Why it’s fun to come and visit you

I’m about to start another stand-up tour, which means, amongst other things, I’ll do interviews on local radio where I’ll be asked “So Mark, are you looking forward to coming to Hull?” What are you supposed to say to that? Do you say “Oh yes, I’ve always loved the Hull audiences, it’s as if the proximity to a huge bridge makes people extra jolly and receptive to fun”?

But equally you can’t say “Not particularly. I mean, Hull is hardly Ipswich is it?”

So before each interview I’ll think of Bewdley. It’s a little town in Worcestershire I’d hardly heard of, with quaint bridges and ducks and a sweet shop full of huge jars like in 1934 and a one-way system far too elaborate for what they need. I had a curry there, during which the waiter and a man who’d come to collect his take-away discussed the size of bait they use for fishing in the River Severn, which has never happened during any curry I’ve had in any other town.

I discovered two sides to its history, before doing a show at their festival. Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister in the twenties and thirties was from there, and it has a safari park, which was in the national news a few years ago because the baboons escaped.

The show was in a hall at the main hotel in the town, and I was introduced by a delightfully over-organised woman who was on the parish festival committee, with a series of questions involving whether I needed sandwiches, soap, juice, a flannel, and several other items that I didn’t catch but may well have been a cushion, a palm tree, a skeleton and one of the statues from Easter Island. “No, I’m fine thanks, no I’m fine honestly”, I kept saying, but it would have been easier for us both if I’d said “Alright then, yes, I will have an unexploded doodlebug.”

Although I’ve never listened to it, I expect she’s a character in The Archers.

At the start of the show she introduced me, by insisting the audience sit in their designated seats, as it was full up so “You – yes YOU, sit down here, no NOT there, HERE. HERE. Can’t you see, HERE, what’s the matter with you?”

At one point during the first half I mentioned their connection with Stanley Baldwin, something like “He was the son of an industrialist, and as a young man was given two hundred thousand pounds, and went on to become Prime Minister during the General Strike. Isn’t it astonishing to think that back then it was acceptable for a Tory rolling in unearned wealth to run the country, by taking things off the poor while the rich got even richer. You couldn’t imagine such a thing now could you?”

It got a bigger laugh than I expected, a bit of a supplementary ‘Oo my word how cheeky’, as if for Bewdley this was the equivalent of a band smashing up their instruments or NWA forcing the audience to sing Fuck da Police, the sort of thing more likely to take place in an urban ghetto such as Worcester.

During the interval my helpful hostess giggled to me that the reason the Stanley Baldwin joke had provoked a reaction was the local Conservative MP was sat in the front row. Everyone apart from me was aware of this, and now I knew this I wasn’t sure whether to find it hilarious that he’d been forced to hear everyone laughing, or appalled that I’d reached a point in my life where the front row of my audience could include a Conservative MP. I don’t suppose Malcolm X was ever told “It should be a good night tonight as Harold Macmillan’s in, Mister X.”

In the second half I mentioned the safari park and the escaping baboons. “Is it true?” I asked, “That they really escaped?” The whole crowd shouted that it was true, and several people were eager to add details.

“What happened to the baboons?” I said. And with not a moment’s pause, as if it was scripted and rehearsed and we performed this every night, someone shouted “One of them was elected as the local MP.”

They collectively roared, except, I suppose, for the local MP, and it was brilliant because as well as funny it was unique. It could only make sense at that point, in that place, in Bewdley.

So I hope this second tour of my ‘In Town’ show, of talking about the quirky bits of bollocks that makes everywhere individual, and trying, if I can, to make some of the show about the town I’m in, will be fun to do. Because each night will be unique, depending on where I am. Whether it will be any good or not I’ve no idea, but it means I’m looking forward to going to Hull.

