Saturday 28 June – Worked hard today – went to Levinsons briefly – [squiggle] etc. Mainly work.
Sunday 29 June – Did exam in morning – went to G [Grandma] Jenny in afternoon – watched cup final early evening – went for drink with Andrew after – met Mary etc.
I was working hard at that time, doing my accountancy exams (presumably that Sunday morning thing was a self-administered mock) while working full time and helping to bring dad’s business (he had sold the shop in Feburary) to a graceful closure with the tax authorities.
This was still less than a year after I left Keele; my diaries suggest that I almost exclusively spent my spare time with old friends from Keele apart from my work crowd and some of my old BBYO crowd.
This reference to spending time with Andrew Levinson is the first reference to an old friend from the street or school in 1986 (unless I’ve missed saomething on the skim).
“Mary etc.” I think must be a lovely young woman I knew at Keele named Mary who kept popping up wherever I happened to be in that first year after I left Keele. I remember bumping into her when I was doing accountancy courses in Latimer Road and also that she ended up in Streatham for a while.
I dread to think where Andrew and I went for that drink and therefore where Mary etc. were also hanging out back then – our end of Streatham was not great for pubs and I doubt if we wandered far. Horse and Groom most likely – it’s had a makeover fairly recently (he writes in 2020) but was well grimey back then.
Here is the typed up version, scanned from what I think must be carbon copies. Is there anyone else left on the planet who remembers what carbon copies were?
I guess I prepared these for our glorious return visit in January 1986 for the traditional UGM/AGM thingie.
I might have some notes or other artefacts from the meeting itself which I’ll post separately if/when I find them. I know I did attend the meeting. I’m pretty sure several/most of us did. If June said you had to be there, you had to be there.
I remember Nigel Dempster writing a whole load of factually inaccurate stuff about Keele Students’ Union generally and me in particular. I also remember writing a rebuttal, which the Daily Mail, surprisingly, published.
This letter request from June Aitken probably explains why I cannot find copies of the rebuttal and other materials – I suspect that I simply sent them to her without making further copies for myself. In 1985, photocopying/scanning was not the simple, almost automatic thing it is today.
Perhaps this letter from June is now all that remains of the Dempstergate debacle.
I have no idea what must have gone wrong with the earlier correspondence, unless it turns up in a pile I have not yet excavated. I got on well with Les, both in my capacity as a student and as a students’ union officer. He was, in my experience, a wonderful lecturer and steward of his undergraduate students. So my comment about the long-forgotten faux pas would have been tongue-in-cheek on my part, as would Les’s rebuttal have been on his part.
I got to know Peter Held on several of the University committees; he was a prominent member of the University Council. I remember being pleasantly surprised when he invited me and Kate to a Lichfield Festival concert towards the end of our term of office, that summer. I’ll write up that concert in the fullness of time; I’m pretty sure I have the programme.
I would have written quite promptly to Peter to thank him for his (i.e. Marling Industries’) hospitality. This letter is his thanks for my thanks, with the offer of a little bit of employment insurance tucked in there, which I remember pleasing me when I first saw the letter.
Not that I can really imagine a career in industrial textiles, looking back, but who knows where life might have been taking me back then?
A couple of weeks ago (May 2017) I wrote an Ogblog piece about my first forays into Ringroad Revue – click here. Quick as a flash, John Easom at “Keele Alumni Central” put Frank Dillon in touch with me, triggering e-mail exchanges, arrangements to meet up and of course a flood of more memories.
Frank wrote/asked:
I was particularly intrigued to learn that you are in possession of The Cornflake Box – or The Holy Grail as Olu Odunsi and I have dubbed it these past 30 years(!) or so.
Any chance you could scan me the contents?
The actual box (which I suppose I inherited from Frank in the summer of 1984) disintegrated during 1985 while it was living in my flat (K block Horwood). I think it was probably replaced by another similar box.
My collection of scripts is now in a file – a mixture of original hand-written scripts and photocopies – a fragment of the Holy Grail with some facsimile elements.
I don’t think that I even took the actual box with me…not that it was THE actual box any more, unless we accept that this particular Holy Grail of a Cornflake Box regenerated every few years – a bit like Dr Who…just more funny, less animated and with fewer enemies.
I suspect it will be autumn (2017) before I get space to take on the Ringroad File/Cornflake Box/Holy Grail Fragment for comprehensive scanning and sharing – otherwise I’ll be interrupting my current/future life by spending a disproportionate amount of time wallowing in the past…and that won’t do.
But I do have, already digitised, a recording of the Finalists Revue from 1985, which I have uploaded in two chunks (due to WordPress file size restrictions).
I cannot remember the name of everyone who appeared in the 1985 Finalists Revue – apologies to those whose names I only half remember or forget.
Frank was gone by then. Olu Odunsi was still around and was a delight to work with on the boards, including this show. John Bowen, who was on the research//academic staff, also joined with us for Ringroad that 1984/85 academic year and was similarly good news to have in the team.
Indeed the whole cast was fun and friendly. Dave Griffiths (who also wrote very good material) and three fabulous lasses, Jo, Jackie and (I think) Karen. Possibly there were others, but I think that’s it. Please help me to fill in the gaps if you are able, dear reader.
I have not re-listened to the recording in full myself yet, but I think the second half might be a tad better than the first half. The recording is poor as we had a microphone shortage, so some bits are less audible than others and some sketches sound a bit shouty.
I was pretty hopeless as a performer, really, but I think it was seen as a bit of a coup to have a union sabbatical on the Ringroad cast taking the pee out of union politics. I wrote little back then – my comedy writing was to blossom later, in the 1990s, at NewsRevue.
