked lawyer. But that's fine. He was a great character.
What's offensive is not being able to mine the deep vein of humour that runs deep in any religion or ethnic group. Muslims did it with East is East. The main character is that was called Khan too. But it took the mickey out of a range of Islamic traditions - forced marriage, circumcision, banning pork - and made it funny. Muslims laughed. We all did.
Unfortunately the BBC decided they wanted to fulfil their ethnic quota by commissioning a Muslim comedy and chose the first one that came through the door. It was rubbish but as a friend of mine, who used to work at the Beeb told me, the average commissioning editor at the corporation only knows seven people really well and none of them are likely to be Muslim to bounce an opinion off.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of offensive, there's an advert on Tube platforms that says none of the swear, tears, cheers and amazing achievements of the Olympics would not have been possible without....Visa, Samsung, ATOS and a load of others.
So sod all those who gave up four years of their lives to take part, all the fans who queued for hours to pay for tickets for a massive taxpayer-funded event. It was nothing to do with you, but the good folk who make Head & Shoulders or something.
And while we're at it, does anyone seriously believe that British Airways really wanted no one to fly with them during the Olympics or was it just a calculated stunt to make them look nice and cuddly but ends up making them look like cynical, exploitative, corporate suits? Cunning stunts.
Must fly...Solly
I think I first heard a Brit-based foreigner complain about 'bloody immigrants' to get a laugh in Mind Your Language in the 1970s and it wasn't that funny then. But even though I've only seen one episode of Citizen Khan, guess what? The dad lamented all those bloody foreigners again. Oh how we laughed.
But that's not offensive in itself. What's offensive is making a trendy, supposedly ethnically-friendly comedy that does not raise a laugh. Why? Because it does not have to be like that.
Every religion, every minority, every ethnic group is perfectly capable of laughing at itself in a way that neither offends those it is laughing nor alienates those outsiders looking in.
I bet we all know Catholics or have Irish friends who think Father Ted is hilarious, Indians who get Goodness Gracious Me, Scots who love Billy Connolly and so on. I even know a black man who thinks Lenny Henry's funny but he's the only person of any colour who does, as far as I can tell.
You don't have to be Jewish to like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks (who else can make Hitler funny) and it's not being anti-semitic if you laugh at Old Jews Telling Jokes. Though anyone who so much as smirks at Adam Sandler, the world's unfunniest Jew (present company excepted) should be shot.
But the point is, Jewish humour is based on stereotypes, often exaggerated, that we all recognise. And as long as they are funny they are not offensive.
Even when they're not funny, they are not necessarily offensive, if the character is rich and colourful and not a one-dimensional caricature. Shylock, Fagin, Dr Legg. Okay, maybe not the latter.
The Sopranos had one Jewish character of note, a crim who lent money to Tony but his Jewishness and the fact he was a moneylender were both noted with dry sarcasm within the plot. The only Jew I can remember from The Wire was the crooked lawyer. But that's fine. He was a great character.
What's offensive is not being able to mine the deep vein of humour that runs deep in any religion or ethnic group. Muslims did it with East is East. The main character is that was called Khan too. But it took the mickey out of a range of Islamic traditions - forced marriage, circumcision, banning pork - and made it funny. Muslims laughed. We all did.
Unfortunately the BBC decided they wanted to fulfil their ethnic quota by commissioning a Muslim comedy and chose the first one that came through the door. It was rubbish but as a friend of mine, who used to work at the Beeb told me, the average commissioning editor at the corporation only knows seven people really well and none of them are likely to be Muslim to bounce an opinion off.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of offensive, there's an advert on Tube platforms that says none of the swear, tears, cheers and amazing achievements of the Olympics would not have been possible without....Visa, Samsung, ATOS and a load of others.
So sod all those who gave up four years of their lives to take part, all the fans who queued for hours to pay for tickets for a massive taxpayer-funded event. It was nothing to do with you, but the good folk who make Head & Shoulders or something.
And while we're at it, does anyone seriously believe that British Airways really wanted no one to fly with them during the Olympics or was it just a calculated stunt to make them look nice and cuddly but ends up making them look like cynical, exploitative, corporate suits? Cunning stunts.
Must fly...Solly
Wednesday 5 September 2012
Verbs You Right
I was looking through a photo album of the kids the other day. One of those old ones. It had a section called 'negative pocket.' I opened it and it said 'these photos are shit.'
==============================================
So where was I? Oh yeah, the Olympics. I must admit I was cynical but the Paralympics have really inspired me. I've cut my left leg off.
The legacy of the events will live on. Most notably in the English language and not just the mangling it got from Trevor Nelson who, let's face it, compared to Fearne 'Amazing' Cotton sounds like Richard Dimbleby.
It was good to see our athletes medalling, some only bronzed but others silvered and many golded. But it was not just about those who rostrumed, it was about those who evented in general.
Never have so many verbs been added to the lexicon in such a short space of time. Or to put it another way, new words were verbed on a daily basis.
Mind you, even Radio Four have got it wrong. I heard an announcer trying to read out a headline that Britain had got a one-two in the archery. This was obviously a phrase far too modern for our man at the Beeb. He said: "In archery Team GB scored a one. Two in the athletics a new world record...I'm sorry, I'll repeat that. Team GB scored a one. To athletics, a new world record...."
Of course I've enjoyed it. It's sport after all. Which is more important than most things in life.
Doesn't mean there haven't been downsides. The crowds at Stratford Station who fail to notice which way a spotty purple-clad teenager is pointing his great, foamy hand and decide to walk the other way.
Canadians who stand on the wrong side of the elevator.
Jon Snow reminding everyone which competitors live in wartorn countries and showing us why Claire Balding is brilliant at this and he isn't.
Oscar Pistorius who, along with Kevin Pietersen has reminded the world what a bunch of shits white South Africans can be when they want to. With a couple of notable exceptions of course (my next door neighbour and a bloke called Bernard for instance).
American athletes with mild hayfever who reckon it qualifies them for the same swimming events as double amputees.
People posting the same bloody pictures of the Olympic Stadium or handball arena on Facebook as if it's the first time anyone's ever seen them.
And Coldplay.
And then there are the bits which would even cheer up Morrissey. Well maybe not. But I enjoyed:
The Brazilian judo girl on the Jubilee line wearing her bronze medal and letting everyone take her photo with them. And then bursting into tears when the carriage applauded her.
The Spanish triathlete my daughter tried to chat up (in Spanish) who was charming, on the Central Line.
The Tube driver who made all the announcements in French as well as English.
And Danny Boyle's wonderful story of the history of the Labour Party which he successfully disguised as an opening ceremony.
Oh and Claire Balding. Even though she has let her autobiography currently be serialised in the Daily Mail, a paper which once ran quite a nasty story about her sexuality soon after she was 'out' but whose publisher found the best deal it could.
===================================================
Post-Leveson and are newsrooms losing their sense of humour? If there was one thing about working in a national (or local) paper newsroom it was the bawdy, naughty but hilarious humour that goes on, much as it probably used to in any workplace.
The language was often blue, unPC and not for public consumption but they lightened the mood even on the darkest days and without the pisstaking, impressions and digs, life would have been a lot duller.
Not any more it seems. A senior executive at the Mail on Sunday is being investigated for bullying. It's in Private Eye so I'm not betraying a confidence.
Basically the news editor called his assistant a c**t. (Some of you are sensitive but this is the lingua franca of the newsroom. Whereas 'lingua franca' is not of course.)
If someone was sacked every time they called me a c**t at The Sun the newsroom would have been empty within two weeks. And the editor would have been had up every five seconds. Though in the case of one particular executive, justification as a defence would probably have worked with any judge in the land.
But at the Mail on Sunday it forms the basis of a 12-page complaint. Twelve bloody pages! There's more to it than that but I'm sworn to secrecy. Needless to say it's a pile of bollo.
Leveson may end up doing a lot of good for our industry. Considering the money spent on his inquiry, you'd bloody hope so. But if he kills humour in the newsroom, then it's an even sadder day for Fleet Street that we could have imagined.
====================================================
Robbers get shot by householders. Great story for the papers because everyone has a view. Which is either: 1.Good for them/an Englishman's home is his castle/hope they killed the bastards/give them a medal.
Or: 2.Why are the only people who legally own shotguns nutters who live in the middle of nowhere.
====================================================
Last week saw the 15th anniversary of Princess Di's death. I think there was something about it in the Daily Express but I could be wrong.
So that's 15 years of sentimental idiots wrapping a bunch of petrol station flowers to lamp-posts and leaving teddy bears out for people they have never met.
Everyone remembers what they were doing when they heard she'd died. I was listening to Radio Four wondering why on earth they'd invited Polly Toynbee on as a royal 'expert'.
=====================================================
When Tony Blair was in power it was said that the three most dreaded words in the English language were 'John's in charge' when the PM went on holiday.
Though the Olympic Opening Ceremony announcement 'Sir Paul McCartney' instils almost as much dread. As does the byline 'by Mihir Bose' in the Standard. Or 'Kelvin wants you' spoken by his secretary. The point is, whatever the reshuffle, whatever the party and whether it's a room full of rich, white Old Etonians or one with the obligatory crook in a sari, working class buffoon pr former head girl forced to face Jeremy Paxman, no one seems to get it right. And some people don't believe The Thick of It is a documentary.
Cheers for now....Solly
==============================================
So where was I? Oh yeah, the Olympics. I must admit I was cynical but the Paralympics have really inspired me. I've cut my left leg off.
The legacy of the events will live on. Most notably in the English language and not just the mangling it got from Trevor Nelson who, let's face it, compared to Fearne 'Amazing' Cotton sounds like Richard Dimbleby.
It was good to see our athletes medalling, some only bronzed but others silvered and many golded. But it was not just about those who rostrumed, it was about those who evented in general.
Never have so many verbs been added to the lexicon in such a short space of time. Or to put it another way, new words were verbed on a daily basis.
Mind you, even Radio Four have got it wrong. I heard an announcer trying to read out a headline that Britain had got a one-two in the archery. This was obviously a phrase far too modern for our man at the Beeb. He said: "In archery Team GB scored a one. Two in the athletics a new world record...I'm sorry, I'll repeat that. Team GB scored a one. To athletics, a new world record...."
Of course I've enjoyed it. It's sport after all. Which is more important than most things in life.
Doesn't mean there haven't been downsides. The crowds at Stratford Station who fail to notice which way a spotty purple-clad teenager is pointing his great, foamy hand and decide to walk the other way.
Canadians who stand on the wrong side of the elevator.
Jon Snow reminding everyone which competitors live in wartorn countries and showing us why Claire Balding is brilliant at this and he isn't.
Oscar Pistorius who, along with Kevin Pietersen has reminded the world what a bunch of shits white South Africans can be when they want to. With a couple of notable exceptions of course (my next door neighbour and a bloke called Bernard for instance).
American athletes with mild hayfever who reckon it qualifies them for the same swimming events as double amputees.
People posting the same bloody pictures of the Olympic Stadium or handball arena on Facebook as if it's the first time anyone's ever seen them.
And Coldplay.
And then there are the bits which would even cheer up Morrissey. Well maybe not. But I enjoyed:
The Brazilian judo girl on the Jubilee line wearing her bronze medal and letting everyone take her photo with them. And then bursting into tears when the carriage applauded her.
The Spanish triathlete my daughter tried to chat up (in Spanish) who was charming, on the Central Line.
The Tube driver who made all the announcements in French as well as English.
And Danny Boyle's wonderful story of the history of the Labour Party which he successfully disguised as an opening ceremony.
Oh and Claire Balding. Even though she has let her autobiography currently be serialised in the Daily Mail, a paper which once ran quite a nasty story about her sexuality soon after she was 'out' but whose publisher found the best deal it could.
===================================================
Post-Leveson and are newsrooms losing their sense of humour? If there was one thing about working in a national (or local) paper newsroom it was the bawdy, naughty but hilarious humour that goes on, much as it probably used to in any workplace.
The language was often blue, unPC and not for public consumption but they lightened the mood even on the darkest days and without the pisstaking, impressions and digs, life would have been a lot duller.
Not any more it seems. A senior executive at the Mail on Sunday is being investigated for bullying. It's in Private Eye so I'm not betraying a confidence.
Basically the news editor called his assistant a c**t. (Some of you are sensitive but this is the lingua franca of the newsroom. Whereas 'lingua franca' is not of course.)
If someone was sacked every time they called me a c**t at The Sun the newsroom would have been empty within two weeks. And the editor would have been had up every five seconds. Though in the case of one particular executive, justification as a defence would probably have worked with any judge in the land.
