Tag: Mark Ellicott

Pass Time With Good Company, With “All Good Sports” For A Few Days, Mid October 2022

Rohan “Candy” Candappa & David Wellbrook

Violets & Fatt Pundit With Mark Ellicott, Simon Jacobs & John White, 17 October 2022

For some reason we were all being too grown up to take photos, but this was a special get together reuniting people who had all known each other at Keele for one reason or another.

I had re-engaged by e-mail with Mark Ellicott during the latter stages of the pandemic while writing my “Forty Years On” series, not least to compare notes over Princess Margaret debacles, a cricket match for which I got picked for the craziest of Ellicott-induced reasons and more recently some exchanges over playlists (or, as we used to call them, mix tapes) from 1982.

Mark Ellicott (right), next to Neil Baldwin of Marvellous fame, 2016

In particular the musical aspects intrigued Simon Jacobs, who wondered out loud to me why I hadn’t set up a get-together with Mark.

Simon, in 2019, trying to make a silk purse out of my (then) sow’s ear voice

Actually, John said something similar when I shared my Mark correspondence with him when we met up in the summer. I had no excuse, so I felt duty bound to act.

John questioning my judgement with his eyes and body language, August 2022

I booked a table at Fatt Pundit in Berwick Street and chose Violet’s as a suitable close-by bar for us to meet for a pre-dinner drink.

I played tennis at Lord’s – a draw at singles seeing as you were going to ask – before hot-footing it (via the flat) to Soho.

I arrived at Violet’s, grabbing a table – just inside but suitably quasi-open to the street – about five minutes before Simon arrived. From that vantage point, we observed Mark walk straight past us and then four or five minutes later he returned having got as confused as everyone else by the Berwick Street door-numbering. John arrived fashionably but not ridiculously last.

We had a good chat and a drink at Violet’s before heading a block or two up the road to Fatt Pundit, where the food was excellent and the chat got even better.

A few comedy moments with the sweet waitress whose high-pitched voice is possibly in a register that none of us, given our advancing years, could hear. But the menu was pretty-much self-explanatory, so a mixture of sign language, reading the menu and common sense allowed us to order a cracking good meal.

It was a really enjoyable four-way catch up.

Goldmine With Rohan Candappa & David Wellbrook, 18 October 2022

This gathering was originally conceived in Soho when Rohan and I met for dim sum a couple of months ago:

Dim Sum At New Loon Fung In Chinatown With Rohan Candappa, 2 August 2022

It was basically a “barbeque meats challenge” based on my assertion that the Queensway specialists therein, especially Goldmine, are better than those in Chinatown.

It turned into a small-scale Alleyn’s School alum thing. David Wellbrook, being Wellbrook, needed to join in the challenge, not least because Queensway is an alma mater of his where he attended the University of Romance (his wife used to live there when they were courting).

We tucked into plenty of barbeque meats, diverting briefly at the start and end of the lunchtime feast for some dim sum, just in the interests of science.

At school Rohan Candappa was always known as Candy, so it was with great mirth and merriment that David spotted “Candy World” across the street.

Rohan Candappa’s world

After lunch, we retreated to my flat where I showed the lads my centennial family relic, on what was, after all, its century day.

Hamsters v Dedanists At Hampton Court Palace, 20 October 2022

Almost everything that needs to be said about this match is contained in my match report on the Dedanists web site – here…or perhaps best to read it from the scrape here, scraped before the current piece drops down the running order.

For those who don’t like to click and/or who don’t want all the tennis detail – here is an extract:

“It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall,” said your intrepid reporter to Carl Snitcher, having braved the 3.5 mile high-pass journey from Notting to Primrose Hill in just over 35 minutes.

“There’s a bad moon on the rise,” agreed Carl, gnomically.

We arrived at a rain-soaked Hampton Court Palace in the nick of time; just as well, as your intemporal reporter was playing in the first rubber. Some might argue that our arrival was actually “worse than two”, but a more substantial discrepancy soon revealed itself; the marker’s sheet was showing a lesser handicap for the Dedanists than the sheet that James McDermott & I had been sent.

In order to avoid a major diplomatic incident, James & I acquiesced to the lesser handicap, yet still somehow contrived to win our rubber, albeit narrowly…

McDermott hitting, me watching

On finally staggering away from the court, your incognizant reporter picked up a message that the Prime Minister had resigned. “That’s the second Liz whose expiration has been announced while I was on the real tennis court in the space of six weeks”, I mused, having been informed of the late Queen’s demise by Tony Friend while I was on the Lord’s court.

I thought I might be the tidings-bringer this time, only to discover that most of the group had learnt the demise of Liz Truss some 45 minutes earlier.

Anyway, this was no time to ponder the fate of shambolic politicians – it was time to tuck into the pies before they too were to become a footnote in history. A positive footnote in the case of the pies of course – once again a delicious choice of
• Chicken Ham & Leek;
• Steak & Ale.

Bread and cheese (yes please) and two species of yummy desert that self-discipline allowed me to avoid, along with the jolly wines on offer…

Pictures by Tony Friend

There’s no better way to lift the spirits on a gloomy, worrisome day than a day of pastance with Dedanists and Hamsters. Symbolically, as the nation’s political shenanigans moved on to its new phase, the heavy clouds and rain of the morning had lifted to reveal a gorgeously bright, sunny evening as we all left.

“So foul and fair a day I have not seen”, said Carl, gnomically, as I dropped him home.

“Pass time with good company”, I replied.

Marvellous by Neil Baldwin & Malcolm Clarke, @sohoplace, 15 October 2022

It’s not every day that Janie and I go to the opening night of a west end run that is itself the opening night of a brand new theatre. In fact, @sohoplace is the first new build theatre to open in London’s West End in the last 50 years, making this quite possibly a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to attend such an event.

In fact, this world premier production of Marvellous was first aired at the New Vic in Newcastle-Under-Lyme earlier this year, to rave reviews which are touted in big letters on the @sohoplace website, where information about the autumn 2022 west end run can be found.

