RIP Les Reed

Les Reed, the songwriter behind Tom Jones' classic hits Delilah and It's Not Unusual, has died at the age of 83.

Les Reed, pictured with unlikely Adidas poster boy Tom Jones

Reed had been the pianist with The John Barry Seven and the conductor of his own orchestra but it's his incredible catalogue of 60+ hit songs that he'll perhaps be best remembered for. Here's just a few examples of those chart toppers;

Reed's songs were recorded by artistes ranging from big American stars like Elvis, The Carpenters and Bing Crosby to homegrown talents like Kathy Kirby, Lulu and Des O'Connor. He wrote the scores for the films Girl on a Motorcycle, The Bushbaby, One More Time, George and Mildred, Creepshow 2 and Parting Shots and he was also responsible for co-writing the 1967 novelty song Who's Doctor Who by then Doctor Who actor Frazer Hines and the B-Side to Leeds United's 1972 Cup Final single, Leeds! Leeds! Leeds! Better known as Marching Together, it's a song still sung by supporters of the club on the terraces both home and away to this day.

RIP

RIP Sandy Ratcliff

Sandy Ratcliff, the former EastEnders actress and star of Ken Loach's 1971 film Family Life has died at the age of seventy.

Born in London on October 2, 1950, Sandy Ratcliff seemed destined for a troubled and turbulent life. Expelled from Grammar School at the age of 12, Ratcliff began a relationship with drugs as a teenager, smoking and eventually supplying cannabis, which earned her some time in prison. After stints as a waitress, DJ and guitarist in two rock groups, she found some acclaim as a model, touted by photographer Lord Snowden as 'The Face of the 70s'. 

However it was acting that she became famous for. She took the lead role of Janice, a schizophrenic young woman, in Ken Loach's 1971 film Family Life, and went on to appear in films like The Final Programme, Yesterday's Hero, Hussy and Radio On, as well as TV programmes such as ITV soap opera Crossroads. But her biggest role was as one of the original cast members in another soap, the BBC's EastEnders. As Sue Osman, Ratcliff appeared in the very first episode in 1985 and played the part of the cafe owner until 1989 when she was sacked due to her addiction to heroin. In her four years on the soap she took centre stage in big issue-led storylines such as cot death, adultery and mental illness. 

Ill health and personal problems were something that dogged Ratcliff after leaving EastEnders, battling both cancer and drugs and hitting the headlines for providing a false alibi for her boyfriend Michael Shorey, who was subsequently sentenced to two life sentences for the murder of two women. Acting work dried up beyond appearances in Maigret and a couple of TV plays and, at some stage, Ratcliff retrained as a counsellor but had retired by the 2010. It was also revealed by the tabloids that she was living on disability benefit of just £70 per week. In her final years Ratcliff lived in sheltered accommodation and it was here that her body was found on the morning of 7th April, 2019. An inquest at Poplar Coroner's Court has been adjourned, pending tests, until October.

RIP

Noah's Castle (1980)

Mention Britain in the 1970s to anyone and you'll invariably get the same responses of 'winter of discontent', 'Dennis Healey going cap in hand to the IMF', 'streets piled high with rubbish because of council strikes' and 'gravediggers refusing to bury the dead'. These perceptions of the 1970s have become folkloric, leaving many to believe that British society was on the brink of collapse under Jim Callaghan's Labour government. Never mind that economic growth, at 2.4%, would go on to stay at exactly the same level in Thatcher's Britain of the 1980s, the 1970s is considered to be the sick decade.

It's this notion that clearly informed author John Rowe Townsend who, in 1975, wrote a book set in the near future that posits the notion of what could happen should the UK succumb to runaway inflation, critical food shortages and the breakdown of law and order. His book, telling the story of a family whose social conscience is tested to the limit by this situation when their overbearing father begins to hoard provisions in his cellar and hole the family up until they are safely through the crisis, was entitled Noah's Castle and it was subsequently adapted for television five years later.  For children. That's right - Noah's Castle, with its heavy themes of social and economic collapses, is a story children.

