Tag: Richard Marks

Visits & Magical Memories As Clear As Mud: Towards the End Of Summer Term At Keele, 9 to 20 June 1981

Was it Mud at the Lindsay Summer Ball that year?

I have a very strong, impressionistic memory of enjoying myself thoroughly during the last few weeks of the summer term of my Foundation Year at Keele.

Unfortunately…perhaps because I was having such a good time…my memories of specific details are less than special and my diary entries pithy to say the least.

I’ll do my best, but could seriously use some help from the hive mind of those who were also there at the time.

A Short Trip To London, Then Caroline Came Up To Keele With Me, 9 to 12 June 1981

Tuesday 9 June 1981 – Up quite late – had lunch came home. Supper – early night.

Wednesday 10 June 1981 – Haircut in morning – met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch – Cyril Monty. Job – early night.

Not many mentions of haircuts in my diaries from that era – a rare event which, I suspect, came as a result of some serious emotional pressure from mum, combined with the reality that I would need shorter hair for my summer job and was not allowing time between coming down from Keele on the last Sunday of June and a presumed work start date of the Monday!

Meeting Caroline for lunch was quite a regular thing in those days. I think she was at Harrods then, so it would have been one of those quite up-market but affordable eateries in Knightsbridge, of which there were plenty at that time.

Caroline: “let’s lunch” – with thanks to Jilly Black for this photo.

Cyril Monty was an orthopaedic surgeon who, along with his family, were friends of my family. I had suffered an industrial injury while working during the Easter holidays that year:

Industrial Injury In Cavendish Square, c26 March 1981

Cyril Monty told me that I was likely to be prone to back problems throughout my life, but if I did plenty of exercise and avoided injury I might get away with it. I invested in a second hand exercise plan book (along with many other books) on the following Friday…

…and did exercises from that book for the next few years. But I am getting ahead of myself.

“Job” will simply mean that I popped around from Cyril Monty’s Harley Street consulting room to 19 Cavendish Square to confirm my summer job starting arrangements.

Thursday 11 June 1981 – Dentist [Harry Wachtel] in morning – shopping – cataloguing tapes etc. Early night.

Friday 12 June 1981 – Up for lunch – taping etc. – met Caroline. Came up to Keele – lazy evening.

On reflection, the taping sessions I described for my unscheduled visit to London in May…

We Interrupt This Keele FY Summer Term: Matters Of Life & Death, Plus A Couple More Mix Tapes, 8 To 19 May 1981

…were probably undertaken (or at least were completed) on this June visit.

Caroline’s Visit, Segueing Into Richard’s Visit, 12 to 16 June 1981

Saturday 13 June 1981 – Hanley for lunch – Gladstone Museum – Mis’s party in evening.

MartynDavies, CC BY-SA 3.0

I was rather hoping that Caroline would remember some details about this visit and Mis’s party. Simon Jacobs (as usual) drew a blank. Caroline’s response to my request for further information:

I’m with Simon, if you think my memory is going to be better than your diary!. I do remember the weekend as described, particularly a boozy party, but unable to add anything to enhance the description!

I describe the next (Sunday) morning as an early start, although what one did with an early start at Keele on a Sunday is a mystery to me. “Early” might be a relative term, of course and I suspect that we went to the campus store to get some food in, as Simon apparently made lunch and I made dinner that Sunday.

Sunday 14 June 1981 – Early start – buying…lunch at Simons [D Block Barnes], lazy afternoon. Dinner here [F Block Lindsay] lazy evening.

Monday 15 June 1981 – Late start. Lunch – Caroline left in afternoon. Richard [Marks] came. UGM -> party – up till late, v drunk.