Marvellous is based on the true story of Neil Baldwin (click here for Wikipedia entry), an uncomplicated, happy soul who, in 1960, wandered through the gates of Keele University as a local teenager and found a safe space there to bring his dreams to reality. Those dreams mostly involve football and/or meeting famous people. As a result, Neil has been honoured with a British Empire Medal, freedom of the cities of Stoke-on-Trent & Newcastle-Under-Lyme, an honorary degree from Keele, plus, first (and possibly best) of all, since 1968, honorary life membership of Keele University Students’ Union.

Neil never had a formal role at Keele, neither staff nor student, whereas some of us actually did the “hard yards”…OK they weren’t all that hard…for our accolades. I arrived at Keele 20 years after Neil’s teenage adventure started and was still there five years later when we (by which I mean the Students’ Union) voted at a UGM to deem 1985 The Neil Baldwin Jubilee Year. I find myself juxtaposed with Neil in the Concourse article reporting that meeting:

UGM Report: “Neil Baldwin Rules OK”, Concourse Juicy Bits, February 1985 Part Four

Reading the above article, it seems that Mark Ellicott, who was the Speaker at that 1985 UGM, curtailed the discussion on the proposal to name 1985 “The Neil Baldwin Jubilee Year” at Keele, by suggesting that anyone who might vote against the proposal would be:

a nasty individual.

I suspect the proposal was approved by acclamation.

Mark might remember. Coincidentally, I am due to see Mark on 17 October (just two days after seeing the show) and additionally coincidentally he is now running the Outernet music venue just opposite @sohoplace.

Indeed, it is through my sustained Keele connections that Janie and I ended up @sohoplace on the opening night, having spotted on the Keele alumni FB postings that the show was transferring to the West End. I managed to grab a brace of good seats for the opening night, which felt like the right thing to do. Why wait any longer than that?

We got to @sohoplace ludicrously early. We wanted to have a look around this new theatre, which we did, but you don’t really need best part of an hour to do that.

Still, we got to chat with some of the lovely staff at this new theatre who were “beyond excited” about their opening night and some of them were even more excited than that when they learnt that I had known Neil at Keele all those years ago. I told them to expect a fair number of Keele alums during the run, because Keele alums are a bit like that.

We really were ludicrously early

We enjoyed our ludicrously earliness in the charming new space, until the theatre bell went. At that point, of course, our carefully chosen end seats (we’re seasoned theatre-in-the-round types, me and Janie, e.g. at The Orange Tree Theatre, so we know to go for those) meant that we had to make way for more or less everyone.

The place seemed pretty full, possibly completely full, as the show was about to begin. I think I spotted Malcolm Clarke himself in the audience (he’s a big fella) but other than that I didn’t recognise any Keele alums, although I’d guess there were a few others there.

What should I say about the play and production itself?

The play is, in a way, an adaptation of the BAFTA-Award-winning film Marvellous (2014), which was itself a post-modern biopic about Neil’s extraordinary life, in which Toby Jones played the part of Neil, while Neil himself also appeared in the film.

The conceit of the play is that six actors have gathered to workshop/depict Neil’s life, only to be interrupted by “the real Neil” (actor Mike Hugo, whose voice was unerringly Neil-like). Some of the actors are seeking meaning and metaphor from Neil’s story, threatening at times to declaim profound monologues, while “the real Neil” finds ways to steer the telling as a rollicking, fun-packed yarn.

Thus the Keele graduate (along with my broad-based-foundation-year-underpinned education) in me would describe the piece as a post-postmodern (or perhaps I should say metamodern) bildungsroman exploring the life and times of Neil Baldwin…

…whereas Neil would no doubt describe it as:

a funny play about me, to make people happy.

There are no shocks or unexpected plot twists in this play. Indeed the play version has straightened out the time-line of Neil’s life, whereas the film was deliberately vague about time-lines, darting back and forth in time on occasion. This “story straightening” makes the play much easier to follow but in some ways over-simplifies.

For example, the play’s timeline implies that Neil went off to the circus in 1980 and returned to North Staffordshire at the end of the 1980s. The truth of the matter is that his circus career, which the play rightly depicts as an environment in which Neil was repeatedly subjected to mistreatment, must have been a stop-start career with quite lengthy periods of return to his family home and Keele throughout the 1980s – certainly the early to mid 1980s when I was at Keele.

But that is detail.

Most importantly, the play tells its mostly heart-warming, comedic tale with verve and light-hearted spirit. The production is excellent and the performances were mostly pitch-perfect (did you see what I did there with a football pun?).

I was especially taken with Suzanne Ahmet’s depiction of Neil’s mum (Gemma Jones’s film shoes being hard ones to fill) and I commend Gareth Cassidy’s comedy timing, in particular when depicting characters with a huge variety of accents, sometimes having to change articulatory-tack at alarming speed.

Yes, some of the comedy tended towards slapstick or pantomime style, but this is the story of Neil Baldwin, a man who spent much of his career as a clown. The sillier aspects of the play were well-bounded and skilfully delivered. Oh yes they were. Oh yes they were.

Best of all, the audience was absolutely carried by Marvellous on that opening night and I sense that almost everyone left @sohoplace feeling happier than they felt on arrival. As the man himself would say,

that’s marvellous.

Guest Contribution: Mark Ellicott’s Response To His Summer 1982 Mix Tape

Mark Ellicott more recently (actually 2016)

In response to my “forty years on” piece about a mix tape Mark made for me in 1982…

Informal Contemporary Music Subsidiary Course At Keele In The Summer Of 1982, Tutor: Mark Ellicott

…which is probably worth reading before reading the following response…

…Mark responded with some fascinating reflections of his own about that music “forty years on”, along with his thoughts on what the follow-up mix tape should have been. I shall try to replicate that “thought-experiment mix tape” within this guest piece.

