BUSHELL ON THE BLOG
Dec 31. I won’t wish you a happy new year. I did that last year and look how that turned out. Instead I’ll wish an awful, stinking year in the hope that 2021 turns out better than this one.
Dec 15. Here is an edited version of my tribute to Barbara Windsor which ran as a pull-out in the Sunday Express last weekend. I wrote it on the day we lost her, so it’s quite raw:
BARBARA Windsor – Bar to her friends, never Babs – was a special sort of star. I doubt that we’ll ever see her like again. Talented, funny and saucier than a Heinz factory, the Cockney pocket rocket personified a much-loved style of salty, working-class humour that dreary killjoys have done their best to stamp out for the past three decades. Although she was rightly made a Dame in the 2016 New Year’s Honours, and often rubbed shoulders with the great and the good, at heart she was always Barbara Ann Deeks, a ballsy upstart from Shoreditch, then the fag-end of East London. Just to see her in those classic Carry On roles transports us back to a more innocent time – an age when comedy was king and you didn’t need an Oxbridge degree to get a TV booking. Her laugh alone was a national treasure, pitched somewhere between sweet innocence and unbridled filth.
Bar was of course much more than the giggling blonde we saw as Nurse Sandra May (Carry On Doctor) and Daphne Honeycutt (Carry On Spying). She proved her acting chops in Joan Littlewood’s 1963 kitchen sink film drama Sparrows Can’t Sing – proper drama, dear. She was Bafta nominated for the part of cheating wife Maggie Gooding in that. And later she was Tony nominated after starring in a Broadway production of Oh, What A Lovely War! Both arguably a little more prestigious than winning Rear Of The Year in 1976. Tsk. And to think some people claim she was only famous for her breasts...
Barbara never resented the fame the Carry Ons brought her. She didn’t feel defined or “objectified” by them. They had made her. And she continued to defend them as a treasured British institution, even when po-faced media types raged against them – Channel 4 banned the films as “sexist” in the late 1980s but have since had a rethink. Bar had appeared in other films of course, the first was as a schoolgirl in 1954’s The Belles Of St Trinian’s when she was just sixteen. But it was the Carry Ons that rocketed her to stardom. She appeared in just nine of the franchise, most memorably as “Babs” in Carry On Camping when her bikini top famously went flying – it was pulled off, she said “by an elderly prop man using a fishing rod and line... on the first take it wouldn’t budge but he wouldn’t stop reeling me in, the next thing I knew I was being dragged through the mud on me bum”. The next take worked splendidly, but in true Carry On tradition, Barbara’s bare bosom was never shown on screen. The films were cheeky, not pornographic. Kenneth Williams said she had “a chest like a confectioner’s counter”. But years later Bar told me: “I don’t know why people bang on about my boobs, they were never much to write ’ome about.” She’d got into the Carry Ons by accident. She just happened to walk through the restaurant at Pinewood Studios at the same time as producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas were tucking into a meal and wondering who they could cast as a bubbly blonde for 1964’s Carry On Spying... Her favourite of the long-running series was 1971’s Carry On Henry, which was she first time she had worked opposite Sid James. They’d both trained as dancers, and did the gavotte for that film in one take.
Barbara was in fewer than one third of the movies but she made the biggest impact of any of the female cast. She saw the Carry Ons as being in the great English tradition of McGill seaside postcards – “that naughty but nice humour, loaded with double entendres.” When she played a season in Blackpool, she said, she’d realised the cartoons on the postcards were just like the Carry On characters – “There was the fat lady – Hattie Jacques. The lech, which was Sid. The little camp man, like Charlie Hawtrey and there was the bosomy blonde who was me.” Her final appearance was in 1974’s Carry On Dick, after sensibly swerving Emmannuelle. She had other film roles over the years, including a small part in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang opposite Dick Van Dyke, Ken Russell’s The Boy Friend and On The Fiddle with Sean Connery. But none that endured so wonderfully.
Bar was a huge fan of Max Miller and Benny Hill, and supported the campaign (still ongoing) to raise an 8ft bronze statue of Benny in Southampton. She could never understand why ITV “bastards” had treated him so disgracefully. Not surprisingly Music Hall legend Marie Lloyd was another huge influence on her. Barbara played her in the 1970 run of Sing A Rude Song at London’s Garrick Theatre, later reprising the role on the BBC’s The Good Old Days. In Marie, with her risqué humour and turbulent love life, Bar had found a strong echo of her own life. I first knew Barbara in the 1980s when she was on her uppers – those down-on-her-luck years after the Carry Ons had petered out and she was stuck in provincial theatre roles or doing a Marie Lloyd act in small but welcoming theatres such as Wilton’s Music Hall, then in London’s Brick Lane.
The Carry On franchise continued to be shown on TV but Barbara never made a bean from the repeats, or from the video and DVD sales or even from having her image on the merchandise, ranging from t-shirts and photographs to tea cups and posters. By 1993 she was describing herself as “skint... with another marriage down the toilet” (after the collapse of her marriage to toy-boy chef Stephen Hollings, 20 years her junior.) Frustrated by her fall from the headlines, I argued in print that she should be cast in EastEnders. Chris Evans backed the idea on the radio and Barbara was duly signed to play formidable Walford matriarch Peggy Mitchell, “muvver” of the thuggish Phil and Grant (which she always rendered as “Gwant”)... It didn’t seem to matter that actress Jo Warne who had first played the character had been at least seven inches taller – Bar was 4ft 10 – and several stone heavier. Her lack of height never bothered her. As she famously told second screen husband Archie Mitchell: “My, you are tall. Never mind darlin’, we’re all the same height lying down.”