Richard remembered…but not for this visit

Neither Simon nor I remember this visit from Richard. I clearly remember his earlier visit during the first term;

Richard Marks Visits Me & Simon Jacobs At Keele, Not Least For Stoke v Manchester United, 19 & 22 October 1980

I wonder what he made of a Keele UGM and the “v late, v drunk” party. I suspect Richard only stayed around for a day or so (the diary is silent on this) as I suspect he was visiting us as part of a road trip which included friends in Manchester and/or Leeds.

Tuesday 16 June 1981 – Good for nothing today – did likewise. Lazy evening etc. Film bad.

Wednesday 17 June 1981 – Earlyish rise – cat etc. Went to disco etc. in eve – played snooker

Thursday 18 June 1981 – Up really early for J-Soc exec meeting. Went to Sneyd in evening.

I wonder how early “really early” was for that meeting. I didn’t have anything else to report until the evening, which might be a clue.

Sue Jacobs Visit & The Mystery Lindsay Ball, 19 & 20 June 1981

Simon Jacobs’s sister Sue – with thanks to Jilly Black for this photo

Friday 19 June 1981 – Lazy day. Bought Books. Susan came in evening. Film Salon Kitty, Lindsay Ball. Mark [probably Bartholomew] & [Liz?] came & stayed late

That book buying session did a great job of getting me started with summer holiday reading plus some basic texts for my impending P1 year.

Salon Kitty was an X-rated movie and Sue was only 16 at the time, but the experience does not seem to have done Sue any harm, nor does it seem to have stuck in her memory.

I have a feeling that this Lindsay Ball must have been the one at which Mud played, but neither Sue nor Simon reckon that they have ever seen Mud. Then again, Simon didn’t even remember that Sue visited us that year. Forty years on, Simon says:

Just because you claim that my younger sister paid us a visit, doesn’t necessarily mean that we attended the Lindsay Ball. Which brings us back to Mud. If they were the top attraction of the night, I might well have found a reason to do something else… x

Sue’s “forty years on” take on all this was as follows:

Fancy Simon not remembering me visiting….no surprise there! I did visit, although no idea of the details at all. Except that we saw a hypnotist show? Simon also did take me back to his room to put me to bed and then to go off again himself…I have no idea about his return…! Happy days!

The hypnotist would have been at the ball and I have a feeling that we did all go to the ball and/but that Simon (& thus Sue) dipped out ahead of the band. So I’m sticking with Mud, as it were, as my best guess for the band for that occasion.

That’s right, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right…

I certainly did see Mud there on one occasion and cannot find another Lindsay Ball mention in my diary that might have been Mud. Hopefully someone amongst the Keele alums out there can confirm or deny my theory.

On the occasion I did see Mud, I recall the Keele audience all-but ignoring the band until they played the only hit of theirs that tended to catch the imagination, at which point everyone danced and chanted wildly:

Muddy Postscript

Helen LeGrand has helped to confirm that Mud’s visit to Lindsay must have been that summer ball in 1981. She adds a very specific memory of her own: “Don’t think it was the original Mud line-up. Memorable for the encore when the lead singer [Les Gray – the only survivor of the original Mud line-up by then] came back on stage completely naked. I’m sure I’m not misremembering that. 😲“

I am pretty sure I didn’t hang around long enough to see the encore, which explains why that mental picture (more smutty than muddy) mercifully does not form part of my own memory.

Saturday 20 June 1981 – Simon & Susan for lunch – went to Newcastle shopping – lazy evening – late night.

Richard Marks Visits Me & Simon Jacobs At Keele, Not Least For Stoke v Manchester United, 19 & 22 October 1980

Richard Marks With Terri Vine (now Phillips) c Spring 1979

In truth, the only bit of this visit I remember is Richard talking me into joining him at The Victoria Ground to see Stoke City play Manchester United on the Wednesday. But the diary is clear that Richard came to visit initially on the Sunday.

My guess is that Richard did not hang around on campus with us for several days. My guess is that he visited us on the Sunday, went on to Manchester to visit some of his many BBYO friends and/or attend to some other business for a couple of days, then returned to North Staffordshire for the football match he yearned to see.

