Does Emily still love him?

A way to use up some of those YouTube clips I'm not allowed to put on my blog any more.

Anyone who grew up, as I did, during the glory days of children's telly, will smile wryly at this video, part of a campaign to save British kids' TV. Clips from The Wombles are overdubbed with canned laughter and inane American slang, before the reassuring voice of Bernard Cribbins (a knighthood beckons, surely?) points out that only 1% of modern children's programming is new British product.

Shocked, I signed the petition, understanding only too well the moral imperative that future generations should have their own manifestations of Vision On, Jackanory and Roobarb. But then I thought back a little more coolly and dispassionately about my own childhood viewing...

Further soppy wallowing for the Brian Cant generation here.

Chuck out the syrup

The obituaries of Charlton Heston concur: here was an example of life following art. As Moses and Ben Hur, El Cid and George Taylor, he played men who stood for dignity and freedom, and whether or not you agree that civil rights and gun rights are morally equivalent, he stuck his neck out for both. Then, when the scourge of Alzheimer’s confronted him, he faced it as he had faced the Egyptians and the gorillas, with great bravery.

But in one small area, his heroism slipped. Unflinching in his defence of African-Americans and gun-owners, Heston was never quite brave enough to acknowledge his own baldness. He set his granite jaw and battered nose against injustice, but from his own genetic inheritance, he cowered beneath a succession of increasingly preposterous toupees, of the sort that even Frankie Howerd might have spurned as unbecoming. As Chuck wielded his trusty flintlock, his wig looked like something he’d just shot.

As someone whose time in the barber’s chair becomes more cursory with each successive visit, I know that few men welcome baldness. But why do so many still persist in fighting it, and make themselves look even more ridiculous than they would in their natural state? As with boob jobs and facelifts, wigs rarely go unnoticed, especially by the many websites dedicated to seeking them out. And if we know someone wears a wig, we assume that person is insecure, or vain, or in denial about the aging process – surely a worse sin than baldness (or, for that matter, sagging breasts or jowls).

Wigs are about more than baldness – they are about honesty and dignity, or the lack of them. Everyone knows that Bruce Forsyth wears a (bad) hairpiece, but few raise the subject in his company. The man is 80 years old now – is it really so shameful to be bald? Maybe not, but if he were to ditch his syrup now, he would be admitting that he’s been fibbing for the last three decades or so. Increasing numbers – Sean Connery, Patrick Stewart and Bruce Willis, for example – are proud of their slaphead status. But others, and I’m sure you know the names, still cower beneath the weave. Come on, guys, when even Heston’s namesake Bobby abandoned his combover, surely the game was up.

There are obvious parallels with homosexuality. I’m sure there are some people in the public eye who have never bothered to come out because everyone knows anyway, and any big announcement would be an embarrassing anticlimax. But wig-wearers don’t need to say anything. They just need to ditch their hairy friends once and for all, and allow their scalps to shine out and proud. Do it, slapheads. Go to the only place where Charlton Heston feared to tread.

Every black'ning Church appalls

Getting theological on CiF's bottom:

The news that the hymn Jerusalem has been banned from Southwark Cathedral has inevitably been denounced by conservative churchmen as evidence of the politically correct namby-pambyism of the Anglican establishment. But this rather misses the point. In the past, some clergymen have objected to its supposed nationalist overtones, perhaps thinking of its popularity with the braying yahoos at the Last Night of the Proms. But the objection of the Dean of Southwark, Colin Slee, is more nuanced: he argues that Jerusalem is "not in the glory of God"; essentially that, in Anglican terms at least, it isn't really a hymn.

And, you know what? He's right. Blake never wrote it as a hymn; it's the preface to his long, obscure poem Milton, and it was only when Hubert Parry set it to music in 1916, as an attempt to rally a war-weary public, that it began to be interpreted in the jingoistic terms beloved of the Daily Telegraph.

Further arrows of desire here...

