John Fleming’s Weekly Diary – No 29 – NHS chaos, online cults, PC linguistics

… CONTINUED FROM DIARY No 28 …

Ariane X – ex Ariane Sherine – the palindrome queen

SUNDAY 2nd AUGUST

In my last diary blog, I mentioned that Ariane Sherine (newly aka Ariane X) said she had discovered that, since finding a new man in her life and becoming happy, she has been unable to write songs.

Inevitably, of course, as soon as I posted that, she wrote another song for her upcoming album, released on the (if you are British not American) palindromic 12.02.2021.

This is part of it:

When you’ve no money left
No love or hope or friends
And your heart it is closed
And you think that it’s the end
And you’re praying to God
Yeah to come and save your soul
Well I’ll save you instead
Bring you in out of the cold

Also last time, I mentioned Charles Aznavour’s observation that, when people are happy, they are all happy in much the same but, when people are sad, there are varied, specific reasons why, so ‘sad’ is more inspiring and more interesting.

Erudite performer and man about town Peter Stanford pointed out that Aznavour had perhaps read the first sentence of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenin (or, on my Russian college course, Karenina):

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”

All I really remember about Anna Karenina is some bloke tapping the wheels of a train and maybe that was only in the movie.

MONDAY 3rd AUGUST

NHS confusion continues.

Last week, my face-to-face appointment with the Kidney Man was changed to a telephone consultation but, having experienced this twice before, I disbelieved it.

On Friday, I checked with the Kidney Man’s secretary and it was indeed a face-to-face appointment.

When I arrived at the hospital at lunchtime today, the two security men checking arrivals (no visitors are allowed because of the COVID-19 restrictions) directed me to Reception just inside the door.

It was the same man on Reception as before – last time he said the entire Nephrology department had moved to another hospital – so I ignored him and went straight to Outpatients reception.

They directed me to the appropriate Consultation section’s Reception. The nurse on that Reception tried to find my details but couldn’t. Then the actual Receptionist arrived.

She told me all the face-to-face appointments had finished; there were only phone ones now. The nurse told the receptionist: “There’s no John Fleming on the list. In fact, there is no list. It may have been thrown away by accident.”

The receptionist said: “I will ask the doctor if he will see you.”

He said Yes.

The Kidney Man knew he was supposed to be seeing me masked-face-to-masked-face.

Apparently this is a micrograph showing a renal core biopsy (Photograph by Nephron via Wikipedia)

He told me I’m still “a mystery”. Nothing showed up on the last blood test. He may send me to see an Ear Nose & Throat man in case that throws up any irregularities. He also has a colleague who is “interested in calcium” so he might want to see me. And they might try a kidney biopsy, though that is unlikely.

“What is a biopsy?” I asked. Does it involve cutting me open?”

“We just stick a needle in your back, under local anaesthetic,” he replied, “and take a little bit of kidney out.”

My next face-to-face appointment with the Kidney Man is in two months, unless something bad were to show up on the blood test.

He sent me down one floor for a blood test. “They may be closed,” he told me. “If they are, just phone the number on the sheet and make an appointment.”

The Phlebotomy (Blood Test to you and me) Department was open.

I left the hospital and went to the National Express office at Golders Green to see how much a two-day coach trip to Edinburgh on 15th/16th August would cost. I want to see what the Edinburgh Fringe is like without the Edinburgh Fringe… and to see comedian Arthur Smith do his annual midnight tour of Edinburgh.

It was £76 return by coach. Much, much cheaper than a railfare.

Nobel Prizewinning Irish politician John Hume

TUESDAY 4th AUGUST

Irish politician John Hume died yesterday. He won the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize for his work trying to bring peace in Northern Ireland.

A BBC commentator said that, the first time Hulme met the IRA leadership face-to-face, he (Hume) said it was like meeting a cult. They were genuinely shocked to find out people genuinely had different views to them. Before then, they had only talked to themselves and their supporters. Anyone outside that circle who disagreed were not seen as people with genuinely different opinions – they were seen as evil.

I immediately thought: Corbynistas… Brexit… almost anyone on Twitter… To hold any opinion different to what you and ALL your friends have is not valid because it is not possible. If you disagree, you must be total evil, must be silenced.

Just me on that one, then?

There was an explosion in Beirut today – around 150 dead and over 4,000 injured. It turned out to be not a bomb but fertiliser. Of the kind used in bombs. Shit happened.

I was going to book an airfare to Edinburgh, after searching cheap price comparison websites. The cheapest return was £65 via Easyjet – cheaper than a coach and a journey time of only 90 minutes as opposed to 10 or 11 hours in a face mask.

My eternally un-named friend suggested looking on the actual EasyJet website. She was right.

It was £65 on the cheap price comparison websites and £55.98p on the EasyJet site itself. (Same flights.)

Arthur Smith was scuppered and scunnered by coronavirus

WEDNESDAY 5th AUGUST

Arthur Smith cancelled his tour of Edinburgh because of the Scottish government’s COVID restrictions on outdoor events. Shit happens.

THURSDAY 6th AUGUST

I got a letter saying my next face-to-face hospital appointment with the Kidney Man is on 19th Ocober. Inevitably, a few days before this, I will get an erroneous text saying it has been changed to a telephone appointment.

