It takes time to become a veteran in this business (advertising). So, it takes a while (39 years in my case) to be asked to look back on the olden days of what I do.
I was honoured to be asked by Barry Hearn to join him for a 60 minute chat with The Lane’s Creative Director, Ian ‘Fletch’ Fletcher about advertising, then and now.
So here’s Barry’s Marketing Society / Lane podcast called leading Conversations #21.
Please do enjoy. And let me know what you think.
This is the 19th Martin Scorsese movie I’ve seen. It settles firmly into the upper quartile of this remarkable director’s work.
His range is immense and this sits closer to some of his American History documentaries than it does to, say, Gangs of New York or Wolf of Wall Street.
But it actually has its roots in Casino/Goodfellas territory, because it’s a kind of mafia film, in that it explores a very one-sided gang attitude to clansmanship (and in a small part Klansmanship).
It’s actually a story of genocide/ethnic cleansing, as Robert Di Niro’s (rarely better, certainly not in the last 40 years) rich, ranch-owning, Oklahoman one-man dynasty sets out to wrestle away the oilfield rights of the Osage tribe of Native Americans by hook or by crook – mainly by crook.
The Osage are mightily rich because oil has been found slap bang in the middle of their land and Di Niro’s William Hale is jealous and determined to get his greedy mitts on the money.
He does this in a pincer movement. Firstly by marrying his returning WWI war hero, a dim-witted nephew Ernest Burkhart (phenomenally played by Leonardo DiCaprio) into the Osage. His willing wife Mollie (a star turn by Lily Gladstone) is unaware of Hale and Burkhart’s long term ambitions and simply falls in love with him. Truth is, it’s mutual.
Hale’s second strategy in this pincer is the straightforward murders of Mollie’s family and many more Osage besides. There are numerous cold blooded killings that pepper the movie and yet it never feels gratuitous (cold blooded and shocking, yes, but not especially repellent – like it might have been in Tarantino’s hands.)
It’s a study in racism and of greed but that doesn’t mean Di Niro, DiCaprio and Gladstone don’t win you over with their overwhelmingly great performances – expect all three to feature at next year’s Oscars (I expect Di Niro to pick up his 9th nomination, DiCaprio his 8th and Gladstone her first – maybe a first ever Oscar for a woman of Native American descent?)
Gladstone is a silent but steely presence. Much of the film documents her suffering at the hands of Hale and Burkhart, and it’s truly shocking how DiCaprio treats her, despite his undoubted love for her.
It’s widely documented that the film is extraordinarily long (3h26mins without a break is a bladder challenging sit through) but although it features murders galore, it’s no action picture. Do not go looking for any Marvel escapades in this one folks. But it’s manageable, riveting and entirely justified in its length.
One other thing to point out. The soundtrack is an almost imperceptible blues bass thrum by Robbie Robertson that builds tension at an almost inaudible level but is like a heartbeat throughout. Sinister and compelling it quietly drives the story along. Bravo Robbie.
The movie is a savage insight into a part of American history that was not familiar to me and it deserves to be seen by a wide audience. Judging from the low availability of seats in Edinburgh’s cinemas this weekend that ambition at least appears to be coming to fruition.
Go see.
In the pantheon of great Scottish vernacular writers Graeme Armstrong has joined the podium. He stands alongside James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Ely Percy and Anne Donovan.
Maybe he is the gold medalist, but let’s see what novel #2 brings.
My only criticism of this amazing book is it could have been edited a little more tightly.
That critique aside, in the meantime we have a belter in The Young Team which is an auto-fictional story of life in brutal, and I mean really brutal, gang culture in Airdrie and the surrounds (Coatbridge, Wishaw, Motherwell, Hamilton).
Whatever, they’re awe shite.
The Young team tells of Azzie’s life as a wannabe gang leader through the ranks, to…well, you’ll have to read it
The grit in this story is that Azzie has a brain. Trouble is he uses it infrequently as his gang-inspired rage too often rules his heart over his head.
At times you grit your teeth so hard you can barely breathe as this horrific story unfolds. It’s not quite Glasgow’s Jimmy Boyle-esque razor gangs, but it’s not far short.
Life in North Lanarkshire’s schemes is awful, although interestingly Armstrong rarely suggests that, it’s just life.
Aggro, violence, wine (Buckfast) drugs and motherly love are the soothing embraces that make this land home. No matter what.
The drugs (or is it the violence – there’s plenty of that) centre the book. Azzie is close to being a junkie, but he’s also close to being a murderer (OK, manslaughterer).
He’s smart, but he’s also mental.
I wouldn’t want to meet him (although I would love to meet Graeme Armstrong). We read of his life from wannabe gang master to sensible 22 year old retiree. But the needle still skips.
It’s, to be honest, terrifying. But it’s written with the mind of a philosopher.
Azzie can escape, unlike most.
This makes it sound like a cliche but it’s anything but. Ignore comparisons to Trainspotting. That’s lazy and predictable. This is a far more serious, and more important, book.
“It’s shite being Scottish”, yes it is – in this den of iniquity.
The stories of rave culture add a bit of levity (but even these are horrifying in places). I wasn’t one of them (thankfully reading this) but levity is not a tonal reference of this book.
Many say it is funny like Irvine Welsh. (It isn’t). OK, it has funny moments. But it isn’t a comedy book by any stretch of the imagination. It’s much more Alan Warner than Irving Welsh in this respect.
So, don’t buy this for a laugh.
Buy it to , I dunno, I’m so middle class that I don’t want to say/admit it – feel better about your life?
Actually, naw, just revel in Graeme Armstrong’s writing skills.
It’s a belter. And it’s coming to a TV near you soon so get it read first.
You probably know Michael J Fox is Canadian, made Back to the Future and has Parkinson’s disease.
What you might not know is how resilient, brave, funny and charming he is.
What you probably don’t know is he falls over a lot and walks like Billy Connolly doing the Glaswegian drunk man impersonation.
In this documentary that is brilliantly directed by Davis Guggenheim there are two stars.
Michael J Fox who narrates the movie, to camera, with his mangled voice often quite difficult to comprehend and Michael Harte, the editor.
It’s a piece of magical illusion because somehow the directing/editing team have managed to piece together snippets of Fox’s work to sit alongside Fox himself in ‘telling the story’. It has echoes of my all time favourite documentary, 102 minutes that Changed America, in that it’s essentially ‘found footage that’s used to tell the story. It’s remarkable.
But at its core is the sad (not sad) sight of Michael J Fox, that lovable little scamp, at 61 looking like a wreck, but still, somehow defying the hideous encroachment of Parkinsons with dignity and humour.
It’s very moving and it’s very great.
I inhaled this splendid new podcast from ITV News, presented by Paul Brand.
It’s a forensic study into the goings on in number 10 Downing Street during the clown king, Boris Johnson’s reign, throughout Covid.
Although there is nothing particularly new about the story itself, what brings freshness and interest to the sorry saga is the revelations of whistle blowers and number 10 insiders who (anonymously) share their observations with us.
Anonymous, because they fear dismissal if they were to be identified as the moles.
It rattles along at a fair old pace and intersperses the story with the many, many ITV News clips that broke each of the seemingly endless stories, including the botch job by Cressida Dick and The Metropolitan Police (clearly some insider dealings going on there) and the ultimate downfall of Johnson for unrelated reasons.
It’s a really great summary of a story that gripped the nation and, in seven short episodes (with no ads), never outstays its welcome.
Firstly, I confess an interest in this, my STAR vehicle.
Throughout its three parts you will see moi appear in a ravishing series of vignettes that makes Bowie in Extras look like some also ran.
But enough of me, let’s focus on the nepotism that riddles this post.
To start with, it’s written and directed by my great friend Andrew Dyer, a great writing, acting, singing and now, it appears, film making talent.
Secondly many of my friends also appear in this. The music is by my pal Gus Harrower, and he fleetingly makes an appearance, more fleeting than me because, realistically, he isn’t as good as me. All of the Wests appear, one in a starring role, although I feel sure Charlie West will have been taking copious notes after seeing my Stanislavsky driven performance – particularly as “The Photographer” in Episode three, and Rio Brady, Hannah Scott, Graham Crammond (narrator) to name but a few.
