Gertsamtkunstwerk

Goodnight from him

I clicked onto the internet by accident yesterday and exclaimed Ronnie Barker died!"

Then I thought, well, he was 76, which, whilst hardly old by modern standards is nevertheless 'a good innings'.

Then I remembered I was never really a fan. I didn't find him or the even less funny one particularly funny; on occasion I found their sexism to be lazy, old-fashioned and insulting.

Walking round the building yesterday, where many of the TVs are tuned to NNC BBC News 24, I saw various highlights of his career. Slowly, dimly, I remembered one vaguely funny sketch from The Two Ronnies - it involved an orchestra, and they did their laundry in the timpani.

They then showed an excerpt from Open All Hours. I recalled I never much liked it when it was shown on Sunday nights on BBC1. I have seen it again recently, and will admit that it contains a pathos that would have been lost on a younger me. Still, wasn't a classic of comedy.

And I never got Porridge at all.

So, sad, but, really, those Golden Ages were not all they're cracked up to be.

Morecambe and Wise - now, they were funny. Often hilariously so.

Happy Birthday Joseph

Longtime readers will remember March, when Joseph took over the reins of this blog in my absence on a City Break Beginning With B.

Today, Joseph is 10

<div align="center">Christmas 1998 (Peace on Earth...!)</div>
It only seems like yesterday when he was born.

Just before he was born, his godmother phoned to say I had just exchanged on my house. I then sat down to watch Tony Blair's sppeech to Conference, the first time Bambi really impressed me.

The evening news was torn between headlining on OJ Simpson's acquittal and the start of Rosemary West's trial.

On this day in 1952, tea rationing ended.

Celebrity birthdays:

1916: James Herriot
1925: Gore Vidal
1936: Steve Reich
1938: Eddie Cochran
1941: Ruggero Raimondi
1941: Chubby Checker
1954: Al Sharpton
1964: Clive Owen
1969: Gwen Stefani

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSEPH

Gramophone Awards

Gramophone
announced its awards on Thursday, and I quite forgot to blog it.

I did a preview - of sorts - a few weeks ago. I think I sort of knew that John Eliot Gardiner would win, on the basis of having the best celebrity backer.

But I completely misunderstood the role of Classic FM listeners. And their function...

The listeners of Classic FM voted for their own Listeners’ Choice Award, and the winner was Plácido Domingo, whose extraordinary year culminated in a magnificent recording of one of the great tenor roles, Wagner’s Tristan, for EMI.

He really is the complete modern musician," James Jolly editor of Gramophone magazine said.

Guardian and BBC also carried the story.

I expect my hard copy of Gramophone will arrive in the post any day now.

Careers advice at Primary School?

Five-year-olds to be given careers advice

A few years ago I audited a school. In the school hall was a display by Year 1 of what they wanted to be when they grew up. A fair mixture of girls and boys wanted to be pop stars, most of the rest of the boys footballers and girls hairdressers. One boy wanted to be a priest.

When I was in the Infants most of the boys wanted to be train drivers and the girls air hostesses. We got more sophisticated in the juniors. Over-ambitious I would say. One girl wanted to be a brain surgeon. She's now a GP. One boy wanted to be an astronaut. Nowadays he sends unmanned rockets into space. I was going to Prime Minister. (Let's gloss over that, shall we...)

Strange news

On the seventh day, America went to court

I learnt at an early age you shouldn't believe everything you read in the papers.

I always try to apply a note of scepticism to a story - sometimes, just a nuance of interpretation can turn round the underlying meaning.

But sometimes you just have to conclude that the newspaper must be lying, because the story is so incredible it can't be explained away by nuance.

Last week one of the plaintiffs testified that her 14-year-old daughter was being abused by fellow pupils at school because she believes in evolution...64 per cent of people questioned for a recent poll said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution in schools, while 38 per cent favoured replacing evolution with creationism...40 per cent of Americans believe God will eventually intervene in human affairs and bring about an end to life on Earth, according to a survey carried out in 2002. Of those believers, almost half thought this would occur in their lifetime with a return of Jesus from heaven...1 adult American in five believes that the Sun revolves around Earth, according to one study carried out last summer.

