Gosh that was quite a fortnight at the end of my second term at Keele. But by the end of it, I was back at my parents house writing grumpy notes in my diary:
I love my aftermath diary notes from that Ball, on 12 March:
Simon’s for coffee, Neil came back afterwards -> brekky, ballot box, FY Committee slept.
Simon would be Simon Jacobs. Neil I’m pretty sure must have been Neil Infield and I guess we all wandered over to Lindsay refectory for breakfast.
Ballot box that day I’m pretty sure must have been the election for Social Secretary that year. Eric Rose won that election, only to be bundled out of the job around the following Easter for financial impropriety and who at the time of writing (March 2021) is festering in a New York State prison for murdering his wife. Not cool. Not Keele at all.
I’d forgotten that I served on FY Committee that year. I served again as Education & Welfare Officer in 84/85.
I’m fairly sure the “slept” comment refers to subsequent behaviour and not the idea that I slept during the FY Committee…but there is an absence of punctuation in the diary note between the phrase “FY Committee” and the word “slept”. Subsequently, I did once fall asleep during a Senate meeting in 84/85 – understandable circumstances – which earned praise from several of the senior academics on that august body, not least Philip Boden who declared it to be the most succinct and incisive contribution to the meeting that day. A teaser until this “40 years on” series gets there, some time in 2025, all being well. But I digress.
Perhaps returning to the bosom of my family in March 1981 felt like a real anti-climax, or perhaps I was rather hungover by the time I returned to Streatham, but I describe a…
Rough evening
…on the Friday night of my return and…
not a good day
…on the Saturday, despite:
Taped. Went to Record & Tape Exchange…
…which was usually the stuff of very good days for me, not bad ones. Especially as I bought heaps of records on that occasion, which I shall write about in one or more music-oriented postings about “that vac”.
I liked Record & Tape Exchange shops so much in the 1980s I moved around the corner in 1988, where I can sometimes still be found!
No, I think I was probably arguing with my parents about politics and social affairs; them sensing that I was not quite the same boy who had gone off to Keele for the first time six months earlier and me sensing that my parents world and their attitudes were smaller-minded than I had previously supposed.
My relationship with my parents didn’t get too bad, but I suspect that hackles were raised a fair bit that time.
Further, I suspect that I was missing Keele already. The prospect of five weeks of office work in the West End of London to rebuild the coffers was nowhere near as enticing as the fortnight that had just passed at Keele.
Katie Turner, Rick Cowdery, Robert Plant, Frank Dillon & Carol Downs, with many thanks to Frank Dillon for the photograph (added June 2017) – also thanks to Steve A Jones for restoration work on the e-pic (October 2018)
In many ways this is a darned simple story.
Robert Plant secretly arranged to play a warm up gig with his new band, The Honeydrippers, at the UKSU Ball on 11 March 1981. The gig was in one of the smaller performance rooms, Room 14, despite the fact that Robert Plant was the former lead singer and lyricist of Led Zeppelin, among the biggest names in rock then and indeed ever.
I was at that ball. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time when one of Robert Plant’s roadies was getting some drinks in just before the start of the gig.
I politely let the roadie go ahead of me at the bar; he returned the favour by tipping me off to get upstairs to Room 14 before word spread. I remember partly doubting the roadie’s word, but he did have a roadie lanyard and he also surreptitiously showed me a Robert Plant badge, so I thought, “if this is a practical joke, it’s a clever one and I don’t mind falling for it”.
I am extremely lucky to have seen that gig; Room 14 is small, so I don’t suppose more than 100-150 of us saw the gig. Even that will have blown the fire limit; once word spread most people who tried simply couldn’t get through the door. Far more people claim to have seen the gig than actually saw it.
The gig became a big news story at the time.
With thanks to Steve A Jones for sending me this image…several times, increasing the quality each time. This version hopefully good enough quality for most/all Ogblog readers.
The intriguing, complicating factor is that, back in 2013, I stumbled across a reference to this gig on-line and discovered that on-line sources, of the “rock history” variety, were all quoting the wrong date for this gig. Some 10 March, some 9 March, none 11 March.
My diary was not always a totally reliable source of dates back then – heck, whole days could disappear at Keele and sometimes I would “back-write” a few weeks if I got behind.
But this was at a ball and balls normally happened on Wednesdays. In any case, there was enough going on in my diary that week to suggest that I was…on the ball at that time (pun intended).
I posted some corrective comments on-line which triggered contact from the relevant Led Zep archivists. They were appropriately helpful but sceptical at first. They wanted additional evidence, so I sought the help of John White (who for some reason I recalled was at that gig, although I didn’t know him all that well back then).