The details, incidentally, are here, but I shan’t be offended if you don’t come to all the shows. http://marksteelinfo.com/

JOHN ARLOTT – BASINGSTOKE REBEL

Lately, for a reason that may be coincidence or the result of cosmic forces I don’t understand, there seems to be a renewed interest in a man called John Arlott. An old TV show of him in conversation with cricketer Mike Brearleys was repeated, a documentary about him was on Radio 4 and I even got to mention him in my radio series, in the show about his home town of Basingstoke.

Arlott is especially loved within Basingstoke. This may not be all that flattering as, on the Wikipedia page about Basingstoke, under ‘Culture’, it says “An episode of Top Gear was once filmed in Basingstoke.”

The town has its connections with celebrity. Liz Hurley is from there, and her mum was a primary school teacher. I spoke to someone who was in her class, who told how Mrs. Hurley proudly addressed the whole school in an assembly once, suggesting they all stayed up to watch her actress daughter who was appearing in her first television role that night. So Basingstoke’s 7-11-year-olds all got permission to stay up late, then stared in awe as Liz rolled around topless for a scene or two, after which Mrs. Hurley never spoke of the matter again.

Sarah Ferguson is also from the area, as is Tara Palmer-Tompkinson, so the place is almost a factory for posh useless women.

But even Mrs. Hurley would have to accept that the most compelling character to emerge from the town was Arlott, despite never being a celebrity, and who died 20 years ago in the Channel Islands.

I first encountered him through his cricket commentary, when I was about eight years old, fascinated by his voice, not just gravely but rattly, like a broken lawnmower or a washing machine on the spin cycle when a pound coin’s slipped inside.

In this croaky burr he once replied to a co-commentator who’d said “And as the sun sets in the West I hand you over to John Arlott”, by saying “And you can rest assured that if the sun sets anywhere other than the West, I’ll be the first to let you know.”

There was something in his tone that suggested he was aware with every ball he was describing, he was part of a wider world. It seemed he might say at any moment ‘So England are 125 for 3 and there’s just time to initiate a debate on the Vietnam War before Dennis Lille resumes from the Vauxhall End.”

You might assume a cricket commentator’s role in making an impact on international affairs would be limited. But later I learned of Arlott’s role in defeating apartheid. In the 1960s a South African player, Basil D’Oliviera, was classified under apartheid law as Cape Coloured. Despite, or perhaps because of playing on rugged patches of ground he was a tremendous batsman and bowler, but with no prospect of playing professionally due to the race laws.

So he was advised to contact an English cricket commentator known to be an anti-racist, who may be able to find him a place in the English game. Arlott read his letters and arranged for D’Oliviera to come to England, and secured him a place in the Lancashire League. Eventually D’Oliviera was selected for the England side, so all was cheery until England were due to play in South Africa. In England’s last game before the tour, D’Oliviera was impertinent enough to score 158 so his selection was secured, but the South African government made it clear they wouldn’t waive their apartheid laws to let him play in a whites-only environment. So the English selectors got round the problem by saying they weren’t picking him anyway, as they didn’t think he was good enough.

I’ve often wondered how the meeting went that decided this. “Hmm, his trouble is he tends to struggle when he’s on 158.” “Yes and he won’t be suited to playing in South Africa, coming as he does from South Africa, where the conditions are very different.” “Yes and you can never trust the temperament of a player whose first name is a herb. That’s why we never picked Oregano Duckworth.”

When the news came through that the English selectors had taken the decision to leave D’Oliviera out of the team, the South African parliament erupted into wild celebrations. The English cricket establishment wasn’t just acting out of cowardice, many of them were ardent supporters of apartheid. For example Alec Bedser, later the chair of selectors, became a member of the National Association of Freedom, that campaigned against the boycott of the apartheid regime.

Arlott wrote and spoke with fury about this behaviour, and eventually when the player selected in place of D’Oliviera became injured, the selectors had to pick Arlott’s man. The South African government announced they wouldn’t let him in the country, so the tour was cancelled and South Africa were banned from taking part in international cricket until the end of apartheid over 20 years later.

