The suspicions of Beaver Hateman: Kate Summerscale on the Uncle Books

I read the first ‘Uncle’ book in the British Council library in Santiago, Chile, when I was about eight and my father was working as a diplomat in the city. I borrowed the next five volumes of the series in turn. 

I was delighted by Uncle – a millionaire elephant who wears a purple dressing gown, engages in savage skirmishes and is wildly generous to his followers – and he became more famous in our family than Babar. When we returned to England, I was amazed that no one seemed to have heard of him.

So wrote Kate Summerscale in The Complete Uncle, a collected edition of all six of the Revd J.P. Martin's books that was published in 2013.

It now fetches silly prices, just as the individual titles did before it was published. Which makes you wonder why the books have not remained in print.

Years before The Complete Uncle appeared, Imogen Russell Williams asked the same question in the Guardian, under the headline The Elephant Not in the Room:

Bizarrely, Jonathan Cape, the original publishers, don't want to reissue Uncle because the protagonist is rich, capitalist and deeply complacent, and therefore the books are "classist". But no one can fail to detect the gleeful humour and wry justice in the lampoons propagated by the Badfort tribe, even as they applaud the righteous wrath with which Uncle "kicks up" offenders 50 feet into the air. ...

Insurgent little pamphlets are dropped by Hitmouse from rickety biplanes: "TO ALL FREE CITIZENS: This is to announce that we have at last completed our plans against Uncle, the arch-bully, tyrant, and boaster!" Described by the Independent as "Animal Farm for pre-teens", Martin's sly ridicule of the imperious and pompous master of Homeward should be required reading for all baby Lefties.

With his hating book, where he writes the names of his enemies, and the skewers he uses as weapons, Hitmouse anticipated the modern journalist. But I will admit his Badfort News was my model when I wrote Focus leaflets.

Anyway, if you ever see one of the Uncle books at a reasonable price, snap it up. You will enjoy it.

I shall end by:

• admitting that Uncle was a subconscious influence on my creation of Lord Bonkers, though it took me years to realise it;
• sending you off to read my post on the discovery that the Revd J.P. Martin and Stanley Unwin, two giants of the British nonsense tradition, were both attached to Daventry transmitting station during the war.

Stanley Unwin in The Box of Delights

I probably heard the repeat of it near Christmas in 1968, but it was this BBC Radio adaptation of The Box of Delights from 1966 that introduced me to the book's magic.

And I discovered recently that Stanley Unwin was in it.

Click play on the video above and you will hear a short scene between Abner Brown, Sylvia Daisy Pouncer, Rat and Rat's nephew Alf. The nephew is played by Stanley Unwin.

Unwin understood that his act worked best in small doses, which is why he turns up making cameo appearances in all sorts of unexpected places.

Deep joy in Long Buckby at blue plaque for Stanley Unwin

A good news story at last. West Northamptonshire Council has installed a blue plaque outside Stanley Unwin's old bungalow on Long Buckby's High Street, reports BBC News.

Unwin lived there for decades, having worked at at the Borough Hill transmitting station in Daventry during the war along with another hero of the English nonsense tradition. After the war he joined the BBC as a sound recordist, until illness among the cast of a show led him to do his doing his party piece in front of the microphone.

His act involved speaking nonsense in a way that made it sound perfect sense if you weren't listening too closely – or overtroiling your eardroves. You can see him in action in the video above. I did a couple of turns in his style in the last iterations of the Liberal Revue at Lib Dem annual conferences.

Unwin's heyday was the Fifties and Sixties when he appeared on radio, television and in films. After that he was regularly rediscovered by new generations of radio producers and creative directors, and I remember seeing him on Inside Victor Lewis-Smith when he was past eighty.

I've already made one pilgrimage to Long Buckby to photograph the headstone for Unwin and his wife in the village churchyard. I'll have to go back soon to see his blue plaque.