But at the Mail on Sunday it forms the basis of a 12-page complaint. Twelve bloody pages! There's more to it than that but I'm sworn to secrecy. Needless to say it's a pile of bollo.
Leveson may end up doing a lot of good for our industry. Considering the money spent on his inquiry, you'd bloody hope so. But if he kills humour in the newsroom, then it's an even sadder day for Fleet Street that we could have imagined.
====================================================
Robbers get shot by householders. Great story for the papers because everyone has a view. Which is either: 1.Good for them/an Englishman's home is his castle/hope they killed the bastards/give them a medal.
Or: 2.Why are the only people who legally own shotguns nutters who live in the middle of nowhere.
====================================================
Last week saw the 15th anniversary of Princess Di's death. I think there was something about it in the Daily Express but I could be wrong.
So that's 15 years of sentimental idiots wrapping a bunch of petrol station flowers to lamp-posts and leaving teddy bears out for people they have never met.
Everyone remembers what they were doing when they heard she'd died. I was listening to Radio Four wondering why on earth they'd invited Polly Toynbee on as a royal 'expert'.
=====================================================
When Tony Blair was in power it was said that the three most dreaded words in the English language were 'John's in charge' when the PM went on holiday.
Though the Olympic Opening Ceremony announcement 'Sir Paul McCartney' instils almost as much dread. As does the byline 'by Mihir Bose' in the Standard. Or 'Kelvin wants you' spoken by his secretary. The point is, whatever the reshuffle, whatever the party and whether it's a room full of rich, white Old Etonians or one with the obligatory crook in a sari, working class buffoon pr former head girl forced to face Jeremy Paxman, no one seems to get it right. And some people don't believe The Thick of It is a documentary.
Cheers for now....Solly
Saturday 21 April 2012
Bernie the dolt
Yes we know it's raining. Yes we know there's a hosepipe ban (in the south). But no we don't need it repeating every single day by every single newspaper, Twitter account holder and television presenter, comedian and pundit. 'Some drought eh?' has become the most boring phrase in Britain.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bahrain is a bit like our weather. Part Sunni, part Shi'ite.
However, thanks to Bernie Ecclestone's relentless pursuit of adding a few million pounds to his multi billion pound bank account, we all know a bit more about the desert kingdom these days.
If it wasn't for Bernie, the tabloids would not be covering the problems of Bahrain in the way it has. Special mention for the Daily Mirror for a feature this week that explained the situation concisely and informatively. That's what tabloids can do when they try. And if the readers are bored, they're still never more than a couple of pages away from a Simon Cowell story.
You can say what you like about Cowell but when it comes to repulsive billionaires, he's no Bernie Ecclestone.
Of course, Bernie isn't doing it to highlight the injustice and anti-democracy violence in some faraway land. He reckons there's a lot of fuss whipped up by the media who don't really know what's going on.
He knows what's going on because the ruling family have shown him the nice quiet streets of the capital, Manama (now sing the Muppet song, doo doo doodoodoo).
Meanwhile, in the villages beyond the scope of Bernie's prune-faced glare, around 1,000 demonstrators have 'disappeared.' Often helped by Saudi tanks probably sold to them by, er, us.
You always know when you are dealing with a particularly nasty regime when you start to get statistics on the 'disappeared.' El Salvador, Pol Pot, Saddam, the Gulags, Ruanda - every great mass murdering dictatorship has been at it.
In Manama (doo doodoo doo), all you get are convoys of young men from Saudi Arabia driving to the brothels and bars of a country that is run on strict Middle East interpretations of Islam. That is, alcohol and adultery are illegal. Unless you are a rich Sheikh from across the border prepared to pump lots of money into the country. Or part of the US military which still hang out in the region.
So Formula One has educated us all about the state of play out there.
We should thank its midget bosses and jockey-sized drivers, their Pussycat Doll hangers on, the big name alcohol and cigarette companies desperate for the exposure and the fact that machines racing round a circuit attracts around a thousand times as many reporters as an Arab Spring uprising.
Quite why Bernie needs the money is not certain. He's already older than Mr Burns judging by the looks of him and he certainly doesn't spend it on haircuts.
The drivers say that sport has nothing to do with politics. One can only assume they are too young to have heard of apartheid. Or too stupid.
---------------------------------------------------
I have deliberately not mentioned my day out at the FA Cup Semi Final up to now. However, what I would say, is that for a national sporting centrepiece, Wembley Stadium has the worst toilet facilities of any ground since Southampton knocked down the Dell.
And that adds to the other downsides such as the lack of atmosphere, the £6.50 burgers and £4.50 pints of beer and hour long wait to get on to a tube train.
Plus making the game a 6pm kick off to ensure that a good majority of the fans were drunk, abusive and more prone to violence (the family next to me walked out early after a rant too many from fans behind them.)
The queues for the gents was round the block a full hour before kick off. I didn't dare venture there at half time in case I missed the second half. Actually, perhaps that wasn't a bad option in retrospect.
Once inside the loos themselves it was chaos and there was no system of queuing (even at lower league clubs you get better organisation).
It's not so bad for the ladies. Like any modern stadium, the organisers like to show how much they care about equality by building as many toilets for women than men. Then they go and host a lot of football matches where 80 per cent of the crowd are male and wonder why there are no queues at the ladies but chaos at the gents.
So, FA. Move the game to a decent time and a decent ground and have done with it.
That's all...Solly
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bahrain is a bit like our weather. Part Sunni, part Shi'ite.
However, thanks to Bernie Ecclestone's relentless pursuit of adding a few million pounds to his multi billion pound bank account, we all know a bit more about the desert kingdom these days.
If it wasn't for Bernie, the tabloids would not be covering the problems of Bahrain in the way it has. Special mention for the Daily Mirror for a feature this week that explained the situation concisely and informatively. That's what tabloids can do when they try. And if the readers are bored, they're still never more than a couple of pages away from a Simon Cowell story.
You can say what you like about Cowell but when it comes to repulsive billionaires, he's no Bernie Ecclestone.
Of course, Bernie isn't doing it to highlight the injustice and anti-democracy violence in some faraway land. He reckons there's a lot of fuss whipped up by the media who don't really know what's going on.
He knows what's going on because the ruling family have shown him the nice quiet streets of the capital, Manama (now sing the Muppet song, doo doo doodoodoo).
Meanwhile, in the villages beyond the scope of Bernie's prune-faced glare, around 1,000 demonstrators have 'disappeared.' Often helped by Saudi tanks probably sold to them by, er, us.
You always know when you are dealing with a particularly nasty regime when you start to get statistics on the 'disappeared.' El Salvador, Pol Pot, Saddam, the Gulags, Ruanda - every great mass murdering dictatorship has been at it.
In Manama (doo doodoo doo), all you get are convoys of young men from Saudi Arabia driving to the brothels and bars of a country that is run on strict Middle East interpretations of Islam. That is, alcohol and adultery are illegal. Unless you are a rich Sheikh from across the border prepared to pump lots of money into the country. Or part of the US military which still hang out in the region.
So Formula One has educated us all about the state of play out there.
We should thank its midget bosses and jockey-sized drivers, their Pussycat Doll hangers on, the big name alcohol and cigarette companies desperate for the exposure and the fact that machines racing round a circuit attracts around a thousand times as many reporters as an Arab Spring uprising.
Quite why Bernie needs the money is not certain. He's already older than Mr Burns judging by the looks of him and he certainly doesn't spend it on haircuts.
The drivers say that sport has nothing to do with politics. One can only assume they are too young to have heard of apartheid. Or too stupid.
---------------------------------------------------
I have deliberately not mentioned my day out at the FA Cup Semi Final up to now. However, what I would say, is that for a national sporting centrepiece, Wembley Stadium has the worst toilet facilities of any ground since Southampton knocked down the Dell.
And that adds to the other downsides such as the lack of atmosphere, the £6.50 burgers and £4.50 pints of beer and hour long wait to get on to a tube train.
Plus making the game a 6pm kick off to ensure that a good majority of the fans were drunk, abusive and more prone to violence (the family next to me walked out early after a rant too many from fans behind them.)
The queues for the gents was round the block a full hour before kick off. I didn't dare venture there at half time in case I missed the second half. Actually, perhaps that wasn't a bad option in retrospect.
Once inside the loos themselves it was chaos and there was no system of queuing (even at lower league clubs you get better organisation).
It's not so bad for the ladies. Like any modern stadium, the organisers like to show how much they care about equality by building as many toilets for women than men. Then they go and host a lot of football matches where 80 per cent of the crowd are male and wonder why there are no queues at the ladies but chaos at the gents.
So, FA. Move the game to a decent time and a decent ground and have done with it.
That's all...Solly
Sunday 18 March 2012
Pray Silence
If praying is what prevents a 23-year-old footballer from dying, then what's the point of doctors?
It's not meant to sound flippant. I was there. It was horrible. I desperately hope he survives.
I was at White Hart Lane yesterday, as I have been for most home games for the past 38 or so years and witnessed scenes that I have never seen before at a football match.
Like pretty much everyone there, I never saw Fabrice Muama fall to the ground but it was quickly pointed out that a player was down and that no one was near him. I saw his leg jerk off the ground as a couple of players tended to him but this may well have been a reflex action as he was rolled on to his back.
Confusion turned to grim realisation that this was not a case of fainting or some kind of fit. Seconds later teams of medics had scrambled to the far side of the pitch to deal with him. You could see a machine brought on which was used to try and jump start his heart and players with head in hands, some clearly in tears.
A man came out of the crowd from the lower East Stand, He was ushered through by fans and stewards, possibly one of those situations where someone shouts "I'm a doctor" and he was applauded on to the pitch and back off again when the medical teams got there.
I later heard a rumour he owns a heart screening business so I'm not sure if that necessarily makes him a medical expert though one would assume fans would not be so keen to get him on the pitch if he'd shouted 'let me through, I'm a medical equipment salesman.'
It was genuinely distressing to be there. And shocking too. What was also striking was just how shocked everyone seemed to be. Fans in particular.
There were some extreme reactions, particularly a young man two seats from me who, coincidentally is also called Solomons (it's not as uncommon at White Hart Lane as it would be, at, say, Spotland.)
I've seen him over the years, coming to Spurs with his dad since he was a nipper. During the drama, he simply burst into tears. His dad consoled him, others looked away embarrassed, I simply patted him on the shoulder because I had no idea what else I should do. Besides, we might be related.
Some dads with kids visibly upset were the first to leave, others stayed, perhaps out of ghoulish curiosity or because leaving seemed to be rude and unsupportive.
No one supposed, for just a minute, that the game was going to go on but people wanted to hear the announcement officially I guess, and when it came, they applauded and then left, quietly and slowly - the exits were rammed anyway but there was no fuss, no arguing. People just made their way out, in turn, and in a very obvious state of bewilderment.
Perhaps, thinking about it, it was bewilderment rather than shock. Watching a young man collapse and, perhaps, die on the pitch, and see the attempts to revive him, is out of context. You feel like you're invading something that should be private, not played out before a crowd of around 35,000 fans.
I sit immediately behind a TV camera (when games are being televised live) and the cameraman had turned the lens away from where the action was happening, under orders from the ESPN management. Later, I wondered if we should have all done the same. But, appallingly perhaps, you can't.
The usual ground noise was gone. On the way out everyone was looking into their smartphones to get the latest newsflash - many were waiting to hear if he had died, I imagine. That's not morbid, but a kind of closure. After all, we had witnessed something dreadful but without a conclusion and that can be even more upsetting.
Then the Twitter cavalcade started. Players Tweeted 'pray for Fabrice'. Managers came on to the radio to say 'he's in our prayers' and even before that, on the pitch, some players were notably praying.
I wonder if they considered why their religious belief would help the player now when it hadn't stopped him having a heart attack in the first place. Does God let these things happen to see if we pray for them to get better? And if that's the case, why do people die suddenly without a chance to see if their faith can be resurrected.
Or indeed, all those millions of others who die of heart attacks, cancer, war, famine and whatever other fate befalls them. Many of those are probably in someone's prayers every night.
And if praying is all it takes to bring people back to life, then did we need the wonderful medics, doctors and St John's Ambulance lot who got to the player within two minutes of his collapse.
After all it is they, and not God, who may, just, have given him a chance to live.
Spurs right-back and a neighbour of mine, Kyle Walker, Tweeted 'even if you aren't religious, pray for Muamba.' Poor Kyle, he doesn't quite get this whole religion thing does he?
You see, neighbourino, there's no point praying to a God you don't believe in - it doesn't make sense and if there is a God, he's probably saying 'Oh, NOW you want my help do you?'
But I accept the sentiment. Although it would have been nice to see a few more players Tweet about how brilliant the medical staff from both clubs were in that situation.
