I once got in trouble on a BBC radio programme for describing The Beatles as ‘just a psychedelic Abba’.

I had a knack for saying the completely right wrong thing as a broadcaster at the time…

Witness ‘Daniel O’Donnell is so middle of the road he should be run over…’

It was all just too much for the fey little self-vaping backroom luvvies at the British Boring Corporation and my talking head career was finally decapitated.

(It was my thoughts on Britain’s ‘poor’ farmers that did me in – I live in a farming community, so I know that many ‘poor’ farmers actually live in country piles set in acres of green and pleasant land, drive Range Rovers and wobble around on top of their pet horses for an hour every evening. Yep, the Ban Banksy Corporation objected!)

I think the BBC misunderstood me though, why am I not allowed to say ABBA are better than the Beatles – certainly Agnetha was sexier – to me anyway – than Paul and Benny had a nicer nose than Ringo!

AND – wait for it! Wait for it! The grand band of pop schlock are back in the public eye with their ABBA Voyage event will begin in London on 27 May. It is a full concert experience, performed by ABBA avatars (ABBAtars)

So, here’s where ABBA stand in this ol’ rocker’s top ten bands … enjoy!

#abba #beatles #paulmcartney #ringostarr #georgeharrison #johnlennon #agnetha #voyage #abbavoyage

My man is not for changing, says Mrs Zelensky

PICTURE: Olena Zelenska/Instagram

Volodymr Zelensky and his wife Olena are spending time together with their children in a major show of defiance to Monster of War Vladimir Putin.

Out of the blue a confetti of incendiary bombs and a congregation of mindless murderous uniformed morons left so many people fearing they didn’t even have a prayer.

Then diminutive former comedian and telly star Volodymr Zelensky stepped in to the half-light of horror. He became the determined face of defiance, strategy and resilience his people needed.

And while Putin flounders in the mud and blood of his own vile ambition, almost all of the rest of the world sees Zelensky as the man who can potentially save it. Unlike so many of them, he has never appeared to tremble at the increasingly rambling rants from bloated Putin.

Putin’s finger may be on the button – but Zelensky’s hand is on our hearts.

His wife Olena fled with their two children as war began. They sheltered in what is described as ‘safe space’ in Ukraine. Russia’s baying dogs of war couldn’t find Olena or the children, Oleksandra and Kyrylo, aged 17 and nine.

At the photo-shoot and Press conference, Mrs Zelenska said she was unsurprised that her husband had inspired the world with his leadership and resistance to Russia. 

She said: “Nobody takes my husband away from me, not even war.”

“‘I can’t say that Volodymyr has changed since the start of this war. He was a reliable husband and a reliable man before, and that he remains.

“His point of view hasn’t changed, the way he’s wired hasn’t changed.”

#ukraine #russia #moscow #zelensky #war #putin

Very sad to report this, Bob Neuwirth, one of Bob Dylan’s sidekicks died aged 82 a few days ago.

We would have reported this sooner but we’ve had ‘techy’ problems.

To many Dylan fans Bob Neuwirth was a dignified, often zany (to use an old fashioned word) but ‘ruthless’ part of Bob’s madcap world of creativity and passion.

It is said the Bob N would be Bob D’s ‘ruthless’ henchman when somebody – including Joan Baez – needed a nudge out of the way. He was also the put-down prince to Dylan’s king.

Dylan biographer, Daniel Mark Epstein, described him as: “The master of the revels – handsome, quick-witted and ruthless, he could cut someone to shreds with a well-timed insult or put-down, and then rescue them with a puckish smile.”

But he could be funny. For instance, he became famous for being the man with no head in the brilliant Subterranean Homesick Blues vid, shot in an alley near the Savoy hotel in London.

Born in Akron, Ohio, the son of Clara and Robert , Bob attended the school of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, and became a familiar figure as a singer and guitarist in local clubs when he met Dylan at the Indian Neck folk festival in Branford, Connecticut, in 1961.

Good on ya Bob!

