I’ve done it again. Twice in two months! I could get a taste for this.
It’s on:
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/you-write-the-caption–230911-2359760.html
The winning caption
In the summer of ’79 I unaccountably found myself working as a ‘chippie’ - something I’d never done before, or since. (A chippie’s a carpenter by the way). I was working on a conversion of The Silk House, a former rag trade sweat shop in Soho’s Berwick Street. It became Silk Sound and a well-known recording studio.
Radio 1 DJ Tommy Vance was involved financially and turned up one Friday afternoon with armfuls of Bollinger and a stock of hilarious anecdotes. I wish I could remember more about the evening, he was a generous man and terrific fun. David Tate (the voice of the computer in BBC’s Hitchhiker’s Guide) was also a backer and turned up too. He could do any voice, any accent and was just as funny.
I’ve hardly been back to the area since, but a week or so ago, I saw Don Giovanni at The Soho Theatre with my partner and members of her family. We’d heard that OperaUpClose has produced some imaginative productions, so we gave it a go. It was well worth it. I’m not particularly an opera buff but am always open to new approaches and they’d certainly brought it up to date. The singing was fine but the acting and imaginative set gave it a meaning that I’d missed in the version I’d seen. I’ll definitely look out for forthcoming OperaUpClose productions.
After a drink, we went to Spuntino in Rupert Street. It’s a New York-style eatery and very trendy. You can’t book, so we had to queue, but the wait wasn’t a problem, more an excuse to drink cocktails and chat with people doing likewise. It’s a wonderfully faux-distressed evocation of times past and the food’s good too. The walls actually are the tiled walls of a long-gone butcher or fishmonger. It’s worth a visit, just to see it. I snapped some rough and ready shots with my iPhone though being a bit more sober might have helped.
The whole evening made me think of my Soho sojourn over 30 years earlier. It was seedier and quirkier then, with a market where people actually did their daily shopping and Fratelli Camisa’s wonderful food store literally a stone’s throw from Raymond’s Revue Bar.
Now it’s more like a tourist Soho-land Experience. Still interesting but sanitised, with something of its heart missing. But then that’s progress, ain’t it?
As a copywriter, I tend to have a think about caption competitions when I see them, it’s a chance to test my creative juices. And as a regular reader of The Independent, I have a go at their weekend sport’s page Caption Competition from time to time.
Well I won on this occasion! I’ve done funnier ones (in my opinion anyway) but who cares, I get the champagne!
You can see it on:
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/you-write-the-caption–220711-2318789.html
Made my weekend I think.
The winning attempt
A month or so ago, as I was lying in bed waiting to feel like sleeping, I thought I’d check my phone for emails – it usually does the trick. On this occasion, it showed a message from SPIN magazine in New York asking if they could run one of my pictures of The Smiths. They also wanted to interview me as part of their Encore feature in which they look at this month in rock history.
I sent them a few photos and they selected one that hasn’t been seen in print before. It showed Morrissey being jumped by a fan backstage at Glastonbury 1984. At the moment I took it, things looked a bit iffy for a second or two but all was well in the end – she just wanted to get up close and personal. SPIN rang me and had a quick chat from which they produced a short interview.
I’m attaching the page for all to see but to see it at its best, you should go to SPIN’s website itself or buy the magazine.
Some of the other photos I took that day are on my Flickr page.
Encore - SPIN Magazine June 2011
I was on a bus going from Edinburgh airport into the city recently and chatted to the woman next to me about where we were from. When I told her that I lived in Bristol, she knew it as the home of The Tobacco Factory and said that it was the place to see Shakespeare. She added that she was planning to come from Norwich for a weekend in Bristol, to visit the city and see a play there.
When you live somewhere, it’s easy to assume that every similar-sized city has much the same amenities. Different names maybe, but the same sort of facility. But it’s not the case with Bristol’s Shakespeare at The Tobacco Factory.
In February, I saw Richard II there, with John Heffernan as a brilliant Richard in Andrew Hilton’s outstanding production. Actually, I have a confession to make. It was a sell-out and I went twice, selfishly depriving some unfortunate soul of the opportunity to go at all.