The Peggy role showed the public a very different side of Barbara. She was playing her own age for a start, a mature woman rather than a sexy saucepot; and, being a real East Londoner, she brought extra authenticity to the role... as well as the ability to pull a pint properly. Unlike her Carry On parts, Peggy was a tough cookie, sharp of tongue, quick of temper and often pig-headed. Like many Cockneys she was big-hearted and easy-going right up until the moment you crossed her. Then you saw the inner steel. Not for nothing did “Get outta my pub!” become her catchphrase. In one of her finest screen moments as Peggy, Bar delivered stinging slaps to both her screen husband Frank Butcher, memorably played by Cockney comedian Mike Reid, and Pat Wicks – his bit on the side. (Pat in turn labelled her “a mad old tart”.) This was very much what the real Barbara could be like if pushed too far. The Bar who turned on Kenneth Williams on the set of Carry On Spying and snapped, “Don’t you yell at me with yer Fenella Fielding minge hair stuck round your chops. I won’t bloody stand for it.” (Kenny was thrilled). What’s less well known is that at the start Barbara used to vomit in her dressing room with nerves before going on set.
She bowed out of the BBC soap for good four years ago, when rather than be slowed consumed by her cancer, Peggy took a lethal overdose and died in her sleep. Her performances as Peggy Mitchell won her several awards including best actress at the 1999 British Soap Awards and best exit at the 2016 Inside Soap Awards. But her most prestigious accolade when she was made a Dame in for her services to charity and entertainment from The Queen in 2016. Bar said she had based her portrayal of Peggy partly on her own mother Rose, partly on Mike Reid, and partly on Violet Kray, mother of the infamous twins. In her own words, Barbara Windsor was “as common as muck”. Her father John Deeks, sold fruit and veg in the local market. Dressmaker Rose was “a Cockney snob” who sent her own daughter to elocution lessons to rid her of her accent. Mercifully the lessons failed and Rose’s dream of her daughter becoming a foreign language telephonist bit the dust. Bar made her stage debut at 13 and her West End debut two years later in the chorus of the touring musical Love From Judy which toured the country.
Throughout her life, Bar stayed true to her roots – even if some of them were hugely controversial. Her first husband was Ronnie Knight, an associate of the infamous Kray twins. She finally divorced him after 21years when he fled to Spain to avoid arrest for his part in the £6 million Security Express robbery of 1983. The writing was on the wall early on when, shortly after they’d met, Knight was jailed for receiving stolen goods. He was later acquitted of the murder of the man who had stabbed his brother but in his book Memoirs And Confessions, he owned up to having hired a hitman to do the job. Barbara insisted that she had believed he was innocent when the police let him go, and was shocked to discover the truth, saying “I picked up his book in Waterstones and I just couldn’t believe it.” She was famously friendly with the Kray family. She was pictured with the Twins at the premier of Sparrows Can’t Sing and at their Soho nightclub El Morocco in the 60s. She also slept with Reggie Kray once and had a long affair with his elder brother Charlie.
Barbara supported my 1980s campaign to reduce Reggie’s 30year sentence for the murder of hitman Jack “The Hat” McVitie. Even in her official autobiography, published in 2000, she defended the Twins, describing them as “real gentlemen: old ladies never got mugged in those days.”
In many ways, she was an unusual signing for the BBC, being the very opposite of the kind of “Cockneys” they portrayed in EastEnders. Barbara was patriotic, a Royalist (she adopted her stage name in 1953 the year of the Queen’s coronation), an optimist and, like her close friend Kenneth Williams, a natural Conservative. She thought feminism had gone too far and men were being emasculated. She also loved the kind of stand-up comedians that TV executives have banished from our screens – like Mike Reid, Jimmy Jones, Jim Davidson, and their unsung apprentice Mickey Pugh, all of whom had honed their brand of fast, hard comedy playing to tough crowds of London dockers and blue-collar workers.
Although she was close to Kenny all of her life, it was her Carry On co-star Sid James, 30 years her senior, who badgered her into bed – “not up to much” was her verdict. She added, “I didn’t even fancy him. But he obviously thought I was this raving, sexy little thing and I thought if I did the dirty deed he’d leave me alone... ” One of the joys of knowing Barbara was how indiscreet she was. When she had to film a scene in the Queen Vic for a DVD release that involved Grant and Phil naked from the waist down, she was quick to report back about which of the “bruvs” had most to be proud of. She married again after Hollings, finding real happiness with her last husband, former actor Scott Mitchell. Psychologists would probably blame Barbara’s long history of dallying with unsuitable men – “blokes who did me up like a kipper” – down to her parents divorcing acrimoniously when she was 15. A self-confessed “Daddy’s girl”, she was cruelly forced to give evidence in court resulting in the barrow boy father she loved so dearly abandoning her. She told me she was “gutted” that she wasn’t asked about her mother’s short-comings too.
Used and abused by various lovers – she said she’d had over a hundred in her autobiography – she certainly adored the less risky company of gay men and was close to the late Dale Winton and Danny La Rue, and Christopher Biggins. Many consider her a gay icon. One of her less impressive couplings was with jazz club owner Ronnie Scott who invited her on their first date in London’s West End. They were supposed to meet outside a sandwich bar but, when she got there, he was already inside tucking in. Ronnie offered her half his sandwich and then took her up a rickety staircase to a dingy room. “The next thing I knew we both had our clothes off,” she said. The second “date” was exactly the same. On the third she said “You know, Ronnie I’m really not enjoying this. It’s not a proper date, as such, is it?”