#bobdylan #bobneuwirth #60s #joanbaez

A compendium of reviews of the last few months of Bob Dylan’s never-ending career

After Bob’s latest leg of his never-ending tour was brought to an abrupt halt by Covid, here at The Society we began curating thoughts, writing, reviews, vids and comments showing how, at 80 he is still refusing to look back.

He’s knocking on a bit but Bob is not an oldie’s act, he’s not a dinosaur of rock or a has-been living on past glories … he is a powerful, dramatic, entertaining, elusive, frustrating genius of a performer who has maintained that genius (more or less) for more than half a century.

As he re-ignited his tour it became like a temple in flames – incendiary, Mephistophelean lighting and a gentle touch to his renowned rough and rowdy ways, the media seemed to have a general lack of interest in reviewing his concerts. The odd one or two appeared in big US state newspapers and mags. But it was left to the man and the woman on the street to tell us all what it is like to see Bob Dylan on stage at this point in his long, long, long career.

So, here we are reproducing many of those reviews – with the writer’s permission and recognising Bill Pagel’s boblinks site – for your delectation!

CLICK HERE You searched for review – The Leigh G Banks Preservation Society

But we are sharing many insights and thoughts too … please join in and share your thoughts and memories with us all.

Cheers

Leigh

https://leighgbankspreservationsociety.blog/?s=review

#dylan #bob #neverending #tour #roughandrowdy

EE-k! The truth behind the internet and Britain’s rural life …

The internet zooms if, like Putin, you want to nuke the world – but not if you call granny from your English country garden…

Years ago now British governments clicked on the potent idea of super-fast broadband across the countryside from Ambridge to Middleton Scriven.

What a joke!

But Boris’s smug promise to “level up” our nation by providing next-generation-speed broadband to most homes within the next three years is about as useful as cyber spiders from Mars as people like me – those who live down the leafy lanes – are dumped by the hedgerows.

And this is according to parliament’s very 0wn slathery spending watchdog.

The report by the public accounts committee found that Boris and his boffins are just relying too much on BT Openreach and the likes of Virgin Media O2, to sign-in to Boris’s election manifesto pledge.

But these companies unfortunately focus on less costly urban conurbations across the country and are failing to deliver proper connectivity for those who live a little more remotely than London W1.

There is no doubt that chintzy cottage dwellers like me are being treated like village idiots.

So, here we have the true story of trying to get acceptable broadband in a commuter village equi-distant from Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds and the bizarre and arrogant way major players treat their customers.

The thing is, on the internet you can fight a war if, like Putin, you have your finger on the metaphorical button’

But if you chomp on a bit of straw like it’s a signal booster and talk to Bill and Ben about flower pots and a little weed, then you are flobber-lobbing f*cked!

If you live in a good signal area you can close down hospitals and governments as your fingers do the walking – you can find everything from how to make a chip shop curry to the best way of vaporising your next door neighbour.

The internet is an ignorant, arrogant, useless, unfeeling, uncaring robot of no determinable intelligence.

It purveys endless porn but also lets you share films of your little kittens. It tells you how to make bombs or commit suicide, extols conspiracy theories, lies without thought, fakes news designed to undermine society, allows you to accuse anybody of anything you feel like accusing them of, publishes pictures of carnage and horror. And steals your personal information and sells it to the highest bidder…

Wow! What an innovation – an invaluable link to the world’s secrets, sex, lies and video tapes.

AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR IT!

Trillions of pounds worldwide are pumped into this new age invisible man-woman by people like me (£60 a month FOR NOTHING), governments and businesses and disaffected groups across the world.

But what actually happens when a dissident group phones BT or EE – there are many other internet failures available – and says in a guttural voice: “Ello! Ello! I must have internet – I don’t care if it costs a bomb.”

Or what happened when old Vlad Put-it-in called and said: “I want to start a war involving obliterating a country and possibly nuking the world– can you do me a deal? I’m happy to have my mobile with you!”

Err, why doesn’t BT-ski or EE-ski just turn off Vlad’s internet because he’s been a naughty boy!

Well, the British equivalent trashed my account only a few days ago when I upset an Openreach engineer by complaining.