Adapted for the screen by Nick McCarty and produced and directed by Colin Nutley, the beauty of this eight-part drama series is that it makes no concessions to being mere children's entertainment, coming as it does from an era that understood that a programme principally featuring children needn't be childish. There's a commitment on display both in front of and behind the camera that would make your average socially aware post watershed drama envious. There's no tipping the wink, no 'it's alright kiddies really, we're only playing' glint in the eye from a cast that includes craggy faced David Neal as the stern patrician and ex-soldier Norman Mortimer (imagine a scrotum with military bearing), future EastEnder Mike Reid as a menacingly softly spoken cockney heavy and black marketeer, Alun Lewis as a charming anarchist, Christopher Fairbank as a morally conscientious food bank organiser and Simon Gipps-Kent as our lead, Mortimer's defiant son, Barry. 

Equally, there's no quarter given in the disturbing, distinctly adult themes that are present in the storyline; when Mortimer takes in his former employer, the snobbish and wily Mr Gerald (the fruity-voiced Jack May), the selfish old bastard not only starts to manipulate Mortimer's forelock-tugging nature by blackmailing him to keep him in the manner in which he's accustomed to, he also makes it very plain that he means to have Mortimer's teenage daughter, Nessie (Annette Ekblom who at the time was married to co-star Alun Lewis who plays her drop-out boyfriend) and expects Mortimer to pimp her out to him - something which Mortimer agrees to do. This theme of sexual bartering in a broken society is also suggested by Michèle Winstanley, who plays a teenage friend of Barry's, who at one point laments that she's not pretty enough to entice shopkeepers to provide her with the food she's so desperate for. 

If watched a couple of years ago, Noah's Castle would have been little more than a fun dystopic runaround that played on the fears of late '70s Britain. Watched now, this story of suspicion and selfishness, of shops and shelves left bare, of food banks facing incredibly high demands they cannot hope to meet, of looting and rioting in the streets and the heavy hand of martial law, feels increasingly like a primer for life in Britain under a hard Brexit.

It has a great theme tune from Jugg Music too.

Wordless Wednesday: Face in the Crowd

RIP Shane Rimmer

Gutted to hear that Shane Rimmer, an actor who - if you grew up in the UK at any time in the 60s, 70s and 80s - has been such a part of all our lives, has passed away at the age of 89.

Canadian born Rimmer's most iconic role was one that only required his vocal talents, namely that of Scott Tracy in Thunderbirds, but he was instantly recognisable for several supporting roles in some of cinema's biggest franchises; Star Wars, Superman, Batman, and a total of three James Bond movies, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds are Forever, and The Spy Who Loved Me. Other film credits included Gandhi, Rollerball (pictured above), Doctor Strangelove, Reds, Out of Africa and Dark Shadows, whilst he appeared in TV dramas like Doctor Who, Coronation Street, Dockers, and the controversial 1977 April's Fools joke (which actually aired in June that year!) Alternative 3, a cod-science documentary about the 'brain drain' which revealed that the elite of society had actually left the soon-to-be-destroyed earth for a new life in space, that continues to resonate among conspiracy theorists to this day.

RIP

Possum (2018)

Possum is the feature length directorial debut of writer and actor Matthew Holness. I've been a big fan of Holness' work for years now - not just Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace but his previous directorial efforts like A Gun For George and The Snipist - and, as a result, I wasn't as thrown by his choice to play things so ickily straight as he does here as others who are only familiar with his spoof (but admittedly dark) comedy may have been. Possum is as creepy as fuck, but I think I'll need to watch this one again to gain a proper, greater appreciation of it.

The retro aesthetic he has always favoured, photographed with such bleak accuracy by Kit Fraser, conjures up memories of many a classic '70s PIF or horror film, and it's hard to determine just what period this film is actually set in, or indeed whether it is all set/occurring in his protagonist's Philip (played by Sean Harris with the usual gaunt and mumbling intensity) head, which is stunted to say the least. The unnerving score from the (BBC) Radiophonic Workshop also fixes the action to a bygone time that believed bright oranges and shit browns to be compatible, recalling as it does the classic era of Doctor Who, but Holness' decision to let scenes play out with little or no dialogue is also reminiscent of various expressionistic silent movies of the 1920s and '30s too.

Unfortunately these sequences can appear a little repetitive, making Possum feel rather aimless, or worse, revealing the roots of its short story origins being adapted to a full length feature. Whilst this feature is only 80 or so minutes I would imagine some restless audiences may easily tire of Harris' many wanderings of East Anglia's urban scrubland. Whilst I can appreciate the cyclical nature of the protagonist's actions from a psychological viewpoint it's worth saying that I quickly guessed the metaphorical nature of Philip's angst and concerns almost straight off the bat, so that even I, with some considerable goodwill, found the playing out of it all a little one-note. 