So why others put their faith in an ancient myth of which there is no proof, I'll put my faith in science, medicine and the hard work and dedication of people who have gone through years of training to deal with this kind of incident.
I'll hope for his recovery as much as anyone else in the country but forgive me if I don't pray for it.
Get well soon, young man. And if you do, don't thank God, thank doctors....Solly
It's not meant to sound flippant. I was there. It was horrible. I desperately hope he survives.
I was at White Hart Lane yesterday, as I have been for most home games for the past 38 or so years and witnessed scenes that I have never seen before at a football match.
Like pretty much everyone there, I never saw Fabrice Muama fall to the ground but it was quickly pointed out that a player was down and that no one was near him. I saw his leg jerk off the ground as a couple of players tended to him but this may well have been a reflex action as he was rolled on to his back.
Confusion turned to grim realisation that this was not a case of fainting or some kind of fit. Seconds later teams of medics had scrambled to the far side of the pitch to deal with him. You could see a machine brought on which was used to try and jump start his heart and players with head in hands, some clearly in tears.
A man came out of the crowd from the lower East Stand, He was ushered through by fans and stewards, possibly one of those situations where someone shouts "I'm a doctor" and he was applauded on to the pitch and back off again when the medical teams got there.
I later heard a rumour he owns a heart screening business so I'm not sure if that necessarily makes him a medical expert though one would assume fans would not be so keen to get him on the pitch if he'd shouted 'let me through, I'm a medical equipment salesman.'
It was genuinely distressing to be there. And shocking too. What was also striking was just how shocked everyone seemed to be. Fans in particular.
There were some extreme reactions, particularly a young man two seats from me who, coincidentally is also called Solomons (it's not as uncommon at White Hart Lane as it would be, at, say, Spotland.)
I've seen him over the years, coming to Spurs with his dad since he was a nipper. During the drama, he simply burst into tears. His dad consoled him, others looked away embarrassed, I simply patted him on the shoulder because I had no idea what else I should do. Besides, we might be related.
Some dads with kids visibly upset were the first to leave, others stayed, perhaps out of ghoulish curiosity or because leaving seemed to be rude and unsupportive.
No one supposed, for just a minute, that the game was going to go on but people wanted to hear the announcement officially I guess, and when it came, they applauded and then left, quietly and slowly - the exits were rammed anyway but there was no fuss, no arguing. People just made their way out, in turn, and in a very obvious state of bewilderment.
Perhaps, thinking about it, it was bewilderment rather than shock. Watching a young man collapse and, perhaps, die on the pitch, and see the attempts to revive him, is out of context. You feel like you're invading something that should be private, not played out before a crowd of around 35,000 fans.
I sit immediately behind a TV camera (when games are being televised live) and the cameraman had turned the lens away from where the action was happening, under orders from the ESPN management. Later, I wondered if we should have all done the same. But, appallingly perhaps, you can't.
The usual ground noise was gone. On the way out everyone was looking into their smartphones to get the latest newsflash - many were waiting to hear if he had died, I imagine. That's not morbid, but a kind of closure. After all, we had witnessed something dreadful but without a conclusion and that can be even more upsetting.
Then the Twitter cavalcade started. Players Tweeted 'pray for Fabrice'. Managers came on to the radio to say 'he's in our prayers' and even before that, on the pitch, some players were notably praying.
I wonder if they considered why their religious belief would help the player now when it hadn't stopped him having a heart attack in the first place. Does God let these things happen to see if we pray for them to get better? And if that's the case, why do people die suddenly without a chance to see if their faith can be resurrected.
Or indeed, all those millions of others who die of heart attacks, cancer, war, famine and whatever other fate befalls them. Many of those are probably in someone's prayers every night.
And if praying is all it takes to bring people back to life, then did we need the wonderful medics, doctors and St John's Ambulance lot who got to the player within two minutes of his collapse.
After all it is they, and not God, who may, just, have given him a chance to live.
Spurs right-back and a neighbour of mine, Kyle Walker, Tweeted 'even if you aren't religious, pray for Muamba.' Poor Kyle, he doesn't quite get this whole religion thing does he?
You see, neighbourino, there's no point praying to a God you don't believe in - it doesn't make sense and if there is a God, he's probably saying 'Oh, NOW you want my help do you?'
But I accept the sentiment. Although it would have been nice to see a few more players Tweet about how brilliant the medical staff from both clubs were in that situation.
So why others put their faith in an ancient myth of which there is no proof, I'll put my faith in science, medicine and the hard work and dedication of people who have gone through years of training to deal with this kind of incident.
I'll hope for his recovery as much as anyone else in the country but forgive me if I don't pray for it.
Get well soon, young man. And if you do, don't thank God, thank doctors....Solly
Sunday 11 March 2012
Cor Blimey Trousers
Why do football managers have their initials on their track suit tops? I've never been able to work it out. Surely everyone else knows who they are. Perhaps it's for the laundry staff so they can hand them back but then why doesn't everyone have their initials on their training kit?
And the Fulham staff, for instance, have got to realise which king-sized zip up top belongs to Martin Jol without needing the letters MJ on it.
Which leads to the obvious conclusion that it's either vanity or perhaps one manager started it all off many years ago and the others have simply followed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The government wants to step up the old Thatcherite policy of buy-your-own council homes after a few years of Labour trying to discourage it.
It was, of course, introduced in order to get more Tory votes in working class areas and succeeded, in particular in the kind of towns built to cope with the overflow from major cities - the British version of white flight. Here in the south it helped the Conservatives to win seats like Basildon and Harlow for instance.
But with an estimated 74,000 council flats and houses a year going private, it does create an enormous shortfall of public housing. That, in turn, lets in enterprising private landlords who can secure a decent and guaranteed rental income from a local authority.
It also leads to six bedroomed houses in Hampstead being rented out to a family of 11 Eastern European benefits claimants which in turn sparks the kind of Daily Mail protest that so worries the Tories.
Now I'm not against working class people moving from council to private. I did it, when my parents went from an East End council house to their first home for instance. It was the first time any of us had lived in a house that wasn't owned either by a council or a brewery.
But how about some kind of rule that for every council house bought by its tenants, the local authority has to provide another one of its own to replace it?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What's the point of the Halifax? Apart from its ability to make the worst adverts on television, is there really any need for this High Street chain of banks?
The Halifax is owned by the pisspoor HBOS group which in turn was foisted onto the much better-run Lloyds TSB (and the name TSB might as well be ditched too, come to think of it.)
This means the group that owns Lloyds Banks in the High Street also owns Halifax Banks in the High Street.
So you have the ridiculous site of a Lloyds Bank just a few doors down from a Halifax with both offering pretty much the same products to the same kind of customers.
It might be different if the Halifax was still a good old northern run building society which put its customers first.
And that's what Lloyds thinks. It reckons the Halifax has a bit more of a working class image which attracts a different set of customers that Lloyds itself.
This comes from the days when it was mutually run for the benefit of cloth cap northerners who wanted a safe haven for what little they could save in order to build up a nestegg.
Old style building societies - when we had the Abbey and the Halifax and the Woolwich and all those others that are now banks - used to have something like 15 times as much money in savings as it had in loans. Which of course makes it far harder to suddenly go bust owing billions of pounds in failed Ponzi-style mortgage schemes.
But it's not like that any more. The Halifax is nows a greedy, run of the mill bank famous for making crap adverts, overweight staff and tacky interiors.
Having a Bank of Scotland chain makes a bit more sense, if only to satisfy the sweaties and have some kind of historic, national identity north of the border. Though the days when having the word 'Scotland' in a bank's title meant trustworthy and good with money went out the window around the time Fred Goodwin did to the country what he did to that pretty, female worker in his department.
But Lloyds now has a whopping great chunk of our money helping it get through these difficult times (don't mention it lads). And a lot of that is now spent on a chain of banks, expensive promotions and the multimillion pound marketing and advertising budget that no longer has a purpose.
So scrap the Halifax, switch the accounts to Lloyds (or one of it's many other trading names) and spend the money saved on paying off the debt to the taxpayer.
------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of adverts, there is a long running commercial for the Ford Focus which you can't avoid. It shows some Germanic sort called Mattheus wasting his time driving around Europe visiting the sites of 'his favourite book' on two tanks of fuel.
His favourite book happens to be The Da Vinci Code, which suggests Mattheus is one of those people who finds it hard to read without his mouth moving at the same time.
Or perhaps he's only ever had three books and he's already coloured in the other two.
Anyhoo, the point is that when the advert was first shown, the voiceover said, quite clearly 'his favourite book, The Da Vinci Code'. But within a couple of weeks they had edited this down to 'his favourite book' without ever saying what it was.
Were Ford embarrassed by the fact it couldn't find a Focus owner who had ever read a decent novel? Or did Dan Brown feel he was not a Ford-type of guy and order the name of the book to be removed.
So I rang Ford. And they said that the reason they edited the advert was because having too much information in it distracted the viewers from the overall product and message.
Yes, that's right. Potential Ford Focus buyers are so distracted by hearing the words 'The Da Vinci Code' that they plum forget what car was being advertised.
----------------------------------------------------------------
On the programme Room 101 (a phrase from the book 1984 which has inspired me to buy a Ford Focus and try and visit all the places named in the novel) guests were asked to choose something that really annoys them they could banish forever. Predictably, celebrity chefs were picked. They were picked by the panel show fixture Micky Flanagan who has only got to appear on Deal or No Deal and Question Time and then we can have him on the our screens on a permanent 24-hour loop.
And the reason he picked them? Because, in his words, every time you turn on the TV there's a celebrity chef. No. Every time you turn on the TV there's Micky 'I'm a geezer' Flanagan.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
If Catholics are against having gay marriages in church because they can invent a biblical reason why it's God wouldn't approve, then should they not have a medical examination for every bride to make sure she's a virgin and a criminal records check on every prospective bride and groom to make sure they have never been convicted of any crime that is specifically mentioned in the bible?
Of course, they could start with their own priests.
Thus endeth the rant....cheers, Solly
And the Fulham staff, for instance, have got to realise which king-sized zip up top belongs to Martin Jol without needing the letters MJ on it.
Which leads to the obvious conclusion that it's either vanity or perhaps one manager started it all off many years ago and the others have simply followed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The government wants to step up the old Thatcherite policy of buy-your-own council homes after a few years of Labour trying to discourage it.
It was, of course, introduced in order to get more Tory votes in working class areas and succeeded, in particular in the kind of towns built to cope with the overflow from major cities - the British version of white flight. Here in the south it helped the Conservatives to win seats like Basildon and Harlow for instance.
But with an estimated 74,000 council flats and houses a year going private, it does create an enormous shortfall of public housing. That, in turn, lets in enterprising private landlords who can secure a decent and guaranteed rental income from a local authority.
It also leads to six bedroomed houses in Hampstead being rented out to a family of 11 Eastern European benefits claimants which in turn sparks the kind of Daily Mail protest that so worries the Tories.
Now I'm not against working class people moving from council to private. I did it, when my parents went from an East End council house to their first home for instance. It was the first time any of us had lived in a house that wasn't owned either by a council or a brewery.
But how about some kind of rule that for every council house bought by its tenants, the local authority has to provide another one of its own to replace it?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What's the point of the Halifax? Apart from its ability to make the worst adverts on television, is there really any need for this High Street chain of banks?
The Halifax is owned by the pisspoor HBOS group which in turn was foisted onto the much better-run Lloyds TSB (and the name TSB might as well be ditched too, come to think of it.)
This means the group that owns Lloyds Banks in the High Street also owns Halifax Banks in the High Street.
So you have the ridiculous site of a Lloyds Bank just a few doors down from a Halifax with both offering pretty much the same products to the same kind of customers.
It might be different if the Halifax was still a good old northern run building society which put its customers first.
And that's what Lloyds thinks. It reckons the Halifax has a bit more of a working class image which attracts a different set of customers that Lloyds itself.
This comes from the days when it was mutually run for the benefit of cloth cap northerners who wanted a safe haven for what little they could save in order to build up a nestegg.
Old style building societies - when we had the Abbey and the Halifax and the Woolwich and all those others that are now banks - used to have something like 15 times as much money in savings as it had in loans. Which of course makes it far harder to suddenly go bust owing billions of pounds in failed Ponzi-style mortgage schemes.
But it's not like that any more. The Halifax is nows a greedy, run of the mill bank famous for making crap adverts, overweight staff and tacky interiors.
Having a Bank of Scotland chain makes a bit more sense, if only to satisfy the sweaties and have some kind of historic, national identity north of the border. Though the days when having the word 'Scotland' in a bank's title meant trustworthy and good with money went out the window around the time Fred Goodwin did to the country what he did to that pretty, female worker in his department.