John sent me a redacted copy of his diary page – John specialised in existential angst in his diary back then apparently – but I must say this is one of the most heavily redacted diary pages I have ever seen:
Many thanks to John White for his efforts digging out this page and redacting…almost all of it. We do learn from that note that Dr Feelgood was the main act at that ball. We also learn that John, back then, preferred the cabaret to Feelgood and Plant.
Our diary trawling efforts, together with the redoubled efforts of those real archivists once they had some more leads to go on, got to the bottom of the matter. There was a private, secret gig in a pub in Stourbridge on 9 March, but the secret gig that blew the story open was indeed at Keele two days later, So the Robert Plant Secret Keele Gig is now “officially” confirmed to have happened when it did happen; 11 March 1981. Some on-line sources might not yet have caught up with this news.
Prior to our temporal triumph, I also tried to engage the help of Daniel Rushton, a Keele alum who had worked at Z/Yen for a while but had recently returned to alma mater. Dan drew a blank, but subsequently said:
extremely happy to hear that this has all been cleared up and that a slight weight has been removed from my weak shoulders. Now I can go back to imagining having been there!
One further intriguing matter from an Ogblog perspective. In my correspondence with the Led Zep archivists back in 2013 I wrote the following:
I might write this business up for the Keele Alumni mag – some of the stuff in my diary has reminded me of some ripping yarns from that end of term week, not least that RobertPlant gig. I envisage a sort-of pseudo blog/diary – what would I have written back then if blogs and Twitter had existed? If/when I do write it up, I’ll let you all know.
This small matter might have planted (pun intended) the thought seed for the entire Ogblog project. Reading that 2013 e-mail again has certainly tweaked my interest in that week of my 1981 diary…there must be quite a bit of other juicy stuff in there.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the “Film Star Makes President” edition of Concourse, I have republished the whole paper in the form of high-quality scans in a Flickr album – click here or the embedded image at the bottom of this page.
Dave had generously given me a great deal of editorial control over the political pages, so the front page and the next two pages were very much mine, content-wise.
Presentation-wise, I think it was entirely down to Dave that we went for an audaciously eye-catching front page – big headline, big photo and election results table only. This was not the regular Concourse way but I think it did help us sell.
I was very proud of the headline; a nod to Ronald Reagan’s recent election and the fact that Mark Thomas headed up the Film Society.
I realise also on re-reading the paper that I interviewed almost all of the protagonists from that early part of the election season: Mark Thomas, Frank Dillon, Anna Summerskill, Ric Cowdery, Steve Townsley, Vince Beasley, Jon Rees…
…I already knew some of them reasonably well and got to know most of them a lot better as the next year or three went on.
Other highlights include:
Dave Lee editorially eating his own liver over the previous editors’ resignation scandal and the Katy Turner column faux pas, on Page 4 and then again at length on Page 13;
Jon Gorvett & David Perrins fret-piece about fire risk, following a Dublin disco fire, on Page 7;
Some Concourse memorabilia on Page 11, looking back 10 years (which now is 50 years), including a snippet about Neil Baldwin from 1971;
A couple of damning gig reviews on Page 17, including the Krokus one by Simon Jacobs which I have Ogblogged about here and the Rob Blow & Di Ball one from deadline night;
I rather like Phil Avery’s hockey team review on the back page, not least because I had to read the entire thing to the end to work out which sport he was reporting. If only his weather forecasts were so suspenseful.
If you want to browse/read the whole thing, simply click the link below and you will find all the pages in high quality digital form, easy to read/navigate on most devices and for sure downloadable.
I have already written about the star-crossed relationship between SU President Katy Turner & Concourse editors Paula & Hugh, which came to a head in early February 1981…
The upshot of all that was the resignation of Paula & Hugh, the interim appointment of Dave Lee to edit the March edition (hot on the heels of the ill-fated February one), the rapid appointment of Owen Gavin and Gerry Guinan to take over the editorship immediately after the March edition, to alternative applicant Dave Lee’s chagrin …
Dave Lee, trying not to look displeased
…you might well be thinking to yourself, “none of this commentary bodes well for the harmonious and timely production of that March issue”.
What Does the Diary Say?
Never wanting to be seen as a rat who leaves a sinking ship, I offered Dave Lee my whole-hearted support to produce that March issue and/but found myself as part of a core team of two on the production side. To his credit, Dave steeled himself to the time-sensitive task with great determination.
Many other contributors of course; Simon Jacobs, Gerard O’Kane, Julia Parkes, Moira Neish, David Perrins, Jon Gorvett, Diana Ball, Robert Blow, David Bakhurst, Dexter…
David Perrins indicating that someone was out?
…but not a great deal of company in the Concourse office itself. To be fair on the others, it was a ridiculous post-shenanigans deadline, towards the end of term. I could just about get away with it as a Foundation Year student, but for most that level of commitment at that time of year was impractical.
