NUFC: Cup Winners, in black and white...

NUFC.com has been running its customary top-notch advent calendar since December 1, and this year it's been devoted to classic team photos (the 'classic' not always reflecting the actual playing quality of the ensemble, you understand...)
But it's hard not to get a bit misty about the 1951 line-up pictured here: them 'uns who brought home the FA Cup with a 2-0 win over Blackpool.
Front and centre in this picture, of course, the scorer of a brace at Wembley: Jackie Milburn. At the start of his Toon career Jackie was also a part-time employee of Hazelrigg Colliery, who generally took the bus to games from Ashington having done his pit shift on Saturday morning. Eventually, I think, he got himself a motorbike; then trouble in one ear led him to quit the pit and throw in his lot with the Toon for £12 a week.
To Milburn's left is another canny goalscorer, George Robledo; the 'gangling' Tommy Walker on the far right had goals in him too. In general you look at these 11 lads and you just wouldn't mess with them, would you? Of course one could say the same of Joey Barton today; and yet the sentiment would be -how can I say it? - different.

'The Double Life of Tony Blair'

It sounds like a high-concept literary novel, doesn't it? In fact it's just the title Newsweek have stuck on this interesting interview-based report by Lisa Miller on the course in 'Faith and Globalisation' that Blair has now begun to teach at Yale. Therein Miller neatly rehearses all the contortions of Blair's public and private positions on what he believed while PM. Her best moment is the assertion that 'in a way, Blair's foundation is the culmination of his life as a double agent' - so making him sound rather like a character out of Kipling or Conrad.

Blair is certainly a character in my Crusaders, for which he also furnishes an epigraph, and he also has a 'double' in the figure of the book's young Anglican priest John Gore - though Gore resists the imputation, as in the following edgy exchanges with Labour MP Martin Pallister:

‘One thing you should know, John – he’s sincere is Tony. His faith is solid, really, it’s what he’s all about.’
Gore was pondering. ‘His wife, she’s Catholic, right?’
‘Cherie? Aye, I think so. What of it?’
‘Just, I don’t know if I recognise his particular brand. Of the faith. And I should say, I don’t know that the public care for politicians who wear that stuff on their
sleeve.’
‘Oh no, not a bit. That’s your job. And that’s what Tony says and all.’ Pallister wore his own thoughtful look. ‘You know what, you’d put me in mind of him a bit. Tony.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Don’t blow a gasket there. No, I think you’d get on, the two of you. What with the faith in common. And you’re both Durham lads, right...?

Anyhow... back to Lisa Miller's interview, Blair's main quotes are humdrum, indeed they might make jaundiced students of Labour history groan and try to amuse themselves by substituting 'The Labour Party' for the 'spiritual faith'/'faith area' bits in the following:

"We have an obligation to present spiritual faith as something that is positive and progressive and solves problems and does good, rather than something that people only read about because people are killing in the name of it."

"To me what is important is that the whole faith area gets some what I would call muscularity, and certainly strategy."

Dullsville, eh? But as usual with Blair the interesting part is trying to figure out what he actually thinks and means, (and intends to do), under the polished patter.

Portsmouth 0 Newcastle 3: We're watching MoTD II then...

'All it takes is a couple of wins', remarked Duane Hopkins, rather too nonchalantly I felt, when he and I and Samm Haillay were picking over the grim 2-2 capitulation at home to Stoke last Saturday. An inspired time, then, for The Lads to lodge the first away win of the season; and at Pompey, where the epic journey for travelling fans is usually worsened by on-the-pitch cruelties to boot.
An open game, by most accounts, and their lively strike duo could have put them clean away in the first half. Instead it was Owen and Martins who registered again, plus a late strike from young Guthrie. I slightly wish the mighty Oba's had been the one from 30 yards that thumped back off the post, rather than a tap past a floundering David James, as Oba is by nature a born scorer of smacking great goals. And Owen is clearly doing his best for us in advance of the long goodbye...
But it's all still so sticky in that league, what with the Irons getting a point at Chelsea and Sun'lun's flabbergasting result yesterday. No-one is acting like the drop is their designated lot, though as of tonight, for the first time this season, there's a couple of sides falling slightly adrift; one of them, inevitably, already came away from SJP with 3 points...

