Book Bag: Frederick Forsyth

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It was sad to read in the news the other day of the passing of journalist and novelist Frederick Forsyth. He was 86 years old and had published more than 25 books. I’ve read quite a few of his novels and I wrote a segment about him some time ago in a blog post about novels that were rejected by publishers. A number of his books were made into films and so many people must be familiar with his work.

Forsyth did his national service in the RAF and was commissioned as an Acting Pilot Officer in 1956. After leaving the RAF he became a journalist working for the news agency Reuters and later he joined the BBC. He was the perfect choice for a foreign correspondent as he spoke numerous languages including French, German and Russian. In 1967 he was reporting on the war between Biafra and Nigeria when the BBC decided they were no longer interested in that particular war. Forsyth resigned from the BBC and continued to report on the war as a freelance. He even admitted later that this was when he was recruited by MI6 as an informant.

His most famous book and actually one that he struggled to get published was The Day of the Jackal. He apparently had no interest in becoming a novelist but turned to fiction as he was out of work and in dire straits financially.  The Day of the Jackal was rejected numerous times but finally one publisher decided to try a limited print run. The book took off first in the UK and then in the USA. It was a mixture of fact and fiction and Forsyth’s description of how to obtain a fake passport was used by John Darwin, the man who faked his own death in a canoe and later tried to make a new life in Panama. This true story was made into a book and TV mini series called The Thief, his Wife and a Canoe.

Forsyth followed up with The Odessa File, a book about the Odessa organisation which helped former nazis escape detection from the authorities after World War II. He wrote numerous other books but when The Day of the Jackal was re-imagined as a TV series recently on Sky TV, he earned nothing as he had already signed away the TV and film rights with the earlier screen version.

The Day of the Jackal

It was a very long time ago when I first read this book. Someone once called it an assassin’s handbook although I’m not sure that’s really fair. The book is set in the early 60s. The OAS was a terrorist organisation made up of ex-army personnel who were angered at De Gaulle’s decision to give independence to Algeria after many of their comrades had died fighting Algerian nationalists. They were trying to assassinate De Gaulle but their organisation had been penetrated by French Intelligence. To prevent any leaks the OAS top leadership decide to hole up in a hotel and arrange for a professional assassin to kill De Gaulle. The book follows the assassin, code named Jackal, as he plans the murder step by step. The French secret service however decide to kidnap a man who functioned as an aide to the leadership. Under torture he revealed the basic plot but how could the French track down the assassin?

The Jackal arranges three fake identities and the author explains meticulously how he does this. He met with a specialist rifle maker and explained how he wanted a rifle that could be dismantled and fitted into a series of metal tubes, the full import of this is only revealed on the planned day of the assassination.

The Jackal also asks for a number to ring for up to date information and the OAS arrange for an informant to seduce a member of the government and pass vital info to the Jackal.

Forsyth apparently wrote the book in 35 days and continued with a similar non stop workflow for all his subsequent books. He didn’t like the writing process and was anxious to get it all over with as quickly as possible. Even so, the result is a tense and gripping read. Forsyth’s books are heavily researched and often including real-life procedures, political contexts, or military operations. He includes authentic settings and terminology that lend a strong sense of realism to his stories. The characters in his books though are usually pretty functional, just there to carry the plot forwards although in The Jackal we find perhaps his most rounded characters, certainly in the few books that I have read.

The Day of the Jackal was made into a film in 1973 directed by Fred Zinneman.

The Odessa File

Again, it’s a long time since I have read this book but it’s really well put together with a real twist at the end. It’s about a German journalist who discovers a diary written by an old Jewish man who has committed suicide. The man was a former concentration camp prisoner and killed himself after seeing a sadistic SS officer known as ‘the butcher of Riga’ walking free in the city.

The journalist decides to try and track the SS man down and finds out that the nazis run an organisation known as the Odessa, which helps former SS men evade justice, assisting them with fake papers and even travel to friendly countries.

The journalist decides to pose as an ex-SS man seeking help from the Odessa and this leads him on a very dangerous path indeed.

The Odessa File was also made into a film starring John Voight as the journalist and the resulting publicity brought about the exposure of the real life ‘Butcher of Riga’, on whom the fictional character was based. Eduard Roschmann was arrested by Argentine police but then skipped bail and escaped to Paraguay.

The Fourth Protocol

I started reading this book a while ago and like all of Forsyth’s other books it is a very exciting read. I was also surprised to find that it was really quite different to the film which starred Michael Caine.

In the book, a professional jewel thief robs the safe of safe of a well to do civil servant. He takes away some pretty expensive jewels but breaks a golden rule by also taking what appears to be an expensive hand crafted leather briefcase.

It turns out that hidden in the briefcase are some top secret documents which the civil servant has been passing to a member of the South African security forces.

This gentleman then organises a group of thugs to find the case but the jewel thief is alerted just in time and is able to round up some tough guys of his own to combat the thugs. After finding out the thugs were after the briefcase, he discovers the secret documents and mails them to the authorities.

Robert Preston, our local MI5 man, then has to find out where the documents came from and who has been leaking them.

Eventually, Preston discovers that the civil service man was passing the documents to a south African diplomat who was also a Russian spy.

This whole episode was glossed over in the film and in fact in the film version it is John Preston played by Michael Caine who robs the safe forcing the traitor to meet with his contact.

The main story though involves a Soviet plot to destabilise NATO by causing an atomic explosion at a US Air Force base in the UK. Components for the bomb are to be smuggled into the country, set up at a safe house just by the air force base and later detonated.

Luckily, our man Preston manages to save the day.

Once again, this is an excellent read peppered with fascinating information about the workings of spies in MI5 and MI6 and also the KGB.

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The Curse of the Blank Page

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This week I’ve been experiencing that blank page syndrome; you know what I mean, you stare at the paper, or the empty laptop screen and nothing comes to mind, and the paper stays like that, blank. So in an effort to boost my creative powers I took a look back at some of my old blog posts.

I see that I started this blog page back in 2014 and my first post went out on the 23rd of May. It wasn’t anything exciting, in fact it was pretty much a sort of advertisement for my book Floating in Space which had just been published on Amazon to an overwhelming gush of cyberspatial silence.

Floating in Space was my first book and I put it together many years ago. At the time, I was writing lots of science fiction and espionage stories based on my love of television shows reflecting both those genres. I had begun to realise though that for fiction to be worthwhile it has to have a basis in real experience. All I knew about sci-fi and espionage was what I had read about or seen on TV so I started to write about myself. I wrote about the insurance company where I had worked and also the bus company where I worked later after a short trip to Europe that was supposed to last for a year but ended up covering about four weeks.

After I had compiled a few essays, I thought I could put them all together into a fictional story about a young man who packs in his job as an insurance clerk, goes to Europe and returns home penniless so gets himself a job as a bus conductor. Throw in some real life experiences and a healthy dose of fiction and the result was a short novel. I have to say that I love Floating in Space. Reading it today is like taking a trip back to my younger days and it brings back all sorts of memories and I do hope that I’ve managed to communicate that time in my life in the mobile phone free and non digital late 70s to my readers.

Floating In Space available now from Amazon!

There have been plenty of times when I’ve struggled to produce an essay or a post and I started one off a few years ago which began, pretty much like this one, in a sort of rambling fashion hoping that something would come to me. I ended up writing about some training which I had undertaken at the time. Here’s an excerpt:

I’ve been on a training course this week, a pretty interesting one but unfortunately not one I can talk about much as it relates to the data protection act and the computer misuse act and all sorts of legal stuff. Still, the training reminded me of a fairly funny training story that happened nearly ten years ago. It was when I had just started at the Highways Agency and in fact I was one of the first batch of operators to be recruited for the North West, a fact that I regularly bore my colleagues with.

The HA sent us to some establishment in Salford for an induction course and I have to say, as much as I like my job, that course was pretty dull! It was fun meeting some new people and doing some interesting team building exercises but after a while, they started to get a little boring and we were all thinking when will we be able to start learning the nuts and bolts of our jobs?

One of the exercises, and to this day I don’t know the point of it, was for us to split into twos and one member of the duo went into another room where they thought of a holiday story to tell, and the other was asked to completely ignore their partner when they returned and began to relate their story. In this instance my colleague was the storyteller and I was the ignorer! So she came back in and began her story. I polished my nails, yawned in her face, checked my watch, hummed a little tune to myself and so on. After a while some inner instinct made me turn to take a quick look at her, and it was lucky I did so because later on I reckoned I had been only a split second away from taking a hefty punch to the nose, however I was able to calm her down and explain it was all part of the exercise!

