Monthly Archives: September 2012

A London Girl

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I have some bad news to depart. I also have some good news for you.

The bad bit is that I will no longer regale you with “Tales from the Shovel : A Simpleton’s Life in a Rural Pub” . No, no. My love affair with the aforementioned (and often mentioned) local boozer has ended, and that situation will not alter up to and until I receive an apology from an offending regular. He knows who he is.

You’re probably thinking something along the lines of “Oh God, Bealing has hd a row about the Police service, or George Osborne‘s political genius, Robin Jackman‘s mincing run-up, or the state of the BBC. Why else would he leave The Shovel ?”

No. None of that. I cannot go into exactly what happened, but suffice to say, I shall not darken that door for a very long time. I may even start using The Liniment and Poultice, as a regular haunt, even though The Incumbent says no, we won’t.

So it being a Friday night, and one of the few in the month which coincides with me having a couple of bob in my pocket, we went up to our old haunts to see what we could see.

We saw a couple of old mates, that’s what we could see. And we drank. And we had fun. And we spent money in Old Greenwich Town, in an Old Greenwich Pub: just like, not only had we never left but ,that both of us were working. And working for firms who paid the proper rate. I can’t remember back that far. Back when I was still allowed to drink in The Shovel (I’ll tell you later) the biggest round I ever bought was £9.50 – and that was only if the Fleet was in. Here I paid (with gay abandon, I might add) £19.50 for the odd cider and a pint-or-two of lager.

But it mattered not one jot. My very old (and in some cases, very drunk) friends had brought me to a pub where Chas Hodges and his band were playing. You know who Chas is. Chas is the Chas of Chas and Dave. I may have mentioned my love for them before. I’m sure I have.

So I am standing in a pub in South London next to the Pearly King and Queen of the Royal Borough of Greenwich (I kid you not), I have a pint of cider in my hand, and one half – the half that writes and owns the songs – of Chas and Dave is but a few feet in front of me. What do I do ?

I wanted to call you all up to ask if you wanted to join me and The Incumbent in this marvellous evening. But I was too excited/drunk to do so.

The best I could do is to record the evening in the best I could. There is video, and one day I’m sure it will be available. Not that there will be a huge call for it.

But there is this:

I may or may not have known all the words to all the songs but me and my new best mate Chas are getting on just fine. Not sure who the Doris on the left is though.

Oolamalawaladollar, That’s what the Fez he Sing

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While it’s all gone quiet, I thought we’d have some music.

A long time ago at a Rugby Club far, far away, me and a young Julian Holland sat down and sang the following. He sang lead and did most of the work on the keyboard, and I was on harmonies.

In truth it wasn’t just me who accompanied him, but a hundred or so privileged drunks, their wives and girlfriends.

Mr Holland had been bought by the local coppers. Or rather, he’d put himself (and his talents) up for auction and would play at a venue of the bidders’ asking for an hour – ish. To cut a short story long, a local Nick won, one of the bidders, was both a copper and a player down our club and so Jools took time out from Squeeze, or The Tube, or whatever he was doing at the time and came to our club to sing.

With me.

Well that’s how I remember it, anyway. Mind you, such was the drunken state of many of us at the time, the lyrics to this song sounded perfectly sensible.

Give me iko
I wanna ball the wall here
Shuffle in Dumaine
Hear the hookacumbi
Meet my tipatina
Love her hold her tightly
Wanna see her swaying
In New Orleans nightly

.
You know I wanna be there
Drinking in the morning
Holler in the evening
Dr. Jazz Dr. Jazz
Bake my jelly roll
You quicken my pulse
You make my rhythm slow

.
Crawfish gumbo
Rhythm from the jungle
Big chief rocking
I follow the voodoo king
Oolamalawaladollar
That’s what the fez he sing

.
How long must it be
How long must I wait
Till Highway 49 takes me to your gate
I eat a bowl of gumbo
That creole child will serve
Sit on the verandah
Happy in a dixie world

.
Maybe on Sunday
Head for Baton Rouge
Dancing with the cajun
Twist away my blues
Then a drop of rain
A trickle in my eye
I look up and smile
At the rhythm that never, never dies

No Closer: The Topless Photos they Dare not Publish.

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There are times when you try to get away from it all. If, like me, you live in the public eye those times are rapidly becoming few and far between.