Simon’s party trick

I’m fairly sure Simon could not be persuaded to come with us to the football match, so it was just me and Richard.

Richard’s purpose was to see the debut of Garry Birtles for Manchester United, as Birtles had just been signed from Nottingham Forrest for a record transfer fee. Get this number; £1.25 million. I’ll repeat that number in words, just in case the sheer scale of it blows readers away. One-and-a-quarter-million pounds.

People who know me well know that I am not exactly a football person. Cricket, yes. Tennis, yes. Rugby, no. Soccer, no, not really. But I was up to have a butchers at my now local soccer venue on an historic night.

Here’s the 11v11 card for the match – sadly lacking the Stoke team but delightfully full of names that even I recognise on the Manchester United side of the card.

Lou Macari, one of those Manchester United players (indeed one of the scorers), went on to manage Stoke and formed an extraordinary relationship with Neil Baldwin, a Keele legend, celebrated in the film Marvellous.

For the record, Manchester United won the match 2-1. Here’s the Guardian review of the match, including both teams’ names:

Stoke v Man UStoke v Man U Thu, Oct 23, 1980 – 20 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

But my main memory of the evening was Richard suggesting that I might get us both killed.

The thing is, not being a football person, I didn’t really understand some of the subtleties of going to watch such a match.

Richard had got us seats in a part of the ground where Stoke home fans watch.

It didn’t occur to Richard that I wouldn’t understand that neutrals and/or supporters of the other team need to travel incognito in such circumstances.

I don’t actually support any team but I was with Richard and he was there to see Birtles and Manchester United so I started cheering for my friend’s team.

It was at that juncture that Richard warned me that I might get us both killed and I must admit that I noticed a few dagger-like looks coming our way. Richard found a way to mollify those around us (I think by signalling with eye rolls and gestures that I was simply a clown, an imbecile or both), enabling us both to survive the potential ordeal.

Diary says that I enjoyed, so I must have enjoyed..

Thanks for the educational and entertaining evening out, Richard.

BBYO National Convention & Aftermath, 30 December 1979 to 3 January 1980

I have very few specific memories of the 1979/1980 BBYO National convention.

One reason for my dearth of memories from that particular convention is a complete absence of photographs. I have hundreds of photographs from the previous year’s convention – click here or below for the Ogblog article and links…

BBYO National Convention 29 December 1978 to 1 January 1979

…but I have not a single photograph from the 1979/1980 convention. If anyone reading this piece has photos…even one photo…from that convention, it would be great to see it and/or add it to this Ogblog piece.

Of course, I do have my diaries, but – as was my habit with large scale BBYO events such as conventions – I considered them, at the time, to be such memorable events that I needn’t write down any details about them.

Below is the sum total of my scribbling for the three days 30 December 1979 to 1 January 1980:

…got up very early in morn, set off for convention. Great time at convention, saw in new year… …GREAT DAY. GOT ELECTED AS NATIONAL RESOURCE.

Yet, despite the lack of memories and writing, the 1979/1980 Convention was a momentous event for me. I was elected onto the National Executive for 1980 (I had been co-opted onto the National Exec to edit the magazine for the second half of 1979, but that’s not the same thing as getting elected).

So let me try to delve the memory bank. The National Executive for 1980 had been scaled right back – the feeling being that most day-to-day responsibility should be devolved to the regions and thus a smaller National Executive could be a more strategic or policy-oriented body.

1980, I think, proved this scaled-down executive idea to be flawed for BBYO in Great Britain and Ireland, but the upshot for the 1979/1980 convention was that there were only three posts up for election that year, rather than the usual 6 to 8 posts.

Jay Marks was elected National President.

Jay Marks, Spring 1979. If you could look that cool, you could be National President.

