A real magpie of a song from Liam's latest solo album, Why Me? Why Not
As a wine taster might say, "Hmm I'm getting John Lennon. I'm getting the Stones and Let'sSpend the Night Together. I'm getting Sunshine Superman. I'm getting Marc Bolan, 'bang a gong' indeed. I'm getting Elton John"
St Helens, England, 1944 I can't tell you how much of a rush that opening caption from The Keeper gave me. You see, it's not often that a film is set in my hometown. Not just my hometown, but on the very streets immediately beyond my front doorstep and within my local pub. And OK, they didn't film it here, they filmed it in rural Northern Ireland, which doesn't really look anything like here but yeah, let me have my moment.
Bert Trautmann is a legend here in St Helens. Arriving in the town as a German POW, his prowess as a goalkeeper soon caught the attention of St Helens AFC's manager Jack Friar, whilst his good looks captured the heart of Friar's daughter Margaret. Of course, being a former soldier in the Wehrmacht (and one awarded the Iron Cross to boot), Trautmann's reception in the town was initially a hostile one in the immediate aftermath of the war, and this struggle to be accepted was further magnified when he signed for Manchester City, one of the biggest clubs in England, in 1949. But Trautmann's gentlemanly conduct, his desire to move on and make the best of things, and his outstanding performances on the pitch soon won even his fiercest critics over. As a player with Man City, he will forever be remembered as 'the man who played on' when, during the 1956 FA Cup Final, he broke his neck but refused to leave the pitch until victory was secured.
It is very weird watching a film set in your hometown though, seeing locations on screen purporting to be places you know, and seeing household familiar actors portray people whose children, grandchildren and relations you also actually know to talk to. As I say, the location filming doesn't really look much like what St Helens looked like during this period (nowhere near industrial looking enough really) and the exterior location of the Junction Inn (my nearest pub) is particularly unrecognisable, I mean it's called the Junction because it's directly opposite the train station so to not factor that in was a bit remiss, but they've clearly worked from photos of the now demolished 'town ground', as us St Heleners affectionately called the team's ground, as the stands as depicted brought back memories. I often have an issue about accents and getting them right (and wrong) in films and it's fair to say that no one on the screen here really convinced me as coming from St Helens, with the possible exception of Barbara Young as Grandma Sarah. John Henshaw, who plays Jack Friar, is performing in his usual Manchester Ancoats accents, whilst Freya Mavor (playing Margaret) and the rest of the cast are doing a generic northern accent that often sounded more Yorkshire to my ears than Lancastrian. To be fair, St Helens is a strange accent these days, with no two people ever really sounding the same; some sound proper Lancastrian, whilst others sound scouse, but the former was definitely the way to go for the actors here. Did any of this detract from me appreciation of the film? No, not really. I'm just glad that they got some good details in - such as the team singing 'When the Saints Go Marching In', a St Helens anthem used for both football and rugby league - and have bothered to tell the story in the first place. It's been a long time coming; the actor Warren Clarke, a staunch Man City fan*, had long harboured a desire to make a film of Trautmann's extraordinary life and it's a shame that he didn't live to see this.
I can't fault the performances either; David Kross is very good and believable as Trautmann, both on and off the pitch, and he possesses good chemistry with Mavor, an actress who is fast becoming a crush for me. John Henshaw is always good value, that goes without saying, but I did feel that the likes of Gary Lewis, Dervla Kirwan, Dave Johns and Julian Sands were a little wasted in their supporting roles. As a film, I wouldn't say The Keeper did anything spectacular and may hold little interest for anyone outside of the north west or those who do not follow football, but it was a very enjoyable watch that didn't seek to simply gloss over Trautmann's war record and the discomfort he felt about having to perform such a duty. I may be reading a little too much into it here, and I have to be a little careful about what I say, but in some respects TheKeeper feels a little timely now as a Brexit movie. St Helens, to my eternal disappointment, was a leave voting town (as indeed were so many towns scarcely troubled by immigration and who had previously benefitted greatly from EU funding) so there's something of a contemporary resonance in seeing characters purporting to be from here (and later from Manchester) telling a German immigrant to go home and treating him with vitriol. Now obviously with the war, these people had a much greater and more genuine reason for hating a foreign migrant than any xenophobe has towards a wholly innocent one in today's climate, but I felt that the parallel was still there nonetheless and that the harmonious message of forgive and forget that the film has is one that is needed now more than ever. Then again, with the news as it is, maybe everything I view feels like it's shot through with Brexit nowadays.
