For the record, I don’t think Bardot was a terribly good actor or singer, nor did she make very many good movies, but that’s not the point. Her arrival in the 1950s signalled a new perspective on female sexuality that resonated well after she ceased to be a major draw in the cinema. She was John Lennon’s first celebrity crush and her look influenced any number of 60s dollybirds (Christie, Faithfull, Rice-Davies, et al) as well as cementing in the mainstream media the association of Frenchness with sensual misbehaviour. She was important, and that’s what qualifies her for obituaries. Her later descent into far-right wingnuttery is neither here nor there. Incidentally, I’d disagree with Justin and also stake a claim for Norman Tebbit. He wasn’t the first senior Tory politician from a humble background – Heath, Powell and Thatcher came before him – but he was the first to eschew elocution lessons and as such must be a role model for the current crop of right-wing populists.

Talking of which, the question of how colossal a shitbag the teenage Nigel Farage might have been rumbles on. I don’t know, as I wasn’t there. But I do come from a roughly similar vintage, being four years younger than him, and am an alumnus of a similar school (selective, single-sex, sporty, cadet corps, faded grandeur, a strange blend of academic rigour and macho philistinism). And racism was bloody everywhere and as the only Jew among the student body, I was on the receiving end and I’m pretty sure that the handful of non-white kids got it even worse. The low point came in 1983 when we staged a mock election and the National Front came a strong second and I wouldn’t be surprised if even that result was massaged downwards to avoid some unpleasant headlines. I remember the names and I remember the faces. I’ll be charitable and assume it was all youthful bravado and they’re now respectable, productive members of society. I’m sure I said some pretty toe-curling things myself at that age. But if I see any of those names and faces appear over the parapets, perhaps by getting involved in politics, perhaps as cheerleaders for a certain former student of Dulwich College, maybe I won’t be so discreet.

PS: More about the good art/bad artist conundrum here.

Frank Gehry has died. You may not be able to place the name, let alone fit a face to it, but you know the buildings, the ones that look like a stack of imploding loo rolls, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Dancing House in Prague, the residential add-ons at our very own Battersea Power Station, beggin’ yer pardon, guvnor.

Reaching through the cigarette fug to rescue the best zingers among the tributes to Tom Stoppard, I find this, from a touching piece by Patrick Marber:

I like cliches! I use them often. With my work it helps for the audience to know where they are now and then.

PS: An earlier ponder from the great man on the accessibility or otherwise of his works; and less than a year ago, the critic who described one of his plays as intellectual masturbation, to which the only feasible response is, “you say that like it’s a bad thing.”

PPS: And just before I publish, I hear Marber describe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead as “showy-offy”, which misses the point even harder.

PPPS: And of course this letter, which has gone viral, or metastatic, or chaotic, or something:

Clickbait, or the principle of clickbait at least, predates the internet by a long while. I remember those hoardings at the pitch of the Evening Standard sellers, declaring “FAMOUS ACTOR DIES” and if you were tempted to buy the paper you’d discover it was someone who was in Emmerdale in 1974.

What the web has done is to refine this technique, luring you in with something more specific, but often irrelevant, reductive and often plain insulting. An obvious example was when the double-Oscar winner Maggie Smith died and all the headlines mentioned was Harry Potter and Downton Abbey – the last-named being a show so banal that even Dame Maggie herself couldn’t be arsed to watch it.

But yesterday they were outdone by The Independent, which marked the death of Connie Francis, a performer who sold over 100 millions in a turbulent, incident-packed career, with this headline:

SINGER BEHIND VIRAL TIKTOK HIT DIES AT 87

2017, Hammersmith Apollo, London. Billed as the last time Brian would play Pet Sounds in London. Brian looks baffled, barely touches his piano, more a protective shield than an instrument. His voice is croaky and hesitant, and Matt Jardine handles the high notes. But in some ways it doesn’t much matter. This is a fan gathering, a chance for us to say thank you, one last time. In the interval, I get chatting to a hardcore devotee, who’s been following the Beach Boys since 1963. He tests me, asking if I know the names of the dogs on Pet Sounds. I pass the test.

