Destroy Success

Based on an original design by Jamie Reid (1979) [1] 

 

I. 

 

It's hard to believe that November next year is the 50th anniversary of the release of 'Anarchy in the U.K.' 

 

But there you go - time flies and soon, just like Malcolm, Vivienne, Jamie, Jordan, and poor old Sid pictured above, we'll all be brown bread. 

 

The funny thing about the Sex Pistols' debut single is that it ends with the instruction to get pissed, destroy, but it's never made quite clear who or what is to be destroyed other than the passer by [2] and, as a matter of fact, one has to wait until The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle to discover that success is the main target marked for destruction. 

 

This is anticipated in the magnificent statement released by McLaren on behalf of Glitterbest after the band fell apart at the end of their US tour:  

 

"The management is bored with managing a successful rock 'n' roll band. The group is bored with being a successful rock 'n' roll band. Burning venues and destroying record companies is more creative than making it." [3]  

 

A statement which caused much embarassment for the Virgin press officer asked to explain whether it was meant to be taken seriously.  

 

One recalls also McLaren's equally well-known line, often repeated in interviews, that it is "better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success" [4]. 

 

For Malcolm, these words essentially define punk rock and daring to fail was not just romantic and heroic, but the only way to create great art [5]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, McLaren wasn't the only one to despise the notion of success; the early 20th century English novelist D. H. Lawrence - whom I would characterise as the first Sex Pistol (seen as a provocative and amusing analogy by some, but I'm being perfectly serious) - also hated success ...   

 

In his final (and most controversial) novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), for example, the Lawrentian narrator sneers at the figure of the young Irish playwright Michaelis, who had a Mayfair apartment and "walked down Bond Street the image of a gentleman" [6]. 

  

Sir Clifford may admire and envy his success - "for he wanted to prostitute himself to the bitch-goddess Success also" [7] - and even Connie may sleep with him, but we, as readers, are encouraged to find Mick contemptible (a bit doggy).    

 

Elsewhere, in his essays, Lawrence also makes clear his dislike for those who chase success - whether that's in the arts or in industry and the world of business. His mother may look down from heaven and feel chagrined at his lack of real success:

 

"that I don't make more money; that I am not really popular, like Michael Arlen, or really genteel, like Mr Galsworthy; that I have a bad reputation as an improper writer [...] that I don't make any real friends among the upper classes: that I don't really rise in the world, only drift about without any real status." [8] 

 

But Lawrence doesn't care; he has punk indifference to what others think of him - even his dead mother - and doesn't give a shit about getting on and becoming a great success in the eyes of the world. He thinks the bourgeois beastly - "especially the male of the species" [9] - hates the Oxford voice [10], and calls for a revolution "not to get the money / but to lose it all forever" [11]. 

 

And that's why, in part, I regard him as a Sex Pistol ...    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image is based on original artwork by Jamie Reid for a full page ad in the Melody Maker promoting the Sex Pistols single 'Something Else', released from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979). 

      It depicts a cartoon version of Sid Vicious, who provided the vocals for the track and who, unfortunately, had died three weeks prior to the single's release. Although I have removed most of the other text added to the design, I have left the slogan destroy success which McLaren and Reid had adopted as their strategy following the firing of Johnny Rotten. 

      The original image can be found in the V&A Jamie Reid Archive: click here.   

 

[2] See the post titled 'I Wanna Destroy the Passerby (Johnny Rotten as Good Samaritan)' dated 28 May, 2020: click here.  

 

[3] This statement, dated 20 January, 1978, is quoted from The Guardian archive: click here. 

 

[4] McLaren repeats this phrase in an interview with Amy Fleming published in The Guardian (10 August, 2009): click here.  

      See the post titled 'Better a Spectacular Failure ...' dated 5 June, 2013: click here. Note how McLaren's son Joe misremembers the line spoken by his father; replacing the word flamboyant with spectacular. 

[5] McLaren took to heart the words of one of his early lecturers at art school who told him that it was only by learning how to repeatedly fail that one would ever become an artist of any note: 'Don't think success will make you better artists.' 

      As McLaren's biographer notes: "The impact of this statement on McLaren was immediate and profound." And he quotes the latter saying: "'I realised that by understanding failure you were going to be able to improve your condition as an artist. Because you were not going to fear failure you were going to embrace it and, in so doing, maybe break the rules and by doing that, change the culture and, possibly by doing that, change life itself.'"  

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 48-49.  

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 21.

 

[7] Ibid.

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'Getting On', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 32.   

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, 'How beastly the bourgeois is', in The Poems Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 373. 

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Oxford voice', The Poems Vol. I., p. 376.

 

[11] D. H. Lawrence, 'O start a revolution', The Poems, Vol. I., p. 392. 

 

 

Straight Outta Kathmandu (Notes on Hip-Hop in Nepal)

Uniq Poet and Bluesss: Straight Outta Kathmandu (2019)

They 'hip to the hop like a black man do ...'

 

 

I. 

 

In one of D. H. Lawrence's most amusing and, in my view, most important articles, he complains about the way in which "two little white-haired English ladies" [1] staying in the room next to his at a hotel in Geneva, continually interrupt his contemplation of the world by transporting him off his balcony; "away from the glassy lake, the veiled mountains, the two men mowing, and the cherry-trees, away into the troubled ether of international politics" [2].   

