Tag: University of Keele

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.

FoodCycle, GoodSAM, The Samaritans, 1981 Keele/BBYO Redux & Being Boilered, This Is Lockdown 3.0, 20 February 2021

With thanks to Rachelle Gryn Brettler for snapping us in Rossmore Road, preparing to do our FoodCycle run on a wet winter’s day

We don’t get out much in Lockdown 3.0, other than to buy food and do our charity work.

That is giving me a chance to crack on with my retro-blogging; I’m working through 1995 & 1996 to cover the Ged & Daisy (Ian & Janie) “25 years ago” story. I’m needing to give more thought, though, to the formerly less well-documented, “40 years on” story of my early days at Keele University.

Strangely, 1981 and 2021 seem to have collided, forty years on.

I wrote last summer about my joy at being asked to make our FoodCycle collections from St Paul’s in Rossmore Road…

FoodCycle’s Spiritual Home In Rossmore Road & Other Tales, 24 June 2020

…mentioning the superb tapes Graham Greenglass used to make for me, including quirky numbers such as Rossmore Road by Barry Andrews. I still hum it or sing it more often than not when Daisy and I do FoodCycle from there:

Dreamy use of sax and double bass on that track.

Last week, I wrote up the very weekend during which several visitors descended on Keele and Graham presented me with a few cassettes, including that very track. The piece below is a thumping good read, even if you weren’t there, including an excellent undergraduate recipe for spaghetti bollock-knees:

The Best Pot I Had In Five Years At Keele, i.e. The First Weekend I Tried Cooking In The F Block Lindsay Kitchen, 11 to 15 February 1981

On Wednesday, before Daisy and I did our FoodCycle run, I did an NHS Responder gig to collect a prescription. Strangely the prescription was to be collected at the Tesco Hoover Factory in Greenford. Strange, because also on that little collection of quirky recordings given to me in February 1981 was the song Hoover Factory by Elvis Costello:

So, by some strange quirk of fate, forty years after being given recordings of those two rather obscure (but wonderful) recordings about lesser-known places in West London, I found myself doing charity gigs from those two very places.

I have already written up the ear worm I got from Hoover Factory a few months after first hearing the song:

Uncle Manny’s Funeral & The Hoover Factory, 15 May 1981

But the early 1980s connection this week does not stop there.

While I have been cracking on with the NHS Responder/GoodSAM app as well as FoodCycle, Daisy has been training to become a Samaritan and this week moved on from being a course trainee to becoming a mentee (i.e. doing real sessions with real calls under the supervision of a mentor).

Towards the end of her course, Daisy had been waiting with a little trepidation to find out who her mentor might be. Mentors work closely with their mentees for a few weeks. She knew that it might be one of her course trainers or possibly someone she hadn’t encountered before.

A couple of weeks ago Janie announced that her mentoring instructions had come through and her mentor was a new name to her: Alison Shindler.

GED: Oh, yes, I know Alison Shindler.

DAISY: What do you mean?

GED: She was a leading light in BBYO towards the end of my time there.

DAISY: Might not be the same person…

GED: …Ealing BBYO – bet it is!

Of course it is.

What a pleasant surprise.

Less of a surprise though, after their first session together, is that Alison & Daisy seem to be getting along really well. I’m confident that the mentoring partnership should be a very good one.

Meanwhile Alison has furnished me with a photo from so far back in the day, the biggest surprise is that we were in colour back then:

With thanks to Alison Shindler for this photo

That’s a c17-year-old me turning around, next to me Simon Jacobs who was central to my “going to Keele” story and part of the “cooking weekend”. In the red scarf I thought was Jilly Black (who has remained friends with me, Daisy and Alison throughout those decades – in fact it is a little surprising we haven’t overlapped before now )…but it turns out to be Emma Cohen disguised as Jilly. Opposite Simon is Lauren Sterling plus, slightly upstaged by Simon’s head, Caroline Curtis (then Freeman) who visited me and Simon at Keele the February 1981 weekend following the “cooking” one.