The 1966 BBC radio adaptation of The Box of Delights

Look what I've found on YouTube. This radio adaptation of The Box of Delights was first broadcast at Christmas 1966 and repeated in the same season in 1968 and 1969.

It may have been through the 1966 broadcast, but is more likely to have been through the 1968 one, that the story won my heart. Who can resist a healthy blend of the Christian and the pagan? I know I was enthralled by it as a little boy.

Listening to the broadcast today, it's slow to get going. But when the story picks up, the production makes good use of sound and the proper music is used.

Cole Hawlings is Cyril Shaps and the young Kay Harker is Patricia Hayes. Caroline Louisa is played by Carol Marsh, whose first film role was Rose in Brighton Rock, and there's even a small part for Stanley Unwin.

How Stanley Unwin and Uncle the elephant won the war

Before he became a performer, Stanley Unwin worked on the technical side of radio:

In 1940, Stanley successfully applied for a job at the BBC working on transmitters as a 'key thumper'. The Second World War was now underway and the Corporation desperately needed Morse operators across the country so he went off to do his bit at the Borough Hill transmitting station in Daventry.

Writing the foreword to the history of the station - Daventry Calling the World - in 1998, Unwin remembered that:

All of us at Daventry belonged to the Home Guard, having daily drills and rehearsals for potential air raids. A password was given each time a shift changed.

And there were air raids:

In 1942 a daylight raiding German plane strafed the buildings where we were ensconced, causing me to dash under the desk in the transmitter room. Mr Bill Gilbert, of Middlemore Farm, Daventry, informed us that it was a Dornier 215 fighter bomber. 

During the blitz on Coventry the drone of the raiding bombers accompanied the sound of the BBC monitored programmes as the incendiary bombs illuminated the horizon. Even the buzz of falling shrapnel from the anti aircraft fire could be heard on the transmitter site.

But Stanley Unwin wasn't the only giant of the British nonsense tradition at Daventry during the war. 

One of his grandchildren write about the Rev. J.P. Martin, author of the Uncle books:

With the beginning of the second world war he was minister in Daventry to the BBC engineers who were transmitting to the Empire at war and across occupied Europe.  Before the war they had secret experiments in the development of radar, the weapon which enabled the Spitfires to win the Battle of Britain. German planes crossed his Northamptonshire skies to destroy Coventry and its cathedral. ...

My mother Stella with my brother Andrew and myself was evacuated at three hours notice because Colchester was the initial target for Hitler’s Operation Sealion for the invasion of Britain in 1940. We were the most fortunate of refugees in Daventry with Nancy and J.P Martin. As a child one was always being told Uncle stories which J.P. Martin had dreamed up in the night.

It was exciting to see J.P. Martin collected in a jeep as a chaplain to conduct services at the army munitions depot at Weedon, which had been built in the Napoleonic wars. He was preaching again to men who again were fighting for freedom, dying in yet another war. Little did he think when he had volunteered as a chaplain in 1918 that he would be talking to his own sons, both born in the first world war and now of an age to be killed for their country.

Did Unwin and the Revd Martin meet? Were they friends? I'm sure they would have got on.

Victor Lewis-Smith, BBC Radio York and Stanley Unwin

The death of the broadcaster Victor Lewis-Smith was announced today and John Jefferson, the first manager of BBC Radio York, shared his memories of him with the city's commercial station York Mix:

"When we were setting up Radio York we were trying to find people who weren’t little grey men.

"Victor had just left the university music department with a trail of interesting stories behind him – larger than life stories. He walked into our lives and we took him on.

"Wisely or unwisely, we gave him a Sunday morning show called News Buff.

"And we were absolutely amazed by the sorts of creativity he brought to that – he had a very different way of using radio to amuse people.

"I sense that, if it was today’s BBC, both Victor and probably myself would have had the sack a long time ago.

"But it’s nearly 40 years ago, and we were able to give people a bit of free rein to try and create something that was different and Victor was very, very different – and probably about the most talented person I’ve ever actually worked with."