 

His point being that he is "not allowed to sit like a dandelion on his own stem" [3] and muse over the things that directly concern him, or that are actually present. Why, he wonders, do so many modern people insist on talking about abstract ideas and caring about people they've never met and places they'll never visit, rather than live on the spot where they are ...? 

 

 

II.  

 

I was reminded of this at a recent SIG meeting [4] where the topic for discussion was hip-hop and youth culture in post-war Nepal ... 

 

Obviously, no one present had any direct experience or knowledge of the topic, but most had done the required reading beforehand [5] so conversation (of sorts) became possible and, despite what Lawrence says above, I found it quite interesting and took away four main points from the essay by Kritika Chettri:

 

(i) Globalisation needn't simply be read as a euphemism for Western imperialism; it is not just an attempt to impose cultural homogeneity, but can provide agency to local actors by exposing them to alien ideas, such as hip-hop, and new technologies. 

      

(ii) In Nepal, these local actors were at first the privileged urban youth based in Kathmandu who had the resources and opportunities to access the culture of hip-hop (its music and fashions). However, hip-hop soon spread like Maoist wildfire amongst the rural youth as well and took on a different character; one related to the folk culture and oral traditions of Nepal, but now in relation to global modernity. 

 

(iii) Hip-hop in Nepal allows for a reinterpretation of national political discourse, but from a different cultural perspective; it is, as Chettri writes, 'a ready vehicle for voicing youth concerns'. Nevertheless, the same old issues to do with class, caste, ethnicity, gender, etc., soon arise. 

 

(iv) Unfortunately, in Nepal as elsewhere, hip-hop remains a scene dominated by a lot of angry (and often misogynistic) young men and some of the language - not so much of delinquency, but of militant asceticism - is profoundly depressing. The author ponders (somewhat wistfully) at the end of her essay whether the introduction of more female rappers will bring about change and make Nepalese hip-hop a bit more progressive. 

      Personally, I doubt it; this is a country where, for example, arranged marriage (often with child brides) is still the norm and where there are still witch hunts in which elderly, usually lower caste women are beaten, tortured, force fed excrement, and sometimes burnt alive. I suspect it's therefore going to take more than spitting a few bars or busting some rhymes to change things anytime soon.              

 

  

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Insouciance', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 95.

 

[2] Ibid. 

 

[3] Ibid., p. 96. 

 

[4] The Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) is an informal collective operating out of the University of the Arts London (UAL), concerned with what we might briefly describe as the politics of style and offering resistance to temporal colonisation; i.e., the imposition of a perpetual present in which it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a future (or remember a past) that is radically different. I have published several SIG-themed posts here on Torpedo the Ark, which can be read by clicking here.

 

[5] Kritika Chettri, 'Straight Outta Kathmandu: Hip-hop and Youth Culture in Post-war Nepal', in Music, Subcultures and Migration, ed. Elke Weesjes and Matthew Worley (Routledge, 2024), pp. 203-216.  

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Straight Outta Kathmandu', by Uniq Poet and Bluesss (ft. MC Dave), taken from the album Blue Up High (2019): click here to play on YouTube.      

 

  

Kings Cross: Dense with Angels and Histories

 

Kings Cross, dense with angels and histories, 

there are cities beneath your pavements, cities behind your skies. 

Let me see! [1] 

 

I. 

 

King's Cross is a district straddling the London Boroughs of Camden and Islington, on either side of the Euston Road (a thoroughfare built in 1756, but originally called, rather unimaginatively, the New Road). 

 

The district was named after a large but ugly monument to George IV which stood from 1830 to 1845 where New Road, Gray's Inn Road, and Pentonville Road intersected - thus King's Cross - geddit?   

 

It's not an area I know well or feel at home in, but it does have a fascinating history as both a red light district and gateway to the North (and Hogwarts), home as it is to King's Cross station, beneath which lies the body of the Celtic warrior queen Boadicea [2].

 

 

II. 

 

Following an extensive programme of regeneration, King's Cross is today all hip and happening and popular with the usual suspects as well as the large student body based at Central St Martins college of art, in Granary Square; a public space which prides itself on being the canalside heart of King's Cross and boasts lots of bars, cafés, and restaurants, as well as a thousand choreographed fountains to delight those who like that sort of thing (often the same kind of people who like laser shows and fireworks).   

 

I don't know what the Romans who settled the area would have made of it all, but, since they invented the idea of panem et circenses to distract and amuse the masses, they may well have approved [3].     

 

This programme of urban renewal (and gentrification) followed many years of post-War (and post-industrial) decline. It was always a poor area, but had been a busy commercial district. By the 1980s, however, it was notorious for drug dealing and prostitution - although low rents and plenty of vacant buildings to squat also made it popular with artists and musicians; think Anthony Gormley and the Mutoid Waste Company [4] .   

 

Now, it's home to the Google UK headquarters [5]. And the British Library, who relocated next to St. Pancras station in 1997. Oh, and The Guardian. 

 

As for the old Gasworks, well, that's been demolished; although you can still view the iron skeleton of Gasholder 8, which has been transformed into an object of architectural and historic interest [6] - i.e., disempowered and robbed of its Victorian grandeur. 

 

Notes 

 

[1] In 2012, these lines from an unpublished long poem titled 'The Brill' written by Aiden Andrew Dun, were inscribed along one side of Granary Square, having originally been spray-painted on the walls of Battle Bridge just before it was demolished. Readers interested in knowing more can visit Dun's website by clicking here. 