Just reading that brought lots of training memories back. We did lots of role playing at Highways in fact I had to do one during the interview for the job,. In that one I had to deal with a woman on the phone who supposedly was being chased by someone while on the motorway. I’m guessing the idea was to see if I could stay calm during stressful situations. Anyway, I managed to calm the lady down, told her the police were on the way after working out her exact location by careful questioning. I got the job so I must have done reasonably well.

Photo courtesy Highways Agency

Towards the end of the induction course, boredom had truly set in. I remember one hot afternoon in this stuffy office cum training room and the lecturer going on and on about the chain of command and how issues had to be escalated to one’s line manager and one’s line manager would escalate things further if need be. I feel rather embarrassed to admit this now but I nodded serenely off into a private world of slumber. Later, and whether it was minutes or even hours later I really don’t know but I was jolted sharply back to reality by the voice of our instructor calling my name. A sea of blank faces were looking at me so I tried to think back: What was the last thing we were talking about? Oh yes, I remember now:

“I’d escalate that to my team manager.”

“Escalate what to your team manager?”

“Well, er. . .”

I glanced over to my left, perhaps hoping for some help, but one of my new colleagues, actually the lady from the storytelling incident earlier, was looking at me in disgust. Over to my right two other colleagues were in a strange sort of state. One had gone almost purple in the face as he tried to hold in a tumult of suppressed laughter and another was covering his face and making strange noises as his shoulders pumped up and down hysterically.

Finally, the lecturer, looking at me with contempt, observed that it might be better for me if I paid attention more and moved on.

Not the finest training course but not my finest hour either.

My absolute favourite training time was something I wrote about a few weeks back, bus driver training.

In those days circa 1979, we trained in old back loader manual gearbox buses sat in a small cab at the front and steering with a huge steering wheel and having to double the clutch to change from first to second gear as those old gearboxes weren’t fully synchromeshed.

Vintage GM Bus flyer

The moment I climbed up into the cab I felt at home and I loved my time in the driving school. Every morning we used to check the bus over and top up the oil and water if required. Then our trainer would choose somewhere in the vast Greater Manchester operating area for breakfast. We might have a drive to perhaps Oldham garage or bus station. I’d start off and our trainer Bill sat behind me in the first seat. The window to the cab had been removed and Bill would give directions and off we would go. His main instruction particularly on narrower roads was to ‘ride the white line’ because our big bus needed the room, car drivers in smaller vehicles didn’t.

Bill knew all the canteen staff in all the canteens in Manchester. Sometimes we might just have tea and toast because on the next run Bill might designate Stockport as our next destination as the new canteen there always served up something good for lunch. To be honest though, I always preferred a breakfast. Back in those days the GM Buses canteens served a breakfast special which was egg, sausage, bacon, a slice of toast and a choice of either beans or tomatoes, all for a pound. My own breakfast favourite though was two eggs on two toast with beans and a sausage which is still a favourite today.

Well, I think that’s it for today’s blog post. I’m pretty pleased with myself. I started out without the faintest idea what to write and managed to write 1400+ words and I know I pinched a few from a couple of old posts but either way, I managed to break the curse of the blank page!

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Thatcher and Give Me 10 Seconds

Posted on by Steve Higgins

On holiday one of my favourite reads was an autobiography by John Sergeant who was once a political reporter for the BBC. It was called Give Me 10 Seconds. It was called this because the BBC usually had John ready to speak to the camera for perhaps two minutes. John needed to get his broadcast together in his head and would usually ask for 10 seconds for a quick mental rehearsal. The book was a particularly warm and enjoyable read and opened my eyes to the way the BBC works.The author seems to think that the BBC was built on rather military styles. Staff didn’t get holidays but instead were allocated ‘leave’. Numerous layers of management operated the BBC empire and it seemed to me to be very similar to how things operated at my old place of work, the Highways Agency.

John’s claim to fame came when he was reporting live from outside the British Embassy in Paris in November 1990. Mrs Thatcher had just heard that Michael Heseltine’s leadership challenge had garnered 152 votes in the first round of voting and while John was presenting live on television, Mrs Thatcher emerged from the embassy with her PR man Bernard Ingham by her side. Despite Mr Ingham trying to push John aside, he stood his ground and firmly held his microphone to the Prime Minister’s face while she advised everyone that her name would be going through to the second round of voting.

John’s book was a great read. He started out working with Alan Bennett as a comedy writer and performer but when he realised that he probably had no future as a tv comedian he got himself a job as a newspaper reporter in Liverpool and later moved over to the BBC as a radio reporter.

It’s actually really fascinating to hear of the rivalry between the radio news and the tv news, as back in the late 60s the radio people really didn’t have much time for their television counterparts. These days of course, television is the senior partner in news reporting and the cameras of the BBC, SKY TV and CNN take the viewer all over the world in search of news.

Even so, in recent years, people and politicians have been highly critical of the BBC not only for the way it reports but also for what it reports. I’ve seen some interviews with politicians by journalists like Jeremy Paxman which were quite frankly just disgracefully rude. Is there bias in the BBC? I personally think that the days of impartial news reporting is over but whenever something happens in the world, and I want some more information, my first thought is to go to the BBC website.

Mrs Thatcher was the first female British Prime Minister. She was born in 1925, studied chemistry at Oxford and married Denis Thatcher in 1951. She stood unsuccessfully for parliament and then settled down to have her children. Later she was finally elected in 1959 as the MP for Finchley.

Image courtesy creative commons

Mrs Thatcher was given various posts on the front bench and when the Conservatives under Edward Heath won the election in 1964, she was promoted to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science.

The Government had to deal with numerous issues such as union demands for higher wages and the three day week and they lost the election in February 1974 but Labour could only form a minority government. They then won a later election in October that same year. Mrs Thatcher then challenged Edward Heath for the party leadership and won, taking over as leader of the opposition in 1975. She finally became Prime Minister in 1979 famously quoting the prayer of St Francis on the steps of Downing St;

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony;
Where there is error, may we bring truth;
Where there is doubt, may we bring faith;
And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

Mrs Thatcher promoted the idea of people owning their homes and even introduced policies aimed at tenants buying their own council houses. She faced up to union demands most notably with Arthur Scargill and the mining unions but became hugely popular when she stood up to the Argentinians who invaded the Falkland Islands.

She led the Conservative Party to victory in three consecutive general elections, twice in a landslide, and she ranks among the most popular party leaders in British history regarding votes cast for the winning party; over 40 million ballots were cast in total for the party under her leadership. Her electoral successes were dubbed an “historic hat trick” by the British press in 1987 and her tenure as Prime Minister was the longest continuous period in office since the 19th century.

Her downfall came in 1990 which brings us back to John Sergeant’s famous moment. Michael Heseltine decided to go ahead with his leadership challenge and Mrs Thatcher burst forth from the British Embassy in Paris to make her statement that she had passed her name forward to the next round of the contest. She had been 4 votes short of victory in the first ballot and therefore a second round was required.

Thatcher seemed certain of going forward into that second ballot but after consulting with her ministers she decided to withdraw and it was John Major and not Michael Heseltine who emerged as the new Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party.

Mrs Thatcher has been portrayed by numerous actresses in film and television most notably by Gillian Anderson and Meryl Streep. Streep starred as Thatcher in the film Iron Lady. She was played frequently on TV sketches and in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only by comedian and impressionist Janet Brown.  Perhaps the most famous comedy sketch about Mrs Thatcher came on the TV show Spitting Image in which she takes the cabinet for dinner. She orders steak and the waitress asks ‘what about the vegetables?’

Thatcher looks at her cabinet and replies ‘they’ll have the same as me!’

Mrs Thatcher retired from the House of Commons at the 1992 general election. She was a Prime Minister who was loved by some and hated by others and even when she died in 2013 at the age of 87 social media memes were declaring the wicked witch is dead!

Which side of the fence are you on?

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Sadness, Memories and those Telephone Menus

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Dealing with death is difficult. Not just the emotional side of death, losing a loved one but dealing with the other side of death, the practical side, can be just as hard.

My brother died recently. He loved his TV and despite not having much money he had a top package from Virgin media. He mentioned only a few weeks before his death that he could even get the Sky F1 channel and I told him over the phone that I would be round to watch some live races. The only chance I got was actually the recent Spanish Grand Prix which wasn’t such a great race until a late safety car livened things up towards the end. Anyway, once I’d watched the race I called up Virgin to advise them that my brother had died. I must have gone through about three menus; press one for this, press two for that and so on. After menu 3 I finally got to an ‘other’ option. I clicked on that and finally there was an option for bereavement. When I went through to option 5 I think it was, the recorded voice advised me to ring a special bereavement line and quickly rattled off the number. I wasn’t expecting that so I reached for my pen expecting a repeat of the number but all I got was a thank you for your call and a dialling tone as the call was ended.

