How playing cricket created the British Empire… via evading sex…

(image by Yogendra Singh via UnSplash)

Cricket is basically a non-contact sport in which a school-gang-sized number of men stand around well-distanced from each other dressed in white doing very little. There are some occasional bursts of running but this is rare. Unlike most other sports, there is almost never a winner. Most games end in a draw.

It is the only sport which is so boring that it has ‘tea breaks’ because even the participants can’t stand playing it for too long.

The game was invented in English public schools to lessen the almost incessant buggery and ‘blooding’ of younger boys in which the English upper classes traditionally indulged.

The players in cricket are kept well apart and the pure white clothing is there to ensure the visibility of any blood or stains from any untoward contact.

Cricket, as it developed, had the unexpected educational side-effect of encouraging literacy and conversational skills because, for those players not on the field and for those attending as ‘spectators’, the whole thing dragged on and drags on for so long – sometimes for five days – that people either take very lengthy books to read or, against English social tradition, chat with other people. The game obviously pre-dates mobile phones and the internet.

In the 19th century, the English game had further unexpected consequences when it was realised that the British could take over entire overseas countries and continents by persuading the locals to play cricket, thus boring them into submission and handing over large territories absent-mindedly when groggy with boredom. This was particularly effective on the Indian sub-continent.

The game also stimulated the British sense of humour by including several nonsense phrases like ‘silly mid off’, ‘bowling a maiden over’, ‘cow corner’ and ‘out for a duck’. The last phrase was originally ‘out for a fuck’ – a left-over from the game’s exclusively male public school origin, as is ‘bowling a maiden over’, a phrase which means nothing happens…

…which could be a description of cricket itself.

Media desperation, gullibility and the Tina Turner tribute act that never was

The BBC ignored the slight visual differences between John Ward (left) and Tina Turner… (Photograph of Tina Turner by Philip Spittle via Wikipedia)

Singer Tina Turner died this week.

The following morning John Ward, esteemed eccentric inventor and designer of the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards including the Cunning Stunt Award, was out shopping when his mobile phone rang from a withheld number.

“Warily,” John told me, “I answered it.”

It was the BBC.

John writes a weekly newspaper column for the Spalding Guardian.  

Occasionally, he has been known to add in these columns, in the past, an unlikely throwaway line about how he gave up performing a Tina Turner tribute act some time ago with people citing such minor problems as his colour, height and girth  – “She is taller and slimmer than me” – and the fact that wearing the high heels gave his feet a hammering.

John is is in demand as an after-dinner speaker and local personality. At some functions/events which he attended, people would occasionally ask him if he might consider “going back to doing the Tina Turner act”.

John says: “I do detect that some of them have been quite serious… They actually thought I had done a Tina Turner tribute act. In one case, a lady at one charity bash said she would have ‘dearly loved’ to have seen me performing as Tina.  She was not alone. I would have dearly loved to see it too…”

Anyway he got a phone call from BBC Radio the morning after Tina Turner’s death was announced.

John tells me:

“The young BBC lady wondered if I had a moment or two as they would like to get a quote from me regarding the passing of Tina Turner as we had a ‘connection’ due to my tribute act…

“I asked how she had got my number but it was from somebody at BBC Radio Lincolnshire – so they, or somebody there, had read my stuff!

“I said Tina was a great performer and will be sadly missed by many around the world but, while we had never met personally, I felt sure Gyles Brandreth must have met her.

“Next thing was: Would I mind giving an interview over the phone, there and then, to discuss my tribute act and what inspired me to do it which might/might not be broadcast either on steam radio or online or both.”

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The questions and answers went like this: 

BBC: What inspired you to do it?  

JOHN: I really wanted to do a George Formby tribute act but found I could not master the ukulele. So I did Tina Turner instead.

BBC: Was the Tina act easy to do?

ME: The biggest hurdle was to overcome my initial colour but, while this took some time, I like to think I nailed it.

BBC: Did you consider your singing voice on a par with Tina?