I was the messenger and they shot me a. because I’d complained about their service b. because I had no idea what the 2^nd and 5^th letter of my ex-wife’s mother’s maiden name is c. because I wanted my PA to speak to them and d. it was easier than getting me some broadband.

Do you know, all it appears Openreach had to do was re-instate the phone line we had cancelled, after 30 years, two days earlier. If they’d done that we could have plugged back in to our lives, no problem.

But they refused.

And, instead, told us to keep an eye out for the next few weeks AND MONTHS for any indication of fibre arriving at the brick toilet block of a ‘cabinet’ 15 feet across the road from our 300 year old cottage.

What a mirthless arrogant abrogating joke!

The problem is though, that they’re not longer afraid of me, the customer. They don’t need me or my business. There are plenty of other cyber-suckers waiting to be insulted by them.

No, I am just a customer! Yep, they just hang up on me when (a) they can’t solve the problem (b) I tell them off for incompetence (c) or they just get bored.

And so here I am, back in the Village of the Damned, after five years of travelling through 15 countries – we’ve had internet from Delhi to Doncaster, from Bratislava to Bolton and from Minnesota to Manchester.

But now I’m back in the garden of the UK, I’m left with no internet to speak of and I am condemned to spending hours talking to a robot masquerading as a human being.

This was what EE said two days after signing me up: “I’m sorry sir, but I can’t find an account for you.”

“But you’ve sent me two letters, two simcards!”

“I’m sorry sir, I realise you must be very frustrated but you have no right to talk to me like that!”

“Like what?”

“In that manner!”

(Pinch me! Have I just woke up!)
“What manor? I live in a cottage!”
“I’m sorry sir, I will not be spoken to in this way.”

And hung up.

Stupid robot!

So, I am left with an internet modem blinking at me like a one-eyed undertaker, nobody to communicate with, BT are sulking with me – and it’s costing me £60 a month!

UPDATE

DAY 7

EE confirmed they had mis-sold us a router which would never have worked at our property

After seven hours of trying to get somebody to sort it out we still have a service which is about as useful as a pair of dropped ‘b*ll*cks’…

To reach this point:

Seven EE operatives have tried to solve the problem – four hung up on us because things just got too difficult for them

EE operatives smugly told us that the internet they were supplying was perfect – and didn’t accept it didn’t work properly

Then, inexplicably, EE decided it was because my house consisted of flats – it doesn’t but Openreach told them it was, so who you gonna believe? Some robots who live in the cabinet across the road? Or the bloke who lives in the house?

The robots of course.

Then EE had a brainwave – they decided that we needed ‘fibre’ (I said I get enough fibre out of EE’s bullsh*t) – but then told us we couldn’t have it because there was no fibre in our village!

Yes there is!

DAY 9

I work nights for various broadcasters in the US so I wasn’t very impressed when the EE broadband team phoned before 8.30am, demanded to know the third and fourth letters of my ex-WIFE’S mother’s name and when I said I had no idea, they cancelled the order

Another EE operative then decided that the problem was because other people were living at the house. They weren’t/aren’t

EE are now apparently re-ordering our broadband and it could take two weeks to install! Who are they ordering it off, if nobody can supply it?

Yep, that endevour was doomed to failure

UPDATE:

It appears the problem is solved as far as EE is concerned – they say that the phone line used by broadband into our house is actually owned by ‘somebody else’ … BUT they won’t tell us who because of ‘data protection’

To help out, EE customer services refused to contact the ‘owner’ and get it sorted out – not within their job, they say!

EE customer services have decided to leave things as they are – perfect for them. They are not supplying broadband to us because it is too difficult. However, they are still taking our money

When we asked to be put on to a supervisor EE customer services told us that ALL their supervisors ‘are in a meeting’

UPDATE

We just received this message off EE – can anybody explain what it means exactly?

Hi,

You recently asked us to make some changes to what the user of mobile number can do with their SIM, which we’ve now done. This means they no longer have the control you gave them before.

