Category: Entertainment

Formula One on the streets of London

I spy rumours around the Internet that one possible future usage of the Olympic Stadium could be a Formula One race circuit. Apparently, Intelligent Transport Solutions Ltd of London have been in discussion with F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone regarding the prospect of bringing the world’s most glamourous high-octane circus to town. And what a prospect it is!

The route would likely see McLarens, Ferraris et al racing inside the stadium as well as around the Olympic Park and while it wouldn’t have the added glamour of multi-million dollar yachts moored casually nearby like Astra vans parked in a supermarket car park as does Monaco or Abu Dhabi, it would have impressively modern facilities and arguably one of the more scenic circuits on the calendar . I don’t know about you but the promise of twenty or so V8s screaming around a manicured park in the East End of London is a mouthwatering one.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking – “They’ve been talking about a London street circuit for years” – and while that’s true, it seems a lot more likely to happen now that there is a suitable site that can be used without bringing the capital to a complete standstill. Although Ecclestone has elsewhere stated that plans for a London circuit that would take in such landmarks as Buckingham Palace and Big Ben were “no joke”, I find it a little harder to imagine cars racing down Whitehall, navigating the Parliament Square chicane and hitting the Birdcage Walk DRS zone than I do around the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Logistically, the new site would be much less of a headache for the organisers.

Of course, Silverstone, the current home of the British Grand Prix is scheduled to host the event for the next 17 years and much investment has and is being injected into the site because of this however, this doesn’t put a lid on the Olympic Stadium proposal. It simply means the UK would host two, count them, two Grand Prix meetings each season. So, all you race fans out there, how cool would that be?

This Girl-on-Girl Action Ain’t Sexy

I was recently utterly enraged by a couple of articles on the Metro website, which claimed that women should know by now that it is practically illegal to venture out in public without first either shaving or waxing their underarms, and that to transgress this long-established social law is to announce to the world that they are disorganised, dirty, and lacking in self-respect and in that mysterious quality known as “class”. To let other people see your hairy pits, claimed the author, is both disgusting and unacceptable.

The articles focused on the so-called “major beauty faux pas” made by Pixie Lott at the London premiere of the latest Batman movie, at which she flashed a spot of pit fuzz; the journo in question likened it to a similar incident over a decade ago when Julia Roberts proudly aired her (admittedly rather more copious) armpit-carpet at the London premiere of Notting Hill. The photographers went nuts on each occasion, of course, which is why these non-events got in the news.

Stunned that such petty bile could be deemed true journalism, through a red mist I scanned the offending pages. I was looking for the name of this perpetrator of male chauvinism and despicable misogyny, this no doubt doddery old bastion of alpha male behaviour holding out stubbornly against the progressive views of a modern society. And then I found it. Amy Duncan. Hmm, that’s a funny name for a bloke.

Well, it turns out that I’m just plain old naïve – and, in my own way, sexist – because not only is this woman expounding the views I most commonly associate with “unenlightened” males, but she is very much not alone in this activity. Apparently, tearing down the fragile walls of female self-esteem is extremely lucrative – if you’re a woman. The Daily Mail’s “Femail”, for example, is a veritable breeding-ground for these shallow, scathing and often pointless attacks on women, by women. It’s big business – but why?

According to psychology studies conducted at two universities in Canada last year, women are programmed to behave this way. We’re in competition with other members of the same sex, and often feel threatened by those we perceive as more attractive than ourselves, which invariably leads to hostile behaviour, such as that which abounds in most newspapers and in every women’s magazine on the market. The authors of the studies, T. Vaillancourt and A. Sharma (both female, just so you know), maintain that once we have acknowledged this behaviour we can begin to address it. After all, if we were incapable of breaking our programming and of controlling instinctual behaviour, then rape and paedophilia would be socially acceptable. Saying that women are “born to be bitchy” (thank you, Claudia Connell of the Daily Mail, for that one) is really just an excuse for not trying to improve our behaviour – but I doubt that women like Amy Duncan will ever amend their views based on such silly things as rational arguments, scientific studies and the ideal of behaving decently to their fellow humans.

Oh, I should be sorry for picking on you, Amy – after all, you’re just one of many awful women who seem hell-bent on making the rest of us feel like shit, and singling you out sort of makes me as bad as you, I suppose. I promise, though, you were just the closest example to hand (I did try picking on Liz Jones, but that’s a real minefield there). I mean, come on – you’re condemning Julia Roberts for being “totally unaware of the furore she had created” when people caught sight of her armpit hair, all those years ago. You know why she was “totally unaware”? Because it wasn’t a “furore” to her; it wasn’t even an issue. And to judge by Pixie Lott’s lackadaisical Twitter response to this latest outcry, it isn’t an issue to her either, so your horrified bleating is a bit of a lost cause there as well. I’d love to know why this kind of thing bothers you – and so many other women – so much. Going by the results of Vaillancourt and Sharma’s studies, I would assume you feel threatened by these beautiful celebs, who are so imbued with self-confidence that they can happily attend high-class functions without worrying themselves into a frenzy over whether someone might be judging their armpits. Or perhaps you are genuinely disgusted by body hair on a woman, in which case I would imagine that you’ve been made to feel ashamed of your natural physical state over the years, which again points to low self-esteem. Is this why you’re trying to make other women feel insecure: so you’re not alone?