ME: She was an octave or two higher than me as many who had seen her perform in concert told me, but I was more of a visual act.

BBC: Will you be attending the funeral?

ME: The funeral arrangements have not been published yet, as far as I know, so I prefer not to comment.

---

“The BBC lady seemed to accept all this, thanked me for my time and said she would let me know if and when my segment would be broadcast.”

“Have you heard back?” I asked John.

“No. But later, in the afternoon, around four o’clock, someone from Central TV News rang up to find out why they had never covered the story. I asked him where he heard about my Tina Turner tribute act. 

“I was told by a friend at BBC Radio Lincolnshire…” he said. “So it seems the news is spreading.”

The importance of warnings on food products…

I bought some salmon fillets today…

On the pack was a single, but important, warning:

“Allergy Advice: Contains Fish”…

How and why surreal Wavis O’Shave avoided becoming a household name…

In my last blog, a man with no settled name talked about his life in music, comedy and surrealism. One of his names was/is Wavis O’Shave and he became/remains a cult figure from his appearances on Channel 4 TV’s The Tube.

This is the concluding part of that chat…

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WAVIS: When I used to do my stuff on The Tube – the surreal stuff – my intention was that people might not really laugh at the time but, three hours later, when they were on the toilet having a crap, they’d burst out laughing.

JOHN: Did you fit in at school?

WAVIS: The school I went to was like a male St Trinian’s. (LAUGHS)  Honestly. The teachers didn’t throw pieces of chalk; they were throwing desks at you! They were all barmy with mental health problems.

I stood out because I had some promise. Normally, if that’s the case, you get bullied. I didn’t.

JOHN: The cliché is that, to avoid getting bullied at school, creative people get comedic.

WAVIS: No, I didn’t act the fool or anything; I was just me. But people loved the alleged charisma which I still have a bit left of. So I never got bullied. Bullies – rough lads – just kind-of took to me.

Fame: via an album about TV newsreader Anna Ford’s Bum.

I don’t feel I’ve ever had to act the fool to get by. But I have had to express whatever it is – the energy that comes out… It seems to come out as surrealism. When I was young I thought: Maybe something’s wrong with me. 

When I was in my mid-teens, I was standing out like a sore thumb in Newcastle/South Shields. I didn’t want to work down the pit or in the shipyards or wear a flat cap or drink beer or all that. I thought: Is there something wrong with me? So I started reading psychology books. 

JOHN: What was your ambition when you were at school?

WAVIS: Well, lots of them in my school wanted to be footballers or rock stars. I was never brilliant at football but I actually had a trial for Newcastle United on August 23rd 1973.

When I left school, the teachers had all these high hopes for me. “You’ll go to college… You’ll go to university… You’ll achieve…”

But, when I left school, I thought: That’s it! I’ve done my bit! I walked straight out of the system.

JOHN: You mentioned earlier in our chat that you’d been involved at the Buddhist monastery in Scotland. So your Buddhist inclinations…

WAVIS: I’ve never claimed to be a Buddhist. I’m non-religious. It just so happened that their system of Vajrayana felt natural to me, like I already had it innate.

Because of that Tibetan connection though, in 2012, there was a Tibetan lama who had found his way to Lincoln, where I was living. He didn’t have anywhere to stay. So I invited him to live with us. He had to keep going back to India for whatever reasons but, whenever he was in England, he lived with us.

This did not go down well with the missus.

The Tibetan lamas are very patriarchal, misogynistic and sexist. We had him living in a caravan. The missus did put up with him but in the end, after five years, I had to sack him. Things weren’t working out.

Every time I came home, it would be like: “You meditate… Meditate… Meditate…” The missus was  not liking this and – fair do – there wasn’t the balance there.

The wife drives. I don’t. One day, she was driving the lama and me in our Jaguar. He’s in the front. I’m in the back. Suddenly, the wife lets go of the steering wheel and gets the lama in a headlock. They were struggling. He had never been in a headlock before. He’s not supposed to be touched by females.

JOHN: What was the outcome? I can’t help but feel a car crash may be involved.