Barbara’s private life was as messy as Tracey Emin’s bed, more the life of a soap character than a soap star. She had a large number of abortions, sometimes she said five, other times seven; three before she was 21. She also had a nervous breakdown, and then, after going through two divorces and HRT treatment, in 2003 she suffered an attack of the Epstein-Barr virus and had to take two years out of the soap. Sadder still, six years ago she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. But all the time I knew her she was a giving person. When Peggy Mitchell contracted breast cancer, she wrote numerous letters of advice to viewers who had contacted her about their own struggles with the disease. She gave me welcome and useful advice after my first live TV appearance in 1989, and did the same for many an aspiring actor and starlet. All the time she was well, Barbara would turn out for charity events. I have two special personal memories of spending time with her. One when she appeared on my ITV TV series (for free), and the other at a charity night in Canterbury organised by the late and much-missed Kent comedian Dave Lee. After the show we sat in the bar of the Marlowe Theatre – she with Scott, me with my wife Tania – and sang old Music Hall songs as the drink flowed.
Oh, and another one... when the EastEnders executive producer stumbled across us on a merry night in a West End restaurant and then banned her from “fraternising” with me. He may have had a point. She did love to gossip. In 2017, the BBC aired Babs, a biopic about her life penned by EastEnders scriptwriter Tony Jordan. Jaime Winstone and Samantha Spiro played younger versions of the star. She said watching it back and reliving the biggest moments in her life was a “very emotional experience for me... I managed to get through it without completely breaking down but at the end I stood up and walked out of the room and had a good cry.” Barbara was, as I said, a special star, and as things are going, an irreplaceable one. It wasn’t just that dazzling smile and the irresistible chuckle. It was the big heart as well. Barbara Windsor had a unique place in British popular culture. She was as much an institution as the BBC itself, but a resolutely working class one.
Dec 13. A quick update: I don’t know when my book on the 1979 metal revival will be published. I finished compiling it over a year ago and as far as I know the publisher is still sourcing pictures. At the rate they’re working my money is on 2029...
Dec 6. I’ve had an email from an academic asking about gay skinheads in the 1980s. It’s not something I know much about. But I do remember sitting in the Nags Head in Covent Garden with a few of the early Oi crowd when a couple of punk girls first brought up the subject. It was the late summer of 1980, and we were sceptical. None of us had knowingly encountered a gay skin, but the women insisted that there were a few to be found in Soho clubs and pubs. Our attitudes were pretty typical of young working class men of the time, we found it funny. We weren’t so much homophobic as unaware. Our idea of homosexuality had been shaped by TV sitcoms and blue collar stand-up comedians like Mike Reid who used to joke that he’d dropped his wallet in theatrical circles and kicked it home rather than risk bending over in such company. Puerile I know, but of its time. No-one then looked at stand-ups to be the voice of revolution. Even the Trotskyist IS/SWP (which I’d been a member of), were hostile to the gay rights agenda, breaking up a gay caucus organised by comrades Bob Cant and Don Milligan. Back then even Elton John was in the closet...
Our second-hand experience of older gay men was more disturbing. The music business was rife with predators back then, from the Walton Hop to the biggest record companies. One good friend of mine in a punk band was targeted by a powerful gay TV pop executive who acted as blatantly as Harvey Weinstein did with starlets many years later. (My own close encounter with the late great Frankie Howerd came later that decade – and he tried it on in a restaurant when my wife had gone to the loo. Ooh, err, missus, no thanks. Not that is stopped me campaigning to get him back on telly).
It’s well documented that punk incubated in Soho gay clubs but it took Tom Robinson, a polite middle class ex private school-boy from a folk trio, to really push gay issues into the pop spotlight. His 1978 Rising Free ep included ‘Sing If You’re Glad To Be Gay’ and carried the Gay Switchboard number on it sleeve. It was Tom’s second hit after ‘Motorway’. Did it change attitudes? Maybe some. When I watched Tom perform it at the Anti-Nazi League festival in Victoria Park most straight blokes in the crowd looked distinctly uncomfortable, but for gay people it must have been inspirational and liberating. My attitude has always been each to their own – even when I was writing lame, and frequently misinterpreted jokes for a certain infamous red top 30odd years ago. Looking back, it shouldn’t have surprised us that the hyper-masculine skinhead image appealed strongly to gay blokes. But what did shock one famous street-punk band was a gig in West Germany way back in the early eighties. A small gang of German skins came backstage after the show. The biggest one promptly dropped his Levis and asked if they were ready for “skinhead love”. He was sorely disappointed. We didn’t see that kind of thing at the Bridgehouse, Canning Town.
Nov 27. Here it is, Merry Christmas! Four decades on from Oi! – The Album, here comes the anniversary waltz: Oi! 40 Years Untamed featuring brand new tracks from the greatest street-punk bands in the world, old and new. Get it on vinyl from Pirates Press for $14.99 or from your local record store (Plastic Head are the UK distributors). Cheers. Full tracklisting: 1. Cock Sparrer - Take It On The Chin 2. Crashed Out - Against All Odds 3. Bishops Green - We Decide 4. Stomper 98 - Bessere Zeiten 5. Doug & The Slugz - Friday In Old Town 6. Lion's Law - Pathfinder 7. The Old Firm Casuals - Noddy Holder (Bootboy Mix) 8. The Drowns - One More Pint 9. Cockney Rejects - Wish You Weren't Here 10. The Last Resort - New Disease 11. The Gonads - Federales 12. Prole - Sawdust Caesars 13. Gimp Fist - One Shot 14. The Business - You Know My Name 15. NOi!SE - Life In The Shade
Nov 3. Anyone who wants to hear me banging on about comedy and variety with ventriloquist Steve Hewlett can catch an earful here. Either I was channelling the Chipmunks or I’d over-done the coffee.
