An East End child, my mum and Dean Martin – Colin Copperfield (2nd of 3)

In yesterday’s blog, actor, dancer, singer and songwriter Colin Copperfield talked about his time performing in London’s West End in Jesus Christ Superstar. 

He started in showbiz aged 14 and, as well as multiple stage appearances, appeared in over 900 TV shows in 26 countries. His autobiography It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Zing! was recently published.

Colin was born in Forest Gate in the East End of London. 

He told me: “I had a bit of a tough upbringing…”

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JOHN: You did 25 years performing with Wall Street Crash but you’ve worked solidly all over the place as an actor, dancer, singer and songwriter because you’re a hyphenate. You can turn your voice and your feet to everything. 

COLIN: I could do it all well enough. I was never the best singer; I was never the best dancer; I was never the best actor. But I could do it all pretty well – not bad.

JOHN: More than not bad, I think, given your career…

COLIN: You’re very kind. 

Early band rehearsal – Colin is centre, behind microphone

JOHN: You started in a band at 14.

COLIN: Well, we did a lot more rehearsing than we did gigs. It was a good little band, though. A couple of the others went on to be session musicians.

JOHN: At 14, you wanted to  be a rock star?

COLIN: I wanted to get out of school, basically. I was so bad at school academically.

JOHN: So was Churchill. 

COLIN: That makes me feel better. I only found out about ten years ago I was dyscalculic (difficulty understanding or learning maths).

I can remember very long Shakespeare speeches but I can’t add anything up. Numbers are a complete blur.

COLIN: Before I was in Jesus Christ Superstar. I had done my bands and a solo cabaret act. I’d done the ships and then I was doing the clubs. I went and worked on the cruise ships and round the Mediterranean for three years. And I did the Superstar cast album before I went to Australia.

The ships were fantastic. We did one-hour versions of West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Oklahoma! As an actor, it was the equivalent of doing Rep. It was a different show every night.

The guy who directed the shows – Jeff Ferris – also worked for Cameron Mackintosh.

Colin’s inspirational mum and dad (at the start of WWII)

JOHN: Your family background was theatrical?

COLIN: My dad Wally worked at the Theatre Royal in Stratford (London) as a ‘stooge’. He was a dustman during the day and a stooge at night. When visiting comedians – all the top comedians – people like Max Miller in those days – used to come in… he worked with a lot of the top comedians just by being a straight-man – a ‘stooge’. 

JOHN: The comedians didn’t have their own straight men touring with them?

COLIN: No. Especially the American comics who’d come over. He’d give them the local references to make.

JOHN: So your dad was a dustman who really wanted to be a showbiz star but he had to support a wife and two children…

The banjo uncles (centre front) with their East End mates

COLIN: Yeah. My dad was REALLY frustrated. My two uncles were very famous buskers.

By day, they were crane drivers around Silvertown Docks, Canning Town Docks, that area. 

But they were also the most amazing banjo players and they played all the local pubs at night – often outside the pubs.

If they were playing inside, my dad would sometimes go along and play the piano with them… which would have been fabulous if he could have played the piano. (LAUGHS) He used to do this technique called ‘vamping’. 

His fingers could land anywhere. There was no technique to it at all, but it seemed to work.

JOHN: So he wasn’t off-key, but he…

COLIN: He wasn’t OFF-key, but he wasn’t IN-key. It was his own way of doing it. I think my uncles (LAUGHS) played even louder just to drown him out.

JOHN: To play ‘badly’ but entertainingly is really difficult – You have to be a very good piano player, like Les Dawson.

“We worked (safely) with Rolf Harris a lot…”

COLIN: Yes. He was a lovely guy. I worked with him. I used to dance with this group called The Young Generation. We worked with Rolf Harris a lot – on The Rolf Harris Show. After us, with Dougie Squires, they turned into The Second Generation.

I was rehearsing the Les Dawson television showwhen he was massive. We were doing this dance routine and I was waiting for my cue to enter; the door opened and it was Les Dawson.

He went: “You a’right?”

I said: “Yeah. You awright?”

He went: “Naw. I got terrible diarrhoea.”

That was my introduction to Les Dawson. He was a really lovely bloke.

JOHN: He didn’t seem to have a big ego.

COLIN: I was so lucky to work with all the people I did, because I got to work with the end of ‘showbisiness’, really.

Lots of zingy gossip in Colin’s autobiography

The most miserable git we ever worked with was Dean Martin. Miserable sod. We were supporting him at the Victoria Apollo Theatre in London. We were there for ten nights with him. He never used the theatre at all. He would come up to not even the stage door; he would come up to a pass door in his limo and walk straight onto the stage. Afterwards – straight off the stage into his limo and off. He had a little bar made by the side of the stage with curtains round it with all the optics in it and everything.

JOHN: So he did drink a lot? I thought it was just his schtick.

COLIN: Well, no, I don’t think he did drink. Or, if he did, not the nights we were with him. We’d be waiting to go on first. We’d do 15 minutes, then it’d be Dean Martin. He went on straight after us and he never once went into this little bar.

Straight onto the stage. Sing. Mock drunk. And walk straight past this bar to his car.

JOHN: Your mother… Was she in showbiz?

COLIN: No. My brother THOUGHT he could sing and he REALLY wanted to be in show business but he was completely tone deaf. 

JOHN: So, when you were 14, you were a music person. In the rock bands, you were the singer?

COLIN: Yes. I could play the guitar but didn’t: I just purely sang. 

JOHN: But then you got into dance…

Young musical Colin with his encouraging mum

COLIN: Only because my mum – she was a real Cockney – said: “‘Ere. You gotta lose yer accent,” she said, “and you gotta ‘ave more than one string to yer bow if you’re gonna go into showbusiness.”

So the dancing is down to my mum. 

I played with some show bands and dance bands. I did a bit of everything coming up. Then my singing teacher said: “It’s all very well doing all this but you need to get some theatre stuff… They’re auditioning tomorrow at the Prince of Wales Theatre (in London) for the Harry Worth stage show in Great Yarmouth.”

Summer seasons were big business then. They would last three or four months. You could almost go from Summer Season into (Christmas) Panto. I was singing with a show band at the time.