Thanks,

The EE Team

UPDATE:

At about 4.30pm EE texted us saying that they were cancelling our order if we did not call them immediately. We did! They didn’t answer, so they cancelled our order!

EE then called us AGAIN to tell us they are not sure if we have fibre to the house – and told us it would take up to five days to confirm … 7 days since they pledged their service to us plus 5 days to confirm the fibre crisis plus 14 days to actually plug it in! That’s 26 days to potentially get broadband working for us – I could build a small telephone exchange in that time!

And so we wait for the next call!

We will update this as it happens – tell us you tales of woe too!

OOPS – AN UPDATE:

DAY 9:

We received a letter containing a demand for almost £100 for the Hub that doesn’t work and £40-odd for the first payment for internet we never received.

DAY 10

The executive office didn’t phone us back as promised.

But we did receive a call saying once more that the problem lies with BT Openreach … they have a problem with their ‘cabinet’ across the road. What?

UPDATE

Now they want their Hub back! (Children!)

DAY 12

Today EE told us again that they could not supply us with internet because BT Open Reach had basically broken their ‘cabinet’. Hohum

It is a funny thing though, there are maybe 700 house in the Village of Damned. And they all have internet.

There are dozens of businesses. And they all have internet!

About 1800 people live within the confines of the village. And they all have mobiles and use the internet.

The people who vacated our house less than two weeks ago were happy with their broadband and had it in place for five years.

Before we left the VoD to go working abroad, we’d had broadband for more than 20 years.

Watch this space.

THE FINAL SOLUTION:

EE phoned us and told us to try VIRGIN!

Surely that’s virgin on the ridiculous – recommending a competitor rather than just fixing the problem!

#virgin #ridiculous #EE #3g #internet #fibre #openreach #villageofthedamned #midlands

SEE VIDEO INSIDE:

SHADES of the mindless consumerism of the hedonistic Sixties have hit the virtual streets of Dylan’s latest anniversary.

Yep, a cyber-world ‘toy’ is our modern times equivalent of flesh-coloured Christs that glow in the dark…

In his dotage Bob has faced up to the dawning of the New Age and flicked the switch on downloads and streaming. And he’s definitely no toothless grandpa sitting on the stoop grinning out of the falling shadows as he zoom his grand-kids.

No, Bob still has one eye on the future as he writes, welds gates, paints his masterpieces, sells his history, auditions new voices and grins like a mock Mephistopheles as he continues to tour endlessly.

His creativity is still the song and dance man on his own endless highway.

Yet, somebody somewhere – at Columbia – came up with this cucumber-sandwich-and-a-nice-cup-of-tea virtual reality idea … 10 seconds to act surprised as you slip into a non-existent pair of Ray Bans and pose as Bob.

Maybe Columbia’s Eye Tea department came up with it – let’s give ol’ Bob some ‘specs appeal’ they may have thought!

The shades are, as far as I’m concerned of course, part of a rather perfunctory celebration of Bob’s art. I might be wrong however, so let me know what you think!

But would you like standing inside Dylan’s shades for just 10 secs? Would it be a drag to see you?

And what about the video that accompanies the shades of blue? Well, it’s very good, very nice indeed thank you.

But was it really worth the effort – particularly when Bob has re-invented himself yet again for all our futures.

To mark Bob Dylan’s 60th anniversary as a recording artist the new music video, “Subterranean Homesick Blues 2022”, has been launched. It pays homage to D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back, with new lyric card visuals created by artists, filmmakers, musicians and graphic designers including Patti Smith, Wim Wenders, Bruce Springsteen, Jim Jarmusch, Bobby Gillespie and Jonathan Barnbrook.

Food on ‘em! But surely they could have all done better for Bob? And is Subterranean Homesick Blues the one to choose? I love it! But it’s not my favourite. It is a bright, chunky Chuck Berry sound-alike – but is it the best thing he’s ever recorded.

In fact is it all a little bit more pedestrian than the golden chair they stock outside Hibbing high school as a tribute to Bob recently?

There’s a microsite where you can catch up with all this ‘fun’ stuff.

