The English Summer, forever fleeting

A great friend of mine once told me feelingly how much he hated arranging his family’s summer holiday too far in advance: ‘You get it booked then you wait and it never comes’ was his existential complaint. Thus, the burden of hope and expectation that falls on an English summer, and the shadowing sense of inevitable disappointment - some of which I find myself feeling whenever I see Magritte's famous 'Empire of Light' (pictured).
This morning London bathes in high June heat, pools of shade and light glinting off any exposed hard surface. It’s the longest day of the year, and for me that always comes too soon, feels like a premature curtain drawn down on the possibility of ‘Summer.’ ('Dark nights coming now, just you watch...') But maybe it’s part of the process, the turning of the earth, the subjective experience of Time.
21 years ago this month I sat my Eng Lit A level paper, composing my no-doubt deathless responses to a set of classic texts that included The Great Gatsby: the sort of novel a young person should read regardless of curriculum, and which will linger in the mind of any reader. Today is the day in the calendar when I always think of that enviable nameless sylph at one Gatsby soiree who says:
"In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year... Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."
I only wish I could be so negligent… For me, though, the tenor is more in line with Tom Waits as ‘Benny’, the ponderous soda fountain proprietor in Francis Coppola’s Rumblefish – my favourite movie when I was 14, and still a cracker, I assume:
"Time is a funny thing. Time is a very peculiar item. Y'see, when you're young, you're a kid, you got time, you got nothing but time. Throw away a couple of years here, a couple of years there... it doesn't matter. Y'know? The older you get you say, "Jesus, how much I got left? I got thirty-five summers." Think about it. Thirty-five summers..."
That many? Still, what are we waiting for?

World Cup 2010: Come back, number ten...

Glimpsed in South Africa (courtesy of Getty images): the maestro, Zizou - brooding, quite likely, on this tournament's dysfunctional Domenech-led French team, as opposed to the previous tournament's dysfunctional Domenech-led French team, whom Zidane nonetheless managed to drag, as if single-handed and Sisyphean, to the brink of a second golden trophy. Would that he were out on the field this time too, doing (some of) that voodoo only he can do...

Not yet glimpsed in South Africa: much quality or verve or excitement, despite the outbreaks of local enthusiasm. I don't require the glut of goals so much as the quality play, from sides looking a bit less glum and gone in the legs (so speaks the Supreme Athlete, from his bathchair...)

The home nation's impending exit (barring a great result against the dysfunctional blah-blah French) is a major downer. Spain's misfire last night has me gloomy, too. My man in black-and-white, Jonas Gutierrez, is being played by Maradona as a defender due to Argentine injury bother. And I don't intend to spend the next 3 weeks just cheering on Miroslav Klose (another version of My Kind of Player.) What's wanted is a bit of magic from The Man in the #10 Shirt - yes, shirt of Zidane, Maradona, Platini, Pele, Puskas. That's where the inciting genius is usually found. So play up, Kaka, Messi, Podolski, Fabregas, Sneijder! Make sure you'll all be around come the knock-outs, then go do that voodoo that you do so well...

Labour's Newsnight hustings, and a clear choice

Wanting to assess the performances of the Labour leader candidates on Tuesday’s Newsnight, I had to struggle to see past the truly wearisome MC-ing of Jeremy Paxman, who managed to be snide, peremptory, and unclear – who also, in the chief scripted bit of ‘humour’, thought it witty to characterise Diane Abbott as some sort of high school cheerleader. Eh bien, nice work if you can get it.
Still, moving on. It seems the main thing people say for Ed Balls is that he would be a 'combative performer' at the despatch box. Cameron will be dreaming of such combat, with a man who has the tense, breathless quality of bluster, and is now completing the feat of talking out of both sides of his mouth.
I confess the apparent popularity of Ed Miliband For Leader has so far been a mystery to me and, having had my head sunk in my hands through most of his contributions last night, I only hope it ends up proving a mystery to 'EM' too.
Andy Burnham did better, got in some sharp points with seeming conviction. A caveat for Andy, though: I’m a proud northerner too, and I (and, I believe, others) wouldn’t vote for you solely or even partially on those grounds. Pack it in, eh?
On the subject of Diane Abbott, nothing occurs to me, other than in respect of her curious attribution of the ‘seeming’ public concern over immigration to an actual concern over housing and jobs – as if immigration were not an actual factor in the actual pools of the latter resources. I guess Diane must feel the working class of England continue to labour under false consciousness.
So, to Diane’s champion, and my pick, David Miliband. He said many impressive things and said them impressively, on the need for economic growth, for hard choices in foreign policy, for keeping a cool head on civil liberties and about the size and role of the state. We glimpsed a touch of prideful stiffness in this seemingly irreducible need to don the mantle of Anthony Crosland, but it’s quite forgivable, especially when Paxman (who attended Cambridge and whose own public service amounts to 30-odd years of sneering at elected politicians from a padded BBC chair) leapt in to thumbnail Crosland as some sort of sad ‘intellectual’ loser. Again, nice work, Jeremy. Rave on, our David.

The Saville Inquiry

Strange to recall that nearly nine years have passed since the day I called in as a visitor to the Saville Inquiry in Derry. It was on Monday, June 25 2001, that I stepped inside the Guildhall, out of a sunlit Derry afternoon, and found a breathtaking technical operation in progress. The Guildhall’s Gothic main chamber had been converted into what Richard Harvey – barrister representing the family of Jim Wray, a victim of ‘Bloody Sunday’ – called ‘Courtroom Starship Enterprise’. Sixty lawyers sat in attendance, a great nest of black crows: three for each victim, plus a group representing the paratroopers. Each was fitted out with a personal computer and a lectern from which they could question the witness, and such was the crowd in the chamber that each QC found himself gesturing to get the witness’s attention so that proceedings could commence.
Large screens were suspended from the oak-beamed ceiling, displaying close-ups of highlighted transcript passages, contemporary photographs, and even a VR recreation of the Bogside, reviving the long since demolished Rossville Flats. As a witness testified, they could refer to a virtual panorama of the Bogside, move around 360 degrees, even draw on the screen with a marker in the manner familiar to us from sports programmes on TV.
Taking the stand during my visit was Ms. Susan North, an Englishwoman in her mid-50s, elegant in a cream dress, pearls, and a hennaed bob. Her job as assistant to photo-journalist Fulvio Grimaldi brought her into the Bogside throng that day. When the shooting started she and others sought refuge in the Rossville flats. To get into a particular flat she had to step over the body of 17 year old Kevin McElhinney, shot dead as he tried to crawl to safety in a stairwell. Once in the flat, she and Grimaldi had to dive for cover as incoming shots were fired through the window. Ms North’s tape recording of this gunfire was played in silence that day at the Guildhall. Much argument ensued about a pretty well inaudible remark transcribed as ‘Let me get the bombs out first’: Ms North remembered hearing or seeing nothing of the sort. She did meet a man with a pistol in his pocket, who was afraid of being ‘lifted’, as they say in the North. And in the streets she saw more fallen bodies, people who’d been shot – five dead, three wounded. ‘Even the most hardened person’, she told the Tribunal calmly, ‘could not fail to have been touched by the monstrous scene.’
David Cameron’s speech to the Commons this afternoon, relaying the main findings of Saville’s Inquiry, moved me considerably. Not that I have any personal stake in the matter, you understand – it’s simply to do with the accumulated tensions of it, which anyone can feel who has read and reflected on the history.
It’s reckoned that ‘The Troubles’ claimed 3526 lives, and certain parties will insist on arranging these names in columns and imagining that a slide rule can show beyond doubt which side was more sinned against than sinning. The poet Thomas Kinsella lamented the tragedy very well albeit at what turned out, sadly, to be a very early stage in the conflict: ‘There are too many dead, on all sides, and it is no use pitting them hideously against one another.’
What we now know for a fact is that in the Bogside district of Derry on Sunday, January 30 1972, at the culmination of a march by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association against internment without trial, unarmed Catholic demonstrators were purposely shot dead by soldiers of the First Battalion Parachute Regiment under Colonel Derek Wilford. We know this now in spite of the subsequent inquiry of Lord Chief Justice Widgery, who decided swiftly and erroneously that Wilford’s men had met IRA gunfire as they entered the Bogside, and that several of the thirteen rioters then ‘dropped’ by Para sharpshooters were themselves armed.

