No More Heroes 4: Larry David - From Social Assassin to Court Jester

No More Heroes 4 (Larry David)

(SA/2026) [1]

 

I. 

 

This is the fourth and final post in the No More Heroes series. 

 

We have already seen how Malcolm McLaren disappoints due to his stuckism; how Nietzsche disappoints because of his not dying at the right time; and how D. H. Lawrence disappoints due to his determination to always remain a priest of love. 

 

Now it's 79-year-old Larry David's turn to be criticised for letting me down - becoming just another Hollywood liberal and, worst of all, unfunny.  

 

 

II.

 

 

Larry David is an American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer, who has received various accolades and numerous awards for his work.  

 

He is loved by people like me for his cynical and at times nihilistic humour, comic portrayals of awkward social situations, and misanthropic observations on everyday life. 

 

The fact that he laughs at everything - even the most tragic events, such as the death of a parrot [2] - and promotes an irreligious ethos of curbed enthusiasm [3] - means that David is accorded a privileged status on Torpedo the Ark alongside the three figures named above. 

 

 

III. 

 

David started his career as a stand-up comedian with a famously confrontational and uncompromising stage persona. Rather than attempt to please his audience, he took a willfully hostile and uningratiating approach. 

 

If a crowd wasn't laughing or paying attention, he would frequently drop the mic and walk off mid-set. David was even known, on occasion, to walk on stage, assess the room, and, if he sensed the crowd was going to be unreceptive, depart without telling a single joke.

 

As Dewey Finn would say: That is so punk rock [4] - and torpedophiles will therefore understand his appeal to me.  

 

  

IV. 

 

Eventually, David made the transition to TV - briefly (and unsuccessfully) working as a writer on Saturday Night Live in the mid-1980s [5], before striking comedy gold when he and Jerry Seinfeld created the NBC sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998), eventually picking up Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. 

 

David left Seinfeld amicably after the show's seventh season (returning two years later to write the series finale in 1998). He then gained further critical recognition for creating, writing, and starring in the long-running HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm (1999–2024), which frequently revisits many of the themes, obsessions, and even story ideas from Seinfeld. 

 

David has often said that his character in the show - a fictionalised version of himself - is what he would be like in real life if he lacked social awareness and sensitivity. In a sense, it's this Larry that most serves as inspiraton for Torpedo the Ark and my disappointment is more with real life Larry, as I'll make clear below.  

 

 

V.

 

I don't care that Larry David has a huge amount of money [6]; or that he resides in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles, California, with an additional coastal home in Montecito [7].

 

I don't even mind that he's a registered Democrat who is deeply involved in party activism and fundraising and has become a kind of court jester in Obama's circle (or Bamelot as it has been dubbed by some). 

 

He's got to live somewhere, after all, and he's entitled to his political views.  

 

However, I'm really not keen on left-leaning celebrities with phenomenally privileged lifestyles using their public platform to lecture others and judge others.  

 

And it's disappointing that someone who was genuinely funny is now becoming just another out of touch Hollywood liberal who holds a large number of his fellow Americans in contempt because of their support for Donald Trump, whom he describes in a CNN interview as an insane sociopath [8]. 

 

I want Larry the libertine who doesn't care about which side of the ideological, religious, or ethnic divide someone is on, provided they can make great chicken and satisfy his sexual needs [9]; someone who refuses to be blackmailed and when forced to choose between sides chooses not to choose.

 

Instead, I get a Larry who returned to TV last month with a deeply disappointing seven-episode sketch show [10] celebrating overlooked figures and absurd moments in U.S. history. Titled Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, it premiered on HBO on 26 June, 2026.  

 

Co-written by David and his longtime collaborator Jeff Schaffer, who also directs, the series was produced in collaboration with Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground Productions. The former President even makes an on-screen appearance as himself. It's basically like watching Curb but in historical context and period costume - but without the laughs. 

 

Many of David's A-list Hollywood friends appear and there are cameos from former Curb co-stars, including Jeff Garlin, Susie Essman, and JB Smoove. But not Cheryl Hines, who is conspicuously absent. This exclusion was reportedly at the insistence of the former First Lady who actively opposed Hines's involvement due to her marriage to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. [11]. 

 

If that's true, then it's another cause of disappointment in David. 

 

It was mildly amusing - although out of character and unbelievable - when TV Larry declined the opportunity to sleep with Cady Huffman because she was a Republican who had a photo of George W. Bush in her dressing room [12], but his personal snubbing (and professional blacklisting) of close friend Cheryl Hines in this way is petty and way more spiteful than anything done to Mocha Joe by Latte Larry.

 

And so, when it comes to Larry David, consider my enthusiasm well and truly curbed ...  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] I've given this picture a pinkish hue (or rosy glow) as I thought fans of Seinfeld season 3, episode 16, 'The Fix Up' (dir. Tom Cherones, 1992), would appreciate that. Unfortunately, whilst Larry David was the writer (or co-writer) of around 60 episodes of Seinfeld, one can't give him credit for this particular episode, which was written by Larry Charles and Elaine Pope.   

 

[2] See the posts 'On Learning to Laugh at Everything' (9 Feb 2019) and 'Torpedo the Ark Means Everything's Funny' (14 Nov 2017).   

 

[3] I would remind readers that the word enthusiasm derives from the Ancient Greek term ἐνθουσιασμός meaning possessed by a god. It first entered English around 1600, still retaining the idea of religious fervour (taking on a more secular modern sense by the 18th century). 

      Torpedo the Ark opposes ideas of rapture, ecstasy, divine inspiration, etc. affirming as it does a materialist (and anti-theistic) philosophy. As far as I'm aware, Larry David identifies as an irreverent atheist born of a Jewish cultural background that has shaped his worldview and comedic style.

 

[4] I'm referring to the character played by Jack Black who utters this line in what is probably my favourite scene in School of Rock (dir. Richard Linklater, 2003). 

[5] During his time at SNL, David was able to get only one sketch on the air and he quit his job as a writer on the show within the first year, after angrily disparaging the quality of the show to producer Dick Ebersol. On the plus side, he did meet cast member Julia Louis-Dreyfus who would later play the role of Elaine Benes on Seinfeld.    

 

[6] David's estimated net worth is around $500 million, with most of his wealth originating from syndication deals for Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.    

 

[7] These are exclusive, affluent, and it has to be said beautiful neighbourhoods: located on the Westside of LA, just north of Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades is known for its stunning ocean and mountain views (as well as its high-end real estate); Montecito is situated in Santa Barbara County and is a highly exclusive enclave famous for its sprawling estates and celebrity residents like Oprah Winfrey and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.   

 

[8] David blasted Donald Trump during a March 2024 interview on CNN's Who's Talking to Chris Wallace? As well as describing him as a "sick man", he accuses Trump of throwing "250 years of democracy out of the window" and of "fooling everybody" - though presumably not those who were smart enough to vote Democrat in the presidential elections in which Trump stood. 

 

[9] I'm thinking here of the genuinely transgressive and risk-taking episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm from season 8 titled 'Palestinian Chicken' (dir. Robert B, Weide, 2011), written by Larry David in collaboration with Alec Berg, David Mandell, and Jeff Schaffer. 