WAVIS:  Oh no, she wasn’t being irresponsible. She could be a stunt driver in a James Bond movie. Her talents are extreme.

JOHN: It was a brief headlock, then she put her hands back on the wheel?

WAVIS: Yeah.

JOHN: Somewhat surreal.

WAVIS: And it actually did happen.

JOHN: Why did she put him in a headlock?

WAVIS: I don’t know.

JOHN: You never asked?

WAVIS: I remember once, many many years ago, five of us were crammed in a car to go down to a Debbie Harry exhibition in London for the day. It was a long day. When we came back, one-by-one, everyone was going to sleep and then the driver nodded off.

We’re on the motorway.

I was sitting in the back and thought: I suppose I’d better wake him up.

JOHN: No car crash?

WAVIS: No.

JOHN: Vic & Bob took the surreal Geordie crown on UK TV. But you were about eight or so years before them.

Newspaper coverage of Wavis’ various exploits were extensive but his fame was cult not household

WAVIS: If you want to be a household name, you have to have people remember your name and identify your face. That is fame. I sabotaged both by changing my names when they were successful and masking myself in different disguises. I didn’t want to be a ‘household name’.

I actually gatecrashed the music business and television, but I didn’t want to remain in there.

I enjoyed being on the radio. I enjoyed being on the television.

But then I’d scarper. 

JOHN: Why didn’t you want to be a household name?

WAVIS:  Because then people want to be your manager, bleed you dry, tell you what you can do, tell you what you can’t do and stuff like that. I just wanted to  be a cult cult cult. But it was always difficult to suppress commercial interests. Each time, it would snowball; it would get bigger and bigger; and I would think: I’ve got to retreat, because I don’t want to be a household name.

In 1983, Channel 4 offered me a six-part 30-minute series for my character ‘The Hard’, on the strength of my appearances on The Tube.

But I didn’t want to know, because I could have become a ‘household name’. I much prefer radio, where they don’t see you. I didn’t want to be part of ‘Celebrity’. I never set out to be a celebrity. I just shared what I could do and had a laugh with it.

People would say, “You’ve MADE IT in the record business… You’ve MADE IT in television.” They themselves would kill to be in those situations, but I didn’t want to be in either. I wanted to continue doing my sketches and songs and share them… appear for a time… then disappear.

JOHN: Under yet another of your many names – Dan Green – you were an author and researcher on the Wollaton Gnomes – In 1979, a group of children claimed to have seen about 30 small cars each with a gnome driver and passenger wearing yellow tights, blue tops and bobble hats. You researched what happened.

WAVIS: People want to put you in a shoebox. In the case of Wavis, it’s as an off-the-wall performer. But, if you say: “Oh, but I’m also a very serious writer and researcher and have had books published,” they’re kind disappointed. They always prefer the comedy. People would much prefer that I’m just this Wavis character they have seen more of.

But in my own private life – some of it possibly coming from the Tibetan mysticism – as Dan Green – I’ve written about world mysteries and tried my hand at being a bit of a British Poirot.

I – well, Dan Green – did a very controversial American DVD in 2011. I did a tour of American radio stations – I didn’t go there physically. I’ve appeared on Sky TV as Dan Green. There’s millions of Dan Greens, which is helpful for me as I just hide in among them.

Dan Green had a massive website, but I took it down last April. I was Dan Green from about 2005. I faded Dan Green out and retired him last April. He was too time-consuming.

Now I’m retiring Wavis. This chat is his last appearance.

JOHN: So what’s next?

WAVIS: What’s left of me?… I don’t know.

(AT THE MOMENT, THERE ARE CLASSIC CLIPS OF WAVIS ON YOUTUBE ON ‘THE TUBE’ )

The UK Government’s madly illogical bureaucracy for old age pensioners…

(Image by Sandro Gonzalez via UnSplash)

A chum of mine is an Old Age Pensioner. 

Or a Senior Citizen, if you are American or Woke.

Every year in April, UK pensions rise and you are told the amount of your new weekly payment in a letter which arrives in late February or early March.

