The Wild and the Willing: Lincoln in 1962

Like the appearance of Jimi Hendrix at a 1967 rock festival held at the Tulip Bulb Auction Hall, Spalding, this is a story I wish I could share with Simon Titley,

The Wild and the Willing was a 1962 film set at the fictional Kilminster University and filmed in Lincoln.

The vice chancellor of the real University of Lincolnshire and Humberside (now the University of Lincoln) once suggested that by today's standards its students "appeared not at all wild, and only slightly willing".

He was right. Though it was based on a novel from the Angry Young Men era, those students are reminiscent of the heroes of the 1954 film Doctor in the House.

The Wild and the Willing is notable today for its shots of Lincoln and for its extraordinary young cast. Ian McShane, in his first screen appearance; Samantha Eggar; an incredibly youthful John Hurt; John Standing; Johnny Briggs; Jeremy Brett.

The whole film is on Youtube, but you will have to be content here with the opening credits, which introduce the cast.

We could all be running naked down Whitehall soon

This afternoon Stephen Tall ran down Whitehall naked (or very nearly). He is pictured here with an impressively large rosette.

He was doing it for charity, and you can still donate to Médecins Sans Frontières (UK) via his JustGiving page.

Commendable though his charitable efforts are, there is a little more to it than that.

Appearing on the Daily Politics in 2013, Stephen announced airily that he would "run naked down Whitehall" if the Liberal Democrats won as few as 24 seats at the general election.

As it turned out, we won a lot fewer than that.

The Daily Politics would not let him forget his pledge, and Kelvin MacKenzie offered a generous donation if he would honour it. Hence this afternoon's events.

Stephen's streak has led me to look at how accurate my own predictions for the general election were.

I wrote a post in January 2015, which made various tentative forecasts. I was right that the Ukip and the Green Party would be disappointed, but woefully underestimated how well the SNP would do.

My suggestion that the Liberal Democrats might outpoll Ukip proved way too optimistic.

The following month I rightly argued that we had made too much of Mike Thornton's victory in the Eastleigh by-election. But I was comforted by Lord Ashcroft's faulty constituency polls and did not draw the depressing conclusion that my arguments warranted.

I seem to have avoided forecasting which party would win the election altogether.

Today I have a feeling that, in the words of the late Yogi Berra, it's deja vu all over again. Politics in 2015 seems just like a rerun of the 1980s.

I have seen this movie before and I know who wins. (Clue: It's not Labour.)

My overwhelming instinct is that Jeremy Corbyn cannot possibly last until 2020, and that if he does Labour will suffer a catastrophic defeat.

But maybe, like the SNP, he will prove me completely wrong.

So be wary of making politics predictions. We could all be running naked down Whitehall soon.

David Bowie advertised an ice lolly in 1969

Thanks to Flashbak for pointing us to this 1969 television commercial for the Lyons Maid ice lolly Luv.

It was shot by Ridley Scott and features a young David Bowie as one of the band.

Patience and Prudence: Tonight You Belong To Me

Patience and Prudence are virtues. But they were also a successful singing act for a short while.

Ear Candy magazine tells the story:

Patience & Prudence were actually sisters and the daughters of orchestra leader Mack McIntyre. Patience (11 years old) and Prudence (14 years old) McIntyre were encouraged by their father, who was already a well know piano player and songwriter (who also co-wrote the B-sides of their two hits). 

Mack McIntyre brought his daughters into the Liberty Records recording studios in Los Angeles in the summer of 1956. One of the songs from their audition tape was a cover of the 1927 hit by Gene Austin called, "Tonight You Belong to Me". 

Liberty Records (also the home of rocker Eddie Cochran) signed "Patience and Prudence" and rushed the tune into distribution. The bouncy song became a hit, charting at #4 in September of 1956 and became Liberty's biggest selling record for two years.

There is a Youtube clip of the sisters singing this song on The Perry Como Show.

What became of them in later life? We shall look at that, with a very different song, next Sunday.

Where Richard III's body was exposed after the Battle of Bosworth

From the Leicester Mercury:

A hologram of Richard III's body will be projected at the subterranean religious ruins where he was publicly display following his death at Bosworth. 

Students at De Montfort University have been asked to come up with designs for the three-dimension projection, which will feature in what is left of the Church of the Annunciation. 

The remains of the medieval building - two arches - stand in the cellar of DMU's Hawthorn Building, in the Newarke, Leicester. 

More than 500-years-ago, Richard's remains were placed there to show he had been defeated by Henry Tudor - a vital part of the Lancastrian victory because it proved the Plantaganet monarch was dead.

I visited these ruins after I paid my respects to the body of Richard III in Leicester Cathedral. They are a surprising thing to find in the basement of a very 1930s building, though I believe St Mary de Castro also has a claim to be the site of the exposure of Richard's body to the people of the city.

The information board outside the Hawthorn Building says:

Excavations in 1935 uncovered human skeletons, one of which was thought to have been Richard III.

So 2012 was not the first time Leicester claimed to have found Richard III.