Frankly, “the Photographer” says it all, a Situationist study of pure creativity at work, within a work.
Meta? Yeah. And your point is?
Aside from me, there are towering performances from Michelle Whitney as Linda and Gemma McElhinney as Cilla plus George Hall who taught Andrew everything he knows (apparently a theatre legend).
It’s a hilarious study of life in the Front of House team in a provincial theatre and has laughs aplenty, as well as some rather touching moments of poignance, particularly in Cilla’s Episode (ep 2)
It deserves to find a larger audience, so please share wherever you see this.
Pilot episode
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
It’s been some time since my last Unknown Pleasures posting, but I’m delighted to be back with an absolute stonker from the phenomenon that is my great friend Anna Aalto.
You’ll see that Anna does not stride the paths of convention in her life, her loves and her passion for the things that mean a lot to her.
She has not only the greatest enthusiasm for a subject I think I’ve ever encountered (Eurovision) but also an encyclopaedic knowledge of it too. I’m talking the FINAL of Mastermind here. She could be the next Fred Housego.
But not just on this: on design systems, on Swedish culture because she’s a true Swedeophile.
She also made me sing this song at last year’s Eurovision office party (dressed as the clown Djambo) and delights in singing it as she passes my desk.
I work with Anna (she’s a top designer) and love the way her passion for things outside of the workplace are equally prevalent in her work and when you hear Anna present you realise you are in the presence of someone that’s off the scale in her commitment, talent and enthusiasm. It’s a wonder to behold.
As you read on you’ll hopefully be transported to another place where you might not be familiar but you will certainly be intrigued. One of my favourite of the 25 so far. If you’d like to contribute please let me know.,
In the meantime, welcome to the wonderful world of Anna Aalto. I’m honoured to share it.
The book I’m reading
My own work.
I’m always reading and yet I’m never reading. I’m sporadically reading. Picking up things and putting them down, taking inspiration from lines and words and nuances and imaginings. This is because I’m writing. I’m always writing.
My most beautiful pleasure is sitting in a café with a pad – early evening – with a cold schooner of indeterminate beer or a glass of freshly brewed V60. I’m an advocate for good old-fashioned handwriting. But I’m also a stickler for mistakes.
I’m writing about the Eurovision Song Contest. More specifically, I’m writing about the people behind the Eurovision Song Contest. The flag-wavers – the people who go. My non-existant, everlasting novel. It’s inspired by some of the people I’ve met and some of the people I’ve only ever met in my head. It’s ambiguous and very very ‘working’. It revolves around a series of interconnected inner stories – narratives, anecdotes and musings. I was swept unsuspectingly into the intense and underground pandemonic cult of the Eurovision fan community once. A whimsical world of sex and sexuality, music and lyrics, fleeting liaisons and fundamentally, love and friendship. And these second-lives greeted me willingly into this vibrant and unyielding reality that exists behind the masks of accountants and shop-workers and dental surgeons.
There’s also a man who eats my shoes and several incidents in a Wetherspoons. I’m sure I’ll finish it one day.
My favourite author or book and The book I wish I had written
‘Grafisk design: Henrik Nygren’. Presentation of work and memories, 1991–2013.
‘Writing’ is pushing the parameters of the question, but this is my answer. I was lucky enough to speak with Henrik – a seminal book and identity designer from Stockholm who is shamefully unrecognized outside of his native Sweden. I picked up his great behemoth of ornamental literature once in a bookstore on Åsogatan, just opposite the working window of his studio, before making a dash to the airport. I just had to buy it.
£60 later, it is an object and a vessel, rather than a book. Humble and overstated in equal measure, ‘Grafisk design: Henrik Nygren’ is a reflection of Nygren’s work – hundreds of pages long – with ribbons of life woven seamlessly throughout it like mementos in a scrapbook or kisses in a diary. Each page is faultlessly executed. The photography is simple, personal and evocative. The typographic tuning – traditional and unpretentious. It is as if Nygren has harnessed Guttenberg’s press itself.
As a designer, I appreciate and long for the ideals of quiet confidence. I wish I’d written, crafted – birthed – this extraordinary personal composure.
The book I couldn’t finish
Anything by Ian Rankin.
I became entrapped by a fascination of my own making a few years ago. As someone constantly at the whim of people and place, I started to wonder more about the place I’m currently in – the grand old city of Edinburgh. There are few writers more synonymous with the place-making of Edinburgh than Ian Rankin – Sir Ian Rankin – who is frequently exalted with capturing Edinburgh in his airport-fodder as a character in and of itself. Something of a sidekick to the clichéd and unoriginal alias of Rebus – a drunken anti-hero from the police who doesn’t play by the rules.
Rankin’s fragrant reliance on temperate dialogue and product names did nothing to evoke the romanticism and Disneyfication of the city I currently call home – for better or for worse. Caustically naming The Meadows or Cockburn Street or The Oxford Bar in the context of a dog walk didn’t present me with the kind of literary magic his numerous accolades, sales figures and knighthood all seemed to suggest was plausible. It was put down after a chapter or two.
I also couldn’t finish ‘Trainspotting’. It is linguistically unreadable, even after a Guinness or two in the departure lounge of Dublin airport. But that is part of its obscure and illicit charm.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
‘Stockholm Design Lab: 1998–2019’
I’ve always been stimulated and enthralled by SDL’s powerful ability to combine the clinical and the beautiful. Poring over their intense and impressive catalogue is like sitting in the dentist’s chair or chewing on a mint.
With clients like Polestar and SAS, everything is white, and yet almost nothing is. Their flawless clarity and typographic craft is as beautiful as it is sobering, and their perpetual marriage of client and creative gives us all hope.
A few years ago, Bjorn, their synonymous creative director, released a book charting the history of this celebrated consultancy, which until recently used to hang omnipotently over Stockholm’s Slussen interchange. It’s not an easy book to find and it’s not an easy book to buy. Maybe I can borrow one?
My favourite film
‘Threads’ by Barry Hines, 1984
I imagine that some people haven’t seen this. Since it’s release on a Sunday evening in 1984, it has only been shown on the BBC a handful of times. I don’t understand why it hasn’t been shown more. But at the same time, I do.
Threads is a British feature-length television docudrama. Written, commissioned and realised at a height of Cold War tensions between East and West, it explains and explores the effects of global thermonuclear war on the ordinary people of Britain.
Set in the city of Sheffield – an industrial heartland with a charted history of Labour administration and pacifism – it centres on two families, one working-class and one middle-class, whos lives are thrown together by the promise of a birth and a marriage. As the mundanity of family planning and job redundancy beckons, geopolitical tensions escalate rapidly and their environment is transformed irreversibly. In the proceeding decades, society itself is moulded around a new reality as food is scarce, disease is rife and language depletes to reflect a haunting and devastating world.
Hines’ use of unknown actors combined with the incidental static and grainy haunt of 80s Britain creates a perfect and terrifying balance of tension, despair and hopelessness in what has been one of the most seminal films of my life. It is far from an easy watch. It is an event. It is a masterpiece. Its matter-of-fact candid nature brings the fantastical narrative of Armageddon into a tangible human-level reality, which results in a sobering and at times bed-wetting effect on it’s audience. It shows horror, it shows destruction – but never in the manner of glorification. It merely shows you, tells you the effects of societal collapse, and makes it seem as mundane as collecting the milk from your doorstep.
My favourite podcast
‘Eurovision Castaways’ by Ellie Chalkley
Tapped from the classic ‘Desert Island Discs’ concept which has lasted generations, I really hope this simple and empowering concept does the same.
In each edition, Ellie invites a ‘castaway’ to the fictional but deliciously conceived ‘Ille d’Bezençon’, a place where alcohol is free and Eurovision fans are free to roam unhindered by the musical pressures of the real world. Each castaway – usually a lifelong Eurovision fan from one blog-site or another – is invited to bring eight Eurovision songs for the ‘duration of their stay’.