Nov 1st. Here’s my chat with prog rock legend Fish from Marillion.
And here’s another with Pete Langford of the Barron Knights, the only British band ever to tour with the Beatles and the Stones. Ian Dury said: “No band has made it until the Barron Knights have spoofed them!”
Oct 29. I was genuinely gutted to hear that we’ve lost Bobby Ball. He was such a lovely, funny man. I first met Cannon & Ball in the 80s. They were playing Blackpool North Pier and the warmth of their audience would have defrosted Iceman. People loved them. Lots of people. In 1985 they put more bums on seats here than Bruce Springsteen – and he’d filled Wembley Stadium twice. Their act had been honed the hard way, in northern working men’s clubs. Tommy Cannon was the straight man, Bobby the braces-twanging clown with temper tantrums. It was Bobby we warmed to initially, but Tommy who made us misty-eyed, sweeping his 5ft4 partner into his arms as he sang The Wind Beneath My Wings. Together they had a perfect mix of slapstick and pathos. The duo broke box office records at the London Palladium, and regularly attracted 18million TV viewers; 20million at Christmas. Playgrounds echoed with cries of “Rock on, Tommy!” Once a £20-a-week welder Bobby, born Robert Harper, reacted to fame and fortune like a Lotto winner, piddling money away on cocaine, booze and womanizing. He splashed out on a nightclub (Braces), bought a Roller and a 42ft cabin cruiser; he liked a fight too. By his own admission he wasn’t a nice person until he found God in 1986 (as Tommy did in ’93).
But when I knew Bobby best, he couldn’t have been better company. Unforgettable highlights were late nights in the Queen’s hotel, Blackpool, down near South Pier, where Bobby and other great northern comics – Mick Miller, Johnnie Casson, Buddy Lee, sometimes Chubby Brown – would drink into the early hours after their shows, keeping the bar crackling with jokes, anecdotes and laughter. He was always funny, even when he was grumpy; always a pro too – he never gave a half-hearted performance.
We filmed Bobby for ITV’s Bushell On The Box – in a mock documentary section about the endangered species, the working class comedian. He also once talked me into dressing up as a panto dame – let’s hope that picture never gets out... The last time we worked together we were judges on a talent show on North Pier. As soon as he was mic’d up, Bobby had the audiences in stitches. He couldn’t help himself. It might be a cliché to say he had funny bones, but it’s also the truth. ITV’s Wheeltappers And Shunters Club broke Bobby and Tommy nationally. It was hard to resist their energy and rough-edged charm. The Cannon & Ball Show followed in 1979. But they never developed for TV as Morecambe & Wise had done. A bad film, followed by flop sitcoms and the rise of colder, trendier, more “fashionable” comedians put paid to their primetime career. TV bosses decreed that variety comedy was finished. Even, bizarrely on variety shows. It took years before Cannon & Ball were back on the box regularly again. For Bobby, acting was the key. He appeared in Last Of The Summer Wine, Heartbeat and Mount Pleasant, and starred as Lee Mack’s feckless father Frank in Lee Mack’s Not Going Out. He once said “All I want written on my gravestone is ‘He gave us a laugh’.” You did that, Bob. In spades.
Oct 11. In today’s Sunday Express Review – my second interview with the great John Cooper Clarke, the Bard of Salford, just 42 years after the first one...
Oct 9. I’m chatting to comedian Geoff Norcott on his What Most People Think podcast. It’s a shame we didn’t get around to Boris who has gone from cavalier to roundhead faster than a piece rate circumciser.
I’ve just been asked for my six favourite albums – the ones I’d take to a desert island. My answers were apparently “a shock” because I kicked off with Kind Of Blue and Led Zeppelin II. “Not punk” they said. Well, duh. Sorry, loved punk, but I’m not kicking out Dark Side Of The Moon for All Mod Cons. It’s hard enough finding space for Marty Robbins. Ramones definitely. Never Mind The Bollocks maybe. Then the Boss and Sabbath can slug it out with Exile On Main Street. Oh but wait. What about Nevermind? Dookie? Tighten Up Vol 2? Talking Book? What’s The Story Morning Glory? Bugger. Despite what Boris tells us, ten is always a lot better than six.
Ask for my six favourite TV shows though, and the answer is set in stone. From the US: The Sopranos, Seinfeld and The Simpsons. From the UK: Minder, The Sweeney and Porridge. Huge apologies to Del-Boy, The Avengers, The Shield, Hancock’s Half Hour, Bewitched, Fawlty Towers, Game Of Thrones, 24, Sharpe’s Rifles, Frasier, Life On Mars, House Of Cards, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet... (continued the Red Lion).
Sept 25. What’s all this about? Find out in November....
Sept 24. Interesting to see jumped up US Congressmen telling Britain to “give back” the Elgin marbles to Greece (Thomas Bruce bought them legitimately in the early 19th Century). It’s almost as if the Yanks have forgotten that they “acquired” Manhattan from the Algonquian Native Americans for 60 guildas a couple of hundred years before that. No doubt they will want to signal their virtue by giving back that great city first. Sept 23. Last night’s Rancid Sounds of Glory mash-up on Spreaker is here.