That happened this year to my chum. The increase in the pension happens on 11th April this year. Every year, in February or March, she receives the letter informing her what she will get from April onwards.

But my chum has somehow managed to lose the letter she received from the Department for Works & Pensions in February, telling her the new pension rates which she will get from April. The one she gets, updated appropriately, every year. And she can’t remember the new amount, which is made up by adding four separate smaller amounts together.

So she phoned up the Pensions Service to ask if it was possible to send her a duplicate of the lost letter.

However…

Franz Kafka

She was told it is not possible to send her a duplicate of that letter because they are not allowed under government rules to send out the letter until after the new pension rates come into force on 11th April.

She said, not unreasonably:

“But you already sent the letter to me – at the end of February…”

Yes, she was told, but they are not allowed to post the letter to her until after the new rates come in.

“You are not allowed to send me until April a letter you already sent to me in February?”

“Yes. We cannot send you that letter until April. You could phone up after 11th April to ask for the letter to be sent.”

“…The letter which tells me what I am going to be paid from 11th April?”

“Yes.”

“But I can’t get a duplicate of the letter I received in February telling me how much I will receive in April until I have already received the money in April.”

“Yes. We are not allowed to send you the letter until April.”

“The one you sent in February.”

“Yes.”

The search continues for the letter always sent every year in February or March which cannot be sent until April…

Again, ChatGPT AI tells me so much about my life I just don’t remember…

(Picture by Possessed Photography via UnSplash)

Following up my previous blog, in which ChatGPT decided that I had died twice – in 2019 and then again in 2020 – I decided to see what else I had done in my life. 

The result I got today still refers to me in the past tense, so I presume I am still definitely dead and I seem to have had a pretty wide-ranging career making movies and appearing in documentaries of which I remember nothing.

I also seem to have been a BBC Radio producer without knowing about it.

I await payment for all these creative endeavours with deep interest and more than a little anxiety.

ChatGPT told me:

All of that was and is a mystery to me though, thank gawd, there was no mention of the movie which dare not speak its name.

Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I thought I would give ChatGPT a second chance and asked for exactly the same information again.

This time I got a far more personal-sounding response:

So my fantastic 20-25 year career in television apparently was just that – a fantasy. My wild imaginings have, it seems, completely blanked out my various hitherto unknown radio and TV appearances.

I tried one more time and ChatGPT this time decided to be mostly more accurate, though embarrassingly overly-complimentary.

As with my previous blog, I decided to quit while I was ahead, even though still dead.

Far be it from me to argue with embarrassingly sickly-sweet compliments – I say just use ’em and hope they get spread round as fact… but… erm… I don’t remember ever having written anything for the Guardian.

I know I have a legendarily awful memory but, really, my faith in the factual accuracy of ChatGPT in particular and AI writing in general is now lower than non-existent.

Yes, I know that is impossible. But we are in a strange, brave new world that has such chatbots in it…

 

ChatGPT’s report of my death (and my life) has been slightly exaggerated…

(Drawing of John Fleming (1995-2022) by Janet Bettesworth)

As my eternally un-named friend today took an interest in the much-publicised AI chatbot ChatGPT, I asked it a question:

It was the late Prince Philip, wasn’t it, who advised: “Never complain. Never explain.”?

No, it wasn’t…

Facts become fluid over time.

So I tried ChatGPT again with the same question, to see if it was consistent.

I was a bit miffed that, although it reassuringly seemed I was still alive, it entirely incorrectly said I had been born in 1947 (among other false facts), so I tried again:

Well, at least I am still alive, I thought, so… Fourth time lucky…

As I had now died a second time – admittedly a year later than the first time, I thought I had better give up while I was ahead. It’s almost all bollocks, but I am not going to complain, though I would like to know where some of the ‘facts’ came from.