My memory of those years is that Lewis-Smith was regularly sacked and then reinstated, but it's all a long time ago.

Anyway, I was sad to hear of his death. I remember his creativity as a broadcaster, and any man who gave Stanley Unwin work is to be admired.

Chess and anal beads in the media? Blame Magnus Carlsen

Embed from Getty Images

Things have moved on and things have got worse since I blogged about the accusation of cheating against Hans Niemann by the Norwegian world chess champion Magnus Carlsen.

You may recall that the 19-year-old American Niemann defeated Carlsen in the opening rounds of a tournament, whereupon Carlsen withdrew from the event and posted a tweet that was widely taken as insinuating that his opponent had cheated.

Since then Carlsen has said nothing, despite the former champion Garry Kasparov's headmasterly advice that:

"The world title has its responsibilities, and a public statement is the least of them here."

So Niemann has been left trying to clear his name when it's not clear even what the charge against him is.

In the resultant vacuum speculation has flourished. The wackiest theory, boosted by a tweet from Elon Musk, is that Niemann was receiving outside help from someone with a computer and that the moves to play were passed on to him by vibrating anal beads.

Quite how the moves would be signalled has not been explained and it all sounds very uncomfortable. Imagine if you got into a time scramble!

I was going to say this is not the image of chess that anyone wants to see in the media, but Rolling Stone has published an article headed "Vibrating Butt Toys Are Exactly What Chess Needs."

Nor did Niemann do anything to calm journalists when he offered to play chess naked to prove he is not cheating.

But in the continuing absence of any clear charges, let alone proof, I shall go on regarding Carlsen as a sore loser - "sulky up the fijord" as my Stanley Unwin speech on Europe speech once put it. 

And I shan't regard Niemann as a sore winner either.

Stanley Unwin goes Inside Victor Lewis-Smith in 1993

Stanley Unwin found it hard to retire as he kept being rediscovered by new generations of producers.

In 1993 he appeared in the comedy series Inside Victor Lewis-Smith.

According to Wikipedia and my vague memories, this BBC Two series (in which Lewis-Smith himself hardly appeared) was set in the Frank Bough Memorial Zip Injury Wing of St. Reith's, a BBC hospital for its fallen stars.

It took place inside the head of a man completely saturated with television and suffering from a hyperactive spleen.

Six of the Best 794

"So that’s three ideas, none of which are that radical, all of which are flawed to some degree, being presented to members as part of an opaque and closed process that only gives them a couple of days to vote on them." No, Nick Barlow is not a great fan of the Ashdown Prize.

Anthony Costello looks at how the Irish referendum on abortion was won: "Early polls suggested that voters across the country were greatly influenced by the personal stories of women mediated throughout the campaign, whilst personal relationships and experiences also had a significant influence on voter choice. There was little or no expression of the rural vs. urban divide."

To continue their revival, argue Nicholas Boys Smith and Maddalena Iovene, Liverpool and Manchester should invest in heritage and transport but not build cul-de-sacs.

"England's defeat at Lord's was an accident waiting to happen," says George Dobell. "It was a culmination of several years' of ECB policies that have disrespected Test cricket."

"In the wilds of Leicestershire, a horseshoe's throw from Rutland, lies the market town of Melton Mowbray. It's a proper agricultural town, with a long history of fox-slaughtering, but what it's best known for is cheese and pies." Diamond Geezer risks leaving London.

Eoghan Lyng celebrates the 50th birthday of the Small Faces album Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. Deep joy.

How I foresaw the European referendum campaign (with some help from Stanley Unwin)

There has not been a Liberal Revue at the Liberal Democrat Conference for a while now, but in a couple of its later appearances I did a Stanley Unwin tribute act.

The first of these explained Vince Cable's taxation policy when he was our shadow chancellor.

The second tackled Ming Campbell's call for a referendum.on Britain's membership of the European Union.

I forget why he made it - it's all a long time ago.

Anyway, my explanation went something like this.

