A Sprig of Holly: Notes on Gibbeting (with Reference to the Case of Tom Jenkyn)

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827): A Gibbet (detail) 

Undated watercolor and ink on paper (36 x 27.5 cm)

Yale Center for British Art

 

 

I've discussed the topic of capital punishment in a previous post and mentioned that I live close to a notorious junction known as Gallows Corner, where they used to hang men in the old days [a]. 

 

I believe it was also the preferred practice to leave the bodies of those executed hanging in chains or fastened into an iron frame. And so that the public display might be prolonged, bodies were sometimes coated in tar and left until almost completely decomposed, after which the bones would be scattered. 

 

Known as gibbeting, this common law punishment was designed as a piece of violent theatre and a final humiliation intended to provide an additional deterrence measure, just in case the threat of hanging wasn't enough to prevent the heinous crime of murder. 

 

An ancient practice, gibbeting wasn't enshrined within English law until the Murder Act of 1751; an act which also included the provision that execution would take place two days after sentencing, unless the third day was a Sunday, in which case the condemned - and those who looked forward to seeing him swing - would have to wait until Monday morning [b].

 

The act also gave the judge passing sentence the power to turn the body of the condemned over to the medical profession for dissection and anatomical study, rather than hung in chains, which, I suppose, one might find a less shameful fate (although I suspect that, if given a choice, a hardened highwayman or pirate would reply like James Bond who when asked by a barman following a heavy loss at the poker table whether he wants his martini shaken or stirred says: Do I look like I give a damn? [c]  

 

 

II.

As a sensitive child, I was upset for days if I saw even a dead hedgehog by the roadside. 

 

So I'm fairly certain that the sight of a rotting human corpse on a gibbet might have been similarly distressing. Although, having said that, the reactions of children to scenes of horror can be complex - as Daphen du Maurier illustrates at the opening of her Gothic novel My Cousin Rachel (1951) ...

Reflecting on the time when, as a seven-year-old, he is taken by his much older cousin (and guardian), Ambrose, to view some poor wretch left hanging in chains where the four roads meet, Philip Ashley recalls:

"His face and body were blackened with tar for preservation. He hung there for five weeks before they cut him down, and it was the fourth week that I saw him. 

      He swung between earth and sky upon his gibbet, or, as my cousin Ambrose told me, betwixt heaven and hell. [...] Ambrose prodded at the body with his stick. I can see it now, moving with the wind like a weather-vane on a rusty pivot, a poor scarecrow of what had been a man. The rain had rotted his breeches, if not his body, and strips of worsted drooped from his swollen limbs like pulpy paper." [d]

 

Philip continues: 

 

"It was winter, and some passing joker had placed a sprig of holly in the torn vest for celebration. Somehow, at seven years old, that seemed to me the final outrage, but I said nothing." [1] [e]

Having walked round the gibbet so as to observe the horror from all sides, with Ambrose playfully poking and prodding the corpse with his stick, as if it were a funfair attraction provided for his amusement, Philip's cousin eventually attempts to put things into a philosophical context and provide a moral lesson:

 

"'There you are, Philip,' he said, 'it's what we all come to in the end. Some upon a battlefield, some in bed, others according to their destiny. There's no escape. You can't learn the lesson too young. But this is how a felon dies. A warning to you and me to lead the sober life.'" [2] 

Stopping short of condoning femicide, but cheerfully parading his sexism, Ambrose continues:

 

"'See what a moment of passion can bring upon a fellow [...] Here is Tom Jenkyn, honest and dull, except when he drank too much. It's true his wife was a scold, but that was no excuse to kill her. If we killed women for their tongues all men would be murderers.'" [2] 

Philip is disturbed to discover the dead man's identity and to realise that, in fact, he knew him. He wished Ambrose had not named him:

