Category: Student Life

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.

Santaphobia, Sartorialism, Keele Connections And Several Crises At Christmas, 4 January 2022

Sanity Clause, Anyone? – Christmas Eve & Boxing Day

Janie and I are not exactly model celebrants of Christmas. In recent years we have made it our habit to volunteer, primarily for Crisis at Christmas, which is a wonderful charity.

Yet Janie does have a fondness for unusual Christmas decorations, and has long-regretted not photographing the “Christmas Gnomes Tea Party” we drove past on Popes Lane two or three years ago.

But we did stop and snap the above acrobatic (or possibly desperate) Santa on Boston Manor Road, setting aside our santaphobia and praising the owner of the house for his stunning fandangle.

As if that wasn’t excitement enough before Christmas, we also did our first Crisis shift of the year on Christmas Eve:

We are Ged & Daisy for our Crisis shifts. Daisy here was sporting Christmas (and for that matter Z/Yen corporate) colours.

Daisy, for reasons known only to her, tends to pronounce the word “crisis” as “crises”, as if one massive homelessness crisis at Christmas isn’t enough.

Daisy was tempting fate this season with her plurality, in my view. Indeed, we swiftly found ourselves embroiled in a second crisis. The Duchess of Castlebar (Daisy’s mum) had yet another nasty fall on Boxing Day, not even two hours after we left her. So that’s hospital again (the third time since the start of November) and all the palaver that entails.

Keeping calm in a Crisis…or crises

All Isn’t Quiet On New Year’s Day

On New Year’s Day, we were back to Crisis. A smaller team that day with plenty to do; we ended up running the coffee stall / canteen, the clothes store and delivering food to rooms on that shift.

For those who might be blunt or snide enough to throw the “ah, but could he run a coffee/food stall?” question in my direction, the answer is, I believe, “yes” – as evidenced not only by our Crisis volunteering but also by the FoodCycle volunteering Daisy and I have been doing since the start of the pandemic.

A Multi-Shift FoodCycle Day In Marylebone, 21 April 2021

Running the clothes store was a different matter.

On Christmas Eve, there was masses of donated stock but it was difficult to find individual items of the requisite type and size for each guest, so some people were taking/writing down orders in the “clothes store”, others were fulfilling them from stock in the basement and then delivering the clothes orders to the rooms. Time consuming but basically a systematic sequence of tasks. Daisy and I worked on fulfilling and delivering clothes orders on Christmas Eve.

New Year’s Day was different. Stocks were running low, with mostly super-large and super-small sizes remaining available. Almost all of the stock had been moved upstairs to the clothes store.

After our session running the canteen, Daisy and I were allocated to the clothes store. That is when we met The Sartorialist; a guest with a particular interest…you might even describe it as an obsession…with the garb on offer.

Daisy tells me that I handled the situation with great patience, but I suspect that my face was betraying whatever my words and tone were belying – I’m not a naturally patient chap. Perhaps sensing my frustration, The Sartorialist kept apologising to me for his persistence, without ever tempering his resolve to see just one more garment, in case it turned out to be a size/colour/style/brand that suited him.

At one point he said to me:

You’re well dressed – why shouldn’t I be?

I pointed out to him my tracksuit bottoms and trainers, similar to those I had worn for tennis a few hours earlier (see below).

I was talking about your top. I don’t wear tracksuit bottoms and I would never, ever wear training shoes.

I thought about my choice of jumper for my Crisis shifts (see above). It must be more than 25 years old. Daisy and I bought it when visiting a provincial town; the weather had turned unseasonably cold on us and I wanted a cheap, comfortable, washable pullover to use as layering.

I also wondered what The Sartorialist might have made of my choice of top – in particular headgear, for tennis (see below).

Geddy In Disguise…With Glasses.

At that juncture, I thought it best to hand the customer-facing side of the Crisis clothing emporium over to Daisy.