A Short Visit From Caroline To See Me And Simon At Keele, 20 to 22 February 1981

It’s all too weird, in a good way.

But now, after all that excitement, Daisy and I are in temporary exile at the flat. The replacement of the Noddyland boiler has over-run by a day, making Daisy right and me wrong, as usual.

Stock boiler image: neither the actual old nor the actual new boiler

I’ve been grasping for a quirky early 1980s musical connection for a boiler replacement. So my earworm for the tail end of this tale is by that early 1980s mainstay, The Human League – Being Boiled:

God’s Gift, Pure Genius, Or Both? Annex To Alleyn’s School Class Of 1980 Virtual Buttery 3, 20 January 2021

When I reviewed last week’s virtual gathering, I forgot to mention Paul Driscoll’s anecdote about the optional “prefect’s blazer” available to those of us who attained such giddy heights at Alleyn’s School. The blazer was emblazoned (pun intended) with the school crest and motto.

That motto was God’s Gift. Edward Alleyn no doubt meant that motto to symbolise education. But the phrase has a sarcastic meaning in modern parlance; e.g. “he think’s he’s God’s gift.” And as Rohan Candappa so ably puts it, “We are Alleyn’s. If you cut us we bleed sarcasm.”

Unsurprisingly, very few of us took up the offer of this optional, distinguishing garment. Beyond the sarcasm, such an emblem had every chance to land us in a heap near North Dulwich railway station, where the Billy Biros (pupils from William Penn School) needed little excuse to isolate an outlier from the Alleyn’s herd, taking severe retribution for invented sleights and offenses.

The main senior school uniform was a two-piece or three-piece suit. I have only one picture of myself wearing mine:

Me And Wendy Robbins, Autumn 1979, Westminster Bridge

I was reminded of all of this by a posting on Facebook in the Keele University alums area.

In the late 1980s, just a few years after a left Keele, when Guinness had a particular advertising slogan on the go, some fine folk in the University of Keele Students’ Union produced the following tee-shirt.

It dawned on me that I am a very rare example of someone eligible to wear not only the Alleyn’s God’s Gift blazer but also the Keele Pure Genius tee-shirt underneath the blazer.

In the dying moments of the Trump US presidency, this suitably modest mental image should be shared with the world and saved for posterity.

It’s just a shame I was unable to model the two garments together back then. I would have looked magnificent; indeed it would have been the best look ever, anywhere, for anyone.

With all due modesty…

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 Mike’s 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

A Letter From Keele, Professor Les Fishman, 2 September 1985

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.

Les Fishman Letter 2 September 1985

In 2008 I went to the memorial mini-conference Professor Peter Lawrence and others held in Les’s honour. I ended up meeting and hiring Les’s grand-daughter, Leo, who thus worked at Z/Yen for a few happy years.

 

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

We Interrupt The Process Of Me Saying Goodbye To Keele With A Two Day Interlude In The Lake District With Petra, 7 & 8 July 1985

Whose idea was this? Almost certainly Petra’s, not least because she had a car, making such an idea possible. She probably also sensed that mooching around Keele for too many days might not be as good an idea.

My diary recorded the trip and for once I took a few photos. Not too many, mind.

That reads:

Sunday, 7 July 1985 – Brekker [breakfast] – left for lakes – Kendal (jazz lunch). -> Windermere -> Bowness. Drove to Keswick – stayed in pub [The Pack Horse Inn] and went on to meal.

Abbot Hall Park, Kendal. Entrance above, Petra below.

Lake Windermere as seen from Bowness, above. Petra at Bowness below.

Monday, 8 July 1985 – breakfast -> town, Bowder Stone -> Honister Pass -> Cockermouth for German lunch -> back [to Keele] another way – got to hospital [to visit Petra’s best friend Ruth] late – returned home, cooked meal

Petra (above) and Me (below) at the Pack Horse Inn, Keswick

The Bowder Stone in the 1890s Public Domain image (colourised).

Honister Pass, Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0

I remember that short-but-sweet break fondly. It came as a surprise when I realised from the diary that we were only away for the one night. Kids, eh?