2012, Singapore Indoor Stadium. The Beach Boys 50th Anniversary, although most of the band is from Brian’s solo outings. Mike Love is as much smarmy MC as frontman, and even he must realise most of us aren’t here to see him. Bruce offers a luscious ‘Disney Girls’ but all eyes are on the chubby guy on the left of the stage. They’ve scheduled several short breaks in the set and Brian shuffles off in a hurry, as if he’s being chased. They encore with ‘Kokomo’ and I scowl. (Review here.)

A few months later, Mike fires Brian. Or does he?

2002, Royal Festival Hall, London. The greatest gig I’ve ever attended. Two memories stand out. In the second act, the band plays the songs from Pet Sounds in sequence but instead of ‘I Know There’s An Answer’ (side two, track two), he sings ‘Hang On To Your Ego’, the original lyrics that Mike Love nixed because they were too druggy, or too anti-Maharishi, or something. And the crowd roars its approval, because we all hate Mike Love.

And then, during the encores, we’re all dancing insanely to ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ and a small boy, no more than eight, seems even more possessed than us old farts and looks in serious danger of dancing over the balcony to his doom. But at least he’d die happy. No, ecstatic.

1990, Doonesbury. Andy Lippincott is the first openly gay character in an American syndicated comic strip, and the first to succumb to AIDS. In his last days, he is serenaded by the just-released CD version of Pet Sounds and after he dies, a pad is found in his hand, bearing his last, scribbled words:

“BRIAN WILSON IS GOD.”

Roger Corman, who died a few days ago, batting back accusations that his work was mere exploitation: “Show me a film which isn’t an exploitation film.”

Possibly a little trite, but when you give it even a moment’s thought, it applies to pretty much all art, doesn’t it?

Rolling Stone, for the first time in many decades, nails it.

And we have to return to Anthony Bourdain’s summation of the man:

Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.

Sadly, Bourdain didn’t live to dance on Kissinger’s grave and nor did Christopher Hitchens. But we still have Tom Lehrer who may or may not have said that he stopped writing songs because satire died when Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. So that’s OK.

PS: Also, this:

The critic Derek Malcolm has died, which inevitably draws us back to 2001 and his shamelessly highbrow farewell gift to The Guardian, his 100 best films; any reader of his work would have a pretty good idea of the directors that would appear, although some might query the specific movies. (The Bitter Tea of General Yen for Capra? Really?)

The fun starts when his fellow reviewers are asked to review his list. Most respond with respect, while quibbling with the details; David Thomson despairs of the whole idea. And then there’s Nick Fisher from The Sun (who also died in the past few months), who gives a lovely display of performative philistinism: 

This is a buff's list, not a punter’s list. Where's Erin Brockovich and Men In Black? Where’s American Beauty or American Pie or American Movie, come to that? Long films with dense subtitles are not my cup of rosie. I think Derek and me would be hard pushed to ever pick a Saturday night out at the flicks together. Does he even eat popcorn? I think I read down to Kes before I even recognised any of these names as movies. Kinda smells of pretension to me. But hey, without buffs there would be no poncey foreign film festivals. And we know how important they are. Not. Kes, Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull and Night At The Opera... yep, I go along with all of these as firm candidates for any Top 100. But, as for the other 96 titles, you're on your own Del. 

Two thoughts. First, although Malcolm might seem to be in thrall to the canon emforced by Sight and Sound, Cahiers du Cinéma, Film Comment and so forth, surely Fisher’s reference points are similarly unsurprising, playing the same game, but shorn of the “dense subtitles”. (Too many words, my dear Godard...)

The other is the frame of reference. Malcolm had almost certainly seen most of the films Fisher cited, and decided from a position of knowledge that they didn’t merit inclusion; could Fisher have said the same about the 96 he objected to on Malcolm’s list?

PS: And for what it’s worth, I’d probably agree with about a dozen of Malcolm’s choices. And I don’t like popcorn.