Arlott’s role in this episode was a reflection of his place as a strident English liberal. On the one hand, his journey through Basingstoke Grammar School, after which he became a policeman, journalist, commentator and then wine critic, suggest he was a dependable member of the establishment.

But one peculiarity of Britain’s history is the empire was justified as a method of exporting the British sense of fair play and justice to its colonies. This was a dubious claim, as if the whole project was undertaken to teach manners to the natives, but throughout the upper levels of the education system, from Grammar schools to Eton, some students took this at face value. For those like Arlott, if ‘fair play’ was flouted, they saw it as their duty to speak out and put it right, in the manner of the uniquely defiant English middle class rebel.

In Arlott’s case he became an official Liberal, campaigning for the party from his youth onwards. This may be why three programmes were made for the BBC in the early nineteen-eighties, in which Arlott and England captain Mike Brearley sat chatting aimlessly to each other while drinking wine in front of a pile of dusty books. Brearley had joined the SDP, the new party that broke from Labour, and at one point launched into a question that lasted around three minutes, along the lines of ‘Given that the hitherto perceived impregnable structural divisions in society…….. and reappraisal of…. advancing towards revised orthodoxy……., is this an apt moment, in your view, for a new party such as the SDP?”

Arlott stared into the middle distance for a moment, swirled his wine round his glass and said slowly “Chateau Mouton 1958 – very good wine for politics.”

He could employ a similar disdain in his cricket commentary. For a while he was on television, and seemed to work on the basis that as you could see what was happening there was no point in him saying anything at all. Once, when a player was bowled, the batsman walked off the pitch, was replaced by a new batsman, and Arlott said nothing. He said such nothing I was convinced the set had broken and started haranguing my mum to call the repair man and tell him the sound had gone. Then, as the new batsman was about to receive his first ball, came a barely audible gruff sound – ‘That’s bowled him’.

But if there’s one story from his life that by itself summarises his character, it may be the one I came across while reading his biography ‘Basingstoke Boy’ as research for the radio show. Arlott was asked, in his mid-forties, as a prominent broadcaster, to speak at a Basingstoke Grammar School Old Boys’ Dinner, and toast the health of his old headmaster, Mister Percivall.

Arlott was a little surprised, as he’d always expressed a dislike for his old master, and describes him as “A man who enjoyed caning, carrying his heavy bamboo cane, thick as his thumb and three feet long, down the hem of his gown. He would survey the offender through partly closed eyes, then order ‘Get down’, then administer three or four powerful strokes. Most victims would fall forward, staggering through the fifth-form room, where friends would run water over their heads or hold them as they vomited.”

But the secretary of the Old Boys’ Association was aware of Arlott’s feelings, and said “We’d like you to say what you thought of him.” So this was his toast, delivered to a packed room over dinner….

“Gentlemen, allow me to recall a single moment in the life of the subject of this toast. One day in 1929 I was sent to his room to receive the inevitable. In cowardly fashion I hid behind the coats. After a few moments I saw a frail, timid, twelve-year-old named Woodcock come into the room. It was clearly his first time. Presently Percivall’s asthmatic wheezing could be heard, and the door shook in its frame as he came in and slammed it shut.

He saw Woodcock and said ‘Why have you been sent here’?

‘Talking, sir’.

‘Then we shall have to teach you not to talk, shan’t we, Woodcock?’

‘Yes sir’.

‘Get down, Woodcock’.

The boy got down, Percivall gave the cane a few preliminary swishes and brought it down. Woodcock stood and the cane hit the back of his legs. ‘That didn’t count’, Woodcock, get down again’.

He got down and this time the cane landed squarely across his ass. Then more strokes across this wisp of a boy, who lay on the floor, weeping.

‘Stand up, I’ve told you already, that didn’t count’.

Eventually Percivall turned him over gently with his foot. ‘Get up Woodcock, you fool’.