Crusaders and Citoyens

I don't really 'do' links on this blog, a disposition I've suddenly come to see as unfortunately solipsistic, given the promiscuous tendencies of one's everyday web-crawling habits. Still, return visitors here (that's you two, sit up straight) will probably have figured out which online writers I consult on a regular basis; and, yes, in respect of British politics, that would be John Rentoul of the Independent, Philip Stephens at the FT, Oliver Kamm & (with some lingering resistance) David Aaronovitch at the Times, and the widely-read blogger Hopi Sen.
So, this afternoon I was very gratified to have my opinion of the David Miliband campaign noted by Hopi Sen, who also had some kind words to say about Crusaders. The term 'comrade' is something else I don't 'do' on account of its now-ruined context (though I could still accept citoyen); and I would be getting ideas above my station to factor myself into any fancied club of 'co-thinkers'. But in politics, as in all parts of life, when it comes to convictions freely expressed then common ground is a fine thing to find.

David Miliband: Not what you'd call an operator

Good grief… The ill tidings came by Twitter this afternoon: “Good news re Dianne. Thanks to my supporters who helped put her on ballot. Important day for debate and diversity in party.”

This blog wants David Miliband to win the Labour leadership contest, and hopes DM wants DM to win it too, because one could be forgiven for doubting as much, given his weird keenness to force an additional opponent onto the ballot paper.

DM’s nominating of Diane Abbott and urging of some of his own followers to do likewise seems to me a weirdly unimpressive stroke. If DM really believed Abbott had a deserved claim to lead the Party then I expect many supporters of his might reconsider their view of his own worthiness for the job. If DM believes Abbott will hive off first-preference votes from his brother and from Ed Balls, and/or that Abbott’s fan club will suddenly look on him favourably as a second choice then I wish him all the best with that manoeuvre, but find it somehow off-putting. And if DM believes that a female and/or non-white candidate is essential in any contest of this sort then I reckon he’s listening to the wrong sort of sanctimony, i.e. that of Labour NEC chair Ann Black (“If the choice is between three or four white male ex-ministers in their 40s, however able, it will be seen as lacking the full range of diversity which Labour seeks to reflect.”)
One wants Labour’s genuine diversity to be apparent, sure, but a leadership contest is not meant to be proportionally representative - leadership skills aren't distributed that way, and leaders aren't people who need a leg-up or a fix to get on the playing field. Your Party leader must emerge as someone who could impress the country at large as a potential Prime Minister, whether the job started tomorrow or in 2015. But then my troops may be overcommitted on this score, so to speak, as someone who admired David Miliband’s performance as Foreign Secretary, and who didn’t vote for Diane Abbot back in 1997 when she was my local MP. (She didn't seem to me the most socialistic candidate, only the most otiose.)

The fact that the Tories are loving this nonsense doesn’t stop them from making worthwhile points, the Spectator’s James Forsyth noting that Abbott ‘will spend the contest making jokes at the expense of the four white male Oxbridge special advisers turned politicians she is running against.’ That would be fine if we could trust that a commensurate number of gags will be had at Abbott’s expense – her career has been risible in some notable ways – and yet somehow I doubt any of them will have the nerve, stifled both by the rules of the game that allowed Abbott in and the fear of being seen to beat up on the media-friendly underdog.
Still, any ‘I Agree with Diane’ tendencies will, I hope, be resisted. For one thing, you will never be sure if Diane Abbott means what she says: the evidence to date is not good, but one also hopes that conclusive proof need never be furnished. For the meantime, though, I second Hopi Sen’s query about whether or not ‘ the chance to look noble on Twitter was really worth it.’

Cosmopolis (UEA): In academe's grey groves...

Good sport at the UEA Cosmopolis events last Saturday. I enjoyed my platform on fiction and politics with the eminent Giles Foden, chaired with some panache by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, author of What If Latin America Ruled the World? Giles said some especially intriguing things about thinking his way into Idi Amin's head for The Last King of Scotland. At Giles' prompting Oscar tasked both Giles and I to propose how we might fictionalise a) the Israeli Gaza flotilla debacle, and b) the BP oil-spill debacle. (My responses were, a) in the voice of a ghost, or else an IDF soldier slipping down a rope, and b) in the voice of a seagull...) Otherwise, I enjoyed expounding as always, on such beloved subjects as Mailer (his 'left conservatism'), George Steiner (poetry after Auschwitz, and Hitler depicted in his Portage to San Christobal of A.H.), and Brecht (the idea of pageant as 'illuminated history', offering a take on 'the truth behind it all.')
I also ended up chairing a fun session with the film/TV producer Judy Counihan, on the subject of how to pitch one's film script/idea to market, a concern on which I personally have begun to feel the pressing need for advice from someone of Judy's calibre...
Norwich itself struck me as a nice spot on my first visit. UEA is a campus college, and funnily enough I'd never been to a real campus before. But it was all very familiar. As the literary agent and novelist Derek Johns remarked to me and others in surveying its brute-concrete/dry-grassland aspect - 'Y'know, James Lasdun's dad did all of this...'

Bookhugger column #3: Fit to Wear the Shirt

Newly posted on Bookhugger, with the World Cup coming down the pipe at us, this month's literary musing of mine is on the very serious matter of books about football. Let me say straight up, there are too bloody many of them, and most of them are bloody rubbish. But the good ones are really, really good. In the piece I reiterate my admiration for the gifts of such artists as Gordon Burn, Ian Hamilton, Richard Williams, Leopoldo Luque, Kenny Dalglish and Zinedine Zidane; and I rehash my by-now-even-to-me-tiresome dislike of the English national team - an antipathy that would be dissolved instantly (if but temporarily) were Fabio Capello sufficiently distracted to pick Bensham's Andy Carroll up front and put Steve Harper from Easington in nets.

Dennis Hopper 1936-2010

Adios then, Dennis. Back when I heard the sad news of his terminal illness I had already written what was, I suppose, a sort of obituary. Tonight, learning he was gone, just a couple of other things occurred to me. One is a funny opinion given me once by Los Angeles policeman Dennis Fanning, who was technical advisor to Hopper on his LA gang movie Colors:

"I didn’t think I was going to get along with Hopper. I figured Hop’s a drunk, a druggie, a sixties radical – all that shit... Well, I got along ****ing famously with Dennis. Because we had the same stories, we just came from different sides of the fence. But we played in the same ballpark - dopers, cops, crooks - we play the same game. It’s the ****ing civilians who are outside the arena..."