As someone who has always been just a bit paranoid about her own underarm hair, mostly as a result of knowing that these callow bitches are on the lookout, what surprised me most about the photos of Pixie and Julia was how un-gross a healthy crop of pit fuzz looked alongside a pretty dress. Sure, it was different, but it was also completely natural and entirely their own damn business. It’s emboldened me, pit-wise, I have to say. Certainly less “disgusting” than, say, a red-raw axilla cut almost to the bone by over-shaving, or sporting the red welts that so often come after a wax. I’m not in the habit of elevating pop singers and actresses as role models, but on this occasion these confident, carefree women are leading the way, whereas the venomous proclamations of Amy, Liz and all those other self-haters are just holding us back.

Film Review: Went The Day Well?

Summon up an image of a quintessential picturesque English village and it’s quite likely you’ll get somewhere close to Bramley End, the fictitious setting for this 1942 WWII drama. Surrounded by rolling countryside, bees hum in untended hedgerows and butterflies flutter by in the warm spring sunshine. Narrow country lanes connect Bramley End to the neighbouring village of Upton Ferrars nearly seven miles away. There are picture-postcard cottages aplenty, their windows and front doors half obscured by climbing roses and honeysuckle and a church at the heart of the village and the church is our first stop as the film’s opening titles end. It’s here that a friendly pipe-smoking local welcomes us with a “Good day to you,” and leads us to the unusual memorial that we have no doubt come to see. It’s unusual because it has the names of German soldiers written on it. German names in an English graveyard? How bizarre. The local then proceeds to tell us how such a thing came about.

Saturday morning on a sunny Whitsun weekend in 1942 and a group of lorries filled with British soldiers rolls into the village. Apparently on an exercise of some sort for three days, they ask the villages for billeting for sixty men who, once the arrangements are made, settle into various houses around the village as well as the village hall. The villagers see it all as frightfully exciting and welcome them gladly but it doesn’t take long for them to discover that the soldiers are actually Nazis forming the vanguard of a German invasion of England. With their cover now blown, the Germans round up the villagers and lock them in the church while the children are held captive in the local manor house and supervised by the kind matronly lady of the manor. An attempt by those locked in the church to escape and get word to the neighbouring village is thwarted by a traitor among them, the village squire (played by Leslie Banks) who is revealed to be collaborating with the Nazis.

That night at the manor, a plucky young lad named George shins down a drainpipe after lights out and escapes into the woods to get help from Upton while at the same time, a group of extremely stiff upper lips finally manage to overpower their Nazi guards at the church. There follows numerous gun-butts to Nazi heads, a lot of gunfire and plenty of heroics from the stoic and defiant locals and just as their bullets are running out, a force of nearby British soldiers arrives to bring an end to proceedings. Oh, and as for the traitor….well, you’ll just have to see for yourself.  All in all, a nicely shot little film from Ealing Studios with a cast packed full of familiar faces, some that you’ve never seen so young – if you thought Thora Hird was born a bespectacled granny then check this out; it was her first major role and she was a 31year old sweetheart.

But what marks this film out as truly interesting is its propaganda quality. Bearing in mind it was made when the Second World War still had two years to go, the introduction that the pipe-wielding local gives us at the start of the movie is a post-war one. He speaks of the newspapers calling the event at the village “The Battle at Bramley End” but that nothing was said of it until after the war was over and “old Hilter got what was coming to him.” One can only guess the impact such a film would have had on its audience, particularly one that knew all too well that the only thing separating them from occupied Europe was a narrow strip of water. Hitler’s planned invasion of the UK “Operation Sea Lion” may have been indefinitely postponed by 1942 (due in part to the Germans not having air superiority over the channel) but to a war-weary British public, the threat must have still been real and constantly in the backs of their minds. What this film did was to show the audience that even if such a thing were to happen and Nazis did land on British soil, with cool heads, brave heart and plucky British spirit, the Germans wouldn’t stand a chance. Simply put, evil would never triumph over good and the Nazis were the personification of evil.