      The closing scene linked to from the episode illustrates my point about rejecting the binary logic of the either/or. Motivated by desire, Larry wants both A and B (and C and D and ... and ... and); in this case, great food and great sex and his loyalty is not so much to 'his people' as it is his penis.        

 

[10] I am not alone in finding Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness lame, lamentable and unfunny. Many critics found it disappointing and derivative, noting that it largely recycles and relies upon material from his earlier work. 

      It was noted also how the series sometimes leaned heavily into overtly partisan talking points and political satire, rather than keeping observational objectivity. For me, all the star-studded guest performances - and Barack Obama's introductory appearance - couldn't save it and, in fact, only added to the impression that David had run out of ideas. 

      Writing in a review for The Guardian (27 June 2026), Lucy Mangan rightly describes the show as "a total TV shambles" with overlong sketches mostly consisting of a lot of shouting rather than clever writing and witty punchlines. The official HBO Max trailer can be watched by clicking here. 

[11] See, for example, Matt Wilstein's report in The Daily Beast (13 July 2026): 'Why Cheryl Hines Is Missing From Larry David's New HBO Show'. According to this report, David's creative partner Jeff Schaffer has confirmed that RFK Jr.'s wife is persona non grata.   

 

[12] Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 4, Episode 10, 'Opening Night' (dir. Robert B. Weide, 2004). 

 

 

No More Heroes 3: D. H. Lawrence - He Will Always Be a Priest of Love

No More Heroes (D. H. Lawrence)

(SA/2026)

 

 

I.

 

Despite my best attempts over the last thirty odd years to portray Lawrence as a perverse materialist and sulphurous iconoclast, his romantic idealism and fundamentally religious nature cannot be denied: "I shall always be a priest of love," he once famously declared in a letter [1] - and that, for me, is the issue here.

 

My disappointment (and frustration) with Lawrence lies in the fact he could never quite abandon this self-assigned role, nor move beyond his old-fashioned and deeply conservative sexual metaphysics upon which he erected his own phallic creed and ideology. 

 

 

II.

 

Lawrence recognises that the model of Love offered by Jesus founded upon self-denial and self-sacrifice has been fatally mistaken, invariably leading to the Cross: "Remember I think Christ was profoundly, disastrously wrong." [2] 

 

Lawrence also understands how an active process of the healthy human soul can quickly turn reactive and become malignant if we are not careful; how love becomes a disease when insisted upon as a transcendent spiritual ideal in which individuals merge into oneness. He strongly criticises the Romantics for precisely this.  

 

But although he rejected the exclusive truth of Christianity, he was always a theist at heart; "ceaselessly and energetically pursuing God, with the aid of the Holy Spirit", as Catherine Brown says in the third of her Oxford podcasts on Lawrence [3]. 

 

And although he often sneered at the Romantics for making a girl think she wants a mixture of sentiment and spiritual fulfilment when actually what she desires is to be fucked seven ways to Sunday in a world of rain showers, insects, and gamekeepers [4], Lawrence's literary roots are clearly in the English Romantic tradition. His love of nature, his irrationalism, his opposition to industrial modernity, kind of give the game away. He simply likes to pose as the darkest of all dark romantics [5]. 

 

 

III. 

 

One is almost tempted to say of Lawrence what Hannah Arendt once said of Nietzsche: he is basically just a reflection or a reversal of those thinkers he stands before and declares to be his enemies [6]. Although he wishes to relentlessly challenge moral and rational idealism and climb down Pisgah, Lawrence ultimately relies on the same tricks of the trade - the same metaphysical assumptions and dualistic frameworks - as his opponents.   

 

Conceding that, like Melville, he is perhaps "a mystic and an idealist" [7] at the core, Lawrence nevertheless insists that, unlike the author of Moby Dick (1851), he abandons his "ideal guns" [8] and looks for new weapons. 

 

But does he? 

 

Does he "let the old guns rot" [9] - or does he simply repair, polish and repurpose the old guns in the hope of passing them off as new? 

 

I am increasingly of the view that just as Lawrence will always remain a priest of love who makes Foucault smile by positing sex is the great clue to being [10], so too he's something of a fraudulent gunsmith who has ground off old serial numbers and the 19th-century dates of manufacture in order to make his firearms look like newer models.  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] See the letter to Sallie Hopkin, dated [25 Dec 1912] in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 492-3. 

      Lawrence not only promises to remain forever a priest of love - and a glad one at that - but that he'll preach his heart out, insisting: "Once you've known what love can be, there's no disappointment any more, and no despair."

      This self-description and his defence of (heterosexual) love in face of modern scepticism has proved very popular with his devotees. Personally, however, I have always rather regretted the phrase and the way in which it's been interpreted by those who insist on viewing Lawrence's work as a type of moral idealism - which, let's be clear, it isn't (even if his writing repeatedly falls back into such).            

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence writing in a letter to Dorothy Brett, dated [26 Jan 1925], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 205. 

      Later, just to clarify his (quasi-Nietzschean) position, Lawrence will write in a letter to Else Jaffe (Frieda's sister): "I am with the antichrist." See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 332. 

      For my post on Lawrence's sympathy for the devil and Luciferianism (10 April 2020), please click here. 

 

[3] Catherine Brown, 'D. H. Lawrence 3: Christianity', University of Oxford podcast (28 Feb 2012): click here. 

 

[4] I'm primarily thinking here of the conclusion that Connie arrives at in chapter XVI of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), after a night of sensual passion in which Mellors takes her in the Italian way: "It was not really love. [...] It was sensuality sharp and searing as fire, burning the soul to tinder." 

      But I'm also thinking of what Lawrence writes at the opening of his essay on Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter in his Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), sneering at the more soppier forms of Romantic literature in which "rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose and it's always daisy-time". The line can be found on p. 81 of the Cambridge Edition of this work, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (2003) - oh, and the line from Lady C. can be found on p. 246 of the Cambridge Edition of that work (1993).   

 

[5] For those (like me) without a degree in literature, Dark Romanticism is a 19th-century movement that explored the more sinister and irrational aspects of human being. Unlike mainstream Romantics who believed in the inherent goodness of people and nature, Dark Romantics believed mankind is inherently fallen and lives in an outrageously cruel and violent world. It's a little less spooky than the Gothic tradition (i.e., not so reliant on supernatural elements). 

      Several of the American authors admired by Lawrence - Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne - are often seen as representative of the genre. 

 

[6] In 'Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture', Arendt writes: 

      "The quest for meaning, which relentlessly dissolves and examines anew all accepted doctrines and rules, can [...] as it were, produce a reversal of the old values, and declare these as 'new values'. This, to an extent, is what Nietzsche did when he reversed Platonism, forgetting that a reversed Plato is still Plato [...]"

      This essay is in Social Research, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Autumn 1971), pp. 417-446. The paragraph quoted is on p. 435. She later incorporated this idea into the first volume of her (unfinished) work The Life of the Mind (1977) although she's essentially just echoing Heidegger's critique of Nietzsche as remaining within Western metaphysics, despite his best efforts to overcome such. 