"Up to that moment the body had been a dead thing, without identity. It would come into my dreams, lifeless and horrible, I knew that very well from the first instant I had set my eyes upon the gibbet. Now it would have connection with reality, and with the man with watery eyes who sold lobsters on the town quay." [2]

When asked by Ambrose what he thinks, Philip attempts to disguise the fact that he felt "sick at heart, and terrified" [2]. And so he answers in an amusing and remarkably precocious manner for a child: "'Tom had a brighter face when I last saw him. [...] Now he isn't fresh enough to become bait for his own lobsters.'" [2] [f]

However, despite such witty bravado, Philip's actual squeamishness causes him to vomit before leaving the scene at Four Turnings: "I felt better afterwards, though my teeth chattered and I was very cold." [3] 

 

Perhaps in anger, Philip throws a stone at the lifeless body of Tom Jenkyn; though, as he ran off in search of Ambrose who had walked ahead, he felt ashamed of his action. So much so, that, eighteen years later, he is planning to seek out poor Tom in the afterlife in order to apologise. 

 

Until then, however, he asks the ghost of Tom Jenkyn to disturb him no more: "Go back into your shadows, Tom, and leave me some measure of peace. That gibbet has long since gone [g] and you with it. I threw a stone at you in ignorance. Forgive me." [3]

 

I don't know about Tom, the lobster salesman and wife killer, but I suspect most readers will almost certainly forgive such a childish indiscretion. 

 

Though whether they will be equally forgiving of Philip's treatment of Rachel - and there is no proof that she was guilty of anything, as Philip finds no concrete evidence to show she had a hand in the death of Ambrose, or that she was slowly poisoning him - is debatable ... [h]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the post dated 20 March 2019: click here.

 

[b] The act of 1751 also stipulated that under no circumstances should the body of a murderer be afforded a decent burial. The act was formally repealed in 1834, by which date the use of gibbeting was very much out of favour with both the public and the authorities; the last two men to be gibbeted in England had been executed two years prior. The socio-cultural reason for this move away from such violent and spectacular forms of punishment in favour of more subtle - more humanitarian - techniques is famously examined by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1975).

 

[c] I'm referring to a scene in Casino Royale (dir. Martin Campbell, 2006), starring Daniel Craig in his debut as James Bond. The joke, of course, is that usually Bond is very particular about how he likes his martini served (shaken, not stirred).  

 

[d] Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel (Virago Press, 2017), p. 1. Future page references to this edition will be given directly in the post.

      Interestingly, with adult hindsight, Philip has decided that Ambrose must have taken him to witness this horrific scene as a test of his character; "to see if I would  run away, or laugh, or cry" (p. 1). 

 

[e] It's arguable that the sprig of holly was not placed in mockery by some passing joker, but, rather, in a spirit of Christian charity and forgiveness; for holly is a sign of the eternal life that is promised to those who repent their sins and accept the love of Christ. 

 

[f] As a matter of fact, although lobsters are scavengers that feed on dead animals, live fish, small molluscs and other marine invertebrates, they are not known for eating human flesh.  

 

[g] Du Maurier doesn't reveal the year in which her novel unfolds, but if, as Philip informs us, the gibbet has long since gone and those accused of murder are now given a fair trial and, if subsequently convicted and sentenced to death, a decent burial, then it would certainly be set after 1834 (see note b above). 

      Roger Michell, the director and screenwriter of the 2017 cinematic adaptation of My Cousin Rachel starring Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin, situates his film "somewhere in the 1840s (between Austen and Dickens: between canals and railways)", as he writes in an introduction to the 2017 Virago edition of du Maurier's book (p. vii).  

[h] Du Maurier is a mistress of ambiguity who loves supplying her books with narrators whose defining characteristic is their unreliability. And so we can never know for certain who's guilty of what and who's the real victim. At one time, I would've found that irritating: Not any more, though.  

Are We Really Returning to the 1970s? (I Wish ...)

Front page of The Sun (20 June 2022)

 

 

I. 