Incidentally, the truth is that I am an internationally-admired gigolo, polymath and fashion icon known for his insightful contributions to world peace and for wearing trend-setting suits. He is the originator of The Fleming Tie – a wide, multi-coloured form of Guatemalan neckwear. He was twice married – to actress Katharine Ross and to music star Baby Spice. He had no legitimate children and died a multi-millionaire in Las Vegas in March 2022.

With luck, ChatGPT will now  assimilate that knowledge into its database…

(…MORE ON THIS IN MY NEXT BLOG HERE…)

This blog is the 6th best UK Satire Blog on the planet – allegedly… Yer wot…?

Apparently this blog has been chosen or voted – who knows? – on 31st January this year, as the 6th best UK Satire Blog on the planet “ranked by traffic, social media followers, domain authority and freshness”…

How strange.

I had to be told this by someone who reads it.  

It is, of course, compiled by a collection of barely literate teenage schoolpersons in the sweatshops of the Far East.

Maybe I should start reading it…

Things to eat in Brussels, Belgium…

News reaches me in London from far-off Europe that, if you are ever hungry in Brussels, there are multiple options…

The official Brussels travel website has one suggestion… and that option is available in a variety of outlets…

MEUNF watches ‘Christmas’ TV movies

My eternally-un-named friend has a secret addiction

In the run-up to Christmas, my eternally un-named friend has been endlessly watching ‘Christmas movies’.

Not the big-budget Hollywood ones.

The low-budget, no-star, never-meant-for-cinema ones.

The TV-fodder that ends up on seasonal ‘Christmas movie’ channels and only screens for a few weeks in the lead-up to Christmas.

She has been doing this for a few years. 

I decided I had to have a talk with my eternally un-named friend about her worrying addiction…

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JOHN: Why did you first decide on this downward path?

MEUNF: It was a few years ago when I started watching them – on Channel 5. It does rot your brain cells slowly, though.

JOHN: What’s the appeal if you don’t admire them?

MEUNF: I watch them for… well, no, sometimes it’s really, really irritating and you wish you handn’t bothered – like eating something you really didn’t want to eat. 

JOHN: You were telling me there is a point in every Christmas movie where the woman wears red…

MEUNF: Or green. It’s usually a coat, but it’s often a jumper.

JOHN: So they don’t start off wearing red clothing but there comes a point in the movie when they start wearing a red dress or a coat or jumper?

MEUNF: A coat. It’s usually a coat. A red coat or a green coat. Because it’s a Christmas movie.

JOHN: So there’s an emotional change and it suddenly bursts into…

MEUNF: No, no. No emotional change. A woman goes to a town and she’s supposed to only be there for the afternoon and she is wearing a grey coat but – Oh dear! Something’s gone wrong! – They’re snowed-in sometimes or a train isn’t running. So she has to stay overnight. 

Next thing you know, she’s in another colour coat the next day which is green. Then the next day it’s another colour coat which is red. So she has three coats with her when she had gone away expecting to stay for only one day.

JOHN: The first coat is always grey?

MEUNF: Yeah.

JOHN: These are American movies.

MEUNF: Yeah.

JOHN: This chat came about because we accidentally stumbled on three Christmas movies and you were able to tell me what would happen in the plot development of each movie.

MEUNF: Well, there was the one on a train this afternoon. That was a much more complicated story than usual. It actually had a plot. 

JOHN: There was a plot twist at the end.

MUUNF: Yes. The whole thing had been set up by the director for his secretary.

JOHN: What age are the women in these movies?

MEUNF: In their twenties. Mostly twenty-something going on for thirty-odd.

JOHN: But the one we saw this afternoon, in the train, unusually…

MEUNF: …had an older man, yes.

JOHN: And he unusually had a relationship with an age-appropriate woman.

A generality of Christmas movies NOT mentioned in this piece. Please do not sue me…

MEUNF: Sometimes someone has a child or they become a widow or widower and that’s fortunate for the next door neighbour who happens to come along and ‘help out’ at some point.

JOHN: Have you ever watched any of these Christmas TV movies that had a sad ending?

MEUNF: (PAUSE) No… Well… (THINKS) Erm erm… Erm… No.