Ah Ian,

Every one of those tracks still gets a regular airing in my household! For me they have never aged because I’ve never gone through a prolonged period not listening to any of them. Anything by Grace Jones in that early eighties period always brings back memories of six in the morning in Freehold Street, Newcastle in the spring and summer of 1982 after a night at the 141 Club in Hanley  with the likes of Anna Summerskill, Mark Bartholomew, Vince Beasley and Jan Phillips, amongst others. Invariably all of us stoned / tripping and / or speeding. The ‘Nightclubbing’ album just tailor made for the wee small hours after a long night out just as everyone was coming down. It was THE album I most associate with that crazy summer term when I went through that cathartic metamorphosis!

The Grace Jones version of ‘She’s lost control’, originally by Joy Division, on that tape I made you was one of the more eccentric covers I’ve heard. Back in 1994 I had the good fortune to meet the great lady when she was booked to play at The Fridge in Brixton. It was touch and go whether she’d make it onto stage - she was several hours late I recall before the show eventually started - but I did ask what had prompted her to cover such a track by such a band. It transpired she knew nothing about the band, knew nothing about Ian Curtis’s suicide and had merely heard the original track before deciding there and then to do her own version. It ended up as the B side to her single ‘Private Life’. She was rather horrified when she found out about Curtis’s demise and that the song was about epilepsy - a condition he suffered from. 

The Roxy Music track ‘Both ends burning’ (from 1975) is etched into the memory because of their performance on Top of the Pops promoting it. Bryan Ferry dressed up as a GI with an eye patch dancing awkwardly as two heavily made up women, also dressed up in military garb, swung their hips behind him - looking vaguely glassy eyed in the eyeball department.

‘Violence Grows’ by the Fatal Microbes was always being played by John Peel. The singer was 15 year old Honey Bane, a schoolgirl who’d been signed up on the strength of her already provocative stage performances. This was a howl of rage from a time when there really didn’t seem much hope for young people as unemployment skyrocketed. Her indifferent tuneless vocal delivery for whatever reason just resonated. 

‘Atmosphere’ by Joy Division arguably my favourite track released just after Curtis’s death  a fitting tribute to the man’s genius. He was only 23 when he died - just imagine what might have come later on in his career had things been different. I wonder how ‘Blue Monday’ by New Order might have sounded had he gotten his teeth into it. I still recall John Peel announcing his death on air and playing ‘Atmosphere’ and being quite shocked. No one then could have imagined the cult status they would 40 plus years later enjoy. 

‘Typical Girls’ by the Slits just a wonderful piece of pop-punk-reggae by the original riot girls. Ari Up the singer (alas she died of cancer some years ago) was John Lydons (nee Rotten) stepdaughter. John married Ari’s mother Nora, a German heiress, back in the eighties. It’s a track that despite its 43 years of existence still sounds like it could have been recorded in 2022.

Mark then went on to suggest a follow-on mix tape:

Had I made a second tape for you that year it would have undoubtedly included the following. All from that 1982ish period. 

‘My face is on fire’ - Felt
‘Fireworks’ - Siouxsie & the Banshees
‘Temptation’ - New Order
‘How does it feel?’ - Crass
‘Torch’ - Soft Cell
‘The back of love’ - Echo & the Bunnymen 
‘Second skin’ - The Chameleons
‘Persons unknown’ - Poison Girls
‘Hand in glove’ - The Smiths
‘Treason’ - Teardrop Explodes
‘Requiem’ - Killing Joke
‘Dead Pop Stars’ - Altered Images
‘Alice’ - Sisters of Mercy
‘Eat y’self fitter’ - The Fall
‘Painted bird’ - Siouxsie & the Banshees
‘Let’s go to bed’ - The Cure
‘Capers’ - The Birthday Party
‘Nightclubbing’ - Grace Jones
‘The look of love’ - ABC
‘Being boiled’ - Human League
‘Pissing in the river’- Patti Smith
‘Walking on thin ice’ - Yoko Ono

OK, let’s give that mix tape a go. I have really enjoyed listening to these tracks and hope readers enjoy them too. Many thanks, Mark, for your kind note and further selections forty years on.

UGM Report: “Neil Baldwin Rules OK”, Concourse Juicy Bits, February 1985 Part Four

A two page spread on the Union General Meeting (UGM) – presumably the 28th January one), about which I am silent in my own diary other than confirming that I prepared for it. I get a bit of stick in the attached piece for being over-prepared, perhaps.

But the star of the show was clearly Neil Baldwin, latterly the subject of a wonderful award-winning BBC docudrama in 2014 starring Toby Jones and Neil himself. We voted that night to deem 1985 Neil’s silver jubilee year at Keele. Marvellous.

Concourse Feb 85 Page 11Concourse Feb 85 Page 12

 

Informal Contemporary Music Subsidiary Course At Keele In The Summer Of 1982, Tutor: Mark Ellicott

I have discovered a cassette tape of “contemporary” music which Mark Ellicott made for me in the summer of 1982. I remember little of the background to this tape, but I did play it a fair bit during that summer break from Keele and quite a lot during the ensuing academic year 82/83, which Mark missed.

During his first year at Keele, Mark was, self-confessedly, going through a bit of a transformation, from “Tory Boy” at the Keele Royal Ball…

Mark Ellicott Guest Piece: A Right Royal Keele Ball, Starring Princess Margaret, But At What Price?, 3 December 1981

…to becoming a more iconoclastic figure in Keele circles, going on to become Social Secretary later in the 1980s and subsequently managing some of the best-known venues in the UK.

I think Mark might have given me this tape right at the end of the summer term in 1982, perhaps by way of an apology for getting me roped into playing cricket on his behalf – long story told here and below:

“Got Roped In To Playing Cricket All Afternoon”, Gentlemen v Players Cricket Match, Keele Festival Week, 24 June 1982

Below is the tape listing from Mark’s one-side of a C90 offering, which I labelled “ME Batch” with a clear note on my log that Mark had made this for me:

Some fascinating choices there, which I have attempted to find in the best versions possible on the web. It will be interesting to learn Mark’s thoughts about this mix tape (or what people latterly would call a playlist) forty years on.

