COTTON PICKIN'

What were you watching on television over the Christmas holiday period and how did it measure up to your seasonal telly memories from the past?

If you are British and over the age of thirty then those memories would undoubtedly include Christmas specials from the likes of Mike Yarwood, Paul Daniels, The Two Ronnies and, of course, Morecambe and Wise...

The man responsible for those and many other great BBC television programmes was BILL COTTON (left) who died earlier this year and who at various times in his long and prolific career was Head of Light Entertainment, Controller of BBC 1 and Managing Director of Television.

The programmes which he either created or oversaw include The Generation Game, Jim'll Fix It!, Parkinson and a legion of memorable sit-coms such as Dad's Army, The Good Life, To the Manor Born and Monty Python's Flying Circus.

As a huge fan of many of those shows it was a thrill to have the job of researching and writing a two-part tribute to this great TV impresario, Showman and Star Maker - A Tribute to Bill Cotton which is being broadcast on BBC Radio 2, beginning tonight at 7:00 pm with the second part going on-air at the same time tomorrow.

The programmes are presented by Paul O'Grady and feature, among others, Bruce Forsyth, John Cleese, Val Donican, Cilla Black, Rolf Harris, Des O'Connor, Michael Parkinson, Terry Wogan, Sandie Shaw, Sue Lawley and Tom Jones - all of whom I got to meet --- in person!!

Here's a little anecdote from one of those encounters...

Bruce Forsyth gave me a great interview talking about the impact which Bill Cotton had on his career and at the end of it I mentioned that I had a bone to pick with our Brucie...

"Oh," he asked, "what's that?"

"Well," I told him, "when I was a youngster, I wrote to you when you were the star of the TV hit Sunday Night at the London Palladium, asking for an autographed photograph. I got the photo but I was terribly disappointed because the photo I got back had a printed autograph!"

"Ah," said Bruce, "well I used to get masses of fan mail... In fact, I remember turning up at my agent's office one day and there was this long line of mail sacks all the way down the hall. 'What's all that?' I asked. 'Your mail!' he answered. So, the agent used to send out the photos for me..."

"Hmmm," I replied, "well, Bruce I was in one of those sacks!" And I produced the photo to prove it.

"Right!" said Brucie, "give it 'ere!" And grabbing a pen he signed it again - this time with a genuine signature and, as the note on it says, IN REAL INK!


And here is Bruce playing piano as a guest (following Jamie Cullum!) on another of those shows launched by Bill Cotton, Parkinson...

So, once again you can catch Part One of Showman and Star Maker - A Tribute to Bill Cotton on BBC Radio tonight at 7:00 pm and Part Two can be heard tomorrow, New Year's Day, at the same time.

BRIDGEWORK

Do you know how many bridges there are in Venice?

FOUR HUNDRED AND NINE!

Although, to be fair, some sources say 378 and still others 400, but then we are talking about the city of mystery and - in any case - there is, as of last year, a new bridge, so it may well be time for a recount...


The Ponte di Calatrava (designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava) is Venice's first new bridge in seventy years - and only the fourth to cross the Grand Canal - but it has been the subject of ceaseless debate and criticism, chiefly for its design which uses traditional Venetian materials of glass and stone but a great deal of chunky iron underwear and has a functional modernity that is at odds with the classical architecture of most of the city...


It has also been slated for its lack functionality: unevenly placed steps on the ascent and descent that are a tripping hazard and also - since many of the steps are glass - a slipping hazard in wet and icy weather...


Then there is the cost: several times beyond the approved budget (even without the decorations that were originally intended for it, but which, somehow, got left off drawings!) and which is destined to rise even more as the bridge now has to be adapted to provide wheelchair access under modern-day Italian laws relating to disabled access...

As for all those other bridges (however many they are): they span some of the 150 canals that divide the island city of Venice into what are, effectively, 118 smaller islands...

After eleven years of visiting we still haven't crossed all those bridges, but here are a few we have traversed, some of them many times...

***

Meanwhile...

Did you know that at midnight tomorrow, New Year's Eve, Greenwich Mean Time will be given a Leap Second? As Wikipedia explains...

A leap second is a one-second adjustment that keeps broadcast standards for time of day close to mean solar time. Broadcast standards for civil time are based on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), a time standard which is maintained using extremely precise atomic clocks.

To keep the UTC broadcast standard close to mean solar time, UTC is occasionally corrected by an intercalary adjustment, or "leap", of one second... When a positive leap second is added at 23:59:60 UTC, it delays the start of the following UTC day (at 00:00:00 UTC) by one second, effectively slowing the UTC clock.