Consummate professional salesperson that she is…

…at least in the matter of selling…by which I mean giving away by dint of talking up…charitably-donated goods…

…Daisy successfully persuaded The Sartorialist to take three items of clothing and move on, enabling us to progress with other customers, who were forming an increasing long, yet surprisingly patient, queue.

4 January – A Charitable Keele Connection On Our “End Of Term” Shift

One of the good things about Facebook is the way it informs you about connections with other people who know your friends. On Holiday Monday I joined the relevant private Facebook Group for people who were doing Crisis volunteering shifts in our slot, to spot that one of the volunteers, Amber Bauer, is a friend of Sally Hyman, whom I know from “back in the day” at Keele.

Sally runs a wonderful charity, CRIBS International. It turns out that Amber knows Sally through that charity.

I wondered whether Amber would be on our 4 January shift. I didn’t spot anyone named Amber during our pre-shift briefing, but that “end of term” briefing was…very brief.

But soon after the briefing, one of my first customers when I was staffing the canteen/coffee stall again, had the name badge Amber, so we connected in person.

A little later, Daisy and I took over from Amber on outdoor duty…

…yes it was punishingly cold doing that duty once the temperature had dropped that evening…

…enabling Daisy to take pictures of a very chilly Amber handing over to a not-yet-but-soon-to-be-chilly me:

I look comparatively cold already and I haven’t started the duty yet. Mind you, Amber seemed awfully pleased to see us when we turned up to take over.

Amber and I both reckon that the above picture and story should make Sally Hyman smile – not least because it includes a soft plug for Sally’s wonderful international homelessness charity.

You Want To Know More About The Charities Mentioned In This Piece?…Of Course You Do…Clickable Links Below:

Crisis – Together we will end homelessness
FoodCycle – To make food poverty, loneliness and food waste a thing of the past for every community
CRIBS International – Care for Refugee Interim Baby Shelter

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

The above photo of The Red Lion is courtesy of TripAdvisor

When the e-mail came through from the Keele Alumni office, suggesting an informal “Keele In The City” at The Red Lion on Parliament Street, the timing seemed perfect to me.

I expected, by chance, to be in Westminster that afternoon, a few hundred yards away from The Red Lion pub.

This photo of The Red Lion is courtesy of TripAdvisor

I e-mailed Bobbie Scully (who is often at work in the Supreme Court, across the road) and John White (who often hangs around in the Palace of Westminster lobbies) to see if they were around and/or up for it. John said no, while Bobbie said yes to meeting around there, but suggested that we make it a quick drink and then a longer meal to catch up after so long – good thinking in my book.

As it turned out, my afternoon meeting in Westminster was somewhat curtailed, so I sloped back to the flat for a couple of hours, waving at the pub as I descended into the underground, then sloped back to Westminster early evening.

Down in the tube station at mid-afternoon, I ran into my photographer friend, Steve, who proudly showed me the pictures he had just taken of Theresa May with Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) – one of which looked rather like the one at the top of this article – click here – but clearly is not exactly the same photo.

I hadn’t seen Steve for ages. He wasn’t an official photographer for this MBS visit, but apparently he had been the Prime Minister’s official photographer for the general election. He told me one or two things about our dear leader that didn’t surprise me but still horrified me. The word “chaos” is the one that sticks in the memory, perhaps due to frequent repetition.

I returned to Westminster about 18:50, some 20 minutes after the appointed hour with the Keele Alumni but 40 minutes ahead of the sort of time I figured Bobbie might show up.

Derby Street – the side road on one side of the pub – was chock full of police vans, which were themselves ram-packed with policemen. I recalled the wise words of Malcolm Cornelius, formerly of the Keele parish in our day:

“it is extraordinary how many policemen you can get inside one of those vans”.

I wondered whether the police had been tipped off about the Keele Alumni gathering. Facebook, after all, is said to be a fine source of security intelligence. The Keele Alumni announcement was full of key words that might trigger security concerns for the authorities…

Keele…Law…Moot…Court…Parliament…Basement…March…Red…

…sounds well dodgy, algorithmically.