Hey! 10 Bad Dates fan spotted.

The film lists book finds itself amid some intriguing company on this reader's list. But then it was always my intention to try to tap the Jane Austen-admiring/Zoe Heller-querying demographic.
In fact I bumped into another 10 Bad Dates fan, a filmmaker, at the bar of the Vermont Hotel in Newcastle last weekend. It was 2am at the time so I may be remembering this over-fondly, but I think this chap keeps the book in his bathroom and finds it a great laugh - the book, that is - but as I say, the ales may have meant I got this wrong...

Davy Hammond 1928-2008

David Hammond passed away near the end of August. I heard so a few weeks after the event, and it's only today that I was properly put in mind to have a look about at some of the obituaries. I see the BBC ran a good obituary and a collection of tributes, and at the foot of both of those pages is a lovely little video that offers glimpses of his singing and filmmaking and a remembrance from Seamus Heaney. Another of the friends remembering him therein comments that essentially Davy was all about taking time when time otherwise moved too fast: this is why Hammond was such a great man for noticing things, seeing their value, passing that on.

I was introduced to Davy by his friend the great Matthew Evans, subsequently Lord Evans of Temple-Guiting - the kind of distinction in life about which Davy was very wry. The one occasion Davy and I spent good time together in Belfast, round 2000, we managed to drink a bottle of Irish whiskey right down to 'the heel', as he called it, and I've used that fine expression of good near-drunk bottles in honour of him even since.

Anyone can look at film or recordings of Davy Hammond and see that he was beautifully gifted and wise and a life-affirming presence in this world. He could pick up a guitar very casually and charm a packed room, but in that charm he was instructive - he was incredibly canny under the avuncular exterior, could cut to the core of things with a slight remark, which must be part of why the likes of Seamus Deane and Tom Paulin treasured his friendship - and the sharpness under the warmth didn't seem to me any kind of a ruse on his part, in fact it's a quality intrinsic to the very best of Belfastmen, as Davy Hammond was and will always be.

Esquire (January) now on stands: includes RTK on HST

Plenty good meat inside the new issue. (BTW there's also a female on the cover this month, which is always welcome, periodically.) I'm looking forward to settling down with a long piece about the so-called 'Natwest Three'. Elsewhere my own contribution is a review of the previously mentioned Hunter Thompson documentary Gonzo by Alex Gibney, which I recommend wholeheartedly. I suppose my chief feeling about it is in the following extracts:

'Gibney shows great footage of Thompson on the stump [during his run for sheriff of Pitkin County], repaying his debt of love to the ‘long fine flash’ of generational energy he’d found in the 1960s; also living out his profound conviction that if one has a serious beef with politicians then one has to get actively involved in politics...'

And yet...:

'In a way, Thompson was too pure for workaday politics. (Gary Hart dismisses him as ‘infantile’.) His drug intake too, however awe-inspiring, clearly generated stores of fear and loathing in him that he couldn’t wholly process...'

Northern Lights Film Festival 2008

Had a good laugh and a decent drink on Tyneside last Saturday, at my favourite festival in the whole wide world, where I've done a turn every year since its inception back in 2003. In the afternoon I conducted what felt like an interesting public discussion with Steven Sheil, the smart and talented director of the deeply unsettling low-budget horror film Mum and Dad, which gets an all-windows release on Boxing Day. Also on the panel, a great guy called David Pope who makes inspired horror/comedy shorts, including Gasoline Blood. In the evening at the closing do hosted in some style by the Baltic Gallery I handed over a Script Development Award, the jury of which I had been part, to a clearly outstanding young writer/director, Deola Folarin. The runner-up Simon Fellowes was also on hand, and I had the pleasure of telling Simon I own a few 'records' he made back when he recorded as Intaferon. Other good, good people it was great to see up there by the broad majestic Tyne included the Better Things team of Samm Haillay and Duane Hopkins, the playwright Fiona Evans, critic Jason Solomons, distributor Eve Gabereau, and the festival's stalwarts Patrick Collerton, Mark Dobson and Melanie Iredale. To 2009, then...