 

Some commentators seem to imagine that Britain is returning to the 1970s, pointing to rising inflation, higher taxes, strikes, shortages, and even the threat of power cuts, as if these things alone defined the decade, when, actually, I think it might just as legitimately be argued that it was predominantly characterised by a greater level of joie de vivre: everything was so much more fun in the 1970s - the fashion, the football, the music ... etc. 

 

It was certainly a fun time to be a child growing up; the 70s was a golden age of sweets, comics, conkers and playing outside all day, whatever the weather, with friends, but without parental supervision, electronic surveillance, or any concern for health and safety. You might come home muddy or with a grazed knee, but you always came home happy. 

But even adults seemed to laugh more and enjoy all kinds of manual labour; including hard, tiring, often dirty jobs. People sweated more - and smoked more - in the 1970s, but they also whistled more than they do now. My father used to return exhausted some days from work, but I never remember him complain about being tired. Similarly, I never heard my mother say she was stressed.  

 

In a sense, the 1970s marked the end of the post-War world as we had known it; a time when the British still had a sense of themselves as a people and were happier and healthier because of it. 

 

 

II.

 

I know, of course, that some readers will say I'm being nostalgic and suffering from the psychology of declinism (i.e., the belief that things only ever get worse over time and that this distorts one's recollection of the past). And I know that they'll be able to point to all kinds of data to show that life is measurably better for most people in the UK now than it was fifty years ago (particularly for ethnic and sexual minorities).

Let me remind these readers, however, that I didn't say things were better in the 70s, only more fun. And whilst people might live longer now and own more expensive houses, drive bigger cars, and have all kinds of technology at their disposal, are they really any happier? 

 

I doubt it. 

 

In fact, British people seem so angry and resentful these days: Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody is civil anymore, or smiles at a passing baby. I think if we were truly able to go back to the 1970s we might learn something important; something which we've forgotten.    

 

 

Note: Whereas I remember the 1970s mostly for fun and games, Polly Toynbee writing in The Guardian remembers the decade as one of feminist and working class solidarity. To read her take on things, click here.   

Hanging on the Telephone

Mr Watson - come here - I want to see you ...

These days, when everyone and their dog has a smartphone, the idea that an old-fashioned landline might once have seemed a real novelty and something of a luxury item, seems ludicrous. But, as this Polaroid of my father taken in the early 1970s shows, that's how it was; the installation of a home phone was a big deal; an event, indeed, worth getting dressed up for.

Not that my father cared about new technology or status symbols: we were one of the last households on Harold Hill to get a colour TV or a telephone line and, much to my mother's chagrin, we never did own a car (my father couldn't drive and had no interest in learning).

I'm convinced, therefore, that the posing of this picture was my mother's idea. I very much doubt there was anyone on the other end and struggle to recall an occasion on which my father ever picked up the handset again. And, always worried about the expense, of course my mother didn't allow me or my sister to use it either. The phone was strictly for show and emergencies.   

Perhaps this explains my own reluctance to make or take calls. I wouldn't go so far as to describe my aversion as a phobia, nor do I consider it a form of social anxiety. But, nevertheless, I've always hated conducting a conversation with a distant, disembodied, and virtual voice. Not only do I find it boring, but have what might be termed philosophical issues ... 

Thus, I'm far happier texting or emailing than speaking on the blower - much to the irritation of certain friends (sorry Zed). Indeed, if truth be told, I still very much miss the writing and receiving of letters. The sound of something coming through the letter box is infinitely preferable to the persistent (and intrusive) ringing of a telephone.

(It's worth noting that even Alexander Graham Bell refused to have a dog at home, considering it an unwelcome and unnecessary distraction.)

The History of a Phone Box

When I was little, one of the things I loved to do was walk with my big sister to the phone box on Straight Road, where she went to call her boyfriend, Barry.

