radio – Page 15 – Mick and Liesel's Antics

Baker’s Doesn’t

We saw Danny Baker’s latest show a couple of nights ago. Over four hours of pacing up and down and talking really fast about his job in the record shop, about The 6 O’Clock Show and only just getting to the point where he started presenting on GLR. We were in the Upper Circle and just above the lights. Yes, it was hot and the odd whiff of hot metal added to the experience.

The performance was at the New Wimbledon Theatre which as far as I can remember ios exactly the same building as the old, original Wimbledon Theatre.

Sarah and I saw Doctor Who on stage here about 25 years ago. Jon Pertwee played the Doctor, didn’t take it too seriously and frequently came out of character. And I think he threw some Worzel Gummidge lines in too. The funniest thing though was… watching the Daleks, on coasters, as they rolled down the slightly sloping stage towards the audience!

This is the third time we’ve seen Danny Baker in the last 15 months or so. First time in Guildford where he performed his first show, From the Cradle to the Stage, which tookm us through his life as a young boy. By the end of three and half hours on stage, he still hadn’t left school. Some great stories, especially centred around his Dad, Spud.

His stage shows certainly give you value for money, especially when you take into account that he’s a very fast talker. More words per minute than anyone else I can think of. Another performer would run out of steam much sooner, and their show would stop after a couple of hours. But Danny Baker’s doesn’t.

Later in the year, we saw him at Waterstones in Piccadilly where he spoke for a while about the newly published third volume of his autobiography, Going on the Turn. We also bought a copy of his new children’s book, Lucie Goose, for Martha. Both were signed and will be worth a fortune on eBay eventually.

In life, only three things are guaranteed: death, taxes and that when you phone an estate agent, they’ll be on another call already.

Our sellers are ready to exchange, we are ready to exchnage with our buyer, but we fear that her solicitor might still be sitting on paperwork and not doung his job very well.

We still don’t have a moving date, but surely it can’t be more than three or four weeks away now? We had the first removal firm round this morning and they’ll send their quote later on.

And after all this time, the house is still, albeit half-heartedly, fighting back. The front door lost its ability to be locked. Luckily for us, it’s still under warranty, and when the guys turned up, the problem was solved in less than ten minutes. I’ll know what to do next time and I’m so glad I still follow what the internet told me about toeing and heeling, removing the windows from the door, unscrewing all the locking mechanism, moving the hinges all of which would reult in a door that didn’t open or close either.

The zip on my shorts broke just as we were leaving the house to see Danny Baker. Luckily, it was closed when it broke. But come on, dear house, sabotaging my legwear isn’t going to make me chnage my mind about moving.

It’s Summer so the garden is growing at a rate of knots. We could leave a wilderness for the new occupants but that seems a bit unfair. We wanted to renew our subscription for garden waste collection but the online system wasn’t working. Our faithful old house somehow hacked into the local council’s website and caused it to fail. We got there in the end, and thanks to the intervention of one of our local councillors, our garden waste bin was emptied this week. All ready for the next session of lawn mowing, bush trimming, weeding and general tidying up.

Eek, we’ll be moving soon and suddenly there is a huge backlog of radio and TV programmes to catch up on. I usually downlaod about 15-20 hours a weeke of radio programmes, plus some podcasts and I can bearly keep up. Then there are several TV dramas that we’re halfway through right now. It would be a disaster if we moved house and were unable to keep up to date with all that stuff.

Then I remember, we’re going travelling for several months, it doesn’t matter! There are times when I’ve thought about getting rid of the TV altogether, but I could never get other family members to agree. But it doesn’t matter!

What sort of programmes would they be, then, I hear you cry? All sorts, but I’m not going to list them, because it doesn’t matter!

When I Live My Dream

On this day, June 1st, 51 years ago, David Bowie released his first eponymous album. Obviously, we were oblivious to this at the time. The BBC Light Programme would never play it, maybe one of the pirate stations did, and David Bowie never really came to prominence until Space Oddity in 1969, two years later.

Bowie-davidbowie

Nobody could have predicted that the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released on exactly the same day, would have achieved so much more publicity and airplay!

I first heard the David Bowie album in 1973 and thought it was OK, actually. The songs are simple, cute and sometimes very funny.

Once when I went home for the weekend from university, a singer in a local pub covered Uncle Arthur, and I’m sure my Mum and Dad didn’t believe that this was an early David Bowie song.

