Dave & the sound of the crowd

Another curious week for the main party leaders: The Brow-Furrowed Son of the Manse (who has appeared relatively gay at times over these terrible last seven days); and the man whom most young Tory PPCs think of as Jesus but to whom Simon Heffer near-religiously and sneeringly refers to as 'Dave'.

Cameron has capped it by going on Adam Boulton's Sky show and saying: yes, he would support the government taking a majority shareholding in RBS; yes, Brown did ‘the right thing in announcing the pan to recapitalize the banking system’; and yes, he accepted that accordingly ‘borrowing is gong to increase.’ He further declared that ‘it would be completely wrong for senior executives in those banks to get a bonus this year’ and, when asked about whether some ought to get the sack, remarked that he ‘would be very surprised if they all kept their jobs.’
So another robustly bipartisan show from DC, the stuff about bankers very much contra to Boris Johnson’s would-be stirring statements at Tory party conference the other week; and the stuff about state intervention in banks clearly not the message George Osborne would have liked to convey at conference either, at least before the initial collapse of the US bail-out caught that conference squarely on the hop.
It looks like in the main the Tories are going to sit this ruckus out politely, trust that in other respects Cameron’s strident efforts to make the party look a little more clean-limbed and cuddly will be judged effective, and that in the long run the electorate will end up blaming the Government for The Crisis. John Rentoul in today’s Independent certainly thinks they surely will: ‘We can argue about whether they are half-right or half-wrong to blame Brown for the economic difficulties that now loom before us, but there is no doubting what the majority opinion is. I expect that the Tories' focus groups reflect the views of the members of the public buttonholed by TV cameras on the street last week: they blame the Government and are especially furious that they, as taxpayers, should be asked to bail out the greedy bankers who were allowed to break the economy.’

Crusaders review on Bookgeeks

There's a very thoughtful Crusaders notice just gone up on the Bookgeeks site, written by Simon Appleby, with a lot of attention paid to some of the internal parallels of character and theme and situation and whatnot. He goes on to say, "Crusaders is a very well-written, tightly-plotted and above all character-driven novel, and Kelly puts his fascination with film to good use with some very cinematic scenes, while the phonetically-rendered Geordie dialogue quickly becomes second nature for the reader... I did not know what to expect from Crusaders - but having finished it, I am kicking myself for not having read it eight months ago." That's great, and I hope a good few other potential readers who were resistant to a £14.99 Royal format paperback back in January might feel themselves drawn to the svelte £8.99 B format now in stores...

Roman Polanski - Wanted and Desired: BBC4 Monday Oct 13th, 10pm

I'm pleased to see the much-admired Polanski doc airs on BBC4's Storyville strand next Monday. The blurb goes likes so: "Thirty years ago, Roman Polanski was convicted of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. After serving 42 days in prison, he fled the US and has never returned. Roman Polanski - Wanted and Desired reopens this complex and controversial case and explores what happens when one of the world's most famous directors gets trapped inside one of his own movies."

I just now re-read the chapter of Polanski's memoir Roman wherein he revisits the sexual episode with the young girl during a Vogue Hommes photo-shoot; his subsequent arrest, to his apparent surprise; those 42 scary days he spent in Chino jail on the orders of the curious Californian Judge Rittenband; and his flight to London and then Paris once he realised that further and protracted punishment might be in store.

So I'm curious to see how the doc tells this tale. I'm aware Rittenband is a controversial figure; also that the girl, now a woman, who has forgiven Polanski, is nonetheless considered a victim of a grave assault by those who have studied the police reports.

The only thing that bugs me about that blurb above is the stuff about Polanski 'getting trapped inside one of his movies', which piles into an especially high load of old media horseshit about Polanski. They first said that in 1969, after Charles Manson's ratbag hippie acolytes murdered Polanski's pregnant wife, and why? Because he'd made Rosemary's Baby. It's slovenly journalism that exhibits a strange and sudden newsman's piety toward the supernatural. Does it work in reverse too? Is Polanski 'trapped' inside The Pianist since the Nazis murdered his mother in a concentration camp?

Anyhow, we shall watch and see...

Money: formerly the best thing money could buy

I had to go straight to Reuters this morning just to feel as goddamn low as possible, in this case with some coverage of the IMF’s latest grim World Economic Outlook. The facts, as bald as we know 'em to be - ‘the world economy is now entering a major downturn in the face of the most dangerous shock in mature financial markets since the 1930s.’ The IMF confirm that Europe and the US are in a special pit of hell, but China and India, if looking at slower growth, will be ‘supported by solid private consumption.’ Lucky them. But we’ll be tightening our belts round this household, no bloody fear.
Still, I couldn’t quite resist checking in on Hamish McRae at the Independent, since he was offering the headline ‘Amid all the panic, there is some good news.’ And to his mind the good news can be summarised thus:
- ‘The Bank of England can and will cut interest rates, which will make things easier for borrowers and for the commercial banks themselves.’ (A prediction Gordon Brown had the pleasure of confirming as reality around lunchtime.)
- ‘the vast majority of British people will be able to go on servicing their mortgages… the home loans the banks swap for cash at the Bank of England will not involve any loss to the Bank or ultimately the taxpayer.’ (I like this faith in the Good Old Vast Majority of British people currently renting their homes from the banks...)
- 'There is virtually no theoretical limit to the amount of money a central bank can create… The big point here is that the modern state has enormous financial power. Providing confidence in its own competence is maintained it can borrow on an almost unthinkably large scale.’ (If this is good news then I'd rather get back into my little pit of hell and wait for the burning to stop. Still, confidence of all kinds is what we're after right now.)

Roman Polanski's Tess revisited

The BBC are running their new version of Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbevilles, which is a perfectly natural and interesting thing for them to do given the public's liking for grand old books well-mounted, and this sorry tale in particular. Gemma Arterton, about to take her bow as this year's Ill-Fated Bond Girl (as well as the face of a new Bond Girl fragrance) takes the lead. I caught a few minutes the other night and it all looked fine and affecting enough. But the age you are counts when you come to these things, doesn't it? Back in 1979 aged 9 I was desperate to see Roman Polanski's big-screen Tess, just because of the utterly indelible impression made on me by its poster featuring Nastassja Kinski, who definitely at that time eemed to me the definition of an angel on earth. I eventually got to see the film a couple of years later on video, and it haunted me, as the saying goes. I only had an idea, albeit a fascinated one, of who Polanski was. It took me another year or so to find his memoir Roman and learn that Tess was a book Sharon Tate kept by her bedside and urged upon her late husband; that his version was a form of uxuriousness, a debt of love; and that Polanski never needed to be told that the world is cruel. So yes, Kinski's beauty was a big factor in luring me to Tess the movie, and I became her dogged fan over the next 5 years as she appeared in about 43 movies, of varying distinction. But Tess was also the start of my love of Polanski, and the near-ancient sense of fatalism and sadness that underlies his work. He was the right man for Tess, whatever they said at the time.

Sound advice on working practice by Muhammad Ali

This last week has had me re-reading The Great Shark Hunt, Hunter Thompson's late-70s era compendium of his journalism, which ends with the long interview-based study of Ali done after the first Leon Spinks fight. It's glorious stuff. Some say Thompson never wrote anything else that was much good thereafter. Whereas Ali beat Spinks in the rematch in New Orleans, though some might say it came at a grave cost to his physical wellbeing.