Saturday 28 February – got up very late – went into Newcastle – ate & Concoursed
Sunday 1 March – late start – Concourse office most of the day and evening
Monday 2 March – OK day – busy with Concourse in evening
Tuesday 3 March – Not bad day – in Concourse office in evening.
Wednesday 4 March – Tough day working on Concourse. Nine Below Zero Concert…
I wrote a lot of copy – I was the political editor and there had been a whole swathe of union elections during February to report. I also did one heck of a lot of typing of my own and other people’s articles. My spectacularly fast four-finger technique was without question the best typing skill on offer…well, probably it was all that was on offer.
Yes, I remember matters becoming increasingly fraught as the days went on. Financially, missing the print deadline would mean ruination.
The set pages needed to go to the printers on the designated day, otherwise the printers would charge for the print run regardless but there would be no paper to sell.
Steve “Spike” Humphrey, a lovely, gentle chap whom I got to know quite well in other walks of Keele life afterwards, was the business manager of Concourse. Spike took pains to remind me and Dave that the print deadline really was just that; an immoveable deadline.
I’m not sure if this is William Randolph Hearst or Spike Humphrey in later life.
On that evening of 4 March, I’m pretty sure Dave & I were already well aware, even as we took a break to see the Nine Below Zero concert, that to get the pages ready for the printers the next morning, we’d be working much of the night to get the job done.
The other point to make about that gig, the very night of our deadline, was that Dave had commissioned and was determined to use, a review of the gig from Di Ball and Rob Blow.
That deadline upon deadline resulted in a little whimper of a hidden plea from me to Dave Lee at the end of that (quite lengthy) piece, when the copy finally arrived and when I finally got it ready for setting:
I apologise unequivocally, forty years on, to Dave, Di and Rob, none of whom were ever guilty of producing rotten articles. I must have been tired and emotional in the early hours of the morning, so, unforgivably, I mis-spoke.
I think Di & Rob kept us company for some time late that evening, as they completed their copy while Dave & I busied ourselves typing and setting other stuff.
But it was just me and Dave who remained once the porters (two from Ted, Walter & Wally no doubt) told us that they had to lock up and we agreed to being locked in.
With thanks to Mark Ellicott for this picture of Walter & Wally
Locked In…
In those days there were no CCTV cameras or anything like that. Yet I have somehow managed to uncover a couple of photos that seem to be pictures of me and Dave at work during that night.
I’d never done any page-setting before, so I think that’s a tentative me Yup, I’m fairly sure that’s Dave Lee putting the finishing touches on a page
I’ll guess that my 3:30 am plea in that article was accurate but also that it marked the near conclusion of our work. I think we had set everything else by then and simply needed to slot in the material from that night’s concert to be done. In fact, I suspect that my joke paragraph was in part a device to use up the space we had estimated for that article.
So I’ll guess that we were done around 4:00 or 4:30 am.
I’ll guess we expected the union to be opened up around 7:00 am.
I recall that we both had a little bit of silver in our pockets and chose to decompress after our labours using the amusements available.
We might have played table football…
…but I have a feeling that Dave was more a pinball person…
…or perhaps my extensive experience playing table football with Simon Jacobs most evenings put me in a different league for table football…
…or perhaps we quickly landed on the notion that table football is a game where you try to use up your goes as quickly as possible, whereas pinball is a game in which you rejoice in your opponents success – especially if it yields free balls and free games so you can continue to play.
I was an enthusiastic pinball player in those days. here is one of the games we might have played – for sure UKSU had this one at that time:
Once we had blown all the silver in our pockets, I think we both felt the onset of fatigue and so we decided to retire to the quiet room at the end of the union extension to grab forty winks before the sun would go up and the union would re-open.
…Then Nearly Knocked Out!
I think we both woke up to the same sound – that of shouting.
“All right you scallywags, where are you? I know you’re in here!”
Words to that effect.
We dozily wandered out of the quiet room, to see Pat Lyons, the building manager, hurtling along the extension passageway towards us.
It’s possibly a false memory, but I remember him wielding something a bit like the above implement.
My life flashed before my eyes. I imagined a Cluedo-like synopsis of our demise: “Mr Lyons, in the Union Extension, with the pipe wrench”.
Dave and I had but a few seconds to advocate for our very survival. Fortunately, as skilled communicators, used to summarising key facts into few words for journalistic purposes, we somehow managed to convince Pat Lyons during that short period of time that we had been deliberately locked in to produce Concourse.
Again my doubtlessly false memory has Pat upon us, about to wield a killer blow just a fraction of a second before our story rang true to him and he disarmed.
“You scared the bloody living daylights out of me,” said Pat
Words to that effect.
The feeling was entirely mutual.