Quite. And then Hopper in his own words, after I asked him once about whether he felt an artist was in some sense obliged to spend time on the dark side of life, or of their own self. His reply:

"Well, I think anybody who looks at our society and decides they want to be an artist, they have to go down that path - I think. I don’t see another path. I’m sure there are others. But if you start with Edgar Allan Poe and go to Norman Mailer, or you start with Vincent Van Gogh and you go through Jackson Pollock, or you start with Dylan Thomas and you end up with Bob Dylan – it seems that the dark journey is for the young, and in some way they feel they have to purge themselves, like the artists of the generations before purged themselves. Looking for that perfect yellow… I always thought Van Gogh was too drunk to find the yellow. Couldn’t even find the tube, man. [Whereupon Hopper laughed his famous laugh.] Maybe he was mixing the yellow with absinthe..."

In short, life was too short to be a civilian... Hopper wound up wearing v-necks and playing a fair bit of golf, sure, but his 'dark journey' was longer and stranger and more venturesome than most would dare undertake, and so it was a good thing he came back. He walks on somewhere still, I hope...

The photo above is, of course, by Warhol.

The Strangely Familiar Case of David Laws

I’m not one of those Labour voters sitting about waiting for this Government to collapse under the weight of its own hyperbole and sanctimony, bearing down as these must on the jerry-built foundations of the Coalition. We are in a deep economic morass, and 'strong and stable' governance is indeed needed, by whatever constitutional means and political talents can be found. David Laws was, evidently, more than competent for a posting as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, but it’s now clear that circumstances should never have conspired in his favour, and for reasons further to those that first seemed obvious (i.e. those arising from the outlandish notion of Liberal Democrats in government.) No, what’s got Laws – as he must have expected, right up to his recent ramrod posturing for cameras and at the despatch box – is that paying out of public money in rent to a long-time companion, albeit in a relationship that Laws would otherwise have denied to the world if pressed to, in the strange conviction that this was his entitlement.
I’ve never understood why those 'Orange Book' Lib Dems didn’t just flounce off and sign up to the Tories, of whom they were natural kinsmen. The Coalition showed me, at least, that the ‘National Interest’ offered them a convenient cover to make that furtive dash across the floor. Laws, of course, was among the fleetest of foot in that respect. Now we learn that Section 28 was always a huge barrier for him in reconciling to the Tories. Well, not so big, as it turned out.
I expect Laws will get another ministerial job in time, if he wants it – that’s the usual way. Otherwise he could go back to the City, from whence he came. No-one ever asked him to serve the public weal, and had he applied for the job then most of us would have said ‘Obviously, first up, don’t join the Liberal Democrats.’
There seems to be a lot of sympathy about for the 44-year-old Laws’ sad, self-inhibiting refusal to let his family know about his sexuality; in any event, since everyone else in his life and around Westminster seem to have known Laws was gay he will, one trusts, feel better soon, not having to lie and fiddle around this key part of his identity. And maybe the risible Nick Clegg will now keep his pompous mouth shut for a while about the 'New Politics' (?!), and the Liberal Democrats’ crusading embodiment of same. Tonight that fundamentally white, well-heeled, curiously self-repressive shower of a party look older than ever, as if it were 1963...

Bravo, Danielle Hope

It's rare enough on these TV 'talent' shows that the most interesting and authentically promising talent should make it through to the final rounds, much less be successful in the final reckoning - hence three cheers for Danielle Hope.

Esquire (June 2010) and the Bill Hicks story...

The June 2010 'Sports' issue of Esquire has been on stands a fortnight, and includes my penultimate film column for the mag, a write-up of the new documentary American: The Bill Hicks Story. I'm a big fan of Hicks, honest Injun - yet it occurs to me that anyone reading the Esquire piece might not believe it. I daresay I sound a bit iffy, a bit niggly. In part that's what an 800-word ceiling does to you: the nuance is sometimes lost, other times a great swathe of what you might really want to say simply doesn't fit. But on reflection I think I spent too many of those 800 words having a mild and pointless dig at the cult of Hicks. I do think his work has inspired too many glowing estate-approved documentary products, too many bad rock songs, too many slackly-assembled biographies. And he is one of those comics who are so great that they can leave their admirers parroting the material like scripture... But, whoah, whoah, what am I saying? There I go again... The main fact is, Hicks was a genius comic, and he died too soon - they shouldn't die, people like that. End of story.
David Letterman is quite a funny man too, if a rum cove at times, and he made himself something of a villain in the Hicks legend, by cutting (on grounds of 'taste' and network sensitivities) what would have been Hicks' final TV stand-up spot from his Late Night show in 1993. In 2009, Letterman invited Hicks' mother Mary onto the show, to apologise for his original misjudgement and loss of nerve, and to debut and showcase the previously excised Hicks performance. It's on YouTube, and is of course hilarious. But below is Letterman's opening apology, which I find very moving, in spite of the audience's uncomprehending chuckles.

How Impress the Working Classes of England?

I spent the daylight hours of Election Day just gone doing a little bit of footwork on behalf of my brother David’s attempt to be elected a local councillor under the Liberal Democrat banner in Holloway ward, Islington. (En route to the morning shift I’d called into my elder daughter’s school and voted Labour across the board for Hornsey & Wood Green, so I felt I had both my family-over-party principles and my general karmic wellbeing in good order.) The photo above is a small souvenir of an interesting day, David and I with another of his friendly volunteers of the day, Kenny.
David polled an excellent 1940 votes, every one of them earned by his own hand and, evidently, on account of his good works in the locality over recent years. But in the end – and this became clear during the day – Labour had got its usual vote out with extreme efficiency, and their three councillors were returned, as was their local MP Emily Thornberry – one of the night’s dearly-fought prizes for Labour. In fact, this was rated one of the party’s model campaigns of Election 2010, as evinced by much post-mortem analysis, such as this from Jessica Asato at LabourList:

“In Islington South, voters weren’t swayed by the Cleggmania which was expected to grip the seat. Instead, the years of community campaigning by Emily Thornberry paid off, combined by assiduous door to door contact - the mountains of literature which the Lib Dems used failed to sway the electorate… There are other explanations for the victories in these seats - not least because most of them were metropolitan, and some of them had larger than usual ethnic minority populations. But we can't underestimate the impact of full time campaigning which they embraced.”

Interesting, as always, that 'metropolitan' and 'ethnic minority' remain coded Labour still. Moving on, Chris Smith made this bolder assertion on the New Statesman blog:

“Labour London… has created a formidable fighting machine and is buoyed by election results thought impossible a year ago. It is the kingmaker that will decide if David Miliband will take over… The political map of the capital now has a solid core of red. It controls eight more Labour councils, having gained more than 180 councillors. Westminster seats were secured despite Ashcroft cash; the party held Hammersmith - home of the Conservative easyCouncil project – plus Westminster North and Tooting. And it won the marginals of Harrow North and Enfield.”

London, maybe... but the South East is back to being a big headache for Labour, indeed Southern England more generally. John Rentoul offered the following dose of salts:
‘A correspondent emails with the numbers. Total number of seats in Southern England excluding inner London: 220. Total number of Labour wins: 12 (5 per cent)..."