My Last Keele Sixties Soul Disco, My Last Visit To Barnes L54 & Other “End Of Keele” Memories, Late June & Early July 1985

Hayward Burt sitting in MY Barnes L54 chair

Having survived a visit to London with Petra in her car…

We Interrupt Keele Festival Week To Dice With Death On A Theatre Trip To London, 28 June 1985

…my diary for the next few days has an end of era tone to it.

Saturday, 29 June 1985 – returned through night – slept in – went to town late – cooked John [White] and Petra [Wilson] a meal – John and I did last Sixties [Soul] disco. Went down well.

Sunday 30th of June 1985 – Rose quite early – Ruth’s folks – Petra’s car – breakfast – visited Ruth – Pitty [Graham Pitt] came over for dinner.

John and I have very happy memories of doing those sixties soul discos. It was kind of Pady Jalali (Social Secretary) to award us the end of Festival Week slot as a last hurrah.

If you are wondering what one of our Sixties Soul Discos might have sounded like, please feel free to click the image above – or here – for a YouTube Music playlist curated by me and John in the style of those discos.

Some people described our discos as Northern Soul style, but in truth they were more mainstream than that, not least because Keele’s record collection at that time had few “rare grooves”. Our soul discos always went down well, as confirmed by my assessment in my diary.

Ruth’s Parents, Petra’s Car & Hospital Visits

I have already told the tale of Ruth, Petra’s close friend, having been hit by a car in the street, in a piece named “Something’s Wrong…”

“Something’s Wrong” In The Keele Hall Salvin Room & I Am Keele’s “Bamber Gascoigne”, 19 to 24 June 1985

I should hasten to add that Petra was not the errant driver in the Ruth incident, as evidenced by Petra being elsewhere (with me) at the time of the accident. More seriously, Petra proved to be a very constant friend to Ruth during her recovery, in hospital, as my late June/early July diary attests. We (or at least Petra) visited Ruth almost every day, except when we were out of town.

I also remember that Eddie Slade, the Senior Tutor, visited Ruth in hospital to see how she was and to inform her in person that she had won an academic prize that year. A lovely touch, I thought then and still think now.

Eddie Slade – what a good chap.

In truth I remember little about the visit from Ruth’s parents. The fact that I blurt the phrase “Petra’s car” between the phrase “Ruth’s folks” and “breakfast” suggests that something once again happened to (or in) Petra’s car, as part of that expedition. Lost in the mists of time from my memory, that one. It can’t have been as dramatic as our near death experience on the Marylebone Road.

Monday 1 July 1985 – lazyish day – signed on, shops, went to hospital., Cooked Petra meal.

Tuesday 2 July 1985 – easyish day – office briefly – Petra packed – I went to Kate’s [now Susan Fricker] for a while – hospital – cooked Petra a meal etc.

Wednesday, 3 July 1985 – sorted things out – went to hospital – then walk round lakes etc.

Thursday 4 July 1985 – easyish day – rose late – went to Trentham Gardens in afternoon – hospital – dinner etc.

Friday, 5 July 1985 – Easy day – office briefly etc – went to hospital – had dinner – went union and then onto L54 to see John, Hayward etc.

Saturday 6 July 1985 – Rose late – shopped – went to hospital – cooked nice meal etc.

I think Trentham was a bit of a crumbling old ruin back then, but I suppose it was one of the few vaguely local attractions near Keele.

I don’t remember John staying in Barnes L54 at that time, but he must have done. My guess is that John had already given up his flat (room) in town and wanted to stick around Keele a while longer. I’ll also guess that it was Alan Gorman who had departed early and therefore had left space for John to squat in L54 a while.

I had lived in Barnes L54 for two very happy years – Autumn 1982 to Summer 1984.

Keele Action Group Springs Forth Campus-Wide, Constitutional Matters Mingle With A Crucial Culinary Debate In My Barnes L54 Flat, 8 to 11 October 1982

It was strange visiting that place for the last time – especially with Hayward Burt sitting in MY chair and all – have I mentioned that bit before?