Still, in the end no harm was done and in fact I think we produced a pretty darn good edition of Concourse, all things considered.
We put the paper to bed (unlike ourselves) in the early hours of 5 March and it returned from the printers for sale on Monday 9 March 1981.
In the spirit of this “forty years on” Ogblog journal, I intend to publish scans of those Concourse pages on 9 March 2021. Watch this space…
I didn’t write a lot of album reviews for Concourse, the Keele Students’ newspaper, but I did write this one, in March 1981. I think my neighbour in F Block Lindsay, Paul, had bought the album; I’m sure I didn’t buy it.
I ended up writing a great deal of that beleaguered March 1981 issue of Concourse, as I shall explain in another post, but clearly I had been commissioned to write this review before the hoo-ha that led to interim editing and all hands to the pump for the paper deadline.
Anyway, my hatchet job on The Stranglers sits next to an equally acerbic review of The Steve Gibbons Band by my good friend Simon Jacobs, without whom I, for sure, would not have ended up at Keele. But that’s another story.
In truth, I don’t think mushrooms were central to most of those parties
The diary & scribbles in my FY programme suggest that I wasn’t going to let lectures get in the way of my planned activities much that week, or indeed for the rest of the term. It seems I managed three FY lectures in the last three weeks of that term.
Well, it was cold and icy.
Also, I had worked out by then that you could get pretty much everything you needed from the FY lecture notes. Keen scouts who liked attending FY lectures would bring fistfuls back to F Block Lindsay for the rest of us to read. It looks as though that system broke down for the last week of term, but that’s another story.
I did attend a swathe of topic tutorials and write a couple of essays that week, though, so it wasn’t all parties and student journalism.
I think one of the essays was part of my law double topic, finishing off my law studies for that year but sealing my decision to study law along with economics for my degree. Thank you, Michael Whincup.
I remember doing a topic on Hormones & Reproduction with Dr Peter Chevins and I think I wrote my essay for that topic that week. There were 10 to 12 of us in that class; I think I was the only male (other than Dr Chevins).
I don’t think I was taking it all in. I blame my riotous teenage hormones.
I have a feeling I spent most of the class time ogling the girls and not enough of it getting my head around the relevant reproductive aspects of endocrinology. Still, I think some private study (unfortunately for me there was no practical experimental learning in pairs for that topic) meant that I managed to write a decent essay. Clearly I also learnt enough then and subsequently to get me started when I wrote a student guide book on sexual matters, Sexplanations, when I was Education & Welfare Office in 1984/85.
Tuesday 24 February 1981
Not bad day – wrote essay. In evening, went to see California Suite. Late night in Harry’s // etc.
Somewhat cheesy movie if I remember correctly – great cast though, with Jane Fonda, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Alan Alda, Michael Caine, Walter Matthau, Maggie Smith…
In late February, then, I guess we were still in the period twixt Harry’s small trouble and big trouble. My guess is that this party was a fairly impromptu affair centred around Harry’s room. The // symbol indicates that we imbibed some dope and that I didn’t even then remember much about the gathering. We probably talked a whole load of rubbish while convincing ourselves that we were putting the world to rights. Possibly we even did put the word to rights – in which case it is such a shame that none of us the next day remembered the answers we came up with that night. Oh well.
Wednesday 25 February 1981
Easyish day. Went to party in evening // at Miriam’s – pretty good.
Miriam will be Miriam Morgan, who, along with her partner Heather (Jones) was the doyen of the Keele Gay Society. I have written up an earlier party with that crowd the previous term, at which I first met Ashley Fletcher – click here or below:
Discussing those parties with Simon Jacobs in late 2020, Simon recalled that, at one of them, there were some magic mushrooms doing the rounds. He and I both very tentatively sampled the mushrooms, probably being too timorous to take enough of the mushrooms to get enough effect to impact on the senses beyond the drink and the (if the // symbol is anything to go by) dope available at the party.
I have a feeling that this party was part of Gay Lib week, as Simon wrote that week (and party) up in the March 1981 Concourse and I cannot imagine another Wednesday night being the party night to which he refers, given my documented events of the various Wednesdays that term:
Reading Simon’s article again after all this time (I probably typed it up for that Concourse – I typed up much of the darned thing), I am struck by how tiny and nascent the Gay Soc was at that time – a dozen or so people – perhaps including me and one or two other “supporters”. Within a year or so that tiny group of active students transformed that Society and well done them.
Ashley reminded me (in correspondence late 2020) that, at one point, I was designated the Gay Soc Mascot, by dint of my support for the group. I had a feeling that honour came later than this, but perhaps it was at this event that the honour was bestowed.
Thursday 26 February 1981
Not bad day. Concoursed in evening etc.