But Lloyds now has a whopping great chunk of our money helping it get through these difficult times (don't mention it lads). And a lot of that is now spent on a chain of banks, expensive promotions and the multimillion pound marketing and advertising budget that no longer has a purpose.
So scrap the Halifax, switch the accounts to Lloyds (or one of it's many other trading names) and spend the money saved on paying off the debt to the taxpayer.
------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of adverts, there is a long running commercial for the Ford Focus which you can't avoid. It shows some Germanic sort called Mattheus wasting his time driving around Europe visiting the sites of 'his favourite book' on two tanks of fuel.
His favourite book happens to be The Da Vinci Code, which suggests Mattheus is one of those people who finds it hard to read without his mouth moving at the same time.
Or perhaps he's only ever had three books and he's already coloured in the other two.
Anyhoo, the point is that when the advert was first shown, the voiceover said, quite clearly 'his favourite book, The Da Vinci Code'. But within a couple of weeks they had edited this down to 'his favourite book' without ever saying what it was.
Were Ford embarrassed by the fact it couldn't find a Focus owner who had ever read a decent novel? Or did Dan Brown feel he was not a Ford-type of guy and order the name of the book to be removed.
So I rang Ford. And they said that the reason they edited the advert was because having too much information in it distracted the viewers from the overall product and message.
Yes, that's right. Potential Ford Focus buyers are so distracted by hearing the words 'The Da Vinci Code' that they plum forget what car was being advertised.
----------------------------------------------------------------
On the programme Room 101 (a phrase from the book 1984 which has inspired me to buy a Ford Focus and try and visit all the places named in the novel) guests were asked to choose something that really annoys them they could banish forever. Predictably, celebrity chefs were picked. They were picked by the panel show fixture Micky Flanagan who has only got to appear on Deal or No Deal and Question Time and then we can have him on the our screens on a permanent 24-hour loop.
And the reason he picked them? Because, in his words, every time you turn on the TV there's a celebrity chef. No. Every time you turn on the TV there's Micky 'I'm a geezer' Flanagan.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
If Catholics are against having gay marriages in church because they can invent a biblical reason why it's God wouldn't approve, then should they not have a medical examination for every bride to make sure she's a virgin and a criminal records check on every prospective bride and groom to make sure they have never been convicted of any crime that is specifically mentioned in the bible?
Of course, they could start with their own priests.
Thus endeth the rant....cheers, Solly
Tuesday 14 February 2012
Dear reader, I married her
Nothing says I Love You on Valentine's Day quite as much as a Smiths/Morrissey song but I'm torn between Girlfriend in a Coma and You're The One For Me Fatty.
I don't know what the fuss is about. As they say, if you lock your wife and your dog in a shed for an hour, guess which one is happier to see you when you open the door.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK officer, it's a fair cop. Come and slip the cuffs on and load me into the back of the Black Maria, I'm guilty.
You see, at the Ilford CID Christmas party of 1983 we ended up at the Red Lion and I'm pretty sure I put into the whipround that saw several of our local Regan and Carter lookalikes get served with a large Bell's or two.
In return I was obviously hoping that at my twice weekly police calls for the Ilford Recorder I would be able to ask one or two detectives a question here or there and get more than the standard two word response.
If only it had stayed there, maybe I would only be looking at community service. But I couldn't stop. Every Thursday I'd pick up a pile of newly published papers and drive round to the various fire stations on my beat and hand out free copies so they could read my latest Folk Focus column or look through the classifieds to buy a second hand Cortina from the Murder Mile showrooms of Seven Kings High Road.
In return I'd get a cup of tea and a Lincoln biscuit, paid for no doubt by honest GLC ratepayers. There's a law against that you know. At least there is now that they've dusted off the 1906 Bribery Act.
There's other TICs too. I occasionally bought a pint for local press officers from Redbridge Council, mainly the two old blokes who had been there when 'all this was fields' but more so when a newly graduated young lady joined them.
In fact I not only bought her a white wine spritzer at The Angel, and then claim it on expenses, I bought her several more at The Warren Wood and, in a desperate quest to get the inside track on the Fairlop Waters Planning Sub-Committee decisions ahead of deadline, I even had sex with her. That was a bit harder to put on expenses I must admit.
To her credit, she never gave me any inside information on council matters. And 26 years later we're married with two teenage children and a labrador. She still doesn't give me any decent stories but perhaps that's because we don't have sex as often either.
Naturally I married her in order that, decades later, if plod called round at 6am she wouldn't have to testify against me. It's an extreme measure, I grant you, but it's always best to plan ahead.
As a journalist and a tabloid one, and a former Sun man, I'm appalled at the arrests of several of my former colleagues including a couple of good mates this week.
But I'm not going to beat my chest about it like Richard Littlejohn and Trevor Kavanagh did, so brilliantly in the Mail and Sun this week.
And there's a simple reason for that. No one gives a shit if journalists get arrested. We can bleat on as much as we like about civil liberties and freedom of speech but that just makes readers turn round and say 'you were not so bothered when the police shot a Brazilian bloke on the Tube' or any other number of rights' abuses gleefully reported in the tabloids.
Both Trevor and Richard's pieces were, I suspect, written more for the benefit of their comrades in the industry - what are known colloquially as tabloid scum - rather than the general populace.
One look at the comments section under their stories quickly tells you that.
There is a simple fact. Journalists have been buying drinks for coppers for hundreds of years. Many of those that did it on local papers now work for organisations like the BBC and The Guardian.
Senior executives on newspapers have gone further. In return for considerable favours they have paid considerable amounts. I suppose in the eyes of the law, a few pints at the Red Lion for a detective constable is no different to a fully paid weekend in a spa for a chief constable.
But there is a world of difference. And there's a world of difference in those executives invited to present themselves at their local nick and a van full of anti-terrorist officers taken off other duties to burst into the house of a 67-year-old Fleet Street legend who helped literally scores of us when we started our Fleet Street careers, going through his draws, looking under his floorboards and searching his attic.
As I said, there are a lot of decent reporters on broadsheets and broadcast who have, at some time, bought a drink for a public servant, not to mention nicking a family photograph by pushing a coathanger through a letterbox.
I could name names but then I'm not a dirty little grass like Will Lewis or Simon Greenberg, dobbing on former mates to save their own skins. Though I doubt it will save their reputations. Already hated by the public, they are now universally hated by journalists too. Nice going boys. Did they teach you that at Harvard?
As they should say on Crimewatch, don't have nightmares - we're only tabloid scum. Evening all...Solly
I don't know what the fuss is about. As they say, if you lock your wife and your dog in a shed for an hour, guess which one is happier to see you when you open the door.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK officer, it's a fair cop. Come and slip the cuffs on and load me into the back of the Black Maria, I'm guilty.
You see, at the Ilford CID Christmas party of 1983 we ended up at the Red Lion and I'm pretty sure I put into the whipround that saw several of our local Regan and Carter lookalikes get served with a large Bell's or two.
In return I was obviously hoping that at my twice weekly police calls for the Ilford Recorder I would be able to ask one or two detectives a question here or there and get more than the standard two word response.
If only it had stayed there, maybe I would only be looking at community service. But I couldn't stop. Every Thursday I'd pick up a pile of newly published papers and drive round to the various fire stations on my beat and hand out free copies so they could read my latest Folk Focus column or look through the classifieds to buy a second hand Cortina from the Murder Mile showrooms of Seven Kings High Road.
In return I'd get a cup of tea and a Lincoln biscuit, paid for no doubt by honest GLC ratepayers. There's a law against that you know. At least there is now that they've dusted off the 1906 Bribery Act.
There's other TICs too. I occasionally bought a pint for local press officers from Redbridge Council, mainly the two old blokes who had been there when 'all this was fields' but more so when a newly graduated young lady joined them.
In fact I not only bought her a white wine spritzer at The Angel, and then claim it on expenses, I bought her several more at The Warren Wood and, in a desperate quest to get the inside track on the Fairlop Waters Planning Sub-Committee decisions ahead of deadline, I even had sex with her. That was a bit harder to put on expenses I must admit.
To her credit, she never gave me any inside information on council matters. And 26 years later we're married with two teenage children and a labrador. She still doesn't give me any decent stories but perhaps that's because we don't have sex as often either.
Naturally I married her in order that, decades later, if plod called round at 6am she wouldn't have to testify against me. It's an extreme measure, I grant you, but it's always best to plan ahead.
As a journalist and a tabloid one, and a former Sun man, I'm appalled at the arrests of several of my former colleagues including a couple of good mates this week.
But I'm not going to beat my chest about it like Richard Littlejohn and Trevor Kavanagh did, so brilliantly in the Mail and Sun this week.
And there's a simple reason for that. No one gives a shit if journalists get arrested. We can bleat on as much as we like about civil liberties and freedom of speech but that just makes readers turn round and say 'you were not so bothered when the police shot a Brazilian bloke on the Tube' or any other number of rights' abuses gleefully reported in the tabloids.
Both Trevor and Richard's pieces were, I suspect, written more for the benefit of their comrades in the industry - what are known colloquially as tabloid scum - rather than the general populace.
One look at the comments section under their stories quickly tells you that.
There is a simple fact. Journalists have been buying drinks for coppers for hundreds of years. Many of those that did it on local papers now work for organisations like the BBC and The Guardian.
Senior executives on newspapers have gone further. In return for considerable favours they have paid considerable amounts. I suppose in the eyes of the law, a few pints at the Red Lion for a detective constable is no different to a fully paid weekend in a spa for a chief constable.
But there is a world of difference. And there's a world of difference in those executives invited to present themselves at their local nick and a van full of anti-terrorist officers taken off other duties to burst into the house of a 67-year-old Fleet Street legend who helped literally scores of us when we started our Fleet Street careers, going through his draws, looking under his floorboards and searching his attic.
As I said, there are a lot of decent reporters on broadsheets and broadcast who have, at some time, bought a drink for a public servant, not to mention nicking a family photograph by pushing a coathanger through a letterbox.
I could name names but then I'm not a dirty little grass like Will Lewis or Simon Greenberg, dobbing on former mates to save their own skins. Though I doubt it will save their reputations. Already hated by the public, they are now universally hated by journalists too. Nice going boys. Did they teach you that at Harvard?
As they should say on Crimewatch, don't have nightmares - we're only tabloid scum. Evening all...Solly
Thursday 9 February 2012
Keeping It Wheel
Karl Lagerfeld thinks Adele looks fat. I think he looks like Davros in sunglasses.
----------------------------------------------------------
Do you think newspaper yes/no phone-in polls are a massive waste of time and money that tells us nothing of the public mood at the time?
For yes, take 25p out of the saucer on the windowsill and chuck it in the bin. For no, do the same.
-----------------------------------------------------------
And talking of the Evening Standard (yes we were) is there anything more ridiculous than its regular fashion feature in which it photographs three people wearing, say, blue slippers, and says it is the latest London trend? Next week: They go to the paralympic basketball finals and report back that three-wheeled wheelchairs are the latest must-have accessory for the modern capital fashionista. Possibly under a headline like 'The Wheel Deal' or 'Keeping It Wheel'.
------------------------------------------------------------
If you have missed the recent editions of the Leveson Enquiry, this is basically the impression it gives. All journalists are slimeballs but this is because all editors are Nazis who tell them to do wrong things. All celebrities are two-faced hypocrites apart from Hugh Grant who really is quite dim. Steve Coogan needs his hair cut and isn't very funny when he's not Alan Partridge. Lawyers are rubbish and have no idea what happens in newspapers. Heather Mills is completely barmy. Piers Morgan is completely smarmy. And when he gets up from having sat down for more than five minutes, Max Clifford leaves behind an oil slick that would even shame BP. And he looks like he wears Blofeld's cat on his head. And he's mates with Simon Cowell. And his 'clients' pay him around £200,000 a year for his services. Thank goodness there is now someone who everyone can hate even more than journalists and for that we should all be grateful.
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Do any of us actually listen to what is said on adverts? If you did, you'd realise what a massive cock-up you are probably making in your choice of toothpaste. You see, Aquafresh has a unique molecular complex. That's right. It means the crap that you use only has some ridiculous unoriginal or possibly second-hand molecular complex and Lord alone knows what that's doing to your gnashers.
And Pantene has its best ever formula. So for all these years you poor schmucks have been using some second rate Pantene formula. You should be ashamed of yourself.
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For the sake of the national team, and without any partisan bias, I think Alan Pardew, Roy Hodgson or my local Tube driver would all make excellent managers of the England football team and that there is absolutely no one else, anywhere, who should be even considered for the job for at least another 10 years.
And a lot of us who feel this way will be singing 'Pardew for England' when Spurs play Newcastle on Saturday.