Uh-oh, midlife crisis alert

I've been listening to the first Arctic Monkeys album again, prompted by Mojo's provocative decision to tap 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' as the seventh best British indie record ever ever ever, 26 places ahead of the Sea Urchins. I bought the CD shortly after it came out, simply because I felt I ought to hold an opinion about the band, and was a tad underwhelmed (rather as I was with Oasis, whose early waxings I got for the same reason). Listening again, once the hypeclouds have cleared a bit, I'm slightly better disposed. They do their stuff, and Alex Turner has the same cocktail of articulate intelligence, fey vulnerability and deadpan insolence that attracted me to the Buzzcocks and the Smiths and Pulp. But I discovered those bands between the ages of 10 and 25. I discovered the Arctic Monkeys when I was the wrong side of 30. They're good. Maybe they're as good as the Buzzcocks et al. Maybe they're better. But they're not mine.

PS: A memory that may or may not be relevant. When I was about 15 or 16, my friend Alex organised a charity cabaret at school. Three of our classmates performed Neil Young's 'Heart of Gold', which struck me even then as being incredibly old. A rough equivalent today would be for a bunch of teenagers to play 'Don't Look Back in Anger', 'Wannabe' or 'Firestarter'.

Home truth

Small Boo: "I've got a criticism of your blog. You put up too many YouTube clips."

Puff piece

As identified elsewhere, there's a certain feeling of ennui infesting the blogverse. So, another bloody YouTube clip seems to be in order.



I'm not sure why, but the Japanese subtitles make it even cooler.

Egg fried life

The biographical blurb for Mei Ng's novel Eating Chinese Food Naked reads as follows:

"Mei Ng was born in Queens and lives in Brooklyn. She wrote Eating Chinese Food Naked while working as a temp."

And then you start reading the story itself, and meet Chinese-American Ruby Lee, who lives with her parents in Queens, works as a temp, and really wants to live in Brooklyn with her Jewish boyfriend Nick. OK, we don't know whether she's going to do it - her indecision, the cultural and emotional dialectics that pull her in two directions at once provide the meat of the novel - but everything is laid out in front of you. Ruby is Mei is Ruby is Mei.

And then, as you go along, you might feel the urge to Google Ms Ng, and you find other hints as to the resolution of the plot; but don't follow that link if you don't like surprises. Is real life just one great big SPOILER ALERT?

That said, the book's not bad. The title suggests an element of chick lit: but it's Noo Yawk ethnic slacker chick lit, which isn't so reprehensible. Here, Ruby's having a distinctly awkward conversation with her mother, Bell:

"Do you come?" Ruby looked down at her hands, which were minding their own business, switching a ring from one finger to another.

"What's that?"

"You know. At the end, when the guy... when the stuff comes out and it feels real nice. Women do that too. But without so much stuff. Usually." Ruby spoke slowly and deliberately, as if she were giving Bell a recipe.

"Oh, that. I heard about that. No, not me. I don't need that." Bell held herself a little straighter, differentiating herself from the women who did.

Putting the jackboot in

I didn't plan to celebrate my 500th blog post on April Fool's Day, but that's how it turns out. Neither did I know that the post would refer to a Comment is Free article comparing the leisure pursuits of motor-racing supremo Max Mosley with those of overenthusiastic Star Wars fans, but that seems strangely appropriate as well.

"The story in Sunday's News of the World, alleging that formula one boss Max Mosley indulged in a concentration-camp-themed orgy with five (count 'em!) ladies of questionable virtue, sounds like a glorious return to the good old days of kinky vicars, wife-swapping parties and overly sensitive reporters making their excuses and leaving. Mosley is offering no comment, but one suspects that only some spectacular explaining will save him.

What exactly has he done wrong, then? Pretending to be a Nazi is not actually illegal in Britain, although it's usually regarded as being in pretty poor taste. David Bowie was castigated for flirting with Hitlerian concepts and imagery; few saw the funny side when Richard Desmond and Prince Harry played the Nazi shtick for laughs. But none of them lost their jobs."

Und so weiter...