Month: January 1982

Friends, Films, Footie & Even A Climax: It Was All Happening At Keele, Late January 1982

The diary suggests that I was actually doing some work that term too. The choice of Economics & Law joint honours sort-of demanded that; especially law.

Still, I was also spending plenty of time doing the other stuff that students do.

Sunday 17 January 1982 – Rose rather late. Did quite a lot of work. Went over to K Block for a while (Mary [Keevil]’s birthday etc.) Worked on afterwards.

Monday 18 January 1982 – Not bad day – did quite a bit of work really. [A] Few people popped in etc – worked primarily in evening.

Tuesday 19 January 1982 – Lots of class today – did some work in the early evening. Tash. Went to see Ordinary People [movie] in the evening – didn’t like it too much really.

Wednesday 20 January 1982 – Quite a busy day. Work etc. – did a fair amount. Went to see Climax Blues Band in the evening (& The Look), Not too impressed.

Dave Lee’s excellent book, The Keele Gigs! reviews the 20 January 1982 gig well, as indeed it reviews most gigs from that era well.

Here’s what The Look looked like (did you see what I did there?):

Here’s The Climax Blues Band, who were sort-of Staffordshire local to Keele but played there very rarely:

Thursday 21 January 1982 – Worked quite hard today. Went to library and everything. Worked in the evening as well.

Friday 22 January 1982 – Busyish day – worked quite hard. Went to 2 parties in union in evening & went back to U117 [Barnes]till very late.

Saturday 23 January 1982 – Rose late – went to Newcastle late. Unindustrious day. Went to G3 [I’m 99% sure the flat in which I’d stayed over the winter break] party in evening – * quite enjoyable. Got quite drunk.

Sunday 24 January 1982 – Got up very late. Did quite a bit of work in the afternoon. Jewish Society meeting at Maurice’s in evening – quite entertaining.


Questions for advanced students:

  • who lived/partied in U117 at that time?
  • who was Maurice and how could such a meeting possibly be “entertaining”?

Monday 25 January 1982 – Work OK. Did quite a lot in the afternoon. UGM in the evening – sold Concourse. People came back for coffee afterwards.

Tuesday 26 January 1982 – Busy day as usual on Tuesday. Went to Tash. Went to film Chariots Of Fire in evening – very good film. Quite a late night.

Wednesday 27 January 1982 – Work Ok today. Worked quite hard. in fact. Andrea [Collins, now Woodhouse] came around in the evening – but mainly a day of industry.

Thursday 28 January 1982 – Busyish day. Went to buffet supper in evening – went back to David’s [Perrins?] after – chatted until quite late.

OK, I need to explain what “Tash” was – I mentioned it several times in my January 1982 diary. Several of the guys in my Lindsay F Block hall were members of a five-a-side football team named ‘Tempted ‘Tash, in honour of the (usually rather feeble) attempts on the part of 19/20 year-old students to grow and show adornments of facial hair, in particular wispy moustaches. Team members included, I’m pretty sure, Benedict Coldstream, Richard Van Baaren (ringleader/captain), Bob Schumacher and some others. I, along with one or two other non-playing hangers on – was Malcolm Cornelius there once or twice? Some of the Harrowby ”girls” (Sharon, Louise, Anjou) perhaps on one occasion? Simon Ascough was keen on footy, but I think he either played or had dropped out of Keele by then – would go along to chant and cheer…usually with limited success in the matter of coaxing winning performances from our team.

Frankly Tash was not as skilful as those shown in this picture by Chuckiefinster, CC BY-SA 3.0

Friday 28 January 1982 – Not too pleasant cold at the moment. Did some work this afternoon. Went to film in evening (Babylon – very good), Went for drink after – didn’t feel too good. Came home.

Saturday 29 January 1982 – Went to Newcastle reasonably early. Did little work. Went to Neil Turner’s party in evening. Got very drunk -> Y13 Hawthorns [Ashley, Mel, Louise & Boris’s place] afterwards where party continued.

Sunday 31 January 1982 – Recovering from last night – finished off questionnaire and did some work in the evening as well – quite creditable under the circumstances.

Monday 1 February 1982 – Work OK. Did quite a bit today & went to visit Andrea in evening. Had quite a late night.

If you cannot imagine the soundscape of that wonderful film Babylon, get the album or simply get yer lugholes around the following track which includes the film’s idée fixe – if a 1980s reggae theme might thus be described.

