Richard Madeley's Winter of Discontent

The Professional Dickhead Richard Madeley (Dick by name, Dick by nature) wrote a column for the Daily Express this weekend. In it, the rampant Tory bemoaned the way that Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party has politically enfranchised a great number of young voters and advising them that they would do well to take heed his personal memories of the Callaghan government of the late 1970s. Yup, the hoary old line of 'rubbish piled up in the streets' and 'not being able to bury the dead' was wheeled out by the real Alan Partridge.

"This week, chatting to a group of 30-somethings," Madeley writes "I described what the Winter of Discontent was actually like if you were there (I was 23). Endless power cuts, freezing evenings spent by guttering candlelight or evil-smelling paraffin lamps; no fire service (the lads were on strike); no funerals (so were the gravediggers); rubbish piling above head height (what we used to call the dustmen were all out too)"

This was all the result of an out of touch, weak Jim Callaghan, Dick attests, who was on 'a jolly' in the West Indies when it all kicked off and came back seemingly oblivous to the situation or how to decisively end it. Hmm. Calling the Guadeloupe Conference, where the world's biggest leaders discussed topical and pressing subjects of the day, 'a jolly' is a pretty odd thing to do if you wish these days to be taken seriously as a political journo, Dick. 

But it seems Dick Madeley's advice to his wholly fictitious young audience was falling on deaf ears.

""But don't you see - this is what will happen if Corbyn wins," I said. "He's a Marxist! He says he wouldn't even press the button! He doesn't understand the basic principles of detterrence!" Reader, I'm not sure they even knew what Marxism is - and as for "the button"..."

The Professional Dickhead Richard Madeley, it seems, knows all about 'the button'. Because, prior to this, his article pontificates at length about what it was like to grow up and come of age during the Cold War. However, what I personally took from this is that the BBC4's recent, excellent Cold War season had been on TV at Chez Madeleys. 

And reader (I mean, seriously?) it's clearly Madeley who doesn't know what Marxism is if he thinks that Jeremy Corbyn is a Marxist.

Perhaps Dick should have done some reading and listening during the Winter of Discontent. He might know then that the industrial action of which he speaks came as a direct result of Callaghan's government reneging on the promise of reforms previously made to the TUC. Now, that doesn't sound like a very Marxist from Callaghan's Labour does it? So, if by his logic Corbyn is a Marxist, why would that happen again on his watch? He also doesn't seem to realise that much of the industrial action was actually against Tory led councils, for example the binmen strike was against Westminster Council, whilst the dead were left unburied in Liverpool, whose county council was controlled by Conservative.

Dear old Dickie also seems rather confused in his memories. Bless. Old age does that I guess. But the fire brigade (or 'the lads' as he condescendingly calls them) were actually on strike for nine weeks at the end of 1977. They actually returned to work in January '78, when the Winter of Discontent commenced.

Perhaps he should have used his valuable long memory and cast further back in time, to the first Winter of Discontent, the one that occurred under Tory Ted Heath's government that led to a three day week and victory for the miners. Actually, maybe I am being unfair because he seems to have done this a little bit, as his reminiscences seem like a fudge of both time periods. Where there even power cuts during Callaghan's Winter of Discontent? There certainly were during Heath's. Perhaps someone with a more reliable memory could give me a definitive answer on that one. No, I'm not looking at you Dick.

Then again, maybe Madeley could have considered a more recent memory, such as Blair's Labour government. He could have told his imaginary 30-something pals all about the tremendous, progressive achievements made in the late 1990s, such as the creation of the Sure Start scheme which gave our children, and our country's future, the very best start in life - something that Corbyn has pledged to bring back after the Tories spitefully closed it down. Or maybe he should just consider the present; a time of breaking-point NHS, of food banks and homelessness and disabled people dying because of inadequate benefits, and of working families unable to make ends meet because the cost of living has soared whilst wages have stagnated for a decade. 

In conclusion, the Professional Dickhead Richard Madeley thinks the late 1970s were bad? Clearly the realities of the present day do not reach his ivory tower. Or maybe him and his wife are just too pissed to notice most evenings?

Girls With Guns

Top of the Pops dance troupe Legs and Co, offer up a gun toting pose for this 1978 photoshoot. 