I wandered through the pub in search of the basement, then saw the roped off stairs, jumped the barrier, went downstairs and found it was all locked up. Confused, I wandered back through the pub and then got caught up in a massive swarm of policemen on Parliament street, all heading from the vans towards Downing Street.

Now dazed as well as confused, I was unwilling to go back inside the Red Lion, which was absolutely heaving with people – unlike my previous visit there, to decompress  after the Payroll Giving Awards. 2011 I think that was, when we held the event at Number 11 Downing Street and I met GOD – I’ll certainly retro-blog that evening in the fullness of time.

Seconds later, a drove of legal-looking folk marched purposefully down the side of Derby Street. Although I recognised no-one, the look and demeanour of this flock could only possibly have been the Keele Law Moot lot.

I joined the throng, as the advanced members of that party threw aside the basement rope and stormed the basement.

“I tried that five minutes ago – it was all locked up down there”, I said, dolefully.

“Oh, don’t worry, they’ll soon negotiate our way in”, said a cheery member of the moot party…

…which indeed they did. Very rapidly. Of course they did. They’d just been mooting all day.

I was assured that no actual donkeys were separated from their actual hind legs in those negotiations. On reflection, by the standards of mooting in the Supreme Court, persuading a publican to open his doors and sell drinks to thirsty Keele Alumni was probably not an especially tough argument to win.

So we were in.

I didn’t recognise anyone, but soon I was approached by a gentleman named George who had studied Psychology and Sociology in the 1970s. We chatted for a while as the moot brigade got their drinks orders in and started to quench their debate-weary thirsts.

Soon after that, Zoë Hollingsworth from the Alumni team came up to me. She had clearly mugged up on some of my post Keele activities and we chatted about charities a bit – a shared interest.

Then a very pleasant surprise – Andrea Woodhouse (formerly Collins) showed up; unexpectedly (to me), although she insisted that she had mentioned her intention to visit on her Facebook page. Perhaps I live on Facebook less than most people, but unless a Facebook posting specifically hails me, I’m unlikely to see a friends posting, unless, quite by chance, I am on-line around the time it is posted. But no harm done – it just made it a nice surprise for both of us on the evening.

Then Bobbie showed up.

Then we all chatted and drank for a while – drinks gatherings are a bit like that.

Around 20:00, Bobbie and I figured we should go and claim our Roux At Parliament Square table, so said goodbye to the drinks party. A shame in a way, as it was a very jolly, not overly noisy and not over-crowded gathering. We’d have enjoyed meeting some more of the people there.

Still, Bobbie and I really wanted to catch up with each other – we hadn’t had a chance to do that for a long time – so a quiet restaurant with some fine food and wine was probably a more suitable setting for that.

Out on the street, the police vans had all gone. The mean streets of Westminster had returned to a more tranquil state – perhaps those dodgy-sounding key words from the Keele Alumni message had now been reinterpreted as benign. Bobbie and I strolled the couple of hundred yards to Roux.

Roux at Parliament Square

The food at Roux really was superb. They sort-of specialise in tasting menus, but I didn’t really fancy those and Bobbie was happy to go along with a more regular choice of dishes, so we had:

  • Dorset crab with Apple, Fermented chili, Dashi (Bobbie’s starter);
  • Pork cheek with Carrot, Ale, Mangalitsa black pudding (my starter);
  • Venison with Savoy cabbage, Pine, Alsace bacon (Bobbie’s main);
  • Halibut with Cauliflower, Grape, Tarragon (my main).

Dig those mains – mine in the foreground

A closer look at Bobbie taking a closer look at her main

We even both had a desert. Wines by the glass to complement the food.

It was great to catch up with Bobbie – no excuse really for leaving it so long but we have both had a lot of family stuff to deal with over the past few years, not least conclusive parent stuff.

Bobbie insisted on picking up the tab, noting that she (and Dave) had enjoyed our hospitality several times in succession…

…then Bobbie suggested that, on that basis, she probably should have taken Janie out to dinner rather than me.