      Obviously, Arendt is right to say that simply reversing values paired in binary opposition isn't enough - though it's important to also note that it's a necessary first step toward deconstruction and revaluation. Derrida argues that to effectively dismantle a philosophical hierarchy, one must follow up reversal with displacement; a second phase that aims to disrupt the oppositional structure itself via the introduction of new concepts - such as différance - that resist clean categorisation and cannot be easily placed on either side of the binary   

[7-9] D. H. Lawrence, 'Herman Melville's Typee and Omoo', in Studies in Classic American Literature, p. 132

 

[10] See the post titled 'Lady Chatterley's Postmodern Lover' (9 Sept 2013), in which I adopt a Foucauldian position to argue - contra Lawrence - that the metaphysical notion of sex as the great clue to being cannot be allowed to pass without close critical examination.

      For rather than simply being an ideal anchorage point that supports the various manifestations of what we term sexuality, sex, says Foucault, is a complex and tyrannical type of agency formed by regimes of power. The Lawrentian belief that it somehow eludes and resists power and resides deep within us over and above the material reality of bodies and possessing its own intrinsic properties and laws, is simply a piece of modern romance.  

      As much as I love Lawrence, I have to admit that I get tired of the austere monarchy of sex ruling over all our thoughts and actions. And I agree with Foucault that what is really peculiar about modern societies is not that they kept sex locked away in darkness, "but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret" [35].  

      In a time to come, after the orgy, so to speak, readers will be unable to fathom Lawrence's sex mania. And they will smile, says Foucault, when they recall that there were once a people who believed that in sex resided a truth "every bit as precious as the one they had already demanded from the earth, the stars, and the pure forms of their thought". 

      See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1998), pp. 35, 159.    

 

 

Other posts in this No More Heroes series include: 

 

Malcolm McLaren: Stuckism and the Quest for Authenticity (14 July 2026): click here. 

 

Nietzsche: The Man Who Failed to Die at the Right Time (15 July 2026): click here.

 

Larry David: From Social Assassin to Court Jester (17 July 2026): click here.  

 

 

No More Heroes 2: Friedrich Nietzsche - The Man Who Failed to Die at the Right Time

No More Heroes (Friedrich Nietzsche)

(SA/2026)

 

 

I. 

 

Having in the previous post examined the source of my disappointment with my punk mentor Malcolm McLaren [1], I'd like now to turn to my philosophical hero - and I use that word with reservations [2] - the untimely thinker Friedrich Nietzsche ... 

 

What is it about him that ultimately leaves me feeling a little let down? 

 

Actually, the answer to this question is pretty straightforward: Nietzsche didn't die at the right time ...

 

 

II.  

 

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85), Nietzsche famously preaches the gospel of voluntary death and praises the difficult art of dying at the right time: "Many die too late and some die too early. Still the doctrine sounds strange: 'Die at the right time.'" [3] 

 

Do this, and death becomes a festival and a triumph; a perfect death which serves as "a spur and a promise to the living". 

 

To die in battle and thus to squander a brave soul is good, says Zarathustra. But to die freely at a time of one's own choosing and most advantageous to one's goal, surrounded by friends "filled with hope and making solemn vows", that is the best death of all.

 

Anyone who wants glory and to be remembered with fondness long after their death must take their leave in good time and not hang "withered wreathes in the sanctuary of life", or lie around just waiting for death to creep up on them.      

 

Perhaps this is doubly true for those fuck-ups who have made a failure of their life; they more than others need to see to it that their death is a great success. 

 

But again, timing is the crucial thing here; for whilst, as we have said, many die too late, there are those who die too soon. Zarathustra names Jesus at this point: "and that he died too early has since been a fatality for many" - something that D. H. Lawrence absolutely agrees with, thus his insistence on mortal resurrection as being far more important than the crucifixion or any ascension unto heaven [4].      

 

But, mostly, the problem is one of people dying too late, not prematurely; of hanging on like apples on a tree even when full of worms and overripe to the point of rottenness. Zarathustra - and let's concede that he's pretty much Nietzsche's philosophical mouthpiece and alter ego - says he would hate to be one of these individuals.

 

He wants to die when at the height of his physical and intellectual powers, so that, in death, his spirit "should still glow like a sunset around the earth" with which he joyfully reunites, so that he may know peace in the material world that bore him.       

 

 

III.  

 

Unfortunately, Nietzsche doesn't die at the right time. After collapsing in Turin, aged 44 [5], Nietzsche lived on for eleven more agonising years in a state of severe physical and mental decline. Thus, in a disappointing twist of cosmic irony, Nietzsche utterly failed Zarathustra's ultimate test.

 

Never in the best of health in bourgeois terms, Nietzsche had nevertheless possessed an extraordinary vitality (what he termed die große Gesundheit). So, it's regrettable that he didn't die defiantly with his arms around the neck of a horse in 1889, but became this vegetable, cared for by his elderly mother and anti-Semitic sister who put him on display for visitors like a living museum exhibit. 

 

Worse still, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche took control of his archives, systematically falsifying his letters and editing his Nachlaß in order to present his philosophy as a form of proto-fascism [6]. Thus, not dying at the right time was not only a personal catastrophe, but by failing to leave his affairs in order Nietzsche enabled his philosophical legacy to be hijacked, distorted, and weaponised by the reactive forces of ethno-nationalism he spent his life combatting. 

 

If only Nietzsche had learnt from Socrates or Seneca before being overtaken by biological fate! They provided masterclasses in how to die and shape their own narratives. As it is, however, his end contrasts as the tragic antithesis to these highly controlled, theatrical exits [7]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] 'No More Heroes 1: Malcolm McLaren - Stuckism and the Quest for Authenticity' (14 July 2026): click here. 

 

[2] The word hero derives from the Ancient Greek term ἥρως which referred to one such as Heracles born of divine ancestry, or to one who was awarded divine honours for their deeds. Whilst Nietzsche retained the concept in his work, he was unhappy with the way it is used in the modern world, often taking on a moral aspect and tied to notions of self-sacrifice, for example. Others may disagree, but, for me, to call Nietzsche a hero would betray a fundamental misunderstanding of his philosophical project.    

 

[3] See Nietzsche, 'Of Voluntary Death', Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 97-99. All lines quoted in section II of this post are taken from this edition of Nietzsche's text.  

 

[4] See Lawrence's vitally important short novel The Escaped Cock (1929), which can be found in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 123-163. 

      One of the earliest posts on Torpedo the Ark was written on this work by Lawrence (29 March 2013): click here. 

 

[5] On 3 January 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown and was briefly detained by two policemen for causing a public disturbance in the streets of Turin. What happened exactly remains unknown, but an often-repeated tale from shortly after his death states that Nietzsche witnessed the flogging of a horse in the Piazza Carlo Alberto, threw his arms around its neck in order to protect the animal and then collapsed to the ground. 