Meanwhile, The Bob Dylan Center opened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, earlier.

Perhaps that’s worth a visit – cyberly or in reality – rather than the Dylan60 | 60 Years Of Bob Dylan On Columbia Records website…

Tell us what you think?

Cheers

Leigh

FAUX TRAIN COMING FROM BOB’S DREAMS OF IRON AND STEEL

Dark day in malice… dial ‘N’ for Nerds as BBC censors Dylan’s anti-racism anthem

Tough guys don’t dance when PA punches their lights out

I am a Manc, a back street boy born to be tough. Moston was my teenage hunting ground.

That’s North Manchester where footpaths were either made out of cobbles or broken bricks and windows. Suburbs of terraced houses, urban regeneration, mud holes and smoking guns. Toothless wives in elastic stockings, smoking Park Drive dimps, dads with death-rattles in their chests stumbling drunk out of The Thatched, The Museum, The Ben and The Bricklayers Arms… t

These were all my roll models.

Yep, this was our King Cotton town in the Sixties and the 70s.

There was One-Eye Jack who’d had his right eye sewn together for more than a decade. It gave him a wicked wink. Jack walked three miles from Newton Heath every day to drink gallons of John Willie Lees at the Blue Bell.

Brian ‘The Bear’ Dunn liked to throw fellow drinkers through pub windows, Brian Poole – who looked like Frankie Vaughan – would grin himself into a coma at the bar, Johnny White Boots liked to pour beer pover people’s heads to start a fight, Dougie Flood and his Quality Street Gang, Jimmy Swords and his cohorts holding war talks in the back room at the Galleon Restaurant on Kenyon Lane.

Peter Tut Tut, Savage Brian and Savatsi might not be street fighters but, like all Mancs, they knew how to look the part. Viagra for the eyes, it makes you look hard.

Yep, rainy North Manchester. At least brought you up tough and rough and ready for anything.

Except being kept from seeing your children by a cuckolded angry ex.

Nothing prepared me for that.

And nothing prepared me for it happening again thirty years later, this time in a pretty little cottage down a lane in the backwaters of Shropshire.

Three children used like an arsenal of emotional bombs by two mothers who just wanted to sit there nibbling Jammy Dodgers and watching Emmerdale while they ladled revenge like cold curdled soup.

I eventually got my children back after many years. But for so long afterwards there was a barbed wire fence between us. It was festooned with lies and fabrications, vitriol and bitterness. Like a bridge of broken locks.

To this day I believe that the scars of the lies their mothers and their families told, still sometimes turn the light black inside my children when we meet.

But despite the drink, the drugs, the insecurity, the worry, the lack of income after paying maintenance, the ‘gifting’ of houses to women who no longer wanted to share my life, I survived.

Some of us don’t.

Douglas Galbraith, a fellow writer, didn’t.

Douglas Galbraith is now dead and not even a stain in the universe.

In 2003 he arrived home from a work trip and was expecting to be greeted by Japanese wife Tomoko and his two sons, Satomi, aged six, and Makoto, aged four.

The doors were locked and Douglas had to break in.

But the house was stone cold and empty. The only clue to what had happened was a Royal Mail letter on the doormat confirming instructions for forwarding post to Tomoko’s new address in Japan.

Douglas had lost his children and he would never find them again.

For years he hammered away at the Japanese courts, the British government and lawyers. He wrote a book about the loss in the hope that they might one day see it, and contact him.

It never happened.

In 2018, Douglas killed himself. He was 52 and hadn’t seen his children for 15 years.

But the battle over them still goes on. On behalf of their grandmother and family, his sister Karen Macgregor, from in Glenborrodale in the western Highlands, is continuing the search.

She has hired a private investigator in Japan,

Karen says. ‘I remember visiting his home and realising it had become nothing more than a shelter. It was devoid of life and love. We could not believe that anyone could be so cruel.

‘He was a loving father and family. She was denying a father the right to love and support his children and she was leaving a family broken and in limbo.. At first, we did not know how to console and support him.’