Enjoy the recording(s) below and please do comment.
Ringroad Finalists Revue 27 June1985 Part One of Two
Ringroad Finalists Revue 27 June1985 Part Two of Two
On top of my Hackgrass reveal antics on our last morning in office, it seems we held some sort of bogus committee meeting later in the afternoon. More a symposium than a mere meeting, by the looks of it.
It looks as though I completed the minutes that December, ahead of our January 1986 appearance at the UGM I shouldn’t wonder, so I’ll publish the typed version at that date. The hand-written version that follows must have been part-written on the day and then concluded later.
Experts at handwriting analysis forensics might be able to work out exactly what went on. John White – I suggest you might choose not to apply for this role, if your attempt at the Hackgrass cypher is anything to go by.
Most of my fellow committee members didn’t know that I was Hackgrass. Indeed the only person on the committee who did know was Pete Wild, as the only people still at Keele who did know my identity were my remaining former Barnes L54 flatmates (hence Pete), Petra Wilson and Annalisa de Mercur.
For the last day of our office as sabbaticals, I wrote a final Hackgrass one-pager and revealed myself to the lovely Pat Borsky in the print room. (As Hackgrass, I mean; please retain some decorum and concentrate, dear reader). Pat agreed to print the one-pager as a publicity circular (pub. circ.) special and the rest is history.
The one-pager caused more than a bit of a stir that day in students’ union circles. I thought best to lie low in my office.
Soon enough, John White plonked himself in my office with pub. circ. and a copy of the February Concourse, saying that he wanted to break the code.
I said that I didn’t much care who Hackgrass was and that I wanted to finish off some work, as I was still very busy.
John laboured with the puzzle for some time in my office, concocting some highly convoluted theories such as:
a=1…z=26, reverse the number series and rework the letters
Once I got irritated enough, I suggested to John that whoever Hackgrass was, he or she probably wasn’t that sophisticated a cipher-wright, so John might be better off trying something really simple like the initial letters of the words in the sentence.
About 10 seconds later, I received an unrepeatable (indeed forgettable) stream of invective from John. I have forgiven him for the invective and I believe he has forgiven me for keeping my identity as Hackgrass a secret during our sabbatical year.
With thanks to cartoonist Paul Wood and Private Eye for their kind permission to use Paul’s image, published in Eye Issue 1636, November 2024.
When I spotted the above cartoon in Private Eye, it brought back a flood of memories about the conception, in Autumn 1984, of the publication that we named “Sexplanations”.
The unfunny part of this story is the running battle I was facing, as Education & Welfare Officer, with those pockets of Keele culture that did not want any information on “Birth Control and Related Issues” displayed and distributed by my office in the Students’ Union. My predecessor had bowed to the pressure of objections to information leaflets on the topic by abstaining from displaying any. I felt it was vitally important to provide information to students and was prepared to take on the issue.
My attempted compromise with the naysayers was to display the better of the supposedly controversial third party leaflets on a promise that I would produce our own Keele SU document that would aim to be suitably balanced in its perspective.
I made an early decision to pepper the booklet with cartoons, as part of my attempt to make the booklet readable and engaging enough to encourage wide readership. I had (indeed still have in a yellowing file) a small collection of Private Eye cartoons that I had torn out of my subscription copies of Private Eye when I saw a picture I enjoyed. Once the booklet had been conceived, I particularly sought out relevant cartoons from the pages of Eye.
The handful of mentions in my diary during the gestation of this booklet refer to it as the “birth control” leaflet. But the medical advisors I consulted, both in the local health authority and the Keele Health Centre, persuaded me quite early to broaden the scope and include information about sexually transmitted infections as well, which we did.
I recall that June Aitken (senior admin assistant) reported to me that Joan was in tears trying to type this document for me. I wondered whether Joan was finding the material embarrassing or difficult.
“Oh no”, said June, “she just so wants to do a good job for you, but cannot read your blithering handwriting, duck”.
The irony of my medically-oriented draft leaflet being illegible is not wasted on me. Sorry, again, Joan! June undertook to help Joan with the draft and of course the resulting document was very well typed and set in the end.
Petra Wilson and Jean Mackay, who were both on my welfare committee, were my main content assistants on this publication and did a terrific job on it. (I wonder what became of Jean? Petra – do you know?).
I recall a meeting (probably quite close to publication day) when we were to choose the name. I came up with the pun, Sexplanations, which none of us really liked, but none of us could think of anything better – i.e. suitably descriptive, catchy and suggesting that their might be some humorous as well as informative content.
Forty years on, I still don’t really like the title Sexplanations and still cannot think of a more suitable one.
Meanwhile, controversy continued to rear its ugly head in the union around such topics, as this snippet from May 1985 Concourse attests, in the matter of Life posters, which I permitted the “Life lot” to put up, but wouldn’t police for them in a “die on a hill” manner. I mean, dying on a hill would have been against their sanctity of life principles, wouldn’t it?
By the beginning of June, it really was time to induce the birth of Sexplanations, don’t you think?
I believe the publication was a success. They certainly went like hot cakes during the few weeks that I remained at Keele post publication – my term of office was very close to its end when the booklet came out. I don’t think it was ever going really to please the naysayers, as their perception of balanced writing on this topic was somewhat at variance with mine.
Just one more strange memory about this topic – i.e. the aftermath of Sexplanations coming out.
Whether the spikey condom (unused) that awaited me under the door on arrival at my office on the morning after the publication was from the naysayers or a random prankster we’ll never know. Petra and I wondered at the time whether it might even have been a late contribution towards our research. Fortunately, further research of that kind would have been pointless post publication.
Anyone out there care to confess to having deposited said “gift”?