      In the following few days Nietzsche sent several letters - known as the Wahnbriefe - to a number of friends including Cosima Wagner and Jacob Burckhardt. Most were signed Dionysus, though some were also signed der Gekreuzigte (the Crucified). He ended his days physically and mentally paralysed and in the care of his sister (i.e., a fate worse than death; see note 6 below).  

 

[6] Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche physically curated her brother's final public image by transforming his living death into a highly orchestrated spectacle. Rather than hiding his vegetative state, she paraded it, meticulously staging his environment, dress, and physical presentation before a carefully selected audience. 

      Thus, for example, she would routinely wheel a silent, uncomprehending Nietzsche dressed in a flowing, heavily pleated white robe that closely resembled a classical philosopher's toga out onto a prominent first-floor balcony, allowing visiting disciples and curious tourists to look up and venerate him from the garden below like a tragic prophet. She also meticulously groomed his famous, oversized moustache in an attempt to maintain the fierce, recognisable profile of his lucid years and disguise his frailness. 

      At the same time, Elisabeth established the Nietzsche-Archiv and - in collaboration with Peter Gast - forged and spliced together entries from his notebooks to create what was intended to be his magnum opus - Der Wille zur Macht. The first German edition of this spurious text, containing 483 sections, was published a year after Nietzsche's death in 1901. This version was superseded in 1906 by an expanded second edition containing 1067 sections and it was this edition that was translated into English as The Will to Power, by Anthony M. Ludovici, in 1910.  

 

[7] Condemned to death by the Athenian court, Socrates refused flight or compromise, choosing instead to drink hemlock as a final, supreme act of obedience to the laws of the state that shaped him. He spent his final hours calmly debating the immortality of the soul with his grieving disciples. 

      Similarly, Seneca - ordered to commit suicide by Emperor Nero - embraced his fate with Stoic equanimity, using his final moments to dictate philosophy and comfort his family while bleeding to death in a bath. Both men transformed state-mandated executions into ultimate proofs of concept, ensuring their deaths perfectly authenticated their life's work.

 

 

The next post in this series - on D. H. Lawrence as inveterate priest of love - can be read by clicking here.  

 

 

No More Heroes 1: Malcolm McLaren - Stuckism and the Quest for Authenticity

No More Heroes (Malcolm McLaren)

(SA/2026) 

 

 

I. 

 

One of the things said by Johnny Rotten that has stuck with me for fifty years is his response to Janet Street-Porter's question about who he admires: "I don't have any heroes - they're all useless." [1]

 

Ironically, his anti-hero stance instantly made him a hero to me. However, my affections and loyalty later shifted to Malcolm McLaren once it became clear that he was the conceptual genius behind the Sex Pistols [2]. 

  

And I have continued to name McLaren - along with Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence, and Larry David - as a primary influence on my thinking. However, I'm not sure I would call them heroes. And, if I'm honest, each has disappointed in some manner. 

 

Here, and in the posts that follow, I will attempt to explain why. Let's begin by raising concerns around what might be called the ideological stuckism of my punk mentor, Malcolm McLaren.      

 

 

II.

 

To be clear: when I say Malcolm was a stuckist, I am not suggesting he had any involvement with the international movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting as opposed to conceptual art [3]. I am simply referring to the fact that McLaren was trapped in his past like a spider in its own web [4].

 

His entire career was an endless (if brilliant) recycling of the memories, radical ideas, and obsessive fixations drawn from his 1950s childhood and his 1960s art school days. Forever associated with the Sex Pistols and defined by the role he played in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), McLaren was stuck in a self-made loop of his own youthful mythology and his desire to live yesterday tomorrow [5].   

 

 

III.

 

Apart from the childhood tales told to him by his grandmother to do with Peter Pan and pirates and Dickensian street urchins, the first thing to really make a terrific impression on McLaren were the great balls of fires projected into popular culture by Jerry Lee Lewis and his fellow rock 'n' rollers. 

 

He loved the records and he loved the clothes and spent his entire life trying to perfectly recreate the look of music and the sound of fashion (a conceptual phrase coined by McLaren that he repeated in interviews and public lectures until his dying day). 

 

He may have experimented with many kinds of music in his career, but at heart he remained a rocker and it was the raw authenticity (and sheer fun) of the records he heard in the '50s that he wished to inject into his own projects and the various incarnations of the little shop at 430 King's Road, from Let It Rock to Worlds End. 

 

Ultimately, punk wasn't really an attempt to look forward - it was, rather, an attempt to strip rock 'n' roll of its bloated, progressive bullshit and recapture the excitement, danger and innocence of his childhood.      

 

 

IV.

 

If, on the one hand 1957 was a crucial year for eleven-year-old Malcolm McLaren [6], then so too was 1968 for the then twenty-two-year-old art student. For although not directly involved in the événements de mai [7], McLaren - the would-be revolutionary and Francophile - now fell under the influence of Guy Debord and the Situationists. 

 

Radical ideas to do with the société du spectacle and the staging of events in order to shatter such, thereby rescuing people from the boredom and inauthenticity of everyday life, remained important to McLaren throughout his life. A volatile character and natural born troublemaker, he was always attempting to mix the perfect Molotov cocktail: two parts art theory; one part political ideology; and one part cultural terrorism.  

 

It's certainly difficult to understand the Sex Pistols project without reference to McLaren and Jamie Reid's belief in the ruins, demand for the impossible, and wish to steal back happiness.  

 

The problem, however, is that avant-garde political theories relying on Marxism and surrealism don't adequately address the problems that emerge in a post-68 world. The revolution that happened was technoliberal in character and seems to allow not only no alternative but no outside space from which one might form a critical perspective or offer resistance. 

 

If McLaren had bothered to keep up with his reading - some Baudrillard perhaps - he might have understood that although the beach does indeed lie beneath the paving stones, it too is a constructed (artificial) reality that merely provides the illusion of depth and the false promise of authentic freedom [8].

 

As the conceptual artist Michal Martychowiec has shown, what were once believed to be natural grains of sand are actually cold and lifeless glass crystals ... [9] 

 

 

V.

 

If, then, McLaren retained a fixed model of style based on the look of music and the sound of fashion and a fixed politics that relied for the most part on subversive pranks and the technique of détournement [10], so too did he hold on to the same concept of sex throughout his life - one closely tied to his radical politics. 

 

Influenced by thinkers such as Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, McLaren was of the view that liberating libidinal energies would outrage bourgeois society and threaten a culture founded upon sexual repression.

 

Thus, like so many other sex radicals and countercultural theorists, McLaren sought to weaponise desire, using pornographic images printed on T-shirts and a range of fetishwear sold in SEX and Seditionaries, for example, to provoke public outrage and incite his young clientele to insurrection.  

 

McLaren was (naively and mistakenly) convinced that by dragging the forbidden into the open, he was striking a blow against the state. However, this politics of desire relied entirely on what Michel Foucault famously termed the repressive hypothesis - i.e., the flawed belief that power functions primarily through prohibition, censorship, and denial. 