The enigmatic James Purnell develops this thought in the Times today:
“Labour’s voters showed [their] party a lot of love on May 6. Despite everything, the core vote came out. People voted Labour in inner cities. There was even a swing to Labour from the Tories among ABs. But there’s bad news too: an 18 per cent swing to the Tories among C2s. The list of lost seats reads like a weekend supplement on holidaying in Middle England — Hastings, South Ribble, Worcester…”
I find myself a bit troubled by the pat-ness of this 'C2' thing (the 'A' and 'B' thing too.) Liam Byrne was going on about it in the Guardian the other day too, and some commenting reader asked if he calls people ‘C2s’ to their faces? It was only this morning that I decided to check out for myself how these famous social grades are properly defined. I found the following on Wikipedia, based on ‘Chief Income Earner's Occupation’ (though ‘living on benefit’ is counted at the bottom of the scale, while the upper end doesn’t factor in that layer of the upper class who don’t actually need to earn by dint of inherited wealth.)

A, upper middle class: Higher managerial, administrative or professional.
B, middle class: Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1, lower middle class: Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2, skilled working class: Skilled manual workers
D, working class: Semi and unskilled manual workers
E, Those at the lowest levels of subsistence: Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners and others who depend on the welfare state for their income
You don't hear politicians using those D and E terms too often, do you? And there's a lesson there. Were I a skilled manual worker (indeed, a skilled anything...) I think I’d be fairly narked to hear my political convictions and voting intentions being bundled into some tacky plastic carrier bag marked 'C2'. Purnell, of course, is not standing, cannot stand, for the Labour leadership, and Byrne is said to be making up his mind, but any serious candidates need to get this part of the rhetoric right, I reckon.

Waking up to the ConDemNation

A dear and erudite friend texted me this morning with his customary wit and wisdom: 'I haven’t felt that sick seeing those two public school ****s standing in that garden since sometime around 1989… Cromwell would be ****ing outraged.'

True, and I do like to feel a bit of loathing and fury myself, it’s good for the soul in the right measure. And yet, over the whole comical Con/Lib business I think I could keep my shirt on - were it not for this outrageous fixed-term stitch-up. 2015 before we get a chance to return a verdict on these jokers? Unless there’s a 55% no confidence vote? C’mon you Con/Lib ****s - you're having a laugh. Jack Straw called in right on this morning’s R4 Today: "completely undemocratic and totally unworkable."
"Let's say this rule was passed where you require 55 per cent of the Commons vote to have an election. What if 51 per cent of the Commons was against any confidence in the government and was refusing to pass legislation? You then get into the extraordinary position where parliament could not be dissolved...but government would be completely unworkable."

To my mind Jack Straw hit quite a vein of form in the latter years of New Labour, and he writes well in today’s Times about the present and future dilemmas:

"Our overall result was not good — the second-lowest share of our postwar vote. But expectations had been so low that there is real relief that we did better than anyone expected even three weeks ago, when polls put us in the low 20s, below the Liberal Democrats. Palpable relief, too, among so many colleagues in marginal seats who never expected to be back… Above all, relief that we have to stand on our own, sort out our future without being engulfed in the miasma of a coalition deal with the Lib Dems… [A]lliances are not, in the end, a matter of calculus but of chemistry. It doesn’t work between Labour (new or old) and the Liberal Democrats... So what of our future?... First Labour must take the lead in defining its record, and in honouring Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s legacy. If we don’t, our opponents will seek to do so in a pejorative way… Second, we must avoid the visceral divisions that followed our 1979 defeat, putting us out of power for 18 years… Third, we must look carefully at the message of the election. It was broadly good in Scotland and Wales, not bad in conurbations and towns such as mine, but in what the psephologist Peter Kellner describes as the motorway corridors in England, it was far from good. Getting back the vote of “decent hard-working families” is imperative... The good news is that all of the potential candidates get this…"

I hope so, Jack, I really do.

Lib-Labbery: The Eve of Destruction

On occasion this blog is as guilty as any of clinging to certain comforting delusions as though they were nursery blankets. Moreover, it delights to see Rupert Murdoch (inter alia) in an impotent rage, and his Sun newspaper groping around on the toilet floor trying to relocate its famous sense of ‘humour’.
But the unhappy truth remains that Lib-Labbery cannot work, or certainly not in this curious moment that we’re living through. The British people won’t wear it, not based on this arithmetic. It’s said that coalitions can grievously wound the smaller party, and here I wouldn’t mind so much, but I can only see the larger party getting gored in the process too. I do believe Labour has to regroup around a bit of the forward thinking and reforming instincts that Tony Blair first advanced and then got utterly distracted from while he was PM. I also think that process will be much assisted by Miliband or Johnson as leader. But I can’t see it being conducted anywhere other than in Opposition. If Labour and the Lib Dems have so much in common, let them work that out together fruitfully in a time and place when the people aren’t waiting for a government to get formed in the midst of an economic horrorshow. I was never too keen on David Blunkett or John Reid while they held high office, but I must concede they’ve talked a few truths in their time while I was finding certain lies more consoling. They’re both right on the present issue, I’d say: I can't see that Labour will be forgiven for this particular effort to retain office - if, by whatever crazy contortions, it actually comes off. The Con/Lib notion at least makes sense by dint of numbers, though Clegg must see the ruin that will await his party then. But it seems to me, however glumly, that the proper course is Cameron now rolling up those much-vaunted sleeves of his and forming a minority government. On a purely tribal level, I think this will also, in the long run, prove the least worst option for Labour.
The photo above is (c) PA/Getty.

Crusaders for the telly?

From The North, 'the blog of author/journalist/broadcaster Keith Topping' reports (you'll have to scroll down, like) that Ruby Films has "lined up the writer of An Englishman in New York to adapt acclaimed state-of-the-nation novel Crusaders for a potential Channel 4 drama. Brian Fillis, whose credits also include the BBC4 biographical dramas The Curse Of Steptoe and Fear Of Fanny, is developing a script based on the 2008 book, the fiction debut of biographer and screenwriter Richard T Kelly. Crusaders follows a young clergyman who attempts to build a new church in a run-down area of Newcastle upon Tyne. His plans are complicated by battles with an ex-bouncer, an MP and a former classmate at his theological college who questions his faith."

The key word is 'potential', of course, we can only see what we shall see. But you can bet I wish the excellent Brian Fillis all the very best with that script he's developing...

Cosmopolis: UEA, June 5 2010

In a month's time the University of East Anglia will play host to Cosmopolis: The International Gathering of Storymakers (first annual...), billed as 'a festival of words, images and sounds to celebrate and explore the universal human practice of making stories.' Well, I'm up for that. In fact, I'm booked as a speaker. The event in which I'm participating is billed like so:

"The Politics of Storymaking (Lecture Theatre 2, 11:10): With electioneering voices now hoarse and politicians dizzy from spin, the novelists Giles Foden (The Last King of Scotland, Turbulence), Richard T Kelly (Crusaders, Sean Penn: His Life and Times), and the editor of New Statesman magazine, Jason Cowley along with a special guest, will discuss how stories and successful politics are inextricably linked."

Of course, stories and unsuccessful politics are pretty solidly linked too (I write as a Labour voter...), so I expect that side of the coin will also get an airing in what I hope will be a lively discussion. Pleased to see the Norwich Evening News have picked it up too...

Bookhugger column #2: What is to be Done?