The box was one of those iconic dome-topped designs by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott; iron-cast, bright red in colour and emblazoned with a crown, and which, even until relatively recently, remained a familiar and reassuring sight on British streets. I'm not sure, but I think people with an interest in telephone kiosks refer to it as a K2 - but possibly it was the smaller, cheaper 1935 model, known as the K6.

In fact, it probably was the latter. But, either way, I thought it was a magical object (and space) as a six-year-old and enjoyed every aspect of helping my sister make a call; lifting the handset from its cradle, dialing, putting the pennies in the slot, hearing the pips go, etc. I even liked the fact that sometimes there would be someone waiting impatiently outside in the cold (less so if that someone was me).           

Sadly, post-privatisation in the 1980s, the traditional red phone box was gradually replaced by a ghastly-looking glass booth: the KX100. Nick Kane, Director of Marketing for BT Local Communications Services, announced that the old boxes had to go as they no longer met the needs of customers. Even more outrageously, he claimed the old boxes were not only expensive and difficult to clean and maintain, but unpopular with the public - something I refuse to believe.        

Today, of course, in this age of the mobile, even phone booths in the KX series have mostly vanished from our streets and those that remain are unloved relics in a state of disrepair or ruin, not even fit to piss in. This includes the one pictured above, standing where a handsome-looking red box once stood and made a young child happy.

Despite how it may appear, I'm not overly nostalgic for the past. But it has to be said that there's something brutal and charmless about life in Britain today, shaped by men like Nick Kane and company, who, as Lord Darlington would say, know the price of everything and the value of nothing.          

Say Hello Then!

Portrait of the Artist Aged 3

(pris juste après une coupe de cheveux)

When I was very young, one of my favourite things to do was stand on the wall at the front of my house and say hello to adult passers-by, be they next-door-neighbours or complete strangers.

In those days, very few people had a car and so there was ample opportunity to initiate contact, even if it was just with the postman, milkman, or the rag-and-bone man, who used to come round on a horse and cart, ringing a bell.

(In those days too, of course, there was no pathological fear of paedophiles and no neurotic concern with health and safety and children of all ages - shocking as it now seems - played outside, unsupervised and without protective clothing.)

One might read my attempt to engage with the world as an innocent sign of friendliness; tinged perhaps with a degree of childhood cheekiness.

But, looking back, I think it betrayed a certain provocative aggression; for if the passer-by failed to respond to my initial greeting, I would quickly issue a second demand that they do so: Say hello then!

Ultimately, it was more a challenge than a greeting ... I didn't want to destroy the passer-by - as I did as an anarchic teenage punk - but I did want to put them on the spot, thus causing a degree of discomfort or irritation.

It wasn't so much that I cared about having my presence acknowledged; but I wanted to remind them that they existed in a world with others and had therefore an ethical obligation to be polite and friendly; that no one had the right to pass by in silence on the other side of the road.

Even today, if I'm honest, I find it shockingly rude when someone sits next to me on a plane, for example, and doesn't nod, smile, or say hello. I understand there's an issue of reserve amongst the English, but, sadly, this is often just used as an excuse to cover up bad manners and social ineptitude.

One of the things I really miss about living in Spain is the fact that everyone says hola!


Afterthought

It might be argued, I suppose, that Torpedo the Ark is just another platform from which to address strangers and that I'm still essentially playing the same childhood game of ethical provocation. And I have to confess that I quite like this idea of continuity with - and loyalty to - my very young self. 

Notes on A Glam-Punk Childhood

20th century boy (c. 1973)

I. 

1977 - the year of punk - may have been of crucial importance in shaping my tastes, attitudes, and ideas, but it certainly wasn't the beginning of my long love affair with pop culture. 

Thus, whilst the first album I ever bought may have been Never Mind the Bollocks, I'd been buying singles since 1971, when Benny Hill released Ernie (the Fastest Milkman in the West), an innuendo-laden comedy song that was the Christmas number one that year and which has remained a much-loved favourite with many of those who remember it, including former prime minister David Cameron.  