Ivor Heller, my fellow Streathamista, was elected National Vice-President:

Ivor Heller, Spring 1979, enjoying a goodness-knows-what moment with Helen Lewis from Oxford
Incontrovertible evidence that the mystery woman above is Helen Lewis, plus a rare picture of Rebecca Lowi, the BBYO full-timer, chatting with Ivor, Spring 1979

The third and final election that year was for National Resources Officer, which was a combination of several former portfolios such as welfare, programmes, Soviet Jewry and perhaps a couple of others. I remember so little about how the elections worked. I think a candidate had to be proposed and seconded by an elector. Each group that was fully constituted (i.e. had a charter) had two electors. I think candidates simply made a short speech of self-advocacy and the electors then voted.

I don’t recall preparing myself for an election battle in any meaningful way. I think the influencers from the outgoing committee had decided that I had done enough in four or five months of magazine editing to justify supporting me for this expanded and complex portfolio. Anyway, I somehow succeeded in convincing enough electors that a bit of magazine writing and editing qualified me for the task…

…which would be a bit like assuming that a political sketch writer and former editor of a political magazine should be elected to a great political office of state…oh cripes!

We joined those already on the National Executive who would remain; Paul Dewinter (Southern Region President), Raymond Ingleby (Northern Region President) and Jeffrey Spector, who was to stay on as immediate past National President after saying goodbye to formal office.

Of course, conventions are also about goodbyes as well as hellos. This convention marked the end of Jeffrey Spector’s Presidency and indeed the end of two very successful years on the National Executive in his case.

Jeff Spector, Spring 1979

Writing forty years after this convention (in January 2020) and nearly five years after Jeffrey’s premature death, his memory lives on powerfully in my mind and I’m sure in the minds of most who knew him.

Jeffrey will have been honoured with life membership of BBYO at this convention, as would several other stalwarts. I don’t remember all the names, but I’m pretty sure Richard Marks, Tania Silverman and Neil Hyman were amongst them.

Of course there will have been interesting events for us all to enjoy. There will have been singing, dancing, skit competitions and a heck of a lot of spirited stuff. We had the spirit all right.

But in truth, I do not remember any specific stuff of that kind from this convention. I’d love to hear from people who have some very specific memories from this one.

But I do have one very clear memory from the aftermath of convention. It is described in my diary a bit but I do also remember it clearly.

Wednesday 2 January – Really late night. GREAT DAY. Returned, went straight back out to Hillel top stay with…

Thursday 3 January – …Dubliners. Saw off in the morning. Got a lot of admin done.

Yes, something went awry with the travel plans for the Dublin contingent on 2 January – presumably they missed their train or were informed that they would not get to Holyhead in time for the last ferry or something.

Anyone who ever went to one of these conventions will know how tired I must have been when I got home, but I had barely put down my bags when I got the call to please come to Hillel House and stay the night. The authorities there were refusing to give the Dublin BBYO contingent (I think it was 10 to 15 people) sanctuary unless someone suitably senior stayed with them to ensure that there would be no trouble.

So I grabbed my sleeping bag and headed off to Euston for the night, where I joined some very grateful Dubliners in a large room that I think was normally used for functions…

…it will have been good training for Janie’s and my Crisis Christmas forty years later:

A Bit Of A Crisis Christmas, 25 To 26 December 2019

I’m amused also to read my comment about “getting a lot of admin done” while at Hillel on 3 January. However tired I must have been after seeing off the Dubliners, I was clearly awake and motivated enough to get started on my new portfolio that very day. The 57-year-old me is awarding the 17-year-old me top marks for effort there.

The Dubliners, being a warm and generous lot, sent me a lovely thank you and gift voucher when they returned to Dublin. I think David Lapedus was the ringleader of that kind gesture.

With the voucher, I treated myself to a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, which has been my writing companion for the 40 years since…

“A thesaurus is great. There’s no other word for it” – Ross Smith

…OK, in the last few years, on-line synonym finders tend to do the job, but for several decades the well-thumbed (but also lovingly preserved) book, depicted above, was my constant companion on my all-too-regular writing occasions. Certainly for all the books (so far) – click here to see all of those in a row.