*One other famous Man City fan also makes a contribution to the movie; Noel Gallagher's song, 'The Dying of the Light', plays over the closing credits.
RIP Barrie Masters, frontman and founding member of Canvey Island pub rockers Eddie & the Hot Rods.
The band were lauded as one of the pioneers of the nascent punk scene, with no less a figure than The Clash's Joe Strummer citing them as the first punk band he ever saw and John Peel pointing to them as the first example of there being a 'change in the air'. But being grouped with DIY bands like The Sex Pistols didn't go down too well originally with Masters who believed the band was more to do with hard graft and accomplishments than fashion. Indeed, The Sex Pistols played their debut gig as support for Eddie & the Hot Rods in London in 1976 and incurred Masters' wrath by smashing up the band's equipment; "I gave John Lydon a little slap and told him, you don't do that to another band's gear" Masters later recalled. They were perhaps best known for the 1977 hit, Do Anything You Wanna Do, an anthem for disillusioned teenagers whose message did little to separate them from the punk milieu they found themselves unintentionally part of. But I'm with Masters; Many's the time down the years that I have bored friends and acquaintances with how much I love this song and how, to me at least, it represents the closest in spirit a British outfit ever got the similar dissatisfied blue collar desire for wanderlust that Bruce Springsteen employed across the pond. It's a beautiful track that immediately energises you, and I cannot think of a better tribute to Masters than playing it, so here goes...
Masters eventually came to terms with the tag 'punk' after playing in the US where he found Blondie were also being heralded as a punk group. The band folded in 1981 but reformed three years later and last performed a live retirement gig together in April this year at the suitably titled 'Done Everything We Wanna Do' night in London.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have little time for Jess Phillips (see here), but I have to say that I am appalled that she and her office were targeted by a right wing idiot last week.
However, despite this sympathy, I have to say that my opinion on Phillips has not changed. In fact I really despair of her. Whilst she rightly calls out Boris Johnson's dangerous rhetoric, she equally condemns those of us on the left who call him a dictator. What is a persistent attempt to flout the law and stymie democracy if not the actions of a dictator? I suspect Ms Phillips would advise caution in calling Hitler a dictator where she around in '30s Germany. Worse, she is taking a moral highground that she does not have the right to occupy. Let's not forget that Jess Phillips once proudly boasted that she'd stab Jeremy Corbyn in the front. At a time when knife crime is on the rise in this country with many needless, tragic deaths, this was a stupid and most toxic statement to make and she should be ashamed of herself. What also irks me about Phillips is how she seems to deliberately work against the party she claims to represent at every turn, as this tweet about her recent front page splash in the right wing press highlights. Labour cannot hope to convince enough voters to place them as the next government of this country if their own representatives show such little confidence. It's a dangerous and deliberate mixed message designed to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of Number 10. That the Sunday Times was so eager to publish it speaks volumes. Jess Phillips is not a parliamentarian. She is a would-be celebrity. She cultivates, from her valuable position, this persona of being a working class, no-nonsense feminist woman who hasn't the time for the old boys network of politics and a lot of middle-class celebrities love her for it. Of course they would, they've found a pet working class Brummie and strong woman. However, Ms Phillips recent claim that she understands little of parliamentary process (made during a greatly impassioned speech in the house in protest of the 21 Tory MP's deselected in Johnson's purge; why can she only get so worked up about the misfortune of her opponents?) is, at best, a further example of her cultivating this 'I'm just an ordinary woman me, bab' and, at worst, a display of extreme ignorance and incompetence. If Jess Phillips really is naive about her role, then she should step aside and allow someone who actually cares enough about the job to study and understand parliament to take her place. Dennis Skinner is a prime example of a working class MP who never lost the common touch, but who studied hard at Hansard and gave 100% commitment to the process because he knew he was there to represent his constituency and, as such, he became one of the great parliamentarians of the age. The two can go together. Of course, Jess Phillips would, if she were to read this, simply dismiss it as 'abuse', just as she does with anyone who dares to disagree with her opinion or stance. This is a particular problem evident in her style, anyone who dares to disagree with her is simply an abusive troll and of course her fans within the middle class circles of the media she aspires to rally round in support.
