Beware looking into the abyss too often for its watch into your soul is constant. The problem with method writing as with method acting, or method anything Is being able to switch back to you, especially if you begin to like the role played and then lose you all together. I suspect this is a problem for comedians, unless they are exceptionally and naturally talented, or become so, after year upon year of working as the assistant, the sidekick, the foil to all the great ones.
I write this as I watch a South Bank Programme about the theatrical, radio and TV life of June Whitfield who is 81. If I feel as I do as 69 approaches what will it be like at 70? June looked fitter, more energetic than me, despite being a decade older.
And she is still working, now on the London stage, with the English National Opera company. where she began in wartime GB, with a certificate of exemption as a student actress. Would we be so enlightened today? June was brought up in South London in a wealthy middle class household becoming a stage actress after RADA. She appeared in a number of production including by Noel Coward who invited his performers into his world, for a time. Last week I think I heard someone plugging Private Lives as if it was a new play, June recalled being asked by a contemporary young player if there was some message in the work, so she told him it was written in a week as the piece of entertainment it remains, although now a historical reminder into how we once liked to see ourselves.
It was not until 1953 that she became a household name when she joined Jimmy Edwards and the rest of the cast of Take it from Here, then a radio programme which had an audience of 22 million just under half the UK population. Her most well known character then was Eth engaged to Ron Glum. She appeared with Arthur Askey on early TV and then Tony Hancock with the Blood Donor sketch. One of the classics, also just about every name comedian of subsequent decades including Frankie Howard, Benny Hill Peter Sellers, Morecombe and Wise, Bruce Forsythe, Leslie Phillips, Roy Hudd, Terry Scott, Julian Clary, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders and has become a stalwart in Britain's longest running situation comedy, The Last of the Summer Wine. There has been no elevation to becoming a Dame or the like, perhaps because she is always there, the first call, perhaps because she appears to have led a normal family life away from her work.
Well done Melvyn and his team for reminding everyone and me just what a national treasure she has become.
There was an inevitability about the lunchtime film, The children of Times Square. which I imagine is similar to the area around Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus and Soho in London, and where the amusements arcades also attract youngster who run away from home and can quickly become prey to those offering shelter in return for work in prostitution and drug dealing. The film centres on two stories, the adolescent rejected by his step father and a mother trying to balance her adult relationship with those of her son. The films pulls no punches on the difficulties of finding someone who enters into this underworld. The second story is that of another adolescent who willingly allows himself to be drawn into this world as a solution to the family poverty which brings them to a communal shelter when their home is destroyed in fire and they are rescued by jumping from windows. The two boys are rescued because in their own ways, their mothers fight against the inevitability of fall into this abyss which happens to so many, the girl who comes to the city to escape a sexually violent domestic situation only to then sell her body to survive, or the street wise young man only too willing to take over the drugs ring when his boss and protector is killed. One wonders how many of the former children of the residential children's home in Jersey, and elsewhere, gravitated to central London who would be able to tell similar stories.
Last night I enjoyed a baked half of a side of salmon covered with Italian seasoning, which had been sawed frozen and then defrosted overnight. It was still too big a portion so what was left over was made into a salad for lunch with thick slices of brown bread, leaving the roast chicken breast with vegetables for the evening meal, deciding against roast potatoes for the second weekend running. The fresh pineapples had been reduced by half to £1 so I had bought two for afters, one portion a day with a banana for the second meal. I have taken not to having breakfast because of rising late and then having some cereal before going to bed, which is better than cheese on toast, or a salami sandwich. I have to drinking percolated coffee, in addition to tea, and orange juice, instead of Pepsi or Coca Cola, and also a little water.
Also for the second week running I opted for the second in the new Lewis series rather than the latest episode of Lost. This was a complex story with links to Morse and his love of Wagner. The amusing aspect of a various serious episode (which took us to the break up of East Germany and the problem of those who worked for the system, some 500000 estimated who have spied for the secret police on their neighbours, sending many to prison and their deaths, for the sake of some advantage and improvement in their economic situation), was that Lewis took up Wagner, which for years Morse tried to get him interested, while his graduate sidekick destined to become a chief constable or part of the Home Office police Inspectorate, makes him listen to contemporary popular records. One can see Lewis turning into Morse with every episode, now living in his own, his wife and children departed, with the occasional dalliance. There was a moment when such an encounter between Morse and another was recalled and the woman asked Lewis if he got on with Morse, responding that their interaction reminded him of a marriage. One can see the relationship between Lewis and his man developing to a marriage of convenience where this is for Lewis for the rest of his days, but the sidekick will be one of many as he marries, joins the Masons or Rotary and takes up golf.
There was further work on the canvases and on the main project as well as doing the end of month accounts. I played much chess and made a silly mistake ending my run of games at 96, five short of the target, having previously. reached 98. I thought much of mother, my aunts and my father.