To parrot the best headline in any newspaper this month, 'Arryvederci - Solly
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Do you think newspaper yes/no phone-in polls are a massive waste of time and money that tells us nothing of the public mood at the time?
For yes, take 25p out of the saucer on the windowsill and chuck it in the bin. For no, do the same.
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And talking of the Evening Standard (yes we were) is there anything more ridiculous than its regular fashion feature in which it photographs three people wearing, say, blue slippers, and says it is the latest London trend? Next week: They go to the paralympic basketball finals and report back that three-wheeled wheelchairs are the latest must-have accessory for the modern capital fashionista. Possibly under a headline like 'The Wheel Deal' or 'Keeping It Wheel'.
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If you have missed the recent editions of the Leveson Enquiry, this is basically the impression it gives. All journalists are slimeballs but this is because all editors are Nazis who tell them to do wrong things. All celebrities are two-faced hypocrites apart from Hugh Grant who really is quite dim. Steve Coogan needs his hair cut and isn't very funny when he's not Alan Partridge. Lawyers are rubbish and have no idea what happens in newspapers. Heather Mills is completely barmy. Piers Morgan is completely smarmy. And when he gets up from having sat down for more than five minutes, Max Clifford leaves behind an oil slick that would even shame BP. And he looks like he wears Blofeld's cat on his head. And he's mates with Simon Cowell. And his 'clients' pay him around £200,000 a year for his services. Thank goodness there is now someone who everyone can hate even more than journalists and for that we should all be grateful.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Do any of us actually listen to what is said on adverts? If you did, you'd realise what a massive cock-up you are probably making in your choice of toothpaste. You see, Aquafresh has a unique molecular complex. That's right. It means the crap that you use only has some ridiculous unoriginal or possibly second-hand molecular complex and Lord alone knows what that's doing to your gnashers.
And Pantene has its best ever formula. So for all these years you poor schmucks have been using some second rate Pantene formula. You should be ashamed of yourself.
--------------------------------------------------------------
For the sake of the national team, and without any partisan bias, I think Alan Pardew, Roy Hodgson or my local Tube driver would all make excellent managers of the England football team and that there is absolutely no one else, anywhere, who should be even considered for the job for at least another 10 years.
And a lot of us who feel this way will be singing 'Pardew for England' when Spurs play Newcastle on Saturday.
To parrot the best headline in any newspaper this month, 'Arryvederci - Solly
Monday 30 January 2012
Pick 'n mix capitalism
Four more former colleagues from The Sun have been arrested this week. I worked with all of them and have spoken to many others from our vintage. I think the general consensus is that a lot of Wapping refuseniks are sorry to see one of them, in particular, in this situation, but their reaction to the fate of the other three can best be described as a snigger.
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David Cameron made a speech about a week ago defending capitalism. Which is fair enough. After all, capitalism rewards hard work and those who pull themselves up by their bootlaces to make money, achieve things beyond their expectations and to compete in a free market economy. All by sheer determination and talent rather than through who you know, an old school tie and inheriting rather than earning money.
But which bit of capitalism do you want? No, really. Because it's quite clear we all like bits of it. The bits of it that mean we can make money mainly.
The bits of it that say businesses should be privately owned and run with the purpose of making capital by buying and selling according to market forces and that those who make the money should be rewarded for it. And controlling labour but at a rate which is economically viable to all concerned.
Like banks of course.
The bits of capitalism that says private businesses make more money if the state doesn't interfere too much. Like banks.
And when the last Labour government relaxed regulation, it meant they had the freedom to make lots of money. Instead, of course, they lost lots of money. But when you let a child go out into the world you allow them to make mistakes. They learn by them. Although you'd rather they didn't make mistakes that end up with you having to sell your house to cover them.
Too much regulation, they argue, and we'll be off. We'll take our ball and go and play in Hong Kong or somewhere. Of course they never do but the threat is enough to keep regulation as loose at Fred Goodwin's zipper.
Then there's the bit of capitalism that says that the state can own RBS but not manage it. Bankers manage banks, not politicians. So they can pay themselves what they want. Cameron believes this, even though he tried to put a seven figure cap on it. So the boss paid himself £953,000 instead. Except it wasn't that, was it? Experts reckon he pocketed around £5 million overall. But that's capitalism too.
In fact, it's probably the purest form of capitalism you can get. A company owned by the state but allowed to operate as if it wasn't in the hope the state gets its money back and more.
And bosses rewarded for their success in such a way it generates half a million quid for the exchequer, which could hire 100 nurses (though of course it won't).
But suddenly we don't like that bit of capitalism. It smacks of inequality even though capitalism allows for inequality in that it wouldn't work if everyone got the same.
And so when it comes down to it, we like our capitalism in easy to digest bite size chunks and not in great big whopping pay packets for a bloke who, when dressed in his riding gear, resembles a Michelin man with a penis on his head. That was such an unfortunate photo Stephen.
For even if we could sympathise a little with a man who gave up a safe job earning millions for a dodgy one earning millions, the sight of him in his black velvet hunting jacket and white cravat, astride a horse and holding a whip while in a knob hat, is enough to want to us all to see him thrown to the dogs.
I don't own the copyright to the photo so you'll have to click on the link to see it though I'm sure you already have.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/01/30/article-2093630-0D5959CA000005DC-979_306x423.jpg
Tally ho....Solly
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David Cameron made a speech about a week ago defending capitalism. Which is fair enough. After all, capitalism rewards hard work and those who pull themselves up by their bootlaces to make money, achieve things beyond their expectations and to compete in a free market economy. All by sheer determination and talent rather than through who you know, an old school tie and inheriting rather than earning money.
But which bit of capitalism do you want? No, really. Because it's quite clear we all like bits of it. The bits of it that mean we can make money mainly.
The bits of it that say businesses should be privately owned and run with the purpose of making capital by buying and selling according to market forces and that those who make the money should be rewarded for it. And controlling labour but at a rate which is economically viable to all concerned.
Like banks of course.
The bits of capitalism that says private businesses make more money if the state doesn't interfere too much. Like banks.
And when the last Labour government relaxed regulation, it meant they had the freedom to make lots of money. Instead, of course, they lost lots of money. But when you let a child go out into the world you allow them to make mistakes. They learn by them. Although you'd rather they didn't make mistakes that end up with you having to sell your house to cover them.
Too much regulation, they argue, and we'll be off. We'll take our ball and go and play in Hong Kong or somewhere. Of course they never do but the threat is enough to keep regulation as loose at Fred Goodwin's zipper.
Then there's the bit of capitalism that says that the state can own RBS but not manage it. Bankers manage banks, not politicians. So they can pay themselves what they want. Cameron believes this, even though he tried to put a seven figure cap on it. So the boss paid himself £953,000 instead. Except it wasn't that, was it? Experts reckon he pocketed around £5 million overall. But that's capitalism too.
In fact, it's probably the purest form of capitalism you can get. A company owned by the state but allowed to operate as if it wasn't in the hope the state gets its money back and more.
And bosses rewarded for their success in such a way it generates half a million quid for the exchequer, which could hire 100 nurses (though of course it won't).
But suddenly we don't like that bit of capitalism. It smacks of inequality even though capitalism allows for inequality in that it wouldn't work if everyone got the same.
And so when it comes down to it, we like our capitalism in easy to digest bite size chunks and not in great big whopping pay packets for a bloke who, when dressed in his riding gear, resembles a Michelin man with a penis on his head. That was such an unfortunate photo Stephen.
For even if we could sympathise a little with a man who gave up a safe job earning millions for a dodgy one earning millions, the sight of him in his black velvet hunting jacket and white cravat, astride a horse and holding a whip while in a knob hat, is enough to want to us all to see him thrown to the dogs.
I don't own the copyright to the photo so you'll have to click on the link to see it though I'm sure you already have.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/01/30/article-2093630-0D5959CA000005DC-979_306x423.jpg
Tally ho....Solly
Tuesday 24 January 2012
In sickness and in Shelf
The BBC have a lovely new film to promote its natural history programmes. Over snippets of cutesy animals, his royal highness, David Attenborough, reads the lyrics to What A Wonderful World.
It's simply beautiful. Then comes THAT shot of two baby polar bears and David says 'I hear babies cry and watch them grow' and as a nation, we all shout 'yeah, in a bloody zoo!'
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My wife, my business partner and several friends and acquaintances are among what is probably a majority who fail to understand the emotional bond between a fan and his (or her) football team.
Let's say it's a man. Better still, let's say it's me though it may be you too.
The relationship between a fan and their team is, quite simply a marriage. Or at least a good marriage.
You are in it for life. You want to be in it for life. Although there are times when you think, why the hell do I do this. But you do it. Sometimes it's a bit routine. You wonder whether there is more to life and what might have happened if you had supported that other lot down the road or someone more glamourous or a bit younger. But then you think, nah, I'm actually the luckiest man in the world when all's said and done.
It's just like marriage. You do it once a fortnight and sometimes it feels like you're just going through the motions when you fail to get as excited as you once did, but then occasionally you do and you come out, pause for breath, light a cigarette and mutter 'fantastic.'
Of course, it can be dispiriting. The kids let you down, they run off with someone else, they get arrested. Though most of the time you're just proud that they try their best for you and wish them luck when they leave home.
Occasionally you turn up drunk or say something stupid in front of guests and they all feel embarrassed for you.
It can be expensive but you don't think of the cost. It's only when you tot up how much it's cost over your lifetime that you realise - blimey, I could have bought a Bentley for that.
But a Bentley doesn't lift you to the same heights or such depths of despair. And if you were going to pop your clogs, you'd much rather it was watching the ones you love than in the seat of a car.
Of course some people get married more than once but that first one is a bit of mistake. You were a bit hasty and fell for the first team that caught your eye but eventually you end up with 'the one' and it was always meant to be.
And there are different marriages of course. What I am describing applies to Spurs, I feel.
If you support West Ham then it's like marrying a childhood sweetheart and hoping that one day you'll buy your own council house and Liverpool is an arranged marriage. Your parents insist on it and, it turns out, you end up being loyal and comparatively happy with a tendency to complain a lot.
Arsenal fans thought they were marrying some posh bird with a bit of an exotic accent but despite enjoying plenty of trips to Europe and lots of sophisticated nights out, they've very little to show for the last few years.
Chelsea fans married some East European catalogue bride for her dad's money and Manchester United fans are like those smug married couples who, every Christmas, send you a card detailing all the wonderful achievements of their children. Little Ryan had a bit of a falling out with his brother. Ginger ran away from home and we thought we'd lost him but he came back again.
At least, most of the time it's like a marriage. However, for our lot, this season has been more like an affair. It's been a real blast, a lot of fun and quite invigorating. And now, even though it's all over, you can say 'well it's been worth it' and go back to normal, hoping for the occasional high, accepting there will be good days and bad days, but sticking with it until the bitter end. Oh yeah, and it looks like dad may be going to prison.
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A while ago I mentioned Evening Standard pisspoor columnist Sarah Sands who tried to argue for the existence of God by claiming the sitcom Rev was funnier than anything about atheists and Leonardo di Vinci did some nice paintings. Today she's at it again. To paraphrase her column, she argues that because religion has such beautiful churches, religion is a 'good thing'.
Reading this rubbish, it reminds you that the best city in the world has one of the shittiest local newspapers serving it. As with its mayor, London deserves better.
Knock knock. Who's there. M.A.B. M.A.B. who? M.A.B. it's because I'm a Londoner.
See ya....Solly
It's simply beautiful. Then comes THAT shot of two baby polar bears and David says 'I hear babies cry and watch them grow' and as a nation, we all shout 'yeah, in a bloody zoo!'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My wife, my business partner and several friends and acquaintances are among what is probably a majority who fail to understand the emotional bond between a fan and his (or her) football team.
Let's say it's a man. Better still, let's say it's me though it may be you too.
The relationship between a fan and their team is, quite simply a marriage. Or at least a good marriage.
You are in it for life. You want to be in it for life. Although there are times when you think, why the hell do I do this. But you do it. Sometimes it's a bit routine. You wonder whether there is more to life and what might have happened if you had supported that other lot down the road or someone more glamourous or a bit younger. But then you think, nah, I'm actually the luckiest man in the world when all's said and done.
It's just like marriage. You do it once a fortnight and sometimes it feels like you're just going through the motions when you fail to get as excited as you once did, but then occasionally you do and you come out, pause for breath, light a cigarette and mutter 'fantastic.'
Of course, it can be dispiriting. The kids let you down, they run off with someone else, they get arrested. Though most of the time you're just proud that they try their best for you and wish them luck when they leave home.
Occasionally you turn up drunk or say something stupid in front of guests and they all feel embarrassed for you.