Questions for advanced students:

  • Can anyone remember exactly what that Neil party & then on to Y13 was? Ashley kindly chimed in an answer to that question on FB: “Ashley Mel Louise and Boris Lived at 13, it was Gaysoc anarcho-central. That evening I think Neil hosted a meet the new boyfriend party at the Hawthorns Bar. Can’t remember the new boyfriend’s name, but he was a lovely chap working and living on the top floor of Hanley hotel” Subsequent chimes (thanks, Sally Hyman) even uncovered an agreed name for the new boyfriend: Gareth. First class work from the team, there.
  • What was the “questionnaire”? I’m guessing that it was connected with the anti-cuts campaigning but I cannot remember in truth.

Andrea (Collins, now Woodhouse) gets a couple of mentions in the space of a week at that time. We stayed pals throughout our several years at Keele and I was really pleased to reconnect with her in Westminster relatively recently at a Keele alum gathering…I mean works meeting…I mean event…I mean party:

Keele Alumni Gathering At The Red Lion, Parliament Street, Then Dinner With Bobbie Scully At Roux, 7 March 2018

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.

January 1982 Keele/UGC Protest Did Make The Papers, Jon Gorvett Uncovers The Evidence

More than a year after publishing an Ogblog piece about our Keele students’ protest against UGC cuts – click here – I received a very pleasing e-mail out of the blue from Jon Gorvett, who had found the Ogblog piece by chance while having a quiet Google.

He had recently uncovered some old Keele scraps, including the following press clippings:

Page 11 of the Evening Sentinel – can we possibly do any better than this?

Yes we can! Page 3 of the Morning Star

So there we have it. Page 11 of the Evening Sentinel but, more importantly, Page 3 of the Morning Star.

Jon is the young man with the “numerate graduates” placard in the first photo above (naturally Jon has gone on to become a foreign correspondent journalist). Jon is also seen wielding a mallet on the far left of the Morning Star picture.

I can be seen in the first photo struggling to retain hold of both the campus model and my sartorial dignity (wearing THAT donkey jacket). I’m gutted that a photo with me in it didn’t make it to Page 3 of the Morning Star, despite the donkey jacket.

I did once make the front page of New India and the back page of the Bastar Sun for my exploits, but that is an entirely different story – click here.

Of course I am still part of the story in the Morning Star. But still, it’s not my image on Page 3. Close but no cigar.

The compensation for my Page 3 disappointment, though, is to be reconnected with Jon Gorvett. He and his treasure trove of clippings might prove very helpful for future Ogblog pieces about the Keele years. I also strongly suspect, based on our e-mail exchanges over the past couple of days, that I shall very much enjoy his company once our paths cross sufficiently for us to meet again in real life.

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

I was reminded of this protest when chatting with some interesting MCC members about Rhodes Boyson in the writing room at Lord’s in April 2016 – click here for a link to the posting about that conversation.

I resolved to dig out my diaries and see if I could find out some more about it. Soon enough, I found this page:

Diary 6 January 1982

Actually the diary entry is not too revealing about this protest. Nor are the pages around it, which refer a lot to “meeting up with the usual friends…various people…some people…the crowd…” as if I would naturally remember all the details when I want them, 34 years later.

Indeed, the entries around the time of the protest have triggered many other memories about how I felt at that time and why I started to plot my escape from halls of residence into an on-campus flat in the early months of that year. Another story for another posting or two.

So I must rely almost entirely on memory for this story.

“The Cuts” (to university grants) was the biggest political issue on the higher education agenda at that time. There were marches and things, which I attended occasionally, but I’ve never been a great one for marches.

A few of us decided that we needed to do something a bit more eye-catching, yet unquestionably in the non-violent protest arena. We hatched a plan for a media/profile grabbing event; a dramatic protest outside the University Grants Committee (UGC) offices on one of their big committee days, when Rhodes Boyson would be attending; 6 January 1982.

In simple terms, we would make a crude replica of our Keele Campus and destroy it in front of the UGC building while the committee met, announcing “this is what you are doing to our University”. Naturally we would alert the media in advance to the fact that there would be “a happening” outside the building during the UGC meeting.

In order to implement our plot, several of us returned to Keele immediately after Christmas. I’m trying to remember who was involved. I’m pretty sure Jon Gorvett and Truda Smith were involved and they do get a name drop in my diary 2 January. I’m also pretty sure that Simon Jacobs was heavily involved, although something tells me that he did not return to Keele early, but joined us in London on the day. For some reason my mind is linking Diana Ball with this event, but I might be mistaken. Similarly I think Toby Bourgein had a leading hand in plotting the protest and possibly even drove the minibus down from Keele, but again I might be mistaken. Surely Pete Roberts was involved?