OK, I'm a bit late for Valentine's Day, but I couldn't resist sharing this

Fighting Back : A Corbyn Special

Perhaps inevitably, the knives are out in the Labour leadership contest, with favourite Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters being attacked and discredited from all corners. 

It isn't going to get any better either, unless we - the electorate and Labour supporters - make a stand and say; enough.

That's where these petitions come in;

The claims that the leadership vote is being infiltrated by socialists and the Tories is getting tired now. I paid my £3 because I believe I have a democratic right to my say and I believe Jeremy Corbyn is the future, as opposed to the Blairites who have been around for two failed elections in recent memory. The in-fighting, the calls to halt the leadership election and the lies being spread about supporters is destroying Labour's credibility. Sign here to express your disapproval and get this stopped.

The comedian, campaigner and left wing activist Mark Steel has been denied a vote in the leadership election. Why? How is this democracy? This is clearly an attempt to fix the result, and keep as many Corbyn supporters away from the vote as possible and it stinks. Sign here to get the NEC to reinstate his full voting rights and put an end to the right wing Blairite's ruining the party from within.

The Guardian has come out in support of Yvette Cooper. This decision has led to many readers of that paper, myself included, feeling a little betrayed and unrepresented by the editorial team. Sign here to get them to reconsider.

Simon Danczuk has said he and his likeminded colleagues will conspire to remove Corbyn from the head of the party if he is elected. This is an outrageous and blatant disregard for the voters will. It reminds me of the plot of Chris Mullin's A Very British Coup actually, and that's a concern! Clearly, Mr Danczuk et al are scared stiff of losing their comfortable positions of power as MP's in Corbyn's vision of a Labour Party. Again, how is this an example of them working for us? If we speak, they must listen and act. To say they would do otherwise is like a mutiny. Sign here

So, Farewell Then Page 3

So, farewell then Page 3

Since 1970, you have been a tradition in The Sun

You had many critics and they have now won

But you had your knockers too.

I always found the feature a harmless bit of smut and a *ahem* valuable learning tool for children - especially as most six year old can read and understand The Sun. It launched the naff pop, corny comedy, B movie, lads mag, reality TV, presenting and panto careers (or just plain WAGdom) of many a glamour girl including Samantha Fox (above) Maria Whittaker, Linda Lusardi, Kathy Lloyd, Donna Ewin, Jo Guest, Jordan aka Katie Price, Katie Downes, Katie Richmond, Melinda Messenger, Zoe McConnell, Penny Irving, Jennie Linden, Keeley Hazell, Michelle Marsh, Lucy Pinder and Jayne Middlemiss (below) who perhaps more than most broke out of the page's glamour girl trappings to present numerous radio and TV programmes. 

But when all is said and done it's perhaps right that, in this day and age, they called time on it.

Though in recent years I had a soft spot (well, not that soft!) for Lucy Collett aka 'Lucy, 22 from Warwick' and Poppy Rivers - who had lovely eyes Yes, I really mean eyes!

News Hounds (1990)

"A week ago I was 'avin' a nice interview with 'em...askin' about me hobbies and star sign an' that. Now they're doin' this to me?!"

I'm a big fan of Les Blair's films. A true contemporary of Mike Leigh, not only have they worked together (Bleak Moments) and share the same improvisational film making methods, they also went to school together. Occasionally he's accused of producing Leigh-lite work (his 1993 film Bad Behaviour springs to mind) but I think that's a very unfair criticism. In a body of work that includes GF Newman's Law and Order, London's Burning, Honest Decent and True and some distinctive features in the Screen One strand - including this one from 1990 - it is clear he is anything but light or a pretender of some sort.

News Hounds, a film about the shabby world of tabloid journalism, is a film with as much to say today in the post Leveson world as it had 24 years ago. Set around the fictitious offices of The Brit newspaper (a thinly disguised The Sun) it stars Adrian Edmondson - virtually unrecognisable here in a fine straight drama performance from his work on Bottom or The Young Ones - and Mike Leigh's muse and then wife Alison Steadman as journalists who may have full bank accounts but have a cavernous hole where there morals should be. 