You can also find it on Google Podcasts
here, and on Spotify
here.
Sept 13. Mod vs 2-Tone? Those were the days....
AUG 15. It was gutting to hear of the death of Pete Way of UFO yesterday. Pete was one of the last great rock ’n’ roll wild men – one of the few people ever branded “a bad influence” on Ozzy Osbourne by Sharon who banished him from Ozzy’s company. Consider that for a moment. How many gallons of booze and fistfuls of narcotics would you have to consume to be viewed as a bad influence on Ozzy?!? Whatever you’re thinking, double it. Pete, who turned 69 this month, was certainly a bad influence on me, but he was always tremendous fun to be around. (On tomorrow’s Gonads’ blog we reproduce the full story of the time Pete and I formed the Unidentified Cockney Gonads with Micky Geggus, Tony Van Frater and RD for one glorious gig/weekend in Leeds). But let’s not forget that for all his breakfast beers Pete was also a tremendous musician and a sensational bassist – he played the bass like a lead guitarist, thrusting himself rampantly into the limelight. He was a huge influence on other bands too. Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris worshipped him, as did Twisted Sister and the Cockney Rejects. Slash was a massive fan. He was a hard man not to love and I’m going to miss the big lug. Much love to Pete’s family at this difficult time.
“No U-turn, no change” brags Gavin Williamson in today’s Times, as if blighting the futures of a generation of A-Level students with an iffy algorithm system were some noble cause rather than just the latest cock-up from our useless clownocracy. The A-Level fiasco is just another let-down from Boris’s bunglers as they stagger from one disaster to the next. When it comes to Covid, common sense has gone down the gurgler as ministers change policy on a whim. Thousands of Brits have now been forced to leg it home from France for no apparent reason. Large swathes of France have lower infection rates than say Lancashire, so why not distinguish between regions? Why are travellers from low-risk Bretagne threatened with quarantine when those from high-risk Catalonia are not? Worse, these panic-driven knee-jerk reactions hamper the economic recovery Britain desperately needs. I don’t think clusterfuck does the situation justice. Unemployment soars, our ex-servicemen are still being persecuted, our borders remain porous, the House of Lords is packed to the point of absurdity with undeserving duffers, virtue-signalling rules the roost and criminals get the kid gloves treatment from the courts. Can anyone tell us in what way a Boris government is different from one led by Sir Keir Starmer?
I’m closing this blog down for a bit. Details of the next book launch and library session will be up shortly here.
Feb 23. Well that was worth getting up for. Tyson Fury dominated Deontay Wilder from the off in their high stakes rematch, battering the Brown Bomber over six and a half brutal rounds. Fury floored the previously unbeaten Yank twice to win the WBC heavyweight belt by a TKO. The Gypsy King never looked in trouble. At one point he even licked his opponent’s blood – he does love his mind-games. And after Wilder’s corner threw in the towel, Tyson still had the energy for a spot of karaoke. Perfect. Now bring on Joshua for the unifier.
Much has been written about the sad suicide of Caroline Flack, and the toxic pressures of social media and so on. Much less has been said about veterans like Eddie ‘Spud’ Murphy formerly of the Royal Highland Fusiliers who took his own life on Thursday. Friends say it looks likely that Eddie’s death was in response to the on-going, one-sided witch-hunt being conducted against British soldiers who served during The Troubles, soldiers who did their duty and have been shamefully betrayed by both the legal system and our Government. Is Boris Johnson really prepared to see our veterans endure political show trials? The clock is ticking. Action this day, Boris. Action this day.
Feb 22. The Democrats’ debate in Vegas was so aggressive it could have been on the undercard for tonight’s big fight. Poor old Mike “Loadsa Money” Bloomsberg got hammered from all directions. The New York Post likened the former New York mayor to “The turkey at a turkey shoot”. He was attacked for being a billionaire, called a racist, a sexist, and criticised for his NDAs. Bloomers may be rich, but he’s no debater. He’s cash rich, rhetoric poor. My friends in the States tell me hard-left socialist Bernie Sanders will win the nomination and then “lose gloriously” to Trump. The vote might be a damn sight closer than they imagine.
The cast of Friends are said to be getting $2m each to re-unite for an unscripted one-off special. Good luck with that. Most actors without a writer are as much use as a jockey without a horse.
Has anyone seen Boris? The PM seems to have gone into hiding rather than say, meet the poor sods hit by the floods. Poor show BoJo. You need less HS2 on the agenda and more H20.
Feb 11. If you hate the hounding of British army veterans please support Dennis Hutchings who is fighting to stop having to go on trial yet again for a fatal shooting in Ulster nearly half a century ago. Dennis, 78 – who has kidney failure and heart disease – has already been tried and cleared twice over the death of John-Pat Cunningham in June 1974. There is no new evidence, no witnesses and no fresh information, yet he has been accused of attempted murder and is due to stand trial – without a jury – on 9th March. As he launched a crowd-funding drive today, Mr Hutchings said: “I spent 26 years serving my country and now I am being hung out to dry like a common criminal. I want to put the Government in a position where they make good on their promise to protect veterans from these ludicrous witch-hunts so no one else is thrown to the wolves. It is disgusting. I’ve spent five years’ on bail when I’m a sick man. And still they’ve come up with no new evidence. The politicians have got to get off their backsides and get on with looking after ex-soldiers.”