As the film is essentially a two-hander between Harris and a grubby, leering Alun Armstrong, this also means that there's little respite to be had here either and a desire for a long shower afterwards may be the common consensus for most viewers. Nevertheless, Possum relishes in its ability to find intelligent scares from its Freudian psychology and, in its creation of the 'possum' puppet itself, delivers something truly unsettling and nightmarish. Whilst I'm not convinced, on this first watch at least, that Possum is a success, I cannot find fault in Holness' desire to at least try something different and applaud such an experimental nature from a debut feature-length director.

Out On Blue Six: The Walker Brothers, RIP Scott Walker

Scott Walker gone. Words fail me. So I'll turn to this incredible and rather apt song, just one of many beautiful tunes he gave us

RIP

End Transmission

Bloody Sunday - Justice

Delighted to hear that the paratrooper known as 'Soldier F' will face prosecution for the murders of James Wray and William McKinney, and the attempted murders of Patrick O'Donnell, Joseph Friel, Joe Mahon and Michael Quinn, in Derry on 30th January, 1972 - Bloody Sunday. 

This great news was tempered by the fact that the PPS ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute a further 16 other soldiers and two official IRA men. The families of all thirteen casualties that day deserve justice, just as the families of the Hillsborough victims deserve justice, or the families and victims at Orgreave, whose fight is still ongoing, to name just two clear examples of injustice in our recent past.

Of course, this Tory government cannot even bring themselves to acknowledge or apologise for the deaths that occurred that day 47 years ago. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, whilst confirming that the MOD will cover all legal costs for 'Soldier F', said; "The government will urgently reform the system for dealing with legacy issues. Our serving and former personnel cannot live in constant fear of prosecution" In other words, we're going to hurriedly change the rules so the crimes we committed in the past can go unpunished and grieving families can never get justice. The Tory party, ladies and gents, in a fucking nutshell.

Wordless Wednesday: Loitering

Out On Blue Six: The Clash - Good Luck Lionesses!

I've also been remiss in not mentioning England Lionesses excellent performance thus far in the She Believes Cup out in the US. So far they've won one game (Brazil) and drew another (the US), and tonight they play Japan - which you can watch, from 10pm, on BBC4. I'm hoping for another win and a glorious goal (or goals) from Ellen White, who drew first blood scoring against Brazil last week. 

So here's a suitable track for her and the rest of the squad, to wish them well tonight. The Clash and White Riot!

Good luck ladies!

End Transmission

RIP Stanley Donen

Stanley Donen, the director of Bedazzled, one of my favourite movies, has died at the age of 94.

The former Broadway dancer will probably be best remembered for co-directing Singin' in the Rain alongside Gene Kelly, but he delivered a raft of classic old Hollywood musicals like Funny Face, On The Town, and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, smart and quirky thrillers like Charade and Arabesque and romances like Two For The Road and Indiscreet. He also made Staircase starring Richard Burton and Rex Harrison as a gay couple, and a couple of stinkers like Saturn 3 and Blame it on Rio.

He received an honorary Oscar in 1998.

RIP 

RIP Bruno Ganz

The great Swiss actor Bruno Ganz has died at the age of 77 from colon cancer.

Ganz will perhaps best be remembered for playing Hitler in the 2004 film Downfall, which many cite as the definitive portrayal of the monster. But I first come across his talents in Wim Wenders' 1977 film The American Friend (an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game) in which he played opposite Dennis Hopper. He was also the star of Wenders' much loved 1987 film Wings of Desire, and its sequel Faraway, So Close in 1993. Ganz was so feted in Germany that he was the holder of the prestigious Iffland-Ring, a prize given to the most significant and worthy German-speaking actor.

Other credits included Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampire, The Boys from Brazil, The Manchurian Candidate, The Baadar Meinhof Complex, The Reader, Unknown and The Party.

RIP

RIP Gordon Banks

The 1966 World Cup winning goalkeeper Gordon Banks has died at the age of 81.

628 appearances in a fifteen year long football league career, with 73 caps for England. A sportsman and a gentleman. A sporting great.

RIP

RIP Albert Finney

Devastated to hear that one of my cinematic heroes, Albert Finney, has died at the age of 82.