 

[2] The claim that queen Boadicea - or Boudica, as people now like to say - is buried under Platform 9 at King's Cross station is, alas, one with no evidence to support it. The legend originated because the area is believed by some to have been the site of her final battle against the Romans in 61 AD.

      As for the station itself, I used to go there fairly often in the early-mid 1980s, travelling by train to Leeds. But I can't say I was particularly impressed; like Margaret Schlegel, the station with its great arches "shouldering between them an unlovely clock", had always suggested infinity and I'm something of an apeirophobe. I'm quoting, of course, from E. M. Forster's novel Howards End (1910), chapter 2.

 

[3] The phrase 'bread and circuses' originates from the writings of the Roman satirical poet Juvenal; see Satire X in Book IV of the Satires, lines 77-81. To read a translation by A. S. Kline (2001) published on poetryintranslation.com, click here.  

 

[4] Anthony Gormley - now Sir Anthony Gormley - is a British sculptor who, I believe, still has a large, light-filled studio in the King's Cross area (designed in collaboration with the architect David Chipperfield in 2001-03). 

      In the late 1980s, the Mutoid Waste Company - an art collective founded by Joe Rush and Robin Cooke in collaboration with Alan P. Scott and Joshua Bowler - moved into Battlebridge Road warehouse, where they built huge industrial sculptures out of scrap metal and held raves; they were evicted by police in 1989. 

 

[5] Or it soon will be at any rate: Google King's Cross is nearing completion and will form part of the so-called Knowledge Quarter in King's Cross Central. Providing over 861,000 square feet of office space for around 7,000 employees, it is the first building owned and designed by Google outside the US.  

 

[6] Stroll along the canal towpath from Granary Square and you'll come to Gasholder Park, featuring the wrought-iron frame of Gasholder 8; fully restored and relocated from the opposite bank of the canal. 

      A Grade II listed structure, Gasholder 8 was originally built in the 1850s and held over a million cubic feet of gas. It was the largest and proudest of nine such giants that once dominated the skyline of King's Cross. Now, it encases 'a sculpted canopy and lush circular lawn' and makes one feel a little forlorn.    

 

 

Musical bonus: 'King's Cross', by the Pet Shop Boys, from the album Actually (Parlophone Records, 1987), written by Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant. Click here to play on YouTube. 

 

    

This post is for Nina O’Reilly, a PhD researcher at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Her research "explores the changing fortunes of youth/sub/club/queer cultures in the King's Cross area" and opens up a wider conversation "about creative agency and access to the city", as well as the role of young people "as active producers of space, particularly in central London". 

      In addition, her work examines how heritage is shaped in cities, and the forms of destruction that are often unleashed in the name of regeneration whilst serving the interests of capital and real estate. 

      Her University of the Arts London profile page - from where I'm quoting - can be accessed by clicking here.     

I Have Seen the Dark Universe Yawning

It is better to laugh at man from inside the Void, 

than to weep for him without ...

 

 

I. 

 

Regular readers will know that I've recently been thinking about the philosophy of absence - click here - and the call of the void: click here.     

 

But the Great Nothing that has really captured my interest of late has nothing to do with subjective experience, but is, rather, a spherical region of space in the vicinity of the Boötes constellation, about 700 million light years from Earth, known as the Boötes Void ... 

 

 

II. 

 

To be fair, it's not quite a void, as it actually contains a number of galaxies. 

 

However, this number is small; just a few dozen and thus significantly fewer than the approximately 2,000 galaxies that one might expect to find in an area of space of comparable size.

 

And let's be clear, here: the Boötes Void, discovered in 1981 by Robert Kirshner [1], is an unimaginably large area of space, with a radius just shy of 330 million light years, or 62 megaparsecs as our astronomer friends would say [2]. 

 

That makes it one of the largest known voids in the visible universe [3] and some even like to think of it as a supervoid.  

 

 

III. 

 

Of course, size isn't everything and there are plenty of smaller voids to contend with and marvel at. In fact, voids constitute around 80% of the observable universe - and don't even mention black holes [4]. 

 

Scientists hope that by studying the Boötes Void they will be able to learn more about the dark energy that drove their formation as the universe expanded. Cosmic voids also conveniently allow for the study of elementary particles known as neutrinos that freely stream across them on a massive scale. 

 

For me, however, as a philosopher rather than an astrophysicist, why the Boötes Void and other such structures excite is because they reaffirm the inhuman scale and nature of the universe. 

 

D. H. Lawrence hated that modern science books made him "dizzy with the sense of illimitable space" [5]. It is, he says, "the disembodied mind alone" which thrills to the thought of the "hollow void of space, where lonely stars hang in isolation" [6]. 

 

But, for me, what this dizzying and profoundly pessimistic thought does is remind one that "Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity" [7]; i.e., a chance to think alien thoughts and to experience monstrous new feelings, that may or may not coincide with human interests. 

 

When one stares at the night sky and contemplates the fact that there exists a mind-independent reality which, "despite the presumptions of human narcissism, is indifferent to our existence and oblivious to the 'values' and 'meanings' which we would drape over it in order to make it more hospitable" [8], one simply can't help smiling. 

 

Lawrence says it's astrology rather than astronomy that gives a marvellous sense of freedom and release [9], but I simply don't agree with that. 