I am like everyone else in that I do like to have time to myself. While I fully appreciate that it is you, the fan and the reader who have made me into what I am, I do expect the press and media to respect the difference between my public life and my private one.

The editors at French magazine Closer saw sense and decided not to publish topless photos of me, on the grounds of good taste and for the public good. No-one wants to see that over their cornflakes.

One can only hope the British press – following the unfortunate incident with the Prince Harry photos earlier this month – decide to heed Lord Leveson’s directions and leave these snaps where they should be left : in the back of a camera, in the bottom of a forgotten drawer.

Just like “Waity” Katy, my body betrays my eating habits (I’m more “Weighty” than waity, and it may not be a sight to everyone’s taste. In the past, this seems to hold no sway with the picture editors of Fleet Street. But please, I beg of you, think of the children and say “Non” to paparazzi pics.

Thank You.

And now, some music.

(Picture below taken with a very short, wide lens)

Death of a Craftsman.

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Sorry to have to report the news of yet another great man who has passed on. Seamus was another in a long line of working and drinking buddies who will be sadly missed. He was wonderful to work with, hilarious to listen to and a pleasure to stand at the bar with. He called a cvnt a cvnt (and we worked with plenty of them at The Telegraph) and always stood his corner in The Cat and Canary afterwards, bless him.

Here’s the Evening standard from yesterday:

Fleet St veteran Seamus Potter dies at 57 

Seamus Potter, chief sub-editor of the Evening Standard’s international pages, has died at the age of 57.

A Fleet Street veteran who enthusiastically upheld all its traditions, Seamus was the eldest son of Daily Mirror features executive and author John Deane Potter and Mirror fashion editor Eve Chapman, who was also the News of the World’s agony aunt in the Eighties and Nineties.

Brought up in Chelsea, Seamus added a literary and arty elan to the Evening Standard on his first tour of duty in the late Seventies.

In 1987, he was transferred from the middle-bench of the paper to become deputy editor of the revived Evening News, as Lord Rothermere sought to squash Robert Maxwell’s newly launched London Daily News. The move was a success — and the Evening News was closed soon after it had helped the Standard successfully scupper the opposition.

After a stint heading production at the Sunday Telegraph under Charles Moore and Dominic Lawson, and spells on the Daily Telegraph’s back-bench and then as Scottish editor and City chief sub-editor, Seamus launched The Sportsman as production editor.

When the paper ran out of cash and folded, he returned to the Standard and supervised the foreign pages, dispensing wit and wisdom and offering friendship and support to younger sub-editors and editors alike.

In his early days on the Western Daily Press, he was a founder member of the “Hole in the Head gang”, a group of maverick young Turks. He jumped off a ferry in the Irish Sea miles from Liverpool to save a cartoonist fellow member who dived overboard for a wager.

In his early twenties, Seamus was named among the top 20 most eligible bachelors in London by a society magazine.

A man of firm views, Seamus was a loyal and committed journalist and friend who accepted the onset of throat cancer with dignity, stoicism and a complete lack of self-pity.

His son Luis and his sister Lucinda were by his bedside during his last weeks in Trinity Hospice, Clapham.

A private family funeral service will be held. The Evening Standard is planning a memorial service later in the year.

My Olympic Legacy: I’m Skint

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Given that you should never judge something til you try it, yesterday four of us did just that:

The author walks around Olympic Park ,unaided, during the Paralympics.

Baked Potato, Topped with Mayo………………………………………………..£6

Bottle of Water …………………………………………………………………….£1.60

275 m Bottle of Bulmers Cider…………………………………………………….£4.30.

A space in Park Live to watch British Airways adverts on tv……………………No Charge

145g bag of Cadbury’s Twirl…………………………………………………………..£3.00

18.7cl glass of (as yet unidentified) White Wine……………………………………..£4.80

Bench in front of huge BMW ads screen…………………………………..Complimentary

Pie & Mash…………………………………………………………………………….£8.00

Son queuing for 20 minutes for waffles, to be told they’d run out…………………..Free

Team GB mini umbrella………………………………………………………………£15.00

Signed copy of man laughing all the way to the bank…………………………….Priceless.

I expected to stand corrected. The athletes were marvellous, and inspiring. But I had woefully underestimated just how crass and callous Locog and Coe’s Corporate Carve-Up manifests itself once you get inside the gates. Disgraceful.