It was an open casting. Number One in the Hit Parade was Tom Jones: Love Me Tonight. I went along and didn’t really know anything and all these hundreds of guys before me in the audition, they were all singing (COLIN SINGS) “My boy, Bill! He’ll be tall and tough as a tree, will Bill. Like a tree he’ll grow…” (a song from Carousel).

At the audition, I gave my Love Me Tonight music to the pianist who was doing the accompaniment and he said: “Are you really gonna sing this?” and I said “Yeah…??”

So I started singing (COLIN SINGS) “I know that it’s late and I really must leave you alone…”

Immediately they said: “Thankyou, Thanks very much, Colin…”

The pianist told me: “Wrong type of song.”

I rang my singing teacher and told him: “One line and they said Thankyou very much…”

“What did you sing?”

“Love Me Tonight.”

“You prat; come round here now…” 

And he told me: “Learn this… (COLIN SINGS) On a wonderful day like today, I defy any cloud to appear in the sky… Go back tomorrow. They won’t remember you.”

So I went back the next day. Same rehearsal pianist. “Thank God, mate,” he said. “You got more of a chance with this one…”

Harry Worth was a very big name in Great Yarmouth…

I sang: (COLIN SINGS) “On a wonderful day like today, I defy any cloud to appear in the sky…” and they said: “Do you want to do three or four months with Harry Worth at The Britannia Theatre in Great Yarmouth?”

JOHN: They didn’t recognise you from the day before?

COLIN: No. And that was my start in proper showbiz.

JOHN: Were you called Colin Copperfield at this point?

COLIN: Yes. Back in the rock bands I was still Colin Satchell but then I started doing my own cabaret act and, for that, I turned into Colin Copperfield. Everybody at the time was called something like that.

JOHN: You did 900 TV shows in 26 countries, 5 albums, 11 singles, 3 Royal Command Performances. 

COLIN: Yes. I was almost as busy as my dad. I was so lucky. A lot of times I was just in the right place at the right time.

JOHN: Well, it’s talent AND luck, isn’t it? You can get just so far with luck. There has to be some talent to last. You have multiple talents and you’re still working. Your mother gave you good advice.

COLIN: Luck is so important in everything in life. Like after I finished on Tommy…

JOHN: This was the musical based on the Who album…

COLIN: Yes. Tommy at the Queen’s Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. I played the Pinball Wizard.

JOHN: Tell me more…

…CONTINUED HERE…
with The Who’s “Tommy” and a brand new musical

“The Long Good Friday” sequel… God takes cocaine?… Weekly Diary No 38

… CONTINUED FROM DIARY No 37…

SUNDAY 4th OCTOBER

In this COVID-19 era, the protocol on non-rush hour London trains seems to be that everyone sits on alternate seats, leaving a gap between each person.

MONDAY 5th OCTOBER

Meanwhile, Thameslink trains are dependable for their undependability. When I arrived at Elstree station at 1358 today for the 1401 train, the indicator board proclaimed that the next train was the 0931 tomorrow morning, expected to arrive at 0939.

After travelling by Thameslink, President Trump’s overdramatic exit from hospital in Washington and overdramatic arrival back at the White House after his COVID infection seemed less surreal.

One online reaction to President Trump catching the coronavirus…

TUESDAY 6th OCTOBER

I was talking with someone who used to work in the London Docks who told me that the nickname for the police there used to be “the cabbage”. Neither he nor I could think of any explanation for this.

He also used to know Barrie Keefe, writer of wonderful 1980 gangster movie The Long Good Friday who, sadly, died last December.

Apparently Barrie Keefe wrote a (so-far un-made) sequel to The Long Good Friday, centred on the tiny but essential character played by Pierce Brosnan in the original movie.

Keefe once told someone that Brosnan had no lines in the original film: he never spoke. The other person disagreed. Keefe (who, remember, wrote the movie) watched the film again and, sure enough, Pierce Brosnan (in the swimming pool scene) does say “Hi!”

“That’s actors for you,” Barrie Keefe responded.

I was working at ATV (who commissioned the movie for the ITV Network via their ITC/Black Lion companies) when ATV/ITC boss Lew Grade refused to screen it because he was outraged by the ending. It had been commissioned by Charles Denton, who was both Programme Controller at ATV and Managing Director of Black Lion, presumably without Grade ever reading the script.

I think the scene in which someone is crucified on a wooden floor in London must have been inspired by Arthur Thompson‘s penchant for doing that in Glasgow. My ex-London docker told me that the scene in which a widow steps out of a car to spit at a criminal was based on a real incident though, in reality, the man apparently just legged it sharpish.

If you have seen the movie, there is a clip on YouTube of Pierce Brosnan talking about The Long Good Friday but – BEWARE – there are major, major plot spoilers in it.

WEDNESDAY 7th OCTOBER

I was talking to someone who plays the online game Words With Friends with strangers.

Playing with scammers who have only a loose grasp of English

Apparently this has attracted scammers who bombard her with messages of a romantic nature – usually in broken English – Many of them, for some totally unknown and incomprehensible reason, claim to be estate agents (that’s a realtor or real estate agent if you live in the US).

I can only assume there is a school for scammers which provides a template suggesting would-be scammers masquerade as estate agents.

THURSDAY 8th OCTOBER

Is this the shape of bomb disposal technicians to come in the near future?

The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer has suggested that, because of the COVID-19 crisis and its effects on jobs, people should think of switching careers.

My diminutive writer/composer/comedy chum Ariane Sherine (her physical stature is relevant) took the government’s online Careers Advice Test on a whim and it suggested she should become an army officer, a bodyguard or a bomb disposal technician.

Her reaction: “This is clearly not the perfect career for someone with clinical anxiety and paranoia who gets freaked out by sudden loud noises!”

Inspired by this, I tried the Careers Advice Test myself. It suggested I could or should become a boxer, a jockey, a hairdressing salon manager, a Member of Parliament or a TV/film producer…

The government site, which also handles Track & Trace for the COVID-19 outbreak, may need some urgent attention.

FRIDAY 9th OCTOBER

An odd day.

I went into the Tesco store in Borehamwood where, among the free books, were copies of Rolf Harris‘ True Animal Tales and the violent Mafia memoir I Heard You Paint Houses (filmed by Martin Scorsese as The Irishman). I am not sure what this says about the reading or social habits of Tesco’s customers in Borehamwood.