It can be expensive but you don't think of the cost. It's only when you tot up how much it's cost over your lifetime that you realise - blimey, I could have bought a Bentley for that.
But a Bentley doesn't lift you to the same heights or such depths of despair. And if you were going to pop your clogs, you'd much rather it was watching the ones you love than in the seat of a car.
Of course some people get married more than once but that first one is a bit of mistake. You were a bit hasty and fell for the first team that caught your eye but eventually you end up with 'the one' and it was always meant to be.
And there are different marriages of course. What I am describing applies to Spurs, I feel.
If you support West Ham then it's like marrying a childhood sweetheart and hoping that one day you'll buy your own council house and Liverpool is an arranged marriage. Your parents insist on it and, it turns out, you end up being loyal and comparatively happy with a tendency to complain a lot.
Arsenal fans thought they were marrying some posh bird with a bit of an exotic accent but despite enjoying plenty of trips to Europe and lots of sophisticated nights out, they've very little to show for the last few years.
Chelsea fans married some East European catalogue bride for her dad's money and Manchester United fans are like those smug married couples who, every Christmas, send you a card detailing all the wonderful achievements of their children. Little Ryan had a bit of a falling out with his brother. Ginger ran away from home and we thought we'd lost him but he came back again.
At least, most of the time it's like a marriage. However, for our lot, this season has been more like an affair. It's been a real blast, a lot of fun and quite invigorating. And now, even though it's all over, you can say 'well it's been worth it' and go back to normal, hoping for the occasional high, accepting there will be good days and bad days, but sticking with it until the bitter end. Oh yeah, and it looks like dad may be going to prison.
------------------------------------------------------------
A while ago I mentioned Evening Standard pisspoor columnist Sarah Sands who tried to argue for the existence of God by claiming the sitcom Rev was funnier than anything about atheists and Leonardo di Vinci did some nice paintings. Today she's at it again. To paraphrase her column, she argues that because religion has such beautiful churches, religion is a 'good thing'.
Reading this rubbish, it reminds you that the best city in the world has one of the shittiest local newspapers serving it. As with its mayor, London deserves better.
Knock knock. Who's there. M.A.B. M.A.B. who? M.A.B. it's because I'm a Londoner.
See ya....Solly
Friday 20 January 2012
We're Gonna Drive 'Em Back Into The Sea
In an advert for Iceland, featuring another of the famous clan, Stacey Solomon, a voice announces the benefits of frozen food 'when people drop by unexpected.' I wouldn't have minded if it was Stacey who said that but it wasn't, it was the narrator. Ad agencies, like newspapers, used to check their copy again and again to make sure that it at least made grammatical sense. Maybe it's a sign of the times, but you can bet a tabloid sub would spot the need for an adverb in a short sentence.
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My mate was head of corporate communications of Kodak in Europe around the turn of the century. He left in 2000 and here's why.
In Rochester, New York, in 1999, as the world got ready to either celebrate or face an apocalypse caused by the millennium bug, Kodak's bigwigs got together for a conference to discuss the future.
The suits on the stage flew round the world on private jets and ran a company employing close to 50,000 people with an HQ that even had its own power plant.
They had returned from a major photo industry show in Germany where the biggest talking point was the advances made by new fangled digital technology.
So the cameras involved weighed a ton, cost a fortune and were a fraction of a pixel in resolution but the IT boffins and assorted photographic nerds were getting excited. This, they decided, was the future. And they were right of course.
Kodak had actually invented digital camera technology several years earlier but as their money came from selling film, they sat on it. The future was in yellow boxes, they thought.
Only the dimwitted couldn't see how short sighted this was. Unfortunately, the dimwitted were running Kodak. Imagine, a camera where you can see the photo you've just taken and take it again if the subject blinked without having to pay for two pictures to be developed. Nope, they couldn't imagine that.
They imagined cameras with reels of plastic where you only got to see the results if you took it into a darkroom and spent hours developing it.
So in front of a room full of PR, marketing and other important types, they went through all their visions of the future without mentioning the word 'digital' once. This puzzled my mate so he asked, out loud, in front of the audience of PRs: "What about digital?"
The senior executive consulted a colleague, turned back and replied: "We're going to drive them back into the sea."
The following year my mate left. He now does very well thank you. Something to do with change management, whatever that means, but it allows him regular trips to Ibiza with women half his age so who's complaining?
Kodak now looks like going the way of RCA, Pan Am, Betamax and the Room at the Top nightclub in Ilford, to mention a few. They could have adapted. They could have produced world beating digital cameras, gone into mobile phones with built in cameras, pocket sized video cameras, ebooks, who knows?
Instead they blamed the changing world around them for leaving behind, tried to claim they were the victims of a 'perfect storm of consumer technology advances' or that they were just unlucky.
My bet is that executive probably retired on a decent pension and is living the good life. Though he may well have gone on to captain an Italian cruise liner, who knows?
Because it is that kind of lack of vision that may well see the remaining 19,000 Kodak workers finally go under. But no doubt the bosses will do all right.
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Talking of cruise liners, I've ordered a Costa Concordia model from the local hobby shop. They've said they'll put it on one side for me. (Hat tip: Allan Hall who really should know better!)
Ahoyahoy....Solly
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My mate was head of corporate communications of Kodak in Europe around the turn of the century. He left in 2000 and here's why.
In Rochester, New York, in 1999, as the world got ready to either celebrate or face an apocalypse caused by the millennium bug, Kodak's bigwigs got together for a conference to discuss the future.
The suits on the stage flew round the world on private jets and ran a company employing close to 50,000 people with an HQ that even had its own power plant.
They had returned from a major photo industry show in Germany where the biggest talking point was the advances made by new fangled digital technology.
So the cameras involved weighed a ton, cost a fortune and were a fraction of a pixel in resolution but the IT boffins and assorted photographic nerds were getting excited. This, they decided, was the future. And they were right of course.
Kodak had actually invented digital camera technology several years earlier but as their money came from selling film, they sat on it. The future was in yellow boxes, they thought.
Only the dimwitted couldn't see how short sighted this was. Unfortunately, the dimwitted were running Kodak. Imagine, a camera where you can see the photo you've just taken and take it again if the subject blinked without having to pay for two pictures to be developed. Nope, they couldn't imagine that.
They imagined cameras with reels of plastic where you only got to see the results if you took it into a darkroom and spent hours developing it.
So in front of a room full of PR, marketing and other important types, they went through all their visions of the future without mentioning the word 'digital' once. This puzzled my mate so he asked, out loud, in front of the audience of PRs: "What about digital?"
The senior executive consulted a colleague, turned back and replied: "We're going to drive them back into the sea."
The following year my mate left. He now does very well thank you. Something to do with change management, whatever that means, but it allows him regular trips to Ibiza with women half his age so who's complaining?
Kodak now looks like going the way of RCA, Pan Am, Betamax and the Room at the Top nightclub in Ilford, to mention a few. They could have adapted. They could have produced world beating digital cameras, gone into mobile phones with built in cameras, pocket sized video cameras, ebooks, who knows?
Instead they blamed the changing world around them for leaving behind, tried to claim they were the victims of a 'perfect storm of consumer technology advances' or that they were just unlucky.
My bet is that executive probably retired on a decent pension and is living the good life. Though he may well have gone on to captain an Italian cruise liner, who knows?
Because it is that kind of lack of vision that may well see the remaining 19,000 Kodak workers finally go under. But no doubt the bosses will do all right.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of cruise liners, I've ordered a Costa Concordia model from the local hobby shop. They've said they'll put it on one side for me. (Hat tip: Allan Hall who really should know better!)
Ahoyahoy....Solly
Saturday 14 January 2012
On the Peace
A new family moves into a house in a well established area. The neighbours are a bit cheesed off at the arrivistes, not least because they wanted to buy it themselves.
The new family are, well, not quite 'the same as us' - they're foreigners and although they can show they have roots there, they have a different religion and different customs and some of their friends are a bit brash and loud.
It's the rich friends that lent the new family the money to do up the house and get the garden in order, send the kids to private school and have a new car on the drive.
This breeds more resentment with the neighbours. They have rich uncles who make their money in the oil industry but never share it round so their homes are a bit tatty.
All in all, the new lot are not made to feel welcome. Occasionally it gets unpleasant. And sometimes there is an uneasy truce.
Some years ago they tried counselling with a rather effete bloke called David. It worked for a while but camp David was a long time ago and things move on.
The kids from the family at number 11 used to throw stones at them but they've moved on and they seem to get on ok now.
And the police sorted out the grumpy old git at number 15. He died and the new lot are squabbling over who should get the house so they're preoccupied.
The people at the house behind occasionally throw dog poo over the fence. The new family threw it back, it hit a baby and the police had a word.
The new family aren't blameless. They've built a very big wall without permission to stop the local scallies breaking into the shed and they blocked off an access road which they weren't allowed to do.
They did give a bit of their land at the back over to some of the neighbours in the hope that it would assuage them. They supply power and water to it too but then they built a garage on part of it so it's still a sore point.
Now there's a new problem. Some secretive neighbours a few doors down used to shout their mouths off about how they're going to send the boys round.
The head of the household is a funny little man with a bizarre dress sense so they nickname him Armani Dinner Jacket.
ADJ has been banging on for a while about how the new neighbours should have their house burned down and how they and all their friends and relatives should be wiped off the face of the earth.
He's even got it embroidered on a cushion on his sofa, that's how much he means it.
The police have seen it but decided that it was all a bit 'sticks and stones' and they shouldn't take much notice of a few insults.
But recently it became apparent that these secretive neighbours have been making a bomb to blow up the new family's house. They've already said how much they want them dead after all.
This gives the new family a bit of a dilemma. The police won't do anything until something actually happens, nor will the rich relatives - although they have written a stiff letter to the local paper about it.
They could wait until the bomb goes off and then throw a bomb back but by then they may already be dead so what good is that?
Alternatively they could take pre-emptive action and superglue the locks or firebomb ADJ's home but then all his mates would join in, and the police and it could get a bit tasty.
Besides, the new family's rich friends may decide not to help them out if that happens.
There is another option. A bit drastic perhaps. But a couple of local heavies - Moss and Addy - have offered to help out. For a bung, they'll 'sort out' the nerdy cousins whose know how is building the bomb.
And so that's what they do. ADJ's nerdy cousins get a seeing to.
Of course, there's a bit of a to do. A few accusations and threats of revenge are made, mainly on Twitter. Even some celebs join in.
However, it does mean the bomb doesn't get built and, instead of the problem escalating, the uneasy peace remains for a little while longer.
It would be nice if there was an easier solution, wouldn't it?
Shalom, Salam, Solly
The new family are, well, not quite 'the same as us' - they're foreigners and although they can show they have roots there, they have a different religion and different customs and some of their friends are a bit brash and loud.
It's the rich friends that lent the new family the money to do up the house and get the garden in order, send the kids to private school and have a new car on the drive.
This breeds more resentment with the neighbours. They have rich uncles who make their money in the oil industry but never share it round so their homes are a bit tatty.
All in all, the new lot are not made to feel welcome. Occasionally it gets unpleasant. And sometimes there is an uneasy truce.
Some years ago they tried counselling with a rather effete bloke called David. It worked for a while but camp David was a long time ago and things move on.
The kids from the family at number 11 used to throw stones at them but they've moved on and they seem to get on ok now.
And the police sorted out the grumpy old git at number 15. He died and the new lot are squabbling over who should get the house so they're preoccupied.
The people at the house behind occasionally throw dog poo over the fence. The new family threw it back, it hit a baby and the police had a word.
The new family aren't blameless. They've built a very big wall without permission to stop the local scallies breaking into the shed and they blocked off an access road which they weren't allowed to do.
They did give a bit of their land at the back over to some of the neighbours in the hope that it would assuage them. They supply power and water to it too but then they built a garage on part of it so it's still a sore point.
Now there's a new problem. Some secretive neighbours a few doors down used to shout their mouths off about how they're going to send the boys round.
The head of the household is a funny little man with a bizarre dress sense so they nickname him Armani Dinner Jacket.
ADJ has been banging on for a while about how the new neighbours should have their house burned down and how they and all their friends and relatives should be wiped off the face of the earth.
He's even got it embroidered on a cushion on his sofa, that's how much he means it.
The police have seen it but decided that it was all a bit 'sticks and stones' and they shouldn't take much notice of a few insults.
But recently it became apparent that these secretive neighbours have been making a bomb to blow up the new family's house. They've already said how much they want them dead after all.
This gives the new family a bit of a dilemma. The police won't do anything until something actually happens, nor will the rich relatives - although they have written a stiff letter to the local paper about it.
They could wait until the bomb goes off and then throw a bomb back but by then they may already be dead so what good is that?