 

For astrology, with its central teaching of as above, so below is an all too human practice that projects man on a cosmic scale. It is astronomy - and the speculatively material way of thinking that comes out of it - that truly provides "entry into another world, another kind of world, measured by another dimension" [10] and which reminds us that the universe "is not our or anyone's 'home', nor a particularly beneficent progenitor" [11].        

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Whilst the American astronomer Robert Kirshner and his team at the University of Michigan were surveying galactic redshifts in order to create a 3D map of the universe, they discovered a huge and largely empty region of space, which was originally called the Great Nothing, but which is now known as the Boötes Void. Due to its size and the fact that it does contain some galaxies, they knew it wasn't a black hole and comparisons with the molecular cloud Barnard 68 soon made clear it couldn't be a dark nebula either.

 

[2] A megaparsec (Mpc) is a unit of astronomical distance equal to one million parsecs, or roughly 3.26 million light-years. It is commonly used to measure the vast distances between galaxies and galaxy clusters, helping astronomers map the large-scale structure of the universe.

      To give some idea of how big a distance 62 Mpcs is, keep in mind that the nearest galaxy to our own - the Andromeda Galaxy - is less than 1 megaparsec away or about 2.5 million light years (i.e., 15 trillion miles). Or, if you want to think of it another way, we could fit billions of galaxies the size of the Milky Way into the Boötes Void. 

      Of course, Lawrentians hate to think this way, sharing (or imitating) their master's horror of large numbers (meganumerophobia): 

      "All this modern stuff about astronomy, stars, their distances and speeds and so on, talking of billions and trillions of miles and years and so forth: it is just occult. The mind is revelling in words, the intuition and instincts are just left out, or prostituted into a sort of ecstasy [...] that lies in absurd figures such as 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [...] figures which abound in modern scientific books on astronomy [...] It is all poppy-cock." 

      See D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 208. 

 

[3] It's important to understand that the portion of the universe we can see (even with the aid of technology) is strictly limited and that the total size of the universe is unknown; it's estimated to be at least 250 times larger than the observable universe, but may, in fact, be infinitely bigger. We're basically living in a bubble and have no real idea of what lies outside.   

 

[4] Spatial voids, of course, are fundamentally different from black holes; the lattrer are extremely dense and have powerful gravity, whilst the former are vast regions of space that are largely empty of galaxies and matter. In other words, whereas black holes are the densest objects in the universe, voids are the least dense regions, formed by the expansion of the universe.   

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse by Frederick Carter', in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 46.

 

[6] Ibid.

 

[7] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. xi.    

 

[8] Ibid.

 

[9] I've written about this in more detail in the post entitled 'I Would Like to Know the Stars Again: Reflections on Astronomy and Astrology in the Work of D. H. Lawrence' (28 March 2021): click here. 

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse by Frederick Carter', in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, p. 46. 

 

[11] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound, p. xi. 

 

 

Welcome to Harold Hill ...

Fig. 1 Welcome to Harold Hill ...

where even the local pub is in ruins

Some readers might recall a post from 2016 in which I described the sad (but all too common) fate that has befallen my local boozer [1]. The Pompadours had once been a Harold Hill landmark, but is now just another derelict pub boarded up and still - nine years later - awaiting demolition (see fig. 1 above). 

 

In that period, things have, if anything - and despite Havering Council's promises of regeneration [2] - gone from bad to worse and my local shopping precinct, Hilldene, is fast becoming an area where even the ghosts are scared to venture after dark [3]. 

 

The air smells of car fumes, cooking oil, and cannabis and even Bargain Town - a large discount store mostly selling things priced at just £1 - has gone out of business; as has the pet shop and F. Cooke's, one of London's oldest established pie & mash shops. 

 

Natwest shut their Harold Hill branch two years ago; Lloyds and the Halifax having previously abandoned the area. The local estate agency has also relocated and even one of the (multiple) charity shops has closed.  

 

Thank goodness the local flower shop and hairdressers remain, as well as small-scale versions of Sainsbury's, the Co-Op, and Iceland. Other than that - and a couple of newsagents - it's basically betting shops, dodgy-looking fast food outlets, and a games arcade (though even Funland may have just pulled its shutters down for good).

 

And over all this, English flags and Union Jacks still pathetically fly (see fig. 2 below) ... 

Fig. 2 Welcome to Harold Hill ... 

where even Bargain Town went out of business

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post 'Ghost Town' (7 November 2016): click here.

 

[2] According to Havering Council's website - click here - consultations with residents have been ongoing since 2016 to try and decide the future of Harold Hill and, in particular, the Farnham and Hilldene shopping area. 

      In 2021, the Council committed to significant investment to ensure that the latter 'continues to be a beacon for the neighbourhood and the whole community to enjoy' and residents should rest assured a single masterplan vision is being put into place.

 

[3] Evidence of gang activity and associated issues, such as drug dealing and violent crime, in certain areas of Harold Hill, is well-documented. Police and local authorities, whilst aware of the issues, seem powerless to do anything (other than hold community meetings in order to warn people that the streets aren't safe). In the last ten years there has been a 167% increase in incidents of knife crime in Havering and Harold Hill East is recognised as the most deprived area in the borough.   

 

Into the Valley of the Dolls

 

Cover of Glamour UK (2025) 

Photo by Carly Scott [1]

 

 

The so-called trans issue - i.e., the debate surrounding transgender rights and what place trans individuals should occupy in society - is one of those that will not go away: and, of course, nor should it go away for as long as trans people face discrimination and violence.