“I am not sure what this says about the social habits of Tesco’s customers in Borehamwood.”

Later, I went into the Tesco store in Leytonstone and found the stand-up urinals in the Gents toilets each had an orange plastic insert bearing the word P-WAVE. I would like to have been at the branding meeting where they brainstormed ideas for the name and colour of this product. 

SATURDAY 10th OCTOBER

Anthony Irvine, the ever-inventive act formerly known as The Iceman emailed me, without explanation, an image of his latest painting.

I have no explanation. He had no explanation. I am open to offers…

But the sky today hinted that God takes cocaine. This could explain a lot about the last week and the current year.

… CONTINUED HERE …

Kunt and the Gang with Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and the Yorkshire Ripper

I try to make these blogs fairly immediate. But, in this case, I have failed miserably.

After trying and failing two or three times to meet up online during the early days of the coronavirus lockdown, Kunt (of Kunt and The Gang – is there any other?) and I eventually chatted via FaceTime on 14th May – that’s almost a month ago now.

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JOHN: What have you got on the wall behind you?

KUNT: It’s my memorabilia… Look… Here… I got this on my final tour: it’s a signed picture of Rolf Harris, some saucy seaside postcards and…

Kunt in front of his wall of memorabilia… Saucy postcards, a famous family TV star and Kunt’s book

JOHN: Who’s in that picture on your Facebook page? The Yorkshire Ripper and Jimmy Savile and…

Kunt performs in front of the Yorkshire Ripper, Jimmy Savile and Frank Bruno… in Hitchin…

KUNT: On my final tour, at a gig in Hitchin, they said: “Have you got an image you want projected behind you?” and I said, “No. not really, but it’s a shame not to have something projected,” and so we used that one. It’s one of my favourite photos. It’s Jimmy Savile introducing Frank Bruno to the Yorkshire Ripper.

JOHN: He’s a nice man is Frank. Did he know it was the Yorkshire Ripper?

KUNT:  No. he was completely hoodwinked into it. So there’s Frank shaking hands with The Ripper and Jimmy Savile is in the background just looking all pleased with himself. The thing I like most about that photo is that it was obviously years before all the stuff came out about Savile and he’s there in I think Broadmoor with a great big cigar and, behind him, there’s a NO SMOKING sign. That says all you need to know about Jimmy Savile in that one photo, smoking, introducing the Yorkshire Ripper to Frank Bruno.

I also love the fact The Ripper is in a late-1980s/early-1990s shell suit. Savile must have just taken it in on that visit and said: “Here, Pete, just slip this on. This’ll suit ya.”

Kunt’s latest Bumface book – free to download

JOHN: It’s been so long getting to chat, I’ve forgotten what you are plugging. Is it your children’s book Bumface Poohands and the Coronavirus Pandemic Lockdown?

KUNT: No, I’m not actually plugging anything. That was weeks ago I done that.

JOHN: Look, I’m an old man; I’m sick; I’m not going to last much longer. There’s COVID-19 around. Help me out here. Make up something surreal. Are you plugging your nightly online show Kunt’s Korona Klub?

KUNT: No! I’m not plugging it because I don’t want other people tuning in to it. I like the people who are tuning into it already, because they’ve been with it for kinda 45 nights and, if you tune in now, you just won’t understand what’s going on because it’s sort of developed its own lingo.

JOHN: You don’t want my blog readers? I’m shocked and saddened.

KUNT: A couple of ‘em are alright but the majority of ‘em I wouldn’t give the time of day.

JOHN: You’ve started drinking early…

KUNT: It’s to take the edge off doing FaceTime with you. I don’t really like doing FaceTime. I don’t wanna plug anything, John. I don’t like plugging things; it’s a bit shameless, ain’t it?

JOHN: Shameless? Have you listened to any of your songs??

KUNT: Well, they’ve got their own integrity. But it’s a different type of integrity.

JOHN: What sort of integrity would this be?

KUNT: One that I sort of tell meself is alright.

JOHN: Which is?

KUNT: It’s morphed over the years.

JOHN: On whom did you base this moral code? Heinrich Himmler?

KUNT: Are you comparing me to Heinrich Himmler?

JOHN: No. He was an underling. You’re more Hitler.

KUNT: Well, I have got a moustache, so there are some similarities. Though not a very good one. It has a bit of mascara on it.

JOHN: Why have you got mascara on your moustache?

KUNT: Because it’s flecked with grey. I’m going prematurely grey.

JOHN: So the ego has landed? You have done pretty much everything. What is there left? You’ve done books, albums, stage shows, become a cult Kunt…

KUNT: I think I’m gonna fake my own death from COVID-19 to make it current and then I’m going to surruptitiously put the thousands of CDs I’ve got stored round me mum’s house on eBay, but in dribs and drabs. It’s the perfect time to hold a funeral and get away with it.

JOHN: Does it have to be a fake death? It would be better if it were real. I could get people to kill you. As a favour, obviously – mate’s rates.

“This is my actual hair. There’s rumours about it being a wig.”

KUNT: John, this is my actual hair.

JOHN: Eh?

KUNT: There’s a lot of rumours about it being a wig.

JOHN: Don’t mention hair to me. Why did you write a children’s book anyway?

KUNT: I’m not plugging it.

JOHN: So it started because…?

KUNT: I went round my mate’s house one day and, on his fridge, he had this picture pinned up of this character with an arse for his face and these poo hands. I asked: “What the fuck is that?” And he said, very matter-of-factly: “That’s Bumface Poohands.”

He said: “I just do these little drawings and leave ‘em in me daughter’s lunchbox to make her laugh.”

JOHN: Has he ever read any books on parenting?

KUNT: No. My mate told me: “He’s a down-at-heel character who ends up in all the situations.” So I said to him: “Have you ever thought of making it into a children’s book?” and I… well… Well, it was just an excuse to meet up every few weeks. We’ve got about a dozen books written now and half a dozen illustrated and we’ve put two out – Bumface Poohands: A Birthday Surprise and Bumface Poohands: A Snowy Day and now we’ve just put this Coronavirus one online as a free e-book.

JOHN: How is Bumface going?