The second single I remember spending my pocket money on was Crazy Horses, by the Osmonds, which reached number two in the UK charts in the autumn of 1972 and proved that even clean-living Mormons can rock out. Looking back, it's clear that the song was ahead of its time with its concerns to do with the environment and fume-spewing motor vehicles smoking up the sky. But even back then, I hated cars and knew that - like my father - I never wanted to drive.

It was the following year however - the year of glam - that I really started buying singles on a regular basis; by Slade, by Sweet, and - of course - by Gary Glitter, whom I adored and had a large poster of on my bedroom wall. I spent many, many happy hours stomping around in my older sister's platform boots and singing along to the smash hits released by the above in that golden year of 1973, including: Cum on Feel the Noize, Blockbuster, Ballroom Blitz, Do You Wanna Touch Me, Hello Hello I'm Back Again, I'm the Leader of the Gang (I Am), and I Love You Love Me Love.           

What was it about these artists and their songs that appealed so powerfully to the ten year old child (and, if I'm honest, still appeal even now) ...?


II.

Obviously, the outrageous clothes, make-up and hairstyles caught my eye and I was seduced also by the camp nature of their performance - even if I had no idea then what campness was. But, mostly, it was the music: loud, fast, tribal and ridiculously catchy - making you want to pogo up and down years before Sid Vicious was credited with inventing the dance.

There was also something distinctly British and working class about glam. Perhaps it was the fact that it didn't take itself too seriously; that, like punk, it seemed to be more in the theatrical tradition of music hall and even pantomime, rather than serious rock with its roots in rhythm and blues. It was about dressing up and messing up and having a laugh - not perfecting one's skills as a musician or soulful songwriter.

As "Whispering" Bob Harris sneered after a performance of Jet Boy by the New York Dolls on the Old Grey Whistle Test in November 1973, it was mock rock - sexy, stylish, superficial, and shiny - not something that real music lovers and old hippies such as himself needed to take seriously (the Dolls, of course, formed the bridge between glam and punk - as the fact that they were briefly managed by Malcolm McLaren in 1975, prior to his involvement with the Sex Pistols, perfectly illustrates).


III.

Those cunts who now sneer with politico-moral correctness and a sense of their own cultural superiority at the music, the fashions, the TV, and pretty much every other aspect of life in the 1970s need to be told (or in some cases reminded) that it was more than alright - it was better. 

Or, at any rate, despite all the boredom, blackouts and bullshit of the time, people were happier and I'm pleased to have been born (and to have remained at heart) a 20th century boy.    

Reflections on the Death of a Jewel-Encrusted Tortoise

The decadent aristocrat Des Esseintes, whose retreat into an increasingly perverse and artificial inner life is depicted with such brilliance by J-K Huysmans in the 1884 novel À rebours (a title usually translated into English as either Against the Grain or Against Nature), is - as Patrick McGuinness points out - a fictional character, but he is not pure invention:

"Among the specific models for Des Esseintes was the eccentric King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who designed an artificial forest with mechanical animals, but there were also Baudelaire himself, Edmond de Goncourt and a variety of fictional characters [...] The most obvious model, however, was Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, an aesthete and eccentric who provided the model for Proust's Baron Charlus in A la recherche du temps perdu ..."

Not only were many of the decorative elements of Des Esseintes's home based on details of Montesquiou's own, but the implausible figure of a jewel-encrusted tortoise creeping about Huysmans's novel was, outrageously, based on fact: "Montesquiou had the poor creature customized to his tastes, and when it died wrote a poem in its memory ..."

This certainly makes one read chapter four of Against Nature with a renewed fascination - and a greater sympathy - for the slow-moving beast:

"The tortoise was the result of a fancy which had occurred to him shortly before leaving Paris. Looking one day at an Oriental carpet aglow with iridescent colours [...] he had thought what a good idea it would be to place on this carpet something that would move about and be dark enough to set off these gleaming tints."  