This is a bit of an anti-climax, don’t you think? I can only apologise to readers for interrupting this programme of parties with such an ordinary-sounding day. Note that “working on Concourse” has become a single-word verb; concoursed. Let us move swiftly on.
Friday 27 February 1981
Busy day academically. Anna’s party in the evening // pretty good.
Hostess with the most-ess
Anna Summerskill’s party was probably quite a low key (perhaps a dozen or so of us) but almost certainly a dope-ridden affair. I’m trying to remember where Anna lived that year; I think Harrowby House, but I could be wrong and someone out there might correct me.
I have written a fair bit about Anna already in the same “Winter Draws” piece as Mad Harry – click here or the links above. Mark Bartholomew – also written up in that earlier piece, would no doubt have been there. Probably (but not necessarily) Simon Jacobs and one or two others from that mini dining club in Lindsay refectory, which by sacred tradition included Anna’s ceremonial fellating of a banana at the end of almost every meal, before Anna would roller-skate off to her next engagement. It’s hard to believe she’s no longer with us (sadly she died of lung cancer in 2012), she was such a force of nature, was Anna.
Not quite sure what came together to make that a (rare) busy day academically, but I was probably trying to get work out of the way ahead of my anticipated marathon efforts towards the looming Concourse deadline over the next five days…
…and there’s a story to the meeting of that deadline, I could tell you. Indeed I shall tell you, in the next episode.
While trawling the diary for Concourse memories, I spotted a few entries that brought back memories of a visit by Caroline during our second term at Keele. When I say “our”, I mean me and Simon Jacobs.
Allow me to translate:
Friday 20 February: Not bad day – went to meet Caroline – went to see Too Many Chefs – Simon’s for coffee – not too late a night.
Saturday 21 February: Late start – went to Sneyd for lunch – lazy afternoon – went to “O” party in evening // late night snowballing and making…
Sunday 22 February: …pancakes. Late start. Simon’s for ploughman’s and booze. Romped in snow – lazy evening.
Caroline will have dossed out at mine on this visit – Simon was with a really nice chap named Roy at that time.
“Too Many Chefs” will have been this movie – actually named Who Is Killing All the Great Chefs Of Europe – at Film Club. Reading the synopsis, I remember this kitsch, eminently forgettable movie surprisingly clearly.
Sneyd for lunch, eh? How many times did I end up eating a meal there during my time at Keele. Often. It wasn’t at all bad, as I recall. Landlord Geoff O’Connor knew and liked his food…but not in a Too Many Chefs sort of way.
“O” party in the evening is not a reference to a 1950’s erotic novel. I think it was the block in Hawthorns where Miz and Heather lived…or perhaps the one in Barnes where Roy lived. Anyway, it will be the name of a block.
I really like the notion of late night snowballing and making…pancakes – spilling from Saturday night to Sunday morning. My guess is that I was trying to reflect the actual timings of those things. Such simple, youthful pleasures. Romped in snow was, I’m sure, similarly innocent fun.
I don’t mention Caroline’s departure, but she must have departed at some point – at least I’m pretty sure she isn’t still visiting Keele as I write. I hope I took her back to Stoke in much the same way as I went down to Stoke to meet her. I’ll guess that Caroline’s departure was between the romp in the snow and the lazy evening.
If anyone else (Caroline? Simon??) remembers this weekend, please do chime in with your memories.
I remember this particular evening surprisingly clearly. It has been brought back to mind in the spring of 2019 by correspondence with Dave Lee, with whom I and other friends worked on Concourse, the student newspaper.
My diary records the event:
18 February 1981: Easyish day – in evening went to Labour Club. Simon then forced me to see Krokus – yuk.
“…forced me to see” is not a phrase you’ll often see in my diary. But I do recall on this occasion that I did not want to see the Swiss hard rock (or should I say heavy metal) band Krokus, but Simon had agreed to review the concert for Concourse, so he had to go.
I remember Simon exerting some “more than gentle” emotional pressure, along the lines that he really didn’t want to attend this particular heavy rock gig on his own. Something about fear was mentioned, as if Simon attending along with an eighteen-year-old, eight stone weakling like me was going to make the evening any safer.
Of course, being a Keele Ballroom gig, there was no real danger of the gig being over-run by packs of Hells Angels intent on causing trouble for weedy students anyway, but I suppose we were newbies still and had not been to such a gig before, so didn’t really know what to expect.
Simon reviewed the gig in the famous “Film Star Makes President” March 1981 issue of Concourse, about which I shall write plenty in the fullness of time.
For now, please just enjoy Simon’s review, headlined “live or dead?”:
I think it is fair to say that Simon didn’t like the concert much.
I especially like the line that describes:
three overpowering guitarists with about as much style as an airbourne [sic] rhinoceros.