The second of my regular monthly essays on literary themes is now up at Bookhuggers: What is to be Done? On political arguments in book-form. The strapline is: 'With one week to go until the culmination of a fascinating General Election, Richard T. Kelly considers the art of the political argument in book form.' The theme of the piece, I suppose, is this (in light of the choices available to the voter): 'The differences are certainly there, in the party manifestoes and the much-vaunted leaders’ debates on TV. But for those of us who fancy a longer mull over matters, wouldn’t our deliberations be enriched by some fiery polemical writing, from all quarters and factions?' The title is of course pinched from Lenin (who pinched it himself), and by happy coincidence the excellent Oliver Kamm of the Times put the same title on his blog post of yesterday explaining (in somewhat heavy-hearted tones) why he will be voting Labour next Thursday...

Vote Labour, all ye penitent sinners...

Gordon Brown’s determination to behave as though he were a character invented by Dostoyevsky – rather than forged at the foot of a stern Scots kirk, the personal back-story Brown prefers – is the big news again. Yesterday’s carnival of reaction had me thinking back to the moment 20-odd years ago when I discovered Dostoyevsky as my ‘favourite writer’, a status he’s more or less retained. One of the scholars whose writings were helpful to my discovery of his work was Professor John Jones of Oxford, who also introduced me to Kafka’s defence of the typical Dostoyevsky hero as a man not utterly deranged but merely ‘incidentally mad’ – in the same manner as the rest of us. Jones was certainly with Kafka on this point, arguing that we all mutter to ourselves when we think we’re alone, cursing under our breath, ‘F**k me!’ or ‘I’ve got him!’ or suchlike. ‘We all do it!’, Jones insisted.
Well, ‘I’ve got him!’ would certainly sum up the current, gleeful view of the Tory commentariat in respect of Gordon Brown, following his inadvertently 'on-mic' dismissal of the woman he met in Rochdale. It’s schadenfreude, of course, but, even if we do indeed ‘all do it’, it’s fair to say that only three of us are currently running for the office of Prime Minister. We are back in ‘psychologically flawed’ land again.
This PM is an unlucky general, for sure. But we do make our own luck in life to a large extent, and Gordon Brown has been stumbling through a veritable thicket of bad karma for years now. His apology was pulpit language – ‘a penitent sinner’, indeed – but the forced grin on his face as he pronounced himself ‘mortified’ was indeed worthy of one of Dostoevsky’s internally divided anti-heroes. Or, to summon another literary spirit – ‘I went on sinning every hour, and all the while most strenuously warring against sin...’ Thus Robert Wringhim, he of James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), the classic text of Gothic Scottish Calvinism.
All I would say to Brown’s happy detractors is: beware that karmic redress, for it is certainly coming down the pipe at us all. We all say hard words when we think no-one’s listening - sometimes even for the amusement of other ears, if we're sure the company is entirely congenial. Had I the misfortune (say, on election night…) to step into some room populated wholly by the Tory commentariat – say, the likes of Benedict Brogan, Fraser Nelson, the guy who calls himself Guido Fawkes, etc, etc – I do suspect the air in the room could probably be condensed down into a draught fit to turn the noble Dr Jekyll into the gloating Mr Hyde.
In any event, this blog is voting Labour on May 6. It will be a ‘lost vote’ in my case, as Hornsey and Wood Green – captured by the Lib Dems in 2005 in a wave of protest against the ousting of Saddam – is not looking remotely likely to change its mind this time. (This likelihood, though, has not converted me to electoral reform…)
I can’t say I’m hungry for 5 more years of Gordon Brown in Number 10: I have for some time wanted Alan Johnson or David Miliband in that job. I do, however - and for my sins - prefer Mr Brown to the other contenders. More pointedly, in the short-term, I want Alastair Darling to stay Chancellor, Miliband to stay Foreign Secretary, Johnson to stay at the Home Office. Anyone who wants Osborne, Hague and Grayling in those jobs has my very best wishes for a swift recovery. (I couldn’t actually tell you whom the Lib Dems would put up for those positions, but I don’t feel a great loss.)

The Golden Palominos Ride Again

Your level of interest in rock ‘n’ roll 'supergroups' will likely depend on how you define 'super' in musical terms. The phrase doesn't quite pack the punch it did back in the early 1970s, circa Crosby Stills & Nash (& Young), when an outfit such as Blind Faith could make substantive claims for its collective prowess. Last year I did mean to check out Them Crooked Vultures, but the moment just passed...

Late last week I found myself listening with great pleasure to my fuzzy old tapes of The Golden Palominos, a New York ensemble directed by the drummer Anton Fier, first associated with master producer Bill Laswell and his Celluloid label, whose recordings spanned the 1980s and 1990s but who for me will always stay gold indeed on account of two particular LPs, Visions of Excess (1985) and Blast of Silence/Axed My Baby for a Nickel (1986) whereupon the principal vocalist is the wondrous Syd Straw but guest performers include John Lydon, Michael Stipe, Jack Bruce, Matthew Sweet, T-Bone Burnett, and (briefly) Dennis Hopper.

So, what do you know? Next week, I learn, the Palominos will in New York City play their first gig in 23 years (i.e. since I bought Blast of Silence on cassette in the branch of HMV on Northumberland Street, Newcastle.) Fier has explained the reformation online thus:

"...there were five different versions of the golden palominos. this gig represents version two which spanned the years 1985-1987.....with a bit of cross-over into 1988. most people remember this version and these years as the syd straw era. this version made two records, "visions of excess", and "blast of silence". this was also the only version of the golden palominos that attempted to be a live, touring rock band....this is where we cut to the present......i am generally not the nostalgic type or one to look back......and in the past 23 years since the last golden palominos live gig i have never before considered reviving a past version, but recently i heard syd sing and i was struck by the beauty of it... and wanted to work with her again......so we're giving this a try here and if it's fun and exciting for us we might consider doing it again on a more full time basis in the fall......so this is an experiment......to see if it is possible to go back in order to go forward......"

The narcissism of Matthew Parris

For me, Times columnist Matthew Parris will always be the prize Thatcherite prat who decided (c.1983, for the benefit of ITV's World in Action) that he would be setting a moral example by living on the dole for a week in Scotswood - where, by his estimation, the local people (whose livelihoods Parris's Government was busily serving to destroy) were, surely, protesting too much about their privations.

For that week on Tyneside, of course, Parris lived miserably, and couldn't afford to keep his lights on by the end; but, unlike the proper residents of the area, he was free to check out of that particular hotel and wash his hands of that particular slice of life, while trying, post facto, to sound awfully wise about it. All in all, a bit of a sponger, that Mr Parris.

Parris is older now, ostensibly more chary of making a sanctimonious charlie of himself, for all the temptations a newspaper column offers in that line. But hark at his latest effort in the Times. (I won't link.) Yes, we do already know that Nick Clegg hates Gordon Brown, and that the contempt is mutual. This was clear last Thursday, as Parris notes. If Clegg should be kingmaker, Brown is finished, for sure. Some of us Labour voters could imagine worse scenarios... But, really, you have to be a Tory blusterer like Mr Parris in order to a) give Clegg huge credit for that paltry animosity, and b) project yourself into Clegg's shoes and so come up with the following pseudo-dialectical explanation for the Lib Dem leader's feelings on the matter:
"Mr Clegg, I believe, sees no reasons other than historical ones why the modern Labour Party should even exist. He thinks Labour has traduced and betrayed progressive politics and that there are strands in its DNA — the old Left, the trade union links, the inborn, knee-jerk collectivism, the State-authoritarianism and the suspicion of individual liberty — that condemn it for ever to lead Britain’s centre-left astray. Ideologically, Mr Brown embodies that genetic inheritance. Personally, Mr Clegg can’t stand him. That’s my take on Mr Clegg. It’s only a guess, but I would put my laptop into the Magimix if — Labour having lost its overall majority — he did anything to put Gordon Brown back into Downing Street."
I'm already gut-sick of hearing Tories like Parris talk as if they had the slightest interest or stake in principles of 'progressive politics.' If they want to drivel on about the 'betrayal' of same, they ought really to have done time in some sanctimonious Troyskist groupuscule, rather than grafting for Rupert Murdoch. Memo to Parris: sure, keep peering into the mirror on this matter, but don't presume to pronounce on anything but your own wan reflection therein.