The conversation which ensues is a delight. As a lifelong Eurovision super-fan myself, I’m constantly fascinated and enchanted by other people’s experiences and how they have expressed, lived and understood their own lives through the medium of the contest. The choices are eclectic – from Luxembourg’s ‘Papa Penguin’ to Estonia’s failed attempt to send ‘Winny Puhh’ to Malmö – each justified in their own unique way, with every castaway having an anecdote or experience with which to summarise their relationship with the song. Hearing how a Norwegian school-teacher cried at the sight of an unknown Icelandic band was something I could empathise with all too much.
My favourite TV series
‘Around the World in 80 Days’ with Michael Palin. 1988.
This unrepeatable series made me fall in love with travel. More broadly, it made me fall in love with the world. Michael’s unlikely everyman attitude to the journey transports him from legendary python to a man for all time, taking us to places we thought we knew, through the eyes of the people who call the world ‘home’.
I used to watch this on an ancient VHS tape when I was 14 and haven’t stopped re-watching since. Even when I travel now, albeit in a slightly less grandiose and cinematic fashion, I use Michael as my inspiration. He’s never on the outside looking in, but rather seeks to sit on the inside looking out.
My favourite piece of music
‘Longplayer’ by Jem Finer and Artangel
Commissioned in 1999 to mark the forthcoming millennium, Longplayer is a piece of music filtered through an algorithm which is scheduled to play for the next 1,000 years. It has been playing now for nearly 23 years, and never repeats.
It’s atonal ambience is stunningly beautiful, if melodically void, however it’s Longplayer’s sense of statement that entices me to include it. It is a marking of humanity, rather than a marking of music – an intangible expression of longevity, future, past and aspiration.
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
Paddington II. Enough said.
The song that saved me
‘Amar Pelos Dois’ by Salvador Sobral. I honestly believe it’s the most beautiful song ever written. It was always there when I needed it.
If I could own one painting it would be
‘Sunflowers’ by Vincent Van Gogh
At first glance it might seem like an obvious answer. Basic art response. Art for the masses. However, it’s beauty and ubiquity aren’t the reasons for it making this list. Instead, it serves as the most uninterrupted window into Van Gogh’s life and mind. An extraordinary – yet super-ordinary – human being, the story of Van Gogh’s conflict with his own world and his own mind and the liminal spaces in between speak so kindly to the latent the struggles so many of us feel. Imposter syndrome? Underappreciated? Undervalued? Complex and conflicting? Yet, his ability to capture the world in such technicolour and visual song as always spoken to me.
If I could go back in time and meet Vincent, I’d pay handsomely for one of his sacred beauties. As would so many of us.
The place I feel happiest
It has to be Stockholm. The things I feel for this city are indescribable. I’ve never lived there yet I feel at home every time I touch down at Arlanda or tap into the T-Bana. It’s rich lights and bitter temperatures nurture the most complex of emotions – memories of friends and aspirations of what could be. One day. It’s the place I feel like myself.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Westlife
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
Tracey Emin, Henrik Nygren, Stefan Sagmiester, Jessica Walsh and Salvador Sobral. And Mark Gorman.
A stalwart of British art, three designers from different generations and a Portuguese jazz musician. And Mark Gorman.
And I’ll put on this music
‘Music for Airports’ by Brian Eno. ABBA when we’re on the floor by the end of the night.
If you like this, try these…
Another 60th Birthday present that my pal Mike Donoghue bought me. It’s a curious concept strictly for the anorakish like me.
It’s been a perfect bog jobbie companion since May but passed its last useful event this morning.
I mean there’s not that much to say about this other than it’s a compendium of photos of record store branded paper bags and carrier bags – everything from Ripping Records to Woolworths and I very much enjoyed its company in that lonely room.
Thanks Mike.
Keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babe
Put your ray gun to my head
Press your space face close to mine, love
Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!
This lengthy tribute to Bowie, approved by the family, is a masterclass in editing.
It features five main components; archival interviews, mixed quality live footage, clips from his movies, an exploration of his extremely great art and superb animation by Stefan Nadelman that glues the whole piece together.
Opening and almost closing with Hallo Spaceboy from the 1995 album Outside, it may seem a strange choice of song to anchor the documentary but it’s a classic from Bowie’s underrated later years and it thematically pulls together many of his space inspired tunes (Space Oddity, Major Tom and Blackstar) which also presents itself ambiguously, at first in the form of a CGI planet that recurs throughout the film.
The editing is surely Oscar nominatable and indeed the whole film is essentially an exercise in world class editing by its director, producer and editor Brett Morgen (who’s work I am not familiar with).
It’s an immersive experience with a largely chronological timeline, but no narration and is designed to please Bowie fans rather than the uninitiated.
It rocks. It’s great. But if you ain’t a Bowie fan this ain’t for you.
Made by Uncommon Studios, and directed masterfully by Andrew Dominick, this takes the genes of Stop Making Sense and mates it with American Utopia to come up with something that is nothing like either, other than in terms of quality.
The documentary is a potpourri of off camera chat (not that much) and live music. It’s kicked off with a slightly dull and certainly unpromisingly slow ramble through Cave’s new ceramicist career, where he shares his depiction of the life of a devil, before we enter a seemingly derelict church where the magic happens. The church setting is incredibly apse. (That was a church pun).
Cave is the most spiritual (in a religious sense) atheist I’ve ever come across. Many of the songs he performs are studded with religious references, and of course death, as they are drawn principally from Ghosteen and Carnage (the former being the deathly album that was written before the tragic passing of his youngest son).
Cave announced only yesterday the death of his eldest son making the mood and lyrics of the first few songs desperately sad. And, to top it all, his only remaining son (Earl) makes a cameo appearance on Cave’s cellphone in a scene of fatherly love that defines Cave’s meaning of life (a husband, father and friend first, a writer and musician second).
The filming shows its workings throughout. Dollies chase each other round a circular track whilst a Steadycam swoops in and out of Cave’s group. Four strings three backing singers and a drummer (plus, of course, Warren Ellis) but most of all Cave, at his piano.
There’s an air of melancholia about all of this, which is hardly surprising, but the mood gradually lifts before closing out with another lament in Balcony Man.
Dominick is also credited with the lighting which is in many ways the star of the show. Atmospheric, piercing, rhythmically cued to the music. At one point a solo piano piece is matched note for note with the pulsing of a single orange spot. It’s mesmerising.
There’s a little humour, but not much, because what this really is, is a religious experience. A movie of great beauty and unlike any other gig film you will ever see.
Tremendous. And may someone’s God bless you Nick – the tragedy you and your beloved wife have had to endure is just not fair. At least you know millions love you.
Presented by Radio 4 and BBC World Service this eight-parter is written and presented by Gabriel Gatehouse. It starts when Gatehouse meets, but dismisses as newsworthy, the Q Shamen months before he shot to global fame as one of the figureheads of the January 6th storming of the Capitol Building in Washington last year.
You remember the guy. Crazy hat, crazy spear, crazy look.
Anyway that’s actually the end (or the current situation) of a story that has its roots in 16th Century witch-hunting, leading to the Clintons (and Q Anon’s accusation that they lead a global cabal of child eating paedophiles).
It’s essentially a mash up of pretty much every conspiracy theory you’ve ever known, bringing in another paedophile story linked to satanic worshipping in a pizza parlour basement that didn’t actually have a basement, Clinton’s email fiasco, Trump’s Russian connections, Putin’s interference with the Western elections, William Rees Mogg’s vision of a new society where the intellectually superior become the only survivors of a collapsed global economy and the gathering conviction among Republican voters that QAnon is onto something. Most roads do lead back to QAnon and the growing influence this ridiculous cult exerts on otherwise sane people.
Gatehouse’s research is excellent. His weaving together of the narrative is compelling and his delivery self-effacing (he admits more than once to disappearing down rabbit holes and actually falling for some of the conspiracy theories he’s trying to debunk). Most of all it’s just really interesting and superbly pulled together.
So, whilst the world didn’t end on 6th January 2021 he postulates that the potential endgame of the gathering may not in fact be the end but a seriously deluded, and dangerous, beginning.
It’s excellent, it really is.
(You can read more of my reviews on https://greatpods.co)
It’s time to reflect on my best of the year. One thing that’s been great about it has been contributing to GreatPods.co a fab new aggregator of quality podcast reviews. Reassures me that my opinion is of some interest out there.
The front half of the year saw better output in my view and, of course, discovery of existing, but new to me, pods.