Hayward: yes you have, Ian. Just hand over the keys…

Postscript – Actually my very last visit to L54 was the following week, where I saw Kate, Pady, Hayward and [Chris Spencer] Farm. That evening will have been my last visit:

More Festival Week Stuff Including My Last Keele Students’ Union Ball, 25 to 27 June 1985

1985 Summer Ball image with grateful thanks to Andrew Macmillan

In many ways the things unsaid in my personal diary entries for that Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday are more interesting than the things said.

Allow me to transliterate those three days for you:

Tuesday 25 June 1985 – busy day – shopped – Ringroad rehearsal – popped over to Kate’s – had dinner – went to Pop Quiz – got drunk – Petra came over.

Wednesday 26th June 1985 – meetings etc – quite busy – dinner – Ball (including weak Ringroad!) – left about 2:30 am.

Thursday 27 June 1985 – meetings etc went to WPAR [if someone remembers what that was, please let me know] – hospital – cooked dinner – Ring wrote summer review – went down very well.

My appointments diary for the Tuesday shows that I had fully intended to play the festival week cricket match for the fourth year running, but became quite inundated with requests for meetings and gave up on the idea of one last go at the cricket.

Those readers who missed out on my Keele cricket (so-called) career can catch up with it through this King Cricket piece authored by Herbert Ackgrass with me appearing pseudonymously as Ged Ladd. It takes some gall to have one of your noms de plume write about another of your noms de plume, so clearly I have some gall:

Players (of the left) v Gentlemen (of the right) – match report + wagon wheel

But I digress.

The fact that we had a last-minute rescheduled Ringroad rehearsal suggest to me that the Ringroad show we performed at the Ball, which I described as weak, was a last minute idea, perhaps to fill a gap in the Ball schedule. We had a long-planned Summer Revue the next day and I think we needed to dredge the bottom of the Ringroad cornflake box of scripts to come up with a second show in as many days that wasn’t going to overlap.

I don’t remember much about the pop quiz on the Tuesday, but as I state that I “got drunk” rather than “won”, or “did well”, I think you can draw your own conclusions.

Frankly, I remembered little about the Summer Ball too. It is only fair to say that John White’s memory did no better. Interesting also that I didn’t note the names of the bands we saw – not even the headliners (Darts).

So I am truly grateful to Andrew Macmillan for supplying the headline image which helped bring back the memories.

One reason that I would not have thought Darts that exciting a pick is that I had seen them at an SU ball early in my Keele career. No doubt Pady chose them precisely because only a handful of us would have seen them at the Valentines Ball in 1981 – written up in this piece:

The Best Pot I Had In Five Years At Keele, i.e. The First Weekend I Tried Cooking In The F Block Lindsay Kitchen, 11 to 15 February 1981

You can hear/see some Darts in the above 1981 write up, but if that’s not enough for you, here’s another embedded video of that retro group. They were seriously retro, even when at their peak in the 1970s:

More interesting perhaps were the support acts. I remember being less impressed by The Higsons than I was by The Untouchables, but enjoying the sound of both.

The Untouchables were very much “John’s and my sort of thing”, with their Mod/Ska revival sound. I wonder whether Pady [Jalali] chose them for our last hurrah deliberately to please us. Forty years on, John [White] and I can ask Pady that question when we all meet up in late July.

I particularly remember liking The Untouchables version of a Northern Soul classic, I Spy For The FBI:

I love the parting remark in my diary, “left about 2:30 a.m.”.

And I had SO many meetings the next day, and THE Ringroad Summer Revue to perform. Did I make it?

Of course I did.

Perhaps WPAR is something to do with “womens group”, but I’m still none the wiser

Not only did I do all of that on the Thursday, but my diary reports that Petra and I visited recently run-over Ruth in hospital in amongst all of that too. I’m getting hot and bothered just thinking about it.