Salford born Finney shot to fame in the early 1960s, cementing a screen persona as the original (and best) angry young man in groundbreaking films like The Entertainer and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. He became synonymous with Woodfall Films and a British New Wave movement that sought to bring northern working class life to the screen as realistically as possible, and Finney was unmistakably the real deal. What Brando was doing for American cinema, Finney was doing for the UK. He followed it up of course with Woodfall's bawdy romp Tom Jones and became an icon of the swinging 60s and a major international star.

The tail end of the '60s and '70s saw him stretch himself both in front of and behind the camera. He directed Charlie Bubbles, his one and only directorial effort and a highly personal film penned by fellow Salfordian Shelagh Delaney in 1968, and financed another Salfordian Mike Leigh's first film, Bleak Moments in 1971. Indeed Finney would never forget his Salford roots and would do much all his life to help the arts and culture in the city (he was key in developing the Lowry for example) and to encourage young people's opportunities. He could have comfortably continued to play straightforward leading man roles as he had done in the previous decade, but the 1970s saw him approach more character based roles, including the title role in the musical Scrooge and (for my money the best) Poirot in 1974's Murder on the Orient Express. This continued into the '80s with roles in The Dresser alongside Tom Courtenay and Under the Volcano, whilst the 1990s saw him feature in a variety of work from Dennis Potter's Karaoke and Cold Lazarus on television and becoming a favourite of US filmmakers like the Cohen brothers (Miller's Crossing), Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich and Traffic) and Tim Burton (Corpse Bride and Big Fish). In more recent years, Finney found himself providing stately support in big budget blockbusters  such as the James Bond film Skyfall (a very amusing cameo) and its rival, the Bourne series.

He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar four times in his career and once for Best Supporting Actor, and he won a BAFTA, an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his performance as Churchill in the 2002 TV movie The Gathering Storm. He refused a CBE in 1980 and a knighthood in 2000 on principle (good man!) and overcame a battle with kidney cancer in 2011.

There won't be another like him. A true great of cinema. RIP

RIP Clive Swift

Clive Swift, the Liverpool born British actor known to millions for his portrayal as henpecked Richard Bucket in 90s sitcom Keeping Up Appearances has died at the age of 82.

Swift many credits also included Born and Bred, The Old Guys and in two editions of the BBC's celebrated Ghost Stories For Christmas; The Stalls of Barchester and A Warning to the Curious. He also starred in films like Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, John Boorman's Excalibur and David Lean's A Passage to India, as well as making two appearances in Doctor Who; firstly as Professor Jobel in 1985's Revelation of the Daleks and in 2007 Christmas special, Voyage of the Damned, as Mr Cooper.

RIP   

Absolution (1978)

Absolution is as suitably chilly, gripping and tricksy affair as you'd perhaps come to expect from Anthony Shaffer, the man behind The Wicker Man, Frenzy and Sleuth. Directed by Anthony Page, it's a tale set in a Catholic public school, a tale of priests, revenge and the sanctity of confession. It stars Richard Burton who, then in the twilight of his career, giving a commanding performance as the austere Father Goddard, a priest slowly driven mad by the pranks of his pupils.

A smirking and irksome Dominic Guard co-stars as Benjie Stanfield, a promising pupil who has mastered the ability to present himself in the  most ideal and favourable light to his masters, whilst at the same time holding them in secret contempt. This rebellious streak is given further encouragement when he befriends Billy Connolly's beatnik traveller, Blakey, who has set up camp in the school's nearby woods. The bohemian lifestyle that Blakey lives is certainly attractive to Stanfield, but it's the disapproval that such a carefree life has for Father Goddard that holds the greater appeal. Knowing just what buttons to press, and encouraged by Blakey, Stanfield starts to spin elaborate lies in the confessional, knowing full well that Goddard is powerless to do anything, and soon enough the boy's beatific innocence in class starts to grate with Goddard. When an argument occurs between Blakey and Stanfield, the latter once again heads to Goddard, this time to confess to the sin of murder. But is the boy really telling the truth this time?

Meanwhile, Stanfield is something of an idol for crippled pupil Arthur Dyson (David Bradley of Kes fame, credited her as Dai Bradley) who follows him around like a puppy - when he's not infuriating Father Goddard by constantly asking questions in class, that is. When Stanfield confesses how his irritation with Dyson has led to fantasies of murdering him too, the now beleaguered Goddard realises that - if indeed Stanfield is speaking the truth - he is powerless to stop the boy or indeed save his soul. 