Douglas had met his wife, Tomoko Hanazaki, at Cambridge.

In his memoir, My Son, My Son, Galbraith he describes their marriage as having descended into ‘an openly declared and exhausting war for the past five years’.

Douglas thought he had a major breakthrough when Interpol tracked Tomoko and the children down to a temporary address in Osaka. Then they moved police refused to give him their new address.

One of the problems was that in Scotland – unlike in England and Wales – child abduction is not an offence unless a residency order is in place.

And Japan is not a signatory to the Hague Convention on Child Abduction.

In 2013 all contact was lost.

Later Douglas was forced to sell his house to to send money to Tomoko to support the children.

‘Tomoko now has the children and the money and before long the telephone, predictably, goes dead,’ he wrote in his memoir. ‘It has been an expensive exercise. They were worth it.’

Douglas died in 2018. He hadn’t spoken to his sons for nine years.

Connaught boss Paddy brings Dylan’s work to his Chateau Kingdom in Provence

Moston, Manchester 10, for whatever reason, was my life’s hometown. Grimy, dark, dreary and rainy.

I don’t remember too much about it really, it was such a long time ago…

I can still see though rundown cottages on Moston Lane, they were crumbing buttresses to the Byronic Simpson Memorial library. Then there were the Gothic turrets and pungent beer stenches of the Blue Bell … feral children and stray cats scurrying at your ankles at the dower and paint-peeling Moston Imperial Palace.

The Mip had been a magnificent old cinema until, in the late 60s, they filled it with tacky market stalls, battered cans of beans, stinking cheese and fresh Eccles cakes.

As a child though, I remember listening to the trains in the rain at midnight. Stars were twinkling and I was all ready to hitch a dream-ride.

The trains were off in the distance but I could hear them, mournful whistles, click-clack of tracks, ‘faster than fairies, faster than witches, Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches’

Yep, dreams of iron and steel.

Even as a teenager I rode those trains every day in to town. I would watch the world become frozen inside its television windows.

Trains used to be the past heading in to the future.

And now Bob Dylan’s train has literally stopped off in Provence, southern France, and is parked a the bottom of hotels boss Paddy McKillen’s garden.

Bob’s biggest sculpture to date – made out of wheels, cycle parts and tools – is called Rail Car, and is a permanent exhibit at Château La Coste, a 600-acre sculpture park. 

Trains are part of his past, says Dylan. Rail Car represents the illusions of a journey rather than the “contemplation of one”.

Bob, coming up 81 years old, said: “The train represents perception and reality at the same time… all the iron is recontextualised to represent peace, serenity and stillness.”

He also spoke of the piece’s “enormous energy”.

Bob’s metal artworks were first shown to the public in 2013 when a set of iron gates called Mood Swings were exhibited at London’s Halcyon Gallery.

Dylan hails from Hibbing, in Minnesota which is home of one of the largest open iron ore pits in the world. said: “I’ve been around iron all my life, ever since I was a kid. I was born and raised in iron ore country, where you could breathe it and smell it every day.”
Château La Coste is the brainchild of Irish businessman Paddy McKillen, it is not just a working vineyard producing biodynamic wines, tasting facilities and a clutch of restaurants, galleries and more. It is also home to a range of ambitious architectural bonnes bouches from some of the greatest names in the profession.

And now Bob’s Rail Car has made it to its final destination, the rolling and thundery landscape of Provence.

And now Bob’s Rail Car has made it to its final destination, the rolling and thundery landscape of Provence.

Gates of bleating flashing … wonder if Dylan still likes to be in Mozambique?

Felix’s mystic garden where Bob sings to Woody forever

#bobdylan #art #metalsculpture #Provence #Château La Coste #Paddy McKillen #connaught

Dylan’s Hurricane is a song which, while factually a bit lacking, took on pomp, cruelty, American society, iniquity, the judiciary, justice, social conditions – and yes, RACISM

I have been a professional writer all my working life – and one of the greatest writers today still has to be Bob Dylan, a chronicler of the iniquities of the world, the human condition, unfairness, cruelty, love and heartbreak …his is a heady mixture of intelligence, awareness, wit and understanding.