Dennis, from Cornwall, a former member of the Life Guards, intends to bring a Judicial Review on the grounds that British veterans are suffering “discriminatory treatment” by the criminal justice system. His lawyers believe that the new trial contravenes Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. On the wrongful killing Mr Hutchings says: “On 15 June 1974 John Patrick Cunningham was shot and killed in Northern Ireland. This was a tragic incident. I did not shoot Mr Cunningham. I was arrested at the time and after an investigation I was informed in writing that the Director of Public Prosecutions had directed that I would not be prosecuted. In 2011 the Historic Enquiries Unit of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) cold-case reviewed this matter and again I was told no action would be taken against me. Then, out of the blue, on 21 April 2015 I was arrested at my home in England by police officers from Northern Ireland and taken the same day to Belfast where I was held for four days and interviewed on numerous occasions; more times, I’m told than Harold Shipman, believed to be history’s most prolific serial killer. I was then charged with Attempted Murder. I have been fighting this case ever since.”
When Dennis Hutchings was arrested the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland was Barra McGrory QC, whose clients had included Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and who first came to national prominence when he took a case to Strasbourg arguing that the killing of three IRA operatives in Gibraltar by the SAS had been unnecessary; a jury trial in Gibraltar previously found that the terrorists had been shot lawfully. (Mr McGrory says that he has also represented Loyalist paramilitaries and police officers). Yes the death of John-Pat, a young man with learning difficulties, was a shocking waste of an innocent life, but no more so than most of the victims of the Troubles. Ninety per cent of the 3,720 killings in Northern Ireland were at the hands of terrorists, yet veterans who served at the height of the IRA’s terror campaign are 54 times more likely to face prosecution than Republican paramilitaries. Stop the witch-hunt. Support Dennis Hutchings here.
Feb 11. A brand new Sounds of Glory show goes live tonight at 11pm on Second City Radio including tracks from The Cars, Ten Pole Tudor, The Jam, The Monkees, The Undertones, Dennis Brown and many more. It’s a proper old school din and no mistake.
Feb 10. Thank you Street Sounds for making my 60s crime novel, All Or Nothing, your ‘Pulp Fiction Book Of The Year’. You can buy it for £6.99 direct from here. Or if you want a signed copy, order it here.
The next reading and Q&A session will be at Paddington Library next month; details to follow. About All Or Nothing: London 1966. The Swinging City, awash with youthful creativity, music and fashion, excitement and opportunity. And beneath Soho’s glittering promise lurk the shadowy men who cynically exploit it, the gangsters supplying the drugs, the women, the knocked-off booze and whatever else you need to get you through the night... if the price is right. Men like Steve Knight an East End Mod with a small gang and a big dream. Steve is smart enough but is he hard enough to see it through? With the Richardsons banged up and the shadow of the law starting to fall on the Kray Twins, smaller firms are jockeying for position. And as the violence escalates, and the police start to take notice, the Knight brothers have one of their own to worry about... In this brash, exotic, disturbing new London, only one thing is certain: not all of them will make it through alive.
Feb 9. The launch party for my 2-Tone and Mod 40th anniversary books will now happen in London on the 4th April. Get in touch if you fancy coming along. Watch the Garry Bushell page on Facebook for other events.
I’m chatting to veteran DJ Johnnie Walker about his incredible rise from “outlaw” pirate radio to national treasure, via punk rock promoter... only in today’s Sunday Express.
Senior Treasury officials are discussing hiking up taxes to pay for Johnson’s economic policies according to today’s Telegraph. Rumours that they’re currently being advised by Thomas Picketty cannot be confirmed or denied. Mansion taxes and pension raids don’t sound very Conservative to me, but then BoJo is already showing signs of being no different from all the others. He’s wrong on Huawei, he’s backing HS2, he’s banning journalists from briefings, he looks likely to sell out our veterans etc etc. If the Tories “soak the rich” in southern England they will betray their core voters, opening their flank to attack from Nigel Farage – or anyone else who believes in low tax, small government and any combination of law & order, border controls and traditional family and community. Brexit voters will have to watch these slippery bastards like hawks.
Feb 7. Labour dominated Newham Council in East London have proudly tweeted about their Drag Queen Story Times “for under-5s and their parents and carers” at Canning Town Library tonight. That’s not a misprint. Under-5s!! You don’t have to be a raging reactionary to raise an eyebrow, glittered or otherwise, about this. And Labour wonder why they’re losing working class voters...
Feb 4. Why are the government banning journalists from Downing Street briefings? Are they taking lessons from Trump, Putin or the Saudis? Rather than restrict access to his favoured publications – The Times, The Telegraph, Viz comic etc – Boris should embrace press freedom. Worrying.
Feb 1. Seven men pleaded guilty to terrorist charges arising from a covert MI5 operation against the Continuity IRA (CIRA) last week. They were members of a terrorist organisation, training to murder and amassing weapons and information. The police call it “One of the most significant terrorism cases in recent times”. Yet incredibly all seven have been released on bail. Why wasn’t this scandal front page news? And why are the authorities apparently obliged to tip-toe around Irish terrorists? They should be treated no differently from Jihadis.