Disused railway stations in Staffordshire

Staffordshire is a much underrated county. It has some of the most picturesque parts of the Peak District and the Churnet Valley, which at one point carries a river, canal and railway but no road.

It also has some interesting disused railway stations.

But then so do Devon, Bedfordshire, North Lincolnshire, East Sussex, Leicestershire, Herefordshire, Hampshire, Cumbria, Cambridgeshire, Kent, Lincolnshire, Cornwall, Rutland. Northumberland, Shropshire, Suffolk, East Riding of Yorkshire, Norfolk, Wiltshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, Durham and Glasgow.

Free Cambridge event to mark the centenary of 'shell shock'

The British Psychological Society is commemorating the centenary of the publication of C.S. Myers' article 'A contribution to the study of shell shock...' in the Lancet by hosting an evening of lectures on psychology and war followed by a wine reception.

The event will take place on Wednesday 18 November (5.30-7.30pm) at Cambridge City Hotel, 20 Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DT.

Professor Edgar Jones from King's College London will speak on ‘Shell shock: Charles Myers and the Generals.’ He will explore the contribution of Charles Myers, consulting psychologist to the British Expeditionary Force, to the understanding and treatment of shell shock during the First World War. 

Dr Nigel Hunt from the University of Nottingham will speak on ‘The complexities of war trauma.’ This lecture will examine the changes in our understanding of traumatic stress across the 20th Century and into the 21st.

This is a free event, but places are limited so please register in advance.

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.

Denis Healey: The Best Prime Minister Labour Never Had?

While Britain watched The Great British Bake Off, BBC2 showed this excellent documentary on the career of Denis Healey.

You can now view it on BBC iPlayer, and I urge you to do so.

The still above shows Ken Livingstone, Tony Benn and a young Jeremy Corbyn during the 1981 deputy leadership election in which Healey narrowly defeated Benn and quite possibly saved the Labour Party.

It seems Corbyn is determined to ensure that achievement is only temporary.

Michelle Thomson was to play a starring role at SNP conference

View image | gettyimages.com

From the Telegraph website this evening:

Michelle Thomson was due to play a “starring role” alongside Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney winning over the business community at next week’s SNP conference, Labour has said.

The Edinburgh West MP, whose property dealings are the subject of a police investigation over potential mortgage fraud, was due to speak at a fringe event addressing the question: “What is stopping UK businesses from exploring new markets?” 

Labour also published a corporate agenda for the Aberdeen conference showing Mrs Thomson was due to appear at a business breakfast meeting next Friday with Ms Sturgeon followed by a lunch with Mr Swinney, the Deputy First Minister.

Oscar Wilde adds: One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.

A Lib Dem haiku for National Poetry Day

A candidate stands
His deposit flutters off
On the soft May breeze

James Fox on Performance

View image | gettyimages.com

Performance is one of the key British films of the 1960s and James Fox's portrayal of a gangster, all hooded eyes and half-smiles, can be seen in inferior copies to this day.

He recently spoke to the Guardian about making the film:

Playing a gangster was quite a departure for me. I’d mostly played upper-class types. But I’d hung out with Donald Cammell, who wrote the screenplay and co-directed, and I think he’d seen a side of me that said: “James is a raving nutcase, so let’s steer him in the direction of the East End and see what happens.” 

And it worked: I fell in love with my character, Chas Devlin, a south London gangster. I prepared for the role very seriously, even visiting Ronnie Kray in Brixton prison. The meeting was quite formal, though – what we really needed was to talk to people on the outside. 

Much more useful, to perfect the manner and accent, were my visits to the Thomas A Becket pub on Old Kent Road with Johnny Shannon, who played gang boss Harry Flowers. John Bindon, who once dated Christine Keeler and had a role as a violent mobster, also had underworld connections.

Sandy Lieberson, the film's producer, is also interviewed:

Donald Cammell originally envisaged Marlon Brando in the Chas Devlin part, but that was always a bit of a fantasy. We were pretty sure James Fox could pull it off, having seen him in films like The Servant. 

Mick Jagger was on board from the start, and he brought to the role all the fame and notoriety that was attached to his own name at that time. We wanted to exploit his unusualness, the androgynous sexual aura that hung around him – something that’s harder to appreciate now that he’s a grandfather and such a figure of the establishment.

The photograph above shows Fox and Jagger on set.

Now see Jagger sing Memo from Turner from the film.

Six of the Best 543

"It seems to me that the Left's narrative about neoliberalism is too naive to overcome it - it understands none of the appeal of its original ideas. It is somewhat vacuous - a fairy tale about nasty people overturning the great and enlightened Keynesian consensus of 1945." David Boyle says it is time for Liberals to read Hayek again.

Jonathan Fryer reviews a new biography of the Soviet spy Guy Burgess.

"[Joe] Orton’s ‘gutter’ was not the brutal and bustling industrial landscape of the North, but the drab monotony of a comfortable city whose council housing reflected its unimaginative mediocrity." Municipal Dreams on the history of Leicester's Saffron Lane Estate.