I remained unseen, which meant unpunished. And that, gentlemen, is an accurate eye-witness account of a happening that, until now, neither of the people concerned were aware was seen by anyone else. That may remind you, gentlemen, of the headmaster whose toast is now proposed, Charles W Percivall.”

Arlott adds “The toast was drunk in a mutter, Mr Percivall did not reply, left hastily and never returned.

And at close of play England were 187 for 5.

WHETHER THERE’S A GOD AND STUFF

For some reason my column didn’t appear in the Independent today, so if your Christmas has been ruined by that, all is well as here it is……..

Having followed the latest debate about religion I’d say the conclusion is obvious, that the only thing as disturbing as the religious is the modern atheist.

I’d noticed this before, after I was slightly critical of Richard Dawkins and received piles of fuming replies, that made me think what his followers would like is to scientifically create an eternity in laboratory conditions so they could burn me there for all of it.

It’s not the rationality that’s alarming, it’s the smugness. Instead of trying to understand religion, if the modern atheist met a peasant in a village in Namibia he’d shriek “Of course GOD didn’t create light, it’s a mixture of waves and particles you idiot it’s OBVIOUS.”

The connection between the religious and the modern atheist was illustrated following the death of atheist Christopher Hitchens, when it was reported that “Tributes were led by Tony Blair.” I know you can’t dictate who leads your tributes, and it’s probable that when Blair’s press office suggested he made one to someone who’d passed on he said “Oh which dictator I used to go on holiday with has died NOW?”

But the commendation was partly Hitchens’s fault. Because the difference between the modern atheist and the Enlightenment thinkers who fought the church in the eighteenth century is back then they didn’t make opposition to religion itself their driving ideology. They opposed the lack of democracy justified by the idea that a King was God’s envoy on earth, and they wished for a rational understanding of the solar system, rather than one based on an order ordained by God, that matched the view everyone in society was born into a fixed status.

But once you make it your primary aim to refute the existence of God you can miss what’s really fundamental altogether. For example, the ex-canon of St. Pauls, presumably a believer unless he managed to fudge the issue in the interview, was on the radio this week expressing why he resigned in support for the protestors outside his old cathedral. He spoke with inspiring compassion, but was interrupted by an atheist who declared the Christian project is doomed because we’re scientifically programmed to look after ourselves at the expense of anyone else. So the only humane rational scientific thought to have was “GO Christian, GO, Big up for the Jesus posse.”

Similarly Hitchens appears to have become obsessed with defying religion, so made himself one of the most enthusiastic supporters for a war he saw as being against the craziness of Islam. But the war wasn’t about God or Allah, it was about more earthly matters, which the people conducting that war understood. And as that war became predictably disastrous they were grateful for whatever support they could find. And so a man dedicated to disproving GOD was praised in his death by the soppiest sickliest most irrational hypocritical Christian of them all.

So the only thing I know for certain is that I would become a Christian, if I could just get round the fact that there is no GOD.

Wheelchairs and coppers and stuff

This is the original version of my article about Jody Mcintyre being deposited out of his wheelchair, but it was a bit too long so the newspaper had to take a bit out (what a cheek, they could have not had a crossword that day instead).

The police like to set their public relations department a special Christmas challenge, don’t they?

Because the only explanation for them being filmed on the anti-fees demonstration, chucking a disabled man out of his wheelchair and shoving him along the road, is so they can enjoy telling their PR team “Stick a positive spin on that for us could you?”

Ben Brown of the BBC tried his best, when he interviewed Jody Mcintyre, the man who was dislodged, and said aggressively “There’s a suggestion that you were rolling in the direction of the police.” Now, let’s suppose this was the case (which I can’t help but doubt), how much physical force is needed, I wonder, to stop a man with cerebral palsy who keeps rolling, even when asked to stop?