It’s the Shakespeare play I know best and yet I learnt so much from the production, which the Sunday Times rightly gave five stars out of five.
I followed that with their Comedy of Errors, a play I hardly knew at all. Again, five stars in the Sunday Times which reported Andrew Hilton’s production is a revelation. Again, who was I to argue.
If you don’t know SATTF, it’s a theatre in the round, so you’re never more than a a dozen feet or so from the action. You can even find yourself right in the middle of it sometimes. There’s very little in the way of props or scenery either, which means that they extract all the play’s meaning from its language and their acting skills. When it works, it’s enthralling and it works most of the time.
I recently directed a Spanish couple to La Iglesia Santa Maria in Bristol. I’ve lived here since I was eight but have yet to visit St Mary Redcliffe, which Elizabeth I described as the fairest, goodliest, and most famous parish church in England.
I visit churches wherever I go (they tell us so much) and yet I haven’t yet visited something so special on my own doorstep. I intend to do so soon.
I ought to begin by saying that I get very little from the sport of boxing; what interest I had ended when Ali retired. I remember my father eagerly waking me in the middle of the night to see the Ali/Liston fights and never quite getting what his excitement was all about.
Well my friend Jack Allen doesn’t see it my way either and was bemoaning the fact that over 200 years ago, Bristol led the world in bare-knuckle boxing yet no-one in the city seems to know anything about it. Apparently tens of thousands of people, royalty and the rest of us, went to the fights and enormous sums were illegally wagered on the results.
Now Jack’s a pretty determined man and set about writing a book on the subject. He duly did and, if you’re interested, it’s called The Bristol Boys and is available through Amazon. It’s a good read.
But selling Jack’s book isn’t the point of my story. He decided that this neglected part of our heritage should be brought before the public eye and set about doing just that. The boxers used to train at the site of The Hatchet, a well-known city-centre pub and Jack decided to get a commemorative plaque put up there.
He gently badgered his friends for a fiver each which some time ago, I stumped up and thought no more of it. Well Jack must have a good many friends, because I recently received an invitation to the unveiling at The Hatchet. Bristol’s own World Champion Glen Catley was there, as well as other Bristol boxing luminaries.
Jack was beaming, as he deserved to, and it made me realise that one person with enough drive can do pretty much anything he sets his mind to. He followed his passion and it never occurred to him that his plaque wouldn’t go up. It’s like they say, if you expect to succeed or you expect to fail, you’ll probably be right either way.
Congratulations Jack, take a bow.
The unveiling with Jack Allen at the back, nearest the plaque. Glen Catley is at the front.
As a long-time football supporter I’ve seen most of the trends in the game and while there’s plenty of amusing touchline comment, there’s some awful stuff too.
I was at Bristol Rovers playing Peterborough a week or two ago and heard something I haven’t come across in quite a while.
Peterborough had their right back sent off, right in front of us. He’s black and as he trooped off the man directly behind me shouted something along the lines of “Get off you black bastard.”
Now I consider myself a considerable physical coward but couldn’t stop myself turning and telling him to shut up and that I hadn’t come to a football match to put up with that.
Guess what? He wouldn’t even make eye contact and kept his mouth shut from then on. He was even more of a coward than I! Maybe not such a surprise. Only a coward is going to hide behind a crowd to shout things like that.
Half time followed shortly after and I heard some people in front of me saying that I was the man who told the man making racist comments to shut up. They appeared to be agreeing with my stance.
Most people dislike such comments as much as I, but when no-one confronts them, loudmouth racists like him are left to feel that they’re expressing views we all hold.
Happily, it’s a very rare event these days but that doesn’t mean it should be allowed to pass.
One of the principal appeals of live football is the sense one gets of belonging to a group. But that only holds as long as we do feel a part of it. My pal Drew and I used to go to England games at Wembley from time to time but stopped going because we didn’t feel a part of a crowd that sang some of the chants we endured. I doubt we’re alone in thinking that way.
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