I passed on that last reflection to Janie, while showing her the above photos.

Janie expressed envy at the sight of the meal and agreed with Bobbie that she has suffered an injustice…

…I don’t yet know how Janie expects me to redress this matter, but no doubt I’ll find out soon enough…

…I might need some of those Keele moot people to help argue me out of this tight corner.

Heck, but whatever the penalty, it was worth it – a most enjoyable gathering and then dinner.

Thank you, Keele Alumni team, for setting up the evening.

Keele In The City, Tiger Tiger, 11 March 2010

I was supposed to go to this event with John White, but it seems he blew me out about a week before (story of my life this, John).

But then, a “quite by chance” encounter with Bobbie Scully (at the Van Gogh we think) rescued my evening. My correspondence with John Easom on 6 March confirms. I wrote:

> I believe you placed John S White on the guest list as well.  Sadly, he is unable to chaperone me that evening, so his name need no longer appear on the list.

> However, I ran into Bobbie Scully unexpectedly last night (what a small place London is) and she has volunteered to take John’s place, as long as it isn’t too late to add her name to this list.  She is also 1984 and might be on your lists as Barbara Scully.

Best wishes and see you Thursday

Why I thought I needed chaperoning for anything I have no idea, but Bobbie certainly did join me that evening at Tiger Tiger I recall.

I remember chatting with quite a few people, not least Mark Thomas, sharing reminiscence of my headline piece when he was elected President of the Union (to be Ogblogged in the fullness of time).

I also met John Easom for the first time that evening, I am pretty sure.

It was quite noisy, though, so I seem to recall Bobbie and I not hanging around too long and heading off in search of a quieter place to eat and have a chin-wag. I think we might have ventured to a Chinese Restaurant for that purpose. We were in that part of town.

Bobbie might remember better than I do…

…or perhaps not.

Memorial Conference for Les Fishman, Management Centre, Keele University,15 October 2008

Leo Fishman – nothing like her grandpa in matters tennis

Professor Peter Lawrence (who had been my P2 economics tutor) got in touch with me about this conference and I was delighted to make space for it.

Firstly, I had very fond memories of Les Fishman, Peter Lawrence and indeed other tutors from the economics department at Keele.

Secondly, with the 2008 recession having just kicked off big time and no-one knowing what was going on, it seemed a good opportunity to find out what my alma mater’s economists thought about it all.

Thirdly, with only a month or less to go until my Gresham lecture on Commercial Ethics, I thought some clear head time in the rarefied atmosphere of the Keele Hill might do me some good for that project too.

Peter Lawrence offered to put me up, but I explained what a terrible house guest I am, so checked in to the Crewe Arms in Madeley Heath.  I don’t think we ate there that night – I think Peter picked me up from there and took me to a gathering elsewhere. Several of the other academics and visitors were there that night, including Keith Tribe and I think also Shirley Dex.

Here is the programme from the Wednesday conference:

progmem(1)-5

I also was sent a copy of Les Fishman’s seminal paper about the effect of the Vietnam War on the US economy: vietnampaper-1 and also a paper by Norman Flynn about the economic impact of the Iraq War econwar.

The conference was very interesting. I especially remember David Leece (who was my P1 tutor) explaining how relevant the work of Hyman Minsky was becoming in the light of this particular recession – spot on.

2016 picture – thanks to Mark Ellicott

I visited the Students’ Union briefly, its appearance had changed somewhat since my previous visit but the print room was still populated by Pat Borsky and (I think temporarily) also Barbera, so it really was like stepping back in time 25 years seeing those two.

Pat Borsky: could not be described as retiring…apart from the day she retired in 2016 – thanks again to Mark Ellicott for the 2016 pictures

Fun networking with several of my former tutors/lecturers, a few other former students (Paul Smith I recall), several delightful members of the Fishman family and others too.

One strange unintended consequence was meeting Leonore Fishman who (with a bit of encouragement from her dad, David) subsequently asked me for a job and ended up working for Z/Yen for a few years. Stuff happens.