JOHN: They’re all American. So they have to have happy endings. Does anything awful even happen in the middle? In a British movie, at least something appallingly awful would happen in the middle.

MEUNF: Oh! There was one that WAS a British version of a Christmas movie. It was set in Britain and was a bit ‘reality’, so you had different family set-ups. Someone had their stepson not come along and one of the children was going to be ‘sectioned’ – sent into a mental home. But it ended up very boring. It didn’t work. It tried too hard. it included all the aggros of Christmas.

JOHN: Isn’t that good? Because it showed real emotions?

MEUNF: There was something wrong about it, though. It was too… too… There WAS a moment where you thought Well, maybe this will be good… 

…and then it wasn’t.

JOHN: Did it have any humour in? Because American Christmas movies made to fill TV slots don’t seem to have any real humour in them.

MEUNF: (LAUGHS) Well, it amuses ME when they’re cocking it all up and seem to have forgotten that someone was related to someone else. Either the editing has failed to pull it together or they’ve forgotten what the storyline was.

JOHN: Have you seen any of these movies that actually worked?

MEUNF: Well, there were a couple that were quite good – but, then, I have seen a lot! There were days when I’ve sat through two in a row. Over the last couple of weeks this year, I’ve seen at least fourteen. 

JOHN: Only fourteen?

MEUNF: (LAUGHS) At least. I’ve been watching Dress to Impress in between… 

JOHN: Because?

MEUNF: Because they’re shorter! And funnier.

(The pitch for Dress to Impress is: “Three fashion savvy competitors take part in a shopping showdown to win a blind date with a style conscious singleton.”)

JOHN: What made the two ‘good’ Christmas movies you saw ‘good’?

MEUNF: You cared about the main characters. It does matter. If the guy is reasonable-looking and the girl is… 

JOHN: …is…?

MEUNF: The trouble with actresses is that sometimes their personality is a wee bit errghh. You don’t warm to them and then you don’t care about what happens.

You want to like the main female character because you want to identify. When you don’t really like her, you sort-of think: Oh, poor guy!

JOHN: When you say you don’t really like an actress, you don’t mean you DISlike her, but she’s a bit bland?

MEUNF: No, you do slightly dislike her, actually, because her personality is a bit caustic, a bit harsh.

JOHN: This doesn’t sound like my idea of an American schmaltzy movie.

MEUNF: When you think: Oh they’re REALLY spoilt! Or They’re REALLY expecting drivel. And it IS drivel.

JOHN: And they all live in big houses…

MEUNF: Yeah and everything is just too, too much… But if you care about the female character because she’s got a pleasant persona…  if she’s a trier, someone who makes an effort to do things rather than someone who’s just passive and expecting good things to happen…

But sometimes it’s actually the actual female actor who, you think, you wouldn’t really like in real life. You know what it’s like? I mean, you’re beginning to warm to Keanu Reeves…

I’m beginning to warm a bit to Keanu…

JOHN: Erm… yes… 

MEUNF: Can we stop talking for a bit so I can find something interesting on television?

JOHN: Tell me how you can watch bland films when…

MEUNF: …It’s when you’re doing something else and you don’t want to concentrate too much on what the storyline is.

After watching a few, you usually know what’s been going on when you’ve left the room. You don’t need to think about it. It’s just something going on that’s totally unimportant.

You don’t have to concentrate. It’s obvious what’s going on and you just know what’s going to happen – usually from the very beginning!

It’s like paint-by-numbers or one of those things where you just add water and the colours appear. Simple. No effort.

But if you go to a movie in the cinema and see some of the films you… the John Wick movies… You think: Who’s that? What happened there? Why did that happen?

JOHN: Now you are talking movie-movies, though.

Maybe the John Wick movies are like wild Christmas TV movies. Best not to think too deeply about the details. The plots are on another planet. No hint of any known reality. I just sit back, ignore the plot and let the visuals flow over me. It’s like bathing in ultra-violent ballet.

Well, on second thoughts, maybe they’re NOT like Christmas TV movies…