Samantha, in this shot, clearly not in New Orleans…
My chum from Lancashire, Samantha Hulme, is currently in New Orleans.
She has been staying with a friend who lives there.
She met him on a previous visit.
She sent me a video of him singing in his living room.
In a second message to me, she wrote:
I love it here.
I love to travel
When I found New Orleans and knew I wanted to make a life here.
Whenever I travel I don’t want to be a stereotypical tourist. I want to be safe, but I want to see the real country, the culture, the real people. I was lucky enough to get the offer of accommodation from Mr James Winfield – stage name The Sleeping Giant.
It was an act of kindness stereotypical of this city. In his own words, he never wants another woman again. He was just genuinely trying to help me.
I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to learn so much about music with a man who was recording records in the 1960s before I was even born. I have had the true New Orleans experience.
I couldn’t have done it better. I have laughed so much I cried with laughter on various occasions – the man’s absolute bluntness, his wry sense of humour, alongside his total inability to understand what I am saying in my northern accent most of the time, will be an experience which will keep me laughing for the next year.
It was like s mixture of living with James Brown, Ray Charles and Elvis – His voice has characteristics off all of them at times.
I am a physical & movement therapist and I can’t believe the stark difference in how we age in the UK compared to here.
James is 76 yrs old.
He works full-time as a panel beater and sprays cars. He sings a few nights a week and he goes out there blazing in all his stereotypical New Orleans fancy suits, bright shoes and I have never known a man with so many hats. He appears to have boundless energy.
I know no-one in the UK like this even a decade younger than him.
Then I look at quite a few of the great musicians and singers here in New Orleans living into their 90s and I can see why.
I love New Orleans.
The video clip I sent you before of James singing in his house was a wonderful spontaneous moment of seeing my new friend jamming with his grandson and what I really saw was his huge love of music that afternoon. When the man talks he sounds like his singing.
But I don’t think it fair to show him only singing to a piece of bread in the afternoon.
So here is a video of him singing at a club as well.
This Saturday, she is headlining the annual (free) One Life Humanist Choir concert at what she calls “the fabulous heathen palace” of Conway Hall– more correctly the Ethical Society’s London HQ.
JOHN: Are you in the choir?
ARIANE: No. The choir are amazing and brilliant. They’re going to be playing seven songs including two of my favourites: Days by The Kinks and Billie Jean (Michael Jackson). When I was originally approached, though, it was also suggested they might supply a choral backing for my songs and I was so excited. I was thinking about writing out sheet music for the first time in decades and what sort of arrangements I would score, but then the choir heard some of my songs and I was told they had ‘reservations’.
JOHN: Why? Are you singing about God?
ARIANE: No. Singing about sex. The choir ‘had reservations’, so I sent them one of my cleaner songs and they said: “Wow! If that is the more subtle one then the extreme ones could be interesting!” They said they had too full a schedule to do the backing, but I think they were being polite and were actually put off by my filth.
JOHN: What was the clean song you sent them?
ARIANE: Would You Still Love Me…
Would you still love me If I took you to the cleaners? Would you still love me If my nose turned into a penis? Would you still love me If I never said thank you or please And I always did asparagus wees And my flange smelled like blue cheese?
JOHN: What did they find objectionable?
ARIANE: I don’t know. I’m totally baffled.
JOHN: You are also bringing out a book in October. I presume that is going to be full of filth too?
ARIANE: No, it’s not. It’s called Talk Yourself Better: A Confused Person’s Guide To Therapy, Counselling and Self-Help. It’s a beginner’s guide to therapy and types of therapy. I’ve written guides to the different types of therapy which are short and funny like myself. And there are contributions from people who have had therapy – including Stephen Fry, Charlie Brooker, David Baddiel, James Brown…
JOHN: James Brown the singer?
ARIANE: No, John. He’s dead. That would be difficult, especially as I don’t believe in an afterlife. James Brown, the former editor of GQ who also launched Loaded magazine.
JOHN: What are Humanists anyway? They’re just atheists.
ARIANE: They are atheists with ethics. Atheists who are good without God.
JOHN: Surely it’s just a way of making atheism into a religion, isn’t it? Which is a bad idea, because almost all religions are OK. It’s organised religion that turns things bad. And Humanism is just organised atheism.
ARIANE: No. We have no places of worship; not even community centres. We don’t stop anybody from doing anything.
JOHN: Except joining in with rude songs.
ARIANE: (LAUGHS) That might be a drawback.
JOHN: You keep saying “we”. You created and organised the Atheist Bus Campaignin 2008. But are you a Humanist?
Ariane at Atheist Bus Campaign launch with Richard Dawkins (Photograph by Zoe Margolis)
ARIANE: That sounds a bit frumpy. I’d rather be the sex goddess of Humanists UK.
JOHN: That would involve flanges, though… So what are you going to sing on Saturday if you can’t sing dirty songs?
ARIANE: I can sing my dirty songs. The choir just won’t be doing the backing.
JOHN: What would they have been doing if they had done it? Ooh-aaah Ooh-aaah ooh-aaahs?
ARIANE: I might have had them sing “vaginosis”. I have always dreamt about one bit in Will You Still Love Me?…
Would you still love me If I had pungent halitosis? …Halitosis… Would you still love me If I had bacterial vaginosis? …Vaginosis…
I would have loved to have had that Vaginosis, John.
JOHN: You’re not just a singer of dirty songs, though. You have a bit of previous. With Duran Duran.
ARIANE: Yes. I left school at 16. I was asked to leave.
This girl was bullying me and she spat in my lunch and I threw a full coke can in her face and gave her a black eye. Her step-sister’s gang were waiting outside the school to beat me up or worse and the deputy head had to escort me past the gang and it was made clear to me this couldn’t happen again and that I should leave school.
I remember the deputy head saying to me: “You’ve got to work out what you are going to do with your life now,” and I said, “I know what I’m going to do. I am going to go and find Duran Duran.”
A young Ariane Sherine with Simon Le Bon
So I found out where they were recording, went down to the studio, met them and started hanging out with them and that’s what I did for the next three years.
JOHN: As a groupie…?
ARIANE: No, no. As a songwriter. I wanted to write songs. I told them that and they would listen to my songs and give me advice and feedback.
JOHN: But you never actually played with them…
ARIANE: I did do some sessions for one of their records, playing piano and singing – Ken Scottwas the producer. But my contributions didn’t appear on the album and they meant to thank me in the liner notes but forgot.And then I didn’t see them for eight years. Then Simon Le Bon saw me interviewed on television when I was promoting the Atheist Bus Campaign and he sent me a letter via the Guardian.
JOHN: Because you were writing columns for the Guardian at the time.
ARIANE: Yes. So we kind of rekindled our friendship then.
JOHN: Any chance of Duran Duran doing a cover of your Hitler Moustache song ?
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 