Those worthy of note and strong recommendation would be…
The Rest is History: Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook’s excellent and often hilarious history pod that’s also extremely interesting, if sometimes a bit mad. The best was their World Cup of Prime Ministers double header.
Dear Joan and Jericha: Julia Davis and Vicki Pepperdine’s super posh, super filthy agony aunt series where nothing BUT NOTHING is too extreme to discuss.
Brian and Roger: Big Owl’s fantastic black comedy by Harry Peacock and Dan Skinner about two men who meet at a support meeting for divorced men. One an unemployed lovely old soul who will help anyone (Roger) is increasingly exploited by the heartless and selfish Brian. Comedy gold. All told through the medium of telephone answering machines.
Grounded with Louis Theroux: Theroux is well known for his sideways look at documentary making, often choosing the left of field as subject matter. Here he talked to 22 people whose lives interested him (the best was FKA Twigs – truly brilliant)
The Battersea Poltergeist: A superb radio 4 drama documentary tracing the true life story of a poltergeist in 50’s London with a cynic and a believer acting as pundits. Gripping and great storytelling.
Wild For Scotland: A tiny, low budget doc about great walks in Scotland. Charmingly told by our lovely presenter Kathi Kamleitner.
I’m a big fan of Jon Ronson, having read several of his books and his two previous podcasts: The Butterfly Effect and The Last Days of August, both of which were brilliant. He also did a fabulous Grounded with Louis Theroux, the first in fact.
So this new outing from BBC Radio 4 had all the credentials for greatness.
It’s essentially an exploration of what he calls Culture Wars, but it’s not massively clear who the ‘wars’ are between or what he means by this.
The first three episodes suggest he has a pathological hatred of American Christian Fundamentalists who take on Femisists, the Pro Choice Movement (episode one)and the Liberal Left who used West Virginian schools as a test bed for new school text books in the 70’s (episode two).
By episode three he’s on to the AIDS epidemic and how, again, Christian Fundamentalists added homophobia to their delightful list of hobbies.
But then the themes start to wander and crumble a little. Episode four is about satanists and five, by which point I was losing interest, is about freedom of speech at Stamford University around about the time of the birth of the internet, built around some huge fall out over a Jewish Scottish joke (that isn’t even funny).
The trouble with this series is threefold:
I’m feeling Ronson has maybe hit a bit of a dry stretch in his career and this podcast is amongst his weakest ever work. At times turgid and often uncertain as to the overall point he is trying to make.
It’s all just a bit dull, frankly.
This has been my Jobbie (or is it jobby) book for about two years.
I have one in the upstairs lavvie and a different one down stairs. And, of course, some of my jobbies are emanated off-site. So that’s why it took meso long.
Jobbie books are as important to me as any other. They create a rhythm to my life that is well-suited to the moments of pedastalic contemplation that do not require, in any way, to be scatalogical.
Some people like Private Eye, The Beano, magazines, their iPhones.
Each to their own but for this purpose, I choose literature, or history.
This is both.
Robertson set out to write 365 stories, all of exactly 365 words, in 365 days.
A monumental objective with no guarantee of success and, of course, there are days when he succeeded better than others, but taken in totality this wondrous tome represents a snapshot of Scottish cultural life, folklore and even fantasy.
Much of it is existential. Robertson clearly has an interesting fixation on his mortality – death features frequently as a character, often alongside daft, but no so daft, Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk.
It’s a broad mix of humour, philosophy, fantasy and frankly, just moaning. He is a middle aged Scotsman after all – so he turns some of his favourite gripes into stories (gripes about authority feature most frequently).
It was with a heavy heart that I turned the final page as I sent the last of the weans I’d dumped at the pool off to the sea.
Thank you for this James.
I’m onto Sapiens now.
(Upstairs that is, I’m still on The Colour of History in the downstairs cludgie).
As we reach the 20th anniversary of 9/11 (or September the 11th if you can’t get your head round this confusing American dating approach) there’s been a slew of great documentaries hitting our screens. I’d argue this is the best. It’s hard to imagine better frankly.
For years my all time favourite documentary (if favourite is the right word) has been 102 Minutes That Changed America (it captured the attack on, and collapse of, the Twin Towers through a massive stitched together segue of found footage, in real time. I reviewed it here in 2009, back in the early days of my blog.
But this new series has raised the bar to a new level by tracking down a whole bunch of people who were there (essentially survivors), caught on mostly newsreel footage at the time that made people, the producers for sure, ask themselves. “I wonder what happened to that guy?” (It’s mainly men. Mainly from the uniformed services, and particularly the New York Fire Department.)
So they went out and found them and interviewed them around their footage – every bit as horrifying today as it was then.
You know, if you were to plan a terrorist atrocity you could not do it more effectively than Al Qaeda, under Osama Bin Laden’s leadership, planned this.
The interviews are essentially personal stories about how and why they got there, who they interacted with (saved, saw die at their sides, lost).
There are some truly extraordinary tales of heroism in all this. And that footage. Hours and hours of it.
Again and again we see the planes strike, the buildings crumble, the jumpers jump.
Is it appropriate to be so enthralled by this real life disaster, that destroyed the lives on nearly 3,000 as well as their multiple diasporae?
I mean, it’s been played out so many times that you wouldn’t think it could still grab you by the pit of the stomach, the pit of the colon actually, quite so viscerally.
But it’s engrossing. It’s so utterly spectacular.
It sort of shames me to be such a voyeur, and yet, it’s also like a modern day pilgrimage. An homage to the bravery and good or bad luck of these ordinary people.
One floor higher: death.
One room eastward: survival.
The sheer lottery of it all is what these stories bring to life. So movingly, so sympathetically teased out of these deeply respectful people.
In many ways it’s actually a tribute to Americans and the American dream because time and again this tells of the selflessness of people. It opens a window on New York’s cosmopolitanship because every ethnicity, every immigrant nation is represented.
Time and again I was in tears as these gripping stories unfolded with little or no blame. No why me’s? No hatred.
It’s a masterpiece on almost every level. Editing, direction, music, pace, drama.
You must see it.
Another cracker from the BBC (and Frontline PBS) narrated superbly by brave and intrepid journalist Josh Baker who surely puts himself at risk as he ventures in and out of Syria for both this Syria and his journalistic day job.
It tells the story of a perhaps radicalised hometown queen American Samantha Sally by her Islamic husband, Moussa Elhassani.
I say perhaps because it’s not clear from the off whether Samantha’s coercion by her husband into the depth of Daesh territory, indeed into the Caliphate is willing or otherwise.
Her two children, especially son Matthew, become poster kids for ISIS as they are forced to make anti-American propaganda films.
The story is complicated and the layers of truths, half truths and lies are difficult to disentangle but this is what makes for such compelling listening.
It’s brilliantly told by Baker and is terrifying in what it reveals, true or otherwise because whether Samantha Sally’s story is true or not, others’ like her surely are.
Gripping and superbly produced this one is well worth the long listen.
“One might say that the publication of a novel takes a village” says Curtis Sittenfeld in the acknowledgements of her sixth novel, Rodham. But in the case of Rodham one could easily expand this acknowledgement way beyond a village, to a nation and perhaps more accurately; a gender.
Because this is a book that every American woman should read and feel that, whether persecuted or empowered, this novel was written for them.
And then every American man should be made to read it as punishment. As a warning that what we have taken for granted (first dibs at opportunity) might not , should not, last forever.
In a year where Black Rights have dominated the non-Covid news this is a book about women’s rights and it seems appropriate that this, and Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys were, by a long chalk, the most compelling ones I’ve read.
This novel doesn’t just ooze restrained moral authority, it takes those that flaunt sexual democracy by the bollocks and kicks shit out of them.
This is the feminist book that makes feminism real, for all.
It’s an unbelievable achievement in writing.
And yet it’s so, so damn prosaic. It’s so, so kind of uneventful.
Despite its monumental subject matter and the giddy heights to which it aspires, and attains, the fact it’s written as a kind of diary, where the author never tires of listing the most banal aspects of a setting, again and again, without ever boring the reader, makes it firstly seem real and secondly incontrovertible. Hillary Clinton would never tell us about the time her aide wiped a snotter from her nose before she went on stage for a speech unless it was real/true. Right?