When I became an editor I knew that I could LEGALLY publish something r*cist for instance, only if I identified the r*cist, quoted him or her correctly with a particular intention.

And the general intention has to be to condemn and expose the r*cist views expressed…

Nobody should ever be r*cist.

Why should you be, what’s the purpose?

Dylan’s Hurricane is a song, which, while factually a bit lacking, took on pomp, cruelty, American society, iniquity, the judiciary, justice, social conditions – and yes, RACISM.

Now, almost five decades later, that supposedly great bastion of equality and caring in the UK, the BBC (Radio 6 in particular), has edited out that other word which now must be spelt with hieroglyphics to avoid offending the internet spiders and bots and the awakened idiots of our cyber world.

That word is n*gg*r (do you recognise it?)

Here, Leigh, takes a look at the reaction to the BBC’s edit of an anthem and also takes a bit of a ribald look at just how simple it is to offend spiders and bots and of course the shallow world of the woke whinger:

“I often make a particular joke about racism which, I suppose, could be seen as offensive by those over-educated nerdy BBC knob-twisting producers with body odour and stinky trainers.

Or the whole of Italy might be offended.

Or, even my Italian ex-wife who is, dare I say, becoming more Italian the older she gets (Hang on! Hang on! I’ve done it again …I gratuitously used the word Italian. Now that’s racist isn’t it? I mentioned a woman too … that’s sexist. I also mentioned that my ex is getting on in years .. surely that’s ageist? Oops, I said publicly that she is my ex, so that’s against data protection – and I indicate she is becoming a bit of a Big-a Fat-a Mama … now that’s not only fat-ist, it’s racist, misogynistic, anti-feminist, anti granny and anti ex-wife. And just plain churlish!)

Myself, I’m very English, mainly because I come from English-land – and let’s face it, I am a bit of a gobby, beer swilling oaf! (Oops can I say that? Isn’t that Me-ist? Surely, I can’t describe myself in those terms! I might offend me! Oh, and all the other English people who are just like me – and that’s just the beer-swilling, tattooed, baseball cap-wearing women!)

Oh no!

A few years ago I was eeking a living – (Hang on? Eeking? Could that be derogetory against frightened people who scream?)

Anyway, I was eeking a living as a Talking Head on the BBC, both regionally and nationally.

Then something happened.

We ended up talking about farmers. I felt qualified to chat as I live in the countryside and number many farmers among my drinking colleagues and acquaintances in the Midlands Village of the Damned. (It was described as that by TitBits magazine in the early 1990s because of various tragic incidents culminating in the suicide of the local vicar.

I got the blame because I was the only hack in the village! Well that has to be hack-ist doesn’t it?)

And this is what I said on the BBC. And it was a joke… “Well Jim, it might not be life as we know it but almost all the farmers I know live in mansions, drive 4x4s to the stables where they take their horses for a trot round their acres of land!”

That was that then.

Had to go broadcasting midnight in New York and on AirTV and Netflix – oh no, how life let me down!

So, let’s return to those over-educated nerdy BBC knob-twisting producers with body odour and stinky trainers.

They censored all round good egg Bob Dylan!

Hurricane is about the boxer Rubin Carter, wrongly convicted of murder. It says ‘and for the black folks he was just a crazy n*****’ and this removed when it was broadcast on Tom Robinson’s 6 Music show on April 24.

Is that really how we deal with racism today? Don’t the woke idiots of this world realise that not talking about something, not using the words that identify the problem, doesn’t make the problem go away, it just drives it underground, from people’s minds, hides it away.

This is how propaganda works, hide the truth and get people to think it’s gone, eradicated. Not a problem any more.

But racism is a problem across the world and the BBC should hang its head in shame … not over those body odour and stinky trainer issues.

No.

It is their wokery in their little Wookery Nook world where equality for those who are different is available against a background of middle-class sniffiness, accusations of biased reporting, cover ups over the likes of Savile and Stuart Hall and a complete lack of understanding of what’s important any more.