Thompson found Ali licking his wounds somewhat, but never down, never out. He blamed himself for not having got in the right shape and mindset, however younger and fiercer was Spinks. He had been with his adored wife and kids right up to the fight, which was lovely, but the doting had made him soft.

So what will you do if you get another shot? asked Thompson.

'I got to get away from the babies', said the Champ. 'I got to get evil. Gotta chop trees, run up hills, get in my old log cabin.'

And that's not the worst advice for a writer either, every once in a while, if indeed they happen to have an old log cabin at their disposal, and just as long as they get all that 'evil' stuff out and pinned onto a page before they come home.

The Strange Case of Richard Kellys

Thanks to a deft intervention from my brother David this site can now be accessed via the URLs http://www.richardkelly.co.uk/ and http://www.richardkelly.org.uk/. Well and good, and my only vague unease arises in the thought of now trying to lay sovereign claim to my given name online, shy of its distinguishing middle initial. That 'T' had to be affected as long ago as the Dark Ages before online search engines, when I realised how common was my name, indeed with what regularity it would crop up in the particular fields of endeavour (film, literature) where I was trying roughly to make my way.

In fact, even before that (and new acquaintances of mine tend scarcely to believe this Amazing Fact), at university I made a great friend in a guy who was also called Richard Kelly, and with whom I actually shared digs for a year, causing the inevitable calamity for all post and telephone enquiries. Richard was and is - would you believe it? - taller and better-looking than me, so the confusion mercifully ended in the flesh, so to speak. But as a fan of Poe's William Wilson and Conrad's The Secret Sharer and Nabokov's Despair and just about every other literary fable of the doppelganger, this Stunning Coincidence was of great amusement to me just as it was to Tall Richard, 'mon semblable, mon frere'. But at that juncture we both of us agreed that the adoption of a middle initial in certain matters would be politic.

Yet this was not the end of the strange case, dear sir, oh no. When I published my first book Alan Clarke in 1998, I pondered for a while and then decided to take the plunge of being billed as plain old Richard Kelly: a way of making my first little self-affirmative scratch on the wall of books and bookmen. Utter folly, as it turned out, for when scouting around for reviews my heart jumped on several occasions to see my name listed in the table of contents - only to find that I shared my name with not one but two reputable scholars, one the acknowledged authority on the poems of John Berryman, the other a teacher at Manchester Grammar Scholar with several well-praised volumes to his name on the psephology of British general elections.

'Scoundrels! Imposters! Accursed villains!'

Well, no, of course - in fact, I wrote to the Manchester RK inviting him to share in the amusement of the Great RK coincidence, and he sent a very witty reply full of Dostoyevskian ironies, asking me that I please be sure to keep him apprised of what We were up to.

All of this had come to pass even before the young Californian film director of Donnie Darko and Southland Tales fame reared his head. I severely doubt he's ever been mistaken for me, but you would be surprised how often the opposite used to occur... More than once I received emails from hip art magazines asking for my contribution or views on some cultural issue of the day, and with a sigh I would realise that the request was intended for my youthful and famous namesake. Still, I would do my best to preserve the masquerade and send back obscene and highly inappropriate replies to these magazines, just to make things a bit tougher for the talented young master. (Not really.)

Still, one should dwell on the matter no further. Clearly all these Richard Kellys are a good bunch of people with which to be grouped, even if only via aforementioned search engines. Presumably there are honest people out there called Jeffrey Archer, say, or Jonathan Aitken, who have never held a position in any Tory cabinet but must occasionally feel themselves traduced by association nonetheless.

Get Shearer, or, The Medals of his Defeats

I know a fair few Newcastle United fans, and I reckon they’re all pretty smart and astute and ironic about the football club and the game of football in general. Indeed some of them write on these very themes with great acuity, as at the excellent nufc.com. None of them have ever entertained any daft delusional ideas about Alan Shearer as some sort of Geordie messiah. Rather, there has been a general admiration tinged with scepticism.
Geordies are canny, they don’t suffer fools and they can sniff a wind-up. (In fairness, the very Geordie Shearer is made of the same stuff.) So any idea that the self-professed sheet-metal worker’s son from Gosforth was a flawless/selfless professional and immaculate team-player/leader who walked on Tyne waters and will one day come walking back to lead NUFC to the Promised Land… Get away, man. Never heard the like of it, other than on those Sky Sports vox-pop packages where the reporters bribe kids on the Barrack Road to say what they need for their preordained story. All this nonsense arises again over the reports stirred up by a dozy Joe Kinnear that a post-Ashley NUFC has Keegan and Shearer ‘parked round the corner.’ No-one in NE1 is losing any sleep over this fantasy.
All this said, it’s important to stress that Alan Shearer was an effing magic footballer. There’s not a football team the world over who wouldn’t be proud of a local-born striker who identified himself so strongly (and, in the main, unaffectedly) with the area, and also scored 200+ goals for the side in 10 seasons. So-called football experts make themselves ridiculous when they try to Get Tough with Shearer’s record, on which he always tersely asserted that he would be judged. Take the utterly third-rate Rob Smyth of the Guardian who last week attempted a critique of Shearer’s career stats so dripping with snide ill will and so foolishly argued as to constitute its own rebuttal.
The various Get Shearer factions are a funny old bunch. Man United fans are generally excused from this as their bragging rights are so strong, all the way from the ‘Let’s all laugh at Shearer’ chants struck up at the 1996 Charity Shield when Man U diddled the newly Shearer-enhanced Toon 4-0. That’s the main anti-Shearer plank: that his medals were largely born of defeats. True, other than his Blackburn league win Shearer’s career ‘victories’ were mainly pyrrhic. But Alex Ferguson knows football better than anyone in these isles, and his admiration of Shearer was avid and unfeigned if unreciprocated (twice), so Man U fans just have to swallow that little truth.
The other main hate-rap on Shearer was that, after his ankle injury of 1997 that robbed him of his pace, he became a bit of a lazy bully on the pitch. I have stood or sat in many an away ground and listened to fans delighting themselves with mucus-filled chants of ‘F@?k off Sheera yew c**t.' I have mingled with fans of the national side who thought Shearer as England captain and #9 was ‘a f@?king arrogant disgrace.’ Shearer himself tended to thrive on this stuff – not that he always got the last laugh, no sir. But I think the animosity he attracted is part of what made him special. He just really got up the noses of rival teams and their fans, and people generally don’t like it up them. And the main way he did that was by being a classic big English #9 - big shoulders, big shooting boots, same old Shearer, always scoring.
Management, by comparison, is a thankless task and requires a different skill-set, so for me as for thousands of Newcastle fans, I’d be perfectly happy if Shearer remained himself a Newcastle fan and kept smartly clear of the NUFC dugout.