(The picture above, BTW, is of your correspondent in Scotswood c.2007. If that seems narcissistic, please excuse: I just didn't fancy putting a pic of Matthew Parris up instead...)

C4/Coming Up: 'Jennifer' undergoes 'Eclipse'

In entertainment news just in: that 30-minute telly script of mine that went before cameras back in February under the title of Jennifer has, in the final stroke of the post-production process, got itself a brand new title: Eclipse. It will be screened, among all 7 of this year's Channel 4/Coming Up films, at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June, and presumably it will air on Channel 4 in the summer - such were the windows afforded last year's Coming Up batch.
Eclipse is, of course, a title with some form behind it, and I do hope that youthful movie fans currently waiting keenly for the next filmed instalment of the Twilight saga (Twilight: Eclipse, due in cinemas this July) don't get themselves confused by this renaming of our little piece, or suspect us of trying to steal a bit of that vampiric thunder.
For me, in movie terms, Eclipse will always mean Antonioni, L'Eclisse being one of the maestro's prime pieces of melancholic urban beauty. Needless to say, it looks to have been posted in entirety on YouTube. Eclipse is, in any case, a perfectly good replacement title on poetic grounds for the film that used to be Jennifer. The little veiled tip of the hat to a director I always venerated is a pleasing bonus. In fact I don't think Zoe Tapper or Andrew Buchan would have looked at all out of place in any work by Signor Antonioni made during his golden years of the 1950s/60s.

NUFC: It is Accomplished

Tonight's title-clinching win at Plymouth was strikingly similar to the previous 28 we've enjoyed in this friendly old Division 2 c. 2009-10, but particularly of a piece with the last six that have come on the trot from a team now easing through the gears. A big part of the story from Home Park seems to have been the touchingly good sportsmanship of now-relegated Argyle, offering Toon fans a congratulatory banner on the pitch beforehand, plus some choice musical selections over the tannoy, 'Blaydon Races' among them, once all was squared away. Accordingly come the final whistle some of the Mags were on the pitch, thinking it all over, and it is now. A close season's work begins properly for Chris Hughton from this point, the gaffer now set the recurrent task of figuring out how we're going to beat Stoke, Blackburn, Wigan and the Mackems. Through Andy Carroll 'rising high to power home a header' as he did tonight and has done throughout the Fizzy Pop campaign? I wish...

Election Fever: a mild sweat

I didn’t watch Thursday night’s party leaders debate on ITV. I was down the pub, with two of my oldest mates, and, god knows, such opportunities crop up rarely at this time of life. Plus, I already know how I’m voting and why; and I know very well what I think of the Liberal Democrat party and of Nick Clegg, who nonetheless appears all of a sudden to be striking great swathes of the British people not as some mere potential kingmaker but, rather, the straight-talking force of common sense incarnate.
Seeking the upside... I suppose it makes a change from noting the main parties’ discreet wrangles over how to plug that £167 billion deficit in public finances. By contrast, for some voters, Clegg must indeed seem like a much-needed blast of honesty. And I have to admit that The Swing to Clegg is a more novel and welcome staging post in the course of this election than the previous week’s bleatings from all those Tory shopkeepers who (surprise!) don’t want to pay an extra 1% in National Insurance.
For me, the deficit is still the top story. The Treasury cannot be run in the manner of a private household, not is government a limited company, and so it still seems important to nail the Tories on their nonsense about efficiency savings, as did the excellent Oliver Kamm, quoting Nigel Lawson’s memoirs (‘Incoming Conservative Governments usually tend to be overoptimistic about the scope for ‘eliminating waste’ - a pledge which is always more popular than specific spending cuts...’)

John Rentoul also put it well last week in rubbishing Cameron’s 'Big Society' waffle:

"I am as opposed to the nanny state as the next person. I do not like Gordon Brown's statist assumptions on the economy and public services. But the helium at the heart of the [Tory] flying pig manifesto is the idea that if the Government stops doing stuff, people will organise themselves to fill the gap in ways that are equitable, fulfilling and tax-saving."

"Sean Penn has a biography...?!?"

Several kind friends mailed the other day to tell me that my Sean Book had made an unlikely, half-glimpsed cameo on Jon Stewart's Daily Show last week. (I'd never have known, as I've found the Show a pretty tiring watch just on the strength of a few past viewings.) All that happened (per the last 10-15 seconds of the clip below) is that some guesting actor mocked up a joke autobiography of himself by wrapping a homemade cover around the Canongate US hardback edition of Sean Penn: His Life and Times, and Stewart, unravelling said mock-up, seemed momentarily diverted by the contents of the actual book. His reaction - 'Sean Penn has a biography...?!?' is one that I could take as wounding proof of the book's utter anonymity in the US market, even though its subject is a sizeable public figure and double Oscar-winner, also a substantive humanitarian recently seen (as pictured) putting his money and his efforts where his mouth is on the crisis issue of the Haitian earthquake.
But, really, I can't complain. Some of Sean's most wonderful movies are productions that scarcely any Americans seem to have heard of either, and that neglect is rather more worthy of protest...

New Esquire (May 2010): RTK on Polanski's The Ghost

The new Esquire has on its cover Jay-Z, which is good news, as I might now find out just who that guy is and what he’s all about. Within, my film column is about Roman Polanski’s movie of Robert Harris’s The Ghost, in which I found much to enjoy while also finding myself unable to get past one mountainous error, namely the drama’s daft imagining of a Blairesque Prime Minister played by Pierce Brosnan – 'Adam Lang', as Harris calls him, an international statesman shown to be utterly devoid of qualities. As I write in the mag:
"Pierce Brosnan unsurprisingly flounders in trying to fill this cursory outline of a person. In Harris’s novel, the ‘Ghost’ decides finally that Lang is just ‘not a psychologically credible character.’ Quite. But while Harris intends us to read Lang as a pliable phoney, all that comes across is Harris’s consuming hatred of Tony Blair, whom Lang resembles in every respect but for the ones that actually matter..."
Admiring John Rentoul’s political writings as I do, and finding myself mostly in agreement with him about the rationale for and legality of Britain’s involvement in the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, I suspect he would not be taken with my piece were he to read it, since he’s been vocal in his criticism of The Ghost and its makers (without having seen the movie); whereas I devote a fair few lines to my admiration of Polanski as a filmmaker, and attribute my overall liking for the film to it being so recognisably un film de Polanski.
As I say in the piece, it has ‘the quite inimitable Polanskian mood: a sense of creeping unease, of the slow-but-steady workings of fate, the unfussy, commonplace presence of evil in the world.’ Moreover, Ewan McGregor in the lead is ‘a classic Polanski hero in distress, naïvely courting trouble and yet, on some level, asking for it.’ And like so much of Polanski, The Ghost plays on the menacing theme of ‘the double’ – two men sharing a moral/physical resemblance and, possibly, a fate. Location-wise Polanski makes the North Sea island of Sylt ‘double’ as Martha's Vineyard, and it’s a great swap, because scenically the film has that mood evoked by Norman Mailer in his New England-set thriller Tough Guys Don’t Dance: the ‘cold sea air filled with the bottomless chill that lies at the cloistered heart of ghost stories.’ Those who treasure how Polanski shot the island of Lindisfarne in Cul-de-Sac will feel those embers warmed by The Ghost.
I must say, I don’t think Polanski undertook the filming of Harris’s novel on the grounds that he wanted to play his own part in dragging Blair up before The Hague. Rather, Polanski had been at work with Harris on a movie of one of the author’s earlier successes, Pompeii, but then the funding collapsed. As Harris tells it (or as reported by Michael White the other week) he then “offered [The Ghost] as an alternative to Polanski, who is not interested in politics. ‘This Gordon Brown, he’s schmuck, yes?’ was the limit of [Polanski’s] conversation.” That certainly sounds like Polanski’s diction, at least as Martin Amis once aped it in a famous appraising interview piece.