Alternatively they could take pre-emptive action and superglue the locks or firebomb ADJ's home but then all his mates would join in, and the police and it could get a bit tasty.
Besides, the new family's rich friends may decide not to help them out if that happens.
There is another option. A bit drastic perhaps. But a couple of local heavies - Moss and Addy - have offered to help out. For a bung, they'll 'sort out' the nerdy cousins whose know how is building the bomb.
And so that's what they do. ADJ's nerdy cousins get a seeing to.
Of course, there's a bit of a to do. A few accusations and threats of revenge are made, mainly on Twitter. Even some celebs join in.
However, it does mean the bomb doesn't get built and, instead of the problem escalating, the uneasy peace remains for a little while longer.
It would be nice if there was an easier solution, wouldn't it?
Shalom, Salam, Solly
Tuesday 10 January 2012
When I say ugly, I don't mean rough looking...
Everyone's talking about a film called The Artist. I believe that wasn't its original title. It was formerly known as Prince.
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Louise Mensch says the reason she's unlikely to get into the cabinet is because she's got young children. In the past she thought it may because she was too attractive.
Following the same logic, I never became a centre forward for Spurs because my hair was too curly, I never married Ann-Margret because I was left handed and the reason I'm not Prime Minister is because I don't like peas. Well, it makes as much sense.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last week John Humphrys asked David Cameron who he would have playing him in a film about his life. Legitimate question in the light of the Thatcher film. Today he asked Ed Miliband, indirectly perhaps, if he was too ugly to be Prime Minister. Those bloody left wing BBC types, eh?
And would he have asked a woman the same question?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good old Kelvin. My former boss illuminated the Leveson inquiry not just with a general attitude of 'so what' about ethics, getting it right and so on, but with a very funny impression of John Major.
Just for the record. If you got it wrong under Kelvin he bollocked you. If you didn't try in the first place he bollocked you more.
But about the Major incident when the then-PM rang Kelvin after pulling out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism.
I remember this story well. I edited The Sun's City page that day while the drama unfolded in the Square Mile. It was both exciting and terrifying and knackering. I wasn't even the regular City editor, I was just covering. Bloody typical.
Every five minutes the editor or the news editor or some bearded twat from features would come in and ask what was going on and I'd have to tap dance my way out of it, waffling about George Soros and betting against the pound and so on. Then they'd leave the room and I'd ring a mate in the City and ask him to explain to me what was going on so I could explain it to the boss.
The worse aspect was the constant changing of interest rates. I remember them going up from 10 to 12 then 15 (though I think that was a promise never kept) and back down to 12.
Trouble was, every time they changed, the paper wanted a table on what this meant for people's mortgages.
So when they went from, say, eight to 10 per cent, I'd have to ring the Halifax and ask them to do me up a table of repayments on £30,000, £50,000, £80,000, £100,000 mortgages and what they'd gone from and to.
There was no email in those days. All the tables had to be faxed to me and I had to type them on to the screen in between monitoring the collapse of the pound, the share prices and phone calls from various readers and reporters, including the political editor, Trevor Kavanagh who - out of everyone - was the most relaxed and gentlemanly of all I dealt with that day. He helped calm me down too, I recall. The guy's a mensch, and not in the Louise sense.
Anyway, no sooner had I finished one mortgage table, the interest rate changed and I'd have to go through the whole process again. It was one of the most exhausting days of my working life. And I didn't even have Twitter, Google or, in fact, the internet at all, to help me out. Blimey.
It was incredibly hectic but looking back, it was at a time when mass market tabloids would clear the desks for a decent political story. Some serious issues may have been simplified but they were dealt with. Even celebrity stories in those pre-Big Brother days would take second place to topics that really affected the kind of aspirational working class readership of a red top tabloid.
At the end of this tumultous day, those of use who had been involved were gathered by the newsdesk when Kelvin came out of his office to say that John Major had rang. Doing the impression again, he told how Major had asked what the paper's view on the day was.
My recollection differs slightly from Kelvin at the Leveson hearing in that he told us: "I told him 'John, I've got two buckets of shit on my desk and I'm going to pour both of them all over you."
We laughed, a bit nervously, and asked Kelvin 'what did Major say?'
Kelvin impersonated him again and said: "Oh, er, ho ho, very, er good Kelvin, I'll look out for that."
It was around this period that I think I really got to see what The Sun was about. Having been slavishly Tory under Thatch, it was now doing a better job of being anti-Conservative than the Labour-supporting Mirror.
It wasn't altruistic, it was commercial.
And being The Sun, it was probably more effective.
The logic was that while Sun readers were losing their jobs and having their homes repossessed, the paper they read could not simply gloss over it because they were, in general, a Tory paper.
They had to support their readers more than they could support a useless government who continued to shoot itself in the foot.
The Sun had supported Major in 1992 but Kinnock was in opposition so, for them, it was a no brainer. Of course, come the next election in 1997, The Sun had switched to Blair.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wasn't entirely sure who or what Georgia Salpa is when I noticed her appearance in the Celebrity Big Brother house. I'm indebted to the Daily Mail online, who seem obsessed with this Richard Desmond show for explaining.
Apparently she is a 'body confident Kim Kardashian doppelganger' they say.
Now, if they could just tell me, again, who Kim Kardashian is, we'll all be a lot better informed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poor old Anthony Worrall Thompson. He was caught stealing onions and bread from Tesco. And that was just for starters. The wine and cheese was for dessert.
Heard an interesting tale about AWT and New Covent Garden where he bought food for his restaurants, and came across some crates of bananas that he accidentally thought belonged to him.
I'm sure it was an innocent mistake. Night all...Solly
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Louise Mensch says the reason she's unlikely to get into the cabinet is because she's got young children. In the past she thought it may because she was too attractive.
Following the same logic, I never became a centre forward for Spurs because my hair was too curly, I never married Ann-Margret because I was left handed and the reason I'm not Prime Minister is because I don't like peas. Well, it makes as much sense.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last week John Humphrys asked David Cameron who he would have playing him in a film about his life. Legitimate question in the light of the Thatcher film. Today he asked Ed Miliband, indirectly perhaps, if he was too ugly to be Prime Minister. Those bloody left wing BBC types, eh?
And would he have asked a woman the same question?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good old Kelvin. My former boss illuminated the Leveson inquiry not just with a general attitude of 'so what' about ethics, getting it right and so on, but with a very funny impression of John Major.
Just for the record. If you got it wrong under Kelvin he bollocked you. If you didn't try in the first place he bollocked you more.
But about the Major incident when the then-PM rang Kelvin after pulling out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism.
I remember this story well. I edited The Sun's City page that day while the drama unfolded in the Square Mile. It was both exciting and terrifying and knackering. I wasn't even the regular City editor, I was just covering. Bloody typical.
Every five minutes the editor or the news editor or some bearded twat from features would come in and ask what was going on and I'd have to tap dance my way out of it, waffling about George Soros and betting against the pound and so on. Then they'd leave the room and I'd ring a mate in the City and ask him to explain to me what was going on so I could explain it to the boss.
The worse aspect was the constant changing of interest rates. I remember them going up from 10 to 12 then 15 (though I think that was a promise never kept) and back down to 12.
Trouble was, every time they changed, the paper wanted a table on what this meant for people's mortgages.
So when they went from, say, eight to 10 per cent, I'd have to ring the Halifax and ask them to do me up a table of repayments on £30,000, £50,000, £80,000, £100,000 mortgages and what they'd gone from and to.
There was no email in those days. All the tables had to be faxed to me and I had to type them on to the screen in between monitoring the collapse of the pound, the share prices and phone calls from various readers and reporters, including the political editor, Trevor Kavanagh who - out of everyone - was the most relaxed and gentlemanly of all I dealt with that day. He helped calm me down too, I recall. The guy's a mensch, and not in the Louise sense.
Anyway, no sooner had I finished one mortgage table, the interest rate changed and I'd have to go through the whole process again. It was one of the most exhausting days of my working life. And I didn't even have Twitter, Google or, in fact, the internet at all, to help me out. Blimey.
It was incredibly hectic but looking back, it was at a time when mass market tabloids would clear the desks for a decent political story. Some serious issues may have been simplified but they were dealt with. Even celebrity stories in those pre-Big Brother days would take second place to topics that really affected the kind of aspirational working class readership of a red top tabloid.
At the end of this tumultous day, those of use who had been involved were gathered by the newsdesk when Kelvin came out of his office to say that John Major had rang. Doing the impression again, he told how Major had asked what the paper's view on the day was.
My recollection differs slightly from Kelvin at the Leveson hearing in that he told us: "I told him 'John, I've got two buckets of shit on my desk and I'm going to pour both of them all over you."
We laughed, a bit nervously, and asked Kelvin 'what did Major say?'
Kelvin impersonated him again and said: "Oh, er, ho ho, very, er good Kelvin, I'll look out for that."
It was around this period that I think I really got to see what The Sun was about. Having been slavishly Tory under Thatch, it was now doing a better job of being anti-Conservative than the Labour-supporting Mirror.
It wasn't altruistic, it was commercial.
And being The Sun, it was probably more effective.
The logic was that while Sun readers were losing their jobs and having their homes repossessed, the paper they read could not simply gloss over it because they were, in general, a Tory paper.
They had to support their readers more than they could support a useless government who continued to shoot itself in the foot.
The Sun had supported Major in 1992 but Kinnock was in opposition so, for them, it was a no brainer. Of course, come the next election in 1997, The Sun had switched to Blair.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wasn't entirely sure who or what Georgia Salpa is when I noticed her appearance in the Celebrity Big Brother house. I'm indebted to the Daily Mail online, who seem obsessed with this Richard Desmond show for explaining.
Apparently she is a 'body confident Kim Kardashian doppelganger' they say.
Now, if they could just tell me, again, who Kim Kardashian is, we'll all be a lot better informed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poor old Anthony Worrall Thompson. He was caught stealing onions and bread from Tesco. And that was just for starters. The wine and cheese was for dessert.
Heard an interesting tale about AWT and New Covent Garden where he bought food for his restaurants, and came across some crates of bananas that he accidentally thought belonged to him.
I'm sure it was an innocent mistake. Night all...Solly
Thursday 5 January 2012
Madsen, dogs and Englishmen
OK, I owe the Daily Star an apology. I may have given the impression that the only people to go on Channel Five's Celebrity Big Brother would be reality TV show rejects and footballers' wives whose French implants had yet to explode and possibly Diane Abbott hoping to find a place where she could be sure no one would be watching her.
It has been pointed out to me by Daily Star night news editor Pat Wooding via my Dr Finlay (Dr. Finlay's Casebook = Facebook, it's the latest in social media rhyming slang) that I cast some doubt, too, on Hollywood actor Michael Madsen appearing, as 'revealed' by the Star. Well, the Star was right and I was wrong.
The Reservoir Dogs actor is actually on the programme. So hat's off to the Daily Star. So too is some bloke who had a number one 11 years ago. And a woman famous for not being married to Ryan Giggs but having his surname.
I now look forward to guest appearances in the house by the likes of Jack Nicholson, former president Jimmy Carter, Dame Vera Lynn and Boutros Boutros Ghali.
---------------------------------------------------------------
This week's conviction of Dobson and Norris - or Knobson and Doris as I suspect their prison mates may end up calling them - has reminded us of that famous Daily Mail front page with the massive headline 'Murderers'.
It is one of the most famous front pages of recent decades, I suspect. But while the headline is one of the best things to grace a front page, above it is a reminder of the dumber side of national newspapers....a massive banner across the top advertising the latest horoscopes by Jonathan Cainer.
This week has seen the Daily Mirror signing Russell Grant as if he was some kind of messiah and most of the other papers trumpeting how they will tell the fortunes of their readers for the next 12 months.
Back on my local paper, when our astrologer had contractual problems, it was left to us reporters to write the horoscope for a couple of weeks.
We worked it out ourselves. I am a Sagittarius and I had a party planned for that weekend so the horoscope for Sagittarius read 'you will find yourself at the centre of a social whirl this weekend' or something similar.
Another guy was playing football a few days later so sporting endeavour featured high on the agenda for Taureans and the girl going to see Elvis Costello made sure that all Virgos could see that they would be lifted by music within the next few days.
Readers wrote in to say how accurate the new, anonymous astrologer was.
It is the 21st Century, we have advancements in science that can convict two murderers because of a tiny speck of blood that has been embedded on a jacket for 19 years.
We can send neutrinos racing round a Swiss Scalextric that could eventually tell us how the universe was created. We can overthrow dictatorships by sending messages via satellites in space through tiny little boxes we can fit in our pocket. We can do all these things and more thanks to the hard work, creativity, brains and dedication of fantastic people all over the world.