George Osborne: Not In For a Relaxing Weekend

A poll for the BBC Daily Politics suggests that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are more trusted ‘to steer Britain's economy through the current downturn’ than are David Cameron and George Osborne. The Labour duo get 36% approval and the Tories 30%. 5% is a poor show for Nick Clegg and Vince Cable, given how widely ex-Shell man Cable’s economic analyses are admired in the papers. (Maybe Cable needs to get rid of that Clegg guy.) But at any rate, perhaps the most telling faction in this survey are the 24% who Just Don’t Know. Hard to blame them, really.
So, just to remind George Osborne that next Monday is a Big, Big Day for him. Big Tory conference speech. No drinking on Sunday night, George, early to bed for you with the draft and a red pen.
Economically it’s generally seemed to me that Cameron’s Tories have been shadowing Labour cautiously and looking to stay out of bother. That’s a low-risk game: the ERM disaster of 1992 didn’t cost John Smith any kudos, even though Labour’s policy was no different to the Major government’s. Moreover Cameron’s profile and approval rating has been more closely associated with stands on ‘the broken society’, education, crime, environmentalism etc. Meanwhile Osborne’s line on the economy has felt respectful toward public spending and shy of ‘unfunded’ tax cuts - though, of course, last year’s Conference-delivered pledge to cut inheritance tax for all but millionaires brought a full-throated roar from Middle England that was hugely influential, not least with the Government.
But this year, the utterly wretched state of the economy and the popular anger and bewilderment out there means that Osborne must be very focused and forceful and seen to be straining at the leash for his big chance to turn the world right-side-up again. That’s a test for a smart young operator who has clearly oscillated between poles of opinion within the tenuously ‘modernised’ Tories, and who must hear an awful lot of mutterings about how it was mainly timing and ambition and a bit of a W11 cabal that combined to propel him to a job at the very limit of his competence.
So how will Osborne be feeling about tax cuts this year? Cameron is said to have warmed to them, perhaps having sampled a little of the warmth that would-be Tory voters feel in return for any such pledges. But then Cameron’s ascent to the leadership was founded on the game notion of ‘compassionate conservatism’, so there is a certain imperative for the Tories to funnel any new tax cuts to low/fixed income workers – maybe raising the initial personal tax threshold above subsistence level – maybe devising forms of assistance that are a bit less forbidding than tax credits, though Osborne seems to be sticking by these.
By the by, one of the would-be populist measures that the newly influential Taxpayers Alliance has got behind – namely the Cut the VAT Coalition calling for a reduction in VAT to 5% for all building repair and maintenance work – has got me interested on first inspection.
Anyhow, I imagine Tory Party members would expect at least a pledge of no rises in income tax or national insurance (since Brown may be - allegedly - seeding the ground for a rise in the latter.)
Given the general grousing mood in the country, there must be a good many Tories who feel (in line with red-blooded Labour folk) that the corporate sector needs to suffer this year. But other Tories are bound to be dogmatic that only tax cuts can stimulate growth (what’s that again?) and that (South East) Britain’s wealth-creators must always be stroked and nurtured and protected and not driven from these shores – that peculiar socialism of the rich. So I’m curious to know how your average Joe/Jane Tory feels about bailouts for failing banks.
Less complicatedly, I’d bet that a big majority of Tories will feel it’s time (O, Now More Than Ever!) for Gordon Brown’s fat public sector to take some pain and be scaled down – recruitment freezes, executive salaries slashed, final salary pensions discontinued etc.
If the notion of newly Popular Toryism is to acquire a reality beyond the polls then Osborne needs to position himself as the defender of ordinary households hunkering down to cope with a recession. Everyone has told me to prepare myself for the vision of a sea of blue rinse in the Tory conference hall. But then the Tories need to be the party of pensioners if they want that working majority in 2010: hence the importance of pensions, fuel poverty, etc.
So I hope I get to Birmingham in time on Monday, even if only in time to find a working television set.

Democrats 08: 'More mush from the wimps'?

Down the years I’ve often admired the polemical writings of Alexander Cockburn (pictured), the Scottish-born, Irish-reared but essentially posh-English radical columnist who has plied his trade in the US since the early 1970s. For a variety of reasons I’ve found his stuff a good deal less interesting since sometime around the late Clinton era and the founding of his website Counterpunch.org; but that could be me getting soft, and it doesn't detract from all the good stuff of his that I've enjoyed. Tonight, watching Newsnight again (what kind of masochist fool am I?) I had to shout at the TV during an item on John McCain’s phony opportunistic stunt of ‘suspending’ his campaign on the pretence of adding his witless views on economics to the current mess besetting America – and in the spirit of ‘bipartisanism’, no less. Jeremy Paxman presented this story with his now-terminally arrogant/obfuscating blather, interviewing Rep and Dem strategists and asking exactly the wrong questions. The Rep guy was a smooth moron of an attack-dog who nevertheless made his moron point (Obama is an irresponsible un-American pencil-neck jerk) loudly and sharply and repeatedly. The Dem guy was a bespectacled fellow called Rosenberg who spoke carefully and declared that he didn’t like to be spoken to in the coarse manner that he was hearing.
‘More mush from the wimps’, I thought to myself - this a memorable term first applied by the Boston Globe to lambaste some pusillanimous aspect of the Carter administration. Recalling where I first heard tell of same term, I pulled down my old paperback of Cockburn’s Corruptions of Empire, consulting again his ‘Archive of the Reagan Era’, which saw him write on January 27 1983 of a ‘Bipartisan Appeal’ led by Peter Peterson (then CEO of Lehman Brothers, formerly Nixon’s commerce secretary), the appeal in question being a union of major US banks and multinational corporations seeking a reduction in the budget deficit.
Cockburn wrote, ‘It is axiomatic that methodical use of the word ‘bipartisan’ indicates that some gross deception is about to be practiced on the persons (and usually the pockets) of the citizenry and that the perpetrators wish to indicate by the deployment of bipartisanship that normal democratic procedures and alternatives have been suspended… Many of the people who got the economy into its present mess and who have been profiting vastly under present conditions signed the appeal with a shamelessness that would be irksome in a child but is repulsive in persons of mature age.’
Timely words, I think. For this is just the sort of rubbish McCain is now up to. So what is Barack Obama’s view on what Cockburn in a recent Counterpunch column quite reasonably calls ‘a bailout program designed to bail out the thieves running our financial system, and stick middle America with the price-tag’? This is not a moment to sit on one's hands: if Obama wants so badly to debate McCain on Friday night, then I hope he's got something sharp and wholly partisan to say, otherwise what's the point of him?

Ahmadinejad, positively gay with glee at the UN

Quite a day in politics. Maybe 6 out of 10 for Brown at Labour conference, I’d say - the usual sanctimony, with more polished attempts at levity (from a low base). In Washington the US financial institutions bailout is getting a hammering off Republican congressmen for being snide, unjust, un-American, and socialistic, and it’s certainly the first two: there must be another way to punish the guilty scavengers while protecting the benighted taxpayer. Meanwhile Newsnight seemed pleased to report that Ahmadinejad has once more reveled in the UN General Assembly's limelight in order to pronounce that ‘the American empire is reaching the end of its road, and its next rulers must limit their interference to their own borders.’ The first part is true for all sorts of reasons. As to the second, I assume we all know how hatefully hypocritical are these words in the mouth of this disgraceful little ratbag; but I do worry that certain constituencies out there think these views statesmanlike, sagacious and all-round impressive. Allah be praised, then, for Newsnight’s Mark Urban, peace be upon him, who drew attention to what he described as some ‘toxic’ remarks from the Iranian President in respect of the ‘Zionist regime’ and ‘the cesspool created by itself and its supporters.’ I trust all keen critics and opponents of Israel, well in charge of the copious evidence supporting their positions, understand too that for Ahmadinejad the Problem of the Jewish State is one arising from absolute first principles, and requiring a final solution. He should get back to his own little cesspool.