I have been asked – all polite and requesty – by Ming the Merciflold to explain to you our new polytito on the European Unibode. 

Though confdentimost, conference, if there’s a mercifold one in that marriage, it’s Elspeth. Indeedy-ho! 

Now historibold, which is of the oldest, we have the European wars. Schlesswig versy Holstein. Alsace versy Lorraine. And all huffalo dowder until the Congress of Viennit with the replay at Villy Park next Tuesday. 

In 1945 there is a new thorcus. All the natiomost of Europe join together in a peacy.
And from this we have the joy of the Eurovision song contest. All boom and bangit with Sandy Shore, Cliff Richibold – there’s a falolloper – and the Bucksy Fizz. 

This, of course, is the home of the Norveige nul points – and sulky up the fijord ever since. 

Fundamold to this new Europe is the swap and trade it. At first we have it all back and forward across the borders with “please have your passy portit open for inspection”. 

And this is of a great waste of time, with estimate have it and 20 billion Euro a year – and that’s without the countit and the declimly point in the wrong place! 

Unfortumost – all shame and sobit – the Britly people are not keen and soldy. What they ask of the Britly passport? What of the pound and perch and of the Queen and reignit herself? 

Hear their cryimost: give me bendy bananas or death and end it! 

For this Ming has a new thorcus – ingenimost though it is. We have the referendium. 

A refererndium – moreover and extramost – not on the Constitutioner but on the whole goddam Euroimost shooting match. 

In or out, matey? That’s the question. We can’t shakeabout any longer, despite the poply song with the knees up and bunting. 

So how is run and work it, this referendium? All puzzlibod, I hear you. 

Here in Britly we have a tradition of the firsty past the post. Or as we say, the cross and stuffit. 

We Libby Dems have a prefer of the PR. And not only that, but the single and transfer it in the multimember too. 

Here we have the long ballot and the placey of the one with the favourite and two and threep – and add 07 if you want Brian to stay in the kitchy, indeedy ho! 

With the referendium the words on the bally paper – the precise and askit of the question – becomes of the importimost. 

And conference I can reveal to you – alone and exclusimost – the verbatim and word for word of it. 

And I quotey: 

“Have you stopped beaty of the wife and stay in Europe. Or do you want to lose your job and employit with the folly of a no?” 

If we don’t mention of the bendy banana we’ll be home and squeakit with that one. 

No questions? Deep joy.

And that was pretty much how the campaign turned out. Except that someone did mention bananas and we lost.

Six of the Best 544

Laura Schwartz reviews Suffragette.

"But there were others who really have been failed, be that by the system, by their families or both. These are the people for whom the Government’s reforms really might not be working ... Behind the masks, the banners and the anger, I wonder if we as Conservatives should perhaps be more ready than we are to work out which is which." George Grant talked to the protesters outside his party's conference.

David Boyle says he "can't think of any area of public discourse so shot through with complete twaddle as housing policy".

Ian Ground on the restoration of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's grave in Cambridge.

"There are almost as many myths about these tunnels as there are Hollywood movies about the war." Ian Visits ventures into the deep-level air-raid shelters beneath Clapham Common.

"Stay cool, won’t you? guest star Stanley Unwin implored listeners at the end of Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake. As The Decca Years demonstrates, the Small Faces were never anything but." Alexis Petridis on the early years of one of the great Sixties bands.

The Wailers: Concrete Jungle

When Bob Marley first toured Britain in 1973 he did not get separate billing. The band did not become Bob Marley and the Wailers until the following year when Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer left because they did not want to tour.

This song, which turns up regularly on BBC compilation shows, is part of a set recorded for The Old Grey Whistle Test in the middle of that Catch a Fire tour. Maybe it shows Marley and his very best.

And there is a random clip of Stanley Unwin at the start too.

Now read about Bob Marley's father.

"Worky nosey grindstone": The Lib Dem leadership channels Stanley Unwin

Last night I posted a song from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to cheer up all my Liberal Democrat readers.