Sean Penn's 'Mountain of Snakes'

Sean Penn's reportage of visits to Venezuela and Cuba, and encounters there with Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro, was published in two parts a fortnight ago on the Huffington Post under the title 'Mountain of Snakes': here are Part 1 and Part 2. I'm rather surprised there hasn't been more media attention paid to these, though the blogosphere seems to have been buzzing at a low level. For a while I had the impression that Sean was minded to make this material into the stuff of something larger, between covers, but I'm glad they've surfaced now for our attention in any case.

Hang the DJ: some Willie on Willie action

Over on Hang the DJ's blog they just began a week of guest entries devoted to Musical Moments of 2008, with one post a day from five of the book's esteemed contributors: Peter Murphy, Richard Milward, Willy Vlautin, Laura Barton and Tom McRae. The justly celebrated Mr Vlautin is first up today, talking about Willie Nelson, dontcha know?

Newcastle United 2 Stoke City 2: living the nightmare still...

How long, o Lord, how long? As nufc.com notes quite rightly, "the Stoke fans captured the true story of the game when they sang, "2-0 and you f***ed it up.""

Richard T. Kelly's 'Lucie Gunn' - Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You...

...in my dreams. And yet there have been crazier notions, and this one at least is acquiring a certain substance. For one thing, today I made it into the industry bible Variety for the first time in relation to the fiction-writing side of my activities - in this case, an original screenplay of mine that's just been earmarked for Film Council backing, much to my delight and all-round gratitude:

"Public funding body the U.K. Film Council has unveiled 18 debut pics that will receive a total of £297,750 ($445,000) from its development fund. Pics include scribe Bola Agbaje’s bigscreen adaptation of her coming-of-age play Gone Too Far!... Other projects include Catherine Shepherd's Like a Virgin, Natasha Wood’s Rolling With Laughter, Richard Milward's Apples and Richard T. Kelly’s Lucie Gunn."

The still herewith is from Looking For Mr Goodbar (1977), a whimsical choice but not totally inapposite, given that Lucie Gunn is described in the UKFC's press notes as "an intense and seductive drama exploring the power games that men and women play in and out of the bedroom."

Here's to Lucie then. A hell of a girl.

Crusaders finds more readers at The Rotters Club

I note an interesting online write-up from a book club who (cf. Jonathan Coe) rejoice in the name of 'The Rotters Club': lately it seems the group have been mulling over both Crusaders and Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, in tandem. That's a whole lotta pages - must have been their 'state-of-the-nation' month. I gather that the readers much preferred Faulks; they thought Crusaders was 'wide in scope and ambition, but loose in having too many characters: its central one, The Reverend Gore, not having enough magnetism.' Still, I'm interested in the judicious closing remarks:

'We all agreed that it was refreshing to read a novel set elsewhere than London and would work well as a TV mini series.'

(Well, they might yet speak truer than they know.)

'It would be interesting to read the novelist's second novel to evaluate any development.'

(Said novel is still at least 18 months away from stores. But it'll mark a change of tack, for sure.)
'Harry Airborne', presumably the group's chief blogger/spokesperson, is frank and rather gracious: 'I probably would not have got past the first 100 pages of Crusaders -it reminded me of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth with its proliferation of characters and unwieldiness - but another member urged me to persevere and I am pleased I did. More JF, who advocated it, had a mastery of the text and clarified the motive of Steve Coulson’s support for the church, whilst another countered my view that the denouement was not too coincidental.'

Obviously I wouldn't have wanted to earwig every last bit of this debate, some of it would probably have stung a bit, but clearly I'd have been pleased to hear those staunch defenders of mine near the end. As I've said before, readers' groups are a great thing in our society, and I'm really pleased to have found my way onto another reading list of this kind.