David Miliband, Man of a Thousand Faces

Out of all the thousands of photos snapped during big moments at events such as political party conferences... well, I can't say I understand why some images are more widely disseminated than others, and a select fewer picked out from within that first selection for widespread reproduction in media outlets...
But I think I can say with some certainty that a lot of people who are involved in such selections for the purpose of illustrating this year's Labour Party conference are people who don't like David Miliband very much - or indeed wish him plenty harm. Because everywhere I look on the web tonight there are people reporting Miliband's conference speech alongside photos of him looking like Goofy.
Meanwhile the BBC are very pleased with themselves because they can report that Miliband was indiscreet within their earshot while chatting to an aide after his speech: ‘I couldn't have gone any further. It would have been a Heseltine moment.’ We'll have to see about that - the wisdom of avoiding 'Heseltine moments', that is, as opposed to the wisdom of teasing/charming a frankly less-than-adoring half-full conference hall. None of this is terribly convincing for Labour supporters of any stripe. The proper measure of it will come when the Tories meet in Birmingham next week. I'll see you there.

Metallica, or rocking the middle years...

Should I buy the new Metallica album? Will I listen to it more than once? Or will I be able to play it at the volume that befits it, without disturbing my kid or the neighbours? These are not exactly rock 'n' roll questions; so it may be that to ask them is, sadly, to answer them. Earlier today my brother casually informed me that he attended this week's already legendary Later... with Jools Holland which pitted Metallica alongside Carla Bruni. He wasn't all that bothered, frankly... so, had he known I cared, he could have easily slipped his ticket to me (or indeed flogged it for at least £1000 on the night.) But then, to return to the issue of my fast-vanishing rock 'n' roll credentials, I'm not sure I could have got the evening off to get along there anyway. I'm perfectly happy using BBC iPlayer to inspect the band's performances of Cyanide and Enter Sandman, and searching YouTube for the (rather long) video to the lead 'single' from the new album. No wonder music sales are sinking fast. But then one assumes the bands now look to make their big money from live performance. In which case they'll not be getting owt from me in the foreseeable. Still, Metallica, I'm with thee in spirit if nowhere else.

Rose McGowan & the heartbreaking old cause

She has a look of the Irish, that Rose McGowan: she'd put me in mind of the girls one would see out on a big Friday night in Belfast or Dublin. She was born in Firenze, though, but her father's an Irishman. This all comes out because of the stew over her remarks about the IRA at a Toronto press conference held for the movie she's in that's adapted from the memoir by the Provo informer Martin McGartland. 'I imagine', said Rose, 'had I grown up in Belfast, I would 100 per cent have been in the IRA. My heart just broke for the cause.' McGartland doesn't sound too happy about the movie in any case, and he's definitely not pleased with Rose now ('Rose McGowan's comments were insulting to victims of IRA terrorism and she should apologise. It's easy to say this sort of thing when you live in LA.' Ouch.) Even the producers of the movie have had to distance themselves from their own talent. Whether the publicity helps or hinders the picture, I don't know: IRA touts are not the most promising commercial subject, and a right old moral thicket from which to try to pull out a genuinely good picture. I haven't read McGartland's book, but there have been some good accounts of informing on the 'Ra (Eamon Collins' Killing Rage) and others that are at least interesting (Sean O'Callaghan's The Informer). Yet they all tell the same essential story: 'My people were being oppressed and so I joined an organisation I considered revolutionary, so as to strike back. But to my horror this organisation also numbered among its members some rather disreputable characters...' It's a good yarn, and it works for people, but it could never be reckoned as the whole truth.

Sean Penn: Hayatı ve Zamanları...

My track-record with foreign-language editions of my books has been hit-and-miss, frankly, but some of the 'hits' give me amusement, such as the fact that there is a Turkish edition of the book I did with Sean Penn out there somewhere, though I've never held a copy of it in my hand. I assume, though, that Hayati is Turkish for 'Life' and Zamanlan stands for 'Times.' I could be wrong, though. When Sperling & Kupfer published the book in Italian they conferred on it the subtitle 'Un cattivo ragazzo', and I know no Italian but my wager is that that little phrase translates as 'A bad boy.' I'm not sure whether Crusaders will get rendered in many other languages (other than Geordie) in my lifetime, but I do believe there's an Indonesian version in the works. Which goes to show that we are the world.

Debt: formerly considered the best thing money could buy

Some naïve part of me has always supposed that when a bank died, the collapse/explosion would be something akin to the death of a star in the cosmos. No such phenomena attended the end of Lehman Brothers, though glancing across the covers of today’s papers (in some surprise, having seen/heard no news bulletins for 48 hours), I saw a lot of well-groomed and utterly gutted young professionals consoling one another after hasty clearings of desks.
What did Lehman reckon were its odds that Secretary Paulson would bail them out instead of ruling it were a better thing that the bank fell? That would be an interesting set of figures.
Meantime I have now caught up with the reportage and analysis, some of which is to the effect that Lehmann’s demise is a testament to functional capitalism and the survival of the fittest. This time, maybe. I won’t be celebrating, not least because for umpteen reasons I couldn’t be neutral about the state's efforts to keep Northern Rock afloat last year.
I suppose one silver lining is that, for a while at least, investment banking should now be seen as a career option roughly as hare-brained as putting your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington.

October Esquire on sale now.

Per yesterday's remarks: I know it's out there now, and I commend it to you warmly. I know it contains my piece on Jar City and also a serial extract from a book I oversaw editorially at Faber and Faber, which is a memoir by the movie producer Michael Deeley entitled Blade Runners, Deer Hunters & Blowing the Bloody Doors Off. I'll maybe say more when I've got my copy and paddled through it.

Mike Ashley's literary leavings

Kevin Keegan has never been considered a wordsmith, though I hear his autobiography is a decent read, and he may even have written some of it. But KK certainly is, as everyone knows, a highly effusive speaker. I'm not thinking of the 'I'd love it' outburst so much as his coming to the steps of St James's after he'd sold Andy Cole to Man U, just to tell the gathering of vexed fans what his logic had been.

Conversely, Mike Ashley, the hoping-to-be-soon-ex-owner of Newcastle United, is not a man to speak his mind before a microphone or indeed on any public stage, but he and his cronies clearly love to write and circulate statements, screeds and rebuttals. Ashley put out a big fat one under his own name on Sunday night, just so that everyone understood he was looking to sell the club and that he and his money were feeling sorely unappreciated by all those Geordie tossers. In fairness, Martin Syed at the Times has taken Ashley's side on this one. So much for fairness.

The only point I feel is worth lingering over (beyond Ashley's refusal to address the fact that he either lied to Keegan about transfer policy or else reneged on a major pledge) is Ashley's bleat that he can't take his kids to SJP anymore, on police advice. I can't do better than the riposte of True Faith on this score: "Please. If he wants to go to the match – go in the bloody director’s box like every other football club owner, put on a proper shirt, blazer and a decent pair of strides and act your age."

Jar City now in cinemas; very good

A writer friend of mine ran into my wife at a party last week and told her I was 'on the poster' for Jar City, Baltasar Kormákur's Icelandic policier that has just been released into UK cinemas. (It's a couple of years old in its country of origin, where it's known as Myrin.) 'On the poster' in the sense that some line or other from my positive write-up of the movie for the October issue of Esquire has been pulled out and used for promotional purposes. I haven't seen the October Esquire yet. Have you? Nor have I seen any Jar City posters plastered around London yet, as opposed to those for Tropic Thunder, say, or Guy Ritchie's new one. But I hope the rumour is true. One likes to be of service when service has been freely given.