#dylan #bob #rubincarter #racism #hurricane #jail #prison

Once, as I searched through the dusty old contacts book of a British evening
newspaper I came across the home telephone number of Brigitte Bardot.
St Tropez 271.
Every so often, perhaps when I’d had a couple of beers too many, I’d dial it.
Never got any answer, just an insistent and foreign-sounding bleat down the
line. But somehow that bleat made me feel exotically close to her.
But that was in 1978, I think, when I was tipped for journalistic fame. If I’d so
much as heard the living legend’s voice on her answerphone I’d have written
an exclusive interview.
Chance would have been a fine thing.
I never got so much as an ‘ello’.
So, when I arrived in St Trop under a sky bleached by the sun, I had this
nagging feeling that I still had some unfinished business with her.
Now don’t get me wrong I was well aware that old BB wasn’t going to be
any beaut any more – everybody’s seen the pictures, skin like a road map
and teeth on stalks … but even though she’s nearly seventy, I just wanted to
see her, talk to her. After all she was the star of And God Created Woman.
Well things don’t always work out the way you’ve got them planned and as I
dipped a sandled toe into the heat shimmer of the promenade I knew why
she still lives here.
Her anonymity is assured. There is no way she is going to stand out in the
crowd.
San Tropez is a haven for prunes in g-strings.
The beach has been turned into a parking lot for speedboats the size of
Cadillac’s and the still-rich-but-no-longer-young-and-beautiful pose like
crispy chickens on the decks, or creak along the beach on ridiculously thin
legs.
Amazingly, the beach, although it has fallen victim to overcrowding for
decades, is actually still unspoiled. It’s immaculate white sand goes on
forever.
It’s the people who haven’t survived. Yes, I’m sure 30 years ago they all
might have looked wonderful swaggering down Ramatuelle or Pampelonne.
from bistro to café, café to restaurant, in the hedonistic pursuit of spending
money. And I’m sure it was chic to dress down for everything from lunch to
a’mour.
But Just a Thong at the Twilight of their existence looks vulgar.
Anyway, with my crest fallen about as far as their arches, I decided to begin
my hunt for Ms Bardot.
Le Star beach bar seemed as good a place to start as any.
I got myself a blonde beer and leaned against the bar post at the corner of the
street in case that certain little lady came by.
Oh me oh my, what a place to be if your other choice is a rest home. There
were ghostly images of old men in hipsters and white slip-ons down by the
sea’s edge at Pampelonne.
Varicosed glamour girls wobbled past with threadbare French poodles and
wigs. No wonder Joan Collins bought a house here.
An Aston Martin purred by and then there was a convoy of Rolls Royces.
You know, when this kitchest of all kitches began in the 1950s St Tropez
was just a tiny fishing village. There wasn’t much to it really, a row fivestorey houses washed up against the quayside, a market still in Place des
Lices. and, appropriately enough, a cinema.
Nothing special, a sheet over an indoor washing line and an old rachety
flicker machine apparently. But the switch was thrown and glamour spun its
heady light. Wannabes arrived and sadly most of them stayed on to become
has-beens.
If only they’d listened to Brigitte when she said in 1986: “The myth of
Bardot is finished, but Brigitte is me.”
The quay is still there and the houses now look as if they’ve seen better
days. But the canopies that jut out onto the pavement are bright with acrylic
legends as bright as neons like Les caves du Roy or Aldo’s Piano Bar.
But away from these haunts of the once famous but still rich, a little inland,
is the charm. Painters still set up their easels as Paul Signac once did, and
there is the flower and food market on the Place des Lices.
Then there is the Musée de L’Annonciade with its masterpieces by Matisse,
Dufy, Rouault, Bonnard and Derain. Or the Maison des Papillons (Butterfly
Museum) and the Naval Museum in an old dungeon.

And as I wandered these streets of white stone I wondered why nobody had
ever thought of opening a museum of beauty … for there would probably be
my only chance of finding old Brigitte.

#BrigitteBardot #StTropez #animals #butterflymuseum