In roller coaster terms it reaches the zenith but then never drops, suspending you above reality in a construct so simply but brilliantly inconceivable that it seems it must be true.
It’s difficult to explain, without telling you the story, how brilliant Sittenfeld is at taking a fantasy, making it a reality and then laughing to herself as you try to unravel the one from the other.
Time and again I found myself stopping to marvel that this was, you know, all made up.
But let’s pause in this gushorama.
Let’s start from the beginning.
The pitch is this. “Rodham. What happened after Hillary didn’t marry Bill Clinton.”
And that’s it.
Except it’s not. Sittenfeld could have gone loopy on us, could have stretched her political imagination beyond any horizons we have to adhere to in reality.
Instead she writes Hillary Rodham’s autobiography, in the first tense, including, you know, that time she had Bill bring her off on a freeway, while he was driving. That time he… (I’ll save it for you to find out the other often quite sordid, eyebrow raising details).
So far, so titillating. But, titter ye not.
This a work of absolute seriousness. The autobiography (except it’s not) of the famous wife of a famous philanderer, but the most popular, and let’s face it, most handsome philander on the planet. A philanderer she married and stood by through thick and thin.
Except, not here. Because she didn’t marry him. Not here.
Why not?
I ain’t tellin’.
One third of the novel takes us up through her girlhood up to the point of her not marrying Bill Clinton. The next two thirds follow the consequences.
Would either go on to political success?
Would they remain in contact?
Would their parting of the ways influence American politics?
Would Donald Trump rise to the heights that he did (the one spoiler I will give you is that Trump makes several cameo appearances to great humorous effect)?
Would there, in fact, even BE any consequences? After all, in this history it was simply an imagined (but real) relationship between two law students. One extremely handsome. One extremely clever.
Even though the entire novel is a fiction it is teasingly stitched together with truths. Real things that did happen but, in the words of Eric Morecambe, “just not necessarily all in the right order”.
It really is a breathtaking literary achievement with deft touches like (How Marvellous!) – a diary entry of an impressionable teen – but it’s not a diary entry, (how disappointing!) it’s the autobiography of one of the most famous women in the world. But it’s not.
Twice Sittenfeld evokes the vision of a cerulean sky. In a novel of plain speaking it is a word that stood out to me, that sent me scurrying to Google dictionary. It’s use was allowable.
It’s also prescient. She was published in early 2020, but there’s an important reference in it to Kamala Harris, Kamala was only appointed Biden’s Vice Presidential candidate in August 2020. There were 5 or 6 women in the running for that role, most notably Katherine Warren, But Sittenfeld doesn’t write her in. She writes in Harris. And Harris wasn’t even the only black woman in the running. So it’s not sleight of hand. I repeat, it’s prescience.
You’ll need some basic knowledge of American politics to get the most out of this. I have a little more than average for a non-American and that helped me, but I’m pretty sure you’ll get the point if your knowledge only stretches to the big names we all know.
I don’t know Sittenfeld. I don’t know her work. But I’ll certainly be looking out her back catalogue after this.
Absolutely 10 out of 10 and thank you Helen Howden for spotting this and lending me it to read.
A gift from above.
![Amazing Grace [Official Trailer] - In Theaters April 5, 2019 - YouTube](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ypHZbtqSU48/maxresdefault.jpg)
The thing that marks out this spectacularly honest documentary is Aretha Franklin’s melancholia.
It’s as if she’s been transported there by another being. Her God? She is so in the moment. So devoid of ego, unlike her entourage, as to make it a truly ‘religious’ experience, not just for her but for the viewer too.
The melancholia manifests itself as a lost look. Separated from the action, the film making onluy there for one reason. To sing.
And there is zero theatrics. Zero showmanship. Zero bullshit.
just an honest to goodness outpouring of singing as best as she can muster and her best will just have to be good enough. Cos that’s all she’s got.
I’ve never seen a music documentary so compellingly believable about the motivations of its maker, that motivation appears to be the love of her God and her fellow humankind.
It’s quite remarkable.
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I’m not even going to mention the obvious subject as it’s affected us all in different ways, other than to say my list of theatre and cinema highlights is extremely short and has been replaced by TV and podcasts.
One of the highlights was moving from self employed to employed status after 15 years.
Things were looking uncertain until an unlikely opportunity arose with Whitespace, a company I have been involved with, one way or another since its inception 25 or so years ago as a subsidiary of 1576. Finally I can wholly lay claim to the title of being a ‘Whitespacer’ as a Strategy Director. It’s been immense having worked on not one, but two, global cosmetics brands, a global pitch for a motor company and a series of successful pitches and client engagements including a huge Oil and Gas start up, a home builder, the new www.netzeronation.scot website, Business Gateway, the Port of Leith Housing Association rebrand, a University, an online learning business, a charity and a lovely tech start up in pharma. Stimulating, all of them.
Sadly my time with Front Page came to an end after a long and happy relationship, it still is. And I’ve worked throughout with another long term client in the wonderful Nexus 24.
The experiment with The Marketing Centre proved to be unsatisfying in the end but I gave it my best shot and they are good guys.
I’m grateful to them all for their support, friendship and income.
Two more relationships came to an end, after 10 years I stood down as Chair of FCT and simultaneously my nine years as Chair of Creative Edinburgh came to a happy conclusion. Both were my choice and I wish both of them well in the future.
But my role as Scottish Chair of NABS remained deeply satisfying and we ran a tremendous National Music Quiz and Art Auction plus the 15th Scottish music quiz, all going online for the first time, and resulting in a record year of income for NABS. A great result driven by an amazing voluntary team in Scotland. Special thanks has to go to Anna Kormos and to Marian in Manchester for their huge contributions.
My Mum’s dementia (Alzheimer’s) has worsened steadily and in August we took the inevitable decision to put her into a care home. It’s been a great decision because the staff at Northcare Suites (100 Telford Road) have been superb. It’s the lap of luxury and although she remains terribly confused, and visits have been strictly limited, she has settled in well and is in good overall health otherwise.
Amy continues to amaze us with her tenacity, creativity, drive and ambition and she started not one, but two, new businesses this year. One in Health and Nutrition (https://www.amygormanhealthnutrition.co.uk) which has seen her build a solid portfolio of clients and a part time role at The Foundry in London, the other as a freelance fundraiser where she has enjoyed great success with at least four clients this year. All the more incredible because she left CAFOD to go it alone in February just as the unmentionable struck. She is awesome.
Ria and Tom both worked at Amazon over the summer. The job from hell. But Tom, in particular, immersed himself in it so hard (60 hour night shift weeks) that he saved enough to escape the UK and move to Whistler in Canada for the next two years. It was brilliant having them and Keir with us all summer and we miss them terribly.
Of course Ria skooshed her first year in Dentistry at Dundee and is back there, living with Keir in Perth where he has an interesting job at a whisky auctioneers. She’s working like a trojan and filling us with pride. All three of them are.
This gave Jeana the opportunity to reignite her homemaking career which she revelled in (but I’ve/we’ve missed our steady procession of AirBnB guests, her second career, that we grew to love so much). Next year maybe.
She started a new career and excelled, as a baker! Brilliant lockdown sourdough and maybe even better fruit bread. Both to die for, and if we eat too much of either, or both, that’s exactly what we’ll do. Dangerous!
Of course, having finally succeeded (after five failed attempts) in the Glastonbury lottery it was cancelled, as was Primavera (who still haven’t refunded me by the way). That was a big blow and I missed the chance of escapades with the boys in Barca and Alan in Somerset. Next year? Hmmm, dunno.
No holidays at all, not even Perthshire in November. I desperately missed our annual pilgrimage to Italy in particular. Next Year? Hmmm, dunno, maybe.
The most exciting and preoccupying thing, for me, of the year was seeing the 45th President of The United States of American undone. He’s scum, and election night found me beside myself as it looked at one point as if he’d gone and done the impossible, but the good people of America proved they DO have a conscience and 80 million of them at least have a brain.
It puts the achievement and humanity of Obama onto an even greater pedestal and the man has become a beacon of brilliance for the world to see, if he wasn’t already.