I love the fact that my diary entry says that I signed on before we set off for London to protest. In those days, the ridiculous student grant system meant that the grant only applied to the term-time weeks and that you had to sign on to the dole to get some money for the non-term weeks. What a palaver for the Social Security people to have to administer.

Of course, the social security system for students has been vastly simplified now; the poor students simply get “the square root of nada”.

I recall that we gathered in a pub on the Hampstead Road, near to Laurence Corner.  I’m pretty sure it was the Sols Arms, now defunct. I suppose it was possible to park without restriction on that north side of the Euston Road in those days. We enjoyed a drink in that pub and then all went to the cloakrooms to don dark jumpers and balaclava helmets. We then rescued the crude facsimile of the campus (mostly papier mâché and balsa wood, I think) and our mallets from the union minibus, toddled across the Euston Road to the Bloomsbury offices of the UGC and conducted our protest.

I don’t recall how much media attention we got – press I’m sure but I don’t think the TV people bothered with us. I report being very tired on return, so I guess there was enough buzz to keep us talking for a while. Perhaps we retreated to the Sols Arms for a few more jars before returning to Keele a little tired and emotional. What do I mean, “perhaps”?

These days, of course, I don’t think we’d get very far in those dark tops, balaclava helmets and mallets before the armed fuzz would intervene. You’d be lucky to survive such a stunt. They were simpler times in many ways.

Apologies to anyone named (or not named) for the failings of my memory. If anyone else remembers more about this extraordinary day, I really would love to hear some more memories of it in the comments. I’m sure that, with some help, my own memory of the event could improve.

June 2017 Update

More than a year after posting this and getting the wonderful speedy response shown in the comment below, I received an e-mail from Jon Gorvett with newspaper clippings – so we did make the papers. I have written an aside, with images of those clippings, click here. 

January 2022 Update

Chris Parkins, who had left Keele by then, came along and took a colour picture. he upped it to Facebook recently and I have asked his permission to show the picture here. If the picture is still here when you read this, Chris has either replied yes or not replied at all. Thanks for the picture, Chris, although I’m a little gutted that I am not in the picture. Serves me right, I suppose, for tiring and having someone else take over my model-holding duties:

Twixtmas, Seeing In The New Year & Making An Early Start To 1982 Back At Keele

A wonderful Wikimedia Commons Picture by Andreas Weith, CC BY-SA 4.0

Seeing in the new year at Keele was nothing like that.

Indeed, my diary tone is exceptionally flat and irritable-sounding for the period between Christmas and New Year and then the early days/weeks of 1982, apart from the 6 January protest in London…

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

which gained us 15 minutes of fame in the Morning Star and The Evening Sentinel.

January 1982 Keele/UGC Protest Did Make The Papers, Jon Gorvett Uncovers The Evidence

Keen readers of this “forty years on” series might have noticed that that the protagonists in the grant protests overlapped quite heavily with the protagonists of the snowbound romance dramas in the run up to Christmas – not least Jon Gorvett, Truda Smith and Toby Bourgein:

Snow, White & The Seven Draughts: An Extra Ten Days Snowed In At Keele, 12 to 21 December 1981

I recall that Keele was still very cold and snowy on my return to Keele between Christmas and New Year, so the atmosphere was no doubt very frosty in more ways than one. But the cause prevailed and we worked in unison to implement the protest…

…it just probably didn’t need me to be around for 10 days before the big day. And when I don’t have enough to do, I tend to get a bit irritable.

Local hostelries seem to have done well out of me/us – mentions of the Golf Inn (I never much liked that place in truth), the Sneyd Arms (which I did like, but by gosh we went there a lot) and the Mainwaring Arms in Whitmore, which I really did like as a proper country pub for a change and which, I am delighted to see, forty years on, has recently been saved by a friendly takeover. The only problem with the Mainwaring was that it was too far sensibly to walk it, so someone in the crowd needed wheels and a willingness to drive.

Apologies to Maria, with whom I went to The Sneyd on the Saturday – I’m struggling to place you. I also couldn’t possibly identify “the crowd” that went to the Mainwaring on the Sunday – it might have been the protest plotters or it might have been the Barnes G Block crowd who had been my hosts in a flat over the Christmas holidays. Or both groups to make a crowd.

Image Borrowed from Parish Council document linked above and here.

I resolved two things after that interlude:

  • firstly, not to return to Keele twixt Christmas and New Year again – although I ended up needing to break that resolution Twixtmas 1984 for reasons I’ll explain when we get to that story;
  • secondly, that I really liked living in a student flat on-campus and really had grown out of halls life. I started the search for a flat, certainly for the next academic year, but actually managed to pull that off a switch reasonably quickly – but again that is a story for another day.