The genius of this film lies not in the twists and turns of Shaffer's narrative but, for me at least, in the sympathy rendered within Burton's central performance. Goddard is not a man to be liked; he's pompous, cold and abrupt, he plays his favourites like Stanfield (and it could be argued - indeed, it is argued by characters within the film - that his interest in the boy lies beyond his academic potential and into something sexual) whilst he is unable to hide the contempt he feels for Dyson, whose naturally inquisitive mind and inability to read social situations irritates him deeply, but perhaps not as much as his disability, which is clearly an affront to him (at one point he even remarks with some cold relish how their pagan ancestors, when faced with a lame and crippled child, would leave it for dead rather than rearing them - the implication being that this is an attitude this particular man of the cloth approves of). And yet, as Goddard is beset by Stanfield's confessions, it's hard not to empathise with him, and this is thanks to both Burton's genius as an actor and Page and Shaffer's commitment to allowing the first half of the film to be solely about characterisation. The desperation that Burton depicts is both palpable and played to perfection; his craggy face becoming increasingly hollow and pale, those eyes become dead and haunted, as the truth creeps up on him and he realises that all that he has placed his faith in is truly lost. It's an exemplary commanding performance from a great actor. Burton may not have always picked the best projects, but he was always convincing in them. That he spent his final years really strong roles  such as this, makes his premature death just six years later all the more tragic.

Equally impressive are Guard and Bradley. It's not easy for two young actors to share the screen with a master like Burton and still hold their own, but these two do and it's all the more impressive when you consider that Bradley had no training in acting, being just an ordinary Yorkshire schoolboy picked by Ken Loach to play the starring role as Billy Casper in Kes just nine years earlier. That Bradley didn't go on to have a successful career as a mature actor is a crime based on the performances he delivered as a juvenile and a young man in the 1970s - though I suspect that, given it took ten years for this to gain a release in the US, it must have been hard for him to capitalise on any work he had done. Meanwhile Billy Connolly, making his cinema debut, reveals a talent that goes beyond his natural profession as a stand-up comedian and folk singer, showing promise as a straight actor a full nineteen years before he got the chance to prove himself alongside Judi Dench in Mrs Brown. He shares just one scene with Burton, but it's  interesting to see two such disparate figures together on film and their natural differences are skilfully conveyed for their respective characters. 

The supporting cast also includes Andrew Keir as the school's headmaster, Robin Soans as an English teacher, Hilart Mason as the school secretary, Sharon Duce as Blakey's scouse girlfriend, Robert Addie as an arrogant and athletic pupil and Brian Glover as a thuggish policeman - though sadly he doesn't get to share any screen time with his Kes co-star Bradley this time around.

A great morality play, Absolution is an underrated gem from late '70s British cinema.

Wordless Wednesday: The Chippy

RIP Windsor Davies

Very sad to hear of the death of Windsor Davies at the age of 88 on Thursday.

The burly, deep-voiced Welsh actor was best known for playing the Sergeant-Major in Croft and Perry's classic WWII set sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum which ran from 1974 to 1981. It was a role that not only made him a household name but also saw him typecast (not that he seemed to mind) as the bullish soldier putting others through their paces in everything from films like Carry on England and Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall to children's series like Marmalade Atkins and Gerry Anderson's Terrahawks. When he wasn't playing the sergeant-major then he was often cast as policeman, appearing as one on TV in the likes of Z Cars, Softly Softly, Callan, Special Branch, Detective, The Mind of Mr J.G. Reader, and The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, and on film in The Playbirds, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Endless Night, and Not Now, Comrade.

Other memorable roles include starring opposite Donald Sinden as rival antique dealers in the ITV sitcom Never the Twain which ran from 1981 to 1991, and the Welsh rugby comedies, Grand Slam and Old Scores. He also starred in Carry On Behind, played General Tufto in the BBC's excellent 1998 adaptation of Vanity Fair and David Lloyd George in Channel 4's Mosley. His last appearances on TV included guest appearances in Casualty in 2000 and in My Family in 2004, before retiring to France. His wife passed away in September last year and he is survived by five children.

RIP

Wordless Wednesday: Women's Shelter

Silent Sunday: Watch What You Say