Norman Mailer's Spooky Art

Today, owing to an unfortunate necessity, I had to forsake my desk at home and go work in the local library, only 5 minutes' walk away, but a drag nonetheless. Waiting for some dogged daily newspaper scanner to give up one of the few writing tables with a plug-point adjacent, I wandered around the stacks awhile and was pleased to happen on a copy of Mailer's collection of thoughts on the writing process, The Spooky Art (2003). Browsing through it at least made the waste of time feel a good deal less vexing, even medicinal.

For a while I read from the index back and found Mailer very good on the affinities and disparities of the Russian masters: basically, that Dostoyevsky went down to depths that Tolstoy couldn't penetrate, but lacked Tolstoy’s panoptic sense of perspective and so tended toward hysteria; consequently from Dostoyevsky we come away with memorable individuals, and from Tolstoy entire societies.

Elsewhere: he's generally thoughtful about bad reviews, albeit occasionally desirous of knocking some picky little toerag's roof in.

He's bracingly self-critical about most of the books, as well as his much-advertised personal failings.

He sounds friendly enough about old Gore Vidal, to whom he is undoubtedly superior IMHO.

You get that sense that he wasn't ever as mad about The Executioner's Song as the book's ardent fans, for all that it's so alive to something fundamental in the big centre of American life, just because it was less his invention.

He makes a useful critique of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections as a self-consciously big and well-upholstered novel that doesn't feel large or truly lived.
He expresses a touching love for the novel on the ground that it is 'the form best suited for developing our moral sensitivity - which is to say our depth of understanding rather than our rush to judgment.'
I nodded grimly in reading another version of his view that writers must discipline themselves 'to do a good day's work on a bad day.'

More grim nods when he volunteered that 'working on a book where the plot is already fully developed is like spending the rest of your life filling holes in rotten teeth when you have no skill as a dentist.'

Then there is the rub: ‘I remember saying in 1958, “I am imprisoned with a perception that will settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time.” And I certainly failed, didn't I? At the time, I thought I had books in me that no one else did, and so soon as I was able to write them, society would be altered. Kind of grandiose…’

Still, searching around some reviews tonight I was satisfied that a fair few writers are properly sympathetic to Mailer's readiness to dare and risk failure.

Thomas E. Kennedy: ‘Perhaps the greatest works are inevitably flawed for they reach toward the unreachable in comparison to small works satisfied with small accomplishment.’

Richard Poirier: ‘At his best [Mailer] seeks contamination. He does so by adopting the roles, the styles, the sounds that will give him a measure of what it’s like to be alive in this country.’

Wilfrid Sheed: ‘Mailer follows the Chestertonian principle of exploring the psychosis proper to the group, the identifying madness, and letting it enter him, like an exorcist opening himself to the devil.’

Quite. Like the demon of his last wondrous production The Castle in the Forest, Mailer gave himself the right to inhabit men's minds. Spooky indeed.

NUFC: Take this ticket, go to hell and stick it

The excellent nufc.com reports that this Saturday there will be a protest march comprised both of Toon fans intended to boycott the Hull game and those intending to enter St James's Park but only after the 3pm kickoff. The plan is to meet opposite Tilleys Bar on Westgate Road for a 3pm march, to finish up outside of Shearer's Bar. There is also due to be a pure protest gathering outside Old Milburn Reception from 2pm, and one imagines that will be one long howl. Desperate times, but entirely justifiable actions.

Sebastian Barry: Booker Prize Contender, naturellement

Many congratulations to the man whom I hope I can get away with calling 'my fellow Faber novelist', Sebastian Barry, on his being shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for his latest novel The Secret Scripture. From this point onward I don't suppose anyone can guess the outcome of the judging, it will all come down to five people in a room something like a month from now; but Sebastian Barry has been to this dance before in 2005 with A Long, Long Way, so one trusts he will be braced at least for the suspense that lies ahead, and able just for the moment to savour another richly-deserved recognition of his gifts.

Hunter S Thompson: Nothing Vicarious

At some point soon I hope to write properly and at length about Alex Gibney's documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which I saw this evening. For the moment I would only say that it sure stirred up some ghosts for me. The final credits run to the tune of Warren Zevon's 'Lawyers, Guns and Money'. The moment in my sluggish adolescence when I first made the connection between what these two men were up to as artists, and liked to in common and indeed together - sometime around the publication of Thompson's The Curse of Lono and the release of Zevon's Sentimental Hygiene - was a fairly vital one for me. Zevon, too, has been gone for some years now. And men like Thompson and Zevon, they really shouldn't die. And on another level, they clearly should. Not by fading away neither.

Newcastle United: Milner did indeed gan...

... in spite of my previous and heartfelt appeal, which, you know, I'm not sure reached him - did he happen to mention it last time you spoke?
Anyhow, today Milner told the Mirror - while no doubt breathing out a great blasting sigh of relief - "What is going on now at Newcastle showed what was going on behind the scenes at the club."
In other news: NUFC itself continues to try to deny it is an effing shambles by sending out pompous pseudo-tough-talking press releases, the latest purporting to be a point-by-point rebuttal of Kevin Keegan's expressed complaints, but failing utterly and risibly on the basis of previous on-the-record comments made by Ashley and Wise.

Richard T Kelly & Ten Bad Dates podcast on CBC Radio

I did a bit for Ten Bad Dates with De Niro on a Canadian radio show today, CBC Radio (Canada)'s Q arts and entertainment digest, hosted by Jian Ghomeshi. Needless to say I went onto the airwaves live from a boxy central London studio. For a while at least you can hear the podcast here, and for my bit you need to fast-forward about 20 minutes into the show from start.

I have done this shtick on this book a good many times now, albeit not so much in the last twelve months, and so Jian Ghomeshi had some comebacks to my glib patter that I wasn't used to hearing necessarily. For instance, a lot of people blithely accept my contention that there is something fishy about the supremacy of Citizen Kane across All-Time Greatest Movie polls of the last 50 (50!) years. Yet I think Jian thought I was being hard on this poor great movie; certainly as opposed to my now-standard encomium of praise to Ishtar... At any rate, a fun show to do, and some amusing exchanges, at least as it seemed to me.

Manchester: So Much to Answer For, Except New Order

More telly for me: for the second or third time I'm watching the BBC4 documentary on Factory Records, only one of umpteen studies of Manchester and post-punk that I've noted over the last 5 years -though it has horse's-mouth commentary from all the main players, but only like all the others do... Still, it's a great human story, a great northern English story, a great art/rock 'n' roll story.
Nonetheless I still feel the way I always felt about most Factory/Manchester music, which is, couldn't give much of a toss. Except for New Order. I love New Order. And I still think it a small marvel that they ever existed.
But I know it to be so because I saw them play live at Queen's University, Belfast, in January 1986, and that's still the best gig I ever saw. They played most of the Low Life album that night, one of their best. They also played 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' that night, and with all due respect it sounded better than when Joy Division played it - just like most of what New Order did.