 

What McLaren failed to realise - and what Foucault brilliantly demonstrated [11] - is that modern power does not repress sex; it incites it, categorises it, and manages it. By remaining stuck in a sixties model of liberation, McLaren's radicalism was easily co-opted. He believed he was unleashing a dangerous, and authentic energy, when in reality, he was merely pioneering a highly profitable new market and the pornification of society.  

 

Decades later, he was still talking about bondage trousers with their zipper crotch with the exact same pseudo-academic earnestness and revolutionary zeal of a soixante-huitard [12]. 

 

 

VI. 

 

If there is one word that comes to define Malcolm McLaren's thinking, it's not sex, nor style, nor even subversion - it is rather authenticity. That's the thing that most intrigued him and which he set out to discover - authenticity in an age of artificiality and what he termed karaoke culture [13].

 

In an interview in 1999, McLaren describes authenticity as something dirty, horrible, and disgusting; something which "is to be found in the ruins" and involves "reclaiming the past"; something which is complex and "has built into it this uncomfortable idea of chaos"; something which contrasts with everything valued today as success [14].    

 

He certainly makes it sound attractive and almost has me sold on the idea. But then he goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid (or at the very least politically naive); "the authentic is something that isn't as easily assimilated by capital" [15] - something that can't conveniently be packaged and sold. 

 

At that point, one realises that ultimately McLaren is still a romantic idealist at heart who has failed to fully learn the crucial (Situationist) message at the centre of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). Namely, that even something like punk is very quickly recuperated - no matter how authentic it may be [16]; that even the most radical ideas and images can be stripped of their danger and turned into products or harmless forms of entertainment.    

 

 

VII.

 

So, to conclude ...

 

McLaren disappoints because of his inability (or refusal) to recognise that his ideals of sex, style, and subversion, had been rendered null and void by a radical neoliberal shift in the 1980s. 

 

His political and aesthetic strategy relied on a set of mid-century conditions that no longer existed, including a rigid, easily shocked, top-down Establishment that could be genuinely threatened by countercultural activity involving the look of music and the sound of fashion.

 

What Mark Fisher terms capitalist realism thrives on the revolutionary rhetoric and authenticity McLaren championed - the pursuit of individual expression, personal branding, constant reinvention, etc. 

 

During his Duck Rock and Nostalgia of Mud phase, McLaren operated under the optimistic delusion that paganism and primitivism were wild forces external to the market. He would insist that a man on a mountain side tapping two sticks together makes a much bigger sound than all the musicians playing electric instruments or programming their synthesisers. But the sound of two sticks can be just as easily commodified as techno-pop (file it under world music and allow it to be sampled by others).    

 

The fact is, in the twenty-first century, there is no Outside from which to launch an attack and desire is no longer (if it ever was) a wild revolutionary force; it is an entirely synthetic product engineered by the market. Capitalism does not repress our libido - it structures it through algorithms, infinite digital feeds, and consumer niches, pre-formatting what we want long before we even know it. 

 

Ironically, when McLaren made his critique of karaoke culture, arguing that young people had become timid consumers of an endlessly recyled past, he failed to realise that this digital landscape was the monstrous offspring of his own '60s ideology and that youth today are not lazy or complacent - many are acutely aware that things are fucked up - but they feel powerless to act (what Fisher terms reflexive impotence) in a way that McLaren's post-War generation of baby boomers were not. 

 

Notes

 

[1] The interview took place in late 1976 at the Denmark Street studio where the band used to rehearse and essentially squat. It was broadcast on the London Weekend Show, hosted by Janet Street-Porter, on 28 November 1976. It was one of the very first television features dedicated to the underground punk scene. To watch a clip on YouTube, click here. 

 

[2] Years later, during McLaren's Charisma Records period (1982-85), that love and loyalty paid off when he placed me inside the label's press office (acting as a kind of spy). I have written several posts about my time at Charisma: click here.  

 

[3] The name Stuckism was coined in January 1999 by Charles Thomson in response to a poem by Billy Childish in which the latter relays that his former girlfriend, Tracey Emin, had repeatedly said he was stuck with his art, writing and music. 

      After exhibiting in small galleries in Shoreditch, London, the Stuckists' first show in a major public museum was held in 2004 at the Walker Art Gallery, as part of the Liverpool Biennial. It was titled 'The Stuckists Punk Victorian'.  

      By 2017, the initial group of thirteen British artists had expanded to 236 groups in 52 countries and although painting is the dominant artistic form of Stuckism, artists using other media such as photography, sculpture, film and collage have also joined, and share the Stuckist opposition to conceptualism. 

      I would like to say more, but this is probably not the right time or place - I will endeavour to publish a post on Stuckism in the near future. 

 

[4] Interestingly, however, the first Stuckist manifesto issued by Childish and Thomson in 1999, opens with the line: "Stuckism is a quest for authenticity" [3] and that is something that McLaren fundamentally endorsed, frequently contrasting it with what he called karaoke culture, as we shall discuss.

      However, the manifesto also emphasises the value of painting as a medium and opposes what is seen as the superficial novelty and nihilism of conceptual art and postmodernism and McLaren, who often styled himself an artist without portfolio and whose final works were audio-visual in nature, would laugh at the statement: "Artists who don't paint aren't artists." I also like to think that, unlike the Stuckists, McLaren would always choose irony over sincerity, viewing art as a material practice rather than a form of spirituality. 

      The first Stuckist manifesto (1999) can be found on their website: click here.  

 

[5] To be fair, this idea of living yesterday tomorrow is not simply an exercise in bogus nostalgia and can be tied to Mark Fisher's thinking on retrofuturism and hauntology and the reclaiming of what he calls lost futures. In notes written in 2000, McLaren discussed how history might be reclaimed (and not merely pissed on): 

      "The question I find most interesting is how you reclaim history. This is a very different thing from repackaging it. It's not about nostalgia, which is basically dead tissue. Living yesterday tomorrow should be about reclaiming history then reversing it into the future. If you can discover how to do that, you are probably doing everything an artist genuinely wishes to be involved in. One must aim to use ceratin disruptive practices to challenge the dominant cultural forms and relax the grip of authority."

      Quoted by Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 718-719.   

 

[6] An end-of-term Christmas concert in 1957 "provided the eleven-year-old with what he would later describe as 'an epiphanic moment'. Among those selected to provide entertainment was a young male teacher who performed an enthusiastic rendition of Jerry Lee Lewis's rollicking 'Great Balls of Fire'." McLaren, who had never seen or heard anything like it, was understandably blown away. 

      Not long afterwards, his older brother took him to see Buddy Holly & the Crickets and Malcolm was fascinated with rock 'n' roll subculture for the rest of his life. See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 30.  

 

[7] McLaren failed to get to Paris in May '68 due to ongoing French rail and air strikes. He did, however, visit the French capital at the end of June and his political imagination was excited by the literature and graphics of the Situationist International (even if he couldn't read much French). 

      Back in London, and friends by this point with Jamie Reid and Fred Vermorel, McLaren got involved with the SI's (unofficial) British offshoot known as King Mob. See my post titled 'It Was Meant to Be Great But It's Horrible: Christmas with Uncle Malcolm and the King Mob' (21 Dec 2025): click here.     