Some years ago I wrote up that Summer Ringroad Revue, my final Ringroad performance, including an audio recording of that show – here’s that write up:

Ringroad Finalists Revue, Keele University Students’ Union (KUSU), 27 June 1985

“Something’s Wrong” In The Keele Hall Salvin Room & I Am Keele’s “Bamber Gascoigne”, 19 to 24 June 1985

Bamber Gascoigne, image use permitted by the National Portrait Gallery

My diary entries for 19 June 1985 barely tell the story. I’d had a busy day of meetings, but the day was supposed to end in an enjoyable fashion, as Petra and I had been invited to an Overseas Students Reception in the Keele Hall Salvin Room, which we planned to follow up with a party/disco in less salubrious Lindsay – probably the Hexagon.

Well posh, the Salvin Room, this image borrowed from the Keele archive

Well posh, Keele Hall, as seen from the lakes

I remember a very relaxed atmosphere at the party – I knew many of the overseas students well from my Education & Welfare activities.

About an hour into the party – I’ll never forget this – Petra suddenly seemed very anxious and said:

I’ve got to go. Something’s wrong. I need to go back to my room.

I went with her, really not understanding her vexation. I don’t suppose she understood it at that moment. We soon got back to Petra’s Horwood block, H if I recall correctly, where one or two people were looking for her. Word had reached the block that Ruth had been run over by a car in town. Ruth was in A&E at North Staffs Royal Infirmary and had been asking for Petra.

I don’t much believe in extra sensory perception – I certainly don’t understand it -and am sceptical about the way that some people profess to have it – but for sure Petra profoundly sensed something that evening in Keele Hall.

Anyway, we jumped into Petra’s car and headed for the hospital.

Jonathan Hutchins / North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary – from Wikimedia Commons CC 2.0

The staff at the hospital were very nice to us. They explained to us that Ruth had suffered some significant fractures and that there was a fair bit of superficial injury to her face which looked worse than it was. Would we like to go in to the observation ward now?

Petra said yes. Squeamish back then as indeed I am now, I said that I would hold back for the time being.

Two or three minutes later, one of the nurses came out to inform me that Petra had fainted at the sight of Ruth and was recovering on a spare bed in the observation ward. Would I like to go in and see the pair of them?

Do you have another spare bed in there?

I asked, instinctively. Perhaps it was the wrong moment for comedy, but there was also veracity in my question.

Actually I did go in to the ward and understood why the events of the preceding hour or so, not least “the big reveal” of entering that small ward, had been so upsetting for Petra. She was a very close friend to Ruth and they are still very much in touch with one another, as I understand it, 40 years on.

My diary entries for the following few weeks have daily visits to see Ruth, apart from a few days when Petra and I were apart (when Petra would have visited without me) or when Petra and I were away from North Staffs together.

Wednesday, 19 June 1985 office – union committee meetings – overseas student reception – heard Ruth had been run over – went to hospital – got back late.

Thursday, 20 June 1985 – Rose early Leisuregames lunch – then went around with Petra to hospital etc – dinner after.

Friday 21 June 1985 – busy sorting out things for Ruth with Petra etc. Had Chinese meal at Hanley Garden.

Saturday, 22 June 1985 – got up quite early. Went home to visit mum and dad.

Sunday, 23 June 1985 – moved belongings around – had lunch. Left [for Keele] quite early – had dinner – Petra came over.

Monday 24 June 1985 – Rose quite late – did university challenge heat (compere) – had dinner with Petra and Ruth’s mum.

Gosh, yes, I remember being “Keele’s very own Bamber Gascoigne, just for one day”, doing the University Challenge teams selection heats in the ballroom that Monday. It was one of the first activities in Festival Week that year and I took the job of compering it very seriously.

The 1982 team – my contemporaries I suppose – picture borrowed from the Keele Archive

I especially remember all the effort I put in on the preceding days, including the couple of days I spent visiting my parents, going through the huge wad of questions that the Granada TV people had sent through to help with those heats. I tried to select collections of questions that I thought would be fairest and best help separate the Keele quizzing wheat from the Keele quizzing chaff.

I must admit I find it hard to think about University Challenge “in our day” without thinking of The Young Ones episode in which the anarchic quartet from Scumbag College take on a bunch of infeasibly posh students from Footlights College Oxbridge. Here’s a link to that episode on BBC iPlayer – you know you want to peek at it.