Nobody reads this blog any more, so there’s little point in writing this. That said, there would seem to be little point in Blogger telling me that several of my posts have been put behind a warning (akin to those apocryphal ruffles that Victorians supposedly used to cover the shame of piano legs) but this is indeed what they’ve done. 

The problem is, beyond a bland ticking-off that they “contain sensitive content” and may not “adhere to Blogger’s community guidelines” there’s no indication as to what may have given the Blog Gods a fit of the moral vapours. Unless, of course, I realise that a post asking why Lisa Jardine privileges the reading tastes of women over men, and one pondering the extent to which Jade Goody’s stupidity is real are linked by one crucial element: since the posts were written, both Professor Jardine and Ms Goody have died. All that I can infer is that we are no longer permitted to speak ill of the dead* and I’m just waiting for Blogger’s AI to stumble over my Jimmy Savile post.

Incidentally, they also found fault in a third post, in which the only potential offence I can deduce is the contention that Haruki Murakami’s first book isn’t terribly good. And since pretty much the only person who gets offended by that sort of thing any more is, uh, me, I’m not sure what the problem is.

*Of course, I have to bring up Bette Davis’s line: “You should never say bad things about the dead, only good. Joan Crawford is dead? Good.”

I was never a diehard Amis fanboy (and it was almost always boys) at the level of some of my contemporaries. But when I first moved to London in the early 90s I embarked on a major catch-up session, reading everything from The Rachel Papers to London Fields in the course of a few weeks. 

What dampened my ardour a little was not just the declining quality of the books themselves through the coming decades (although that is evident) but the fact that Amis had become a bit of a punchline, with the strange story of the new agent and the sweary letter from his ex-friend Julian Barnes (also wife of his old agent) and, yes, his dental bill. These days I’m scrupulous about distinguishing the Art from the Artist and as such I really can’t be doing with numpties chopping bits of Eric Gill statues, his crimes notwithstanding. Back then there was an element of self-branding going on, ostentatiously retrieving my copy of Dead Babies from my ICA carrier bag as I strap-hung from Brixton to Victoria. And then the name on the front became just a tad embarrassing, and I transferred my affections to McEwan and Ishiguro and Winterson and more...

So, even though I sneered when the BBC kept the Phil/Holly saga at the top of the bulletin, even on Radio 4, even as the news of Amis’s demise was trickling in, I’d have to admit that we’re all susceptible to a bit of celebrity gossip once in a while.

I refuse to choose. But if I do have to pick one, it’s this, and it’s because of the lyrics and yes, I know Burt didn’t write the lyrics, don’t @ me (is “don’t @ me” still a thing?) but even the lyrics, just a sliver of them:

...and all the stars that never were/Are parking cars and pumping gas...

Which, had it arisen in The Last Tycoon or All About Eve or Sunset Boulevard or Barton Fink would still say everything that ever needed to be said about the vagaries of fame and showbiz and all that cal.

 

Each year kills off a few more of my heroes and in 2022 it was probably the death of Raymond Briggs that stung the most. This month, for the first time in decades, I sat and watched the film of The Snowman. Briggs himself wasn't all that fond of it, believing it missed the point, asserting that his original book isn’t about Christmas, but about death: “I create what seems natural and inevitable. The snowman melts, my parents died, animals die, flowers die. Everything dies. There’s nothing particularly gloomy about it. It’s a fact of life.” And I’d clean forgotten until I saw a documentary that preceded this year’s showing that Briggs himself appeared as his curmudgeonly, welly-booted self when the film first went out in 1982. He was swiftly replaced by David Bowie at the behest of the American networks, and this is the version that became the definitive one. So just to redress the balance, here’s a Christmas card more in keeping with Briggs’ original intentions. Have a Christmas, everyone, as happy as you like.

(Georges Mouton, ‘Bonjour’, c 1903, from the V&A collection.)