 

[8] See the essay by Nataliya Atanasova, 'We Dreamt a Beach and Found a Desert: What It Means to Live in Post-Situationist Reality', Sofia Philosophical Review (1): 70-85 (2026). This essay can be downloaded as a free pdf via Academia.edu.   

 

[9] Sous les pavés, la plage! was a solo exhibition by Polish artist Michal Martychowiec, held at the De Sarthe Gallery in Beijing (16 July to 13 August, 2017). Creating a deceptively inviting beach setting, Martychowiec replaced natural sand with industrially produced glass crystals, in order to critique capitalist realism. For more details visit his website, michalmartychowiec.com 

 

[10] Détournement is a Situationist technique by which familiar images and texts are recontextualised or amusingly altered in some fashion, forcing people to question the original ideological meanings embedded within them. 

      It was outlined by Guy Debord and Gil Wolman in their Mode d’emploi du détournement, which originally appeared in the Belgian surrealist journal Les Lèvres Nues #8 (May 1956). An English translation by Ken Knabb can be found in the Situationist International Anthology (Revised and Expanded Edition, PM Press, 2024).     

 

[11] See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1998). 

      Foucault persuasively argues in part two of this work that what most perversely characterises modern societies, "is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret" (p. 35).   

 

[12] See the episode of Being Malcolm (Canal Jimmy, 2000) titled 'How To Make Subversive Trousers' in which McLaren discusses the design for bondage trousers, created in 1976 and sold in Sex and Seditionaries, the shops he operated at 430 King's Road with Vivienne Westwood. It was uploaded to YouTube by the Malcolm McLaren Estate in 2015. 

 

[13] McLaren first unveiled his Karaoke Culture thesis in an essay titled '8-Bit Punk' published in Wired (November 2003) He spent the final decade of his life expanding this concept, giving a 2010 TED Talk titled 'Authentic creativity vs. karaoke culture' shortly before his death.

      The manifesto is founded upon the idea that contemporary culture is a kind of desert of the real and that young people today are incapable of generating authentic and original art, prefering to 'mouth the words to other people's songs' - i.e., surrendering agency and living by proxy, whilst chasing instant celebrity and success (afraid of struggle and failure). Karoake culture, argued, McLaren, built a risk-free environment (or safe space) - the antithesis of 430 King's Road. To combat this, McLaren championed a romantic return to creative authenticity and real sex with real bodies in order to discover real pleasures, which had to be better, he said, than 'fucking an inflatable doll'. 

 

[14] Jefferson Hack, 'A Malcolm McLaren Moment', Another Magazine (7 May 2013) - revisiting an interview originally conducted in 1999. 

 

[15] Ibid.

 

[16] Récupération is the situationist term for the co-option and commercialization of radical ideas. Formulated by Guy Debord and the Situationist International in 1960, it describes the process by which subversive concepts are twisted and absorbed into mainstream consumer culture as harmless, innocuous commodities. 

 

 

Part two in this series - 'Nietzsche - The Man Who Failed to Die at the Right Time' (15 July 2026) can be read here.

 

 

Magic Moments (In Memory of Joyce Greenfield 1931 - 2013)

 Joyce Greenfield and Perry Como 

sharing a magic moment 

Time can't erase the memory of 

These magic moments filled with love 

 

 

Like many people, I associate the popular song 'Magic Moments' composed by Burt Bacharach, written by Hal David, and recorded by Perry Como in 1957 [1], with TV ads for Quality Street [2].   

 

But when I listen to it, I also think of my best friend's mother who loved the song so much she had it played at her funeral service in 2013 [3].  

 

At the time, I didn't quite understand the choice; didn't know if it primarily revealed her sense of fun, her passion for smooth American crooners, or her love of confectionery.  

 

But having just re-read a quote from Malcolm McLaren in Paul Gorman's biography, I think I finally understand why the song held such profound meaning for her generation. Recalling his own childhood in the late 1950s, McLaren explains how it captured the pure optimism of an era transitioning away from post-War austerity into a period of consumer affluence and joyful exuberance:

 

"As well as 'Rock Around the Clock' I heard Perry Como's 'Magic Moments', which our mother had bought. The sound became interesting to me, because it seemed to be a language that everybody emotionally felt in some way. They responded to it. It could have been absolutely inane if you sat down and thought about it, but that didn't matter because it was a train people wanted to get on. They all thought it sexy, and so did I." [4]  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] 'Magic Moments' was originally the B-side of Perry Como's 'Catch a Falling Star' (RCA Victor, 1957), released in December 1957. However, such was its popularity that the single effectively became a double A-side and the song charted in its own right, reaching number one in the UK thereby becoming Como's biggest UK hit. To watch Como and friends performing the song back in the day, click here. Or for audio only, click here. 

 

[2] For non-British readers, I should explain that Quality Street is a tin of mixed toffees and chocolates first manufactured in 1936 by Mackintosh's in Halifax, West Yorkshire and, since 1988, produced by Nestlé. A real Christmas favourite, it was named after J. M. Barrie's popular four-act comedy Quality Street (1901). 

     

[3] Born in Bethnal Green in 1931, Hannah Joyce Greenfield - known as Joyce by friends and family - was evacuated to Wales during the Blitz, returning to London towards the end of the War, finding employment in the rag trade having left school at fourteen. 

      After marrying, she and her husband, John, moved like so many other Eastenders to Essex, where they raised three children; a daughter, Lynne, and two sons, Peter and Andrew. The latter recalls that his house growing up was always full of the popular music from the 1950s and '60s and that his mother was particularly fond of singing along to Perry Como's 'Magic Moments'.

     Joyce - who in some ways was like a second mother to me, so much time did I spend at her house with my friend Andy - sadly passed away on 29 November 2013, aged 82. Her funeral took place (like my mother's ten years later) at South Essex Crematorium, on 13 December 2013.      

 

[4] Malcolm McLaren quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 31.     

 

 

Whitley Bay (In Memory of My Mother)

Vintage poster from the 1920s encouraging holidaymakers 

to take the train to Whitley Bay [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Although, in a very real sense, Soho is my spiritual home and the place in which I feel happiest, dig deeper, as Heidegger would say, and you will find me standing on golden sands ... [2] 

 

 

II.

 

Whitley Bay is a seaside town in the North Tyneside borough of Tyne and Wear, England [3] - about ten miles east of Newcastle. It's perhaps most famous for its grey-black rocks that my mother used to love climbing on as a little girl and St. Mary's Lighthouse [4].

 

The town has a long history stretching back to at least 1100 when it is first mentioned in historical documents. But it wasn't until the late 19th-century that it emerged as a popular seaside holiday resort - rather than a coal mining town [5] - after it, along with several other small coastal towns, was connected by rail to Newcastle. 

 

At this time, the town was still known as Whitley and was often confused with the far more famous (and upmarket) town of Whitby, in North Yorkshire. Fed up with the problems this caused, including misdirected mail, in 1901 local residents were asked to suggest a new name and Whitley Bay came out on top (the town officially adopted this new name the following year).    

 

 

III. 