In the next episode of this forty years on series, I’ll be writing up, amongst other things, the Students’ Union Summer Ball, which took place a couple of days after the University Challenge heats. I need your help, dear readers…

…SO…

…fingers on buzzers and no conferring, here is your starter for 10:

Which act headlined at the Keele Students’ Union Ball on 26 June 1985?

And, your bonus questions for five points each:

Name the support acts…

…(Ringroad doesn’t count as a support act).

Answers in the comments or by private message please.

Out Of Office But Not Quite Yet Out Of Time At Keele, Mid June 1985

With thanks to Mark Ellicott, who captured the historic moment at which I symbolically handed the keys to the Education & Welfare Office to Hayward Burt.

10 June 1985 was the day of the last UGM of the academic year and the official end of my sabbatical year of office as Education & Welfare officer. Not that the official ending seemed to reduce the number of meetings and things I attended for the next few weeks. We sabbaticals in particular undertook quite a substantial “handover”, which we hadn’t received with such gusto from our predecessors but which we felt we should do for our successors.

I have previously written up the “Hackgrass Reveal” story, which dominated the early part of that historic day:

Hackgrass Reveal in Pub Circ, Keele, 10 June 1985

I have also previously written up some sort of spoof Union Committee meeting we held after a wet lunch that day:

After The Hackgrass Reveal…Later That Same Day…A Strange Sort of Committee Meeting, 10 June 1985

My appointments diary tells a slightly maudlin tale, with the entry “UGM, The End” on that day:

My personal diary sort-of covered the day…

Monday 10 June 1985 – last day officially in office – did little – “union committee meeting” for awhile – then somewhat chaotic last UG M – drink after etc. Very late night.

…although it failed to mention that I was awarded life membership of the Keele Students’ Union at that UGM. I was given a card the following day to prove it. Very proud of that card I am, such that I carried it around with me at all times for years. It now looks like this:

Like my face, my life membership card has seen better days. 40 years is a long time.

I always knew I had something in common with Nelson Mandela, but in truth had forgotten, until I found this article in the Sentinel while looking for something else, that Nelson & I both had life membership of UKSU conferred upon us that night:

Nelson gets life on 10 June 1985Nelson gets life on 10 June 1985 15 Jun 1985, Sat Evening Sentinel (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England) Newspapers.com

Here’s the text from my personal diary for the next week or so:

Tuesday, 11 June 1985 – Rose late – residential services in afternoon etc – had dinner with Petra.

Wednesday, 12 June 1985 – busy day – meetings etc – celebrated after Senate – had dinner with Petra.

Thursday, 13 June 1985 – meetings – in office most of the day – had an easy evening [Strangely, the appointments diary says that I did the Bust Fund Disco that night. I expect the appointments diary is right and the memory at the time I wrote up that week was wrong.

A 1984/1985 Keele Students’ Union Bust Fund Disco Playlist

Friday, 14 June 1985 – meetings, office etc. Cooked dinner for Petra, Ruth and [Graham] Pitt.

Saturday, 15 June 1985 – lazyish day – shopped etc – popped over to Pitt’s – went to Jackie Wong’s for dinner.

Sunday, 16 June 1985 – Rose late/lazy day –brekker etc. Cooked Petra dinner later.

Monday, 17 June 1985 – went to Derbyshire for day with June – peak/picnic etc. dinner. Got back late – Petra came round after.

I have very happy memories of the day June Aitken (the Keele Student’s Union administrator extraordinaire) took us outgoing sabbaticals (me, Kate, John & Pady) to the Peak District, for a day of picnicking and walking.

It was a truly special and memorable day – I am so irritated that I didn’t take a camera and a roll of film that day. I fell in love with the Peak District that day and visited it many times since – especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s – the following photo from 1990:

Tuesday, 18 June 1985 – meetings etc – Ringroad rehearsal – Petra cooked dinner later.

The next day…something significant happened. I’ll write up that story and its aftermath next time.

Now now, no peaking!