Jan 31. Happy Independence Day! There’s a lot of work to be done of course, but we have finally got our nation – and our democracy – back. The worst part of the last 1317 days has been the repeated claims by Remainers that anyone who voted Leave was at best thick and at worst narrow-minded, bigoted and probably xenophobic...simply because we wanted to make our own laws, police our own borders and leap free of the European Union’s draining mix of micro-regulation, uniformity and red tape. They were furious that the great unwashed failed to fall into line. The ruling class have hated this country, and England in particular, since the 1930s. It was genuinely bizarre to see “Labour” politicians lining up with the CBI, the banks, the BBC, the judiciary and the senior echelons of the civil service to trot out the same old doom-mongering nonsense. They’ll have to change to survive. Ranting rent-a-gobs like Terry Christian will keep banging on until their hearts explode, but sensible Remainers realise that there is no going back. The country needs to come together and work together. It’s been said that Britain can be “Hong Kong to the EU’s China”. I like the sentiment but who really believes the unaccountable monolith of the EU will last as long as China? Most Leave voters love Europe, its people and its cultures, as I do. Let’s hope other European countries follow our lead and vote to carve out their own destinies too, as allies and friends.
Jan 20. Watching the documentary Rush: Time Stand Still reminded me what a technically superb drummer Neil Ellwood Peart was – both intricate and explosive. Even his fills were detailed. Dave Grohl called him “another species of drummer”. Canadian Peart, who died aged 67 earlier this month, was the main lyric writer for the wildly complex geek-friendly rock band. His huge futuristic drum kit was likened to an industrial plant. Rush had elements of conceptual prog rock, metal, and a tendency to quote from classical composers. Peart’s lyrics added to the unorthodox mix. A follower of Ayn Rand, he scandalised the NME back in 1978 by telling them Britain had been “ruined” by socialism. Later he claimed he’d become a “bleeding heart libertarian”. Farmer’s son, Neil was inspired to drum by Keith Moon. Ginger Baker, Gene Krupa and John Bonham were major influences too. He joined Rush in 1974. Gene Simmons of Kiss joked that Neil, Geddy Lee (born Gary Weinrib) and Alex Lifeson were the ugliest band in rock, “too ugly to get laid”. Never orthodox, Peart preferred to travel to gigs on his BMW R1200GS than on Rush’s luxury tour bus – he wrote books about his road trips. Travel was his way of coping with the loss of his 19-year-old daughter Selena and common-law wife Jacquelyn in the late 90s. He married rock photographer Carrie Nuttall in 2000 and is survived by her and their daughter Olivia. In 2015 Neil retired after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. He was a hugely talented, free-thinking musician who despised the over-commercialisation of the music industry. He told Rolling Stone that rock was “about being your own hero... I set out to never betray the values that 16-year-old had, to never sell out, to never bow to the man. A compromise is what I can never accept.”
Jan 19. I’m talking to Penn Jillette and 1970s Liverpool soul sensations The Real Thing in today’s Sunday Express. Here’s one story deemed too rude for the printed page. Penn dated Debbie Harry for three years in the 80s and told me that he’d invented a sexual device for her pleasure. He called it the Jill-Jet and swears it was extremely effective, although those weren’t quite the words he used... Talking of things we couldn’t print, last year I asked Gavin & Stacey star Larry Lamb how he relaxed and he immediately replied “I have one off the wrist”. Lovely.
Jan 18. It looks like the belated book launch party for my Mod and 2-Tone books will now be happening in Shoreditch, East London at the end of February. Please get in touch if you’d like to come. We’ll have copies of my novels available on the night too.
Equity’s response to Laurence Fox’s entertaining appearance on Question Time is entirely predictable. As “liberal progressives” they can’t tolerate anyone with different views. Denounce him! Purge him! Hate-hate-hate!
Jan 16. Half a million? That’s how much the House of Commons's Commission reckons it would cost if the Great Bell of Big Ben bonged to celebrate leaving the EU at 11pm on January 31. £500K! It didn’t cost that on New Year’s Eve. It’s £14,200 usually. Ah but the contractors say they’d have to reinstate a floor underneath Big Ben that was removed this month, and then reinstall the temporary equipment needed to make the bell sound. Yeah, yeah. I know a couple of scaffolders who’d sort it for a grand, cash in hand, no questions asked. If not, we have the bells recorded don’t we? So why not just hire a PA and crank up the volume? It’d give us the symbolism and embody the spirit of can-do Blighty.
Jan 14. Labour’s potential leaders look about as inspiring as Norwich City. It’s like trying to choose between arsenic and strychnine. I grew up in a Labour household in south east London and was a member of the party up until 1986, so it saddens me to see them committing electoral suicide. Their useless candidates include Lady Nugee, who famously sneered at the English flag, a continuity Corbyn drone and a knighted millionaire lawyer who tried his best to overturn the referendum result. Labour isn’t the party of Clement Atlee and Harold Wilson any more. They’ve been replaced by a strange breed of “woke” middle class liberals and bourgeois Marxists who care more about fashionable fringe issues than everyday challenges. Their narrow orthodoxies and blinkered views – on everything from family and law and order to gender identity, via defence, border controls and knife crime – are more likely to lose the votes of concerned citizens than convert them. You rarely hear them talk about homes and jobs, and they seem to have no understanding of aspiration. In contrast Old Labour spoke to the British working class and addressed their problems. Old Labour was patriotic. Old Labour supported grammar schools as a means of undermining the class system, and law and order as a means of punishing predators. They were conservative with a small c – unlike the Tories who don’t seek to conserve much at all. They would have been horrified to see British soldiers being hounded through the courts. (What’s happened to Boris’s promise to stop that?). Corbynistas would say Old Labour failed as we still live in a capitalist country. But firstly when they had the reins of power, Labour created the NHS, established the Open University, nationalised the railways etc, and secondly history has shown time after time that command economies don’t work. You have to ride the tiger of the free market while taming its excesses. If Labour can’t speak for the working class, someone else will... but I don’t think a new party will come from “the far right”. The far right barely exists in the UK, except in the fevered imagination of the far Left who behave more like fascists than any other organised grouping in the country. It was bizarre last year to see trade unionist Eddie Dempsey of the RMT get “no-platformed” by Oxford graduate Owen Jones for daring to make the leftwing case for Brexit. Dagenham-born fire-fighter Paul Embery was suspended from the FBU executive council for the same reason. Embery supports the Blue Labour tendency that essentially stands for all the things that once made the Labour Party successful. Britain needs a credible opposition that stands up for the man and woman on the street, a Democratic People’s Party that can offer stability, freedom and progress; a party genuinely for the many and not the right-on few. Sir Keir won’t deliver that.