Biden and Harris (the 46th and 47th Presidents) were not perhaps the most dynamic offering for the American electorate, but decency is back and soon I expect to see a woman in the White House Oval Office. She will be great once Biden passes the baton. He did what he had to do – carefully, graciously and in a dignified manner that befits the office. He’ll no doubt have to buy his own lightbulbs on movers day, but the fact that he knows his way around will not obligate the outgoing filth to show him round.
Sadly we, in the UK, are stuck with filth for now. The disgrace that has held office in Downing Street is there for all to see and no further comment is necessary.
Turning to the best bit.
My best of’s.
It wasn’t a vintage music year but I enjoyed, very much, the following:
Michael Kiwanuka rightly won the Mercury, although I backed Moses Boyd.
I also greatly enjoyed Songs for our Daughter by Laura Marling (even though she doesn’t have one) and she would also have been a deserved winner.
Taylor Swift’s two albums were excellent folksy releases.
I listened to a lot of Dub Reggae, mainly from the 70’s.
Sudan Archives’ Athena was excellent.
Big Thief and Dirty Projectors both brought smiles to my face.
Janelle Monae’s sole single release, Turntables, is awesome.
And I loved Weyes Blood’s Titanic Rising (although I think that was a 2019 release).
What I can’t understand is the adulation Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters garnered. I tried, believe me.
Here’s a link to my Best of 2020 tunes on Spotify. (Too much old stuff on it for my liking.)
In cinema there was little to thrall about so Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series almost picks up the ‘best of’ gong by virtue of its feature length running times (particularly Lover’s Rock).
But the prize goes to another Adam Sandler masterpiece. The quite ridiculous Uncut Gems. Wow!
Parasite was a big disappointment to me, as was Fincher’s Mank.
True History of the Kelly Gang (pre you know what) was epic and wonderful.
I also saw and really liked Little Women before the shutdown and 1917 which is outstanding and a contender for my movie of the year.
I liked the Go Go’s documentary.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 was great Sorkin fare and gets there on merit, but hardly a classic.
The Borat sequel only makes it onto the list because of the lack of competition and the brilliant expose of Giulliani.
And so to TV. The year of TV.
It kicked off with something I thought wouldn’t be bettered, Normal People, but it just got better and better.
I Will Not Destroy You.
The Crown.
We Are Who We Are.
The aforementioned Small Axe.
Unorthodox (a little gem).
The Queen’s Gambit.
Song Exploder. (A Podcast conversion to Netflix)
Homecoming (another podcast convert – especially Season 2 with Janelle Monae)
The Plot Against America.
Educating Greater Manchester.
Des.
Dracula (on BBC).
Quiz (it was a good year for ITV drama).
Dirty John.
The Third Day on C4.
Industry (a late contender for series of the year. Please bring it back. Filthy and brilliantly performed).
And another was the excellent Criminal. A franchise that extended across Europe using the same police interview room (with different casts for different countries) to create unusual very cleverly plotted procedurals that were anything but procedures.
But, at the end of it all I’m going to give it to The Comey Rule for the remarkable performance of Jeff Daniels.
In podcasts, my new found love, there was so much it was ridiculous:
Shout outs for Adam Buxton and Louis Theroux.
Steve Richard and Matt Forde made politics lovable.
5:38, Hacks on Tap, Left Right and Centre and Pod Save America enthralled me through the American election.
In drama podcasts, Tunnel 42 was magic, as were both seasons of The Horror of Dolores Roach.
Slow Burn is brilliant but Season Four (David Duke) wasn’t its best. For that you need to listen to the Clinton and Watergate series’.
Hunting Ghislaine was also brilliantly horrifying and it was great to hear yesterday that the bitch is not being bailed.
In music Soul Music (BBC Radio 4) and Song Exploder were both joys to behold. As was The Clash Story.
But my Podcast of the Year is a toss up between 13 Minutes to the Moon (Season Two about Apollo 13), Transmissions (the story of Joe Division and New Order) and Wind of Change, the conspiracy story about the CIA writing The Scorpions’ classic song of the same name.
And then there’s Desert Island Discs of course.
Turkey of the year was Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Appalling schmuck.
I had a terrific reading year too, finally joining a Book Club:
Feck Perfunction by James Victoire is a great business read.
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
One Two Three Four about the Beatles by Craig Brown is superb. And Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany was another great musical read. A musical trilogy was made up with The Eavis’ Glastonbury 50. An event I never made. Naeb’dy did.
Pine by Francis Toon is a good Scottish book. Not as good as Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (but I still don’t think it should have won the Booker – far better were last year’s TWO winners Girl Woman Other by Bernardine Evagelisto and The Testaments by the incomparable Margaret Atwood – not her best but still fantastic).
I really enjoyed Ian McEwan’s rewriting of history in Machines Like Us, a real return to form.
I read two McEwan’s this year. Solar was the other, but it was shit.
The Testament of Gideon Mack is a great wee Scottish story by James Robertson and I’m also enjoying his 365 Stories as my bog book this year.
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney wasn’t as good as Normal People (the TV series).
Worth Dying For – The Power and politics of flags was good fun.
I finally read Small Island and loved it. As I did in reading Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Hilarious.
Tender is the Flesh: by Agustina Bazterrica is a tremendous, undiscovered, Brazilian novel about post apocalyptic times where humans are grown as food.
But my two books of the year were epic masterpieces, each of them. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld and The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Both dealt with American discrimination, the former of women, the latter of Black lives. Both are beyond excellent.
My walk of the year was Glen Etive, with Ria, all 26 miles of it.
Oh, one last thing. I lost weight.
The fact that Sweeney, best known for his work on the BBC’s Panorama and Newsnight, felt the need to include his name in the title of this tells you something.
He’s a man on a mission and, until the last episode, it felt that mission was being delivered with a cool disdain that nevertheless erred on the side of balance. He wraps the production with a rather more pointed conclusion that undoes a little of the, earlier, brilliant work.
But that’s a minor gripe, because this is a beast of a production in so many ways.
Firstly the music chills you to the core, right from the off.
Secondly, Sweeney himself is a class act. A formidable presenter with an intellect to match.
And thirdly, the content and its protagonist(s), are, indeed, beasts. And not the cuddly sort.
By the closing credits Sweeney has annihilated Maxwell and, jury aside (we’ll have to wait till July for that decision), he has good reason, if not proof.
She’s a piece of work is Ghislaine Maxwell.
Brought up by a monster and in a long term relationship with another (both dead, maybe both by suicide) she inherited an attitude of princessly, entitlement from her, probably sociopathic, criminal of a father, whom Sweeney further paints as a narcissistic sadist.
She’s a daddy’s girl extraordinaire, spoilt but not spared the lash (which Sweeney conjects she may have developed a taste for) she treats others around her as expendable trash on her rise to the top.
But the top of what? The top of nothing, frankly. OK, the top of a society invitation list, maybe. But this woman has not contributed an iota of ANYTHING to the furtherment of any aspect of the human race.
Her lover, Jeffery Epstein, needs no introduction, and although we nevertheless get plenty of that from Sweeney it’s really her role as his handmaiden and chief pimp that constitutes this story.
And the story is brilliantly, quite lasciviously told, in tones of barely concealed glee as Sweeney hacks her legacy to pieces and feeds it to the listener in bite sized pieces.
She is devoid of goodness.
She’s a coward (running away into hiding the second Epstein’s protective layer peeled away).
And she’s a rapist. So entwined with Epstein’s actions, sometimes joining in after hunting down and luring his prey that she can only be seen as conjoined with the filth that his (stolen) money facilitated him.
It’s gripping, frightening and disgusting.
It’s no wonder Sweeney seems so emotionally involved.
He’s a man on a mission and I , for one, sincerely hope his target rots in a jail cell for the rest of her entitled days.
Bravo John. Bravo.
He’s a great man (with a horrible voice, it has to be said).
A truly great man.
And an example for humanity of what you can do with wealth. Not only is he leading the fight for the developing world in medical research and disease control through his donations, but by his fundraising too.
And he has a new podcast with Rashida Jones called “Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions”.
The first episode is excellent and I was really interested in an optimistic view he took on post-Covid society. It may not be a unique view, or even his own, but it struck me as relevant.