Leo Fishman at Jez Horne’s “Z/Yen Stag Do”, 2010. Thanks to Monique Gore for this picture.

Cambridge Weekend with Charlie, 26 to 28 January 2008

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We wanted to visit Charlie in Cambridge before she finished her law degree at Girton. January of her final year was leaving it almost as late as would be feasible. We had a pretty full itinerary of short trips March/April and Charlie had finals to start thinking about.

We booked the Felix for the last weekend of January, went and had a good time.

We had a wander around Cambridge on the Saturday and saw some interesting things, the most memorable of which was the Pepys Library. We went with Charlie and some of her friends to a comedy show after dinner on Saturday. Sub-Footlights, had its moments. But for some reason no photos from those bits. Oh well.

The photo album on Flickr is entirely pictures of drinks and dinners; on Saturday night in Cambridge itself, then at the Felix on the Sunday evening – click here or below.

P1270095

The Day I Saw Slade & The Smiths At Keele, 10 January 1995

With profound apologies to lovers of 1970s & 1980s popular music who clicked this page under false pretences; I just couldn’t resist the headline. But I am talking about the day I went to Keele and met Dr Eddie Slade while seeing Professor Mike Smith for the first time. Later, I had dinner and stayed over with Mike Smith and Marianna, at their house in Church Plantation.

Professor Mike Smith, who sadly died suddenly, 12 November 2020

It happened like this. My business partner, Michael Mainelli, had worked with Mike when Michael first came to The British Isles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Coincidentally, mostly while I was at Keele.

Michael and Mike had kept in touch. Mike Smith went on to become, in 1990, Professor of Health Informatics at Keele in the departments of Computer Science and Medicine. He concurrently held the position of Director of Information at North Staffordshire Health Authority.

Our business, The Z/Yen Group, was starting to thrive. I was looking after the civil society side of the practice and was starting to itch for bright resource, around the time that Mike was starting to look for opportunities to mix some fresh commercial activity in with his academic work.

Michael suggested that Mike and I meet. Knowing that Keele was my alma mater, Michael suspected that an excuse to stop off at Keele the next time I was heading north would be an attractive proposition for me.

So, between client appointments near Euston on the Tuesday morning and client appointments in Manchester on the Wednesday morning…

…Mike Smith said he would be delighted to see me on the Tuesday afternoon & evening, insisting that I should stay with him and Marianna at Church Plantation.

I think that first house might actually have been The Smiths’ house!

Mike also asked if there was anyone still at Keele that I would especially like to see, as he had time that afternoon to wander down memory lane with me.

I suggested Eddie Slade. I had seen most of the people who had taught me and were still active at Keele on earlier visits, but had not seen Eddie since my Education & Welfare sabbatical year, some 10 years earlier, when Eddie was Senior Tutor.

I recall that Mike didn’t rate our chances of getting in to see Eddie, commenting that he didn’t think he’d ever had an audience with the Director of Studies (as he was now titled).

But when I arrived at Keele, Mike told me that, to his surprise, Eddie had remembered me and said that he would like to have a meeting with both of us.

A recent (2020) picture of Eddie, borrowed from the Douglas MacMillan Hospice site, a wonderful cause

It was great swapping stories with Eddie from the distant past…9 to 10 years earlier. We’d not seen eye-to-eye over everything, but on the whole had got on very well and had worked together to resolve some “little difficulties”. Some of those tales might yet emerge in my write ups; some might best remain unwritten.

We also discussed how the Students’ Union had changed in those 10 years. I was delighted to learn that the Real Ale Bar was one of the union’s great commercial successes, as that had been one of our 1984/85 innovations.

I then asked what turned out to be a daft question about the television rooms. In our day, there had been three television rooms and the addition of a fourth TV channel (Channel 4) had caused some consternation. I asked Eddie how they regulate the television rooms now that there are multiple channels…

…Eddie laughed and explained to me that any student who wanted to watch television in the 1990s had their own TV. The former TV rooms had long since been repurposed.