Morgan Jeffery asks if Doctor Who is in crisis.

"La Shrubsole ... is, in the parlance of the men’s game, quite a “Big Unit”, but light on her feet with an attractive habit of placing herself in the field by skipping from side to side, with her hands extended horizontally, as though dancing to a rendition of 'Nymphs and Shepherds Come Away' only she can hear." Backwatersman bids farewell to the 2015 cricket season and incidentally explains a famous quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald.

A London inheritance climbs the Caledonian Park Clock Tower.

Bishop Peter Ball and Elizabeth Butler-Sloss

BBC News reports today:

Sex abuse victims of former Sussex bishop Peter Ball are suing the Church of England for hundreds of thousands of pounds. 

Ball, 83, who admitted offences against 18 teenagers and young men in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, is being sentenced at the Old Bailey on Wednesday.

I am not a believer in conspiracy theories - you don't have to be when evidence of the extraordinary unwillingness of the establishment to see Bishop Ball suffer for his crimes is openly available.

When Peter Ball resigned as Bishop of Gloucester in 1993, after receiving a police caution for committing an act of gross indecency against a teenage trainee monk, he was given a grace and favour house by the Prince of Wales.

In the current court case, a deal with struck with the Crown Prosecution Service. By pleading guilty to the offences for which he will be sentenced tomorrow, he avoided more serious charges.

As the Church Times reports:

Bishop Ball pleaded not guilty, on Tuesday, to indecent assaults on two boys aged 13 and 15 in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided not to proceed with these charges. 

Phil Johnson, who first made allegations against Bishop Ball in 1996, claims that he was abused at the age of 13. He told The Guardian that he had been “silenced and denied justice”. He has lodged a complaint with the Director of Public Prosecutions and with the Crown Prosecution Service.

You can hear Phil Johnson in the audio recording above.

The other person taking part is Baroness Butler-Sloss, who had conducted an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse in the Chichester diocese. Peter Ball was Bishop of Lewes before he went to Gloucester.

As you can hear, Butler-Sloss does all she can to persuade Johnson to agree that Ball should not be mentioned in her report.

Pet bearded dragon Barbara found alive four days after fire at owners' home in Sundridge Park

Well done to Bromley's News Shopper, winner of today's Headline of the Day Award.

I suspect the insurance investigators will want a word with Barbara.

Cat-astrophic closure hits Leicester

Leicester's first cat cafe has closed its doors.

The Mercury reports:

Cats, Cakes and Coffee opened in exclusive Stoneygate at the beginning of August. 

The venue announced on its website on Thursday that it was "ceasing to trade" that day. No reason was given. 

A statement posted online by the café read: "It's been an eventful few months, and to those of us who have supported us we thank you from the bottom of our hearts."

George Osborne first and 10 (whatever that means)

Last week the Guardian told us:

George Osborne wants to have an NFL franchise based permanently in London within the next five years to confirm the city’s status as the “sporting capital of the world”. 

The chancellor met with NFL executives, team owners and former players at Downing Street as the Miami Dolphins prepared to face the New York Jets at Wembley stadium on Sunday. 

Osborne said he would “love to have a team here based in the UK playing in the NFL” and he believed Britain was making steps towards that goal. “The real prize, the real touchdown for London, would be to get a team based here,” he said.

My first reaction is that Osborne should have more important things to do with his time. Bringing an NFL franchise to London is the sort of task that should consume a wacky backbencher, not the chancellor.

But this enthusiasm of his does confirm that he is not a traditional Conservative. If he were, he would be worrying about how to persuade more children to take up rugby or cricket,

To someone of Osborne's cast of mind, America is the future. His enthusiasm for elected mayors, a role unknown in British local government until recently, confirms this.

As I argued in a recent post on a cricket club in David Cameron's constituency, this sets Osborne apart from his prime minister.

But already this enthusiasm for all things American looks dated.

For the group of Tories who produced Britannia Unchained - Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore, Liz Truss - the future is Singapore.

And for the former Liberal Democrat MP Jeremy Browne in his Race Plan, the future is China. That dictatorship makes an odd beacon for 'authentic liberalism'.

Still, Jeremy is not alone. Today Jeremy Hunt expressed the hope that, thanks to cuts in welfare, we would all have to work as hard as the Chinese.

Who knows where the future will pop up next?

The Geordie haka

[The video has disappeared from Youtube, but you can view it here.]

England have gone out of the World Cup.

But we can take comfort in the discovery that the haka originated, not among the Maoris of New Zealand, but in Newcastle Upon Tyne.

Alex Salmond banned from flight after booking ticket as Star Trek captain

The Independent wins our coveted Headline of the Day Award.

East Midlands Liberal Democrats Autumn Regional Conference

This event takes place on Saturday 7 November at Derby Moor Community Sports College. Moorway Lane, Littleover, Derby DE23 2FS.

The keynote speakers will be party President Sal Brinton and the blogosphere's own Mark Pack.

Full details and booking information on the East Midland Lib Dems site.