 

If it doesn't have the most illustrious roll call of famous names associated with it, Whitley Bay is nevertheless where comedy writer Ian La Frenais was born, in 1937, and he went on to co-create with Dick Clement one of the 1970s British TV shows most celebrated on Torpedo the Ark [6]. 

 

And it is also where my mother was born, 100 years ago today ... Whitley Bay remaining the place she loved best, despite her living in Essex for over 75 years and rarely returning to the North East after leaving to start a newly married life at the end of the 1940s.  

 

A print of the picture above, by John Littlejohns, still hangs in her bedroom even now, three years after her death [7].  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The original art deco style poster was designed by John Littlejohns in 1929. It was commissioned by the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) to promote services to Whitley Bay and displayed at local stations as well as larger stations on the East Coast Main Line including London. The work is held in the collection of the National Railway Museum in York, which is part of the Science Museum Group. 

      The poster features Table Rocks Pool, situated just south of Whitley Bay and north of Cullercoats, showing people in fashionable bathing gear. This small natural tidal pool was developed and made safe for swimmers in the 1890s following a number of fatalities. It was later significantly expanded in size (to 70ft) and steps were added along with a hut to provide changing facilities, although, unfortunately, this blew down in strong gales four years after its erection in 1912. 

      Sadly, by the 1970s - as more and more English people deserted the British seaside and flew off to the Spanish Costas - the pool had fallen into disuse. However, it still remains visible at low tide even today.  

 

[2] I'm paraphrasing a line that Heidegger is reputed to have liked saying: 'Dig deeper and you will find yourself standing on Catholic ground.' See the essay by John D. Caputo, 'Heidegger and Theology', in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignan (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 270.

 

[3] Whitley Bay has been part of Tyne and Wear since 1974. Prior to that it was governed as part of Northumberland. 

 

[4] St. Mary's Lighthouse (1898) is on the tiny St. Mary's Island (aka Bait Island), just north of Whitley Bay on the coast of NE England. The small rocky island is linked to the mainland by a short concrete causeway which is submerged at high tide. 

      Sadly, it was decommissioned in 1984, just two years after its conversion to automatic operation. It is now a tourist attraction run by the North Tyneside Council. In addition to the lighthouse itself there is a small museum, a visitor's centre, and a café. In 2012, St. Mary's Lighthouse attained grade II listed status. Plans for further renovation have so far come to nothing due to financial issues and environmental concerns.   

 

[5] Exposed coal seams can still be seen in the cliffs north of St. Mary's Island and it's possible to pick up shiny black pieces of coal from the beach at low tide. 

      For younger readers who may not know, coal is a combustible sedimentary rock formed from fossilised plant matter subjected to intense heat and pressure over millions of years. While sparkling diamonds may be a girl's best friend, for me, it's coal that has a more magical allure with its lustrous sheen; and for D. H. Lawrence, the son of a miner, coal was a powerful symbol of the earth's hidden forces, carbon providing the elemental clue to human nature. 

      I mention Lawrence here not only for a literary connection to coal, but because, like him, I am also the son of a miner (loosely speaking); my father left school in Newcastle at fourteen in the year my mother was born and the General Strike took place (1926) and spent a very brief spell down the pits. Hating the experience, he took a job working in a paint factory instead. 

 

[6] I'm referring of course to Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (BBC One, 1973-74). 

      Certain scenes in The Likely Lads (dir. Michael Tuchner, 1976) - the feature-length spin-off of the TV show - were filmed in Whitley Bay. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, the movie starred Rodney Bewes and James Bolam, reprising their roles as Bob and Terry. 

 

[7] Readers who want a fine art quality medium-sized print (52 x 62 cm) can find one (framed) on the King & McGaw website priced at £160. Produced in partnership with the National Railway Museum, every purchase of the print helps support this institution.  

 

 

Rigsby and the Grey Lady

Fig. 1: Gay Rose as Brenda is amused to see 

Richard Beckinsale as Alan dressed in his Grey Lady garb  

 

 

I. Things That Go Bump in the Night: A Christmas Ghost Story

 

In paranormal folklore, a wandering female spirit is typically referred to as the Grey Lady. 

 

Fans of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter will doubtless think of Helena Ravenclaw whose ghost haunts Ravenclaw House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  

 

But fans of the classic 1970s British sitcom Rising Damp (1974-78) - of which I'm one - will immediately think of the series two episode titled 'Things That Go Bump in the Night' [1].

 

Written by Eric Chappell and directed by Len Lurcuck, the episode first aired on 19 December 1975, and starred Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby, Richard Beckinsale as Alan, Don Warrington as Philip, and Gay Rose as Brenda [2].   

 

Because of its broadcast date, it can reasonably be considered a Christmas ghost story, constituting a marvellous comic addition to an ancient British practice of pagan origin [3]. 

 

  

II. Things That Go Bump in the Night: Synopsis

 

After Alan returns late one night from the cinema, having taken Brenda to see Doctor Zhivago (1965) [4], he and Rigsby get into a discussion about the latter's preference for watching horror films on TV, such as Dracula's Daughter (1936) and The Mummy's Hand (1940). 

 

Alan suggests this shows a morbid frame of mind, but Rigsby insists they have something important to teach us about "the eternal struggle between good and evil, revealing the darker side of human nature" (3:27) [5] and that the supernatural is not something to be lightly dismissed: "They don't like it when you're frivolous about them." (7:09) 

 

Knowing that despite his claims not to believe in vampires and ghosts Alan won't walk through the local churchyard after dark, Rigsby decides to play a joke on him with the aid of a rubber werewolf's hand bought from a local toy shop. 

 

Having scared the bejesus out of Alan, Rigsby then attempts to do the same to Philip by wearing a ghoulish rubber mask. Unfortunately, and hilariously, the urbane and supercool Philip isn't fooled or frightened by Rigsby and greets him calmly when he jumps out - "Hello Rigsby" (8:21) - advising him also to change his face soap.  

 

Undeterred, Rigsby then tells them the tale of the Grey Lady who is said to haunt the house, having being walled up long ago. This gives Philip an amusing idea, which involves Alan donning an old-fashioned long dress and bonnet in order to scare Rigsby. This he does, twice, on the stairs: "My God, she's a size", Rigsby tells Philip: "She's got wild hair and feet like barges. No wonder they walled her up." (14:40) 

 

All of this is much to Brenda's amusement (see fig. 1 above) and, interestingly, she also seems far more sexually attracted to Alan when he's in drag than she was earlier at the cinema: "Well, now you're here, why don't you take your frock off?" (11:47) [6]        

 

Philip persuades Rigsby that the Grey Lady is trying to get in touch and they need to hold a séance - although Rigsby isn't keen on putting the lights out until Brenda expresses the fact that she's game. And it's whilst the lights are out that Rigsby accidently on purpose has the opportunity to bump into Brenda, his hands touching her breasts: Quite firm (15:57) [7].