KUNT: It’s going alright. Bumface Poohands and the Coronavirus Pandemic Lockdown seems to have landed quite well. I’m quite happy with it. It sort of tells a story of what we’re kinda stuck in at the moment… in a fairly jocular way, compared to how bleak things actually are – and it seems to kinda cross over with adults and kids.

But Bumface Poohands is like everything I do. I always think Oh! This’ll be the thing that crosses over. But it never is. The ideas I have always have a very finite amount of people who are gonna like them. I thought at one point that Bumface Poohands would be my retirement plan, but now I’m looking at alternative arrangements.

JOHN: If you have 12 new ones written and 6 illustrated, it may yet still happen. JK Rowling approached every sensible publisher in London with Harry Potter and they all turned her down – quite rightly. It’s a ridiculous idea: a boy wizard in this day and age! No-one is going to buy that. Totally uncommercial. But then she got a publisher and now everyone is drowning in dosh.

KUNT: Yeah. I can just see Bumface Poohands becoming the new Harry Potter… It’s never gonna happen, John.

The great showman’s autobiography…

JOHN: Well, you’re a great lyricist; you write great tunes; if you drop a few of the ‘cunts’ and ‘fucks’… You are an Essex boy made good… or bad. Rags to riches story or whatever…

KUNT: But I came from a working class, aspirational middle class family. There’s no story there. It’s not rags to riches.

JOHN: What’s it been like round your way?

KUNT: It’s been strange round here. My mate’s doctor died and the landlady at one of the local pubs. But, other than that, it feels like it’s all kinda happening in London and the cities, not Essex.

It’s like it’s happening somewhere else.

JOHN: I think I have enough for a blog there.

KUNT: I don’t think so.

JOHN: I think so. I will craft it into a thing of fascinating beauty and riotous fun.

KUNT: I don’t think so, John. I read the last one you did.

JOHN: Have you ever had anyone write a brilliant, incisive piece on Kunt and the Gang?

KUNT: No. Anyway, a brilliant, incisive piece wouldn’t really be right for Kunt & the Gang.

JOHN: Then I’m the ideal person for you.

KUNT: Just make it sound better than it actually is, John, and then it’s maybe worth this awkward FaceTime.

JOHN: Do you still feel awkward?

KUNT: You haven’t put me totally at my ease… Heinrich Himmler?

JOHN: This might not get posted in the next two days. I might be sleeping.

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Exactly one week later, I was taken into hospital for seven days with low kidney function and high calcium problems. I don’t blame Kunt. Not totally. But I did think it might be a good excuse for taking so long to post this blog.

He finished his nightly Kunt’s Korona Klub shows on YouTube with Episode 58 on 31st May.

Last night, 8th June, I got an email from Kunt. It read:

“How you keeping John, not chasing you up, just seeing how you are?!”

I took this as a veiled threat – he lives in Essex – and I had run out of excuses for my laziness in transcribing our chat. I did not think the fact I currently have constipation would be justification enough.

On a cheerier note, he added: “I’m going to start a new monthly YouTube show called The New Normal in a few weeks time… 

“In one section, Down Meme-ory Lane, I turn investigative journalist and hunt down people whose image became a viral internet phenomenon…

“In another, I’ll Be The Judge of That, I adjudicate over petty Facebook disputes and make a ruling as to who has been the biggest cunt…

“And there is going to be a continuing serial drama following the inhabitants of ‘Yewtree Close’… a bit like Neighbours for sex offenders.”

The man is unstoppable.

 

The Maggy Whitehouse Experiences – the stand-up comic who is also a vicar

Maggie says: “Most of the congregation are sheep… Literally”

Maggy Whitehouse bills herself as a “Maverick priest, comedian and author who believes in an All-Inclusive Loving Beingness that also kicks ass.”

 So, obviously, I wanted to talk to her.

So, obviously, we did – at Paddington station – when she was in London.

So we were, obviously, supposed to be talking about comedy but we ended up, obviously, talking about religion…

…and, no, she is not related to Mary Whitehouse…

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JOHN: I tend to ramble when I chat to people..

MAGGY: I love rambling. Going off in different directions. Most of the congregation are sheep.

JOHN: Be careful what you get quoted saying!

MAGGY: No. Literally. I sometimes go out and practise a sermon at night, when I’m putting the chickens to bed. I will be in the paddock sermonising out loud and I will turn round and 30 pairs of sheep eyes are staring at me, from the field behind.

JOHN: You live a rural life on Dartmoor. Are you from there?

MAGGY: No. Harborne in Birmingham.

JOHN: And you were a producer for Carlton TV.

MAGGY: I did a couple of documentaries on China in the 1980s, because my dad was a railway expert and used to write books about steam engines. He founded the Birmingham Railway Museum. He went in to China in 1976 – as soon as it opened up – with my brother. After three or four years, my brother decided to get married. My father had no-one else to travel with, so he took me to China.

Suzi Quatro, Vince Hill and Caesarian scar sightings

I was already working as a radio presenter with Radio WM in Birmingham, then I moved over to BBC TV – Pebble Mill at One – as a producer. I joined them three months before they closed. Then I moved to Carlton TV and a terrible lunchtime show called Gas Street. It had Suzi Quatro and Vince Hill as presenters. That was a marriage made in Hell. Suzi was great fun: she used to show us her Caesarian scar and things like that.

JOHN: You met loads of famous people.

MAGGY: Yes. This was back in the politically incorrect days. I met Rolf Harris and he was disgusting.

JOHN: He had a reputation, back then, as a groper.

MAGGY: He used to push himself up against you and put his hands behind you and go “Woo-wugh-wugh-woo-wugh-wugh” like his wobbly board thing. Fortunately I was too old for Jimmy Savile. I just knew he was vile; he made my skin crawl.

JOHN: Steam engines got you into TV…

MAGGY: Yes. My dad got a commission to write a book on steam engines in China but they wanted a real coffee table book – not just all about the engines; more about travel. I had been travelling with him for six years by then – we went out every summer – so I wrote the book and he took the pictures.

Then I did two TV documentaries on steam engines in China and got lots of marriage proposals but Tiananmen Square happened and all future travel in China went out the window. And I had also met my first husband, Henry. He was a sound recordist. We got married and he was diagnosed with terminal cancer six months later – two months after Tiananmen Square – and by February the following year he was dead. So I lost husband and career within a year, which was a bit…

JOHN: Was this when you had a Road to Damascus and decided to become a vicar?