Presumably the police turned to each other in shock, spluttering “Oh my God he’s rolling straight for us. These riot shields and helmets with visors offer woefully inadequate protection against such a persistent rolling machine. If we’re lucky our batons can buy us SOME time, but his momentum is terrifying, it’s like a cerebral palsy tsunami.”

Maybe this is how to win in Afghanistan, we recruit a Multiple Sclerosis battalion to roll mercilessly through Helmund Province and the Taliban will run away shrieking in fear.

Or perhaps a police spokesman will say “When we spotted Mr. Mcintyre we had every reason to believe he may have been Stephen Hawking, in which case he may have been planning to fiddle with time and send our officers back to the Battle of Trafalgar, which could have been extremely dangerous, so we took the precautions necessary to avoid that risk.”

Even as they showed the film on the news, Ben Brown said it “APPEARED to show Mr. Mcintyre being pulled from his wheelchair”, with a lingering ambiguous ‘appeared’, as if he was going to add “But it turned out to be a stunt staged by Derren Brown. We were misled by the power of suggestion, and when you look more closely you can see it’s a butterfly landing on a petal.”

This process started on the day of the demonstration, when live footage of mounted police charging into the crowd and swinging batons was accompanied by a reporter saying “It looks as if the crowd are getting restless.”

This is a common disorder amongst news reporters, that ought to have a name such as “Confused Baton Charge Back-to-Front Bashed and Basher Syndrome.” Sufferers would make novel boxing commentators, saying “Audley Harrison is lashing out with tremendous aggression there as he stares with a blank concussed expression into the paramedic’s torch.”

They might also consider Alfie Meadows, who was so restless he ended up in Chelsea hospital in a critical condition, having a brain operation after being whacked with a police truncheon.

It’s also emerged that when he arrived there, the police insisted he should be taken somewhere else as that hospital was only to be used by their officers. So there seems to be a misunderstanding of how hospitals work, with the Metropolitan Police under the impression they have the same system as restaurants. So you arrive unconscious, then a porter says “Do you have a reservation?” But if it’s busy you get told “I’m sorry sir, we’re fully booked this evening. The police have taken all three wards I’m afraid, but if you survive the night you’re welcome to see if we’ve a brain surgeon available tomorrow.”

And yet most coverage of the demonstration has surrounded the violence of the students. Maybe this is because most reporters and politicians believe with such fervour the police are innately honourable, and demonstrators are troublesome, they can’t help but see such a one-sided view.

But imagine the uproar if a policeman had needed a brain operation after being hit by a student, or if students announced that following recent events they were investigating getting a water canon, or that a reporter might angrily ask Camilla “But there’s been a suggestion you were rolling towards the demonstrators.”

Or maybe the incident with Jody Mcintyre is nothing to do with students, and this is the new test for anyone on disability benefit. The police sling you on the floor, poke you about a bit, and if you manage to roll anywhere there’s clearly nothing wrong with you and you get your payments cut.

How I Spent an Afternoon

The Guardian Guide asked me, in that way these publications do, to write a list of ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ this Christmas. So I wrote them out as little verses to fit the original song. And that is the magnificently pointless way I dribbled an afternoon away. So here it is…..

This Christmas, there are….
Reasons to be cheerful – one, two, three

Shaun Ryder looking splendid
The boiler getting mended
X Factor has ended,

Student demonstrations
Thatcher’s palpitations
Graham Swann’s variations

Stilton smelling rotten
Palace off the bottom
James Naughtie’s moment that he’d wish forgotten,
Reasons to be cheerful part three

Dawkins not believing
Ricky Ponting seething
Shane McGowan still breathing

Blair getting hounded
Camilla so astounded
Nothing Gordon Brown did

A single malt’s aroma
A ‘Hmmmmmmm doughnuts’ from Homer
Ariel Sharon still in a coma
Reasons to be cheerful one two three…….

Those pesky people from the IDF

Somehow, the Chilcot Inquiry has become like Big Brother. About once a month it pops up as a small item in the news and you think “Oh blimey, I didn’t realise that was still going on.”