OK, I dialed again, at least I had my pen and paper ready. So, through the first menu, then the second and finally to the third. Press option 5 and the voice comes on with the phone number, I went to jot it down but the pen wouldn’t work!

Aaaagh!

After a few minutes of screaming I managed to calm down and realised that I had no choice but to go through the nightmare scenario again, this time with a working pen. I finally got the number but seriously, couldn’t they just put it on their web page; Bereavement, call this number 0800 blah blah blah. No, that’s clearly too easy. Anyway, now to repeat the process for his gas and electric, the DWP (actually pretty easy) his water rates, his insurance and of course I need to speak to the Undertakers.

My brother, despite never planning anything in his entire life actually bought himself a funeral plan. Sadly, the company he chose, One Life, went bust last year but he had even looked out for that eventuality, he had bought himself some life insurance with Sun Life which was happily linked to a funeral home.

Another annoying thing is registering the death. Despite us being in the hi-tech age of 2025 you can’t do it over the phone or online. You have to do it in person which meant a bus ride into town because cars are decidedly unwelcome these days in Manchester city centre. The other thing with the register office is that you can’t just walk in, you have to have an appointment. I made my appointment online but arrived 45 minutes early. Could they see me early? Of course not, so I went for a wander round the area and even passed a small tapas bar which many years ago was a very exclusive men’s tailors where my brother Colin had his very first job. Among the clientele were the presenters of Look North, the BBC’s local news show and Granada Reports, the ITV version. I remember Colin telling me that he once served the guy who played Alec Gilroy on Coronation Street.

Colin’s former workplace. Once a menswear shop, now a tapas bar.

His boss was a very well to do fellow who lived in Wilmslow and drove a Rolls Royce. Every morning he picked up Colin for work at a busy junction by the Bluebell pub. Colin was living at home in Handforth then and you might think that with his boss picking him up he would be keen to get up out of bed and get ready for work.

Unfortunately, Colin just could not get out of bed in the morning. My mother told me that she used to throw a pan of cold water in his face to get him up but even so, he usually arrived at work round about lunchtime. His boss wasn’t happy at being left waiting and Colin was given his p45.

The coroner had already sent all the relevant info to the register office so all they really needed from me was a signature which I signed with the registrar’s old fashioned fountain pen.

Here’s a funny thing about death, the way things come around again. The vinyl albums that he and I argued over for instance, we swapped records, swapped back again and swapped back and forth so many times neither of us knew who finally owned what. Well, now all those vinyls have come back to me. Not only those but the audio tapes I was going to throw away, Colin took them and now they’ve come back too, as well as the copy of High Noon, the 1950 film starring Gary Cooper. I lent it to him ages ago and he told me he’d given it me back. I said he hadn’t but he insisted he didn’t have it. Either way, it’s come back to me again.

I took the bus into Manchester as I mentioned earlier. At one point we were stopped at a set of traffic lights and I looked up to see what appeared to be Colin crossing the road. A man looking just like him with his identical walk and his identical leather jacket was crossing and I was convinced it was him until he looked up straight at me and I realised that of course, it was someone else.

Later on, sipping a half of lager at a pavement pub table in Albert Square, a woman came past pushing one of those granny trolleys that old ladies push and she was the absolute image of my mother. I remember thinking that all I needed now was to see my dad. I scrutinised lots of people as I travelled back home on the bus and finally, I spotted someone who looked a little like dad. I convinced myself the man was the perfect double of my late father but when it came down to it, I knew he wasn’t. Death just messes with your head I suppose but, in a way, I felt that I had seen my entire family that day.

I tried to think of the last time we were all together and it was probably some occasion years ago when I visited home on a Sunday and we all ate Sunday dinner together. The time that came to mind though was a birthday. Perhaps it was my birthday but me, Colin and Mum and Dad, all met together in a pub on the border of Manchester and Salford called the Mark Addy. The pub was situated on the banks of the Irwell and at lunchtimes they served rather nice portions of either pate or cheese with plenty of fresh bread. It was a sunny afternoon and it was rather warm so I rather suspect it was my father’s birthday as his birthday was in August.

Some years ago, the Mark Addy was flooded when the river burst its banks. The insurers declined to insure it again and the pub has remained closed ever since but I often think about it and that last sunny afternoon we all spent together.

One last sad story. Years ago my brother had a dutch girlfriend named Inge. He has kept in touch with her and while I was sorting out his flat I came across a framed picture of Inge. She is one of my Facebook friends so I sent her a photo of the picture and we messaged each other for a while and talked about Colin. A little later she told me that she had had an online meeting with someone in the USA and during the meeting the woman’s three-year-old son came into the room. When the meeting was over the woman introduced the boy to Inge. She asked the boy to say goodbye to Inge and he did so. Inge asked his name and he told her.

She turned to the boy and said “goodbye Colin.”

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A Genie Called Ralph. Fiction by Steve Higgins

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Normally, I tend to republish my WordPress posts on Medium. This week I’ve been a little too busy to write something new so I thought I’d republish one of my Medium posts on WordPress.

What can you say when a genie called Ralph offers you three wishes? How about ‘yes please!’

This was my first holiday since last year. I had been working hard at my day job as a content creator for a bank as well as my own website The Left-Handed Blogger. My girlfriend had left me for another man and the weather was cold.

I was feeling a little down to say the least so I had surfed the internet and found a cheap(ish) flight to Bermuda. It had been a long journey and on arriving at my hotel I had changed into shorts and a T shirt and popped down to the bar. On the patio I ordered a large beer and settled down to enjoy the warm weather.

I scanned through my phone to see what was happening in Barbados and to maybe find where would be a good place to eat but the local news was all about some Mexican drug baron, Emiliano Montoya, who had turned up on the island. I scrolled past all that and was pleased to find some good reviews about the restaurant in the very hotel where I was staying.

I finished my beer and decided that there was plenty of time for a swim before dinner.

I dropped my bag and towel down on the beach, took one look at the blue sea and ran towards it. I swam for a while and then turned back to the beach. I dropped down on my towel and let the sun dry my body. I started to think about my blog. I wondered if my blog readers were wondering why my regular posts had dried up. Then again perhaps no one had noticed. After a while I dropped off to sleep. Like I say, I had worked hard; at least six months of eleven-hour days and I was tired.

When I awoke, I was annoyed with myself. I had turned to my side and already I could feel my right-hand side burning in the sun. Oh well, no matter. I just need to make sure to tan the other side too.

I pulled a bottle of water from my bag and stood up. I was feeling better already and I looked around at the fairly quiet beach and then back towards my towel. My foot touched on something and I looked down and buried there in the sand was a bottle. It had a sort of old world look about it. I wondered if it might be something valuable and I dug it out of the sand. It had what I thought was a sort of oriental look about it. It was heavy with a bulbous onion sort of shape with a handle and it was still corked. An old wine bottle perhaps.

I sat down on my towel and pulled on the cork and after a while it popped out and a huge spurt of smoke or gas poured out. After a few seconds the smoke began to pull together and it seemed to congeal into the shape of a man.

I fell back into the sand and as I looked up, the smoke became an Arab man in a turban and a baggy silk outfit. He looked a little stunned and began shouting in some sort of Arab language. After a while he noticed me but I couldn’t understand a word. After an age I recovered myself and said something totally stupid like ‘who are you?’ and he looked back at me in amazement.

‘Master’, he said in English. ‘You have freed me from imprisonment. Who are you? What is your name?’

“George”, I mumbled. “George Ferguson.”

“George, thank you for my freedom. Free to breathe the air again, free to feel the warmth of the sun. Where are we?”

“Barbados” I said, still not really believing what was happening.

“George, I am a genie, imprisoned in that bottle in a time when the earth was young. Let me grant you three wishes. Master, what is your first wish?”

Three wishes? He has got to be joking I thought. Where is the camera? Who is filming this mad stunt for Instagram or TikTok?

Without thinking I blurted out “Twenty thousand pounds!”

The genie looked at me as if I’d had said twenty thousand fish fingers. He thought for a while and then said “Master, I need to understand this new world. I will come back to you soon and grant your wish.”

With that he held his hands together in a pose of prayer, nodded thoughtfully to me and promptly burst into a cloud of smoke or steam and vanished.

I stood there stunned for a few moments. Nothing seemed to be moving around me and then slowly I could see movement and hear the sound of the waves lapping at the shore, the voices of children playing and the shouts and chatter of people at the beach.

What a daydream! A daydream so real it was almost untrue. Perhaps it was! What was that type of dream I had read about lately? A lucid dream. A dream that feels so vivid it could be real, of course, that was it! A lucid dream. Wow!