The sight of my Roget’s Thesaurus would often make me think of that convention and in particular that additional night with the Dubliners at Hillel House.

A BBYO convention is great. There’s no other word for it.

Postscript: Jay Marks responded to my shout out for more memories and/or materials in tremendous style – thanks in the most part to his mum. I have annexed – link here and below – a wonderful magazine piece from the Jewish Chronicle at the time, preserved by Jay’s mum and sent through via Facebook by Jay;

BBYO National Convention & Aftermath, 30 December 1979 to 3 January 1980: Annex

Boring Talk On Tractors Again, BBYO, 23 August 1977

While I was researching a piece about visiting Billingsgate with Andrew and Fiona Levinson in August 1977 – click here for below for the Billingsgate piece…

A Visit To Billingsgate Fish Market With Andrew & Fiona Levinson Plus Pen Friend Valerie, 20 August 1977

…I turned the page to uncover the following diary entries:

1977 was a relatively uneventful late summer for me; my first without a family vacation since I was a toddler. Graham Majin and I made our second animated film that summer, but it was in the can by late August. Graham and I went to the Ashes test match that Saturday (27th August) – my first taste of live international cricket – written up here.

But then my eye landed on my entry for Tuesday 23 August:

BBYO in evening. Boring talk on tractors again.

This got me thinking.

I recall some boring talks at our club (Streatham BBYO), but I don’t recall any on the subject of tractors. Further, I cannot imagine that the organising committee would have made the mistake of arranging, more than once, the same boring talk about tractors.

Who was on the committee at that time? I’m struggling to remember and might need a little help from my friends.

Dave Young was our President at that time, leading us to the granting of our charter to be a fully-blown club in the BBYO sphere. Dave was famous throughout the Nation for announcing himself at regional and national gatherings thus:

Dave Young…(raises arm to nose; visibly wipes nose with sleeve while audibly sniffing)…Stea’ham.

Other committee members back then? I can only recall a handful:

  • Karen Harris (no relation),
  • Sue Leyons (not 100% sure of the spelling),
  • the late lamented Lisa Benjamin – probably the person who did the most to persuade me to start going to club in the first place,
  • I’m sure there were others…help!

I think I joined the committee at the end of that year or possibly early the following – I had only been going to club a few months by then, I think. A more comprehensive go through my diaries will no doubt reveal more.

Anyway, my point is, that was not a bunch of people who, to my mind, would have been disposed to arrange talks about tractors. Nor would they have been daft enough to repeat the dose after, perhaps by chance, making the mistake of booking a speaker who turned out to be, obiter dicta, tractor-obsessed.

No.

This leaves two possibilities:

  1. that the phrase “boring talk about tractors” was, at that time generally or in our circles specifically, a euphemism for a tedious speech on any subject. I do recall years later, when involved in Regional and National programming, that Richard Marks used to refer to a “talk about Bejam” ( a frozen food retailer located near Richard’s home club of Pinner) as his archetype for poor club programming. But I always assumed that Richard’s archetype was based on a genuine experience;
  2. the phrase written in the diary does not read “tractors” but is in fact an attempt to write some other word. It has been said that my handwriting is less than perfect and some (lesser beings) find it hard to read. Perhaps someone out there can translate my hieroglyphics or can spot the error and work out the intended word.

This is not the most interesting or pressing puzzle in my life at the moment – nor in yours (if there is anyone out there still reading at this juncture).

But I would like to capture some more memories of that early Streatham club committee and would be fascinated to hear any other recollections (from within the Streatham gang or from those from other BBYO clubs who who came across us) of that early era of our club.

On the road to Rayagada, in Odisha (formerly Orissa) State, India. I could tell you a story or two about our travels there…click the photo of you are curious