Just one thought on Megxit: did no one ever explain to Meghan the difference between royalty and celebrity? I wish her and Harry well but can you honestly see it lasting?
Jan 13. R.I.P. philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, one of the brightest and bravest conservative thinkers of our age. It took (and takes) real guts to speak freely in the face of mob intolerance. Here’s the interview I did with the great man on my old GBH radio show.
Jan 12. Gwyneth “Pepper Potts” Paltrow has produced a candle called This Smells Like My Vagina. Sadly I have no way of knowing if it does, but many of Gwyn’s off-screen activities seem to revolve around her fanny. When she isn’t steam-cleaning it, she’s poking jade eggs up there. It’s what they do in California. But would the media be quite so enthusiastic if Ozzy Osbourne marketed a candle called This Smells Like My Cock? At least it’d be the right shape.
Jan 1st 2020. Happy New Year!! I’m sorry the rate of blog entries here has plummeted like Holly Willoughby’s cleavage of late; work is pretty hectic, but I will keep you up to date with book news, readings etc as often as I can. As always, thanks for reading and all the best for the Roaring Twenties!
Random irritations: 1) constant “Remain” propaganda on social media predicting post-Brexit doom and gloom but oddly never mentioning the stagnant German economy or the French transport strike, now in its fifth week. The Yellow Vests’ protests have been going on all year. Chomeur en avant! 2) “Veganuary” propaganda, the only vegan I know really well bangs on about their superior diet but is constantly ill. They need to take supplements to supply the nutrients missing from their grub, small but vital things like Vitamins B12, A & C, iron and zinc. 3) Climate change hypocrisy – the BBC just devoted a whole edition of Radio 4’s Today programme to Greta Thunberg, and to make it they flew to Stockholm. That’s right, flew, by air, in a passenger jet. The idea of taking a ferry presumably didn’t occur to these over-privileged numb nuts.
Rock music ages constantly. It may be the soundtrack of teenage rebellion, but nowadays its leading practitioners look more like the cast of The Last Of The Summer Wine. Paul McCartney, 77, and Aerosmith with Steve Tyler, 71, headline Glastonbury this year, while the biggest UK arena tour is an 80s classical package including Jimmy Somerville, Belinda Carlisle, Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, Carol Decker and the Royal Philharmonic Concert orchestra. Rock’n’roll! Um, no. But big business all the same. This last decade has belonged to K-Pop, EDM, and acts like Kanye, Kendrick, Arianne, Adele and Beyoncé. I admit, I was more interested in urchins like Missing Andy, the chippy Essex boys who turned out minor masterpieces like Dave, Scum and Made In England. At the protest end of popular music, Louise Distras has emerged as the most significant new artist in the UK. Check out Dreams From The Factory Floor and watch out for her new album which is even better. Globally, the Arctic Monkeys’ fifth album, 2013’s AM, was the Sheffield boys’ best yet, with Alex Turner’s slippery lyrics married to everything from g-funk to heavy rock riffs with a side order of John Cooper Clarke.
In actual rock, Rival Sons got better and better ending the decade with the blistering Led Zep influenced Feral Dogs, and heavy blues based rock enjoyed a live revival around bands like the Graveltones. In what now must be fourth generation Ska, the genuinely exciting Interrupters burst onto the California scene with their magnificent anthem Take Back The Power. They tour Britain next month with support from London’s Buster Shuffle who have echoes of Madness and Chas & Dave and go down well with audiences from Madrid to Mexico City. There’s an obvious punk/2-Tone influence in the Bar Stool Preachers too (check out One Fool Down). Beach Slang are probably the best youngish pop-punk combo around. While older punk names like Penetration and Stiff Little Fingers continue to produce excellent new work.
Street punk has had new lease of life with audiences all over the globe and plenty of young up-and-coming bands abound; but for my money the best albums of the decade came from those relative oldies Argy Bargy – who sounded like an angrier Jam on Hopes, Dreams, Lies & Schemes – the even older guard Cockney Rejects (East End Babylon) and Cock Sparrer (Forever), and the sprightly youth, cough, who constitute the Old Firm Casuals (Holger Danske). The London/Poland combo Booze & Glory may be controversial but songs like Only Fools Get Caught, Carry On and Blood From A Stone put them streets ahead of most rivals. In Germany, Stomper 98 had actual hits. French band Lion’s Law continue to impress. And Oi bands continue pop up everywhere from Brazil to Japan. Too many self-styled punks are obsessed with some imaginary “purity” but there’s no purity in obscurity. Raw rock ’n’ roll with a message of backstreet rebellion, freedom, protest and working class patriotism has to be carried into the heart of the charts if it aspires to mean a light. Gawd knows we need it.