Unfortunately, having purchased the tortoise and had it delivered to his home - and once it had been deposited on the carpet - it soon became apparent that "the negro-brown tint, the raw Sienna hue of the shell, dimmed the sheen of the carpet instead of bringing out its colours; the predominating gleams of silver had now lost nearly all their sparkle and matched the cold tones [...] along the edges of this hard, lustreless carapace".

Des Esseintes decides the only thing to do is to jazz the tortoise up a bit; to make it into a brilliant object (and artwork) in its own right; glazed in gold and encrusted with precious stones. But not just the familiar stones that vulgar people wear on their fingers; he wanted "startling and unusual gems " - both real and artificial - that, in combination, would "result in a fascinating and disconcerting harmony".

Job done - the tortoise suitably bejewelled - Des Esseintes felt perfectly happy and sat gazing at the splendid reptile as it lay "huddled in a corner of the dining room, glittering brightly in the half-light". Alas, his happiness doesn't last long as the tortoise dies: "Accustomed no doubt to a sedentary life, a modest existence spent in the shelter of its humble carapace, it had not been able to bear the dazzling luxury imposed upon it ..."

And people complain about the crushing effects of poverty!

Interestingly, there are faint echoes of this scene in Brideshead Revisited (1945), when Rex Mottram presents his fiancée Julia Flyte with a small tortoise that has her initials set in diamonds in the living shell. Unlike Des Esseintes, however, the narrator of Waugh's novel (Charles Ryder) can see that the bejewelled tortoise is slightly obscene and in poor taste.

In even poorer taste, however, is what children of my generation used to paint on the backs of pet tortoises; believing their shells to resemble the steel helmets of German soldiers, we would cheerfully decorate them with Iron Crosses and swastikas. And if there's anything more depressing than a dandified, decadent tortoise, it's a Nazified tortoise ...       

Notes

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature, trans. Robert Baldick, (Penguin Books, 2003). Lines quoted are from Chapter 4, pp. 40-49. 

Patrick McGuinness, 'Introduction' to Against Nature, ibid., pp. xxvii-xxviii.  

Eveleyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, (Penguin Books, 2000). The tortoise scene is in Chapter 6. 

For a related post to this one written in memory of J-K Huysmans (and his jewel-encrusted tortoise), click here. 

In Praise of The Persuaders!

Tony Curtis and Roger Moore 

as Danny Wilde and Brett Sinclair: a fine bromance

I'm very grateful to True Entertainment for currently re-running all 24 episodes of The Persuaders! that were originally broadcast on ITV between September 1971 and February '72.

For in so doing, they afford viewers such as myself the opportunity not only to enjoy once more the unique acting abilities of Mssrs. Curtis and Moore and the fascinating on-screen chemistry between them, but also to relish the fabulous fashions of the period, the sensational theme tune by John Barry, and take nostalgic delight in memories of childhood and this golden age of British television, which is tarnished only by the politically correct retro-analysis of critics keen to suck the fun out of everything and denigrate the past (such as those insufferable bores on Channel 4's It Was Alright in the 70s).       

Played mostly for laughs, The Persuaders! is an action-adventure series starring a post-Boston Strangler Tony Curtis and a post-Saint but pre-Bond Roger Moore, as two rich, good-looking, but ever-so-slightly over the hill playboys - Danny Wilde and Brett Sinclair - who have a taste for danger and a talent for solving crime, as well as a penchant for living the high life in the company of a succession of beautiful women.  

The series, devised and produced by Robert S. Baker, was filmed on the Continent, as well as in the UK, at a time when Europe was still regarded as a sophisticated, glamorous, rather exotic location and not as - well, how do we see Europe today in the age of Easy Jet, the migrant crisis, and Brexit ...?