I laughed to myself then stepped forward towards the sea and my bare foot touched the bottle, the onion shaped bottle from where the genie had come. That had been the catalyst, the thing that had started the dream. It was a dream, surely.

Back at the hotel I went up to my room and took a shower. I was thirsty and after towelling myself dry I popped on a robe and walked towards the small cooler in the lounge and took out a bottle of water. I was still thinking about that daydream and wondering why on earth did I ask for 20,000 pounds? Why didn’t I say 100,000 or even a million? I laughed to myself but as I drank from my bottle it seemed as though there was a little steam or smoke in the hallway. The smoke became thicker and then coalesced into a man. It was the genie again but this time he was dressed in a light blue jacket, a white shirt and faded blue jeans.

“George” he said. I stumbled back and fell onto the bed. It wasn’t a dream, it really wasn’t.

“Call me Ralph,” said the genie.

“Ralph?” I asked.

“Yes, I decided that from now on that’s the name I’m going to use. I like it, I don’t know why but I just like it. What do you think of the clothes?”

“Great” I mumbled.

“It’s 2025 George. I can’t go around wearing that old stuff anymore. The world has changed, so very much.”

Ralph did a sort of twirl showing off his outfit. He did look pretty smart.

“Anyway, I can’t hang around here for ever. I came to sort out your first wish, here it is. He turned and picked up a black attaché case and handed it to me. I placed it on the bed and flipped open the lid. Inside was a series of crisp pound notes.

“Twenty thousand?” I asked.

“Of course, twenty thousand pounds, just as you wished.”

“Is it real money?”

“Of course it’s real. Although in my day we preferred gold but this is your day and things are so very different.”

He looked a little sad for a moment. Perhaps he was remembering his own time and place whenever that was.

“Now, your next wish. What is it?”

“Well, I’ve not really thought about it. I thought that -I thought this might have been just a dream.”

“Times change but people do not. Even in my century people were sceptical, people did not believe in me. But I have many places to see, many things to do. You have asked for money, not as much as I might have imagined but money nevertheless. Your next wish will probably involve power or women, which is it to be?”

I thought for a moment but the genie anticipated me.

“What sort of woman do you desire. Tall and blonde? A nice figure and an ample bosom.” He laughed and went on. “Those are the attributes that men seem to desire in this modern world.”

I sat down on the bed and smiled. “Yes, a woman like that but madly in love with me, the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“Wait, wait, whatever you may think, I am not the master of this world, just a small part of it. I would have to bring that particular woman halfway across the world to this place, how would she react? What would she think? What about the most beautiful woman on the island, would that please you George?”

“Yes, yes I think it would.” We might have been talking about a particular shade of wallpaper or a colour scheme for my lounge.

The genie smiled, “That then is your wish?”

“Yes genie, I wish to meet a beautiful blonde, the most beautiful on the island.”

Ralph jumped to his feet. “Your wish is granted but please, please George . .”

“What?”

“Please call me Ralph. I need to reinvent myself, to change myself to fit into this new world that you have opened up for me.”

“Thanks, Ralph.”

“Thank you, George. You wish will come true soon, in the meantime think about your final wish.”

“I will” I answered but even as I spoke his body had broken up into a swirl of steam and smoke and in a moment, I was alone once again.

Later I dressed and went down to the hotel restaurant. I asked for a table but was told they could not fit me in until 8:15. I glanced at my watch, it was 7:30 and I wished that I had booked. Oh well!

I ordered a drink at the bar, a gin and tonic and just then a really lovely woman came in. She was wearing a flowery sort of dress and had dark hair. It looked as though she was wanting a table for dinner too. She ordered a drink and smiled at me and for a moment it looked as though she recognised me from somewhere. Lovely as she was, I didn’t know her but then another woman came to the bar. She was tall and blonde and wore a short black dress. She had a gold necklace around her neck and a gold bangle on her wrist. She too gave me a smile and I began to wonder, would this be the tall blonde that I had wished for? I mean, how would the wish work? Would a beautiful blonde just appear in my room or somewhere? What actually would happen? To be honest I was still partly expecting someone with a camera to pop up and announce that I had been part of a TV or internet wind up.

The blonde had ordered a drink and seemed to be saying something; was she talking to me?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just having a little moan. I’m so hungry and I forgot to book a table. I didn’t think it would be necessary.”

She spoke English with an American accent and I asked if she was from the USA.

“No,” she replied. “I’m from Mexico but I have spent a lot of time in the USA. You are English?”

“Yes, over here on holiday. As a matter of fact, I only arrived earlier today.”

“I came here for a business deal with a colleague but it didn’t work out.”

I took a sip of my gin. She had hesitated before the word ‘colleague’ and I registered it for a split second but didn’t think about it further as she was smiling at me as if I was George Clooney or someone. She was very lovely, was she the one? Was she the beautiful blonde I had requested? Was she madly in love with me?

She did seem to be looking at me with a certain sort of affection, unless I was imagining it.

Anyway, we chatted and seemed to be getting along well. She told me her name was Lucianna and after a while the subject turned on to food. Tired of waiting for a table we went out for a taxi and asked the driver where we could get some good Caribbean food.

We ate together and came back to the hotel and after a few drinks it almost seemed as if we were old friends.

I awoke the next morning still tired. Something was under my arm and I could feel lots of hair. When I looked Lucianna was pressed against me and my arm was under her neck. I could smell her hair which smelt of shampoo and I realised I was full of the spent ardour of passion. I turned towards her and she moved closer, her eyes still closed and kissed me gently.

“I love you George,” she said. Why had I asked the genie -Ralph- for a girl madly in love with me? A girl who liked me would have been enough. Perhaps liked me a lot might have been better but not madly in love with me. In the world of genies and wishes there was a steep learning curve. Two million and not twenty thousand. A girl who liked me a lot rather than a girl who is madly in love with me. I should have thought about my wishes more, thought them through after all, at some point Ralph is going to return and grant me a third wish, my last wish and I need to get that one right.

I wondered if Lucianna was staying in this hotel, she must be surely. How can I get rid of her?

“Lucianna,” I whispered gently, “do you need to get back to your own room? You know, sort yourself out, change your clothes and stuff?”

“No senor. No. I am planning to stay right by your side for ever and ever. The moment I saw you I knew you were the man for me. I am going to ask Emiliano for a divorce straight away. Well soon, after more loving from my man.”

What did she say? Did she say divorce?

“You’re married?” I asked.

“I told you. That useless idiot of a husband. He doesn’t need me and I don’t want to be around when his fellow drug lords bump each other off.”

“His fellow drug lords?”

Wait, wait a minute. What was that on the news yesterday? The drug baron who has come to the Caribbean?

“Your husband is . . .Emiliano Montoya?”

“That’s him and it’s only a matter of time before the Americans arrest him or someone in the cartel shoots him.”

Just then there was a knock at the door.

“Have you ordered breakfast?” asked Lucianna. “Just coffee and orange juice for me and perhaps a slice of wholemeal toast.”

“I haven’t ordered breakfast” I said.

“I hope it isn’t Emiliano. He isn’t at his best in the mornings, it might be better for me to see him later. Wait, don’t let him know I’m here!”

With that she jumped out of the bed and ran to the bathroom in a blur of nakedness. I watched her as I pulled on a robe and went to answer the door and she whispered frantically “don’t let him in!”

I opened the door not really expecting the apparently famous drug dealer but standing there was a smartly dressed Hispanic man. He wore a smart jacket and shirt, in fact his outfit was remarkably similar to the clothes that Ralph was now wearing.

“Senor,” said the man politely. He had a huge moustache and a swarthy pockmarked complexion and said that he was sorry to be bothering me.

“I had something of an altercation with my wife last night, Lucianna, and the staff mentioned that you had a drink with her at the bar last night. She has a terrible temper but she usually calms down quickly and comes back to me. Last night she didn’t so naturally I’m a little worried. Is she with you, senor?”

“With me?” I put on my best surprised look. “Oh no. I did have a drink with her, at the bar. She might have mentioned something about an argument, I don’t remember.”

“Did you have dinner with her?”

“Dinner?”

“Yes, but please don’t misunderstand me senor, I am not angry or hurt. I want the best for Lucianna, always. She is a headstrong woman and we have many arguments but of course, when she comes back, I will love her all the more. She is the love of my life.”

I was really just thinking about what to say next when the bathroom door opened and Lucianna stormed out in a robe screaming and shouting in Spanish. After a great monologue which went on for quite a while she reverted to English and started again;

“The love of your life? The love of your life. That’s fine, that’s rich coming from a bum like you. Did you say that to that woman in the bar in Los Angeles? What about that other whore, the one who you say comes only to clean your house?”