With thanks to Mark Ellicott for this 2016 picture of the Students’ Union

After saying goodbye to Eddie, we had time for me to have a look around the Students’ Union, so I could see for myself the fate of the former TV rooms and far more besides.

This was also interesting for Mike, who confessed that he had never been in the Students’ Union building before, so it was my turn to give him a guided tour for the most part. It hadn’t changed all that much.

In 1995, there were still quite a few staff in the SU from my era. For sure Pat Borsky was there to be seen in the Print Room, for example; I think Barbara also.

Disappointingly, though, nobody said…

…”cards please”…

…as we entered the Union, although I did have my dog-eared life membership card with me, just in case.

Wally…where were you? Thanks to Mark Ellicott for this 1985 picture

Anyway, after having a good look around the union, we retreated to Church Plantation where I met Marianna for the first time, we three ate a hearty meal, enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation and the rest, as they say, is history. Mike and I worked together and became friends for 25 years, until his sudden death so sadly intervened.

I write this piece, the tale of how Mike and I first met, in late November 2020, just a couple of days before Mike’s funeral and just a couple of weeks since I wrote the personal tribute linked here and below.

A Personal Tribute To Professor Mike Smith, 12 November 2020

My First Flame, c. December 1994

Picture with kind permission of goodfreephotos.com – click here

7 May 2017 – I read the Facebook posting linked here, written by Justin Sutton, an old mate of mine from school, about the song Africa by Toto, which brought to the front of my mind the peculiar story of my first flame.

I don’t mean “my first flame” in the romance sense. Good heavens no. I was over 20 when Africa was released as a single, in my third year at Keele.

No, no, no, I mean my first internet flame.

I started using the internet in the second half of 1994, while setting up Z/Yen, primarily because I/we expected it eventually to be useful for business.

But there wasn’t much going on commercially on the net in those days, so, to get into the swing of using the net, I used it quite extensively for my personal interests. Not least, at that time, subscribing to some Usenet groups that I thought would help me with my development of comedy lyrics, including one where people simply discussed the lyrics of songs.

One correspondent on that lyrics group stated that Africa by Toto was their favourite lyric of all time. That posting made me recall the spring of 1983 and the way that my flatmate, Alan “The Great Yorkshire Pudding” Gorman and I would mimic the line

As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti,

which at the time we thought might be the most pretentious lyrical line ever, not least because it barely rhymes with “solitary company” and also barely scans the beat of the song. You sort of need to rush through that line like a broadside balladeer or a calypso singer with too much to say and not enough beats in which to say it.

I made these points about Africa by Toto on that Usenet group and then went about my business for the next 12 or perhaps even 24 hours, as was the dial-up method in those days.

When I returned to the group, I had been comprehensively flamed by the Africa-lover. Their beef was only partly a disagreement with my feelings about the lyric, which was understandable. It was primarily a character assassination suggesting that I was not qualified to discuss that lyric, on the basis that I had failed correctly to transcribe the line in question.

That line actually reads, “as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a lepress above the Serengeti”,

explained the angry song-lover.

In those days, there was no Google or YouTube or Wikipedia or on-line repository of lyrics to turn to. But I couldn’t even work out what a “lepress” might be. Nor why anything other than “Olympus”  might make sense as the simile in question. I even spent a few minutes looking through the dictionary to see if there was a word which had slipped my mind, the feminine form of which might be lepress and make sense in context. The only word I could think of that might take the feminine form “lepress” was “leper”, which didn’t make sense to me in context.

I made these points on the Usenet group and then went about my business for the next 12 or perhaps even 24 hours.

When I returned to the group, I had been even more comprehensively flamed by the Africa-lover.

You know ******* well that a lepress is a female leopard. Don’t be so ******* insulting.

The flamer had also acquired one or two supporters who joined in the flaming, mostly on the grounds that they like the song, a view which I find fair and with which I have some sympathy. I also sort-of like the song; it’s just that one line that has always grated on me and was the source of our 1983 mirth.