As it happens, I have subsequently been to visit rhinoceroses in person (in the jungles of Assam in 2005) and can confirm the resemblance:
The airborne one can just be seen in the distance through the undergrowth.
In any case, I think my single word diary entry review – “yuk” – says enough. Although possibly my take would have been insufficient detail for Dave Lee’s editorial needs at that time.
…I also came back with a large Judge enamel cooking pot, depicted above, together with a somewhat distressed-looking frying pan:
I really should point out that the above photographs were taken forty years later, in February 2021, in the kitchen of my Notting Hill Gate flat, where these artefacts still reside, a little incongruously amongst the granite and the fancy-schmancy cookware. I still use the enamel cooking pot occasionally; it’s in extraordinarily good nick. As the young folks might say, it is a remarkably peng pot.
I’m not sure I’ve used the frying pan for 25 years or more. In fact I was a little surprised to find it still there, at the back of a kitchen cupboard. But then it would be a wrench to throw it out after all these years.
I should also point out that the frying pan…Tower Brand, British made, patent number lost in the mists of time…already looked fairly distressed in 1981. In fact, it might look less distressed now than it did then; apart from the dent.
Dad had brought both the pot and the pan from the kitchenette at the back of his shop, where they had festered unused for many years. My guess is that they predate dad opening the shop even, in the mid 1950s, quite possibly hand-me-downs from dad’s parents.
We’ll return to the cooking later in this piece.
Here’s the diary extract for the first two weeks of February:
Nope, I can barely read it either
Music In The FY Lecture Theatre, Darts At The Mid-Term Ball & Late Nights, 11-12 February
I went to both of Professor Dickinson’s FY lectures that Wednesday morning; the first on British Music, the second on American Music. I seem to recall the focus being on late 19th and 20th century composers of the Elgar, Walton, Britten, Ives, Barber, Copeland variety.
The diary for that day (11 February) merely reads:
Did little – Ball in evening – Darts very good – very late night again!!!
Dave Lee’s book The Keele Gigs (due Summer 2021) will doubtless cover the topic of that Darts gig (and the support acts) well. I do remember Darts being a fun act to watch as an 18 year old. They looked a bit like this:
12 February 1981 – Up late – did little all day – very boozy evening & late night.
I’m just starting to spot a pattern here, dear reader.
A Trio Of Weekend Visitors & Some Rudimentary Cooking In The Communal Kitchen, 13 to 15 February 1981
13 February 1981 – Not bad day. Nick [Frankel,] Graham [Greenglass] & Rebecca [Segalov] came – went to bar -> Simons. Graham stayed here – talked music till late.
These three were BBYO friends, primarily of Simon’s (although I already knew Graham quite well) from Pinner.
It was not so easy to accommodate several guests at Keele. I know that Graham slept in a sleeping bag on the floor of my tiny study-bedroom. I think that Simon stayed with his then-boyfriend Roy, freeing up space in his study-bedroom for Nick & Rebecca. Or perhaps Simon’s next door neighbour, David Perrins, was away that weekend freeing up space there. Or both. Weekends at Keele were often a merry-go-round of room favours, long before Airbnb was invented.
I shall write separately on the wonderful mix tapes that Graham made for me back then. Suffice it to say that I think he brought two (or possibly even three) with him on that visit and I listened to those tapes a lot throughout my time at Keele.
Graham & Simon, 1979
14 February 1981 – Got up late – went in to Newcastle for lunch – went to lakes – cooked supper – S, G & I went to Lindsay disco – mine…
15 February 1981 – …for coffee, Anna [Summerskill] came, as did [Mad] Harry, Sim [on Ascough] & [Brummy] Paul – another latey.
So 14 February 1981 will have been the very first time I used my dad’s old cookware.
Freshers stayed in halls and dined in refectories Monday to Friday; the grub was part of the hall fees. But we had to fend for ourselves at the weekends on modest budgets and with limited facilities in halls. Most freshers, especially the male freshers, did not eat well at the weekends.
I was travelling up and down the country and therefore not around at Keele for many weekends in my first term. When I was around, I can tell from my diary, that I tended to eat in places such as The Sneyd Arms, The Golf Inn, The Student’s Union or in “town” – most probably Newcastle-Under-Lyme; mostly with Simon and his crowd.
So I’m pretty sure that this weekend will have been the first time I tried cooking at Keele.
F Block Lindsay had one small kitchen which was shared, if I remember correctly, between all 20 to 25 students who lived in that block. Possibly it was just as well that most male students were uninterested in cooking. I think the blocks that housed female students tended to have fewer people and/or more plentiful kitchen facilities. I’m wondering whether it is too late for me to bring a discrimination claim against the University.
Anyway, from memory this early effort was Spaghetti Bolognese. I planned it the weekend before, when with my parents. I remember my father insisting on pronouncing the name of the dish “Spaghetti Bollock-knees”.