Perhaps because of its French and Italian locations and Ferrero Rocher aspects, the show was extremely popular in these countries, as well as in Germany, Spain, and Sweden. Indeed, The Persuaders! persists to this day in the cultural imagination of film-makers and audiences across Europe. Only the Americans seemed unimpressed, even though it was made with the profitable US market in mind. ABC, who aired the show on Saturday nights against Mission: Impossible over on CBS, were so disappointed with its ratings that they pulled the series before it completed its 24 episode run. 

The relationship between the two characters is meant to be in the odd-couple vein; Wilde is the brash New Yorker who escaped the violence and deprivation of his upbringing to become a self-made millionaire; Sinclair the polished Englishman, well-educated and from a privileged background. This is made clear in the opening title sequence, which consists of a visual biography using a clever split-screen technique that was designed so that neither actor would appear to have top billing; something that both men stipulated when they agreed to co-star.

Despite instantly disliking one another when they first meet, Danny and Brett soon develop an affectionate - if highly competitive - relationship that borders on being what we today like to term a bromance. Thus, although red-blooded heterosexuals, they seem only to have eyes for one another (unless there's a mirror around) and are often in close and playful physical contact.

Sadly, according to Lew Grade and other insiders on the show, Curtis and Moore didn't get along so gaily as their characters, either on or off set - although it should be noted that both actors denied there was any animosity between them and each maintained that, whilst very different people, they had an amicable working relationship.     

Thankfully, a big-screen remake announced in 2007, starring George Clooney and Hugh Grant in the roles of Wilde and Sinclair, seems to have come to nothing.   


Click here to enjoy the opening credits and theme to The Persuaders!

Nice to See You, to See You - Dead!

Bruce Forsyth Death Mask  

Treating life as a good game, good game and always putting his best chin forward (a gesture some found comic, but which struck me as an act of narcissistic self-assertion), enabled Bruce Forsyth to have a career of great longevity in a business which, purportedly, is unlike any other. 

For over seventy years he was on our TV screens - longer than any other male entertainer - proving that, if nothing else, the Mighty Atom was a monster of stamina, popular with producers and the public alike. 

However, I have to confess to a wicked feeling of glee when I heard the news that he had died. Because Brucie belonged to that golf club of performers whom my parents loved when I was growing up, but I despised. As a child, the words light entertainment, royal variety, and London Palladium were anathema and he was associated with all these things.            

But now he's dead. Gone to that great green room in the sky, where angels and demons bid for his eternal soul and the right to decide wherein it shall reside: Higher, higher! Lower, lower!    

It seems that one of the few genuine pleasures of getting older is that one starts to outlive those who blighted the airwaves during one's childhood; the sinful pleasure of morose delectation and spitting on graves ...  

In Happy Memory of Coal

One of the things that I most looked forward to as a young child was the arrival of a man at the door: the milkman, the postman, the bin man, the gas man, the electric man and - my favourite man of all - the coal man, carrying his great, heavy black sacks of fuel.

My mother - who I don't think ever quite trusted any of these men - always gave me the job of supervising the delivery. I would count in every bag as it was emptied with a lovely crashing noise around the back of the house, piling up into a magical mountain of fossilized carbon that sparkled with all the dark glamour of the underworld and provided a wonderful play area to climb upon.  

It was a sad day when, finally, my parents succumbed to the lure of modern convenience and decided they'd had enough of going out into the cold and shoveling coal into a scuttle and raking over the ashes each morning, installing an ugly new gas fire which warmed the house, but not the heart.

I say my parents, but I really just mean my mother, for I believe my father loved (and subsequently missed) the open fireplace as much as I did. Certainly he loved to stand before it, warming his legs, as he would say, and loved also to poke at the red hot coals, as if attempting to divine the elemental mystery of fire.    

In Memory of James Garner

James Garner (1928 - 2014) 

as Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files

The Rockford Files is one of those '70s American TV shows that everyone who remembers it, remembers it fondly. Just as I'm sure the lead actor, James Garner, who, sadly, died yesterday, will also be remembered fondly by family, friends, and fans alike. 