But also, by now, I had acquired quite a few supporters, some of whom were supporting the logic of my specific argument about the lyric, while others were simply arguing that I was entitled to my opinion and that the purpose of the group was, after all, to debate lyrics.

I also received a private message with a plea from one of the group’s moderators, who told me that she felt that I had been unfairly flamed but asked me to post a conciliatory message to try to calm the group down. She was asking me to do this, she said, because she sensed that I was the more likely of the combatants to acquiesce to her request.

I thought about the moderator’s conciliation request, while also consulting my English and American dictionaries, to try to work out what a female leopard might actually be called. “A leopardess”, since you asked. I also listened to Africa by Toto again, just to see if I could detect anything other than “Olympus” in that line.

So I did post a conciliatory note.

I apologised to the original poster for my not liking the Africa lyric as much as they did. I apologised to any females or lepers who had been offended by my attempt to define the mystery word “lepress”. I asserted that the female leopard is a leopardess in both English and American usage. I suggested a compromise lyric, with neither Olympus nor lepress, which might just make sense and satisfy everyone’s sensibilities:

As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a left breast above the Serengeti.

I dialed-in to that group a couple more times over the next day or so to watch the flaming discussion peter out. Then I unsubscribed from that group.

Anyway, here is Africa by Toto with the lyrics shown in all their glory and accuracy on the screen.

On Learning That Former Schoolmate Wayne Manhood Had Died, c30 June 1981… Correction: 1986

With thanks to Martin Cook, from whom I have “borrowed” the above photograph, depicting Wayne Manhood with soccer ball and trophy, front-centre. Link available only to Alleyn’s Facebook alumni – hence the crossed-out appearance of this link..

Prescript

This posting has generated a lot of discussion on the Alleyn’s 1970s Alumni Facebook Group, not least people pointing out that Wayne died 1985 or 1986 – consensus coalescing around 1986. As I have said on the group:

It’s extraordinary how memory plays tricks. I so clearly remember a maudlin conversation with Jimmy Bateman about the fragility of life on that very first occasion that he and I went to that UCL Bar and then The Sun, summer 1981, but I now realise THAT conversation must have been triggered by the sudden death of my uncle a few weeks earlier…

…I’ll update/correct the blog piece once I have gathered more thoughts – not least my own. Some of the comments are very moving and so many interesting thoughts. Thanks again.

Below is that updated piece, with the original, jumbled piece below that, just for the record.

21 February 2020 – A Better Informed Reminiscence Of How I learnt the News Of Wayne Manhood’s Demise

The collective brains of the Alleyn’s School alums suggest strongly that the tragic event happened in the spring or summer of 1986. At that time, less than a year after I had come down from Keele, I was spending almost all of my time with Keele friends and work colleagues. In fact my first reference for meeting up with anyone from school in 1986 was late June, when I met up with Andrew (Andy) Levinson in Streatham:

Work, Andy Levinson & Watching Football, Possibly The Horse & Groom In Streatham, 28 & 29 June 1986

I’m guessing but the combined forces of Andrew and Fiona Levinson would probably have learnt such news through the grapevine.

However, my diary does note, just a couple of weeks later, a meeting up with Graham Watson and a chance encounter that same day with Jon Graham:

A Couple Of Busy Days Seeing Several Old Friends & Hannah And Her Sisters, 16 & 17 July 1986

What I now know for sure though is that, despite my suggestion that I clearly remembered the event of learning the news about Wayne, the truth of the matter is that I do NOT recall the actual learning of the news. What lives on, though, is the effect the news had on me. The first one of our generation to go. The senselessness of it. Those emotions unquestionably stuck.

As Steve Butterworth so eloquently put it in the e-mail he sent me – I’m sure he won’t mind me reproducing these words:

…It was not fair but Wayne was the unlucky one that night. 

I still visualise the flowers that we’re strapped to the offending lamppost that he crashed into, when travelling on the South Circular!

I expect you’re right about June, as the sun shone brightly at his funeral, but the year was 1986.