I think I only brought one secret ingredient to Keele with me, which served as my stock base (as well as a warm snack) throughout my time at Keele; Osem Chicken Soup. Much more tasty than chicken stock cubes and a base I could use when cooking for vegetarians.
In the Keele days, I needed to buy this Osem ingredient in London, whereas now you can get the product almost anywhere, e.g. Sainsbury’s.
The rest of the ingredients I will have bought in the Newcastle-Under-Lyme Sainsbury’s on the Saturday. Here is my recipe.
Ian's Keele Fresher Spaghetti Bollock-knees Recipe
Quite a lot of onions
A good few carrots
A large pack of mince - hopefully the large packs are available at a special low price
A large tin of tomatoes - ideally an Italian brand that looks the part
A couple of teaspoonsful of Osem Chicken Flavor Soup (a stock cube or two can be substituted)
A good squeeze of tomato puree from a tube (that tube will last a good few months)
A good squeeze of garlic puree (that tube will last even longer than the tomato puree tube)
A good pinch of table salt
A good pinch of ground black pepper
Vegetable Oil (likely to be rape seed oil in those days)
A good fistful of spaghetti (circa 4 oz per hungry person)
Chop the onions into quite small pieces. Ditto the carrots. Brown these ingredients in vegetable oil within distressed-looking frying pan. Add the mince once the onions and carrots are brown. Thoroughly cook the mince.
Dissolve the Osem soup...or stock cube(s)...in boiled water and add to the distressed pan. Also add the salt, pepper and tinned tomatoes. Then add tomato puree and garlic puree to taste. Reduce until a good texture and flavour of sauce..
While reducing the contents of the distressed pan, bring a large quantity of water to the boil in the peng enamel cooking pot, add a good pinch of salt and cook the spaghetti for about 10 minutes.
Drain the spaghetti and serve the sauce over the spaghetti.
This all looks a lot more complicated when written down than it actually is. I knew how to do this before I went off to University.
I remember that my cooking of this food for our guests caused a bit of a stir in F Block Lindsay. I’m not sure anything quite so cheffy had occurred in that kitchen during that academic year until my effort. Perhaps I am being unfair. Anyway, the smell attracted quite a few people into the kitchen and I received quite a few requests for future meals…some of which I found ways of meeting, as I’ll explain in a future piece.
I have a feeling that Simon will have gone back to join Roy before the “post Lindsay disco” gathering in my room. In truth I don’t really remember it and I’m trying to get my head around the incongruous gathering of Anna Summerskill and her (as I remember it) constant desire to talk left-wing politics, with a bunch of hopped-up, mostly apolitical 18-year-old fellas – Graham, Brummy Paul, Mad Harry, me & Sim.
Sunday 15 February 1981 (continued) – up late – went in direction of Mainwaring – ate at Services – they [must mean Graham, Nick & Rebecca] left – Simon & Malc [Cornelius] for supper – early night
I have a feeling that the five of us headed off in the direction of The Mainwaring Arms, but then realised that a quick nip into the Keele Services “around the back” would enable the Londoners a quick getaway, while Simon & I could easily walk back to Keele.
As for the supper that evening, I’m going to guess that I vastly over-catered for the previous evening and had loads of Bollock-knees left over to enable me, Simon and Malcolm Cornelius to enjoy a hearty meal the next day.
I have no pictures of either Rebecca or Nick from back then, but Rebecca ended up with another BBYO friend of Simon’s and mine, Alan Tucker (who I think visited us on a separate occasion, some months later). Simon is still in touch with Alan and Rebecca forty years on.
Now I admit that I did much of the typing for that early February 1981 edition of Concourse. I was deemed to be a bit of a whizz with two fingers on the old keyboard. Still am, though I say so myself.
But I did not get involved with laying out the paper in preparation for the printers for that edition. That was, in theory, more experienced work. That was often the editors’ role. It was certainly the editors’ role to check that all the pages were well set.
Something went awry and I’m not sure that my writing about the controversy now will extract the true story.
One rumour had it that the skewiffy setting of Katy Turner’s Presidential Column was a deliberate snub to her by the editors, Hugh Peart and Paula Higginson. One rumour had it that it was an honest mistake by someone setting the paper in a mad rush to get the proofs to the printers.
It was always a mad rush to get the proofs to the printers.
Dave Lee might be able to shed some light on the cause.
Anyway, my diary suggested that I was busy on Concourse from 31 January to 3 February with little else to report. My FY Programme suggests I went to a few lectures & classes that week, but still I deemed such days “easy”. Easy meant “no essay deadlines and no exams” in my mind back then.
On Wednesday 4th February my evening comprised:
Local Authority meeting in eve. Au Pairs live – not too good.