Talk of dabbicals, gangbangs, carjacks, bums and fags… (Photograph by Dmitry Ratushny via UnSplash)

FRIDAY 7th AUGUST

I spent the afternoon with my eternally un-named friend.

At one point, an arrangement went wrong. She said: “It’s a dabbical.”

We both looked at each other. Neither of us knew what the word should have been. I suggested it was a reasonable-sounding word so should be in common use.

Later, I was in conversation with someone totally different and it came up in conversation that, in the US, she had been told the British word ‘gangbang’ means ‘carjack’ over there.

Later still, I looked it up online and, as far as I could find, on both sides of the Atlantic, gangbang = gangbang and carjack = carjack. A very odd misunderstanding.

I do always wonder, though, what would happen if an Eastender from London said to someone in Kansas: “I want to bum a fag”.

Late night: my eternally un-named friend phoned to say: “Debacle…”

The offensiveness of phral and bhrātṛ

SATURDAY 8th AUGUST

Continuing with linguistic problems, in the new ultra-PC, non-binary world, a performer posted the following on Facebook:

---

QUESTION: I’ve been working very hard on replacing gendered collective terms like “dudes” & “guys” with “folks” whenever I address groups. I occasionally slip up. But I’m trying.

I was convinced that “pal” was non-gendered but I’ve just looked it up and it isn’t.

Its etymology is:
First recorded in 1675–85; from English Romani: “brother, mate,” variant of continental Romani phral, ultimately from Sanskrit bhrātṛ “brother”.

Does anyone know a non-gendered equivalent, please?

I’ve just found out that by using “pal” with a trans friend (who calls me “pal”), I’ve been unintentionally mis-gendering her and I don’t want to.

“Alright, friend?” feels odd.

There must be a non-gendered equivalent? Surely?

That said I’m struggling to think of a feminine version and the lack of that might be the reason I assumed it was non-gendered.

It’s two things:

a) Does this have the capacity to hurt someone?

b) Is it easily within my gift to avoid even the potential of causing that hurt and it cost me nothing more than the tiniest bit of thought?

If the answers to both of those questions are “Yes” then I’d feel like an utter arsehole if I didn’t at least try.

It’s my job as a decent human being to try to make extremely minor and trivial accommodations to avoid the possibility of hurting someone.

---

I may be revealing myself as an utter arsehole here but – admirably caring and commendably sensitive though his aim is – I think if someone is linguistically sophisticated enough to be offended by the 17th century Romani or ancient Sanskrit roots of perfectly commonplace 21st century English words, then they are probably intellectually resilient enough to cope with being called “pal”… although, frankly, I would be wary of using the word without care in Glasgow (where “cunt” is a genuinely commonly-used conversational term of affection).

… CONTINUED HERE …

Bras, a drag king, lesbians and the IRA

A bag of bras

Just after twilight yesterday, I was rushing to catch a train and was carrying a bag of bras destined for, in my imagination, bemused bosomy women in Kenya.

If you don’t know why, you should have read my blog three days ago.

Crossing a busy road in Borehamwood, I bumped into a lady about my age or older and knocked her over. I didn’t see her; she didn’t see me. Queues of cars in both directions had their bright white headlights on in the black air. She ended on the ground; I dropped my bag. Fortunately the cars were not close enough or travelling fast enough to hit her or the plastic bag.

I would not have liked to explain why I was carrying a plastic bag of bras, though I do try to be supportive in general.

Especially as, after delivering the bras to the Mama Biashara charity shop in Shepherd’s Bush, I was then going to the Admiral Duncan gay bar in Soho.

LoUis CYfer had the Admiral Duncan crowd dancing last night

I am not gay. This blog’s South Coast correspondent Sandra Smith had persuaded me to go along with her to see drag king LoUis CYfer host and perform her (LoUis CYfer’s) regular Wednesday night act there. Well, OK, I did not need any persuasion, having met and blogged about LoUIs CYfer just over a a month ago.

I don’t know why I have never gone to gay clubs, as I do like a bit of OTT kitsch and camp.

In the mid-1980s, when I was researching TV shows, I did go a few times to a lesbian cabaret at Oval House in South London, but it was all a bit too cliquey for peaktime Saturday night television.

IRA songs and lesbian cabaret seemed to share something…

In Dublin, in the 1990s, I bought a collection of IRA songs to see what they were like and was surprised because so many of them were obviously designed to reassure their listeners that they were not losing.

The Oval House lesbian cabaret seemed ro me to have much the same psychology – inward-looking – We are not alone. We are a marginalised, prejudiced-against group and we should huddle together for reassurance. We are not losing! A sort of covered-wagons-in-a-defensive-ring mind-set. Everything was self-referential and inward-looking to try to build up reassuring self-esteem.

Elvis in a cardigan – LoUis’ support act last night

So the Admiral Duncan last night was a very enjoyable surprise. Not an enclave. Not a meat market. Relaxed. I guess (I hope) it is a sign that gay times have moved on since the 1980s.

LoUis CYfer had to battle slightly against a distracted Christmas pub audience. But that is normal in any British pub and club. And she succeeded.

So I guess things are progressing OK.

CYfer so good.

The final months of punk rocker Paul Fox of The Ruts: he never surrendered

The Ruts on the inside cover of their CD The Crack

(This was also published on the Indian news site WSN)

My chum Lou is an interesting man: he makes knuckledusters and knows interesting people. Last night, he was talking to me about Paul Fox.