MAGGY: No. But I lost my faith then, really. I had been an armchair Christian. I just showed up at church occasionally at Christmas.

My husband Henry had been an atheist and, on his deathbed, the Catholic hospital chaplain said: “I’m sorry, my dear, but, if he’s an atheist who does not believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ, then he cannot go to heaven.”

THAT was a Road to Damascus moment, because I just thought: But that is wrong! Henry was a better person than I. He was kinder than I. He was far less of a trollop than I had ever been. I just thought: No! No! And I could not get a funeral for him that would reflect a little bit of faith. 

It had to be Church of England or Humanist back then and my family and his family would not go for Humanist so, basically, I walked up the aisle behind my young husband’s coffin hearing him damned to Hell. And I was thinking: This isn’t right! This isn’t right!

Most people might go into Atheism from that, but I went crazy and went into New Age – Buddhism and chakras and healing and that sort of thing.

JOHN: Kabbalah?

MAGGY: That came later.

JOHN: Did the New Age stuff help you?

MAGGY: Yes, because I learned about all sorts of alternative things and Healing was very interesting at this point.

Maggy’s business card (NOTE: Terms & conditions apply)

After a few years, I realised I was still FURIOUS with Christianity. The whole idea that, if you didn’t believe in Jesus, you didn’t go to heaven. And all the power and corruption which everybody alerts me to and I know about… But I realised what I had done was I had stuck all this in a nasty heap in the corner, put a nice pink blanket over it and covered it in tea lights and crystals and I was pretending it didn’t exist. I realised I was going to have to deal with it.

I also started having the opportunity to do funerals for people.

JOHN: You were a multi-faith funeral giver?

MAGGY: Sort of. A sort of self-taught one. I found a guy in London who taught me.

JOHN: Funerals? What needs teaching?

MAGGY: You have to be taught what not to say and how to deal with dead bodies and bereaved people. You are quite often going to be there when they are dying. I ended up being a hospice chaplain.

So I started putting myself around as a funeral person in London, where the work was. And I went to university to learn New Testament Greek because I thought: If I can read the New Testament in Greek, I might actually understand what this guy Jesus was on about and not have to rely on other people’s translations.

However, it turns out there are 32,000 versions of the New Testament in Greek.

JOHN: Not literally 32,000…

MAGGY: Yes, literally. Most of them are fragments. Only about 500 are full ones. But they are quite dramatically different.

JOHN: Are they all translated from the Aramaic or something?

MAGGY: No, they’re just different ways they wrote it down because, in those days, if somebody had written down one of the Gospels and wanted to copy it out, they would read it out loud and people would copy it down and they would make mistakes. 

JOHN: I remember reading or hearing somewhere that, in the original language, there is no definite or indefinite article. 

MAGGY: That’s right.

JOHN: So the phrase ‘Son of God’ does not necessarily mean THE Son of God, it can equally mean A Son of God. And we are all Sons (or Daughters) of God.

MAGGY: Yes. We are all children of God… and Christ is not Jesus’ surname… The Christ exists independently of Jesus.

JOHN: In the original, no-one was saying he was The Christ. They were saying he was a Son of God: he was a good man. The Moslems believe in Jesus as a prophet, don’t they?

MAGGY: Yes. In fact, he is mentioned in the Koran more than Mohammed is.

A sphere representing the Left Eye of God – inside the Cao Dai Tây Ninh Holy See in Vietnam.  (Photograph by Ernie Lo)

JOHN: The Cao Dai religion in Vietnam reveres Confucius, Jesus and Victor Hugo… I think because the French civil servant who created the religion rather liked the works of Victor Hugo.

MAGGY: Well, you should see my altar at home. It has Isis, Mary & Joseph and…

JOHN: Isis as opposed to ISIS…

MAGGY: Yes. One of my friends Christened his daughter Isis eight years ago. It is a problem now…

(… CONTINUED HERE …)

Critic Copstick on cocaine in kids’ TV + meeting Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris

Copstick publicity shot for The Grouchy Club

In yesterday’s blog, comedy critic Kate Copstick explained why she gave up her planned career as a lawyer because she lost faith in the legal system.

“So,” I asked, “then what did you decide you wanted to do?”

“I had always wanted to be an actress,” she told me at The Grouchy Club in Edinburgh. “So, when I got asked to do a play for no money, I said Yes. It was a piece by Pedro Calderón de la Barca with the snazzy title The House With Two Doors Is Hard To Guard. I played the comedy maid, which was when I discovered the joy of corsets.”

“Did you,” I asked, “want to be a comedy performer or an actress?”

“Oh, I wanted to be an actress,” she said. “I wanted to be Joan Crawford. I had posters on my wall of Debbie Harry, Joan Crawford and Bryan Ferry.

“But people preferred me trying to be funny. Then they kept asking me to write.”

“Why,” I asked, “would they ask you to write if you were an actress?”

“Because nobody believed I was really an actress. Also, I was so bossy that I tended to write and direct. It started off with me saying: Wouldn’t it be better if I said this…

Copstick, children’s favourite

“Then someone from Scottish Television saw me and I fronted a kids’ programme about the environment. Then I was asked down to London to present Play School for BBC TV.”

“Why?”

“They obviously just looked at me performing in my wig and my Ginger Rogers frock and thought: I would love to see this woman dressed as a penguin jumping up and down on children’s television.”

I told her: “I used to know someone who did Playbus. He went into porn.”

“Many of us did,” said Copstick.

“How long did you do Play School?” I asked.

The prim, proper and always professional Copstick

“About four years, then I did a load of other kids’ programmes – Up Our Street, No 73…”

“Did you do that rude Christmas tape for No 73?” I asked.

“Everything was rude when you got behind the scenes,” said Copstick. “The very first place I ever encountered cocaine was on Play School.

“Because it was only pre-school television with small budgets, they didn’t give you any time for re-takes. Once you started recording, you had time to do two episodes back-to-back. That was it. No mucking about. No re-takes. So we rehearsed endlessly. One time, we did all the rehearsing including the songs and it was all lovely, all great, all timed to perfection. But when we recorded it, the show was a whole minute short and nobody could understand why.