His postulation is that post-Covid our life patters will have been so fundamentally disrupted and restructured that they may never return to the old way of working.
One, positive, consequence of not being “downtown” office-based will be that instead of gravitating to massively busy city centre drinking dens (post work), we will instead socialise in our communities far more. So that suburban bars and restaurants will massively benefit and the city centre hostelries will be permanently maimed.
I would speculate further.
As the “High Street” collapses, and the bars and restaurants that populate them, follow retail in its demise the city centre will entirely re-purpose into residential areas and those bars and restaurants will become community hostelries rather than after work boozers.
All of this will, in my view, contribute to a levelling out of geographic meaning and a better balance to all of our lives.
Go Bill.
Not so much a podcast, as a sharing of BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week by Barack Obama, narrated by the great man himself.
In interviews, Obama can be a bit ponderous but narrating his life story he rattles along without hesitation and takes your breath away with the quality of his written word and his beautiful almost soporific rendition.
It’s a thriller of monumental proportions picking off, in turn, his Primaries for President, the first election, The credit crunch, the ACA, Michelle’s visit with The Queen and, most grippingly of all, the killing of Bin Laden.
It’s two and a half hours of majesty that I devoured in one (long) walk and wanted more, much more.
And I’m wondering if the audio book, given this, would be a better bet than the written version; although I’d want the spine to grace my bookshelves to prove that I am an advocate for the man that will go down in history as one of greatest presidents (human beings) of all time.
I love him, man.
I really, really do.
Another in BBC Radio 4’s excellent Intrigue series, to sit alongside the superb Tunnel 42.
This time a nine-part series follows the search for the truth behind the death of WWII Nazi officer, Otto Wachter, who is alleged to have been responsible for mass murders of Jews in Poland between 1942 and 1945.
The Grandson of one of the deceased (murdered) Jewish victims (his entire family was wiped out in the Grand Action) Phillipe Sands is determined to expose the murderer for what he is and sets out on his trail by meeting Otto Wachter’s own son, now in his 70’s, who lives in a castle in Austria.
What follows is a complex tale of espionage, counter surveilance, cold war intrigue and the role of the Vatican in an unGodly cover up and escape from retribution of a whole succession of senior Nazis who seemed to be more palatable than communists to the Italian illuminati in the Cold War era.
For those familiar with the heart breaking tale of the Underground Railroad, so beautifully brought to life by Colson Whitehead in the book of the same name, The Ratline is effectively the rather less palatable Nazi version of it, in which mass murderers of the Third Reich were ‘Persil Cleaned’ and set on their way to anonymity and freedom (or a bit of Commy bashing) by the Italians.
It stinks.
Writer and narrator Phillipe Sands is to be congratulated for his composure in telling the sordid tale without completely losing it as his grandfather’s despicable killer is followed through a jigsaw of clues back through his footsteps in the lee of the war, showing not a morsel of humility or reconciliation.
Wachter’s poor, deluded grandson believes him to a good man at heart, and offers up a lot of evidence of his activities to Sands, his friend, (strange and unexplained but the key to the door) but it’s pretty compellingly set out that he was a murdering bastard and got all that was ultimately coming to him.
It’s a grand, if complex, reconstruction of history that rewards careful listening.
What do Cabbage Patch dolls, Metrosexuality, Unicorn poo, Jennifer Aniston’s depression, the Jane Fonda Workout, The Mullet and The Karen have in common?
They’re all the subject of episodes of Decoder Ring, the great monthly podcast by Willa Paskin from Slate.
As eclectic as they are REAL, each episode pretty thoroughly researches a cultural phenomenon tracing it back to its origins and explaining the impact it has had on society and culture as its influence grew.
Sure Unicorn Poo may be less life changing than having a mullet, but trust me: these are THINGS.
These are things that matter.
And, with her tongue firmly embedded in her cheek Haskin treats each with reverence and respect.
She could be exploring the rise of Marxism in Tsarist Russia (if that’s even a thing). But she’s not, she’s wondering why a doll with eyes too closely set created monsters out of suburban housewives.
It’s that good.
Honestly, it’s like a little dollop of nectar has been spat into your ear by a hummingbird each time a new episode drops.
Go get gooey eared.
And thank me.
This is gold dust.
David Dimbleby, let free of his BBC shackles finally has the chance to say what he really thinks. He doesn’t of course, but it’s what he implies, nods, winks that tells you he is deeply cynical of the liar Tony Blair and the fool George W Bush who fell in man-love over the opportunity to blow the fucking shite out of somewhere. That somewhere was Iraq.
The pretence was to rid the nation finally of the evil autocrat Sadaam Hussein, but the two lovers got all tangled up in revenge for 9/11 and the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, a sworn enemy of the Iraqi state.
We all know we were lied to, but this truly great podcast uncovers not just how and why but also quite how flimsy and pathetic the so called evidence was. Some of it was gleaned from cab drivers, but Blair’s chief proof point was the evidence from an exiled Iraqi biochemist, living in safety in Germany, and codenamed Curveball. (A man who had never been in a weapons factory in his puff and who got all of his ‘evidence’ from the internet).
I mean, it’s comedic.
Dimbers puts Tony Blair through his paces in one to two episodes, exposing him for the c*** we all know he is. It’s a cringe fest as we listen to him weasel his way around the story. But it’s great listening.
Dimbers is brilliant. Just amazing. He is effortlessly statesmanlike and so compelling to listen to.
The most horrifying part of the whole thing is the denouement. The rebuilding of Iraq post Hussain. The complete destruction of its moral order and the breeding ground for ISIS more like. Governed by more fools who didn’t give a flying fuck about the country, it has left Iraq in a worse state than it was under Hussain.
What would you prefer? A life of terror under an evil autocrat that is singleminded in his madness. Or a hotbed of turmoil, inter-tribal, religious civil war with some of the most heartless terrorists in history?
You choose.
Truly great work from Something’ Else Productions.
Must listen stuff.
“To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.’
The long paragraph above, from Martin Luther King’s essay “Loving your enemies” is surely his response to biblical scripture in which the main tenet of Christianity to “love thy neighbour as thyself” is stress-tested to extremes in the civil rights movement’s strongest card: that Black (then called Negro, and much worse) Americans should rise above the injustice that was being meted out upon them.
Jim Crow American ‘culture’ (pah!) and ‘politics’ (more accurate) was so obscenely in violation of basic human rights as to make the “land of the free” as much a work of fiction as the gospels. But King’s advocation of noncooperation with evil, the absolute root cause and ultimately the ace card of the civil rights movement, was what made it, and him, irresistible – good will eventually triumph over evil and if good transcends (through violence and hatred) into a mirror image of its perpetrators’ behaviour then stalemate, or worse, will result.
Taking the moral high ground may well have been the ace to play. But it needed played with dignity, clarity, consistency and conviction. The hallmarks of King.
Today we live in an America where its President would luxuriate in the heady glow of Jim Crow time, where his racial hatred would be given an outlet in which he could fully exploit his white supremacy. He could read his nazi doctrine to the nation free from the shackles of wokeness. His wall would have long been complete.
So, the irony of his marriage to an immigrant. The irony that Germany is possibly the high water mark, as a nation, in humanitarian treatment of minority peoples, people without a land to call their own cannot be overlooked. The war against oppression is no longer the war against hitler. And America can no longer wipe its hands of Jim Crow.
The fact that a fascist is in power, despite all that Colson Whitehead tells us of in the pages of the Nickel Boys, is America’s shame. And having hosted many ‘Democratic’ Americans in our home, as Air BnB hosts, my wife and I are very aware of the shame that they carry around the globe on their hunched, apologetic shoulders.
The criminal that is the current POTUS is an ugly stain upon the integrity of what was (largely but by no means exclusively) a great nation until 2016, and will be again I’m sure.
Well, it will be a great nation when, once and for all, it rids itself of its institutionalised racism. Not in every corner, but in enough of them for it to still matter, to still manifest itself through police brutality and murder of innocent victims: murdered black children, women and men who were the consequences of shoot first, ask later.
This has to stop and anyone who has any shred of belief in my view will find it cemented further by reading The Nickel Boys.