Paul Fox was lead guitarist in the British punk rock band The Ruts. He died of lung cancer in October 2007.

So it goes.

“I used to bump into Paul every now and then at what’s now the Coy Carp in Harefield,” Lou told me last night. “On a Sunday, they used to have a few live bands down there. Paul was inspirational, absolutely amazing, a really sound guy. What a man! Never heard him slag anyone off. When I heard he’d got cancer, I told him: I’m your driver, I’ll look after you.

“One day he was in so much pain and I was getting pain tablets at the time but I didn’t need them any more… He was not getting enough pain killers from the hospital because I think a doctor there knew he’d had a problem with narcotics in the past and decided to keep him a little bit short.

“If it had been anyone else, they’d probably have got as much as they wanted, but he was constantly in pain. I used to say to people: When you meet Paul, please don’t squeeze him; he’s in so much pain.

“But Paul wouldn’t go Argh! get off! He’d just stand there and take the pain.

“So, anyway, I used to help him out with his tablets.

“Once, we were coming back about 2 o’clock in the morning from his sister’s in Hastings. He was groaning; he’d taken some tablets, but they hadn’t kicked in yet and he said to me: I’d rather this was over sooner rather than later. And I told him: Listen, Paul, if you want to make a job of it, I’ll help you.

“Yeah, he said, but, if they come after you and you get caught, you’ll go behind the door for that.

“I said: Stupid as I am, I would be like an Republican soldier. I would have done what I thought was right. OK. I’ll do me bird for it. But, if what I did was the right thing for that person I helped. I’d be like a soldier. I’d say I did the right thing.”

“You mean an Irish Republican soldier?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Lou, “they were very, very committed men, god bless ‘em. Brave men. They weren’t trained like British soldiers.

“So Paul said I’d rather it was over and I said Well, alright. And then I sat there thinking What have I done? I can’t go back. I’ve made a commitment.

“And Paul sat there for what seemed like ages, though it was probably only about ten minutes and eventually he said: No.

We’ll Never Surrender! – The Ruts’ Staring at The Rude Boys

“No what? I asked him.

“No, he said, We’re going to see it out to the end.

“I said: That’s good… Don’t forget the song…

“What song?

“We’ll never surrender.

“And we had a little laugh about that.”

The Ruts’ song Staring at The Rude Boys includes the lyrics We’ll never surrender.

It is on YouTube.

“It was re-recorded by local band Gallows,” Lou told me. “They got big. Paul was ever so appreciative of the money they made him.

“He told me: You know, I got £19,000 and I love this government. They’ve given me this place to live in and they’ve upped me dole money.

“I said: Well, it’s cos you’re terminally ill, Paul. That’s why, mate.

“And he said I’m so happy.

“Is there anything you want to do that you haven’t done? I asked him. Whatever it is, we’ll do it.

“I wanted to fly,” he said.

“Well, we can do that, I told him. I know a bloke with a small plane.

“Nah! I wanted to learn to fly, he said.

“And did he go up in one?” I asked.

“Well, a bit of him did,” replied Lou. “His ashes were thrown out over Northolt. Some of his ashes. The rest of his ashes, I think, are with his sister in Hastings, god bless her. She told me they were going to be in a wooden box, so I got a little silver plaque and engraved on it …We’ll never surrender!…

“He died in 2007 – six years ago now,” Lou told me.

“My mother died in 2007,” I told Lou.

So it goes.

“When they diagnosed the cancer,” Lou told me, “Paul asked them How long have I got? and the doctor said Ooh, you’ve got a long, long time.

Paul Fox in final gig with The Ruts at Islington in July 2007

“And he asked them Have I got time to write an album? and they said Absolutely.

“A couple of days later, they told him Here, Paul, we made a little mistake. You’ve got a rampant cancer. You may have six months to live. And that’s what he had. About five-and-a-half months. Bosh. He was gone. Bang. Gone.”

“It’s almost better shorter,” I said. “My father was the same. I asked the consultant how long he had left and the reply was Three months to three years and he died almost exactly three months later.”

“We were raising some money for Paul,” Lou told me last night. “We was doing a do. We still do it every year. The Paul Fox appreciation society, mate. We get together once a year and raise a few quid.

“I don’t forget about Paul but, you know, things go on… and then that comes round and I walk into that fucking bar and there’s a picture of him that night – the last night at Islington – and… it gets to me… it’s getting to me now… oh fuck… ”

“Have you seen Blade Runner?” I asked Lou.

“Yeah.”

“You know Rutger Hauer’s death speech?”

“No.”

“When I die all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain,”

“Oh, yeah,” said Lou.

Lou looks at Paul Fox’s poster last night and remembers him

Before Paul Fox died, he had 100 copies made of a poster on which he printed some of his memories.

Lou has No 3 of the 100 posters on his wall.

Some of Paul’s memories on the poster are:

“I was in a band called Hit & Run with Malcolm Owen. He came and played me Anarchy in The UK. We both said We can do that and promptly formed a band. The first two songs we wrote were Lobotomy and Rich Bitch. I can also remember Malcolm giving Sid Vicious a good hiding in The Speakeasy for being disrespectful to his bird. In Malcolm’s defence, Sid was an arrogant cunt.