 

Some people clearly wish it were otherwise: clearly wish that trans people would shut up and go away; including some of those who should know better. 

 

Whether we should put J. K. Rowling in this category is debatable. I don't believe she's transphobic and think her concern is primarily to protect the rights and status of biological women. 

 

However, she's back in the news once more after slamming Glamour magazine's decision to feature nine trans women on the cover of an issue honouring 'Women of the Year' and one can't help wondering if the bee in Rowling's bonnet buzzes with a certain obsessiveness.     

 

Taking to X, she accuses the UK publication of suggesting to its young female readership that men can be better women than they are and that this has a very negative effect on their sense of self-worth. But that's quite an extreme reading. 

 

It could be that Glamour is simply making the point that not all women are born; some are self-made - i.e., that for some, their womanhood is not something determined by genes, but, rather, a set of constructed traits (some resulting from surgical procedures and hormone treatments; others involving the use of clothes, makeup and other forms of artifice). 

 

The fact that the trans women on the cover of Glamour happily accept the designation dolls [2] is a clue to this - and might even be seen as a concession to those who insist that trans women are not real women. 

 

Which, in a sense, they're not. 

 

But then, as friend of mine who takes his agalmatophilia very seriously said when looking at the above photograph: They're not even real dolls!  

  

Notes

 

[1] The nine trans women - or dolls - who appear on this cover (all wearing T-shirts by Conner Ives) work across fashion, music, publishing and activism: Munroe Bergdorf (model and author); Shon Faye (journalist and presenter); Maxine Heron (communications officer at the UK based charity Not a Phase); Mya Mehmi (DJ and musician); Munya (model); Ceval Omar (model); Bel Priestly (actor and TikTok creator); Dani St. James (chief executive at Not a Phase); Taira (model and writer). 

      The article, by Shon Faye, which includes interviews with the above, can be read online by clicking here. 

 

[2] Actually, one of the trans women interviewed by Shon Faye - the Japanese model Taira - does recognise that the term dolls to describe trans women might be problematic; especially as it enters into mainstream culture and is used by (cis) people who do not know its historical context as a term from Black and Latina queer ballroom culture in the 1980s. 

      She says of the slogan Protect the Dolls - first used by the American fashion designer Conner Ives and which has since been adopted by various celebrities as well as members of the LGBTQ community - that whilst it's a powerful line and may help raise positive awareness of the problems facing trans people - particularly feminine-looking trans women - it could also "encourage objectifying trans bodies" and become othering in and of itself. 

      I think Taira has a point: and it's interesting to discover from Faye's article that trans is the fifth most popular porn category searched for in the UK. It's ironic that it's often the same men who desire and sexually objectify trans women who call loudest for their removal from public life and subject them to abuse.  

        

Did You Hear the One About the Philosopher and the Actress?

The Philosopher and the Actress: 

Wittgenstein & Raquel Welch 

  

I. 

 

According to the Google AI assistant, Ludwig Wittgenstein was an austere and reclusive Austro-British philosopher who did not know and never met the Hollywood sex symbol and actress Raquel Welch. 

 

Not only did they move in completely different social and professional circles, but Wittgenstein died in Cambridge, in 1951, aged sixty-two, when Miss Welch would have been an eleven-year-old child living in California with her parents.    

 

But even if they didn't cross paths in what passes for the actual world, perhaps their lives were entangled at some weird quantum level. At any rate, I can think of a parallel incident involving the same tool that allows us to make a connection between these two individuals ...

 

 

II. 

 

Many younger readers, having grown up in a world of central heating, will probably never have warmed themselves before a real fire place; never watched smoke sucked up a chimney, never emptied an ashpan, never filled a coal scuttle, or handled the various other tools that one needs to maintain a good fire, such as a long metal poker, designed to safely adjust and break up the burning logs or red hot lumps of coal so as to improve airflow. 

One person who did know how to handle a poker - though not always in the manner intended - was Herr Wittgenstein and even many non-philosophers will be familiar with the astonishing confrontation with Karl Popper at the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club, in October 1946. 

 

Arguing over whether there existed substantial problems in philosophy, or merely linguistic puzzles, things grew increasingly heated when Wittgenstein began to wave a poker around to make his case, at one point thrusting it in Popper's direction and challenging him to give an example of a moral rule. 

 

According to Popper, he calmly stood his ground and replied: 'One should not threaten visiting lecturers with a poker.' Infuriated by this mocking response, Wittgenstein - and again we rely on Popper's account of the incident - threw down the poker and stormed out of the room [1].     

 

 

III. 

 

Interestingly, Raquel Welch also knew how to handle a poker with violent intent ...

 

According to a recent documentary [2], Welch once threatened her father - an aeronautical engineer from La Paz, Bolivia, of Spanish descent - with said implement during a family argument around the dinner table in which he had thrown a glass of milk in the face of her mother. 

 

She was sixteen at the time and sick of her father's tyrannical behaviour towards her and her mother and this incident - in which he backed down and backed away - changed their relationship forever as well as the dynamic of the household. Thus, it was a defining (and empowering) moment for her [3]. 

 

And whilst Popper may have a point - one should probably not threaten visiting professors with a poker - I feel that the young Miss Welch (or Raquel Tejada, as she was known at this time) was justified in standing up to a bully who had humiliated and sought to intimidate her mother on many occasions over many years.   