So, at midnight tomorrow, there will be seven - not six time - 'pips' and just before you get to shout HAPPY NEW YEAR, you'll have one whole second of extra life!

Make sure you live it -- to the full!!

Oh, yes, and still on the subject of timings... I know that Christmas is been and gone and that the shops are full of New Year Sales (instead of the Pre-Christmas Sales) and that the Radio Times contains more summer holiday advertisements than programme details, but there's still time - although not much - in which to catch Wendy Hiller and Alec McCowen in my Christmas radio dramatisation of The Fox at the Manger.

Based on the story by P L Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, it can be heard, on-line, until 31 December via the BBC's Radio 7 iPlayer (you'll find The Fox on the alphabetical listing of shows) but you've only got today and tomorrow to tune in!

***

And FINALLY...

A FOOTNOTE on the Ponte di Calatrava...

The original glass steps had - at more expense - to be made opaque as voyeurs were (apparently) photographing up the skirts of women from boats passing underneath...

These Italians! Any excuse!


Images: Brian Sibley & David Weeks © 2006/8

For more Venice imagery, visit my website to view the album Venice Observed and then follow the links at the foot of that page to three further albums of photographs.

MOUSE-BOAT

After posting that photo of Walt Disney in a gondola earlier today, we spotted - on our way back from the Ospidale - a nasty glass figurine of his Master's Mouse playing gondolier with Minnie as passenger...


Needless to say, this is not a genuine, authorised, copyrighted Disney image - but then, again, this particular piece of 'Genuine Venetian Glass' was very probably made in Taiwan!

As for the invalid: I've got to keep wearing the bandage, keep taking the tablets, keep off food that requires biting or chewing and, as far as possible - and this is a bit of a challenge - keep my trap shut!!

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE...

Click on images to enlarge

"'But where do the people walk?'
inquired I of my gondolier."

- Hans Christian Andersen

STREETS FULL OF WATER.
PLEASE ADVISE.

- Robert Benchley
in a telegram to his editor at The New Yorker

***

And speaking of the need for gondolas, here's a photo of a famous gondola-passenger - Walt Disney - with his wife, Lilian, and youngest daughter, Sharon, being ferried up the Grand Canal in 1951, when Walt was attending the Venice International Film Festival.

They are passing what is now the Bauer Hotel (a stone's throw from our apartment), possibly on their way either from the celebrated Hotel Danelli or en route to the equally famous Hotel Gritti Palace...


This photo is really fascinating because - from the presence of the suitcases behind the passengers - it is clear that when it was taken (almost sixty years ago) gondolas were still being used as taxis, taking people wherever they required to go in the city, rather than - as now - as a mere tourist attraction following a site-seeing circuit...

I was just imagining asking one of the gondoliers who have a station behind our apartment if they'd take me to the hospital for my appointment this morning!

Images: David Weeks & Brian Sibley © 2006/8; photo of Walt in Venice from Michael Barrier.


For more Venice imagery, visit my website to view the album Venice Observed and then follow the links at the foot of that page to three further albums of photographs.

DECIDEDLY DOGE-Y

My first thoughts about my bandaged face were, you will remember, Christmas Carol-related, but David, subsequently, said I looked like I was playing the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet - a part which, actually, I think I'd be rather good at!

Now, however (especially with my woolly hat on), I think I have a certain kinship with the Venetian Doges who were the chief magistrates and leaders of the Most Serene Republic of Venice for over a thousand years...



See what I mean...?

Images: Doge Mocenigo by Bellini, 1480; Doge Sibley by Weeks, 2008.

JAW-DROPPING ART

Click images to enlarge

"Pictures, were there, repleat with
such enduring beauty and expression:
with such passion, truth and power:
that they seemed so many young and fresh
realities among a host of spectres."

- Charles Dickens


"Painting is the way Venetians write."

- John Ruskin

"White walls, the paper of the mad."

- Venetian Proverb

***

A few hours after writing this blog posting, I was having an unexpected Venice adventure: I yawned and dislocated my jaw!

We went straight to the Ospidale (water taxi fare: €45!) but the doctors in Pronto Soccorso (the Venetian equivalent of A&E) couldn't get it back into its correct sockets, so I had to wait three hours - in what was excruciating pain - for a specialist to come over from the mainland. He was terrific, but had a heck of a struggle because the jaw had been dislocated for such a long time.