“I also remember Rusty Egan asking me to audition for the Rich Kids, one of Glen Matlock’s bands after the Sex Pistols. I didn’t get the job because my hair was too long and it didn’t suit the band’s image. Midge Ure bagged the job in the end.

“I remember doing a TV show called The Mersey Pirate which was the predecessor to Tiswas. (In fact, it filled the Tiswas summer break in 1979.) This boat went up and down the Mersey and turned round and come back again. The only trouble was we’d been out partying till the early hours that morning and were feeling slightly rough. We boarded at 8.00am and, when the boat turned round, we kept falling out of camera shot.

“Also appearing on the same show were the guy who played Darth Vader and the Jolly Green Giant – Dave Prowse – and Don Estelle and Windsor Davies singing their hit Whispering Grass. We were skinning up a joint and Windsor Davies walked by and said I used to smoke that in the Army. I bumped into Don Estelle years later when we both appeared as ourselves in the line-ups for Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He remembered that day on the Mersey quite well.”

Paul’s final gig with The Ruts in London on 16th July 2007

On the 16th of July 2007, three months before his death on 21st October 2007, Paul Fox headlined a concert in his own honour, teaming up for one final performance with his surviving band mates and with long-time Ruts fan Henry Rollins filling in for original Ruts singer Malcolm Owen who died of a heroin overdose in 1980.

So it goes. Paul is interviewed about it on YouTube.

Memories of the Falklands War, the IRA bombings and Glastonbury in 1982

Anna Smith, a peacenik in 1980s

Yesterday, I quoted a hedgehog memory of this blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent Anna Smith. At one time, in the 1980s, she tried performing comedy.

“Possibly my comedy career did not advance,” she told me today, “because I was consumed with altruism for hedgehogs, meeting with Generals Against The  Bomb and rescuing young children who had inadvertently ingested pages of LSD at the Glastonbury Festival.

“In 1982, an elderly actor – George Walton, of Soapbox Children’s Theatre – was letting us stay for the summer in the spare bedroom of his house in Forest Gate, East London. Next door lived a young  boy who spent his days in his garden howling the Tarzan call – Ah-AH-ah… Ahhh-AH AH! – quite musically. I used to wonder if he would write Tarzan – The Opera, when he grew up. Sadly, he didn’t.

“I remember I was staying at this house in Forest Gate not long after the IRA bombing of a bandstand in Regent’s Park. George Walton was upset about the bombing as his nephew had been one of the musicians playing in the bandstand when it exploded. The nephew was not killed but, tragically, he was made deaf. After that, I always made a point of crossing the street near embassies, unless it was one that I was protesting outside of.”

1982 was also the year of the Falklands Conflict.

The Falklands 1982 – same year as IRA attacks

“The war with Argentina was of especial interest to me,” Anna tells me, “because I was born in Argentina and thus an Argentine citizen for life. So, technically, I could have been considered an enemy alien. I remember in English kindergarten in Argentina I had been taught that the islands in the South Atlantic were The Malvinas in the morning and The Falklands in the afternoon, depending on who was teaching the class…

“When I travelled in and out of England during the Falklands War to my striptease assignments in Brussels, the British immigration officials would look askance at my place of birth – though some, seeing my Canadian passport (and shapely figure), added kindly: Ah well, you can’t help where you were born, love…

“In some parts of East London, there were street parties being held under banners saying  SIXTY MORE ARGIES KILLED!!! and the like.

“It was the same year I went to the Glastonbury Festival.

“We had met a child called Joseph when we were selling anti-nuke badges at a small festival at Crystal Palace. He looked a bit like a monkey. His ears stuck out. He was about eleven. He seemed to be a precocious and unusually solitary child, very outgoing, but always alone. At Crystal Palace he lagged about our area, talking very intelligently. We wondered whether we would see him again and he then asked if we were planning to go to Glastonbury. We were and told him we would be near the train ride.

“A month later he found us exactly there. He had very much enjoyed the train ride and he came round to talk with us frequently.

1982 Glastonbury Festival – children on acid

“On the last day of the festival, he popped by and I was not there. When I returned, my friends said he had been there with some strange sheets of paper with tiny cartoons printed on them. He had wondered whether the papers might be drugs. My friends did not know and he had wandered off into the crowds…

“I realised that it was likely LSD and we started looking for him. We tried to get to the main stage so they could announce that there was a missing child wandering around Glastonbury alone and probably very high, but they wouldn’t let us anywhere the stage, because Alexei Sayle was on and they thought we were merely rabid Alexei Sayle fans trying to get near him, touch him or whatever. So we were stuck with the futility of trying to explain: NO WE DONT WANT TO TOUCH ALEXEI SAYLE!

“Eventually we got them to make the announcement – I think it may even have been Alexei Sayle who made the missing child who resembles a monkey announcement – and the crowd laughed at first, not sure if it was a set-up for a joke. We only mentioned the monkey because of his ears, poor kid…

“He was found and brought to the Samaritans in an enormous white tent overflowing with cots and stretchers and people crying, overdosing on drugs and vomiting and lying on blankets.

“Most of the volunteers were very concerned about the location of the remaining acid. But, at some point, one of the supervisors realised that the emergency tent with its Samaritan acid scavengers and vomiting addicts was not a good environment for any child and Joseph was moved to the cosy living room of the Eavis farmhouse, where he was cared for and we sat waiting for his parents to show up while he hallucinated, seemingly happy, as green lasers lit up the darkness outside.”