On his website Edmondson reflects on the enjoyable and beneficial long rehearsing and devising period for making the film (for his previous Blair film, Honest Decent and True, he recalls an in depth two month rehearsal period before the cameras rolled which seems to fit in with the Leigh working method) A week of this process was spent at The Daily Star's offices shadowing the news desk; "the phone rang and someone shouted across to the News Editor 'It's Greenpeace!'. 'Tell them to fuck off!' came the reply"

This work paid off as Blair captures a frighteningly realistic air to the proceedings, with its thieving, lying beer swilling journalists, that it makes the viewer feel in need of a good shower afterwards. The plot is relatively simple but that benefits the piece, giving us a feeling of just a few days in the life of a busy working newspaper office. Following an abortive undercover scoop on a kinky sex loving MP (its pulled by the powers that be with no explanation other than the chewed out editor Paul Kember's cry of 'we dropped a bollock') The Brit newspaper decide to go all out for a 19 year old actor from the Isle of Dogs (a young Steven Macintosh) who is achieving fame and household name status for his role on the TV soap 'The Square' (EastEnders in all but name) It's Macintosh's character who utters the immortal quote at the start of this review; the build 'em up and knock 'em down nature of the British tabloids relationship with celebrities in a nutshell. In dragging this young actor to the front pages, we see the reporters steal a photo from his half sister's (Linda Bassett) home which will prove that she is in fact his mother, and help place the final nail in the coffin of the Ade Edmondson character's life outside the grubby Brit offices - not that he seems unduly affected by this.

The key to Blair's work is believability and the extensive and unusual working methods clearly pay off to capture that air of authenticity. There's a frighteningly good performance from Alison Steadman as the chain smoking Nina Myskow alike who pretty much provides the answers for her interviewees; finishing their sentences, cutting them short and putting words in their mouths, and she gets to act opposite the vile Edwina Currie playing herself (though you'll note the scene cuts just as Steadman asks her who she fancies in The House - time will subsequently tell us John Major was the man in question!) as well as Edmondson's boorish moustachioed rugger bugger turn. But these are just the two 'starring' roles in what is truly a fine ensemble piece that includes Paul Kember, Christopher Fulford, Judith Scott and Antony Marsh all shedding light on the caustic and nefarious environment that brings many homes its headlines in the morning.

Watch it in full on YouTube here

Hey Thatcher, Lay Off The Kids!

Following the untimely death of Rik Mayall this week and the alarming news of extremism entering through the back door of one Birmingham based school, The Times inadvertently produced this rather amusing juxtaposition...

Never Buy The Sun

The Scum are being offensive and ignorant again with this headline. It's a dangerously selective way to lead on the research the article purports to cover and reinforces the public perception of the mentally ill as a risk to society. Research would actually show that people with mental health issues are more likely to be attacked, rather than actually attack. Worryingly, it is headlines like this that may see the attacks against mental health sufferers increase.

It's worth pointing out that Andy Burnham and Labour's health team have criticised this article as reported by the New Statesman Here

Please sign this petition, set up by psychology teacher Rhiannon Lockley, demanding they correct the sensationalist appraoch and donate the profits from it to mental health charities  Petition It's this kind of 'journalism' which only further reinforces my animosity towards this right wing rag of a paper, a feeling so succinctly put to song by Billy Bragg, referencing their shocking and incorrect coverage of the Hillsborough disaster.

Taking The Daily Fail To Task

It's fast becoming one of the moments of TV in 2013.  When The Daily Mail's sub editor went on Newsnight this week to defend the indefensible article regarding Ed Miliband's dead father, he was quickly taken to task by former Blair spin doctor Alistair Campbell in a defining moment of trial by television

Now Campbell has taken it one step further. He is petitioning The Fail's editor, the odious coward Paul Dacre, to come on TV and debate with him, or a professional interviewer, the impact his insulting piece on a dead man has had.

You can sign it here change.org petition

This whole thing to me smacks of the instinctive fear the media and establishment have when the word 'socialism' gets bandied about by the Labour party. They're happy to see the party in competition or even in charge, as long as it follows the Blair model, but they're petrified of the party attempting to get back in touch with the left wing policies that actually should be at the foundation of their every action. And so The Fail did their very best to discredit Miliband, stirring up public opinion against him before next year's election by this notion of socialism-bad, using the tried and tested method of slagging off someone who is no longer around to defend themselves. They did this by wrongly proclaiming him, a man who fought and risked his life for Britain in the war, to be a man who actually hated Britain. As if having a left wing tendency and a belief that the country, and the world, could be improved upon therefore means you are 'the enemy within'. 