With that she screamed and set about the man slapping and punching him. He grabbed her arms and threw her onto the bed. He slapped her hard and she fell back, momentarily quiet.

“This is how you repay me? I work my fingers to the bone; I risk life and limb to earn us a good living and I find you in the bedroom of this gringo!”

Montoya turned to me -the gringo- I suppose.

“And what have you to say senor, stealing my wife, seducing her?”

I didn’t have to do much seducing but I didn’t say that and then as I stood there, slightly stunned, Montoya opened his jacket and produced a pistol. Lucianna screamed and made a grab for the gun but he caught her with a huge back handed slap and she fell back on the bed. All I could think of then in my terrified state was to shout for Ralph.

“Ralph, Ralph!” I called, hoping that perhaps my genie could save me and just then Emiliano and his wife froze. I stepped back in amazement and suddenly there was Ralph.

“George, what on earth is happening?”

“Genie, Ralph, you’ve got to do something. This maniac is trying to kill me!”

“Times change but people do not. Men fighting over women, women fighting over men. I’ve seen it all before, a thousand times over.”

“Ralph, you’ve got to help me.”

“George what can I do?”

“I wish, I wish everything was back to how it was before. .”

Wait a minute George, calm down. Do I really mean that? I was scared for a minute but now, perhaps I just need a minute to get myself together.

Anyway, it was too late. I opened my eyes and I was lying on the beach. I jumped straight up and saw my bag and towel were still there and the sea was just as blue as it was yesterday. I ran towards it and jumped in. I swam for a while just to freshen myself up and then came back to the sand and dried myself with the towel. Wow, what a dream! I took a bottle of water from my bag and drank it all down. I stood there for a minute and took in the birds and the waves and the chatter of people further down. I found myself looking down for the genie’s bottle but this time I couldn’t see it.

Later, back at the hotel I called down and booked a table for dinner then took a shower and dressed. In the bar I was told that my table would be ready in a few minutes so I ordered a gin and tonic. Just then a really lovely woman came in. She was wearing a flowery sort of dress and had dark hair. It looked as though she was wanting a table for dinner too. She ordered a drink and smiled at me and for a moment it looked as though she recognised me from somewhere. Lovely as she was, I didn’t know her. I wanted to talk to her but I wasn’t sure what to say. She smiled again and came over.

“Sorry to bother you” she said. “Do you happen to be a writer, an internet writer?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I am.”

“I think I’ve read your blogs. The Left-Handed Blogger? Is that you?”

I laughed. “Yes, I’ve never been recognised before. How did you know it was me?”

“You have a little picture on your page.”

“That picture is ancient and it looks nothing like me.”

“It was just the way you were standing, just like in the picture. I usually read your blog every week but last week there wasn’t one.”

“Yes, I’ve had a few problems lately with the blog.”

“What sort of problems?”

“Well,” I took a sip from my drink and the waiter came over to say my table was ready.

“Would you care to join me and I’ll tell you all about it?”

“Well,” she said. “I am hungry . .”

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Three Reads from My Holiday Book Bag

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s always good to slip out of the pool, dry yourself off and then relax in the sun with a really good book. Here are three of my latest holiday reads. (try the video version by clicking here!)

The Thief, His Wife And The Canoe

I first heard about this story on the TV news many years ago. I’d mostly forgotten about it until recently when there was an ITV drama based on the story. This was the book version and even though the story is fascinating, the book, written by a newspaper journalist wasn’t that gripping.

Essentially, John Darwin was facing bankruptcy after getting hugely overreached on a series of buy to let mortgages. He decided that the only way out was to fake his own death and cash in on some life insurance policies. His wife apparently tried to talk him out of the idea but John, a dominating and overpowering personality, went ahead and faked his own death. Amazingly he even went back to live with his wife, sometimes having to retreat to the bedsits next door when any friends or family came to visit. He arranged a false passport using a method explained in the book ‘Day of the Jackal’ by Frederick Forsyth and then the two, Darwin and his wife, planned to buy property in Panama and live a new life. Later, Darwin decided he wanted to return to the UK under his own name by posing as someone who had suffered with amnesia and in fact one day he disposed of his fake passport, walked into a police station and told them ‘I’ve lost my memory!’

Journalist David Leigh tracked down Darwin’s wife in Panama and managed to extract the entire story from her before she returned to the UK to face imprisonment along with John.

The result is interesting but not really a great read as perhaps the author is more used to newspaper stories rather than an entire book. Either way, it kept me interested for quite a few days.

Death of a President

I’ve read this book before many years ago but even so I thought I’d throw it in the motorhome and give it another read. The President’s widow, Mrs Jackie Kennedy asked the author, William Manchester to write the book so there would be one authorised record of what happened in Dallas when President Kennedy was assassinated. The result is a record, in fact a micro record of what happened to Kennedy and those around him, beginning a few days before the assassination and ending with his funeral and the shooting of his assassin by another assassin.

For me, who has been interested in the JFK assassination since at least 1968 when his brother, Robert Kennedy was also murdered and I was 12 years old, it’s a fascinating record. Others might think perhaps that the author has spread his research too far, that we are not interested in what the President’s pilot thought or did or how the honour guard prepared for the President’s funeral and how the President’s sister or brother-in-law reacted.

Anyway as a passionate JFK researcher, a couple of things stood out. One was a time chart that showed that JFK was shot at 12:30 and that at 12:31 and a half, motorcycle cop Marion Baker intercepted Lee Oswald, the supposed assassin, on the second floor lunchroom of the Texas School Book Depository calmly drinking a coke. That meant that Lee had, in 90 seconds, hidden his Mannlicher Carcano rifle on the 6th floor and got himself down to the second floor to meet Baker. Did he shoot the President or was he in the lunchroom all the time?

Here’s another thing. In one of my favourite JFK assassination books, Best Evidence, author David Lifton reckons that sometime between leaving Dallas and arriving at Andrews Airforce base in Washington, JFK’s body was somehow removed from his coffin and transferred to a body bag and then helicoptered to Bethesda naval base where work was done on the body prior to it being seen by the official autopsy staff. In Death of a President, William Manchester says that Mrs Kennedy spent all her time sitting near to the casket on Airforce One with many of JFK’s team of assistants and secret service personnel. So how was Kennedy’s body removed without anyone knowing?

OK, I’ve gone off into the realm of JFK assassination folklore there but to get back to normality, this was a very well researched book and gives a massively detailed look at the events surrounding a tragic day. If anything, the detail is perhaps a little too much and I could sort of imagine it as a feature film using that split screen effect that you often saw in the 1970s; Kennedy getting into the limo side by side with a shot of the assassin getting ready and so on.

Verdict; an absorbing read, very detailed.

Blue Angel: The Life of Marlene Dietrich by Donald Spoto

This was a very compelling read, a biography of Marlene Deitrich who to be fair, I didn’t know much about until this book.

Marlene was one of those people perhaps born at the wrong time. Today might be a better time for her when lifestyles of gay and lesbian people are not so much of an issue.

Marlene rose to prominence in the film world of Germany between the world wars. She was married to assistant director Rudolf Sieber and together they had a child, Maria. The couple had what we might call an open marriage and Marlene had various partners, both male and female and her husband too found himself another love. A big hit for Marlene was her performance as Lola Lola in The Blue Lamp, directed by Josef Von Sternberg in 1930. Shortly afterwards Marlene and Von Sternberg moved to Hollywood and the two made a series of films for Paramount. While she was away from Germany the Nazis rose to power. Goebbels himself asked her to come back and work in German films but when she declined, the Nazi party rejected her. Marlene became a naturalised American and even entertained the troops -the allied troops during World War II.

She had affairs with both men and women and at one point even began to wear male oriented clothes and once she was denied entry into a Paris night club for wearing trousers.

She was extremely concerned with how she looked in films and always arranged with the lighting crew for a key light to illuminate her face in a particular way, many times even bypassing the director. Alfred Hitchcock for one was not amused.

When the film work fizzled out she reinvented herself as a performer with a one woman show in Las Vegas. The clothes and lighting she organised herself, in fact at home she even had a special key light, just as she specified for her films, that she would stand under when she met journalists and even her friends.

She was always there to help her friends and still stayed close to her husband and his partner. If friends were sick or even just down, Marlene would come round and clean up and make food. She was not only a famous and beautiful star but also a proud hausfrau.

The book opens with her appearing in a short sequence in her very last film, which incidentally starred pop star David Bowie. She performed for the camera perfectly, only one take was required, then she returned to her Paris apartment and except for hospital and doctors’ appointments, she never left again until her death in 1992.

Not the best film book I’ve ever read but still an informative and intriguing read.