Anna lives in Vancouver now.

“I was out at the river yesterday,” she told me. “At 6.00pm. the CBC announced that some of the salmon fisheries seasons were open. Several species of salmon have arrived at the mouth of the Fraser. At 8.00pm I was out watching the fish jump.”

Different times, different lives.

“I hope Joseph is OK now,” said Anna.

“Ooh! Ah! Up The RA!”… Is the RA the Royal Academy?… Ooh! Ah! No, Missus

A report in The Scotsman today headlined

‘OOH AH UP THE RA’ FOOTBALL CHANT OUTLAWED BY CROWN

says:

“Celtic fans have been warned by police that singing ‘Ooh ah up the ’RA’ at games will lead to arrests and prosecutions, following advice from the Crown Office. However, Assistant Chief Constable Campbell Corrigan said “no other chant or song, sung en masse by the Celtic fans” would currently be subject to criminal proceedings.”

This report is, I suspect, totally incomprehensible to a reader brought up anywhere other than in Scotland or Ireland.

For one thing, of course, the Yanks in their eccentric colonial way call football ‘soccer’ (as do the southern and Republican Irish). For another, probably only people in the British Isles know that Celtic has predominantly Catholic supporters – although, oddly, my admirably perverse Protestant Uncle Jimmy supported Celtic throughout his life.

But the main stumbling block to understanding is the word “RA” (pronounced “rah”) which I had never heard until I worked in Dublin for a while in the early 1990s.

If you are in Ireland (and certain parts of Glasgow) you do not need to specify “Irish” before RA: it is taken for granted.

When I worked in Dublin, one of my workmates was a girl who had been brought up in the notorious border town of Dundalk. I say ‘notorious’ from a UK point of view… Because it was near the border with ‘The North’, a reportedly large number of high-up IRA people lived in and near to small market town.

I went there once during the later stages of the most recent of The Troubles to see what it was like and succeeded in not speaking to anyone even when buying food in shops (because I have an English accent).

Dundalk was a very sleepy little place where you could fantasise that nothing ever happened.

The reason I went was because the girl in Dublin had told me a true story about her childhood in Dundalk. She swore it was true and I believe her.

At her primary school in Dundalk, she told me they used to have knitting classes.

They used to mainly knit black woollen balaclavas.

They used to knit lots and lots of them over a long period. Well, throughout her time there.

The children were never told why. It was only when they grew up they realised.

Ireland: land of comedy, corruption and persuasive terrorism

(This was also published by the Huffington Post)

I am back in the UK after a week in Kerry in south west Ireland.

My friend acquired five small pieces of flat grey slate to use as coffee cup coasters. They were confiscated at Kerry Airport on the way back home lest we fashion them on the plane as Stone Age axe heads and attack the cabin crew.

This is partly understandable and a good use of lateral thinking, though a tad fantastically paranoid and I did wonder if some of the massive amounts of cocaine smuggled in through Kerry had trickled down to the security lady who was evidently so proud to wear her overly-neat uniform.

Yes. Mieow. Indeed.

Still, we could indeed have turned out to be the Coffee Cup Coaster Terrorists.

There was no negotiating possible with the security lady which was odd, as chatting things over to sort out problems tends to be a national pastime and to work wonders.

I was told that, a few years ago, in the Iveragh Peninsula, where we stayed, there had been an attempt by the IRA to wield more local influence in Kray Twins like ways – a bit of protection money here, a bit of a percentage there. But this was nipped fairly quickly in the bud by “some people” having a chat with the RA lads and making it clear this was not acceptable.  Quite who “some people” were was unclear but, clearly, they had well-honed and persuasive negotiating skills.

Likewise the late lamented roguish Irish politician Charlie Haughey who was Taoiseach three times. I was told that once, when he was not Taoiseach, he needed a bit of money and his luxury yacht sank in suspicious circumstances.

The circumstances were so suspicious that the insurance company refused to pay out – until Charlie had a little chat with them and pointed out that this was Ireland and, if they gave him any trouble, they themselves might encounter similarly annoying obstacles to their interests when he became Taoiseach again.

They paid out.

It’s good to talk.

As I mentioned in a blog before, Charlie was that very Irish thing: a lovable rogue and his passing must have been much lamented by the tabloid press and by stand-up comedians and pub humorists across the country.

During his reign as leader, Charlie’s Fianna Fail party was known as “the party of the brown envelope”.

Of course, wagging tongues do not necessarily tell or even imply the truth and innocent people can be sullied. Charlie’s successor as Fianna Fail leader and as Taoiseach was Bertie Ahern, a much-respected Taoiseach untouched by scandal – he was known as the ‘Teflon Taoiseach’.

He came to power in the same year as Tony Blair and the two of them succeeded where many others had failed – getting a peace deal in Northern Ireland.

It’s good to talk.

Historic and highly admirable stuff but, oddly, Bertie had been an accountant before entering politics and then Minister for Finance before becoming Taoiseach.

I say “oddly” because, it later turned out, he had no bank account until December 1993. (He was Minister for Finance 1991-1994 and became Taoiseach in 1997 when he was aged 45.)