Copstick first encountered cocaine in children’s television…

“It turned out that, between the rehearsals and the recording, the boys in the band had been in the dressing room enjoying some of Bolivia’s finest (cocaine) and all the songs had gone at almost twice the speed they had in the rehearsals.

“So the programmes were not just educational for the children, they were educational for me personally.

“I did this show called Whizz and got on Top of the Pops. We recorded the theme tune, released it as a single and, for some reason, it did really well in the charts. No-one could understand why until I went on Top of the Pops and somebody told me it had a massive student following because the hook line was Do the Biz, Do the Biz, With Whizz. None of the nice middle class ladies at the BBC realised Whizz/Wiz had any kind of double meaning whatsoever, but students thought it was fantastic.”

There is, sadly, no copy of this song on YouTube, but there is a video of Pulp singing Sorted For E’s and Wizz at Glastonbury.

“Was Jimmy Savile presenting Top of the Pops when you were on it?” I asked Copstick.

“No. It was Mike Read and Gary Davis. When I got to come down the chute onto the stage, there were all these girls. There were self-evidently 16-year-old girls who just went there in the hope that somebody famous would fondle their boobs.”

“You met Savile somewhere else?” I asked.

“I was doing a show called On The Waterfront up in Liverpool with Bernie Nolan (of The Nolan Sisters). She could drink more vodka on a night than anyone and get up at 7 o’clock the next morning looking like she was straight out of convent school. That girl had hollow legs. I’ve never met anyone who could drink like her.”

“You are too modest,” I said.

“She taught me everything I know!” said Copstick.

“And Savile?” I asked.

“On the show, I did a thing like Through The Keyhole, but it was called Through The Sunroof – I went into people’s cars. So I did Through The Sunroof with Jimmy Savile’s car and we had to go up to his house in Leeds and when I met him, instead of shaking my hand, he turned it over and licked the palm. Eurghh! Just loathsome. Some people you meet and you just know… And there was Rolf Harris, as well.”

Rolf Harris, former children’s entertainer

“You met Rolf?” I asked. “You must have been groped by Rolf. Everyone was groped by Rolf.”

“When he came on the show as a guest,” said Copstick, “we had a lovely young female director who used to wear trousers that had a rose trellis pattern. When Rolf came in, she was bending over to pick something up and he said: That’s a furrow I’d like to plough! He self-evidently was just a bit of a dirty old man which is not great, but I think there’s a difference between being a dirty old man and a paedophile.”

“He had a reputation for groping,” I said, “but I was surprised by the children.”

“I’ve kind of always thought,” said Copstick, “if you like grown-ups, you like grown ups; if you like kids, you like kids. It’s not really the same people. So, as an ex-lawyer, I was very surprised by the Rolf Harris verdict.

“I think, yet again, it’s the Establishment being so horrified and embarrassed that nobody did anything about Jimmy Savile or Cyril Smith or any of the other people they knew about but protected… that anybody they can now grab onto is going down because somebody has to and they can’t do anything about Savile because he’s dead.

Copstick at last month’s Edinburgh Fringe

“I’m sure all of us who are grown-up and female have had some hideous, ghastly, creepy uncle type stick his tongue in your ear before he should and you just go Ughh! but there’s a long, long way between that and being attacked. I think all the women who are lining up claiming Dave Lee Travis held their boobs are doing a terrible amount of damage to the people who really did suffer.

“It must be horrendous. I can’t imagine what it must have been like being one of these boys in the home that Cyril Smith went to. Or being in Stoke Mandeville Hospital and seeing Jimmy Savile wander across the ward towards you with his cock in his hand. Horrendous. Horrendous! But it’s not the same thing at all as a bit of a misjudgment.”

… CONTINUED HERE …

Sexual abuse: when women & children were seen as ‘fair game’? – in the past?

A British Rail poster from the past, with paedophile pop star Gary Glitter

The last words of my blog yesterday were:

“The past does not exist, even though everything is interconnected by happenstance.”

Someone took exception when they read this yesterday and told me:

“You’re an idiot. Of course the past exists.”

Well, it doesn’t and it does…

Two days ago, I posted a blog headlined Rolf Harris, Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter, Roman Polanski – and what it is like to be sexually assaulted as a child.

Yesterday, I got a response from ‘Sandy Mac’. This turned out to be someone I met at the Edinburgh Fringe last year. This is what she wrote yesterday:

---

I was born in 1946.

I was about seven years old or a bit younger and sometimes looked after by a neighbour with a small daughter. I rarely saw her husband but, on this occasion, he was at home.

He and I were in the front room sitting in front of the fire. Amidst the chat, I looked up to see this ‘thing’ in his hand which he urged me to touch.

I remember feeling uncertain, confused if not a bit frightened at what he was asking, although I didn’t know why.

I remember him saying: “Go on. It won’t bite.”

Then his wife called us to the kitchen to eat. I can’t remember how I felt after that as we all sat around the table.

I do know that I didn’t tell my mother, but I didn’t go to that house again.

A happy coincidence maybe, but no explanation was given.

In my early twenties, I remember working for one particular employer who was an absolute menace around women. He also wielded quite a lot of power. Not a happy combination. As well as witnessing my employer’s behaviour towards women at first hand, I heard accounts from other people too. This would have been in the mid-1960s.

That sadly was the climate of the times.

Police at that time, I remember, were loathe to intervene in cases of domestic violence. Oh how I applauded Erin Pizzey when she opened her first refuge in Chiswick in the early 1970s.

I was an ‘unmarried mother’ at sixteen and was sent to a mother and baby home, run by nuns in Stamford Hill.

The stigma was huge in 1962, only matched by my mother’s disappointment in me.

My daughter will be 52 this year with three boys of her own. She was reunited in Canada with her father and his lovely wife. She and her dad had about ten years to get to know one another. She was with him when he died a few years ago now.

Rolf Harris, Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter, Roman Polanski – and what it is like to be sexually assaulted as a child

Today’s headline in the Daily Mirror

Yesterday, children’s entertainer Rolf Harris was found guilty of twelve sexual assault charges dating back to the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, including an attack on a child of seven.

“He always had the reputation,” I said to a chum this morning, “of being a groper. And, I mean, feeling the breasts of 22 year-old secretaries is obviously bad, but this is a different level. Now, I suppose, we won’t see him in clips of any old programmes, just like the BBC now removes Jimmy Savile from any old Top of the Pops re-screenings.”