The queue to view the Queen’s coffin will live on, in sociology theses if not in blessed memory, mainly because the end point was a bit of a disappointment. A few people, especially those with some kind of military background, had prepared some sort of ritual (a salute, a curtsey, just a brisk nod) but many, even after all those hours living off sandwiches and some warped folk memory of the Blitz spirit, spent their 10 seconds of communion with the late monarch frozen in the headlights, so afraid of committing some arcane faux pas that they just stared, then waddled off.

An analogy with Brexit seems apt. People definitely wanted Brexit, but many of them weren’t sure why, and even more had no idea what to do after it had happened. Endless iterations of “we’ve got our country back” aren’t really a basis for operating a major, if declining, 21st-century economy. And gawping mutely at a wooden box under a flag for a fraction of a minute is no substitute for a functioning constitution.

I’ve consumed the events of the past week and a half with a sort of baffled scepticism. As I’ve said before, I wish no ill on the Queen, and I hope her family and friends have had a chance to grieve properly. And I don’t really have anything against the people in the queue; they simply have a hobby that doesn’t ring my particular bell, like golf or potholing or light opera. But this morning I discovered that two people I vaguely know through social media have had medical appointments cancelled at the last moment, because it was thought to be more important that NHS staff get a chance to watch the funeral. My scepticism is hardening into anger; to mangle Elvis Costello, I used to be amused, now I fully intend to be disgusted.

PS: Will the sentimental Stalinism never end? Corgi owners throughout the land claim their dogs are in mourning too...

PPS: From Mic Wright, a trilogy of invective that goes into more detail. (This is part 3, links to 1 & 2 beneath the pic.)

PPPS: From the new Private Eye:

 I reserve the right to be sadder about one nonagenarian than another.

And so the Queen finally enters Valhalla, not lasting quite long enough to tell us what she thought of Cobra Kai season five. Now is not the time or place to cast aspersions on the late monarch. Whatever you think of the institution itself, she clearly discharged her role with commitment and aplomb; and, in any case, she's someone’s mother, someone’s grandmother and so on. That said, we seem to have entered a moment – with uncomfortable similarities to the period following the death of her daughter-in-law – when those who aren’t swept up in the mood of collective melancholy feel uncomfortable about conducting business as usual. We don’t mock the Queen herself, but surely some of the bloody awful poetry and awkward corporate tweets are fair game? And as for faded celebrities trying to get in the act...

As far as big public events go, it seems that the effective shutdown of normal service at the BBC and other broadcasters when Prince Philip died last year is now rightly seen as overkill; but the laissez-faire attitude from the Palace has led to some anomalies and inconsistencies. So there was cricket, but no football. And we were allowed a few daft game shows on Saturday night, even if they were shunted to BBC2, but not the Last Night of Proms. This last cancellation seems particularly odd; wouldn’t a bit of sentimental flag-waving be just the ticket? And there are precedents. In 2001, the Last Night took place four days after the 9/11 attacks, surely a more brutal shock to the collective system than the passing of a 96-year-old? The mood was a bit more sombre than usual, exemplified by Leonard Slatkin conducting Barber’s Adagio for Strings. And it was beautiful and respectful and wholly right.   

I can’t claim to have been a devotee of the late composer Harrison Birtwistle but I do recall the brouhaha that arose when his defiantly dissonant Panic was premiered in 1995 during the Last Night of the Proms, an occasion more usually graced by flag-waving singalongs. What I had forgotten is that the TV broadcast was fronted by the twinkly, urbane Richard Baker. Not even Stravinsky managed a stunt like that.

I’ve always felt an uncomfortable empathy with the Rosencrantzes and Guildensterns of this world, those whose greatest claim to fame is their (often accidental) proximity to a bigger, brighter star. And as such, I mourn the magnificent Pamela Rooke, aka Jordan, whose snarling presence in press coverage of the Sex Pistols made the whole three-chords-now-start-a-band formula feel too much like hard work. You didn’t even need to pick up a guitar. You just needed to be.

I never knew the urologist Professor James Malone-Lee. But someone I knew many years ago did know him, which is why, by the wonders of Twitter algorithms, I saw this, an object lesson in level-headed understatement in the face of the inevitable. “...a little inconvenient” indeed. He died peacefully this morning.