Harry Enfield: This is Hardcore

My favourite show is back on telly. In saying it's my favourite, it seems that I reveal my age, because a lot of the preview write-ups in the papers would lead you to suppose that said show is awfully tired on arrival. And yet it seems to me that Harry Enfield's and Paul Whitehouse's comedy is more current and observational and clued-in than any other comedy I've seen on telly lately (admittedly, there's so much obvious brainless crap I just don't bother with.)
Anyhow: glad to see so many characters returning in this series from the (much-derided) first series of Harry & Paul: the lordly surgeons, the Notting Hill shyster knick-knack seller (pictured), the too-nice bloke forlornly in love with the Polish barista... I just hope we'll see the return of the gormless American tourists who are very keen on gay men and hijab-wearing ladies ('Isn't she probably pretty...?')

Gordon Brown: The Big Fightback (Postponed)

The Prime Minister has told the Scottish CBI that the current economic downturn is “the first, great financial crisis of the global age”, and that “Britain cannot insulate itself” from said crisis, being part of said joined-up globe. There is an upside, though, to do with ‘long-term resilience and underlying strengths’ in the British economy. I like the sound of that, as Brown surely hopes we all will, but while I was born at night it wasn't last night.

Brown also had a catchy line about freeing Britain from the ‘dictatorship of oil’, a cause that George Bush was espousing for the US a few years back too, having been frustrated in previous efforts to shore up said dictatorship. But Brown’s vision has a lot to do with our being energy-efficient in the home, and helping subsidise the electric car. These are tough sells in a downturn, so I wish him good luck on that one.
The PM also stuck up for the Union, since he was in Glasgow, but sadly he’s a Scot in an age when the loudest Scots voices in politics say otherwise. Good luck there, too.
All this, by the way, forms part of Brown’s ‘relaunch.’

Steve Richards of the Independent is sounding rather more in sorrow than anger about Brown, saying ‘These days it is the fashion to rubbish his tenure at the Treasury, but even his harshest critics must acknowledge the political skills that accompanied the policies.’ Wait, though: this is how Richards talks up the Brown legacy: ‘Over a lengthy period he managed to put up taxes, redistribute some cash, increase public spending, and remain popular.’ I’m a great admirer of Richards’ columns but I’m sure that come the morning after, he would want to think again about that crowded, confused sentence. All I hear is a summary of how Brown sold his most inept moves to Labour's most lemming-like voters. It's exactly how and when he made his moves on tax-hikes, redistribution and public sector handouts (so making himself the darling of so many voters who think themselves the Soul of Labour) that is the key; and the reason why he's been rubbished ever since.

Richards also laments the falling-off in Brown from his Treasury days of obsessive policy ground-laying; but you don’t get that luxury as PM, which is the job Brown thought he wanted and was made for. And again we must ask – just run that Treasury Legacy past us one more time?

Still, Brown can be reassured by the latest, newly incoherent and choleric attempt to murder him made by Charles Clarke in the New Statesman. I admire Clarke too, and liked him a lot as Home Secretary. But since he and fellow Blairites couldn’t find anyone to Stop Gordon in 2007 and so lined up behind Brown instead, all this ongoing acrimony is a waste of space.

Fukuyama in the Financial Times: History/My Story

In the FT Francis Fukuyama has pointed out a few tough truths that he assumes both candidates in the US election have taken onboard: namely that ‘the past two US administrations could assume American hegemony in both economics and security. The next administration cannot’; and that the task of the next Administration will be ‘to gracefully manage an adversely shifting global power balance and significantly diminished US influence.’

Ah, 'gracefully'… and so the sun sets (and the blood dries) on the US imperium. All empires must perish, by overstretch if not stagnation: I have had my 'issues' with the American version, though I prefer it still to any of the rival candidates now vying for succession.
Of course Fukuyama has got Russia on his mind and argues that the US were too brusque and bumptious through those early post-Cold War years when the Russian Bear was mangy and down on its knees. He clearly reckons Iraq as an irredeemable disaster, because he says that ‘one of the chief ways that US power has been diminished in this decade is in its moral credibility.’ And he’s also one of those who wants to throw the Nato Kosovo action back at Britain and the US too, for setting ‘an unhappy precedent of legitimising separatism.’ (But being separated from people who want you dead is a powerful driver. All I can say is that it’s all very well for wonks and scholars to favour the why-can’t-you-all-just-stick-together? option.)
Still, Fukuyama also manages to squeeze in the call-me-civilised qualifier (‘I do not want to be seen as apologising for Moscow’s behaviour… That Russian feelings of resentment are understandable does not make them morally right.’) And I daresay the strongest point he has is that the push for Nato membership for Georgia and Ukraine does look like nothing but an American game, and only Angela Merkel seems to have the seriousness to make this understood.
BTW why should one pay attention to Fukuyama? Not sure. But then, you know, this guy once forecast the End of History - a bold call, albeit completely wrong and wronger every day. Still, with such a brass neck maybe there’s a chance that one day he’ll call it right.

Keegan/Ashley: Whose psychological flaws?

Talk is cheap, as we all know, and I'm writing from London, among the southrons, so I defer to my honourable friends at nufc.com and true faith in terms of the smartest and most felt on-site reportage of today's hateful bloody shambles at Newcastle United. I'm not interested in what the national press have to say, unless they have more luck in getting either Keegan or Ashley/a crony of this on the line tonight. The Mail, though, says Keegan has been in heavy session with m'learned friends.

The nationals will give Keegan a good few digs, of course, some sharper than others. There's a certain crying-on-the-inside aspect to KK's personality that is like fresh meat to the ravening pack. But unlike a lot of NUFC fans I don't think there's a southron vendetta against the club: it's just the natural born schadenfreude of football fans, most of whom spend a lot of their time depressed over a lot of nonsense and need to get a laugh out of some other lot who appear worse off. And we do give 'em no end of material to work with.

Five words, but: 'Dennis Wise', 'dugout', 'next match.' No way. I hereby endorse any strategy of supporter-driven resistance to this skin-crawling prospect. If Ashley has the slightest understanding of that kind of broad-based sentiment, then he should get his effing jumbo-sized black-and-white shirt on and go explain his rationale over a pint to any fan he can find who doesn't feel like nutting him.

Xisco is a Geordie

Well, someone on the Barrack Road was listening to me because apparently they just put out an announcement, for Xisco and Gonzalez both. And I'll just say this for the Xisco lad right now - he doesn't need to get his bloody hair cut, and these days that's a blessed relief to see in a young player. Good proper short haircuts mean bags of goals, in my lengthy experience.

Late Transfer Window Drama: fans yawn, scratch heads, gloomily...

I was definitely cheerier this morning: I thought we had this guy Xisco from Deportivo. And there's a name to make headlines and t-shirts out of. But if we had him this morning, why did midnight pass without confirmation? Hell's teeth. And everyone thinks we have this Gonzalez on loan, but again, it's not official as of 00:15. Other names have vanished like breath off a razor-blade. Meanwhile texters report desperate Toon bids for defenders at Sheffield and Derby, both knocked back. It's not what it said in the brochure, no sir. But I see Antoine Sibierski's off to another club - good luck to him, he was the butt of great Mag frustration on Window day in January 2 or 3 years back. As they always say, it's the hope that kills you.