To add a little to the intrigue, the second side of the cassette is a recording of Changestwobowie, which my log says was made for me by Andrea Collins (now Woodhouse). Did Mark and Andrea collaborate on making this cassette for me, or did Andrea offer to fill in the second side of the tape for me after Mark gave me a one-sided cassette? My diary and logs are silent on such details and my memory only retains the extent to which I played this cassette quite a lot in the second half of 1982.

To close, here’s one of my (many) favourite tracks from that Bowie album:

Forty years on, just in case I didn’t express sufficient gratitude at the time: thanks Mark, thanks Andrea.

“Got Roped In To Playing Cricket All Afternoon”, Gentlemen v Players Cricket Match, Keele Festival Week, 24 June 1982

Mike Stephens, caught out

By 1982, the annual Gentlemen (of the right) v Players (of the left) cricket match had become an iconic feature of Keele Festival Week. It was many years later that I learnt that this “tradition” had only started a year or two earlier. Keele traditions were a bit like that back then.

The Roping In

I made a pigs ear of writing this event up previously, combining my memories of the 1982 match with the 1983 match, having forgotten that I ended up playing this match three illustrious times while at Keele; my last appearance being 1984.

My mistake was spotted by Mark Ellicott, whose name I had delicately left out of my previous write up of this first occasion, as it was for an “intoxicated” Mark that I was hurriedly found and roped in as a late substitute. Mark pointed out that it must have been 1982, as that was the summer during which he was caught up in all this stuff and he was involuntarily on sabbatical from the University the following academic year. Mark later went on to be a Students’ Union sabbatical, stretching his Keele duration yet further.

On the topic of this 1982 cricket match, my diary entry merely says, with surprisingly little enthusiasm:

Got roped into playing cricket all afternoon.

Here is the Mark Ellicott substitution bit of the story, as I originally wrote it, before Mark got in touch. Naturally I have now cleared with Mark the idea of attaching his name to the story:

“I got a knock on the door early afternoon…a certain wild-haired student (even more wild-haired than me), who latterly – more latterly even than me – became a sabbatical, had been experimenting with an acidic chemical – presumably something to do with his subsidiary or extra-curricular studies – and had accidentally ingested rather too much of the stuff…

Mark Ellicott two or three years later

…he might have been experiencing something like this:

In short, the accidental acid victim was away with the fairies and I was in the team.“

Mark describes his experience slightly differently, presumably starting the evening before:

It was on Results Day for finalists in the summer of 82. I had scored two tabs previously and was working that day as a waiter in Oysters wine bar serving up bottles of wine etc to celebrating finalists. I dropped one tab whilst working idiotically enough and after ten minutes when nothing was happening even more idiotically dropped the second. Thereafter it all gets hazy, but like you I have kept a diary since I was a kid so can refer back. I must have wandered away from my workplace because the next thing I remember is wrestling with an anonymous young woman outside the Computer Science lab. Then it’s several hours later and I’m sitting in the Union bar with Truda Smith, Mark [Bartholomew], Simon [Jacobs], Anna [Summerskill] etc. I’m completely incapable of speech at this stage. I hear Truda’s disembodied voice explain to people “he’s tripping, keep an eye on him”. Next thing I recall I’m hiding under a bush by Keele Hall and Mark and Simon come looking for me, find me, and gently return me to the Union and a disco where I have a vague recollection of ‘dancing’ to ‘Say Hello Wave Goodbye’ by Soft Cell. Then I’m at a party in Stoke talking to a woman who runs a chippie. Completely brilliant day that was !

When I gently suggested to Mark that I might link his name with my cricket-career reviving incident, he replied…

…please go ahead and use my name. I’ve never been embarrassed about my psychedelic experiments then.

The Match Itself

Under the circumstances, I didn’t expect much of a role for The Players and got pretty much what I expected.

I was reminded of this 1982 match in August 2018, after Adil Rashid had a rare “thanks for coming” (TFC) test match – i.e. he did not bat and did not bowl in the whole match – a very rare event in test cricket – written up here…

…but not quite so rare an event in beer matches. Indeed, both the 1982 & 1983 Gentlemen (of the right) v Players (of the left) match at Keele were TFC matches for me.  I did not bat; I did not bowl, but…

…I did field.

In this 1982 match, I recall The Players captain Toby Bourgein (who sadly died in September 2020) sending me out to graze in the long grass, on the boundary, where he supposed I’d do the least damage. I recall that enabled me to keep a trusty pint of ale close at hand.

But the ball tends to follow the team donkey. I recall the Gentlemen doing rather well against us at that stage of the match, with Mike Stephens (Secretary 1980/81) batting well & properly, along with a beefy, sporty fellow…I think his name is Steve Bailey, who had been the Chair of the Athletic Union, providing some humpty to the innings.

I’m pretty sure the above picture shows “the humpty chap”, Steve Bailey, at the 1980 Christmas Ball – apologies if I have grabbed a picture of the wrong humpty chap.

Three times the humpty chap lifted the ball skywards in my direction. Three times I failed to catch it. One of those misses was a juggled attempt which failed even after several potential reprieves. One I think I lost sight of completely, perhaps even running the wrong way.

Toby sent me to backward point instead, where he suggested that catches were far less likely but I might at least save some runs if I continued to put my body (the only asset I seemed to be bringing to the party) on the line. I think I brought my skiff of ale infield with me.

A few balls later, Mike Stephens executed a firm, albeit slightly uppish, late cut, which should have hurtled to the left of a diving backward point for four…

…but the diving backward point, me, somehow contrived to dive at the correct moment and the ball contrived to stick in my hand. A stunning, potentially match-turning catch.

It might have looked like a left handed version of this one from school a few years earlier, c1979, for which I was the photographer, not the catcher.

I recall Mike Stephens stomping off in an uncharacteristic huff of “it’s so unfair. He can’t catch for toffee…”

…it was a little reminiscent of the James Pitcher “TFC with single moment of glory” match against The Children’s Society 21 years later, almost to the day:

Match Of The Day & Play Of The Day, Z/Yen v The Children’s Society, Holland Park, 22 June 2004

I don’t think my derring-do was enough to help salvage this 1982 match for The Players, but revenge was sweet for the next couple of years.