It’s a short novel and a fictitious account of the life of one man (two in truth) whose very existence is entirely defined by racism. Elwood, the main protagonist, is a black American, brought up in Tallahassee, Georgia.
We meet him, aged around 10, in 1962. His maternal grandmother has just bought him the greatest gift of his life, a record of the speeches of Martin Luther King, featuring extracts from his Loving Your Enemies Essay.
Little could the bright, ambitious and bookish young Elwood know that cruel fate and prejudice would thrust him centre stage into that essay.
For spoiler reasons I won’t tell you how teenage Elwood ends up, not in college, but in the young offenders institution called Nickel. Nearly sixty years later an unmarked burial ground of battered and scarred young black men’s bodies has been found by property developers.
Not battered, no. Tortured.
It triggers a return to the haunting ground.
What marks out Whitehead’s writing as equal only, in my view, to Cormac McCarthy’s is his ability to storytell about extreme subjects without resorting to, in any way, flag-waving politico.
Although this book is, cover to cover, about the injustice of racial prejudice it’s not even remotely tub-thumping. At no point does the reader think ‘if only he’d drop the politics for a bit’ and yet every single page is suffused with them.
How he does this, apart from being a peerless craftsman, is to side-eye his observations. Although this book is about life in a torture chamber of racial oppression its narrative does not dwell on this. Hitchcock’s 15 minutes of tension is worth a minute of shock is equally applied by Whitehead, except his tension is more of a contextualisation of racism where the reader sees it italicised in their peripheral vision, not up front in caps.
Hardly any of this book describes torture. Hardly any of it lists the daily criminality of the regime or the sheer burden of difficulty their lives endure. For that you’ll need to read the ice cold litany of terror that Jonathan Littel describes so shockingly through the eyes of a WWII nazi officer in the brutal “The Kindly Ones”.
No, this book riffs off, time and again, King’s essay as the oppressed inmates of Nickel strive to overcome evil. By doing good. By keeping clean. By being undetected. By righting their passage.
It’s a work of staggering genius.
Not a sentence in this novel goes to waste. Many you have to read two, three times because Whitehead may have decided 200 pages was sufficient to tell his story (in places rip-roaringly so) but no way was he going to make it easy for us.
He lays traps everywhere. He writes half sentences that pack more storytelling punch than any writer I know. You have to work it out. Sometimes you complete a paragraph and realise that buried in it were two or three words that so upend its meaning, and the book’s direction, as to entirely discombobulate you. This means you have to navigate this novel as if in a minefield. Gently, softly, guddling the trout. One false move and you’re back a chapter.
And what chapters. What vision. In one he tells, as a complete side story, but as a keystone, about the annual boxing tournament at Nickel. The competition that has been won for the last 15 years by the black kids. Yet, at no point in this hideous exemplar of racial torture are you able to double-guess the chapter’s outcome. That’s partly down to his masterful storytelling, but it’s also down to that knack he has of simply not overdoing the message despite, as I said earlier, suffusing the book with the message.
As it nears its conclusion Whitehead throws in a plot device that is so explosive, so monumental, that it made my heart skip a beat and reappraise the entire novel. It’s unprecedented in my experience and it’s what cemented this into its outcome as one of the greatest books I’ve ever read.
I mean, I really don’t think that if you have The Underground Railroad (and its Pultizer Prize) on your CV you can really expect to step up any further.
Can you?
If you’re Colson Whitehead you can.
Wow. What a cracker from the BBC.
Part of its ‘Intrigue’ series of 15 minute documentaries. Over ten episodes (2.5 hours) it tells the story of an almost unbelievable tunnel break from East Berlin to West, tunnelling under the wall from the West for over 400 metres to a domestic cellar in the East, a year or so after it was suddenly constructed.
Each episode concludes with the haunting and glorious tones of Tom Rosenthal’s “How This Came To Be “and “Keep Me Warm” played alternately (I was utterly convinced these were undiscovered Alt J songs but my research proved me wrong).
Helena Merriman is the light touch presenter and delivers the story with dignity and no shortage of empathy.
And what a story.
A bunch of engineering students in West Berlin set out to rescue loved ones from the East but then extend the invitation to others. They, “Great Escape” style fight all sorts of challenges, including floods and discovery thanks to Stazi informants, to head steadily towards their goal.
The stakes are raised even higher when an NBS (US) news station gets involved to film their efforts and to essentially fund the project. Their efforts can be viewed in the resultant full length documentary here. (although having watched the first 15 minutes it’s not as gaping as the Beeb’s audio version.
There are twists and turns aplenty as their fortunes wax and wane and I’ll not spoil the outcome here but, like in all good yarns, in many ways the journey is every bit as important as the destination.
It’s intoxicating stuff and deeply involving, so that you develop a real empathy for main tunnellers, each and every one a hero.
A classic.
Soul Music is a riff off of Desert Island Discs, in that it is about the story behind music. In this case one song per episode.
No presenters, no title music even.
But it’s often, like DID, a tear jerker.
This one is no different.
But what elevates this particular episode, apart from the quality of the song, is the description of its creation.
It’s truly illuminating and fascinating as a result.
Highly recommended.
Wow. This is strong stuff.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a white supremacist became an American political phenomenon. David Duke’s rise to power and prominence—his election to the Louisiana Legislature, and then his campaigns for the U.S. Senate and the governorship—was an existential crisis for the state and the nation.
That’s how Slate sells the fourth in their outstanding Podcast series (The Watergate Scandal 10/10, The Clinton Scandal 9/10 Tupac – didn’t enjoy that, and now Duke.)
Heavy stuff with heft.
Slow Burn really is an outstanding editorial platform with a great track record and this adds further weight to Slate’s enviable reputation with a gripping tale, riddled with back stories and sidebars that add colour and context to the rise of a fascist to a position of influence, but no power.
Who could ever imagine a fascist in power in the USA?
Until 2016-2020. When it became a reality.
The difference between Duke and Trump is that Duke, ex Grand Wizard of the KKK was an acknowledged Nazi who tried to cover up his past, whereas Trump is only waves the flag of fascism (No brown short and swastika) albeit with the ability to create an authoritarian police state in the world’s third largest country.
Duke sought a Nazi state, for sure, but under the auspices of The GOP, The Republican Party.
Just like today.
And, yes, the GOP was embarrassed to shit by Duke, as those that will admit it are of his fascist successor.
Where Duke failed was through his ostentatious official past. His espousal of anti-semitic, anti black politicking stated for what it was. The cross burning couldn’t be airbrushed from Duke’s history, whereas Trump gets the police to enact his enmity and racism with only a powder puff hairs and an orange fake tan that says;
“Me, a Nazi, looking like this? Oh come on.”
It’s wonderfully narrated with relish, and a degree of awe (fear really) by Josh Levin. His anguish is palpable as he tells the tale of what could have been…
…and is now.
The story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos is an unbelievable tale of ambition and fame gone terribly wrong.
So say ABC Studios in promoting the podcast of Elizabeth Holmes’ outrageous fooling of too many people that shouldn’t have been fooled.
Theranos was her college idea (for which she dropped out hence the title) a machine that analysed single droplets of blood to diagnose up to 100’s of health conditions like diabetes in a single drop with no need to draw blood via syringe.
A life changer for the planet. And Chiat Day’s ads fell nothing short of that claim.
Except every single analysis ever done by Theranos required a syringe draw. Because they weren’t analysed on Theranos machines.
She fooled Walgreens into signing an exclusive distribution deal.
She copied Steve Jobs by wearing all black turtlenecks.
She adopted a deep baritone voice that was 100% fake, to give her an air of authority.
She suckered US Secretary of State for Defence George Schultz, but not his grandson.
Henry fucking Kissinger sat on her board.
Bill Gates invested millions, so did Rupert Murdoch ($125m to be precise).
And at one time it was valued at $9billion.
All on a bare faced lie. A hoax of grand proportions. Gargantuan in fact.
You have to feel sorry for the small investors, more so for the poor people that were given incorrect diagnoses, but the big boys were simply suckered, and failed in their due diligence.
It’s a brilliant story, brilliantly researched and brilliantly narrated by Rebecca Jarvis.
High quality stuff that you should seek out now.
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