Malcolm McLaren 1946-2010

I only met him once – about 13-14 years ago, at London’s Café de Paris, aptly enough, it being some event in honour of his son Joe – so I won’t pretend any deeper understanding; but old McLaren certainly helped to liven up my youth. His best testaments, I reckon, are Julien Temple’s The Great Rock and Roll Swindle (1980), in which he was very funny (‘Helen, never trust a hippie…’), so revealing his own distinctive performative streak; and Duck Rock, the fabulous record he made with Trevor Horn in 1982-83. Horn told some very bemusedly funny tales around that time, about sitting in one of New York’s priciest studios watching McLaren hopping about, them both listening to hours of African drumming, dollars draining away with every second… He’d already heard Malcolm’s efforts at ‘singing’, so even a genius of Horn’s stature must have wondered if this record was going to work... Well, it did, it was a beaut – witness 'Soweto' – and not thanks to McLaren’s musical 'talents', but his gift for bringing good things together and joining them up, which used to be called 'sampling' and which we all now do with our computers and what have you.
On last night’s Newsnight Jeremy Paxman, who’s paid to scoff at everybody and possibly scoffs at his own kids, scoffed through an obituary in which the most patently ludicrous detail seemed to be McLaren’s championing of something called ‘hip-hop’. Well, one glance at the video for 'Buffalo Gals' and it all comes back - just how clever McLaren was in that department. He was, in the spirit of the age, an impresario and packager of ‘the street’ and what we learned to call its ‘subcultures.’ When he was knocking around Hollywood in the mid-80s, dating Lauren Hutton and trying to produce movies, his major project was said to be called 'Surf Nazis Must Die.' Good grief, I thought then. Having since learned a lot more about the hardcore Malibu surfing scene, from Sean Penn and others, I think McLaren’s instincts were as bang-on as ever. But he wasn’t cut out for America. He was very English, and somewhat European. And like a lot of ostensibly shocking and edgy artistic types, he wound up looking and sounding a bit stuffy and high-flown at times, but they do do that, don’t they? ‘Sex Pistols’ - that’s what he chose to call that mob of surly, spotty delinquents, and such blatant cheek should always be cherished.

Masters 2010: Watson walks in the sun

I’ve never been to Augusta National, Georgia, and I don’t reckon I’ll be going. They’re sniffy about membership, as is the right of any club, but they also have a special history of offensive racist arrogance. Moreover, their current chairman, this pompous windbag called Billy Something-or-Other, seems to think he can pronounce formidably on Tiger Woods’ failures as a husband and professional. As Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star puts it unimprovably, ‘Who knew God made a high horse low enough for Billy [Something-or-Other] to saddle?’

(The Woods Affair shows that America still retains a weird Puritan streak – a need to confess, to parade conscience, an inability to recognise its own fallen state, smell its own BS, and just live with that, however imperfectly.)
Where was I? Oh yeah, Augusta. Yes, wouldn’t want to go there, but whenever I see it on telly it looks like a Disney matte painting of a dream golf course – lush turf, white sands, stone bridges over glass-like ponds, dappling sunlight and shadow…
I first watched the Masters in 1979, when the winner was 'Fuzzy' Zoeller, one of the tour’s 'characters', who in 1997 celebrated the historic victory of Tiger Woods by joking freely about fried chicken and collard greens on the champion’s dinner menu. In 1980 Seve Ballesteros, whose swashbuckling looks were as improbable in their own way as Augusta itself, won it by a country mile. In 1981 the winner was my main man, Tom Watson.
This morning’s first round Masters leaderboard sees Watson vying up there with Fred Couples, Sandy Lyle, Bernhard Langer in touch too… Hold on, what freakin’ year are we in, 1985? How come Craig Stadler and Ben Crenshaw are so far back?
It appears Watson is graciously trying to leave us, his avid fans, with a better memory than the bitter blow of his final-hurdle failure at last year’s Open. This time, he really can’t hope to stay in the hunt – yesterday the pins were kindly placed, the ball sat up invitingly on the fairways, the wind and rain stayed away, and all that can’t last – but it would have a certain elegance if Watson could stick around the upper echelon of the board this week.
BTW I don’t know what Watson thinks about the smelly hypocrisy of Billy Something-or-Other but in 1990 he did resign his 20-year membership of Kansas City (Mo.) Country Club, the place where he learned the game, because the club refused the application of a Jewish businessman. Billy, there are indeed some people out there with principles, and you could learn some yet.

Dennis Hopper: Ragged Glory

Sad to read of the apparently terminal illness of Dennis Hopper: the Man from Dodge City, one of the most edgy and compelling figures in post-war American cinema, both as a quite inimitable actor/artiste and an occasional, thwarted director. (The recent picture to my left of Hopper and Jack Nicholson is (c) Harrison/Getty.)
I do believe I first caught sight of Hopper as the cannily cast philosophical-drunk father to Mickey Rourke and Matt Dillon in Rumblefish (1983.) But it might have been in Out of the Blue (1980), which he also directed – a simply, shatteringly brilliant picture about punk rock, nihilism and dysfunctional family life. This early 1980s moment was the point where Hopper finally got sober and career-minded after decades of terrifying bad craziness – the lost years of Taos, New Mexico, the elopements, the heavy dope, the blowing oneself out of a chair with dynamite. As a veteran of that era once began a story to me (and, really, one need say no more) – ‘Dennis Hopper came by the house, raving mad...’
By 1985 Hopper was, in the words of a Hollywood friend of mine, ‘not the same gunslinger’, his tortuous sobriety so tightly maintained as to give offence to Charles Bukowski when the two met to discuss Hopper’s directing Bukowski’s script Barfly. Then came Blue Velvet (1986), in which Hopper acted out a beautifully stylised, vicariously thrilling version of his former lunacy as refracted through the dark glass of David Lynch. Career-wise, Hop was back: ahead lay Speed, Waterworld and what have you. But we shall not forget Rebel Without a Cause, The Last Movie, The American Friend, Tracks, Apocalypse Now, River’s Edge et al.
I’ve had the privilege of talking to Hopper on a couple of occasions, first in 2002 for the sake of my book about his friend Sean Penn. and then in New York in 2006 (when he was accompanied by his wife Victoria Duffy) – that discussion in respect of an autobiography he was minded to write, subsequently acquired for the US by Little, Brown and for the UK by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The provisional title was Out Takes. I wonder now if we can still hope to see this book, at least in part if not in whole?
The tome Hopper was contemplating was not some chronological plod through the annals but, rather, a memoir galvanised by especially charged moments and meaningful scenes from his life – some of them already the stuff of notoriety/legend, others previously personal. It was all set to be a classic American Life & Times: Hopper and I talked about Dylan’s Chronicles, and his admiration for the deftness of Dylan’s prose in conjuring time and place as well as his own creative process. I suppose we must now see if the fates are kind, and what Hopper has in mind to leave behind as testament.
One memory that I personally will always treasure: Hopper, on learning that I was published by Faber and Faber, leaned close to me, eyes shining as they do in his greatest movie moments, or – once in a while – in post-rehab interviews where he fondly recalled the demonic power of Amanita muscaria. But what Hopper wished to share with me in New York that day was how deeply he admired the work of Faber’s founding father, T.S. Eliot. ‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws’ – Hopper recited precisely, with low-burning fervour – ‘scuttling across the floors of silent seas...’ Now there’s an audio-book I’d buy in a second. Long may you rave on and on, Senor Dennis.