“It’s as if all my childhood memories are being trashed,” my chum said. “First of all it was Gary Glitter and Do You Wanna Be in My Gang? and I Love You Love and now it’s Rolf and Two Little Boys and Jake The Peg mit his extra leg.”

They didn’t want Gary Glitter in the gang

“Well,” I said, “I loved the Spice Girls movie Spice World and that had a big sequence in it with Gary Glitter in Do You Wanna Be in My Gang? and they had to cut it out at the last moment before release because he got arrested and most of the Spice Girls’ fan base were pre-pubescent and only-just pubescent girls.”

“My friends in Germany used to come over every year to see Garry Glitter perform,” said my chum. “It was their big annual thing, like going to the Glastonbury Festival.”

“How old were they?” I asked.

“In their twenties, I guess. And there was a poster about reduced railway tickets for students. I asked at the railway station, got two of those and sent one to Germany. Obviously, I don’t have it up on the wall now and I haven’t played my Gary Glitter records since: I’ve got one of his LPs.”

A British Rail poster featuring Gary Glitter

“Why don’t you play the record?” I asked.

“Because all you’re aware of is that this person singing is this very unpleasant person who wants to use and abuse people, that sex is so trashed, debased turned into a nasty abusive thing.”

“But,” I said, “the music is still the same. If it was good before, it’s still good now, even if you know the guy was a nasty sexual predator. Just because you’re a mass murderer doesn’t mean you can’t produce a good piece of music or a great novel or a movie.”

“You’ve said that about Roman Polanski before,” my chum told me.

“Yes,” I said. “I think he should have his bollocks cut off and be thrown in a pit of vipers for the rest of his life. But it doesn’t change the fact Macbeth and Dance of The Vampires are great films and they should not suddenly be un-screened.”

Unlucky British Rail also used Jimmy Savile (centre back) in their ads

“It’s irrelevant whether it’s good or not,” said my chum. “It’s a reminder of something nasty that has ruined that work of art. With Roman Polanski, he (normally) is not actually starring in the films and most people aren’t aware who directed a film. It’s not like Gary Glitter or Rolf Harris or Jimmy Savile who are up there performing in front of you as themselves. Once you know something about someone, it changes your perception and you can’t un-know it.

“The thing is my experience of… It’s not a heavy one like other people you know… But, on the beach when I was nine or ten, we were all by the chewing gum machines and it was dark and late and the parents were off in the house chatting. And there was this man – he might have been only a teenager himself, but he seemed a grown man to me – he was putting change in the chewing gum machine.

“I was walking on the beach about twenty yards away from the other kids, somehow. And he said Hold my finger and I realised it wasn’t his finger, cos it was without a bone in it. It was squidgy.

“I was only a kid and all I knew was there was something alarming about it. Something unpleasant and you realised Oh! a bit like the ice cracking underneath you if you were on ice. Or Oh shit! The road’s falling away. Oh dear! Trouble! Nasty! It’s like you’re treading on ordinary ground and then Oh, no! This is wrong! This isn’t right! How do I save myself from this?

“It was nothing that I even understood. You don’t really understand anything at nine or ten. This adult is intending to do something. You hadn’t wanted to hold someone’s finger. They’ve even lied to you to get you to do something. Your mind is with all the other kids like Let’s run round in circles and then run round in the other direction! You’re on that level and suddenly… It is a nasty thing and in one’s consciousness your brain is suddenly aware of Alarm! Danger! – What’s this?”

“And,” I suggested, “you don’t quite know what the danger is?”

“Yes. You’re completely in your own little world as a kid. You just know something is not good. Nothing hurt. He wasn’t nasty to me. He didn’t say nasty things… You never forget it happened. If something worse had happened, it must be like…”

She paused.

“Did you tell your parents?” I asked.

“No. Why didn’t I tell them? There’s a feeling that someone’s done something wrong. Something’s gone wrong. If a dog had come and bit me or even just frightened me, I’d have told them Oh! That dog’s frightening me! but, for some reason… It’s as if you don’t know if maybe you have done something wrong yourself. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. But it was like you are in a complete sleep and you suddenly wake up and find yourself in a slight nightmare of Oh! What’s this? Oh no! This isn’t right! I just turned round and walked away. I realised it wasn’t his finger. I think that’s what woke me up to the danger.”

The deleted Spice World sequence featuring Gary Glitter is on YouTube.

The Rolf Harris sex ‘arrest’ – Why was he NOT named and why did the police bring Jimmy Savile’s name into it?

Yesterday’s front page Sun ‘exclusive’

Yesterday, the Sun newspaper ran what it called a World Exclusive under the headline.

ROLF HARRIS SEX ABUSE ARREST

To most people, the word ‘arrest’ means that someone was detained, was charged and will appear in court in the very near future.

But the police now seem to be using the word ‘arrest’ in a very non-colloquial way. What they seem to mean by ‘arrest’ in any high-profile case – especially anything within an intercontinental ballistic missile’s reach of the headline-grabbing Jimmy Savile paedophile story – is that they have simply questioned someone under caution in a trawl for evidence.

Having a headline saying ‘arrest’ makes it seem that the police are actually doing something. They are indeed doing something, but there is an element of PR-led bullshit rapidly creeping in here.

Yesterday’s Sun story:

WORLD EXCLUSIVE
ROLF HARRIS SEX ABUSE ARREST
TV LEGEND, 83, QUIZZED OVER ASSAULT CLAIM

was more complicated than it seemed.

The Daily Express front page today

The story was actually that the UK TV star Rolf Harris “was held” (note the Sun’s use of the past tense) “over historic sex abuse allegations by police from the inquiry set up following the Jimmy Savile scandal”

There is obfuscation here, again caused by the police’s PR-led attempts to show they are actively doing something.

In fact, the Sun story ‘revealed’ that police had raided Rolf Harris’ home on 24th November last year (he was not there), interviewed him under caution on 29th November last year and arrested him on 28th March this year.

As far as I am aware, this ‘arrest’ means he was questioned under caution, not that he was actually charged with anything nor with any court date pending.

The police were quoted in yesterday’s Sun as saying: “The individual falls under the strand of the investigation we have termed ‘others’.”