It's exactly the kind of tone Thatcher took with the miners in the 1980s, labelling honest working patriotic men who exercised their democratic right to industrial action as enemies, some of whom - just like Miliband Snr - were of a generation to have served this country in WWII.

Cashing In On Her Figure

Little newspaper snippet from 1972 featuring Hammer babe Caroline Munro

The actual point of that 'article' isn't clear, it seems to just be an excuse to celebrate a year of decimalisation in the UK and to point out Munro was doing a bit of modelling. Still, do we really care there's a lack of content?!

Munro later became a Bond bad girl in The Spy Who Loved Me...though going off this, she really ought to have been Moneypenny 

Dream Date

Haha! Poor Mr Chandler!

And speaking of well no, it's more odd pairings rather than dream dates....

Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson looming over the lovely Maddie

Witch Hunt

Slightly annoyed today to read that the fat poisonous hack Julie Birchall - she who considers Jordan a good role model for teenage girls - has decided to use the Jimmy Savile scandal to bring out an axe she's had to grind for some time regarding legendary DJ John Peel.

In today's The Scum,  ahem I mean The Sun, she points out 'the facts' about Peel's paedophilia, namely the fact that his first wife the tragic Texan Shirley Anne Milburn (who committed suicide in 1973) was 15 when he married her in 1965, Dallas. It's worth pointing out however that in Texas the legal age of consent was 13. Hardly against the law then is it? Peel was always open about this time in life, recording it in his autobiography years later - long after thirty+ years of wedded bliss with the mother of his children I hasten to add. 

She also records how Peel received oral sex from one fan in America in the early 60s who, as Peel explained in 1989, 'turned out to be 13...though she looked much older' What paedophile admits that? How many rock stars, DJ's, actors, whatever have had sex with a girl without asking their age??

I'm surprised she didn't bring up the occasional comment Peel made about schoolgirl uniforms to continue her low blows of blank ammo. This was something that Python Graham Chapman would also wax lyrical about, albeit his penchant was for schoolboys. Chapman even 'adopted' a boy....yet the accusing finger rarely gets levelled at him, it's just accepted that was how it was. Ditto Bill Wyman and his long term relationship with the then 13 year old Mandy Smith. Why is that?

Savile was a monster who needed outing. Now he's dead, it's far too late to bring him to proper justice but I hope that his victims who have for so long suffered in silence get some peace and sense of justice in the time to come.

Peel on the other hand is to my mind utterly innocent and, as a dead man, it is unfair that such slander is being thrown at him, as he cannot defend himself. The plain truth is Birchall has never liked him and this is just another article in a series of mud slinging works regarding him by her. If I'm wrong I'll stand corrected, but I don't think I am.

Cleo Rocos in Confessions of a Wedding Photographer

No not a forgotten Robin Askwith 'epic' but an of it's time cheap and cheerful advert for an article from the not unmissed Sunday 'newspaper' The News Of The World.

Look out for a very young Cleo Rocos. Indeed she must be very young. The uploader of this curio states the advert is from the 70s. Cleo was 15 - and lying about her age - when she commenced working on Thames TV's The Kenny Everett Video Show, so she must be 15 here or thereabouts.

I must admit since the BBC4 Kenny Everett biopic and a few repeats of his shows this week, Cuddly Ken and Cleo have been on my mind. As a child growing up in the 80s Kenny's BBC1 TV shows were a naughty treat, his risque humour appealing to adults with a sense of the silly and of course to kids of my age as the jokes tackled such subjects as boobs, bums, toilets, farting and snot! When Kenny came out as gay (though he hated that word, preferring homosexual) it left a big impression on me as a boy. It's fair to say school playgrounds are a breeding ground for bullying in regards to many things such as racism and homophobia, creating mind sets that would worryingly thrive or thankfully fall in later life, but it never affected me - I didn't see anything wrong with being gay if that's what Kenny Everett was.
So in a way it's thanks to him I was an open minded child too.
And it's thanks to Cleo too, who got me through some difficult teenage years! ;)

Here's to Kenny and the divine Cleo

The Daily Mail and Emily Lloyd: Slow News Week?