Aston Martin: Hard Times

For the November issue of Esquire I interviewed the formidable and admirable James Bond producer/gatekeeper Barbara Broccoli, mainly on the fairly rich topic of marketing of and product placement within the Bond movies. Naturally we talked a fair bit about Aston Martin; that firm’s long and fruitful relations with the Bond franchise; and the special enthusiasm for Bond of its current CEO Dr Ulrich Bez, himself a keen connoisseur of speed and gadgetry. The blue-chip, look-and-dream-but-don't-touch lustre of the Aston Martin brand is what has made it such a useful partner to the Bond enterprise. ‘Aston Martin don’t have a huge advertising spend’, Broccoli told me, ‘because they sell every car they make before it’s made, people are so desperate to buy.’
It seems that last year Aston Martin sold 7,300 vehicles. This year they expect to shift 'only' 6,500. Thus today the firm announced it was cutting 300 full-time and 300 temporary jobs, around one-third of its UK staff. ‘Like other premium car brands’, said Dr Bez, ‘Aston Martin has been forced to take action to respond to the unprecedented downturn in the global economy.’ Christmas break had already been extended a fortnight, which was rather a black crow of an omen. Unite has, naturally, pointed out that this spells ‘a bleak Christmas’ for those laid-off.
Is it worse to lose one’s job right before Christmas, or first thing in the New Year? Which has the most piercing effect on one’s personal and familial morale and the management of one’s household finances? I fear a lot of us are about to be told, if not to find out very directly.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: she was right all along...

... as it turns out Barack Obama doesn't know what he was talking about on the great matter of foreign policy, and so has appointed Mrs Clinton as his Secretary of State. This irony is not entirely at the President-Elect's expense. But on the mundane personal level, sad to say, all the mental energy I (and many others?) expended in willing Mr Obama to the Democrat nomination - thus (I, or we, imagined) to break the Clintonian dynastic hold over this unprincipled shambles of a Party - was a waste, and a culpably naive one at that. I don't know who Obama thought he was fooling in welcoming his 'dear friend' HRC to the microphone today, and I hope he knew how silly and calculating he looked. The biggest problem to start considering as of now is exactly how practically ill-qualified is the self-proclaimed Superwoman of the 3AM Phonecall for the job in front of her. On a level beyond argument, in his thorough and consistent trashing of her application at Slate, Christopher Hitchens argues that 'it's difficult to see Sen. Clinton achieving confirmation unless our elected representatives are ready to ask a few questions about conflict of interest.' But then Reuters simply reports that 'all the nominees are expected to win quick confirmation by the Democratic-controlled Senate.' This the end of that, then?

The Internet Archive: a work in progress

Last week a friend introduced me to the Internet Archive, a 'digital library' which looks a bit like an inchoate history of the Web and a bit similar to a tried-and-tested paper archive in terms of its non-judgemental gathering of interesting bits of stuff that future generations might care to rummage. First and obvious thing to strike the eye last I looked - the Kennedy/Nixon debate of 1960.

Middlesbrough 0 Newcastle 0: Not the champagne stuff, then

It's another point on wor travels but clearly our generally bottom-six standard of form continues, even if tonight we sit one spot above the bottom three just on goal difference, as Sunderland took one of their more peculiar spankings at home to Bolton.
I’m glad we have Viduka back – he’ll be sluggish for a game or two, and will need his shooting boots re-heeled, but given a run of games the big man (if arsed, that is) worries defenders and gets goals. Will Kinnear have the wit to follow Keegan and play Marco, Martins and Michael in the sort of attacking triangle that skinned Spurs (away) near the end of last season? Otherwise choosing an attack duo is a bother. The traveling fans at Burra booed when Viduka came off the bench for Martins, who’d looked pacier and livelier than Owen. Oba himself was down the tunnel like a shot, which is a worry.
In other news Big Sebastien Bassong is winning big props – may he abide. But Jose Enrique would probably be on his way in January were it not for our problems on the left.

Crusaders review on Bookgeeks: New URL

Purely for the purpose of one's private web archiving.

http://www.bookgeeks.co.uk/2008/10/10/simon-as-review-crusaders-by-richard-t-kelly/

Mumbai: Patrick Cockburn's not soft on Pakistan

Looking over the early analysis of the Mumbai atrocity I might have been overly keen to hear something original, in the hope that it would prove more discerning. But in today's Independent the very reputable Patrick Cockburn weighs in to argue that the truth, banal and horrible, is that Pakistan is to blame, and that the Western powers and media are deliberately "downplaying foreign involvement. Indian allegations about "external linkages" of the terrorists is wearily reported as an unfortunate resumption of Pakistani-Indian finger pointing."