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Titanic

Posted on by Steve Higgins

The story of the Titanic, the ship that hit an iceberg and sank in 1912, is one of those stories which seems to be forever in the news. It’s a story that has caught the imagination of pretty much everyone. Even the other day, just scrolling through the BBC news page, I came across an item about some new digital scan of the Titanic wreck which revealed new information about the disaster.

This week I thought I’d take a look at the story of the Titanic and how it has been represented by television and film, well at least the TV shows and films that made an imopression on me, as well as the actual story of the tragedy.

The Titanic was designed to be the new premier ship of the White Star Line. It had been built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast and built alongside its sister ship the Olympic and was launched on the 31st May 1911 and was then towed to another berth where its engines and superstructure was installed as well as its majestic interior. The sea trials of the ship were undertaken on the 2nd April 1912 just eight days prior to leaving Southampton on its maiden voyage. The Titanic was the largest ship in the world and advertised as having the passenger accommodation of ‘unrivalled extent and magnificence’. It was also billed as unsinkable even though a few days into its first journey it would end up at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Titanic on Television.

The Time Tunnel

The Time Tunnel was a sci-fi series created by Irwin Allen in the 1960s. The best episode in the series was probably the very first one. A US senator has come to take a look at a secret time travel project and see if the huge amounts of money being spent are justified. Scientist Tony Newman, fearful that the project will be cancelled, decides to trial the new Time Tunnel apparatus and send himself back in time. He activates everything and transports himself back in time arriving in 1912 on board the  Titanic.

His colleague, Doug Phillips also goes back to the same time zone to rescue Tony. The captain of the Titanic naturally doesn’t believe his ship is doomed to sink and back in the Time Tunnel control room the technical staff have a bit of a problem bringing the two scientists back to the present (actually 1968) but manage to transfer them to another time zone and so the scene is set for the subsequent adventures.

The Titanic at the Cinema.

A Night to Remember (1958)

I’ve always liked this film. It starred Kenneth Moore as the Titanic’s second officer, Charles Lightoller, and was based on a book about the disaster. The film was released in 1958 and tells the usual story about the sinking. The ship sets off but during the journey the overworked telegraph officers fail to pass on a warning about icebergs. The ship hits the iceberg and sinks. Despite a limited budget and only 1950s era special effects, A Night to Remember is actually a really good film.

Raise the Titanic (1980)

This was a film produced by TV mogul Lew Grade who was wanting to move his TV production company ITC Entertainment into the world of cinema. He had read the original book and thought that it might be possible to make a film series about US government operative Dirk Pitt in the manner of the Bond series.

In the film Dirk Pitt played by Richard Jordan proposes a salvage operation for the Titanic as he is convinced an American named Brewster had discovered a rare radioactive element called Byzanium which was stowed in wooden shipping boxes aboard the Titanic.

A huge undersea search takes place and the Titanic is ultimately found and raised. The Byzanium is not found aboard though although it does finally emerge in a neat twist at the end.

I’ve always enjoyed Raise the Titanic. It was based on a bestselling book by Clive Cussler although the film did not emulate the book’s success.

A great deal of the budget for the film was used to create a 50 foot model which was filmed at a huge water tank at the Mediterranean Film Studios in Malta. Apparently the three million pound model remains there today rusting away although the water tank is in regular use.

Not long after the film was made the real Titanic was located and it was confirmed the ship had broken up and was lying on the sea bed in two separate sections.

Titanic (1997)

Titanic was written and directed by James Cameron. The main thrust of the story is about two passengers from wildly different social classes who fall in love on the ship although one, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, dies in the disaster and the other played by Kate Winslet survives.

A treasure hunter (Bill Paxton) and his salvage team explore the wreck of the Titanic looking for a famous necklace, the Heart of the Ocean. They discover a safe which they bring to the surface to find it only contains a sketch of an unknown woman. After it is featured on TV the woman comes forward and tells the story of meeting Jack Dawson (DiCaprio) and of course of the sinking of the Titanic.

Director Cameron and his producers built a huge outdoor set in Playas de Rosarito in Mexico with uninterrupted views of the ocean and a water tank in which the Titanic set could be tilted to film the sinking scenes. Overall, the production cost was over 200 million dollars making it the most expensive film of all time. Happily for the producers, it also became the highest grossing film of all time until the release of Avatar, another film written and directed by Cameron.

The Novel

Dreaming a story and making it into a novel or a screenplay sounds pretty fantastic but in 1898 an American writer, Morgan Robertson, wrote a story about an unsinkable ship called the Titan which sailed from England to the USA but during the journey hit an iceberg and sank. The story was published fourteen years before the Titanic disaster. I remember reading the story of this writer years ago, even that the writer saw the story played out in front of him like a movie but all the research I did on the internet for this blog seems to imply that the author was a man who knew his business where ships were concerned, felt that ships were getting bigger and bigger and that a disaster like that of the Titanic was inevitable.

Books

I only have one book in my collection about the Titanic. It’s a big glossy picture book, not about the actual ship, but about the shooting of James Cameron’s film. It documents Cameron’s twelve dives in a tiny submersible which gave him the idea of the treasure hunters looking to find the necklace the ‘Heart of the Ocean’ and his realisation as Cameron himself mentions in the book’s foreword that the main thrust of the story should be a love story with the Titanic disaster almost as a backdrop.

The book tells about the numerous models that were built of the ship both as a pristine sea going vessel and as an underwater wreck. The making of the full size set in Mexico which could be dropped via hydraulic pistons into a huge water tank was an immense undertaking and adds immeasurably to the finished film.

So what actually happened to the Titanic?

The Titanic was on its maiden voyage to the USA. It left Southampton on the 10th April 1912 and stopped at Cherbourg in France to pick up more passengers before heading out across the Atlantic to New York. Four days into the voyage it hit an iceberg. Lookouts had been sent aloft to look for icebergs but their task was difficult. It was a moonless night and pitch black. The sea was very calm which meant that the lookouts could not see waves crashing against the icebergs that they had been warned to look out for. When an iceberg was finally spotted the lookouts rang down to the bridge. The officers there ordered the ship to turn hard to port. Some reports say that the engine room was ordered to stop engines which would not have helped the turn. Either way the ship brushed the iceberg and the resulting contact made a gash along the side of the ship and water rushed in.

The ship had been designed to stay afloat with four of her watertight compartments flooded but it could not stay afloat with the flooding of six. Interestingly the compartments were not sealed at the top so that when one flooded, the water tipped over into the next and so on until the ship sank.

The bow of the Titanic courtesy Wikipedia Commons

In another documentary I watched a few years ago a theory was put forward that the three million rivets that held the steel plates of the ship together were made of poor grade metal which became brittle in the freezing sea water. When the ship impacted the iceberg, the heads of the rivets popped off and sea water flooded inbetween the steel plates of the hull.

RMS Carpathia arrived about an hour and a half after the sinking and rescued all of the 710 survivors by 09:15 on 15 April. More than 1500 people died in the freezing waters of the Atlantic.

Titanic in the News.

As I mentioned earlier, the Titanic was in the news again when a new 3d scan of the wreckage of the Titanic was revealed.

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Texting and my Brother

Posted on by Steve Higgins

My brother died this week. As you can imagine I’m pretty upset. He was the younger brother so the accepted plan was for me to die first but somehow, things didn’t work out that way. Still, to a certain extent my brother was a burger and pizza eating TV watching couch potato so perhaps him dropping dead like that was not really unexpected. He was a guy that I sometimes wanted to slap and tell him to sort himself out, to clean his flat up and wash the pots and hoover up and get himself off his lazy backside and get a job or do some training or something.

Once I made him a huge roast beef Sunday lunch. I had done loads of food so I plated up an extra portion and told him  to ‘slap this in the microwave and eat it tomorrow’. I called him the next day to remind him. ‘Remember’, I said. ‘You’ve still got that roast dinner in your fridge. Slap it in the microwave tonight.’

‘Oh that’, he said, dismissively. I ate that last night when I got home!’

Despite all that, despite him spending money recklessly, buying numerous leather jackets from catalogues, getting into debt and going everywhere in taxis and eating takeaways when he could have saved money by eating sensibly and eating healthily, Colin, my brother, was a latter day Oscar Madison (remember the Odd Couple) who was happy doing nothing but watching television and old films day after day and paying for the top satellite channels when he had no money. Despite all that and owing money left right and centre, he was my best friend and I loved him and miss him so much.

This next section is something I wrote about him a few years ago. Just reading it brought back our friendship so fully that I almost picked up my phone and texted him there and then.

I’ve written about my mother and father in my blog posts so perhaps it’s about time I wrote about the one remaining family member, my brother. My brother Colin lives in Manchester and we see each other every couple of weeks or so when we meet up in the city centre for a pint or two.