The police started off investigating the Jimmy Savile paedophile case and people connected to that. Then, quite rightly, they started investigating totally unconnected claims of (particularly media-connected) non-paedophile sexual incidents brought to their attention.

These cases are labelled by them as ‘others’. But, by saying that ‘the Savile enquiry police’ are investigating these ‘others’, the police PR machine implies the cases are connected directly to the paedophile investigation and this (presumably intentionally) gets the police ‘brownie points’ in the public’s eye.

What interested me, though, was that the Rolf Harris arrest story was not new.

As the Sun reported yesterday in their Rolf Harris ‘exclusive’, “Harris has been named on social media sites by hundreds of thousands of people” and “the world’s media have been camped outside his home since he was first questioned”.

Their story concluded with the line: “Other celebrities arrested include Freddie Starr, Jim Davidson, Dave Lee Travis, PR guru Max Clifford — who all deny wrongdoing — and Gary Glitter.”

The difference, though, is that when those people were questioned – or “arrrsted” as the police phrased it – they were named in newspapers.

The original detention by police of Rolf Harris WAS reported when it happened, but the reports did not name him. Variations of the phrase “prominent children’s entertainer” were used. Why?

On my Facebook page yesterday, referring to the Rolf Harris arrest report in the Sun, I posted:

The only surprise is… Why was this not reported last November?

This resulted in an online conversation between one of my Facebook Friends and writer Harry Rogers.

I reprint it here in full with their permission:

Rolf Harris, iconic children’s entertainer

Facebook Friend: It’s wrong to name. The man has not even been charged, let alone found guilty.

John Fleming: Everyone else was named. In this case, variations on the phrase “prominent children’s TV presenter” were used.

Facebook Friend: John, again it’s not impossible someone wishes to cash in on his fame, to set up so to speak.

John Fleming: In this specific case, it’s relevant that I worked in television for several companies… But my point is why were others named but not him?

Facebook Friend: So are you saying name and shame without even being charged? That surely is not reasonable!

John Fleming: I tend to agree. But I am saying either name or do not name. Why were the others named and not Rolf?

Harry Rogers’ current Facebook profile picture

Harry Rogers: Probably ‘cos he had had such close access to the Royals

Facebook Friend: John, I hear what you are saying, but I don’t feel anyone should be named unless found guilty

John Fleming: Again, I tend to agree with you. But why was Rolf, almost uniquely, not named?… I actually agree with you. There should be anonymity. But, if there is not, then everyone should be reported equally.

Harry Rogers: The BBC reported there were legal restrictions until today and now those restrictions have been eased, otherwise he would have been outed before today

John Fleming: It would be interesting to know what the restrictions were. A super-injunction?

Facebook Friend: The same stigma for men accused of rape. Woman not named, but sometimes they make up stories. The law needs addressing. It’s outdated.

Harry Rogers: Wait and see

Facebook Friend: The sad thing about all of this now is that a man in his eighties will now be remembered for sex charges, as opposed to decades of being a wholesome hugely talented entertaining individual.

Harry Rogers: And if he is guilty? Then what….

Facebook Friend: Well, if guilty very sad because he will be judged as a person for that and not for his wonderful contribution as artist, entertainer and indeed as a well known animal lover.

Harry Rogers: As such a person that you describe he should have known better, if guilty. It is an abuse of privilege that allows many celebrities to believe that somehow they are different to everybody else, but the reality is that they are the same as the plumber or the school caretaker and should be treated accordingly.

Facebook Friend: Harry, this is subject for debate. An error of judgement perhaps 40 or 50 years ago, although not condoning, surely is not revealing of a person’s real character necessarily.

Harry Rogers: Tell that to the Nazis still hiding even now after the holocaust and those who spend their lives hunting them down. If sex offenders had not given way to their proclivities there would be no story here. Sexual abuse and violence are things which harm people for years. As a teenage boy I was raped by a minor pop star and said nothing for years because I felt ashamed, however it did cause me a lot of grief. You think Rolf deserves to be let off for a minor indiscretion, if he did it. If he did do it then he abused a position of trust and power and deserves to face the music. Sun arise early in the morning.

Facebook Friend: I hear what you are saying Harry. Let’s say his crime was just wanking a boy off 40 years ago. Would that be reasonable to pursue charges now? I am not so sure. If it was rape of a child that of course is another matter… My main concern is the naming and shaming before a verdict! Undemocratic

Harry Rogers: I hardly think the police would be wasting so much time and effort if that was the case, but, in terms of naming and shaming, Rolf Harris can easily come forward and defend himself. There isn’t a TV or media outlet that wouldn’t give him a platform to tell his story… And, anyway, child wanking is still an abuse of power

Facebook Friend: Harry, this is the problem. Police keep on wasting time and public money.

Harry Rogers: The pursuit of child sex offenders is not a waste of public money… As a tax payer this is one police activity I am in favour of

Facebook Friend: Harry you are right. My main concern is the naming and shaming before a verdict

Harry Rogers: As I say if he is innocent then let him stand up and deny it and if that is proved to be true then let him sue the accusers for bundles.

John Fleming: I would be surprised (guessing from what I know) if there is any accusation of child sex abuse in the Rolf Harris case. I would be very surprised if it involved boys or under-age girls. The police say it is not directly related to the Savile case; it comes under their ‘others’ category.

Facebook Friend: The accusers probably don’t have millions. It might be the Michael Jackson case that made people think they might cash in

Harry Rogers: Speculation is dangerous

Facebook Friend: So what should I do Rolf Harris is my Facebook friend?

Harry Rogers: Justice is important. The BBC is putting its neck on the line by running the story again so soon after the Savile debacle… As for Facebook, it’s probably best if we all wait and see. I have no idea what the accusations are, neither do I know whether he is guilty of anything, I am prepared to wait and see what happens, however I am interested in the fact that he has been arrested and will watch this case with the view of an abuse victim to see how it pans out. The fact that we know his name is meaningless. It is the evidence that counts. And we are all adults so we are able to make up our minds about it provided it is all out in the open.

Facebook Friend: My problem with this is a man now in his eighties cannot walk the streets in fear of attack etc. This has to be wrong!

Harry Rogers: Rubbish

Facebook Friend: I don’t think so