I think my favourite song is ‘When I Live My Dream’. I used parts of it when I was courting Sarah. And I emailed the lyrics to Liesel when I was wooing her. When we watched the film A Life Aquatic, I was delighted to hear Seu Jorge’s Portuguese version. That was great. I was, however, miffed when, a few years ago, London Heathrow Airport used it in an advert to celebrate its 50th anniversary. No! Sacrilege!

Today is the 68th birthday of top singer/songwriter Tom Robinson. On this day, eight years ago, Liesel and I saw him and his band in concert at Shepherds Bush Empire. The gig, celebrating his 60th birthday, was titled ‘Glad to be Grey’, a fantastic pun on one of his best-known songs, ‘Glad to be Gay’.

He sang a medley of his greatest hit, ‘2-4-6-8 Motorway’ as he had done when he performed at my 50th birthday party, some years earlier. Yes, my very good friend Tom was good enough to visit Chessington and entertain us for an evening. Top bloke! I’d first met him at a writing retreat in 2002. This was less than a year after Sarah had died and I was still feeling very fragile. He was incredibly helpful and supportive and the group from that weekend kept in touch for many years afterwards. In fact, we met up with Marko beforehand for a quick drink. Cheers!
(I know what you’re thinking. ‘Hey Mick, you’re writing this nonsense 16 years after attending a writing workshop? You should ask for your money back, mate!’)

The gig took place during a campaign to save BBC 6 Music, our favourite music radio station, from being closed down. Tom was and is a presenter and several other presenters turned up to wish him a happy birthday with a cake designed to look like the 6 Music logo, which itself resembles a record player.

finale 1937

Other guest musicians include Toumani Diabaté on the kora (don’t tell Tom, but I could have listened to Toumani’s kora all night) and Nitin Sawhney.

Overall, a fabulous night. And happy 68th, Tom, possibly greyer and gladder.

So, to summarise: David Bowie, the Beatles and Tom Robinson are amongst my favourite artistes of all time. And BBC 6 Music is still a favourite radio station.

Dingle Peninsula

A good night’s sleep and we woke up to rain. The bungalow is bigger than our own house, but much quieter. The only sounds from the outside world, other than the rain, are the Atlantic Ocean, some sheep and some lovely birdsong: heard but not seen.

In the kitchen/dining area, we found an extensive CD collection. Christy Moore and The Pogues. So we can at least drown out the sounds of nature.

Except the Christy Moore CD case is empty, and inside The Pogues’ 30:30 we found Now That’s What I Call Pop CD Three. How disappointing!

But the good news is, The Pogues’ CD was found in the CD player, and the CD player actually works.

But then again, this was the only one from the 2-CD set.

Yesterday in the car, I think it’s fair to say we were both disappointed with RTE Radios 1 and 2. Too much talk about Repealing The Eighth. It’s an important issue, yes, but we want to be entertained. And the music wasn’t to our taste, except on the Gaelic station, but the signal wasn’t as reliable

Also, the Vote Yes and Vote No posters on every lamppost don’t do much to enhance the beauty of what we’ve so far seen of The Emerald Isle, even the ones that aren’t blatant lies.

We took our time getting ready to go out, hoping the rain would ease, and that the Dingle Peninsula would live up to its reputation.

And it really did. Bright green fields, glacial valleys, mountains plus all that the Atlantic could throw at the coastline. We stopped at Inch and took a mile: in fact, we walked over three miles on the beach there, despite the wind. I think the word is ‘bracing’. But fortunately for us, the rain had stopped a long time ago.

Speaking of miles, we saw a poster for Ryan’s Daughter, the film, in the local café, and for teenage me, the big star of the film was Sarah Miles. It was filmed in the area, and they are very proud of that.

We had coffee and carrot cake at the café, part of our c-food diet, following the crisps and curry yesterday. As it’s not the full tourist season, the outside toilets were still locked up and there were no rubbish bins: recycling bins, yes, ordinary litter bins, no.

Inch Beach

This guy was the only one fishing on the beach, we have no idea if he caught anything but a few sea-birds looked hopeful. Lots of people had driven along the beach though and I made sure that if future archaeologists inspect the fossilised footprints, they’ll wonder just how 21st century walked.

After a cheese sandwich for lunch, we drove to and through Dingle itself and further west. We stopped several times to admire the views and there are not enough superlatives available, so just imagine us saying ‘wow’ on repeat.

At Dunmore Head, we joined the sheep and walked up and over the headland to within spitting distance of the furthest west point of mainland Ireland. It would be a terrific place to watch the Sun set, but that happens so much later than at home.