My brother Colin is a very subtle character. He won’t ask me outright if I fancy a pint with him, he’ll tend to text me and his text will usually go something like this:

Meatballs!

You’re probably thinking, now that is subtle; is it a code? No, but the correct answer is this:

Definitely!

Still completely in the dark? Well, I suppose you might not be classic movie fans like Colin and me because a lot of the time we text in movie dialogue.

My brother sent me a text a few days ago; it read simply ‘You don’t remember me do you?’

Probably a little confusing to the man on the street but I knew exactly what he meant. I responded with; ‘I remembered you the moment I saw you!’

My brother came back straight away; ‘by the nose huh?’

Yes, texting in movie dialogue is what we do. Picked up on the movie yet? That particular movie is one of the movie greats of all time. It starred Marlon Brando in an Oscar-winning performance, much better, much more exciting and above all, much more human than his other Oscar-winning role in The Godfather.

Here are some more texts

ME: Do you remember parochial school out on Puluski Street? Seven, eight years ago?

MY BROTHER: You had wires on your teeth and glasses. Everything.

ME: You was really a mess.

The movie was ‘On the Waterfront’ and it’s probably famous for the double act of Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger playing brothers but there are plenty of other wonderful performances and scenes. My personal favourite is when Brando and Eva Marie Saint walk together in the park and Eva drops a glove which Brando picks up but keeps hold of and eventually pulls onto his own hand and we know that Eva wants it back. The dialogue above comes round about here when Brando, playing the part of Terry Malloy, realises he knew Edie, played by Eva Marie Saint at school. He is trying to communicate with her in his oafish way and Edie begins to realise she actually likes him but, well watch the movie, believe me it’s a great scene. It finishes like this:

MY BROTHER: I can get home all right now, thanks.

ME: Don’t get sore. I was just kidding you a little bit.

I read somewhere that Elvis knew all the dialogue from Rebel Without a Cause, the James Dean movie. If so, my brother Colin and I are in good company because we know the dialogue from that film too, as well as Giant and the aforementioned On the Waterfront. One day I thought I’d try a quote on Colin that he would never get.

ME: I took everything out of that car except the rocker panels!

I sent the text off feeling pretty pleased with myself. He’ll never get that in a million years I thought. My phone bleeped a moment later and I looked down to see:

MY BROTHER:  C’mon Herb, what the hell’s that?

Top marks indeed if you remember that dialogue from The French Connection.

My brother and I do text each other a lot but we also chat on the phone too. The thing is though; we talk on the phone with East European accents. We started doing it one day then began a sort of unspoken contract to carry it on. Sometimes I’ll get a call and he might say, in his best Hungarian accent ‘ Gut Evenink my friend’

‘Gut evenink to you also my friend’ I tend to reply.

East European is the norm but sometimes we use German accents. Handy when we bounce quotes from The Great Escape off each other!

Me: I hear your German is good, and also your French . .

My Brother: Your hands UP!

The Great Escape is a firm TV movie favourite but let me finish with a 60’s classic we also frequently text about:

Me: She’s in beautiful condition!

My Brother: Blimey girl, you’re not as ugly as I thought!

Me: I saw that geezer Humphrey going off. You’re not having it off with him are you?

My Brother: I tumbled at once. Never be cheerful when you’re working a fiddle!

Me: I ain’t got my peace of mind. And if you ain’t got that, you ain’t got nothing.

My brother: It seems to me that if they ain’t got you one way, they’ve got you another.

Got the picture yet? The film is Alfie. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert who also directed some of the earlier Bond films. The script was written by Bill Naughton and adapted from his own book and play. Alfie is a fascinating film on many levels. It’s a peek back at the swinging sixties; it explores the elements of comedy versus drama, something I’ve always loved and which I looked at a while ago in a post about the TV show MASH. The film features great performances from all the principal and supporting actors. One fabulous feature is how Alfie talks directly to the camera and sometimes even says things that directly contradict something he is doing or saying to another character. In the opening sequence, Michael Caine as Alfie, addresses the audience and tells them not to expect any titles. There are none, except for the film title itself and the closing credits which feature photos of the cast and crew.

Many actors turned down the chance to play Alfie on film, including Caine’s then flat mate Terence Stamp who played the part on Broadway. Laurence Harvey, James Booth and Richard Harris all turned down the role and Alfie became a breakthrough movie for Michael Caine.

Now my brother has gone it’s too late to text him one final time. If I could though I’d perhaps text him this:

So what’s the answer? That’s what I keep asking myself. What’s it all about?

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10 Classic TV Ads

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Don’t you just hate TV adverts? I certainly do. There are those times when a TV advert comes in useful I suppose. Perhaps when you are watching a good film and you need to make a cup of tea or pop to the toilet. These days in the hi tech world of TV, most people are able to pause live TV and do those things anyway. I wouldn’t mind if the TV adverts were actually worth watching but these days of course they aren’t. Anyway, here are 6 classic TV ads of yesteryear that I think are rather good. Here we go . .

1.

This is an advert for Strongbow cider featuring Johnny Vaughn, who you might remember as fronting the Channel 4 breakfast show many years ago, and Jerry Hall. Jerry was an American model and was once upon a time involved with Bryan Ferry and then Mick Jagger. It’s a fun advert that has always made me laugh.

2.

A particular favourite of mine is the Ford Puma advert from 1997 featuring Steve McQueen. McQueen of course passed away from cancer in 1969 so how did he feature in the ad? Well, filmmakers shot footage of the Ford Puma in modern San Francisco and digitally inserted McQueen into the driving seat using footage from his 1968 film Bullitt. The result was a stylish short TV ad recreating a scene from the original feature film.

3.

An old TV advert I always used to enjoy involved an old guy trying to trace a copy of a secondhand book; Fly Fishing by J R Hartley. He eventually finds a copy and the book seller asks his name. “J R Hartley” he replies. What were they advertising? Yellow Pages! Strangely enough some bright spark – actually author Michael Russell – produced a spoof book; Fly Fishing by J R Hartley which became a best seller and prompted two additional sequels.

4.

Probably the funniest classic TV ads are the ones with Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins which are promotions for Cinzano. They actually made 10 TV commercials between 1978 and 1983 which all ended with a glass of Cinzano getting spilled all over Joan.

Rossiter had a successful theatre career but is best remembered for his portrayal of the seedy landlord Rigsby in TV’s Rising Damp, still shown regularly on UK TV. Joan Collins has had a long career in TV and films including a spell in the USA starring in the TV series Dynasty. This year, 2025, she is due to portray Wallis Simpson in a new film production. Leonard Rossiter died in 1984 aged 57.

5.

A great advertising series were those for Boddingtons beer. I used to love a pint of ‘Boddies’ as we used to call it but then the brewery was taken over by another company (Whitbread, I think) and the Boddingtons bitter they produced was really not like the original Boddingtons at all. Anyway, back in the 1990s a series of adverts were produced starring Melanie Sykes speaking in a broad Manchester accent.

6.

My particular favourite Boddingtons ad was this one that starts off in Venice but ends up somewhere in Manchester.

7.

Bolton comedian Peter Kaye featured in a series of ads for John Smiths beer. Can’t say I was that keen, then or now, on John Smiths beer but the adverts were good.

8.

A great favourite for many people were the puppet ‘aliens’ used in an advert for Smash which was a powdered version of mashed potatoes. You just added liquid I presume but personally, I’m happy peeling and boiling my potatoes to make mash just as I have always done.

9.

In 2018 Elton John featured in a Christmas commercial for top end store John Lewis. According to Wikipedia there is a regular Christmas ad for the store every year. I’ve clearly missed the others but I always thought the Elton John one was pretty special.

10.

I’m going to finish with this one advertising another beer, this time Heineken. Bryan Pringle plays a sort of latter day Professor Higgins trying to teach a very well spoken lady, the exotically named Sylvestra le Touzel, to speak cockney. Bryan Pringle featured in a number of films and numerous sitcoms from the 70s to the 90s. He died in 2002.

What were your favourite TV ads?

Those were my 10 TV ads but just before I go to press I thought I’d add one final one. I know I said earlier that modern ads are just not as good these days but I recently spotted this one in which Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal were asked to recreate that famous scene from When Harry met Sally. (I’ll have what she’s having!)

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AKA (Also Known As)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This week’s post is about pseudonyms and people who use different or other names.