 

They hold hands round the table: and Philip contacts the Grey Lady: "Are you there, lady in grey? Do you wish to speak to us? Knock once for no and twice for yes." (16:31) Alan, hiding in the room, tells Rigsby in a comical ghostly voice that she's alone and unhappy and that he should be kind to his tenants before it's too late: "Money isn't everything. Don't be an old skinflint." (17:27)

 

Thinking that there must be a tape recorder hidden in the room, Rigsby jumps up and pulls back the curtain from behind which the voice emanates - only to encounter the Grey Lady for a third time. He runs from the room screaming.     

 

The following day, Rigsby enlists the help of sceptical local vicar (played by Norman Bird) and his overly enthusiastic cricket-loving curate (David Rowlands). The vicar tells Rigsby he'll see what can be done, although he's reluctant to perform the elaborate exorcism that Rigsby is demanding with holy water sprinkled over everything, insisting there must be some natural explanation and that "too much spiritual excitement" is "bad for the digestion" (20:15).  

 

Predictably - this is a sitcom after all - things do not go as planned. The clergymen only discover Alan and Brenda canoodling on the sofa and manage to photograph Rigsby - now dressed as the Grey Lady having found the outfit and uncovered the deception (not quite what they hoped for the parish magazine).  

 

They storm off with the vicar telling Rigsby he doesn't need a priest - he needs a doctor. 

 

This leaves a final scene on the stairs outside Brenda's room in which Rigsby, still in Grey Lady get-up, asks Philip for a light. Philip gives him such and then delivers with his usual deadpan comic skill the killer line: "You know something Rigsby, we just can't go on meeting like this." (23:35) See fig. 2 below. 

 

III. Things That Go Bump in the Night: Why I Love This Episode

There are several reasons why I love this particular episode of Rising Damp. Here are arguably the main two:  

 

Firstly, it cleverly subverts the Gothic horror tradition and writer Eric Chappell brilliantly plays with the Christmas ghost story trope by setting his tale not in some lonely country mansion or haunted castle, but the slightly seedy world of the boarding house and bed-sit. 

 

Exploring Rigsby's superstitious character - established in earlier episodes such as 'Black Magic' (S1/E2, 1974) and 'Charisma' (S1/E4, 1974) - always produces comedy gold and it's fun to discover that not only is he a lover of classic horror movies, but an avid reader of Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1839). 

 

Secondly, the episode provides a masterclass in physical acting - and I say that as someone who isn't a great fan of slapstick, farce, and/or the use of drag in order to solicit laughter. It works here, though because the writing is so good and Rossiter, Beckinsale and Warrington all give sterling performances - as does Gay Rose [8]. 

 

I am very aware of the fact that Fawlty Towers (BBC Two, 1975-79) is critically regarded as superior to Rising Damp, but if I were exiled on a desert island, I know which box set I'd rather have with me ... [9]  

 

 

Fig. 2: Rigsby (Leonard Rossiter) in the Grey Lady outfit

and Philip (Don Warrington) being supercool and witty as always 

 

Notes

 

[1] Rising Damp, 'Things That Go Bump in the Night' (S2/E7) can be watched in full on YouTube: click here. Times for the lines quoted from the episode will be given in the post.    

 

[2] Brenda, an artist model, played by Canadian actress Gabrielle Rose (credited as Gay Rose), temporarily replaced Miss Jones (Frances de la Tour) in the second series of Rising Damp. De la Tour was obliged to step away from the show in 1975 due to theatre commitments. Although she only appeared in four episodes as a new tenant, Rose made an interesting addition to the cast and I have always been fond of her character who added a missing sexual element to the show. 

 

[3] Telling ghost stories by the fire on those long December nights is rooted in the ancient winter festival of Yule, celebrated by Germanic peoples to mark the solstice; a time when people believed that the veil separating the living from the dead was thin. 

      It is an oral custom that carried on into the Christian era and the telling of terrifying tales and spooky stories had a real resurgence in Victorian England thanks to authors including Charles Dickens and M. R. James (the latter's 1904 collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary remains a spine-chilling example of the genre). 

      If largely overshadowed by more modern (and more commercial) Christmas traditions, the custom of telling ghost stories never completely went away and in the 1970s the BBC broadcast a series of short television films under the title A Ghost Story for Christmas (1971-78).

       And so, as indicated, the Rising Damp episode under discussion here must be understood within a broader cultural context. Readers who want to know more are encouraged to read The Ghost: A Cultural History (Tate Publishing, 2017), by the writer and art historian Susan Owens.   

 

[4] Directed by David Lean, Doctor Zhivago (1965) is an epic historical romance set in Russia which "deals with man's disillusionment with the Russian Revolution" (2:12). Alan was hoping it would get Brenda in a nice romantic mood - which it did; she fell in love with Omar Sharif.  

 

[5] Alan is impressed with Rigsby's insight, but he is simply repeating something he heard on Film Night, the BBC Two show that aired from 1968 until 1976 and featured movie reviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and interviews with prominent actors and directors.    

[6] Whilst gender play is, one suspects, quite a common phenomenon in the bedroom, some members of the kink community use the term Gynemimetophilia for this form of attraction. Coined by sexologist John Money in 1984, this clinical term refers to a sexual attraction to men who mimic or impersonate women, including cross-dressers and drag queens. 

      Although nothing is made explicit in the episode of Rising Damp under discussion, it does contain a scene in which, having been defrocked by Brenda, Alan tells her she's terrific and that they must do whatever it is they've done again sometime; that she's made him feel like a man. The more sexually experienced Brenda seems fairly blasé and simply reminds Alan not to forget to put his dress back on when he leaves. See the scene beginning at 13:31.  

 

[7] This is probably my favourite line in the episode, but I cannot decide whether it was scripted by Eric Chappell or ad-libbed by Leonard Rossiter. And I'm not alone in this; writing in an article on Rising Damp for the website Television Heaven (published on 5 June 2020), Andrew Cobby admits to his own indecision concerning who should be credited with the line, deciding that even if Rossiter didn't come up with it, he should be praised as an actor for making it sound as if it's ad-libbed.

      Either way, it's a hilarious line, which seems to make Brenda smile - or again, is that the actress Gay Rose who is amused and on the verge of breaking character? I can't tell, even though I've watched the scene repeatedly.   

 

[8] I have to confess that I'm not so keen on the supporting roles played by Bird and Rowlands, but don't wish to say anything too negative about either actor here. 

 

[9] Actually, several critics have come round to the opinion that Fawlty Towers hasn't aged as well as Rising Damp and now feels like a clever but clockwork theatrical farce rather than a genuine sitcom. 

      Writing in The Guardian (20 November 2009) Catherine Shoard argues that, at its best, Rising Damp "bears comparison with Beckett and Pinter". Plus, as she rightly notes, "it's hilarious".

      See also Michael Henerson's article 'Shouldn't we celebrate Rising Damp?' in The Spectator (24 September 2025), which argues that the ITV show was every bit as good as Fawlty Towers - just as funny and featuring a central performance by Leonard Rossiter just as convincing as that given us by John Cleese.  

      

 

Readers who wish to read more about Rising Damp are advised to go to Oh ... Miss Jones! a fantastic online resource for all things Rigsby: click here.