Tig Àine is probably the café with the best possible view anywhere. How anyone that works there does anything other than look through the window is beyond me. We had more coffee and cake while watching the waves crashing on the rocks, watching a group of five ducks amble by and admiring the pictures painted by local artists. Yes, we would have liked to buy one, but no, we didn’t, the overall plan is still to de-clutter.

After yesterday’s disappointment with the local radio offerings in the car, today I connected my phone via Bluetooth so we were able to listen to some old BBC radio programmes. Tony Blackburn’s Golden Hours is the fastest show in the world, apparently!

The drive back to base was gorgeous too and for supper we had a fry-up.

We could spent days here to be honest.

Disastrous Broadcasting Career

Liesel will tell you that what I wear most days is determined by what’s on top of the pile in the cupboard or in the drawer. But yesterday, I deliberately sought out a t-shirt that I’ve had for nearly twenty years, but have probably only worn a couple of times.

RIP BBC GLR, 1988-2000. A radio station that many people look back on with great affection. (Ed: Liesel rolls her eyes when I go on too much about GLR, so I won’t, on this occasion.)

We went to The Cavendish Arms in Stockwell last night to support a friend who’s going to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe in August for 27 nights. He’ll be talking about his Disastrous Career in Broadcasting. 27 years broadcasting, in fact, so plenty of disasters to choose from.

Let me introduce Jeremy Nicholas, writer, broadcaster, MC, after-dinner speaker and all-round good guy. We saw him at The Cav as he previewed the Edinburgh show for the first time. The material will be honed over the next few shows: some of the stories, all true, just work better than others.

And by coincidence, some of the stories came from his time at GLR where he presented the Breakfast Show in two stints and the afternoon show for a few years.

180506 me and jeremy nicholas

There were also stories from BBC World Service, BBC 5 Live, local Radio Nottingham, Channel 5, 2012 Paralympics and on the way, just like Don Black on Radio 2, there was plenty of name-dropping.

We’d like to see the show in Edinburgh but if all goes to plan, we’ll be in Alaska by then.

But we would definitely recommend going along: just don’t get drunk and heckle like someone did last night (not Liesel). The stories are true, you’ll have a good laugh at someone else’s minor disasters and we all like a bit of schadenfreude, don’t we!

Here’s another blogging experiment. If it works, you’ll be able to see the remaining dates in a box below…

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FJeremyNicholasSpeaker%2Fposts%2F168088033910637&width=500

How’s that?

Two Gigs and More Music

At the River by Groove Armada has just been played on the radio. It took me back to the late ’90s, listening to GLR while doing the washing up. The sky was blue, the sun was out, I could hear the waves crashing on the beach, the sound of gulls squawking in the distance, and feelings of comfort and warmth. Nostalgia. It seems along time ago, now, twenty years in fact, but it’s funny how hearing a song can evoke all those feelings from so long ago.

The previous song was Blues in the Night by Rosemary Clooney. Not many songs remind me of my Dad, but this one did. Far more songs remind me of my Mum, Dad just wasn’t interested in music, apart from a very select, short list of songs.

Thanks to Guy Garvey on BBC 6 Music for proving that mentally at least, time travel is possible.

Talking about music, this week, Liesel and I went to two gigs. Not on consecutive nights, that would just be too much for these old bones.

Martha Tilston appeared at The Half Moon, Putney and showed us her new film, the Cliff Top Sessions, in which she invites a group of fellow musicians around to her place to play and sing.

Afterwards, she performed some of her own songs too, both old and new. I think we’ve seen Martha play live more often in the last twelve years than any other musician and she’s always good value. We bumped into her Mum too, but never did get around to having a long catch-up.

O’Hooley and Tidow are rising stars from Yorkshire whose songs are usually about real people and real events. They have great harmonies and Belinda O’Hooley’s keyboard playing is fantastic (classically trained, surely?) and their on-stage presence is lovely, very friendly and funny. They were at The Ram Folk Club based in a sports club in Thames Ditton, not a stone’s throw from where we live. We wish we’d found out about The Ram Club years ago but somehow, it’s been under our radar. And just before we move away, too. How’s that for rotten luck?