Backing Cockburn's contention, Sky continues to report that 'a number of Indian officials' place the blame on Lashkar-e-Taiba. Cockburn raises the spectre of Bush's long and forlorn courtship of Musharraf, and presumably believes the West is still trying to make an ally of a scorpion. He goes on to take issue with what we might call the Tariq Ali position of a few days ago: "… supposed experts now emphasise the alienation of Indian Muslims and suggesting that the origin of the terrorist assault on Mumbai is home grown, the fruit of the radicalisation of Indian Muslims by systematic discrimination against them by the Indian state."
He concludes: "…It is self-defeating hypocrisy for the West to lecture the Indian government now about not over-reacting and not automatically blaming the Pakistani government or some part of its security apparatus for Mumbai… It may be that the monster the ISI created is no long under its control, but it is ultimately responsible for what has happened."

I wonder if Cockburn thinks there is any negotiating with Pakistan on these matters - by India or Western powers? He suggests a big headache is on its way for President Obama. But we already know from the campaign how Obama feels about Pakistan's terror-by-proxy, don't we?

Crusaders noted in the Independent's choice of 2008 fiction

The Independent was very good to my debut novel on more than one occasion in 2008, and literary editor Boyd Tonkin's generous mention in the paper's year-end round-up gives me a spot in the midst of more distinguished company:

"In Crusaders (Faber, £8.99), Richard T Kelly used Newcastle politics on the eve of the New Labour landslide as the action and ideas-packed stage for a chronicle of change."

Mumbai: another day for the jackals

The ever more resonant image of India as a 21st century superpower has also had its attendant shadows and ghosts: such as the off-putting strangeness of India's systems of class, caste and religion, and the grim disparities of wealth so evident in Mumbai (which provide the premise and backdrop to the new hit movie Slumdog Millionaire.) Moreover, BBC Newsnight reported tonight that India has been taking its share of the pain of the global economic crisis – the stock market 50% down on the year, the rupee down 20%, £13 billion worth of investment pulled out - even before yesterday’s atrocity, and the loathsome CCTV pictures from Mumbai of those ghouls in sweatshirts and jeans, their backpacks heaving with grenades and spare magazines for the AK-47, stalking the softest of soft targets in hotels and train stations.
If, as they liked to say in the 1970s, 'political terror' is a form of 'communication', what are these ratbags trying to tell us? The rumoured hunting down of British and American passport-holders proposes one horrible interpretation – that these were Islamist jackals, unleashed from Pakistan or Kashmir or recruited by al-Qaeda, taking their glorious stand against the glaring evils of modernity and pluralist poly-ethnic democracy.
Tariq Ali, characteristically, and in Counterpunch, has countered the rush to this judgement: ‘The Lashkar-e-Taiba, not usually shy of claiming its hits, has strongly denied any involvement with the Mumbai attacks.’ Ali also sets out a list of grievances among Indian Muslims – ‘the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in shining Gujarat… supported by the Chief Minister of the State and the local state apparatuses’ and ‘the continuing sore of Kashmir.’ In short, Ali is warning India to get ready for the national angst of learning that these were homegrown murdering scum.
Shuja Nawaz draws a similar conclusion in the Huffington Post: ‘Chances are that this is a homegrown outfit’, and that they are "communicating" on behalf of ‘the Muslims of India, who despite being close to 150 million strong have a disproportionately tiny share of India's burgeoning wealth.’ But the real message Nawaz believes is being sent out is one designed to throttle some promising political progress, by the arousal of hatred: ‘This incident may spell danger for India-Pakistan relations at a time when a much-needed thaw seems to be emerging… Just one day before the attack, at a meeting in Islamabad of the Home Secretaries of India and Pakistan, an agreement was reached on a wide range of measures aimed at combating terrorism.’
Here's to that spirit and those measures, then, and let's be having them.