My Second “Thanks For Coming” (TFC) Keele Festival Week Match, 21 June 1983
O Captain! My Captain! – Gentlemen Of The Right v Players Of The Left – Keele Festival Week Cricket Match, 26 June 1984

I have no photos from the 1982 game, sadly, nor the 1983 nor 1984 ones, but this one from a year or two earlier, thanks to Frank Dillon, should give the reader a pretty good feel for the look of the mighty Players team.

With thanks to Frank Dillon, this picture of an earlier “Players” team, probably 1981

If anyone out there has any more memories and/or photographs of our festival week beer matches, I’d love to hear from you.

The Business End Of My P1 Year At Keele, Last Three Weeks Of May 1982

For the benefit of people who were not at Keele back then, the term “P1 Year” referred to second year students who, like me, had opted to the the Foundation Year (FY) in their first year. P stood for “principal” I think.

Those who didn’t enjoy the cognitive and recreational benefits of FY would describe their undergraduate years as T1, T2 and T3 – T standing for “three” I think.

Before I trawl my diary for that May period, I’d like to talk a little about the vibe in my flat, M65 Barnes. The diary is silent about it, so unless I describe it soon, my P1 year will be over, M65 will be demolished and I won’t have told you about our quirky group of four.

Barnes M65 From February To June 1982: Me, Ahmed, Margaret & Jo

Barnes M Block was behind that tall tree

I have already described why I chose to move into a Barnes flat around February 1982 and how I went about doing so -click here…

…not least, I was very keen to secure a flat for the following year and guessed that, with two of us electing to continue to have a Barnes flat, we’d get first dips on the vacant ones due to the M Block demolition.

Ahmed Mohd Isa was the member of that flat who wanted to stay on in a Barnes flat and was due to be my flatmate beyond 81/82. He was part of the small Malay community at Keele in those days – I got to know that crowd well through Ahmed that year and then subsequently. I’ll write more about that gang separately. Most of them lived in a flat in Q Block Barnes, while Ahmed I think had been allocated to M65 entirely by chance at the start of his Keele career.

The other two in M65’s last year were named Margaret and Jo. Margaret was from Manchester I think – while Jo was from the South-West if I remember correctly – Hampshire perhaps.

Both of them were vegetarians who disapproved of (but did not prohibit) my meat preparation and eating in the flat. I remember one occasion when a really bad smell started to pervade the kitchen and the girls became convinced that I had left some meat to rot somewhere.

Jo wandered around the kitchen, sniffing in a rodent-like manner behind cupboards and fittings, determined to find my errant flesh product. In fact, she discovered something especially foul-smelling that could not possibly be attributed to my carnivorousness. Behind the corner cupboard/pantry shelf, Jo found a decomposing cabbage, which she delicately removed from the flat at arms length with one hand while holding her nose with the other hand.

But the girls did have an absolute golden rule in the flat and woe-betide either me or Ahmed if we broke this rule: complete silence between 19:30 and 20:00 when Coronation Street was being broadcast. Margaret was the strictest enforcer of this rule. “Shhh”, she would hiss if either of us was so thoughtless as to want a glass of water or to grab a spoon and go back to our room during that broadcast. They would both sit in a leaning forward posture – usually with heads propped forward between fists, to ensure complete concentration and maximum proximity to the tiny screen of their portable black-and-white telly.

I’m pretty sure that Tony, who moved out to allow me in, had been to some extent at war with the girls, which was the main reason he moved out – but I didn’t have direct evidence to support that theory.

Margaret and Jo were finalists and in many ways were quite tolerant of both me and Ahmed as stop-out non-finalists, although we were both reasonably respectful of their need for some peace and quiet for revision.

They had some interesting friends, the most eccentric of whom was a posh lad known as “Dips”, who was the young country gent type and was known on occasion to drive his Land Rover across the playing fields – a recipe for getting caught red-handed and fined as his was almost certainly the only vehicle on campus that would leave tyre marks of that exact kind.

Who knows, 30 years later I might have re-encountered Dips at the Mollington Point-To-Point

It’s a shame I have no pictures of that flat or any of that crowd.

Given It Was The Business End Of That Academic Year, I Don’t Appear To Have Done Much Business For At Least A Couple Of Weeks

Here is a transcript of the first scrawl-ridden diary page:

Sunday, 9 May 1982

Rose very late today after returning [from the aftermath of the Clint Eastwood & General Saint evening] about 8 am.

Went to union in the evening for a quiet one.

Monday 10 May 1982

Easyish day – did little.

Went to union for a few – Jon [Gorvett] and Mark {Ellicott] came back afterwards for [Tarot] readings etc.

Tuesday, 11 May 1982

Busyish day – as is common on a Tuesday – though not feeling too good.

Went to film nonetheless – Four Seasons – really good.

Returned still ill.

Wednesday, 12 May 1982

Easyish sort of day really.

Didn’t go to union in the evening as I was feeling terrible.

I have written elsewhere about my Tarot readings at Keele – click here or the image below:

In truth I don’t recall doing readings for Jon Gorvett and Mark Ellicott, but I am in touch with both of them forty years on, so I’ll ask them if they remember me reading for them.

I also don’t recall what ailed me – probably just a debilitating cold.


Thursday, 13 May 1982

Easyish sort of day – did some work but not too much.

Contrived a suitably easy night.

Friday, 14 May 1982

Went to my tutorial and straight off to London with Rob [Schumacher?] and Simon M[orris?].

Lazy evening with Ma and Pa.

Saturday 15 May 1982

Did some taping etc today. Lounged a lot – spoke to some people.

[Cousins on mum’s side] Hannah [Green], Sidney [Pizan], Jacquie and Len [Briegal] came for dinner – very pleasant evening.

Up till very late washing up.

Sunday, 16 May 1982

Rose quite late – had lunch – taped, lounged and spoke to more people.