The thing with Garner was that he was both very good-looking and a very good actor, capable of playing both comedic roles and more serious parts with the same grace and charm, whether on the small screen or the silver screen (he was one of the first Hollywood stars to move between the two). 

Among his many movie roles, that of Flt. Lt. Robert Hendley, known as the Scrounger, in The Great Escape (1963), is a personal favourite. But, it's primarily as the LA-based private investigator Jim Rockford that Garner most impressed himself upon my young imagination: I liked the way he dressed in sports jackets and open-necked shirts; I liked the equally casual manner in which he approached his work and handled the cops; I liked the fact he lived in a trailer on the beach; and I liked his lawyer and on/off girlfriend Beth Davenport (played by Gretchen Corbett).

Thanks to syndication, DVD, and YouTube, it's easy to still enjoy episodes and to delight in the show's fantastic theme tune (composed by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter), as well as Garner's great performance. The man had style - and that's the highest you can say of anyone. 

 

That Queer Riviera Touch

Film poster by renowned Italian artist Arnaldo Putzu (1927 - 2012)

One of the films that made happy as a child was shown yesterday on Film4 - That Riviera Touch (1966), dir. Hugh Stewart, and starring Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise playing versions of themselves.

There is a plot, involving a jewel thief and a large sum of money won at a casino, but it's basically just the two English comics fooling around on the French Riviera and competing to win the affection of the beautiful Claudette, played by Canadian-born actress Suzanne Lloyd.

I have to confess, it didn't quite amuse as much as it did when first watched on TV in the 1970s, but it did still interest - particularly the ending, which is somewhat queer to say the least and openly hints towards the establishment of a ménage-à-trois of some kind. 

In other words, the two inseparable friends each get to get the girl; Claudette happily marries both men, thereby voluntarily committing an act of bigamy. In the final shot, Eric turns to the camera and says with a knowing smile: "We'll cross that hurdle when we get to it", seemingly referring to the question of who will first fuck the bride.

However, one couldn't help suspect - knowing the intimacy of the relationship between Eric and Ern - that they might be inclined not simply to share their new matrimonial duties in a cordial and civilized manner (one taking Mon-Weds, the other Thurs-Sat, leaving Sunday as a day of rest), but agree to pleasure Claudette simultaneously.  

Indeed, it's tempting to imagine that whilst all three are naked in the honeymoon suite, there might even be explicit sexual contact between the boys. This is not to suggest that all men are secretly tempted by the prospect of penetrating one another or aroused by the thought of hairy male legs, but it's amazing how often the presence of a woman - serving as an alibi of sorts - facilitates experimentation of a bi-curious character in such circumstances.       

And why not? For as Eric would say: They can't touch you for it. 

Aurora Contra Airfix

As a child, I was never much interested in building complex models of planes and ships and certainly wouldn't describe myself as belonging to what Geoff Dyer has termed rather nicely the Airfix Generation.

I did, however, love assembling the luminescent body parts of the great movie monsters manufactured by the Aurora Plastics Corporation. 

Founded in New York in 1950 by engineer Joseph E. Giammarino and his business partner - the wonderfully-named Abe Shikes - the company became famous for these terrifying figure kits that delighted children who had a certain gothic disposition and a fascination for the morbid and macabre, rather than military history.

Of the dozen monsters that followed their 1961 Frankenstein kit, I remember having five: the Wolfman, Dracula, the Phantom of the Opera, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and, my personal favourite, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. 

At night, I would lie in bed and shine a torch upon them to boost their glow-in-the-dark power when the lights went out, deliberately attempting to induce nightmares - although, in truth, they weren't particularly scary; perhaps not even as scary as those hairy gaping vaginas that featured in 70s porno mags conveniently stashed in the woods by persons (or perverts) unknown which also captured my youthful imagination and taste for the monstrous.