Based on a short story entitled “The Lieutenant Died Last” by the English author Graham Greene, Went the Day Well? was directed by Brazilian born Alberto Cavalcanti who would go on to make a handful of films for Ealing Studios in the 40s most notably, “Champagne Charlie” and “Nicholas Nickleby”. The film’s reputation has grown significantly with the passing of time and in 2005 it was named as one of the “100 Greatest War Films” in a Channel 4 poll in the UK. In 2010, the British Film Institute National Archive released a restored version of the film and it was met with critical acclaim.  I think Tom Huddleston of Time Out London summed it up perfectly by writing that it was “jawdroppingly subversive. Cavalcanti establishes, with loving care and the occasional wry wink, the ultimate bucolic English scene, then takes an almost sadistic delight in tearing it to bloody shreds in an orgy of shockingly blunt, matter-of-fact violence.”

Went The Day Well? is a great little film and a window into a time and a place that has long gone and yet to watch it and to understand its message is to truly find respect for the men, women and children that lived through those dark years of Nazi terror. A classic in every sense.

 

 

The Scottish Referendum will be a vote on music, as well as politics

Ask the common man on the street who the most commercially successful Scottish musicians are, and the chances are unless you happened to encounter an avid music fan with a taste for biographies, you’d be lucky to squeeze much out of them.

On the other hand, if you were to ask that same stranger the accolades of English musical exports, you’d have found yourself in a much more familiar place. But is this surprising?
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has produced some of the most influential musicians of the modern era – but considering Scotland’s population accounts for just 8.4% of its makeup, a mere 5 million people, they’ve probably got the strongest music credentials per capita of any country on the entire planet, harboring a creative ingenuity that is something more reflective of its 32% share of our geography. The 1970s were witness to such Scottish cultural sharings as the Bay City Rollers phenomena, one of the first of many acts to be labeled as ‘the biggest band since the Beatles’. Aberdeen resident, Annie Lennox, went on to achieve success not only in Eurythmics & The Tourists but as a solo artist also, selling over 80 million records and subsequently earned the distinction of the “most successful female British artist in UK music history” – collecting four Grammy Awards and a record eight Brit Awards on the way. Franz Ferdinand, KT Tunstall, The Fratellis, Paolo Nutini, Biffy Clyro and Calvin Harris are yet more examples from a long list of exemplar specimens of the Scot sound.

However, despite a fervent nationalism and such cultural romanticisms that make their southern neighbors seem drab and generic in comparison, their music industry is by no means reflective of the quirky and mythical place it calls home.

English music in comparison has a completely different story to tell, in part to the fact that it actually has a story. The woolly and strange thing about the concept of ‘Englishness’ is its lack of appropriate context; it’s strange that for a nation that tends to drop the cross of St. George for a larger and more encompassing ‘British’ mentality – its music industry is the word’s most staunch admirer, second only to football.

Gene Simmons of KISS once said in an interview with The Sun “When you say guitar god, it really just means English, doesn’t it? There are no American guitar gods. All the rock gods are English.” Whether Simmons falls into the Yankee misconception of England being synonymous with the UK is unclear, but the fact the red and white nation was singled out speaks of more than a confusion of definition.

Fact is, the geo-politics of the music business is a side often never told. Not only does this idea play out on a field between constituent countries, it’s something that has been a fierce factor in the generation of the British sound. When Manchester’s music scene blew up in the late 80s/early 90s with the likes of The Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses and The Charlatans, label scouts were ordered up north on a musical pilgrimage that would mark the most significant cultural moment for the city, ever. So powerful was this movement, even its ensuing hangover was enough to propel Oasis into the history books. But what spoke most about the comparative emptiness was the rhetoric that ‘the record execs had called them back to London’; the HQ of not just English, but British music. And it was true.

Against the industry’s London-centrism, surely Scotland had a role to play in the brewing music nationalism of Britpop and ‘Cool Britannia’ of the 1990s? Nope, not really. Mostly down to a flurry of over-excitement by the British music press, Britpop was initially an ‘Anti-American’ movement characterised by a nostalgia for English rock and character, yes, not British.

Damon Albarn of Blur spoke of his “attempting to write in a classic English vein” when talking about their album ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’ (a record that was almost called ‘England vs America’). The predominantly ‘English ideal’ of the era was somehow repackaged into a more falsly inclusive form. From its anti-grunge dogma, to its championing of more camp and socially awkward personal traits (Brett Anderson, above), the idea from its inception was a purely English one. In the years that ensued, the Union Jack went from a backward imperial remnant to a fashion icon, and by the time Geri Halliwell got her hands on that infamous dress nobody gave a fuck what started it.

The fact is, Scottish music has never had its own distinct legacy or concise narrative. And despite its creative genius and flare, it often struggles to receive its proportionate share of limelight; more times than not boiled down to an ultra-creative enclave off the north of England – with piercing through as a cultural collective being something that continuously evades them. It’s become true, now more than ever, that a union with a more aggressive larger sibling comes with a fair share of downsides. And if the Scottish public decide to go the way of independence in 2014, the inevitability of a more insular and self-concerning domestic musical policy will certainly follow. No longer would London be the speakers through which the sound of Scotland is amplified. And I think they’ll be a shitload better for it.