Completely lazy evening – good break (from what? – Ed).

I guess the dinner with cousins was a slightly belated 60th birthday event for mum.

I particularly like my sarcastic note to self, which I must have written more or less immediately after writing the phrase “good break” asking myself, “from what?”

Self aware, that comment.

I hardly seem to have been over-exerting myself in the summer term of my P1 year, perhaps because there were no exams of any consequence that year – just finishing off some written work.

Sunday 17 May 1982

Return from London in the morning – spent the rest of the day writing my last essay of the session.

Tuesday, 18 May 1982

Essay went in.

Went to Anju [Sanehi]’s in the afternoon – decided to give film a miss – lazy evening in instead.

Wednesday, 19 May 1982

Easyish sort of day – spent whole evening in union – drank quite a bit etc.

Thursday, 20 May 1982

Did some work today – not too exerting though.

Lazy evening in tonight.

Friday 21 May 1982

Lazyish day today – did very little.

Spent quite a bit of time in union (EGM etc – chatting). Boozy afternoon and evening.

Went to film [McVicar – thank you Tony Sullivan for keeping records]– disco – back to Anju’s for tea.

Saturday 22 May 1982

Big shopping spree today – a late start.

Went to union in evening and to disco with Simon [Jacobs], Jon etc etc. Earlyish night.

Sunday, 23 May 1982

Easyish day – did very little – spent most of evening in the union do very little really – cooked a lot.

Monday 24 May 1982

Easyish day – mainly in union. UGM in the evening – a goody I feel.

Joe [Benedict Coldstream] came back after.

The mood of my May 1982 diary, which uses terms like “easyish” and “lazy” rather a lot, suddenly changes on the next page or two.

More Speed, Less Haste: The Rest Of May 1982

I sense that I rather realised that I really did need to get a bit of work done that term. I also remember quite clearly that I attempted at least one terrible technique for getting stuff done.

In short, although the diary is fairly quiet about it – the next week went a bit weird.

Tuesday 25 May 1982

Busy day of work – did quite a lot. Stayed in in the evening and did quite a bit more work.

Wednesday 26 May 1982

Busy most of the day getting ready for flat inspection. Did a little work – watched football [European Cup Final – probably a big screen job in the ballroom] & film [probably a TV broadcast not Filmsoc]– ok.

Thursday, 27 May 1982

Flat inspection today – last tutorial – [Union election] counts – FA Cup [Final replay] – cheap beer – futurist disco* dash home for supper// and all nighter of talk and writing.

Friday, 28 May 1982

The day seem to flash by – went to Pete [Roberts]’s office in ‘noon – took early night.

Cheap beer and hanging out with friends is more likely to have been my motivation for the football matches than the football itself.

I have no idea what a Futurist Disco might have been – presumably not futurist music as I now understand the term:

Social Committee preparing for a futurist disco?

…but the symbols suggest I had a good time and then retreated to take some speed to get me through a period of intense talking and writing. I remember this stupid experience well – it was the second and last time I experimented with that dangerous stuff. I remember feeling at the time that I was getting through loads of writing and getting loads done, only to realise that, after having lost a day-and-a-half, that I had written utter drivel and would need to rewrite everything I had attempted to get done that way.

I also chewed my lips to shreds…again.

Not a good idea, Speed in the hope of cognitive productivity. Certainly not for me – I would now advise against it.

Saturday, 29 May 1982

Rose late – lazy sort of day.

Went to union -> Mark’s [Bartholomew this time I think] with Si [mon Jacobs], Johnny Rothman [who must have been visiting Simon] etc. – stayed till late…

Sunday, 30 May 1982

… Went to Amphitheatre in the early hours. Got out about 8 am.

Went to bed – got up for a few hours and went back to bed!!!

Monday 31st of May 1982

Lazyish day about place – tried to work in eve.

Tuesday, 1 June 1982

Quietish day. Tried to do some work. Saw film [The Deer Hunter – thanks again, Tony Sullivan] in eve.

The “amphitheatre” is just behind that row of trees – picture “borrowed” from University website nature trails – click here or picture for those.

Yes, I remember wandering off in the early hours, after that ad hoc party of Mark & Simon’s, with a chap whose face I can picture but whose name I’ve forgotten and we ended up jabbering some sort of a theatrical role play of our own devising in that amphitheatre until well after sunrise. As with my speed-induced writings, it seemed terribly profound when we were doing it and then on reflection the next day was mere drivel. Still, it was fun and every Keele student should have a spring or summer nighter down the amphitheatre under their belt before they leave Keele.

On rereading my diaries forty years on, I realise it is just as well I didn’t have too much serious academic work or examinations to prepare that term – I was well off the pace in the spring of 1982.

Many A Slip (On An Icy Keele Campus) Between Jazz & Lip: Ronnie Scott & Friends At Keele, 16 January 1982

Image from Wikipedia with same “fair use” rationale.

The especially cold and icy weather, which had plagued Keele before Christmas, persisted into the early days of the 1982 Spring Term.

Early that term, I recall taking a tumble on the slope that led to the Chancellor’s Building from the Lindsay Hall end, while rushing to get to a lecture or tutorial on time.

A little dazed, I soon realised that someone had hoicked me up and I was being stared at by none other than “ABC” Dick Hemsley, asking me if I was alright. “Yes, I’m fine”, I said, embarrassed to have found myself in such a vulnerable circumstance with one of the better-known right-wing villains of the campus. “No”, said Dick firmly, studying my reactions carefully, “I think you might have bumped your head. Really, are you OK?” Thankfully I hadn’t banged my head and most of the bruises were to my “left ego”. That incident stuck in my mind, because it made me realise that Dick, despite our opposing political views, when it came to the crunch, was instinctively concerned about my welfare.

I sense from my diaries that I was a bit irritable/tetchy after the historic, publicity-attracting protests outside the UGC offices on 6 January:

Protest Outside the UGC Offices Against Grant Cuts, University of Keele, 6 January 1982

Possibly term seemed like an anti-climax; possibly the weather got to me – I have never much liked icy-cold weather and this was a proper cold spell.