NUFC back to Sky Sports Div 1: Get in, you bassa

Gareth Harrison puts it unimprovably over at True Faith: "You know that when Nolan is able to compose himself for a perfectly placed overhead kick in the opposition’s area that things really are going your way but it was a poetic way to put the cap on our promotion. The chances of him being able to stop, light a tab and spank a goal like this in against the likes of Vidic and Vermalean are reasonably limited but hey, let’s enjoy it while it lasts."
Pragmatic musings, too, from NUFC.com: "Rather than the scenes of mass jubilation that were reported by TV and press sources though, our take on proceedings was more one of quiet satisfaction... Let's not forget that the blow we have recovered from was self-inflicted. To sum it up in one word, relief."

Britain Decides 2010: Trouble in Mind...

The polls open in less than six weeks and the odd, nervy, queasily fractious tone of our politics persists. I have read clever men in both the left/liberal and centre-right press saying this is an election that both main parties deserve to lose... Well, my vote is already in the bank, so to speak, but if I did need electronic help in my decision then I might take John Rentoul's steer toward the diverting game of VoteMatch.
Meanwhile Anatole Kaletsky said a few things with which I agreed in today's Times:
As Tory leaders become increasingly desperate and fill the airwaves with exaggerated denunciations of public debt, combined with hand-on-heart vows to protect every spending programme they mention and firm commitments to reduce taxes, what will voters conclude? That the Tories are Janus-faced on the most important issue facing the nation — the need to set responsible priorities for debt reduction through tax increases and spending cuts. And being two-faced translates into untrustworthy and contemptuous of the voters’ intelligence... The Tories want to present themselves as potential saviours for a nation that, under Mr Brown’s leadership, has suffered the economic equivalent of Dunkirk. But if they genuinely believe that Britain has suffered 13 years of shocking economic mismanagement since 1997, that reducing debt is an overriding moral obligation and that the country is now on the brink of bankruptcy, then Dunkirk-style sacrifices must be demanded. In that case — which might be described as the Greek scenario — the Tories are grossly irresponsible to promise tax cuts or protect spending programmes such as the NHS, not to mention foreign aid, bus passes and winter fuel payments...

Fenham Eusebio: Incredible Hulk?

Listening to this affable, decent, thoroughly professional, dishwater-dull post-match interview with NUFC’s top homegrown striker… whey, it could be wor Alan Shearer talking, back in his prime. But no, it’s Shola Ameobi, restored to the side after a frustrating break for injury, and back where he left off, scoring goals for fun in Division 2.
Is Shola about to get another shot at being a top-flight striker, a Toon #9 even? He seems to have held off the challenge of young Nile Ranger, very much a bench-warmer of late, sad to say; also that of Leon Best, who was bought as Shola-cover just as 'Marlene' Harewood was borrowed, and now seems to be struggling to get in the squad. Well, as Shola points out, there’s team spirit about NUFC these days, of a sort not seen since the Robson years. (When Souness was boss Shola was at times deployed on the left-wing, to little effect i.e. the occasional prolonged, gangling, aimless dribble.) The forging of a good team means competition for places, and exclusion. You need to earn your place, and in Shola, Carroll and Lovenkrands NUFC have had three proper notching strikers this season. Next season? Hmm. Even Wolves, as pundit Shearer pointed out recently, could score for fun when in the Fizzy Pop League…
A final Shola/Shearer point: it looks to me like Ameobi has used his convalescence to hit the weight-pile. His upper body has, to my eye, a newly rock-like aspect, reminiscent of how Shearer came back from his ankle break c.1998, shorter of pace but strategically self-reinvented as a serious tough nut. Some might say that with Carroll we have our bruising/eye-watering striker already in place, nee further applications, thanks. But aggression was a quality Shola always needed more of, and a bit more muscle will help with that.

First Bookhugger column: Gothic - The Beast That Will Not Die

As 'promised' last week, my first Bookhugger column is now posted up here and trailered like so:
The Richard T. Kelly Column: Gothic, The Beast That Will Not Die
For the first of his exclusive monthly columns for Bookhugger, novelist and screenwriter Richard T. Kelly explores the enduring popularity of the Gothic in literature and film – from Bram Stoker to Stephanie Meyer.
May you find something of interest therein...

RTK online column at Bookhugger.co.uk

As of next week I'll be writing a monthly column for the excellent Bookhugger online literary magazine, this to address various matters literary, writers and their books, the publishing business and all what have you. Bookhugger is a splendid platform for book fans, and I'm looking forward to being part of it and having this outlet for expression. In advance of the first column going up I've filled in the site's regular writer's questionnaire, which they call 'The Book That...', a little listing of tomes (Dostoyevsky, Mailer, Mishima et al) that have meant something to me in years gone by, and indeed still do. My responses are here.

Division 1 crunch-time: Play up, the Arsenal!

This site is Black & White, right? My 'second team' is Glasgow Rangers, for reasons too tired and obvious to rehearse here. But I suppose my third team - though I would never formally sport the colours - is probably Arsenal. In fairness, I have now lived in North London longer than anywhere else in my life. Moreover, as any fule know, Wenger's Arsenal at their best play the loveliest-looking football in England.
At my elder daughter's nursery I sometimes have the crack about sporting matters with a Gooner Dad, and when a month or so again I casually tipped his men for the title, he groaned. 'Nah, nah, not the Geordie curse...' Presumably he meant that any mission that's been blessed by a Mag is doomed thereafter to ignominious failure. Or sunnink like that. At any rate, spankings by Man United and Chelsea followed hard upon my bit of clear-eyed punditry and most of us reckoned that was that for the Arsenal this year, can't win owt with kids, blighted by injury, too fancy for their own good etc. And yet Prof Wenger's lads have not laid down. They're still in it, by jove.
It's the improbability of it all that so delights: Van Persie crocked; the initally heavy-footed return of the perplexing Sol Campbell; poor young Ramsay's horror injury; Bendtner's natural arrogance seeming to extend to a disdain for hitting the target; Wenger's one-eyed vantage on the rules given some credence by some shocking refereeing... And still they rise, leading one to feel that perhaps indeed truth and beauty will out, perhaps indeed it's meant to be, as it usually isn't. The joy of Cesc indeed...