I cannot imagine why I went to a Local Authority meeting other than a recommendation from Richard Kimber to do so as part of my Politics sessional. I don’t remember a thing about it, but I suspect that some Councillors would say the same thing about their entire career on the Council.
I did become reconciled with The Au Pairs and grew to like their album Playing with a Different Sex. The following track, which is on that album, shows what they looked and sounded like:
Rumour had it that a couple of The Au Pairs had been students at Keele. I’m not sure whether I can get that “fact” confirmed or denied. I can confirm that lead singer Lesley Woods went on to become a practicing barrister.
After my classes on the Friday I went to my parents’ house for the weekend; my only such visit that term.
A Weekend In London 6 to 8 February
Friday 6 February – arrived about 7:00 – ate, phoned – turned in earlyish
Saturday 7 February – easy day, taping etc. Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] came over for supper ->town for coffee and cakes.
Sunday 8 February – easy day – lunch locally with Grandma[Anne] – got back to Keele about 8:00 – had a few drinks
The diary entries are intriguing. I mention that I phoned. These days no youngster would consider phoning to be “a thing”, but it was time consuming to queue up for the payphones at Keele and expensive. So it was “a thing” to me that I could spend some time that weekend calling people.
I shall write a separate piece on the chart music I taped on that Saturday. I’m pretty sure I also taped some of my albums and such to increase my mini collection of cassettes up at Keele.
I don’t remember Caroline coming to the house for supper but I know for sure that my mum would have felt that she owed Caroline and her family many, many meals for all the hospitality I’d had from them when doing my BBYO stuff in the year or so prior to Keele, mostly in North-West London, with Caroline’s mum Jacquie providing warm and wonderful hospitality of the edible kind regularly.
I don’t know why I recall the trip up town with Caroline for coffee and cake (and a chance to chat), but I have a strong memory of a place near or possibly even in Whiteleys. From the late 80’s onwards, I didn’t think of that Bayswater/Notting Hill Gate neighbourhood as “town”, I think of it as “home”.
Lunch locally with Grandma Anne was probably at Il Carretto in Streatham.
Skewiffy-Column-Gate
On the Monday, 9 February, the concourse controversy kicked off proper. The diary reads:
Not bad day. Concourse came out. UGM in eve – spoke about Concourse etc. Went back to Mark’s [Bartholomew] for coffee – stayed chatting all night…
In many ways I think the controversy passed us by at the time.
So we Concourse “cub reporters” were simply thrilled to see our pieces and credits in print. Also, the very fact that Concourse was the centre of attention at that evening’s UGM only added to the sensation that the University of Keele Students’ Union’s fourth estate, in the form of Concourse, was terribly important.
In the aftermath of that day, the controversy about the Concourse skewiffyness was quite fierce; the result was that both of the editors resigned. I don’t think that happened publicly on the night (otherwise I’d have written about it differently in the diary). That hoo-ha and multiple resignation incident had momentous and amusing consequences for me (and for interim editor Dave Lee) a few weeks later – watch this space.
Coffee Afterwards…Or Did I Mean “Coffee”?
I don’t think I went back to Mark Bartholomew’s place for all-night coffee and political chat on many occasions, so I suspect this might have been the day (night) that I met Neil Infield, who became a good friend, to some extent during the Keele years, to a greater extent after Keele. More on that anon.
Anyway, the location of that gathering was, if I remember correctly, L Block Lindsay.
I did not use the word “coffee” as a euphemism for other stimulants or relaxants. I used a little “//” marking in my diary for those. So on this occasion, I am pretty sure that the phrase “coffee and chatting all night” was literal and descriptive. If we were lucky the coffee would have been freeze-dried granules of the Nescafe variety. If we were less lucky, it would have been cheap powdery stuff with a generic supermarket label that had an insipid, bitter taste that vaguely resembled coffee.
Simon Jacobs reminded me (February 2021) that Mark Bartholomew, at that time, held himself out to be of the Polish nobility or something of that kind. The more inebriated he became, according to Simon, the more elaborate those Polish royalty stories became…see what I mean?
I remember Mark berating me for being unable to pronounce Łódź properly. I can do that now. Sounds more like “Woodge”. Never forgot it.
I’m not sure whether either Simon Jacobs or Jon Gorvett were part of that particular all-nighter – they’ll doubtless deny all knowledge of the occasion anyway, whether they were there or not.
10 February -> brekky -> 9.00 -> bed -> got up for dinner -> union for drinks
I love that little diary note – I can see from my FY Programme markings that I went to Stephen Banfield’s 9.00 lecture on Romantic Music but then went to my bed rather than attend Roger Marsh‘s 20th Century Music lecture.
Glad to see that my untimely slumber enabled me to revive in time for dinner and some drinks in the Union. Priorities.