Even when John Prescott described the evidence his government went to war on as “Tittle-tattle” no one took much notice. Before long, like Big Brother, they’ll come up with stunts to try and revive some interest. So they’ll reintroduce contestants from previous inquiries such as Martin McGuinness and Christine Keeler, or make some witnesses complete a task of finding hidden ping pong balls in the room or they have to give evidence blindfold.

So it might seem these procedures are pointless, in which case it makes no difference that the Israelis have agreed to co-operate with a United Nations inquiry, into the episode in which nine people died after the Israeli Defence Force went aboard the Mavi Marmara as it sailed towards Gaza.

But it seemed to matter to the Israelis, because until this week they insisted their own inquiry was sufficient, and that was already under way.

One fact emerging from this process was that the victims, according to ‘Sgt. S’ who shot six of them “Were without a doubt terrorists.” And he produced evidence to back this up, which was “I could see the murderous rage in their eyes.”

This matches the classic definition of a terrorist according to international law, as someone “With murderous rage in their eyes”, and shows the key witness in any terrorist trial isn’t the forensics expert or explosives analyst but an optician. If they’re trained well enough they can shine a light at the iris and tell whether you’re short-sighted, long-sighted, Hamas or Basque separatist.

But there was more. According to the Jersusalem Post the IDF told the inquiry the group on the boat were “Well-trained and likely ex-military” because “Each squad of the mercenaries was equipped with a Motorola communication advice, so they could pass information to one another.” A Motorola communication advice? So these so called peace-activists were armed with mobile phones! It’s a wonder the whole Middle-East wasn’t set alight. And to think Motorola and other sinister arms dealers such as Nokia and Orange go round trading in this deadly merchandise quite openly.

If the IDF were asked to police a rock festival, at the moment when everyone used their mobiles to take a photo they’d open fire on the whole crowd, then once 3,000 were dead Sgt.S would say “Well done boys, if we hadn’t been so careful that could have turned quite nasty.”

One possible difficulty in proving the optically murderous gang’s intent could be that none of them had guns. But the IDF dealt with that by saying the ‘mercenaries’ preferred to use “Bats, metal bars and knives, since opening fire would have made it blatantly clear they were terrorists and not peace activists.”

So this was another cunning trick of the terrorists, to disguise the fact they were terrorists by not doing anything terrorist. My neighbour’s much the same; disguising her terrorism by being seventy-four and spending all day peacefully doing the garden without ever shooting anyone, the evil witch.

Even more blatantly, the inquiry was told the group did have guns on board, but “The mercenaries threw their weapons overboard after the commandos took control of the vessel.” Because that’s classic guerrilla training, to carry guns right up until the moment when the enemy arrives, and then throw them away. This is the strategy of all great military thinkers.

That’s why Nelson, at the Battle of Trafalgar said “Men, I see the French, and so let every Englishmen do his duty, and chuck all our weapons in the sea. That’ll teach the bastards.” On and on this goes, with Prime Minister Netanyahu making it clear he agrees with it, himself calling the victims “Mercenaries.” Because these mercenaries were trying to get goods such as medicine to an area that’s under a blockade, which is typical mercenary behaviour, except instead of gun-running they were inhaler-running.

But bit by bit Israel is finding it has to answer for itself publicly, and the old excuses are not so easily accepted. From now on they’ll have to put a bit more thought into their bollocks, which has got to be for the good.

THERE’S NO NEED FOR THAT

I swear these are the words I just heard, from a woman sat behind me on the train from Victoria to Crystal Palace. She’d just finished a phone call, and said to her friend in a VERY loud and shrill voice “Every time he sees his ex-girlfriend there’s trouble. She’s only gone and hit him on the head right where he had the operation. Then because he couldn’t have sex she’s got him viagra and it’s made him have a fit. I’m sick of her.”