Lenin aka Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov

Last week in a post about Painters and Paintings, I mentioned Lenin who was the first Communist leader of the Soviet Union. In fact, it was he who created the Soviet state but his real name was not Lenin. He was born in 1870 as Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. He studied at Kazan University and later became a Marxist activist after moving to St Petersburg, later renamed Petrograd. In 1897 he was arrested and exiled to Siberia for three years. In 1903 the Russian Democratic party (later renamed the Communist Party) split into two and Lenin led the Bolsheviks against the Menshiviks. In the unsettled world of the late 19th and early 20th century, political activism in The Russian empire was a dangerous game and Ulyanov began to use a pseudonym to protect himself. The name he chose was Lenin.

After his exile ended Lenin left Russia for the relative safety of western Europe, even living in London for a time. He returned to Russia when a revolution broke out in 1905 but when that failed, he returned to Europe and continued to organise and write essays and propaganda for the Bolshevik cause.

After the revolution which toppled the Tsar, the Germans who were then at war with the European allies in the First World War, sent Lenin into Russia on a sealed train. Churchill famously commented that

“Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy.”

Lenin was welcomed in Russia as the leader of the Bolsheviks and was helped by Stalin to escape the forces of the provisional government controlled by Alexander Kerensky. The Bolsheviks however soon engineered a second revolution; the provisional government was overthrown and Kerensky, his brief entry into history over, had to flee.

Lenin presided over the new government. He made peace with Germany despite having to negotiate away a huge swathe of land to the Kaiser’s Germany. He waged a civil war within Russia against those who tried to restore the Tsar. He renamed his party the Communist party.

In 1921 Lenin became ill, finally dying in January of 1924. In his last days he tried to remove Stalin from power but failed.

Stalin aka Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili

James Abbe, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Stalin was born into a poor peasant family in Georgia in 1878. Later he became a bank robber, providing funds for Lenin and the Bolshevik party. He was born Joseph Vissarionovich  Dzhugashvili and like Lenin, adopted a pseudonym. The name Stalin came from the Russian word for Steel and is often said to mean ‘man of steel’. In his early days as a Bolshevik, Stalin robbed banks to fund the revolution. Later, Stalin organised and edited Bolshevik newspapers for Lenin and Lenin promoted him to the party’s central committee in 1912.

When Lenin died, Stalin took control of Lenin’s funeral and began to cultivate a cult of personality around himself, gradually removing all those who opposed him on the central committee. After expelling Leon Trotsky who was exiled and later deported in 1929, Stalin was unopposed as the supreme leader. His regime oversaw mass repression with millions consigned to forced labour in the Gulag camp system and others who Stalin perceived as threats, imprisoned or murdered in his purges.

Stalin died in 1953. After collapsing, he was discovered by his security staff who were too scared to approach him at first. Later they moved him to a couch thinking the heavy drinking dictator might have been drunk. He died on the 6th March and later Khrushchev emerged as the new Soviet leader.

Trotsky aka Lev Davidovich Bronstein

By Isaac McBride – Barbarous Soviet Russia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3363312

Trotsky was another Bolshevik who used a pseudonym. He was the creator of the Red Army and the man Lenin thought would be a good successor. He, like Lenin and Stalin, suffered exile to Siberia and later met Lenin in London where he worked on the party newspaper. He returned to Russia in 1917 and became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. After the Bolsheviks took power Lenin appointed Trotsky to the post of foreign minister, later becoming the Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs. He built up the Red Army and led it to victory in the civil war.

After Lenin’s death Trotsky was sidelined by Stalin and expelled from the Communist party and later from Russia itself. He finally settled in Mexico until his murder by Stalin’s agents in 1940.

Elton John aka Reg Dwight

That’s enough Soviet history for now so let’s move swiftly on to the music business. Reginald Dwight was born on the 25th March 1947. He lived in Pinner in Middlesex with his mother and father, Stanley and Sheila, although they divorced when Reg was 14.

Something that had a big effect on the young Reginald was his parents’ love of music. He began tapping out tunes on his grandmother’s piano and the age of 11 won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music.

At the age of 15 Reg got himself a job playing the piano at the local pub and in 1962 he and some friends formed a small band called Bluesology and they soon picked up a regular gig supporting singer Long John Baldry.

In 1967 Reg answered an advertisement in the New Musical Express. It had been placed by Liberty Records who were looking for new talent. Reg went to audition for the A & R manager, Ray Williams but Ray appeared to be unimpressed when Reg sang an old Jim Reeves hit and by way of ending the interview Ray handed Reg a sheaf of unopened lyrics written by someone who had answered the same ad.

That someone was Bernie Taupin. He and Reg hit it off instantly and Reg began writing music to Bernie’s lyrics. Six months later Reg changed his name. He took his new name from Bluesology bandmates Elton Dean and Long John Baldry and put them together to become Elton John.

In 1969 Elton’s album Empty Sky became a minor hit and was followed by the eponymous Elton John in 1970. ‘Your Song’, a single from the album went to number 7 in the UK singles chart and Elton John had arrived.

Archie Leach aka Cary Grant

Grant was born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England in 1904. He had a poor upbringing and his mother suffered from depression and his father was an alcoholic. The young Archie was interested in the theatre and performing and his mother was keen on him having piano lessons. His older brother had died before reaching the age of one and this perhaps made his mother a little over protective of the young Archie. Even so, his mother was not a woman who was able to give or receive love easily and the older Cary Grant blamed his childhood relationship with his mother for his problems with women in later life.

When Archie was 9 years old his father placed his mother in Glenside Hospital, a mental institution, telling his son that she had gone away on a long holiday and later, that she had died.

Archie befriended a group of acrobatic dancers known as The Penders and he was able to eventually join them and there he trained as a stilt walker and became part of their act. Later the group toured America and Archie decided to stay, following in the footsteps of others before him like Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel who had made their way to the USA in an almost identical way.

On Wikipedia they mention that on the trip over to the USA, Archie met Douglas Fairbanks and was greatly impressed by him, so much so that Fairbanks became a role model for the young Archie Leach.

In New York Archie worked in vaudeville with various comedy and theatrical groups. He joined the William Morris theatrical agency and began to pick up many theatre roles. In 1932 he had his first screen test and was given a five year contract with Paramount Pictures. B P Schulberg the general manager of Paramount decided that Archie Leach was not a good enough name for films so Archie came up with the name Cary Grant taking Cary from a stage character he had played and Grant chosen randomly from a telephone directory.

Cary Grant retired from acting in 1966 when his only daughter was born. He died in 1986 aged 82.

Ayrton Senna aka Ayrton Da Silva

It might come as a surprise to many to learn that the legendary racing driver Ayrton Senna did not use his real name. Instead, he chose to race under his mother’s maiden name, Senna. He decided to use the name Senna as in Brazil, his home country, Da Silva is a very common name and Ayrton hoped the use of Senna would make him stand out and be more recognisable in the world of motor sport.

Ayrton Senna in the McLaren Mp4/4 in 1988. Photo by the author

Ayrton was born and raised in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo. He was born in 1960 and began racing karts at the age of 13. After twice finishing as runner up in the world kart championships Ayrton moved to Europe to compete in Formula Ford and later Formula 3. It was quite an achievement for the young Brazilian. He spoke little English and he and his wife were fishes out of water in the UK. Only his massive desire to succeed and to make it into Formula One kept him going. Alas his young wife was not up to the challenge and returned to Brazil.

Senna went on to enter Formula 1 and with the McLaren F1 team he won all of his three world championships fighting constantly with his great rivals Alain Prost and Nigel Mansell. He was killed on the 1st of May 1994 at the San Marino Grand Prix in Italy after leaving McLaren for the Williams team. He crashed at the Tamburello corner when he hit the concrete wall there and a suspension arm, forced back in the impact pierced his most vulnerable area, the visor of his crash helmet.

T E Lawrence aka John Hume Ross and T E Shaw

By Unknown author – pavellas.blogspot.com, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7367070

Thomas Edward Lawrence is a fascinating character. He was a British army officer and writer best known for his role in the Arab Revolt during the First World War. He became known to the public through a series of film presentations by writer and documentary film maker Lowell Thomas.

After the war Lawrence tried to vanish into anonymity by joining the RAF as an aircraftsman using the alias of JH Ross. Later when his real identity was exposed he left the RAF and joined the army using the alias TE Shaw. He was unhappy in the army and was eventually readmitted to the RAF.

His account of his work in the Arab Revolt was published in his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Lawrence actually lost his manuscript at one point and was forced to reconstruct the entire book. Later, the book was used as the basis for the film Lawrence of Arabia starring Peter O Toole as Lawrence. A stage play was also written about him by Terrence Rattigan titled Ross which explored Lawrence’s alleged homosexuality. Alec Guinness featured in the play in the title role as Ross/Lawrence.

On the 13th May 1935 Lawrence was severely injured in a motorcycle accident and died six days later on the 19th May.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the source information.

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