Sadly, on this day in 1993, Mick Ronson passed away. He was in David Bowie’s band in the early 1970s, during the time most of us fell in love with the science-fictiony, strange new music. When I went up to University in 1973, there were very many Michaels so to differentiate, I chose to be called Mick, in honour of Mr Ronson. I shared a room with Nick. Mick and Nick, well, it made sense at the time. The only people to carry on calling me Michael or Mike were my parents and official bodies such as banks, the NHS and the passport office. I still feel like a ‘Mick’ and when someone does call me Michael, I still expect to be told off for something. I remember seeing Mick Ronson join David Bowie on stage at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992, a very moving event in many respects.

Stairs & Ramps & Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

I couldn’t find the car in the multi-storey car park. My ‘best friend’ from school, Oscar, was with me but he was still of school age. He said he knew where the car was and he set off. I tried, but I couldn’t keep up with his youthful speed.

On one level, there were no cars, just a lot of children playing and laughing and having picnics. It was wonderful. As I stepped through the door onto another level, I realised it was one huge carousel, rotating slowly, but without any horses to ride. So colourful, though.

I ran up and down stairs, up and down ramps, but I just couldn’t find the car, nor Oscar. So I went to the ground floor, to the ‘customer services’ desk to see whether they could locate my car using the CCTV system. Well, they couldn’t because they only had black and white cameras and my car is red. But they did say that just a few minutes earlier, a young man had asked the same question. Aha, I thought, so Oscar can’t find the car either.

It was at this point of course that I woke up. I was feeling quite excited about the possibilities of having shared use facilities: half car park and half children’s playground. But also feeling quite disappointed that I had a red car: that would never happen in real life.

It’s Bank Holiday Monday and of course, it’s raining. In fact it’s rained quite a lot recently, the bottom of the garden is quite soggy. The grass is growing and probably needs its first cut of the year, but electric mowers and water-logged lawns don’t mix.

Another small contribution to Mick’s 15 minutes of fame was broadcast last night on Tom Robinson’s Now Playing show on BBC 6 Music.

Intrigued? You can listen to the whole show until May 2nd.

The Craic Was Good

BBC 6 Music is our Sunday soundtrack, usually. Not necessarily all day, but the presenters are all pretty good, the music is fab, and if we hear a song we’re not too keen on, we know something good will come along later.

Today though, there was some competition. The 2018 Winter Paralympics are taking place in PyeongChang. I have two whole legs and I can’t ski and steer where I want to nor stop when I need to. So to watch disabled skiers, some sitting down on monoskis, do their stuff is awe-inspiring.

But the most intriguing game is the Wheelchair Curling. And it made me think of Albert Einstein. Hold on, that’s quite a leap, isn’t it? Well, he is reported to have said, “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”.

Here is a game in which large stones are slid along an ice rink and points are scored in a similar way to bowls: it’s determined by how many stones are closer to the centre of the target than those of the opposing team.

Wheelchair players have to push the stones with a long broom handle. Or stick. There is no sweeping as there is in conventional curling.

So there you have it. Sticks and stones. Wheelchair Curling is really World War IV.

Oh well, back to the radio.

Amy Lamé presents a show every Sunday afternoon between 4 and 6pm. Everyone is welcome, boys, girls and everyone in between. There is a ‘French Fancy’ each week, which is great, we don’t hear much French music on the whole. But on Amy’s page of the official website, it’s billed as ‘a Gallic tunage feature’. Tunage? One of my all-time most disliked words! Ever.

Another feature was promoted on Facebook thus: “We’re celebrating music with a #NorthernIreland connection today on BBC Radio 6 Music 4-6pm GMT. What track helps you kick back, relax and get that ‘Lazy Sunday’ feeling?”

One song immediately sprang to mind, so I sent off an email very quickly.

Steve the producer wrote back and asked for my phone number so I sent it. Well, I haven’t been on air for a long, long time.

The phone rang, I spoke to Amy, talked about my Mum and about Jenny, William and Martha, and she played my suggested song. And after all that, the song still managed to bring a lump to my throat.

Wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time?

Paris in the Springtime

Walking around the streets of Paris, it’s easy to make comparisons with London. We’ve seen far fewer rough sleepers, just a couple really. But there are many more beggars, each with a much-used old paper cup with only a couple of coins in at the most. Some have dogs but most don’t. What most of them do have, that beggars in London don’t have, is a nice, big, comfortable cushion to sit on.

Another ploy is to come up and ask you to sign a piece of paper. You assume it’s a petition so you read it. Then you find out the person is ‘deaf and mute’. They’re asking for money and you’re supposed to indicate how much you’re donating when you sign. You’ve got to admire their bottle, but, pretending to be deaf?

And on the Metro, we’ve been privileged to have heard three different speakers presumably asking for the price of a coffee or a small contribution for their lodging tonight.