There’s no law which says you have to have a bank account but, given such facts, stand-up comedians and unfounded speculation can run amuck.

Later, in court, Bertie’s former girlfriend testified that he once drove her to a bank in Dublin’s O’Connell Street so she could withdraw £50,000 sterling in cash for him. A businessman involved with Bertie told of emptying a briefcase containing £28,000 onto a desk and Bertie put the cash into a safe, without counting it. And, indeed, without giving a receipt.

Comedy gold.

Recently, when both former Provisional IRA leader Martin McGuinness and former Eurovision Song Contest winner Dana ran for the post of President of the Irish Republic, McGuinness came third and Dana sixth out of the seven contenders.

This was said to be because fewer people could remember Dana’s hits.

Ireland. Land of comedy, corruption and persuasive terrorism.

Despite the attacks on 9/11, the Yanks are still living on another planet

After yesterday, more diary extracts. Well, diary and e-mail. This time from 2001, just over a week after the Al-Qaeda 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Monday 17th September 2001

I got an e-mail from someone I know, a Londoner with American parents:

Thankfully all my friends and family are accounted for but it took until late on Friday/ early hours of Saturday morning to get the OK from everyone I know and care about in New York and Washington. 

My Aunt is a medic and has been working flat-out to cope with the casualties and fatalities that arrive at the medical centres/ hospitals around New York. She will need post traumatic stress counselling, as will all the rescue workers and medical staff. 

I did hope that the events of last week would prompt my sisters who haven’t been speaking to one another for the past 15 months to make their peace – they haven’t. 

I replied:

It’s difficult to comprehend what effect this must have on Americans. They have never had foreigners attack them on their own soil nor been in many wars whereas, in Britain, we have been at constant war somewhere since at least 1939 and any of us could have had our legs blown off in the last 30 years by an IRA wastebin bomb while doing our shopping.

I think they’re still a bit on another planet. When a few hundred US body bags have come back from Afghanistan, they’re liable to turn insular again. It’s a sad reflection on my superficiality but the thought did flit through my mind “Well, this may help the Irish problem in the medium term because the Americans may be less prone to see the IRA as jolly little green freedom fighters.”

Tuesday 18th September 2001

A British Moslem friend of mine, who has worked in the US, spoke to her former boss in Washington this afternoon. She said he sounded angry and told her there was real anger in the US following the attacks on New York and Washington last week. Another friend of hers – a Moslem Brit in the US – said it was dangerous for her to return to the US because Moslems were being attacked. Such is American ignorance that a Sikh was killed in a racial attack.

I watched the David Letterman TV show, transmitted from New York. He gave a ten-minute opening monologue about the World Trade Center bombing, then interviewed US TV newsman Dan Rather who was there as The Man Who Knows The Real Situation.

The perspective given was that the Baddies are mad, insane and neither cause-and-effect nor logic enter into it. There is no point trying to understand their motive because there is none. They are just Pure Evil with no cause except that the Baddies see the Americans have more money and a better life than they do, so the only trigger is Envy.

Letterman asked Rather – apparently seriously – why something could not have been done in retribution last Saturday (the New York attack was on Tuesday).

When the Independent newspaper wrote a column saying to the Americans “Welcome to the real world” they got it wrong.

The Yanks are still living on another planet.

The link between gangland Edinburgh and “The Sex Life of a Comedian”

Comedy performer Dave Thompson has been telling me more about his new novel The Sex Life of a Comedian, which I blogged about yesterday. Dave famously got fired as Tinky Winky in the TV series Teletubbies because, after a lengthy period playing the iconic purple creature, it was suddenly said his “interpretation of the role had not been accepted”.

The plot of his novel involves a stand-up comedian on the UK circuit who gets a job wearing a blue furry costume in a world-famous television show but then gets fired. The story involves drug-fuelled celebrity sex romps, the Mafia and wild parties aboard luxury yachts.

Dave tells me: “Although the novel is fictitious, I’ve drawn from the landscape I’ve worked in and mixed real events with made-up ones. That’s why one of the main characters is a promoter from Edinburgh with gangland connections.”

So I was particularly interested to hear more about the section of the book in which the central character, at a celebrity sex party, accidentally spurts on a member of the mafia…

“Well, yes,” Dave tells me. “I have done gigs overseas for promoters who were organised criminals. In one country which shall remain nameless, I found myself working for comedy promoters connected to the IRA.

“The local mafia had tried to extort protection money from them, but found themselves up against IRA tactics. The mafiosi came round to ‘teach the promoters a lesson’ for not paying them protection money, but the IRA guys beat up the mafia guys with baseball bats and threatened far worse if they ever came back. The beating was so severe the mafia left them alone after that.

“I had a great gig that night and, after the show, there was a party in the nightclub where the gig was held. I had some business to sort out with one of the promoters and we went back to my hotel room to do this. He and I hit it off and had a convivial chat and a drink from my mini-bar. When we returned to the party, people who knew the promoter looked very anxious.

“As soon as I was separated from the promoter, I was asked if I was okay. I said I was fine and didn’t understand why they were so concerned. It turned out that the man I’d invited to my room was notorious for his temper and they thought we were gone so long because I’d offended him and he was beating me up.

“There’s a lot more about their criminal activity that I can’t talk about because they could recognise themselves and I might end up like the mafiosi who annoyed them.