Poem for the Day: Briggflatts (Bunting)

Since he's been on my mind for the purpose of an essay I'm currently writing, perhaps I might set down a stave or so from his most famous work - this eminent Northumbrian, who refused that he was a Geordie since he was actually born in Scotswood...
"A mason times his mallet
to a lark’s twitter,
listening while the marble rests,
lays his rule
at a letter’s edge,
fingertips checking,
till the stone spells a name
naming none,
a man abolished.
Painful lark, labouring to rise!
The solemn mallet says:
In the grave’s slot
he lies. We rot."

Arsenal 3 Newcastle 0

I daresay I should take the bloody rough with the smooth and resolve to note down each of this season's league results, be they good or ill. (Though I skipped the Coventry game midweek just because it never helps to get lathered about any early Toon progress in the League Cup - it can't last.) Typical of Arsenal to rediscover their groove today but, again, that's the Toon for you, forever freely handing out good vibes to opposing teams and their fans - e.g. your ropiest striker who hasn't scored in two-dozen starts is nailed on for a brace against Newcastle, as is that hamstrung ex-NUFC player you have on your books, so the manager might as well get him off the bench. If mugs like that can do it, Robin Van Persie can do it in his sleep, which is kind of how he did it today. Next up, Hull at SJP. Wigan put 5 past them today. But come next Saturday will we have any strikers fit to start? Or is Nicky Butt expected to bang 'em in, on top of everything else?

Obama v McCain: somewhat more interesting...

However snarky by nature I may be, I'm still wont to use words like 'maverick' and 'outsider' when it comes to describing John McCain; so why should I have been surprised by his VP pick? I wasn't, not hugely, though I know of Governor Palin about as much as you do if you aren't from Alaska and don't work for McCain 08. But anyhow, the deed is now done, so let's get it on, the last 8 weeks of this interminable campaign are now morally obligated to be lively at least.

Ten Bad Dates quiz #3 @ Curzon Soho 16.09.08

Crusaders writLOUD/RADA Write-Up

At least for the time being there's an amusing little account online here of the reading I and three other writers gave at writLOUD a fortnight or so ago. My reading itself can still be listened to if you follow the link that is the writLOUD logo in the right hand margin below. And the photo herewith finds me (right) alongside writLOUD's James Vincent, who was MC/Q&A facilitator for the evening.

Nice review of Crusaders in the Irish Tribune by Tom Widger

I'm pleased to have featured in the Tribune's paperbacks round-up of last Sunday 24th, possibly the first mention the book's really had over in Eire. Tom Widger describes Crusaders as 'a state-of-the-nation's-soul novel, Russian in tone, certainly nodding in the direction of Dostoyevsky, and Russian in bulk, 10 years in the making and highly rewarding.' Grand so, say I. On paper I could maybe be mistaken for a Russophile, perhaps, but then I've never been there, and these days I find myself deferring that long-promised trip to St Petersburg onto a very far-distant To Do list...
Then again, I suppose if someone made me an offer...

The Story and the Truth: a new blog

An interesting new blog can be found here courtesy of Dan Hartland and Anna French, promising to feature "novels, history, education, politics, football, fashion and travel". The first substantive post is a very smart one on Obama's 'issues', with heavy reference to David Cameron and the grounds of his starting-to-look-unassailable poll lead over Labour.
I couldn't agree more with TS&TT's general critique of the Democrats' sanctimonious and rather slack-jawed campaigns of recent vintage: 'Dedicated to a rationalism that expects voters to respond to debating rhetoric, they have ceded term after term to the Republicans, allowing their opponents to define the rules of the game.'
I should say that the blog also has some kind words for Crusaders in a sidebar books feature called 'Words We Like': to wit, "A state of the nation novel without the po-faced worthiness, this has everything - gangsters, Parliament, Anglicanism and council estate soap opera. A formidable - and wryly written - treat."
In all, one to watch, as they say.

James Milner: Divvint Gan, Man!

When you watch your team these days do you have moments (while they're losing, or otherwise performing substandardly) when you count on your hands those players on the park whom you consider Fit to Wear The Shirt? I've had that feeling a fair bit with NUFC over the last 10 years, barring a couple of Bobby Robson seasons where nearly all of the first-choice XI were either canny-gifted or triers at the very least. But part of the reason I cheered when Kevin Keegan returned to SJP back in February ('Third, actually, I came as a player...') was because here in the midst of a bit of a shower was a man who was Worthy and Proud to Wear the Shirt, even if he'd only be doing so figuratively, kicking every ball from the touchline.

James Milner hasn't got the greatest pair of shooting boots and his delivery from wide can be erratic, but at 22 he's hardly the finished article, and still he's absolutely the sort of player I want to see in black-and-white. But it looks like he's on his way to Martin O'Neill's Villa, so epitomising the very vexatious one-step-up two-steps-back culture of the Barrack Road.

Saw the BBC News today, oh boy...

On BBC2's Newsnight earlier Kirsty Wark succeeded in giving George Bush’s edgy press secretary Dana Perino a much stiffer and ruder talking-to than she handed out to the seasoned (male) charge d’affaire of the Russian Embassy in London. Manners and predispositions, I guess... As part of the same lead item Newsnight gobsmackingly gave airspace to some young Russian twerp of a journalist, in a shiny jacket and shinier t-shirt, who tried to sound a lot bigger than he looks in dismissing the views of the British government as Washington’s poodle, etc, yawn.
Miliband did well today. The Telegraph reports his saying that "the sight of Russian tanks in a neighbouring country on the 40th anniversary of the crushing of the Prague Spring has shown that the temptations of power politics remain." But check out the Telegraph readers’ posted comments (scroll down) if you want to get yourself massively dispirited: thin streaks of would-be testicular contempt for Miliband and ‘Bliar’-‘Nu’ Labour/pseudo-sophisticated hatred for the faltering US imperium/veiled admiration for far-flung Russian ‘toughness’.
Cameron has applauded Miliband for going to the Ukraine but tried to up the ante in talking to BBC News: "I think the only language a bully understands is when somebody stands up and says, 'Look, what you've done is wrong...' Prime ministerial, do you think? Sky News further report him as saying “Having Russia as member of the G8 at a time when her troops are still on the sovereign soil of another country I think is inappropriate.”
The 10 O’Clock BBC News decided to follow David Davis and 'shadow immigration minister' Damian Green in giving Neighbourhood Wardens a hard time, soberly repeating the Tory allegations of ‘cheap policing’, with a slight implication of the advancing horrors of the so-called surveillance state. The focus seemed entirely upon the punitive potential of wardens, not on their value to those local people who might know them as individuals, trust them and welcome them. Personally I have observed these Wardens to be of plenty good use to the deprived wards of Scotswood and Benwell in West Newcastle. (One Stewart Carse from Co Durham was the Warden the BBC hit upon to make his case in less than ten seconds.) Online I see the BBC reporting Damian Green to the effect that ‘the government should be freeing up regular police to tackle serious crime.’ Okay then, if you’re running on a law and order auction, you Tories, I look forward to your bids.

Having cast doubt on the government’s concern for our ailing urban 'communities', the 10 O’Clock News then offered some plaintive noises about people who invested in buy-to-rent barely-built second properties in Spain – now suffering from the catastrophe in the building trade which has followed the credit crunch as night follows day. For sure, I hope these punters get out of the hole they dug for themselves, just for their own sakes, but honestly, how many of us – in turning on the nightly national/world news at a time of geopolitical turmoil, only to hear about such essentially private misfortune – could give an effing toss?