The diaries – which are shown at the bottom of this piece but upon which I shall not expand this time – suggest a relatively dull phase – at least in my mind…

…until the Ronnie Scott & Friends Jazz Night on 16 January, which was a hugely memorable event in all sorts of ways.

Ronnie Scott co-founded the legendary Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in the late 1950’s. It was already an institution by the early 1980s and we were truly blessed that Ronnie liked visiting student venues and especially liked the vibe in the University of Keele Students’ Union Ballroom. I saw him perform there several times while at Keele – this was the first of those times.

Dave Lee’s excellent book The Keele Gigs! has a fine account of this gig.

The following clip, from some time in the early 1980s, is pretty close to what the ensemble looked and sounded like at Keele that night:

For those who know little about Ronnie Scott/Ronnie Scott’s and would like to know more, the following hour-long Omnibus film from 1989 is quite comprehensive and almost of that time:

There is am even more comprehensive 2020 documentary movie, which I have seen and can confirm is a very interesting watch, which you can find out about on IMDb here.

My memories of this particular January 1982 evening at Keele are a strange mixture of clear and blurry. The diary entry only tells a small part of the story:

…went to Jazz Night in the evening. ** got pissed during and after!!

This suggests that only alcohol was imbibed at our table, although in my mind there was also whacky backy involved. Perhaps that was because Ronnie kept saying, “I must stop smoking this stuff” whenever he muffed his jokes/lines, which he did with charming frequency.

We sat at tables in the style of a jazz club like Ronnie Scott’s and I remember it all seeming very grown up and sophisticated at the outset. I think we drank wine and cocktails rather than beer at our table, which is probably why we got pissed unusually quickly.

I was at a table with, I am pretty sure (in reducing order of sureness): Miriam Morgan, Heather Jones, Ashley Fletcher, Helen Ross and one or two others. One person who was certainly at our table was a rather exotic-looking (to me) gay female with whom, for reasons I cannot with hindsight fathom, I started to dance. I’ll guess it was initially her idea, because dancing isn’t something I can imagine myself ever having spontaneously initiated.

Mercifully, this Jazz Night was long before the age of smart phones, pocket video cameras, TikTok and the like, so there are no moving pictures of our “performance” – indeed not even any stills to my knowledge.

It probably looked a little like the following clip at first, except that John Travolta is a very capable dancer trying to look awkward, whereas…

We danced in an increasingly frisky manner as time went on, until a pivotal moment when I suddenly felt drenched. Someone from a nearby “Tory Boy” table tipped a jug of water over us with the entreaty, “you two need to cool down”.

I’m not sure who did the tipping; it might have been Mark Ellicott (who still sat at Tory Boy tables back then) or it might even have been ABC Dick. Whoever it was, the gesture was done without menace and with a witticism thrown in, such that we and everyone at the tables around us found the joke funny, so we joined in the laughter and redoubled our frisky efforts.

Strangely, I ran this story by Simon Jacobs and Jon Gorvett just the other evening – forty years on. Both of them confirmed that they were not there on this evening.

Yet Simon, who usually claims not to be able to remember anything about our Keele days, immediately identified the young woman in question as “Nicola from Crewe and Alsager College”, which of course was the right answer. Respect, Simon, respect.

Nicola ended up going out with Miriam, which I think brought the Miriam and Heather era to a close, although I might be muddling the sequencing and/or duration of that episode. Others might well be able to put the record straight.

My diary states clearly that we all carried on drinking after the Ronnie Scott Jazz Night had concluded, but the frisky dancing with Nicola was definitely merely a “moment in time” thing during the jazz night.

Postscript – Remembering Nicola

Within minutes of me posting this piece, Ashley Fletcher commented on FB, reminding me that, a couple of years later, he shared a place in Newcastle with Miriam & Nicola, who became and were still very much an item after that January 1982 time.

Ashley also recalls that, ironically, Nicola looked like an androgynous new romantic performer named Ronny – indeed she did – click this link or the picture below to see pictures and even a vid of exotic-looking Ronny.

Borrowed from and linked to Lord Bassington-Bassington

The Rest Of the Diary

Diary pages for the week or so leading up to Ronnie’s below. For the completists. There’s a prize if anyone can work out who or what I went to see on Tuesday 12th!

Postscript – Remembering Nastassja

Following an entreaty from Kay Scorah that she wouldn’t sleep until the 12 January diary entry mystery was solved, I gave the matter some deeper thought. Then I looked at the Rosetta Stone for a while. Then I concluded that the pathetically scrawled four-letter word, which I had thought all along was probably the title of a film, given that Tuesday evening was film night…

…must have been “Tess”. No really.

The 1979 Roman Polanski marathon version of Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

My teenage hormonal head would have been full of Nastassja Kinski for a few days…until Nicola came along. Sorry Nastassja.

You can sleep now, Kay.

Postscript To The Above Postscript – Remembering Tash, Tess & Nastassja

The mention of Tess generated quite a postbag and I realise that I was mistaken in attributing the 12 January scribble to that film. John White writes:

 Don’t think that says Tess btw. The word begins with an s and ends with an h. Sure it wasn’t a person?

But I was buoyed by Jon Gorvett’s memory flash, inspired by my mention of Tess:

Anyway, also bizarre that you should mention Heather Jones, Tess, Nastassja Kinski and crushes all in the same post, Ian, as I recall both myself and Heather taking a sudden interest in Thomas Hardy around then, after Kinski had appeared on the cover of the version of Tess of the d’Urbervilles on sale in the Keele bookshop. Noticing this, we both later confessed to a massive crush on the said daughter of the great director (and massive child abuser, I see now), leading ultimately to enormous enthusiasm for Cat People, when that hit the screens later that year. 

…so I responded as follows:

100% sure it was Tess. Memory flash corroborated by Jon Gorvett, who said that note brought a flood of memories. Gilted Jon (by Truda) and gilted Heather (by Miriam) both salivated over Ms Kinski at that time. My handwriting was truly appalling at the best of times and I often wrote up diaries when pissed or stoned.