And yet the newspapers are still keen to propagate the medieval myth that our lives are governed by a load of mumbo jumbo. And that we should believe some fat tosser in a look-at-me waistcoat or daft old witch with a bad haircut who says that because Venus is up Uranus then the colour red will be significant next April.
Quite frankly the whole astrology scam has been going on too long and our newspapers shame themselves by pandering to it.
There are some people for whom their daily horoscope acts as a kind of crutch to help them through their sad and lonely days. Much the same as God does for others I guess.
Anyone who needs a crutch as badly as that is so lame that if they were a horse they'd be shot.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Good little programme on grammar schools on BBC4 which made the point that the system was let down by a lack of dynamic young teachers.
I'll vouch for that. I can say it never did me any harm but I'd rather have come out remembering a lot of good teachers and one bad one, rather than one really good teacher and a bunch of misfits, incompetents, paedophiles and crusty old Mr Chips style bastards.
But hey, I'm not bitter....class dismissed. Solly
It has been pointed out to me by Daily Star night news editor Pat Wooding via my Dr Finlay (Dr. Finlay's Casebook = Facebook, it's the latest in social media rhyming slang) that I cast some doubt, too, on Hollywood actor Michael Madsen appearing, as 'revealed' by the Star. Well, the Star was right and I was wrong.
The Reservoir Dogs actor is actually on the programme. So hat's off to the Daily Star. So too is some bloke who had a number one 11 years ago. And a woman famous for not being married to Ryan Giggs but having his surname.
I now look forward to guest appearances in the house by the likes of Jack Nicholson, former president Jimmy Carter, Dame Vera Lynn and Boutros Boutros Ghali.
---------------------------------------------------------------
This week's conviction of Dobson and Norris - or Knobson and Doris as I suspect their prison mates may end up calling them - has reminded us of that famous Daily Mail front page with the massive headline 'Murderers'.
It is one of the most famous front pages of recent decades, I suspect. But while the headline is one of the best things to grace a front page, above it is a reminder of the dumber side of national newspapers....a massive banner across the top advertising the latest horoscopes by Jonathan Cainer.
This week has seen the Daily Mirror signing Russell Grant as if he was some kind of messiah and most of the other papers trumpeting how they will tell the fortunes of their readers for the next 12 months.
Back on my local paper, when our astrologer had contractual problems, it was left to us reporters to write the horoscope for a couple of weeks.
We worked it out ourselves. I am a Sagittarius and I had a party planned for that weekend so the horoscope for Sagittarius read 'you will find yourself at the centre of a social whirl this weekend' or something similar.
Another guy was playing football a few days later so sporting endeavour featured high on the agenda for Taureans and the girl going to see Elvis Costello made sure that all Virgos could see that they would be lifted by music within the next few days.
Readers wrote in to say how accurate the new, anonymous astrologer was.
It is the 21st Century, we have advancements in science that can convict two murderers because of a tiny speck of blood that has been embedded on a jacket for 19 years.
We can send neutrinos racing round a Swiss Scalextric that could eventually tell us how the universe was created. We can overthrow dictatorships by sending messages via satellites in space through tiny little boxes we can fit in our pocket. We can do all these things and more thanks to the hard work, creativity, brains and dedication of fantastic people all over the world.
And yet the newspapers are still keen to propagate the medieval myth that our lives are governed by a load of mumbo jumbo. And that we should believe some fat tosser in a look-at-me waistcoat or daft old witch with a bad haircut who says that because Venus is up Uranus then the colour red will be significant next April.
Quite frankly the whole astrology scam has been going on too long and our newspapers shame themselves by pandering to it.
There are some people for whom their daily horoscope acts as a kind of crutch to help them through their sad and lonely days. Much the same as God does for others I guess.
Anyone who needs a crutch as badly as that is so lame that if they were a horse they'd be shot.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Good little programme on grammar schools on BBC4 which made the point that the system was let down by a lack of dynamic young teachers.
I'll vouch for that. I can say it never did me any harm but I'd rather have come out remembering a lot of good teachers and one bad one, rather than one really good teacher and a bunch of misfits, incompetents, paedophiles and crusty old Mr Chips style bastards.
But hey, I'm not bitter....class dismissed. Solly
Tuesday 3 January 2012
What a Filkin liberty
Dame Elizabeth Filkin's report on the ethical relationship between police officers and journalists recommends that we don't flirt with them or drink alcohol with them.
I would personally recommend that journalists don't sleep with policewomen. You could end up with cressida dick.
------------------------------------------------------
However, this does restrict the training of local newspaper journalists in how to build, maintain and use contacts of course.
As a local hack, the police are a good source of stories and the journo, in return, is a useful conduit for the police to appeal for witnesses, to launch crime prevention campaigns and, in general, to promote a better image of the force.
I started off at the Ilford Recorder. It is one of many parts of the country where, quite frankly, the police could use as much help as they can get in improving their image.
I was there a long, long time ago but can remember, with varying degrees of fondness and horror, various ways of bonding with the bill.
The annual Recorder versus Met Police East Traffic Division Indoor Sports Olympics for instance (basically a darts match at the police social club) got everyone together. And very drunk. After which everyone drove home, knowing they wouldn't be stopped as all the traffic cops were drunk too. Perhaps it's a good idea these things don't take place any more. Besides, I'm sure that fat copper with a moustache and 'Crafty Cockney' tattoo was a ringer.
And the local nick's Christmas Party, a more stuffy affair in which the editor, the Mayor and various others would discuss niceties over a glass of sherry.
However this was rounded off with the traditional CID lock in at the Red Lion (everyone gave a fiver to landlord Mick Ryan on the way in) which would end around 5am so we could go home and get changed before police calls the next morning.
The Recorder would do the odd human interest story about the police. The detective who draws caricatures of his colleagues and gets them exhibited, the hidden story behind the signed photo of Jayne Mansfield behind the duty desk (she once broke down in Ilford and the police helped her out, so it wasn't really a mystery but we could resurrect the story every three or four years) and the chief inspector's obsession with Arsenal. It made them more human. Apart from supporting Arsenal of course.
They helped us too. I got an exclusive interview with Adam Woodyatt, aka Ian Beale in the newly launched EastEnders (this was 25 years ago remember) because his dad was the chief copper at Barkingside nick and set up the interview.
Oh, and Adam Woodyatt was a charming young man. He biked round from Elstree to Valentine's Park on a new Yamaha but we couldn't go to the pub as he was underage and that would have been a much better story!
I understand he's still in the soap though I don't watch it any more.
In between we would carry stories about local crimes and help the police find witnesses of course. It was called making contacts and has acted for decades as a central plank in learning to be a journalist.
Now of course, we can't do this any more thanks to the likes of Neil Wallis. Which is something else he's done to ruin journalism.
Instead of being able to mix with real policemen and women so we can understand them and they can understand us, we'll have to deal with jobsworth press officers who give us (and via us, you) only half the information we need. I don't include you, Andy Roberts, of course.
And as for young local journalists, they will have to rely on Wikipedia and Blackberry Messenger for their information and never get to talk to a real human being ever again.
------------------------------------------------------------
An 81-year-old man had a heart attack at Spurs last night and died. I was at the game and it wasn't that exciting. But the conversations I've had with football fans follow the same pattern. As a way to die it's up there with being crushed by a falling piano or being shagged to death, or in a Las Vegas hotel room while snorting cocaine from the naked body of a showgirl. Or is that just me? I've always liked pianos.
At least being 81 means he lived long enough to see Spurs win the league. I have a feeling that even if I live twice as long I won't be that lucky.
So if it's going to be a coronary at the Lane then hopefully it will be at something better than a 1-0 scrappy home win against West Brom.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Things you never thought you'd say. This includes 'I'm warming to Joey Barton', 'Louise Mensch is a bright woman' and 'Well done Daily Mail.'
Well, knock off the last one. After the conviction of David Norris and Gary Dobson there is, at last, a reason to be able to tell people you're a tabloid journalist rather than try and disguise it with 'oh, I'm a content provider for multimedia organisations.'
Of course, the real hero is not Paul Dacre, the reformed police or even Mr and Mrs Lawrence.
No, the real hero is science. It was the advances made by scientists that got the double jeopardy law changed. And without the science all the valiant efforts of the newspaper, the police and the parents themselves may well have been in vain.
Naturally the Daily Mail will bask in the glory and they are entitled to. Even Roy Greenslade has praised them. We can but hope that having discovered the good they can do, they do it more often.
Perhaps they should run a story that doing the right thing cures cancer.
Evening all....Solly
I would personally recommend that journalists don't sleep with policewomen. You could end up with cressida dick.
------------------------------------------------------
However, this does restrict the training of local newspaper journalists in how to build, maintain and use contacts of course.
As a local hack, the police are a good source of stories and the journo, in return, is a useful conduit for the police to appeal for witnesses, to launch crime prevention campaigns and, in general, to promote a better image of the force.
I started off at the Ilford Recorder. It is one of many parts of the country where, quite frankly, the police could use as much help as they can get in improving their image.
I was there a long, long time ago but can remember, with varying degrees of fondness and horror, various ways of bonding with the bill.
The annual Recorder versus Met Police East Traffic Division Indoor Sports Olympics for instance (basically a darts match at the police social club) got everyone together. And very drunk. After which everyone drove home, knowing they wouldn't be stopped as all the traffic cops were drunk too. Perhaps it's a good idea these things don't take place any more. Besides, I'm sure that fat copper with a moustache and 'Crafty Cockney' tattoo was a ringer.
And the local nick's Christmas Party, a more stuffy affair in which the editor, the Mayor and various others would discuss niceties over a glass of sherry.
However this was rounded off with the traditional CID lock in at the Red Lion (everyone gave a fiver to landlord Mick Ryan on the way in) which would end around 5am so we could go home and get changed before police calls the next morning.
The Recorder would do the odd human interest story about the police. The detective who draws caricatures of his colleagues and gets them exhibited, the hidden story behind the signed photo of Jayne Mansfield behind the duty desk (she once broke down in Ilford and the police helped her out, so it wasn't really a mystery but we could resurrect the story every three or four years) and the chief inspector's obsession with Arsenal. It made them more human. Apart from supporting Arsenal of course.
They helped us too. I got an exclusive interview with Adam Woodyatt, aka Ian Beale in the newly launched EastEnders (this was 25 years ago remember) because his dad was the chief copper at Barkingside nick and set up the interview.
Oh, and Adam Woodyatt was a charming young man. He biked round from Elstree to Valentine's Park on a new Yamaha but we couldn't go to the pub as he was underage and that would have been a much better story!
I understand he's still in the soap though I don't watch it any more.
In between we would carry stories about local crimes and help the police find witnesses of course. It was called making contacts and has acted for decades as a central plank in learning to be a journalist.
Now of course, we can't do this any more thanks to the likes of Neil Wallis. Which is something else he's done to ruin journalism.
Instead of being able to mix with real policemen and women so we can understand them and they can understand us, we'll have to deal with jobsworth press officers who give us (and via us, you) only half the information we need. I don't include you, Andy Roberts, of course.
And as for young local journalists, they will have to rely on Wikipedia and Blackberry Messenger for their information and never get to talk to a real human being ever again.
------------------------------------------------------------
An 81-year-old man had a heart attack at Spurs last night and died. I was at the game and it wasn't that exciting. But the conversations I've had with football fans follow the same pattern. As a way to die it's up there with being crushed by a falling piano or being shagged to death, or in a Las Vegas hotel room while snorting cocaine from the naked body of a showgirl. Or is that just me? I've always liked pianos.
At least being 81 means he lived long enough to see Spurs win the league. I have a feeling that even if I live twice as long I won't be that lucky.
So if it's going to be a coronary at the Lane then hopefully it will be at something better than a 1-0 scrappy home win against West Brom.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Things you never thought you'd say. This includes 'I'm warming to Joey Barton', 'Louise Mensch is a bright woman' and 'Well done Daily Mail.'
Well, knock off the last one. After the conviction of David Norris and Gary Dobson there is, at last, a reason to be able to tell people you're a tabloid journalist rather than try and disguise it with 'oh, I'm a content provider for multimedia organisations.'
Of course, the real hero is not Paul Dacre, the reformed police or even Mr and Mrs Lawrence.
No, the real hero is science. It was the advances made by scientists that got the double jeopardy law changed. And without the science all the valiant efforts of the newspaper, the police and the parents themselves may well have been in vain.
Naturally the Daily Mail will bask in the glory and they are entitled to. Even Roy Greenslade has praised them. We can but hope that having discovered the good they can do, they do it more often.
Perhaps they should run a story that doing the right thing cures cancer.
Evening all....Solly
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