 

In brief: violent and abusive husbands and fathers deserve to get their comeuppance.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Whether Popper's account is strictly accurate - or is dramatised for comic effect - is debatable. The most comprehensive account of this confrontation can be found in the best-selling book by David Edmonds and John Eidenow; Wittgenstein's Poker: The story of a ten-minute argument between two great philosophers (Faber & Faber, 2001).  

      Readers might also like to know that an animated short film entitled Wittgenstein's Poker is currently in post-production, directed by Christian De Vita, written by Casey Cohen, David Edmonds and John Eidenow, starring Brian Cox (as Bertie Russell), Richard E. Grant (as Wittgenstein) and Karl Markovics (as Popper): click here for details, or to lend support via Kickstarter, click here. 

 

[2] I Am Raquel Welch (dir. Olivia Cheng, 2025), is a feature documentary (produced by Network Entertainment) which explores her life and legacy. To watch a trailer on mubi.com, click here. 

 

[3] Those wishing to know more should see Welch's 2010 memoir, Beyond the Cleavage (Weinstein Books), in which she provides an account of this incident with her father and a poker that she gripped with both hands. 

 

Enjoy This Post - Such as it Isn't

Polo: the mint with the hole

Photo by Conell on Flickr (9 April 2018)

 

 

I. 

 

As a child and natural born nihilist, absence always excited more than presence (not necessarily making the heart grow fonder, but the head spin faster); holes, slits, and cracks always fascinated more than wholeness and smooth impenetrability. Pulling the plug was always a much greater pleasure than filling the tub with water.   

 

And the philosophy of negativity still appeals to me today; I spend an inordinate amount of time watching shadows in the darkness and listening to the silence. Althought whether nothingness is an actual feature of ontological reality or one that we merely imagine due to the way we think and speak (i.e., a conceptual fiction rooted in language), I don't really know and, to be honest, don't really care [1].

 

 

II. 

 

Funnily enough, the idea that we can perceive absences is becoming increasingly popular in contemporary culture - and not just amongst philosophers. People seem to be waking up to the fact that whilst how things are matters, so too is it equally vital how things are not and that being rests upon non-being. 

 

In other words, people seem to be responding to the call of the void [2] in ever greater numbers and I have to admit I smiled when I came across an essay written in 2017 by Dan Cavedon-Taylor which argued that we can tactually perceive the absence of a tooth after the dentist has performed an extraction - for wasn't I saying much the same thing in the very first post published here on Torpedo the Ark five years ealier [3].

 

Namely, that the sense of loss is palpable and that a rotten tooth - even after removal - continues to function as a provocation and invisible presence. 

 

Thinkers in both the European and Anglo-American traditions of philosophy have accepted the truth of this. Even Bertrand Russell - about as far away from Heidegger in both philosophical methods and concerns as one can get - conceded that there must exist negative facts. 

 

However, there remain those who argue that "although we can experience absences, and although our absence experiences are often triggered by perceptual experiences, absence experiences are not themselves a perceptual phenomenon" [4] and warn we should not be seduced by those thinkers who suggest otherwise and commit themselves to "the reality of negative features in the world and our ability to perceive them" [5].   

      

Thinkers such as Roy Sorensen, for example ...

 

 

III.

 

Sorensen's work on negative reality [6] - things that are paradoxically present by their absence - tries a bit too hard to be quirky and fun and so quickly starts to irritate, but, nevertheless, he's got some interesting things to say on shadows and holes, for example, and I'm vaguely sympathetic with his attempt to persuade others that these things are entities in their own right (and not just mental constructs that result from human experience and expectation - which was Sartre's position). 

  

I'm not entirely convinced that the hole in a Polo mint can be perceived independently of the matter that surrounds it, but I would certainly agree that the hole cannot be defined purely in terms of the mint sweet; it's an objective feature in itself and to deny this just seems a little silly and a form of metaphysical prejudice that thinks presence is the be-all and end-all and absence of no positive importance or reality because seemingly less tangible.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This is clearly a question that continues to trouble many philosophers, however, including Stephen Mumford, who peddles a form of soft Parmenideanism in his recent book Absence and Nothing: the philosophy of what there is not, (Oxford University Press, 2021). 

      For Mumford, the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides was largely correct to say that the division into Being and non-Being is a false rather than a fundamental division as what exists is everything whilst what does not exist is nothing. For Pamenides, to believe in the existence of both Being and non-Being is contradictory and makes knowledge impossible. He also insists that Being is eternal and indivisible.  

      Unlike Parmenides, however, Mumford does not think that being is essentially fixed and unchanging and he does not rule out the possibility of being able to think about what there is not and even that there might - under certain circumstances - be some form of negative entity that would have to be acknowledged (if only as a theoretical anomaly). 

      Thus, Mumford can, in this way, have his cake and eat it; maintaining his argument that absence and nothingness are not an ontological part of everyday reality, whilst still writing a 200 page monograph on the subject. That's not to dismiss his methodology, but simply point out the convenient nature of making a compromise of this kind.       

 

[2] I don't mean to suggest more and more people have the urge to jump from atop a tall building, but that more and more people are waking up the fact that the void is a space of forgotten possibility and future potential and so has vital existential reality. See my recently published post on this (22 October 2025): click here.  