However, I now realise and am 100% sure that the pesky word on 12 January was Tash, not Tess. The Tash reference is explained in the subsequent “Forty Years On” piece.

But I did see Tess around that time – I’m guessing it must have been the film shown 15 January, which I don’t name – I simply describe it in my diary as “boring”. Frankly, I do recall finding the excruciatingly long Tess movie boring in every regard except for the visual charms of Ms Kinski.

Mark Ellicott Guest Piece: A Right Royal Keele Ball, Starring Princess Margaret, But At What Price?, 3 December 1981

Mark Ellicott has managed several of London's iconic venues, including Dingwalls, The London Astoria and more recently Heaven.  He cut his teeth as Keele Students' Union Social Secretary in the mid 1980s. But Mark arrived at Keele as a clean-cut, Tory-boy. The Royal Ball in December 1981, Mark's first term at Keele, might have seeded Mark's dramatic transformation. I am thrilled to host Mark's guest piece, in which he reflects on that starry night, forty years on.

The naiveté of youth!

As a Fresher in my first term at Keele, in the autumn of 1981, I was weirdly excited, as were many others, about the prospect of the Royal Ball in the Students Union almost exactly 40 years ago to the day.

At the time Princess Margaret was Keele’s Chancellor and she had periodically in the past ‘graced’ the Union with an attendance at one of its events. I wasn’t particularly pro or anti monarchy at the time, but as an eighteen year old still adjusting to an independent life it did appear to be a vaguely thrilling thing to be a part of. So I eagerly bought my ticket and a day or two before the event headed into Newcastle to hire an evening outfit.

Ticket holders – the cost was £8- were advised to arrive before HRH at a certain time – ostensibly for security reasons but I suppose also because it would have looked a bit weird if Mags had had to jostle her way into the Union building competing with hundreds of students and getting asked by the SU porters for some photo ID in order to gain admission. 

Everyone was  dressed in outfits that veered from the completely over the top to the over formalised absurd.  I count myself in the latter category. Sort of Primark meets Brideshead Revisited meets a downmarket magician about to perform in a provincial working mans club.

Some unsavoury looking guests at the ball

HRH arrived resplendent in pink at eight and the then Social Secretary Eric Rose, dressed in a natty black and white suit, introduced her to the Union Committee.

Margaret Rose & Eric Rose

Some members of the Committee, like Treasurer Steve Townsley, took a stand objecting to the whole circus and stayed away boycotting what they and many others felt to be shameless kowtowing to a discredited person of enormous privilege. That was not my view at the time but it was a view that I came to share.

Margaret, once she had worked out who the VP Internal and NUS Secretary and the Chair of Constitutional Committee etc. all were, was then led onto the dance floor by SU President Mark Thomas for an awkward ‘dance’. Mark, a genial Welshman who it was impossible to dislike, looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up whilst HRH just looked indifferent and blandly into the distance with a thousand yard stare etched into her face no doubt having had much experience of similar situations. She shimmied around the floor quite fluently but would periodically flap her arms  so that she semi resembled a goose or a swan  preparing for flight.

Mark & Marge – Mark wasn’t normally the clenched fist type

I’m not sure she was entirely aware she was doing it but it did look quite funny.  I tried to get close to the couple but I got too close and  a burly looking security man intervened  and shot the sort of look at me that you would normally reserve for those things you see laying on their back at the bottom of a pond.

The intention was I suspect for the look to reduce transgressors to a pile of smouldering ash and to think twice about any possible future  spatial intrusion. My friend Paul, a Wolverhampton lad, and already drunk intimated to me he was going to try and ‘get off’ with her. He was optimistic about his chances following her recent fling with a twenty something young man called Roddy Llewelyn. Naturally I encouraged Paul to pursue his dream but I was not confident of his success given the goons around her.

Once five or ten minutes of this nonsense was concluded Margaret was led upstairs to meet the star performer for the event, Newcastle born Alan Price.

Alan Price a few years earlier

Price sang sort of music hall stomping pop anthems that in the 60s were inexplicably  popular and who retained for whatever reason some popularity on the student circuit long after his heyday had come to an end. Rather like Gary Glitter and Edwin Starr  in that respect. Although I obviously was not invited myself to join Mags and Pricey in their enclave away from the masses downstairs, I was a witness to her much later emerging onto the balcony to watch his performance wobbling unsteadily and needing to be supported by one of the security men, who had shot me the filthy look a while earlier. I’m told she and Mr P indulged in a vast quantity of whisky and that she was flirtatious to the point of nigh on asking him to unzip her dress at one point. That I would have paid extra to see.

Alan Price’s performance was immediately forgettable. Just turgid tuneless fairground ditties that like those bubbles kids make with those bubbles machines which  are there one minute and then……pah…just disappear the next. Five minutes after he had finished his entire show had been forgotten.

HRH was supported out of the building looking a little bit like she found something hilariously amusing. It was very apparent that she was pissed out of her head. She seemed to be cackling at one of the bins at one point. This sort of thing happens when you are drunk. I have been there myself. For some reason when off your nut a banal everyday inanimate object can suddenly appear like the most amusing, laugh out loud, clutching your stomach thing ever.

She dropped her cigarette holder as she left. The holder was about a foot long and looked like the sort of thing Noel Coward would have used. One of her flunkies picked it up for her and as he got up he lightly banged his head on her chin. She was peering down at him watching him retrieve it and stood just a little too closely. She smiled at the collision, although again this would have been because she was soused. Had she been sober he would no doubt have been whipped and beaten and made to crawl around on all fours for a month or two.

The Ball continued without her but it was by now a rather dull anti-climax. I went home whenever it finished feeling vaguely deflated.

It wasn’t my last interaction with our Chancellor.

Barely six months later as an indirect consequence of me and a friend trying to sack her from this titular position I got myself suspended for a year from the University.

But that is a different story. For another time.

Ellicott transforming…

…Ellicott transformed.

Ellicott, the hair presumptive