Life must be filled up

At this moment, In The Bleak Midwinter, my very favourite carol, is playing on Classic FM. (Wrong tune, I prefer the Darke.) For goodness sake, it's Thanksgiving for those celebrating and November not even over. How I'll survive until Christmas in the face of this relentless festive blast, I just do not know.

I’m very grumpy with the BBC today after finding that two of my favourite programmes, Only Connect and University Challenge, have been banished from this evening’s TV schedule in favour of athletics. They really couldn’t care less about their viewers, it seems to me. On the other hand, they do give us some treats. Over the weekend, I caught just some of Radio 2 Beatles, a pop-up radio station celebrating fifty years since the Abbey Road album came out. The only programme I heard almost all the way through was the BBC Top 60 Digital Chart, which you can find here. Nice to see George Harrison at #1.

What a back catalogue! And that’s only sixty out of many more. Anyone knows what a huge Bob Dylan fan I am but Bob has been writing songs for about sixty years and the Beatles were only together for a short time. It really was an astonishing creative outburst. I’m an unashamed lover of early Beatles over later, no matter how innovative and good the songs are. Since this chart is based on digital downloads, it’s naturally biased. Some of my favourites are missing, like You Won’t See Me. What faves would you add to the list?

News today of the death of June Whitfield, aged 93. Most of the praise seems to be coming from the cast of AbFab who, unlike so many of the people Whitfield worked with, are still alive. She was of course brilliant in that and I always thought it very generous of Jennifer Saunders to write her the best lines and give her the last word. My memories of her go back much further, to when I was a mere child in the 1950s. I liked listening to a radio comedy programme called Take It From Here, in which Whitfield played Ethel, the long-suffering fiancée of Ron Glum. Her catchphrase was a plaintive ‘Oh, Ron!’ You can hear her say it at 1.07 into this episode.


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‘The BBC has lost the rights to cover England's upcoming cricket tours of Sri Lanka and the West Indies on radio to commercial broadcaster TalkSport.’

Has the BBC gone mad? TMS is what I pay my licence fee for! It’s been the sound of summer since my childhood and I’m just one of millions of fans all over the world. Who wants cricket commentary interrupted by advertisements?

At least we’ll still have the Test Matches played here this summer, but for how long? The Beeb seems to hate cricket.

David Beckham is not only one of the most attractive men in the world, he’s a really nice bloke. Hear him on today’s Desert Island Discs on the BBC iPlayer.
Yes, I know I’m old enough to be his mother but so wot.

Look away now all purists who only listen to Radio 3 and anyone for whom the word ‘popular’ is a term of abuse. To mark the twentieth anniversary of its Hall of Fame of favourite music chosen by listeners, Classic FM has brought out this Ultimate book, written by Darren Henley, Sam Jackson and Tim Lihoreau with illustrations by Lyn Hatzius. I thought I’d better write it up today, as Easter weekend is when the countdown begins, with the top choices revealed on Monday.

So what do you get when you buy or borrow this large, lavishly produced book? First, the aggregated list of the top 300 pieces of music picked since the Hall of Fame began. Then, potted biographies of the composers on the list, with comments on the chosen works but nothing about the rest of their output. There are recommended recordings and a list of ’25 Recordings You Should Own’. The full page illustrations are very striking; I had trouble picking a favourite.

The chart (what else is it?) has some surprises. Mozart comes in at #3 with his Clarinet Concerto. Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Piano Concerto is #4. But you have to get right down to #37 before J S Bach makes an appearance with the Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins. God is thirty seventh; what kind of taste is that?:-) There’s a lot of film music on the list, with John Williams featuring several times. I was pleased to see that The Warsaw Concerto (from the film Dangerous Moonlight) is included, as well as more modern works. I might have hurled the book from me in disgust had there been no Purcell but luckily he does get in.

Why should you read this book (or at least, look at it)? Everyone loves a list to disagree with and this one is a genuine representation of popular taste in classical music. It’s a useful basic reference book. You will almost certainly find some music mentioned here which is unfamiliar and may be worth exploring. ‘What is number one in the Hit Parade?’ I hear you ask. The people’s choice is Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.2 in C Minor.
Many thanks to Elliott and Thompson for sending me a copy of the book, which I’ll be referring to again, I’m sure.
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I heard this song, Sympathique, on the radio this morning and really liked it.

I was up at six this morning so I’ve already heard a lot of radio. On every news bulletin it’s been announced that ‘Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland’s First Minister’ has blah blah. What a strange emphasis. It suggests that Northern Ireland has a second, third, possibly even a fourth Minister.

GMS was out to get me this morning. Aled Jones and Canon Ann Easter (the unlikely Chaplain to the Queen) were discussing the sad death of a friend and said that only Bob Dylan would do to remember her by. So they played Forever Young, causing crack-up number one. After a little more chat came Adele’s version of Make You Feel My Love. I nearly emailed in begging them to stop.

Nothing on television yesterday evening so I knitted socks to Ill Met by Moonlight, my latest from LoveFilm. Even though it’s a Powell and Pressburger film starring Dirk Bogarde, I didn’t like it. The film is based on the true story (look it up yourselves) of a SOE plot to capture a German general in Crete and ‘make the Germans look fools.’ This is typical of the kind of brave but crackpot scheme which lost lives while doing nothing at all to end the war. Film makers really should have known that the war was not won by suave British officers cocking an eyebrow and spouting poetry. And Dirk Bogarde looked too damned pleased with himself throughout.


photo from IMDb

When I was about twelve I had a photo of Dirk Bogarde on my bedroom wall. Little did I know.

I had a weird experience on Saturday as I was driving to the market. I had SOTS on the radio and suddenly found that I knew every word of a song I swear I haven't heard or given a thought to since the sixties. It was If I Had A Ribbon Bow, the first single by Fairport Convention and I sang along merrily. It took me back in an extraordinary way, yet I can't remember why. Here it is; it takes a while to get going.



The singer is Judy Dyble, not Sandy Denny.

Ray Davies has a new album out, See My Friends. This no doubt accounts for the extensive Kinks coverage at the moment. Before Christmas I watched Ray Davies – Imaginary Man, a film by Julien Temple. I found this madly irritating; a needlessly arty film which did the greatest British songwriter of the 1960s no favours. Even I got tired of endless shots of him wandering around London singing to himself.



Far better (or more accessible to people with low tastes?) was yesterday’s radio programme: Johnnie Walker with The Kinks, We’re Not Like Everybody Else. Johnnie really knows the music. He spoke to Dave as well as Ray. Above all, there were plenty of songs, including some of the covers. It was interesting to hear what it was like appearing on the same bill as The Beatles. That John Lennon was an arrogant bastard.

Part of this video was used in Imaginary Man. They look like something out of The Wrong Box.



Coming up: the 1950s on TV.