 

[3] See Dan Cavedon-Taylor, 'Touching Voids: On the Varieties of Absence Perception', in Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Vol. 8, Issue 2, (2017), pp. 355–366. The post on TTA that I refer to is 'Reflections on the Loss of UR6' (24 Nov 2012): click here. 

      Cavedon-Taylor and myself are in agreement that after having a tooth pulled - and after the anaesthetic wears off - the first thing you do is run your tongue along your teeth until arriving at the gap where once a tooth was located: "The gap is experienced as unnerving, and not merely on its initial probing […] Something once experienced as present within your mouth is now experienced as lacking." 

 

[4] Laura Gow, 'A New Theory of Absence Experience', in the European Journal of Philosophy Vol. 29, Issue 1, (March 2021),  pp. 168-181. To read online, click here. 

      And see also Gow's paper entitled 'Empty Space, Silence, and Absence' in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 51, Issue 7, (October 2021), pp. 496-507. Published online by Cambridge University Press (March 2022): click here.  

      In this text, Gow examines two experiences which some philosophers have claimed (mistakenly, in her view) to be paradigmatic examples of absence experience: the experience of empty space and the experience of silence. For Gow, "even if we can see empty space and hear silence [...], such experiences cannot be used in support of the perceptual view of absence experience". 

 

[5] Stephen Mumford, Absence and Nothing: the philosophy of what there is not, p. 2. 

 

[6] See for example his book Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows (Oxford University Press, 2008); or his more recent study, Nothing: A Philosophical History (Oxford University Press, 2022). 

In Memory of Three Fictional Spivs

James Beck in character as Joe Walker in Dad's Army (1973) 

George Cole as Flash Harry in The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954)

Arthur English as the Prince of the Wide Boys (1950) 

 

 

I. 

 

As a child, like millions of other people, I used to enjoy watching the TV sitcom Dad's Army (BBC, 1968-1977). Admittedly, some of the characters I found irritating - Clive Dunn's Lance Corporal Jones, for example - but most I thought amusing; particularly John Laurie's Private Frazer. 

 

The character who most intrigued me, however, was Private Joe Walker, played by James Beck, a flashy petty criminal dealing in black market goods with a cheeky Cockney persona; i.e., what is known by British English speakers as a spiv.  

 

If Private Godfrey (Arnold Ridley) might have made a kind grandad, Joe Walker would've been a fun uncle and generous I'm sure when it came to birthday gifts and Christmas presents (even if they had fallen off the back of a lorry).  

 

 

II.  

 

The origin of the word spiv is obscure, although, perhaps significantly, it was the nickname of a small-time London crook and con artist, Henry Bagster, who was frequently arrested for illicit street trading during the early years of the 20th century and whose court appearances often attracted press coverage.  

 

Whatever its origin, the word wasn't popularised until the Second World War and post-War period, when many goods were rationed in the UK and spivs really came into their own as a distinct class of traders, with a distinctive look and way of dressing; hair slicked back with Brylcreem; a Clark Gable style pencil moustache; a trilby or other wide-brimmed hat worn rakishly at an angle; a long drape jacket with padded shoulders; a wide brightly patterned tie, etc. 

 

All these things were de rigueur for someone who wanted to advertise their entrepreneurial spirit at the time and look the business. One of the reasons the general public not only tolerated but seemed to admire these worldly-wise and larger-than-life characters - apart from the fact they could get you what you wanted - was that they looked so chipper and at odds with the austerity of the times [1].   

  

 

III.

 

The look was perfected by comedian and actor Arthur English, who, during his early professional career as a stand-up comic, adopted the persona of a stereotypical spiv and became known as the Prince of the Wide Boys (Jimmy Perry and David Croft, the writers of Dad's Army, were happy to admit that Private Walker was in part based on English's stage character) [2].

 

But the look was perhaps most memorably pushed to its comical extreme by George Cole, as Flash Harry, in The Belles of St. Trinian's (dir. Frank Launder, 1954); one of the greatest and most popular of British films [3].

 

Whether Harry might identify as a spiv is debatable and he tends to describe himself as a fixer and go-between; the man whom the girls trust to bottle and sell their gin, distilled in the school's chemistry lab and place bets on the gee-gees for them. 

 

But he looks like a spiv and acts like a spiv, so I think we can use this term in good faith (although the fact that he helps the sixth form girls find wealthy lovers and potential husbands doesn't quite make him a pimp). 

 

Let's just say that Harry's a shady character and a well-dodgy geezer; a ducker and diver who certainly has connections with the criminal community, even if he's not quite one of their own [4]. 

 

Notes

 

[1] The fact is, the British working class have long had a soft-spot for loveable rogues and dashing outlaws. Thus, as Stephen Baker and Paddy Hoey note, "although in both official discourse and the cinema of the period" spivs tended to be presented as "'dangerous, unpatriotic and un-British'", there was public ambivalence about them and even "a degree of sympathy for such glamorous, anti-authority figures" who, after all, helped alleviate the misery of wartime conditions. 

      See Stephen Baker and Paddy Hoey, 'The Picaro and the Prole, the Spiv and the Honest Tommy in Leon Griffiths's Minder', in the Journal of British Cinema and Television, 15 (4), (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp. 513-531. The lines quoted are on p. 519. To read this essay as an online pdf, click here. 