Recently read...

I pre-ordered it and it arrived promptly on publishing day. And then sat on my coffee table for two weeks. Why did I want to read a footballer's memoirs?

I read a lot when I was younger, especially in my early teens. At that age they give a fascinating insight into the glamorous world of football, but even then, you don't expect great works of literature. Nevertheless, looking back, and, indeed, looking at some I have read in more recent years, one has to conclude that Footballer's Memoirs, as a genre, on the whole are pretty appalling.

It's not that they're badly written, after all, they're mainly ghost written by journalists. Let's face it, who, other than writers actually write their own autobiographies. (Well, okay, politiicans. I haven't read Bill Clinton's, which ought to be fascinating, because, reportedly, it's full of long, turgid prose and it almost unreadable. ) The problem is, most footballers don't really have anything to say. Once they have shopping-listed their career successes, their injuries, their goals, what more is there to say?

And, I have to say, Lee Sharpe's memoirs are a perfect example by contrast of why footballers' memoirs are so boring. His are interesting, and analytical, and contain a surprising level of self-awareness. That didn't entirely surprise me. When he was at his prime, I used to buy a video magazine about Manchester United; he featured heavily, being so telegenic. He always struck me as articulate, and intelligent. (I have to say that I didn't watch more than fifteen minutes of Celebrity Love Island, despite his presence).

Although, obviously, it's difficult to tell how much is him and how much the ghost writer, there are some extraordinary descriptions of the unglamorous side of football including  his days as an apprentice at Torquay. Fascinating portrayal of life as a young professional at Manchester United. And interesting insight and analysis into the psyches of Alex Ferguson and Roy Keane. I don't think Fergie comes out of it very well. Not that Sharpey is nasty, he just highlights Fergie's shortcomings, and concludes with extraordinary high praise for him. And he explains Fergie's shortcomings by his limited background.

He describes when he was at Bradford, at age about thirty, he decided to enrol on a course, aimed primarily at business people, about motivation, positive thinking etc.  It was a revelation to him that something so simple could actually be so effective. All the time previously in his career, it had been about fear - fear of the opponenets, fear of making a mistake, fear of failure. Yet he believes that by telling people they can do it, or writing a positive score on the wall before a game can dispel many of the self-doubts. He says all he ever wanted to do was go out and play football, he wasn't even bothered about medals. He wanted to feel the ball at his feet. And to earn big money and attract beautiful women.

He was shocked when on loan at Portsmouth, Graham Rix took the more experienced players aside, and, whilst emphasising that his word was final, he wished to hear their views. This was a shock to Sharpey , because hitherto, he had been used to having to do what he was told, unquestioningly. Even to the extent that Fergie ordered him to move out of the house he shared with his grlfriend and move back into digs.

He illustrates how much has football has changed since he joined Torquay in 1987 and United in 1988; sometimes it's so easy to forget. I suppose what is most noticeable is the extent to which managers like Fergie, for all his proven track record, really are a dying breed. He talks about Sam Allardyce at Bolton, and how they have teams of psychologists.

It's also interesting to read what he has to say about his cohort of players and how little they were taught about to live their lives, in contrast to that cohort (four years younger) of Beckham, Scholes, Butt, the Nevilles. He's funny about the Nevilles, without ever - quite - being cruel.

I would say it is a must-read for any Manchester United fan, and highly recommended to any football fans. Totally essential if you're a Sharpey fan, of course.

I know it sounds silly, considering that this is a former Manchester United and England player, with an impressive list of honours, but I sort of thing that this is the waste of a good brain. I know he's getting more into punditry, and he hints that the Celebrity Love Island thing has opened the door for more TV work, but, even though I know the book was ghost-written, I can tell that the originator is Sharpe just not by name.