“I think there’s a mutual attraction between organised crime and show business – each lends glamour to the other.

“At the height of their power, the Kray Twins used to hang out with celebrities in the West End of London and Barbara Windsor was married to East End villain Ronnie Knight, who was jailed for his part in the £6 million Security Express robbery in 1983.

“He escaped and whilst he was on the run in the Costa Del Sol, taking advantage of the lack of an extradition treaty between Britain and Spain, he owned a nightclub called ‘Club R Knights’.

“I was invited to the opening night party and met Ronnie. He was very pleasant and pulled me a pint of lager. Barbara Windsor had already left him because she couldn’t stand the Spanish heat and he had another blonde partner, who looked very similar to Barbara Windsor. I had a long conversation with her and was impressed by how well-read she was.

“I had been invited to the party because of my girlfriend at the time – a pretty blonde actress and singer who appeared in West End musicals. Her mother and stepfather owned a villa near Fuengirola on the Costa Del Sol. The stepfather was from Essex, had a huge black Rottweiler and was a friend of Ronnie Knight’s. He took us to lots of parties thrown by ‘geezers from Essex’.

“We were warned never to ask anyone what they did for a living as this was contrary to etiquette. The stepfather told me that, whenever I took my girlfriend to a restaurant, I should tell them he had sent us. That way, we got the best table, free drinks and the meal was be less than the menu price.

“One evening we were relaxing by her mother and stepfather’s pool and the English language radio station was running a phone-in competition for couples in love. The stepfather told me to phone in and mention his name and, immediately, my request was played on the radio and we won a bottle of champagne.

“I never saw the bottle of champagne because, soon after we got back, the girl dumped me in favour of a criminal, who subsequently beat her up.

“That relationship is long over but she and I are still good friends. Years later we posed naked together for the News of the World.  One of the characters in the novel is partly based on her.

“As for Ronnie, the News of The World later paid him £45,000 to stage-manage his return to Britain, so he could see his mum before she died.  He was arrested and sentenced to another seven years in prison.”

Dave also tells me:

“I’ve checked the sales figures on the book again and it’s looking very encouraging!”

I am not surprised.

You can buy The Sex Life of a Comedian here.

The man who kept accused war criminal Ratko Mladic’s hat in his living room

I posted this blog a few months ago but, with the arrest yesterday of former Serbian general Ratko Mladic, I thought part of it might be of interest again. It is about one of the most interesting people I never met.

* * *

Bill Foxton is dead now and we’re back to that famous Rutger Hauer death speech in Bladerunner.

He’d seen things you people wouldn’t believe and, when he died, almost all those moments were lost in time, like tears in rain. His death went mostly un-noticed, but he intersected with History.

In the mid-1990s, I (almost) wrote the autobiography of a Soviet sleeper agent who, let’s say, was called Ozymandias. I have blogged about him before. He believed that the British and the Spanish were the most violent people in Europe. He told me about a British friend called Bill Foxton who, he said, had gone to public school in Somerset, then joined the French Foreign Legion for five years and fought in the Algerian War of 1954-62.

“At that time, a lot of guys in the Legion were German,” Ozymandias told me, “Many of them former S.S. men. Bill told me that during the French Algerian War in the early 1960s, when they entered a village to ‘clear it up’, the Spaniards were the only ones who would shoot babies in their cradles. Even the ex-S.S. men didn’t do that.”

After his experiences in the Algerian War, Bill Foxton returned to England in the Swinging Sixties with lots of money in his pockets and met lots of girls who fancied him and, according to my chum Ozymandias, joined a privately-run special services group. They used to train Idi Amin’s bodyguards in Uganda and there was an incident in Qatar when the Emir’s brother was shot.

“Finally,” Ozymandias told me, “in 1969, Bill was employed as one of a group who were paid to go and kill Colonel Gaddafi in Libya. But they were stopped at London Airport by the British security services and the private company they worked for was closed down. Because of his experience, Bill was persuaded by the British authorities to join the SAS and was immediately sent to Ireland 1969-1973.

In a previous blog, I mentioned an extraordinary true story in which an Irish Republican was kidnapped in Belfast, drugged and put on a plane from Shannon to New York. Bill Foxton was involved in that. He was also a member of the British bobsleigh team in the 1972 European Championships. He was an interesting man.

In 1973, he was sent to fight in the secret war in Oman which, at the time, was called ‘the Dhofar insurgency’ and was said to be restricted to southern Oman; it was claimed the Omani Army were fighting some Yemeni insurgents. In fact, the insurgents were backed on the ground by South Yemeni regular troops supported by East German advisors and troops, acting on behalf of the Soviet Union. Oman was backed on the ground by British SAS troops (plus, in the early stages, the Royal Navy) and by units of the Shah of Iran’s army and the Jordanian Army. The commander of the British forces was an admiral and his problem was to cut the rebels’ supply routes from South Yemen into Oman. The British strategy was to construct three fences along the border, manned by more than 5,000 Iranian troops. Behind these three fences, inside Oman, the war was fought by the British SAS and Oman’s mainly Baluchi army while Jordanian desert troops defended the northern part of the desert in Dhofar province.