 

[2] As Denis Gifford reminds us in an obituary for Arthur English published in the Independent (19 April 1995): "English was not the first to caricature the spiv on stage. That honour belongs to the great Sid Field, whose West End wide boy, Slasher Green, is immortalised for all time in the film London Town (1946)." But English's spiv act - "which he wrote himself and delivered at top speed in full motion" - was undoubtedly a thing of comic genius. 

      English signed off his first radio broadcast with the following rather lovely lines:  

      "This is Arthur English shoving orf to the tune of 'The Windmill's Turning'. Shove on the coal, blow the expense,  just keep the 'ome fires burning. Perhaps I've made you larf a lot, I 'ope I've brought yer joy.  So 'ere's mud in yer eye from the end of me tie, good night - and watch the boy!'

      To read Gifford's obituary for Arthur English in full by clicking here.   

 

[3] Such was its success with critics and moviegoers alike, that The Belles of St. Trinian's gave rise to three sequels: Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957); The Pure Hell of St Trinian's (1960); and The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery (1966), all directed by Frank Launder.

 

[4] In this he's very much like George Cole's other iconic character, Arthur Daley, in the long-running TV comedy-drama Minder (ITV, 1979-1994). They are, of course, distinct characters created by different writers and operating in different eras, but whenever I watch the Crombie-coated, trilby-hatted, cigar-smoking Arthur Daley, it's hard not to have thoughts of Flash Harry. 

      Interestingly, there was initialy resistance to the idea of casting George Cole in the role of Arthur Daley as he was seen as a bit too refined: "It was only when Euston Pictures's executive producer Verity Lambert intervened, noting that Cole had made a name for himself playing Flash Harry, the spiv in the St Trinian's films, that the deal was sealed ..." 

      See the excellent essay by Stephen Baker and Paddy Hoey cited in note 1 above, p. 518.  

 

 

Bonus: Flash Harry making an entrance in The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954): click here.    

 

 

Who Was That Young American Press Lady?

Lee Ellen Newman: Press Goddess 

Charisma Records (c.1983)

I.

 

As Paul Gorman reminds us in his excellent biography, when Malcolm McLaren presented his groundbreaking new record 'Buffalo Gals' to the executives at Charisma Records in the autum of 1982, excitedly telling them how kids "'danced on their heads to this beat in the middle of the streets of New York'" [1], he may have anticipated a little bemusement, but not such angry incomprehension and resistance. 

 

Unfortunately, however, that the track was "a stylistic aural collage to rival McLaren's work in fashion, interiors and design was entirely lost on the record company ..." [2]   

 

The head of promotions declared that it was not music and refused to take it to the radio stations; poor old Tony Stratton-Smith wondered how he was going to recuperate at least some of the monies paid out in advance; and, according to McLaren, the only person who stood up for him was "'the press lady: a young American, new in her job'" [3].  

 

 

II. 

 

The question becomes: Who was that young American press lady?

 

And it's a question I'm happy to answer; not only because today happens to be her birthday, but because Lee Ellen Newman is one of the people I will always be grateful to.  

 

For she it was who advised me on the importance of building a wide network of contacts, of cultivating a likeable public image, and of remaining calm under pressure (even if, unfortunately, I never quite managed to accomplish these things to her high professional standard).  

 

And she it was who taught me how to write concisely and persuasively and to master the art of what is known in the PR world as strategic storytelling; i.e., the deployment of a cleverly structured (and seductive) narrative in order to appeal to a target audience and achieve a specific goal [4].  

 

So, thanks Lee Ellen for being an early mentor, a dear friend, as well as one of the few figures in the music business that Malcolm always had affection for. 

 

And happy birthday!

 

Notes

 

[1] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman, in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 517.

 

[2] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 516.     

 

[3] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 517.  

      As Gorman goes on to elucidate, Charisma seriously considered taking legal action against McLaren on the grounds that he had grossly overspent and that "he was in breach of the contractual obligation to deliver music of acceptable commercial value". 

      However, 'Buffalo Gals' became a top ten hit in the UK and other countries and this "proved sufficient for Charisma to back off from its legal posturing" and press on with release of McLaren's debut album Duck Rock (1983) and other singles taken from it, including McLaren's biggest selling and highest charting hit, 'Double Dutch'.

      Relations between the artist and the record label failed to recover, however, even though Charisma would release two further McLaren albums: Fans (1984), which fused opera with R&B; and Swamp Thing (1985), composed of out-takes recorded between 1982 and 1984, which I like, but everyone else hates; McLaren's version of 'Swingin' the Alphabet' ('B. I. Bikki') is even more hilarious than that given us by the Three Stooges in their 1938 short film Violent is the Word for Curly (dir. Charley Chase): click here.     

 

[4] It may sound a bit cynical and manipulative and some might view strategic storytelling as a form of what is called by our political friends spin. In my experience, however, it's more a game whereby you give a journalist, for example, what they want for a good feature and they give you what you need in order create excitement around the artist you are representing and boost sales of whatever it is they're promoting. In other words, strategic storytelling is an exercise in backscratching rather than backstabbing and the wilful deception of others.  

 

 

Readers who wish to know more about Buffalo Gals should see the post entitled 'And They Dance by the Light of the Moon ...' (19 Feb 2019): click here.

 

Readers who think they might enjoy a post in which I reminisce about my time with Lee Ellen at Charisma Records should see the post entitled 'Memories of Summer '84: Charisma' (17 July 2024): click here.