None of the above detail (or at least my memory of it!) changes the sentiments in your piece. Thank you for that.

Below is the original, flawed, jumbled-memory piece below unchanged, just for the record.

My 13 February 2020 “Original”, Jumbled Memory Posting

I’m not entirely sure why this tragic event has popped into my head lately. Possibly because I have recently learnt of the demise, or near demise, of several contemporaries (from walks of life other than school).

Wayne Manhood was the first of my contemporaries I learnt had died.

People of our parents’ generation often talk about “remembering what they were doing when they learnt that John F Kennedy had died”. My generation has a similar thing with “the day Princess Diana died”. My guess is that many people from my Alleyn’s School cohort can remember what they were doing when they learnt that Wayne Manhood had died.

I learnt that Wayne Manhood had died from James “Jimmy” Bateman in a bar in UCL, where Jimmy was doing a holiday job in a bubble chamber research laboratory.

I’m pretty sure it was the first time we thus met up that summer, 30 June 1981, because I think the tragic event had occurred before I got back from University. But I will stand corrected if I have got the actual dates confused.

Don’t ask what I’d been doing in Braintree, Essex that day. That’s a different story.

Neither Jimmy nor I knew Wayne Manhood all that well…but everyone in our year knew Wayne. Almost everyone in the school knew Wayne Manhood, not least because he represented the school in so many sports. And also because he was an outgoing and thoroughly nice fellow. Wayne and I had been in the same class in the first year:

My First Class At Alleyn’s School, 1S, And Some Nicknames, guessing 8 January 1974

In truth, I don’t remember whether or not we were in the same class again after that. Was he in 4AT/5AT? Someone out there will know.

In the later years, I only really remember talking to him at cricket matches, on those rare occasions that he wasn’t on the field of play for more or less the whole match. He could bat, could Wayne, much as he could play football and field hockey to very high schoolboy levels.

I remember Wayne encouraging me to play cricket rather than score and umpire so much, refuting my suggestions that I was no good, wisely saying that I could enjoy playing that game (and other games) at a reasonable level.

Yes, it was Jimmy Bateman who broke the news to me that Wayne had died. I’m not sure how he had heard the news, nor even how much detail he was able to share with me. I still don’t know much about what happened. A night out with some old boys from the school. A motorcycle. A fiendish bend in the road in Forest Hill. Am I remembering this correctly? Others might correct me or add detail. The detail matters little.

I remember Jimmy Bateman and I sinking quite a few beers that night. We’d no doubt have done that anyway. I suspect we started in the UCL bar and progressed on to The Sun in Lamb’s Conduit Street, a favourite real ale pub with a fine selection of ales back then (no more, in February 2020), which I continued to frequent for many years.

I remember the song David Watts as an earworm for the news of Wayne’s death. I had acquired a second-hand copy of All Mod Cons by The Jam a few weeks earlier and had been listening to it a lot in the preceding weeks. It was not the tone of envy nor the gay subtext of the David Watts song that resonanted about Wayne, of course, but the notion of a boy most likely from school, a young fellow who was good at everything he attempted:

…he is the captain of the team…

… I dream I could fight like David Watts…

Lead the school team to victory,

and take my exams and pass the lot…

Of course, we are a lucky generation. My father, who was 20 when the second world war started, lost many friends who were in the flower of their youth. Our grandparents’ generation similarly lost so many of their young in one or other of the world wars.

But in some ways, the very fact that losing a compadre at such a tender age was so rare in our generation made Wayne’s death all the more tragic, unexpected and shocking. Life isn’t fair and life is fragile. I hadn’t yet reached the age of 19 in June 1981, but I learnt a little more about those aspects of life when I learnt about Wayne Manhood’s death.

It will soon be 40 years since my cohort left Alleyn’s School. It makes no sense that Wayne saw hardly any of that time.

I have no idea why this subject popped into my head a week or so ago and refused to budge without me writing it up. But write it up I now have. I very much welcome other people’s memories of Wayne Manhood and his passing.