I fear, however, that our leaders have paid more attention to the scene that comes immediately before it.

If you remember Professor Stanley Unwin, you may like to see his grave at Long Buckby.

Stanley Unwin "Inside Victor Lewis-Smith"

A late (1993) appearance by the man whose grave I once went on a pilgrimage to photograph.

An explanation of the Liberal Democrat position on a European referendum

On looking through past posts on this blog I find that I provided just such an explanation as long ago as 2007 when Ming Campbell was still leader of the Liberal Democrats:

I have been asked – all polite and requesty – by Ming the Merciflold to explain to you our new polytito on the European Unibode. 

Though confdentimost, conference, if there’s a mercifold one in that marriage, it’s Elspeth. Indeedy-ho! 

Now historibold, which is of the oldest, we have the European wars. Schlesswig versy Holstein. Alsace versy Lorraine. And all huffalo dowder until the Congress of Viennit with the replay at Villy Park next Tuesday. 

In 1945 there is a new thorcus. All the natiomost of Europe join together in a peacy. 

And from this we have the joy of the Eurovision song contest. All boom and bangit with Sandy Shore, Cliff Richibold – there’s a falolloper – and the Bucksy Fizz. 

This, of course, is the home of the Norveige nul points – and sulky up the fijord ever since. 

Fundamold to this new Europe is the swap and trade it. At first we have it all back and forward across the borders with “please have your passy portit open for inspection”. 

And this is of a great waste of time, with estimate have it and 20 billion Euro a year – and that’s without the countit and the declimly point in the wrong place! 

Unfortumost – all shame and sobit – the Britly people are not keen and soldy. What they ask of the Britly passport? What of the pound and perch and of the Queen and reignit herself? 

Hear their cryimost: give me bendy bananas or death and end it! 

For this Ming has a new thorcus – ingenimost though it is. We have the referendium. 

A refererndium – moreover and extramost – not on the Constitutioner but on the whole goddam Euroimost shooting match. 

In or out, matey? That’s the question. We can’t shakeabout any longer, despite the poply song with the knees up and bunting. 

So how is run and work it, this referendium? All puzzlibod, I hear you. 

Here in Britly we have a tradition of the firsty past the post. Or as we say, the cross and stuffit. 

We Libby Dems have a prefer of the PR. And not only that, but the single and transfer it in the multimember too. 

Here we have the long ballot and the placey of the one with the favourite and two and threep – and add 07 if you want Brian to stay in the kitchy, indeedy ho! 

With the referendium the words on the bally paper – the precise and askit of the question – becomes of the importimost. 

And conference I can reveal to you – alone and exclusimost – the verbatim and word for word of it. 

And I quotey:

“Have you stopped beaty of the wife and stay in Europe. Or do you want to lose your job and employit with the folly of a no?” 

If we don’t mention of the bendy banana we’ll be home and squeakit with that one.

Unwinesque advice on Europe for David Cameron

In the light of the prime ministers travails over Europe yesterday, the following sentence from my turn at the 2007 Liberal Revue seems pertinent:

In or out, matey? That’s the question. We can’t shakeabout any longer, despite the poply song with the knees up and bunting.

Stanley Unwin on Whitby

As my post about Stanley Unwin's grave proved so popular, I thought I would offer a glimpse of the great man at work...

The Passing Show: The Life and Music of Ronnie Lane

In the course of reading about Ronnie Lane and Slim Chance I came across this terrific BBC documentary about him.

The programme confirms all the stories about Lane in Shropshire and the earlier material on the Small Faces and the Faces is fascinating too.

I once blogged about Ronnie Lane in Shropshire:

Charlie Hart, a member of Lane's band Slim Chance, remembers hanging out with a "lethal combination of rock and roll A-list - Clapton, Townsend, Small Faces etc. - and Shropshire farmers".

And an article on GoJo Music suggests we can add the Three Tuns in Bishop's Castle to the list of Lane's Shropshire haunts.