In 1975, Bill was inspecting a sector of the border fence when East German troops fired an RPG – a rocket-propelled grenade – at him. He was alone, but managed to jump back onto his jeep and drive off, holding his blasted and bloodied arm onto his torso with a torn strip of his uniform. He held the strip of fabric with his teeth and drove with his other hand, while the enemy troops continued firing grenades at him. He drove about 6km to a British base where a Pakistani medic came out to see him.

“I think I’ve lost my arm,” Bill said through his clenched teeth.

“Well, let’s have a look then,” the Pakistani medic replied sympathetically. Bill let go of the strip of fabric he was holding with his teeth and, when his arm fell out, the medic fainted on the spot. Alan fainted too. They flew him to the British base at Akrotiri on Cyprus, where his arm was amputated and, by the time my chum Ozymandias met him, he had an artificial one.

“I am a big man,” Ozymandias told me, “but Bill has a neck twice the girth of mine. He may only have one arm but, when we met in 1982, I could see immediately he was extremely tough. Red hair, red beard, strong, broad neck. We immediately got on.”

According to Ozymandias, Bill Foxton had won an award from the SAS:

“At that time, Bill had already lost his left arm but was still a serving member of the SAS; he was training in the deserts of Oman with younger SAS troopers closing in on his position from all sides and he buried himself in the sand. He dug a hole with his one good arm and simply buried himself deep underground. The SAS troopers passed over him without realising until he told them and the Regiment was so impressed they gave him their Award.”

After the secret war ended, Bill decided to stay in Oman and started running the Sultan’s Armed Forces (SAF) Beach Club: apparently a splendid, well-organised place with a restaurant full of ex-patriot British soldiers from a wide variety of armies. He had his SAS Award plaque hanging on the wall of his office.

I heard all these stories about Bill Foxton from my chum Ozymandias and then, one day in the 1990s, I accidentally heard him being inteviewed – Bill Foxton – he was by then spokesman for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and apparently also head of the European Commission Monitoring Mission during the Yugoslav wars.

According to Ozymandias, Bill kept a hat in his living room in Britain. The hat belonged to Serbian General Ratko Mladic. During the Yugoslav wars, Bosnian forces ambushed Mladic’s car in an attempt to assassinate him; he was not in the car but his hat was. So the Bosnians killed his driver and gave the hat to Bill, whom they admired. That was the explanation Bill Foxton gave.

In 1999 he was awarded the OBE for his work in Kosovo.

By 2008, he was working in Afghanistan, running humanitarian projects.

The next year, in February 2009, he shot himself in the head in a Southampton park with a 9mm Browning pistol after he lost his life savings – reportedly over £100,000 –  in the $64 billion Bernie Madoff fraud.

His death was not news except in the local Southern Daily Echo in Southampton. The BBC mentioned it as a ‘human interest’ aside to the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme fraud story, like a teardrop in rain. His death went mostly un-noticed, but he intersected with History.

Oh – that British plot to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi in 1969, the year he came to power… it was allegedly stopped because the US Government felt that Gaddafi was sufficiently anti-Marxist to be worth ‘protecting’.

I am getting a Scottish passport – with Sean Connery

American comedian Lewis Schaffer recently Tweeted a #ff recommending this blog for its “casual xenophobia and non-casual name-dropping”.

Well, for sure, when Scotland gets independence, I am going to get a Scottish passport as soon as possible because it will be safer than a British or (by then) English passport.

If your aircraft gets hijacked or you get involved in any other terrorist mass hostage situation, the first people to be shot are the Americans – obviously – or sometimes the Israelis who, for some semi-mystifying reason count as Americans in such situations.

The next to be shot – depending on the former colonial history of the people with the guns and the bad attitude problem are either the British or the French.

The last people to get shot are likely to be Irish or Swiss passport holders… The Irish because even the most uneducated terrorist has probably heard of the IRA and you don’t shoot your own; it’s like Toyota owners being polite to each other on the roads in Britain. And the Swiss are fairly safe because even the most uneducated terrorist is likely to know the Swiss are neutral in everything and have never done anything – they did not even invent the cuckoo clock.

It’s also probable, of course, that most terrorist organisations bank with the Swiss and you don’t want to annoy people who are giving you a good interest rate and hiding your identity from the CIA, the NSA and MI6.

So I am going to get a Scottish passport when Scotland breaks from the United Kingdom.

I have no idea why Lewis Schaffer – who continues to appear on stage every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in London’s longest-running solo comedy show at The Source Below in Soho – should complain about name-dropping.

But, then, he’s a New York Jew.

What does a colonial kid like that know?

Marilyn Monroe once reportedly asked Laurence Olivier when being served doughy things at a Jewish dinner while they were filming The Prince and The Showgirl in London:

“What are those?”

“They’re matzoh balls, Marilyn,” Olivier told her.

“Gee, Laurence,” she replied, “Don’t they eat any other part of a matzoh?”

Also has the otherwise street-savvy Lewis never heard of adding random Tags to blogs to try to get extra hits? I haven’t even mentioned the racist Britney Spears animal sex tape scandal involving Prince William, Kate Middleton and Justin Bieber referred-to by the porno stand-up comics in the inept IKEA ad currently running on British television but obviously not on the hardcore sex channels nor on Colonel Gaddafi’s cage-fighting Libyan TV channel? The one with the trans-sexual goldfish. Nor have I mentioned granny sex (popular with Lewis). Nor Japanese schoolgirl facials.

What is it with the Japanese and sperm?