Last week saw The Daily Mail (a 'newspaper' that would blame any or all of the countries ills on immigrants) print an article entitled 'What Happened To Emily Lloyd?'

Emily was something of an overnight success in the 80s thanks to her debut starring role in David Leland's Wish You Where Here. She later made several films in the US before her career started to dip and she withdrew from acting. Hardly an original story. I myself have posted the occasional 'Do you remember?/What's x up to?' style blog posts in the past, largely to jog memories and remind potential readers how great they were. However The Daily Mail take a distinctly different approach....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2188193/Emily-Lloyd-Wish-You-Were-Here-star-looks-scruffy-unkempt-20-years-on.html

As with all these 'What became of...' stories the usual answer is the work dried up, they chose to concentrate on their family, they retired to do something else or, in some cases, tragedy befell them. The Daily Mail have a particular interest  for the latter, a morbid and sensationalist interest they have on poor Lloyd.

Because you have to ask, what do The Mail think happened to Emily Lloyd?

Surely they know by now? After all, they wrote a similar article on her in July last year, they wrote two articles in the same vein in 2009 all with the now familiar long lens intrusive camerawork, and in 2005 they interviewed Emily focusing on, what they're clearly obsessed with in regards to her, namely her self confessed long term mental health issues. In this interview she confirmed how she hated a gossipy reaction to her current life and whereabouts. But The Mail have clearly failed to take this on board.

That's FIVE articles all asking the same question. Slow news week or the media version of obsessive stalking?

It's especially sickening that The Mail are once again focusing on Lloyd as 'downcast' and 'scruffy', words suggesting depression and a poor reclusive and introverted lifestyle they feel goes hand in hand with a mental health problem and not in fact focusing on something they hastily skip over in this latest article; that she was seen out and about, looking glam and happy with her father on the South Bank at the opening night of an event called 'Cantina'

Why? Because a picture like this one doesn't fit the story...

Another thing The Mail seem wilfully blinkered about is the fact that she is now 41 years of age. She isn't a walking Hollywood wet dream and as anyone who doesn't write for The Mail will realise, no one can live 24/7 like one anyway. No, not even Brad and Angelina - I hate to dispel that myth!  It's like we are supposed to feel shocked and saddened at the sight of a 40+ yr old with no make up on out walking the dogs who just happened to have made a few films?  

Ridiculous and insulting.

Read All About It?

It's been a monumental news week this week in which our eyes are drawn to an international stage and the notion of terrorism and extremism.

In Norway the horror of the 77 massacred last July is being revisited with the trial of possibly this generation's most terrifying monster, Anders Breivik. A man who has been surprisingly judged as sane and is taking this opportunity to bring his ridiculously twisted world view out into the open as he staggeringly pleads not guilty and pours salt into the open wound of an entire nation.

It's a terrifying, saddening and gripping turn of events, the final chapter in a tragedy that still doesn't feel real. It feels like it belongs in a Jo Nesbo book or, more correctly, a nightmare.

Meanwhile here in the UK, the wrangles of deporting the radical cleric Abu Qatada to Jordan are ongoing, with the likelihood that legal battles could mean months before this menace can be booted out of the country and made to stand trial under Jordanian law. 

But despite all this, what has actually made the front pages of the tabloids this week day in day out? 

The fact that Simon Cowell wipes his arse on black loo roll and has botox injections on a regular basis. 

It's insulting that we still believe we have a free press. 

This man is buying front page publicity, and in doing so, is knocking real news off the headlines. 

It doesn't matter if it's necessarily good publicity, it just has to be publicity. And why? Because the BBC talent show The Voice just happens to be beating his Britain's Got Talent in the ratings war and this odious little flat topped twunt will do anything to get some interest from the public in him that may result in viewers switching to his show instead.

What a deeply trivial society we find ourselves living in today. Because, and let's get this straight, what we are witnessing here is the power of one man to such an extent that what he wipes his arse with can make front page news over genuinely relevant stories that affect us all globally, just to influence what people watch on TV in his favour.

It's a sad state of affairs that an influential music figure like John Lennon could get assassinated in New York in 1980 yet this cretin, with as much and, dare I say it, possibly even more influence yet of course zero talent, is still walking the earth.