Hang the DJ and YouTube's great video jukebox

I've just been looking through a finished copy of the previously mentioned music lists book Hang The DJ (Faber, ed. Angus Cargill), and it's been giving me great pleasure, along with the inevitable individual pang of regret for how much more I could have said were there the space, time, or interest on anybody's part in what very little music I listen to these days. Thankfully I have this blog...
On which note, here in no real order are ten tunes that I don't actually own on either vinyl, cassette, CD or MP3, but which I find myself looking at quite regularly on YouTube. Some are obvious gems, others are what connoisseurs might tactfully describe as guilty pleasures, whereas I am far too old for that sort of nonsense now:
Richard Thompson, Needle and Thread: In my mind I did buy his last album and yet I find no evidence about the house.
Stewart Copeland & Stan Ridgeway, Don't Box Me In: From the soundtrack of my favourite movie c. 1984, amazed I never bought it.
Sinead O’Connor, Jealous: before she took the veil, a characteristically Beautiful Love Song
Gerry Rafferty, Baker Street: where did he get it from? And where has he taken it to?
Wall of Voodoo, Mexican Radio: Shaky Stan Ridgway again (pictured) - and he should have been in pictures.
Siouxsie and the Banshees, Kiss Them For Me: I know she's a legend and that, but who knew she'd scrub up like so, and move so sinuously to boot?
Lou Gramm, Midnight Blue: If you want to feel like Bret Ellis's Patrick Bateman... REM used to cover this tune, in naked envy.
The Blue Nile, Tinseltown in the Rain: A fine singer who's got better and also sorted out his hair and shirts.
Black Uhuru, Great Train Robbery: the matchless power of Sly and Robbie.
Level 42, Something About You: to be viewed alongside its diptych 'Leaving Me Now' in which Mark King also plays a crying-on-the-inside clown.
I will play this game again...

Russia, and a fresh fight for the anti-imperialists

Having lured Georgia’s foolish President into a little war he couldn’t afford, Russia are now playing Stage II of this great game and recognising the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, with its plucky 70,000 populace. ‘If you hate us’, Russia says (in effect) to the UN, the US and EU, ‘we’re glad, and we don’t care. What are you going to do about it?’ Well, I hear Bush is sending Vice-President Cheney to the region, so that will doubtless raise the tone of the debate…
You will have seen/heard that Russia currently does have some really angry is-anyone-listening?-type Western apologists, who didn’t like the Kosovo war of 1999 and didn’t think Milosevic was unusually despicable, and do think that NATO sewed dragon’s teeth with that military action. An FT leader makes what I think is a (perhaps ‘the’) salient distinction: “The Abkhaz and Ossetian populations have not been threatened with anything remotely approaching “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” by the Georgians. If anything, the danger is in the other direction, with ethnic Georgians fleeing both regions to escape the Russians and the Russian-armed secessionists.”
As the FT suggests, this flawed and dishonest logic of Russia’s might yet bite her back or otherwise embarrass her, encoraging “the restive republics of the north Caucasus, such as Ingushetia and Dagestan, as well as Chechnya, to determine their own destiny.” As books by Bob Woodward and Alistair Campbell have shown us, it was over his attempted crushing of Chechnya that Putin really reached out to the Western powers, in search of common cause against what he called as an Islamic menace; then after 9/11 Putin shook his head, reckoned he’d told ‘em so, and decided to focus his efforts entirely on never having to seek common cause with anyone ever again. As Christopher Hitchens writes in Slate, “overt Russian imperialism is back, after a very short absence from the scene, and it is no more amiable or benign from the many toxic resentments it acquired during its period of decline and impotence and eclipse.” Any statesman who quite fancies being a hated pariah - would indeed wear such status like a crown - is a tough opponent to weather.

Made in Heaven (US 1987, dir. Alan Rudolph)

Following on from my lament of a few nights ago about having failed to squeeze an entry on Tourneur's Build My Gallows High into Ten Bad Dates, I've been reminded of a commensurate failure to build a spot in the book for Made In Heaven, one of the movies I really love from the mid-1980s: an affection possibly enhanced by its unavailability on DVD, which left me clinging to vague, fond memories - until, that is, I found some lovely clips on YouTube, such as this trailer...

At the final reckoning Alan Rudolph's career will probably come to be seen as one founded on the cultiest of cult movies (obviously, with Dorothy Parker and Gordon Liddy among his diverse interests, and Keith Carradine and Kris Kristofferson his favoured leading men.) And bittersweet romance has always been one of Rudolph's strongest suits. So Choose Me (1984) may end up getting counted as his masterpiece. Whereas Made in Heaven is one of those movies that most critics considered a would-be-commercial misfire, and the release version was chopped about without Rudolph's consent. But it's definitely the picture of his that I'd take to my Crusoe island.

It's a celestial Love Story that moves from funny/rueful to unashamedly cute/winsome - and then abruptly becomes a Loss Story, with terribly wrenching effect. The excellence of the narrative and its structure is the power of its metaphor.

Lovelorn Tim Hutton dies before his time saving some kids from drowning and goes to an oddball but charming Heaven, where God is Debra Winger in drag (we might indeed all find this to be the case one day...) In Heaven Hutton meets and falls in love with Kelly McGillis, and she with him. Natural justice, the viewer might say. But McGillis was 'made in heaven' and is there only to be gone from there, en route to earth: 'I'm going to be somebody's baby.' Hutton appeals to God/Winger, and is told that's his hard luck: such is life, and death. (You can watch this bit actually.)

But, the rules have one loophole - Hutton can be sent back after McGillis, reborn as a babe himself. The catch is that he won't know where in the world he's going, or anything of why he willed this to be: he'll just be an average Schmo like we all are, stumbling around in the dark. If he can find (or rather, run into) McGillis within 30 years, their fine feelings for one another will be restored like magic - 'love at first sight', you might say. If not, then love will never find either of them: the rest of their lives will be doomed to sadness, and unfulfillable ache.

Now then - did you spot the metaphor? The sense in which this obvious whimsy actually throws a sharply slanting, possibly painful light onto what is a crushingly familiar romantic preoccupation to a great many human beings? That's the wonder of this lovely movie. And YouTube preservation aside I hope it's reincarnated in a proper home format one day.

This is the ending, and if it seems especially to make no sense I believe that's because it was one of the passages most aggressively recut against Rudolph's wishes so as to sweeten an otherwise downbeat end. Still quite gorgeous, though. Contains for me the most fabulous focus-pull-plus-slight-pan in any movie. The score is Mark Isham and the final song is Neil Young's 'We Never Danced', again laid on thick as they did in the 1980s, but such is the way to High Emotional Content.

Good Crusaders review in today's Observer by Robert Collins

Another good notice for the Crusaders paperback today, I'm very happy to report. The Observer's Robert Collins describes Crusaders as "big, boisterous and brazenly old-fashioned", likens me to "a Balzac of the pre-Blair era" (a nice touch that I will take in the spirit doubtless intended) and ends by saying that "for sheer scope and rambunctiousness, it's irresistible." Those are terrifically generous sentiments.
As have others (passim), Collins does point out my "hijacking the antiquated prose of the Victorian social novel", and says that he finds this has "mixed results." And as previous, I've absolutely no quarrel with that view: one makes one's choices in this manner at the outset, and lives with 'em thereafter, and I respect the way Robert Collins has expressed his opinion of same.