There was a fierce wind outside for part of the day and the promise of cold and some sleet and snow reinforcing my mood. Around the town there are florious beds and banks of of crocus and my window boxes of daffs are in bud, and how I long to feel the Spring again.
I write this as I watch a South Bank Programme about the theatrical, radio and TV life of June Whitfield who is 81. If I feel as I do as 69 approaches what will it be like at 70? June looked fitter, more energetic than me, despite being a decade older.
And she is still working, now on the London stage, with the English National Opera company. where she began in wartime GB, with a certificate of exemption as a student actress. Would we be so enlightened today? June was brought up in South London in a wealthy middle class household becoming a stage actress after RADA. She appeared in a number of production including by Noel Coward who invited his performers into his world, for a time. Last week I think I heard someone plugging Private Lives as if it was a new play, June recalled being asked by a contemporary young player if there was some message in the work, so she told him it was written in a week as the piece of entertainment it remains, although now a historical reminder into how we once liked to see ourselves.
It was not until 1953 that she became a household name when she joined Jimmy Edwards and the rest of the cast of Take it from Here, then a radio programme which had an audience of 22 million just under half the UK population. Her most well known character then was Eth engaged to Ron Glum. She appeared with Arthur Askey on early TV and then Tony Hancock with the Blood Donor sketch. One of the classics, also just about every name comedian of subsequent decades including Frankie Howard, Benny Hill Peter Sellers, Morecombe and Wise, Bruce Forsythe, Leslie Phillips, Roy Hudd, Terry Scott, Julian Clary, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders and has become a stalwart in Britain's longest running situation comedy, The Last of the Summer Wine. There has been no elevation to becoming a Dame or the like, perhaps because she is always there, the first call, perhaps because she appears to have led a normal family life away from her work.
Well done Melvyn and his team for reminding everyone and me just what a national treasure she has become.
There was an inevitability about the lunchtime film, The children of Times Square. which I imagine is similar to the area around Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus and Soho in London, and where the amusements arcades also attract youngster who run away from home and can quickly become prey to those offering shelter in return for work in prostitution and drug dealing. The film centres on two stories, the adolescent rejected by his step father and a mother trying to balance her adult relationship with those of her son. The films pulls no punches on the difficulties of finding someone who enters into this underworld. The second story is that of another adolescent who willingly allows himself to be drawn into this world as a solution to the family poverty which brings them to a communal shelter when their home is destroyed in fire and they are rescued by jumping from windows. The two boys are rescued because in their own ways, their mothers fight against the inevitability of fall into this abyss which happens to so many, the girl who comes to the city to escape a sexually violent domestic situation only to then sell her body to survive, or the street wise young man only too willing to take over the drugs ring when his boss and protector is killed. One wonders how many of the former children of the residential children's home in Jersey, and elsewhere, gravitated to central London who would be able to tell similar stories.
Last night I enjoyed a baked half of a side of salmon covered with Italian seasoning, which had been sawed frozen and then defrosted overnight. It was still too big a portion so what was left over was made into a salad for lunch with thick slices of brown bread, leaving the roast chicken breast with vegetables for the evening meal, deciding against roast potatoes for the second weekend running. The fresh pineapples had been reduced by half to £1 so I had bought two for afters, one portion a day with a banana for the second meal. I have taken not to having breakfast because of rising late and then having some cereal before going to bed, which is better than cheese on toast, or a salami sandwich. I have to drinking percolated coffee, in addition to tea, and orange juice, instead of Pepsi or Coca Cola, and also a little water.
Also for the second week running I opted for the second in the new Lewis series rather than the latest episode of Lost. This was a complex story with links to Morse and his love of Wagner. The amusing aspect of a various serious episode (which took us to the break up of East Germany and the problem of those who worked for the system, some 500000 estimated who have spied for the secret police on their neighbours, sending many to prison and their deaths, for the sake of some advantage and improvement in their economic situation), was that Lewis took up Wagner, which for years Morse tried to get him interested, while his graduate sidekick destined to become a chief constable or part of the Home Office police Inspectorate, makes him listen to contemporary popular records. One can see Lewis turning into Morse with every episode, now living in his own, his wife and children departed, with the occasional dalliance. There was a moment when such an encounter between Morse and another was recalled and the woman asked Lewis if he got on with Morse, responding that their interaction reminded him of a marriage. One can see the relationship between Lewis and his man developing to a marriage of convenience where this is for Lewis for the rest of his days, but the sidekick will be one of many as he marries, joins the Masons or Rotary and takes up golf.
There was further work on the canvases and on the main project as well as doing the end of month accounts. I played much chess and made a silly mistake ending my run of games at 96, five short of the target, having previously. reached 98. I thought much of mother, my aunts and my father.
There was a fierce wind outside for part of the day and the promise of cold and some sleet and snow reinforcing my mood. Around the town there are florious beds and banks of of crocus and my window boxes of daffs are in bud, and how I long to feel the Spring again.
No comments:
Post a Comment