But take a look even at the first part of The Passing Show and you will see the sights of the Stiperstones as the charabanc ("a victoriana sharowbold, and this is the fourwheelful of sst sst out the backgrove," as Stanley Unwin would have put it) drives along.

The pub at the very start is the Miners Arms at Priest Weston, at 00:50 you see the Devil's Chair and at 01:02 the tin tabernacle at White Grit, which has been pictured on this blog.

Back in the sixties everyone was getting it together in the country. But to do it in the harsher climate of the seventies, that was something else.

Ronnie Lane & Slim Chance: How Come

Yesterday's expedition to Long Buckby and the grave of Stanley Unwin has naturally put me in mind of the Small Faces. Unwin narrated the second side of the group's LP Ogden's Nut Gone Flake and was surely a better choice than their original thought Spike Milligan.

But the Small Faces and the solo career of Steve Marriott have featured in Sunday videos before, so it is time to catch up with the band's bass player and other songwriter Ronnie Lane.

After Marriott left to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton, the remaining members of the Small Faces joined Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart to form the Faces, enjoying enormous success.

Ronnie Lane gave all that up, moved to the remotest part of Shropshire and former the wonderfully loose Slim Chance. How Come was there only hit - their second single The Poacher suffered from the cancellation of Top of the Pops at the vital time. This was the seventies.

There are many tales to tell of Ronnie Lane in Shropshire - I have already blogged about those days and shall return to the subject soon. A Shropshire friend of a Shropshire friend there assures me that Lane and his rock star companions were "very naughty boys", but it remains wonderful to me that there was a time when you could wander into a remote pub under the Stiperstones and hear them playing unannounced.

Ronnie Lane's most remarkable project was Passing Show, a sort of travelling musical circus. Writing in Uncut, David Cavanagh described it as:

A picaresque odyssey along the highways and byways, it framed Ronnie's love of good-time music within the wider context of a Romany way of life. Viewed through the eyes of conventional rock tour promotion, 'The Passing Show' was crazy. It required the country's least flexible officials – the town councillors, police constables and fire chiefs – to look at life not as a protocol but as an adventure.

Soon afterwards Lane fell ill with multiple sclerosis and in 1983 his friends put on a celebrated charity concert to raise funds for him - you can see a clip from it here. Ronnie Lane died in 1997.

Note, by the way, that the video above comes from The Basil Brush Show. You don't get children's television like that any more.

Stanley Unwin's grave at Long Buckby

Today I have been on a pilgrimage to Long Buckby in Northamptonshire to pay tribute to one of my comedy heroes and to see if the story about the inscription on his gravestone is true. Happily, it is.

Unwin moved to Long Buckby when he started working for the BBC at the nearby Daventry transmitting station in 1940 and lived there for the rest of his life.

Although all his attempts to retire were thwarted because he was constantly being rediscovered by new generations of producers and directors, it is probably necessary now to tell my younger readers about him.

As his Guardian obituary said:

To say that Stanley Unwin, who has died aged 90, was a comedian gives no idea of his unique brand of plausible malapropisms, grammatical distortions and straightfaced nonsense. As a prewar BBC sound engineer, he befuddled private conversations and entertained his children, but, from the 1950s, he delighted a much larger audience on radio, television, stage and in films.

And it wasn't just that Unwin was admired, he was loved. The World of Stanley Unwin says:

For someone who was modesty itself and forever grateful for the opportunities he had been given, he would probably have been quite embarrassed at the length and breadth of the obituaries that appeared over the following few days: 'top billing' across seven columns in the Times; nearly a quarter page in the Guardian; two columns and a whacking great photo in the Independent, and online obits from the BBC right across to newswire agencies in Australia.

Deep joy.

I have been known to to perform an Unwinesque turn myself at the Liberal Revue, but it is harder than it sounds, because Stanley Unwin's art was to have his nonsense so nearly make sense. It is easy to overtroil and falollop as a result.