Ignoring all these people, some of whom may be in genuine need of help and not really just trying to fleece ‘tourists’, is tough. But I’m not really a bad person. I made friends with a tiny, old French lady in a bookshop who couldn’t reach what she wanted from the top shelf. We agreed that it was nice buying books for grandchildren, but that’s as far as my French language skills went.

The other problem we have is that our phones lose charge and we don’t have the correct adapter to charge them. I looked in an Apple shop that we happened to pass, but 25€ for a plug with an Apple logo seems a bit OTT. Fortunately, Monica came better prepared. So, my phone is fully charged now and my thumb is typing away and sometimes hitting the correct letter at the first attempt.

Earlier today, I was alerted to a new voicemail message. When I called to listen to it, the nice man said there weren’t any. However, I did retrieve it later, and a second one, both from our estate agent, asking me to call back.

Two more offers have been received, neither of which we want to accept right now. Someone really wants a downstairs toilet but doesn’t want to spend £25,000 installing it. I’m assuming it’s Donald Trump looking to install a gold-played one for that price. Another one wants to rent the house out but wanted to buy the house for a small amount, cheeky devil. There are a couple more people due to view the house later in the week. Yes, it does feel weird having hordes of strangers looking around our house while we’re not there, but equally, it feels wrong when we go and look at other people’s houses and flats.

Meanwhile, back here in Paris, many of the museums and other attractions are closed on Tuesdays. So yesterday, we all went for a long walk, via the Hôtel des Invalides and the Musée de l’Armée. Napoleon’s Tomb is in a church nearby, but we didn’t pay to see it.

We caught a bus, when we eventually found the correct bus stop, to start the main mission of the day: a tour of chocolate shops!

Lots of free samples were enjoyed of course, and we all bought a lot of chocolate to take home. How much really gets back to England, well, we’ll see.

Bon Marché is a big shop. Liesel, Monica and Neha looked around while I took refuge in the book department. I’m reading A Tale of Two Cities right now, it seemed appropriate, but I couldn’t find a French translation. This is where I met the little old French lady, by the way. I went for a coffee because the seats in the café were more comfortable than those in the book shop itself.

Today we visited the Louvre. It’s huge. I wanted to see he Mona Lisa of course, it being the star of a few stories that I’ve enjoyed over the years. Liesel enjoyed the Egyptian section, stuffed cats, stuffed crocodiles and all. I looked at a lot of Italian art and it was nice to see that not every Italian painting from the olden days is a Madonna and Child, which is what I remember from Florence, especially. The Islamic art was also interesting, and I learned a lot about Arabic script.

Yes, I was moved by seeing Leonardo’s most famous painting in the flesh, but it’s sad that it has to be hung behind a thick layer of bullet-proof glass.

We were hoping to take a boat to the Eiffel Tower but the river was flooded, the jetty and many riverside restaurants were under water. Literally, in Seine.

We took a bus instead, the 69 again, and queued to be security-checked then queued to buy tickets then queued for the lift and queued a few more times to take the lift up and back down again.

Wild is the Wind. Really wild. And very cold. So while I’d wanted to climb the stairs initially rather than taking the lifts, in the end, I was quite glad I didn’t. The cold wind went in one ear and out the other, despite my fleece ear-covering hat.

And while the views from the very top of the Tower were wonderful, it was a nice, bright , sunny day, it was bitterly cold in that wind.

On the walk back to our hotel, we stopped off for hot chocolate and crêpes with hot chocolate sauce. So much sugar, so much chocolate, but so nice to sit down in the warm.

Having watched TV a few times now, I can say that I’m very disappointed by the lack of Olympjcs coverage: we have to watch Eurosport 1 in German and we see a lot of German competitors, especially the medal winners.

Car adverts are just as terrible in French or in German, and all the roads are just as unrealistically empty as they are in British ads.

Trails for reality/talent shows are just as annoying as they are at home.

And of course, you can always find a food-based programme or two, just like on Freeview.

I was hoping to listen to some French radio but the device in the hotel room either doesn’t work, or it’s too complicated for little old me. And listening online, on my phone, would be OK, if I could guarantee being able to charge it again afterwards! I know, I know, first-world problems!

Liesel, Monica and Neha sought out cheese fondue for supper this evening, I was happy to eat whatever was in the room, but no, I didn’t eat all the chocolate, not his time.

Here are Monica, Liesel, Mona, Lisa, Neha, Mick and some other character at the Louvre.