Finally - after a needle full of Valium in the bum - the muscles relaxed sufficiently for him to get the jaw relocated and we set off by boat back to our apartment.

BUT --- almost an hour later, and three stops down the line, out it popped again! As soon as we could, we jumped ship and headed back to back to the Ospidale...

The specialist (who was, by now, back home on the mainland)was telephoned and turned round and set off across the lagoon once more.

Another three hours of agony ensued until he got there and put things right for the second time. On this occasion, however, he decided that - having had my jaw out of sync for best part of six hours - I would have to have to bandaged up to prevent it from moving until the muscles relax and go back to where they should be...

So I now look rather too like Marley's Ghost with his kerchief wound about his head (to keeping his jaw from dropping open) and I've got to remain like this - on a liquid-only diet, too! - until Monday when I will see more specialists at the Ospidale who will advise me what's best thing to do next...

Some holiday!!


Images: Brian Sibley & David Weeks © 2007/8. The top image shows Titian's Assumption of the Virgin located in the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.

For more Venice imagery, visit my website to view the album Venice Observed and then follow the links at the foot of that page to three further albums of photographs.

BEWITCHED, BOTHERED AND BEWILDERED

Click on images to enlarge

"The senses are so dazzled and almost
bewildered, I think, on arriving here,
that we are tempted at first to run
(or rather swim) up and down...

...staring at one thing...


...peeping at another...

...and endeavouring to find our way about
the strange new world, much as a cat does
on arriving at a new abode."

- Frances Trollope

Of course, back in the 19th Century, Fanny Trollope - who was a novelist and, incidentally, the mother of Anthony (Barchester Chronicles) Trollope - probably had people to show her the sites of Venice.

Today's visitors - despite being told that half the fun of visiting the city is in getting lost - are often encountered in the desperate throes of map-reading - usually with the aid (or not) of a totally inadequate map!


There are, in fact, only a couple of decent maps of Venice - and the best of those is the one from Magnetic North - but you'll never find them on sale in the city!

Images: Brian Sibley & David Weeks © 2006/8

For more Venice imagery, visit my website to view the album Venice Observed and then follow the links at the foot of that page to three further albums of photographs.

VENETIAN ENCOUNTERS

It is, as the cliché runs, a Small World...

On Christmas Eve, we were walking along a street in Venice, late at night, when we were accosted by an Italian couple who said to David, "Excuse us, but we met on Kalymnos in August: you performed magic for us at the Artistico taverna in Emporios and your friend, here, used to sit under the trees reading..."

Now, apart from the extraordinary fact that they identified us by the light of the shop windows of Prada and Fendi when we were all muffled up against the cold in coats and scarves and hats and yet when we last met - in a remote corner of a tiny Greek island - we were all in shorts and T-shirts, BUT they live in Milan and come to Venice every year - for one night only - to attend the Christmas Eve Mass in San Marco... And yet we happen to meet: what are the odds...?

Of course, Venice is - and always has been - a city of encounters...

Whilst tourists - being intent on seeing the sites - tend not to see the residents (who, in turn, do their best to ignore the tourists), there are places where their worlds, inevitably, coincide...

People meet in bars and cafes in campos and on bridges. They stop to talk: their voices ricocheting off ancient walls and mingling with the lap and slap of water in the canals, the chitter-chatter of heels on flag-stones, the murmuring of pigeons and the accordion-accompanied serenading of gondoliers...







Images: Brian Sibley & David Weeks © 2007/8

For more Venice imagery, visit my website to view the album Venice Observed and then follow the links at the foot of that page to three further albums of photographs.

DECEMBER THE TWENTY-FIFTH

It's Christmas Day
in the Morning...

...and we're just back from the Basilica San Marco, where the faithful were celebrating the first Mass of Christmas. Visit the Cathedral when it is unlit and you might consider it nothing more than a grey, dusty mausoleum, but when illuminated - as it was tonight - it is flooded with a breathtaking golden radiance...

It is, perhaps, the nearest experience to being inside light: warm, reassuring, womb-like; a cradle in which we - together with the new born Christ Child are gently rocked to and fro within the golden heart of an ancient Faith - beating, pulsating across the centuries...

***

Now, what kind of greeting should I send you on this very special day?

Well, I think what would be appropriate would be to quote one of the lyrics written by LESLIE BRICUSSE for the 1970 film...

Bricusse wrote the song, 'December the Twenty-Fifth', for the scene featuring Fezziwig's Ball, in which Ebenezer Scrooge relives the Christmas jollifications that he enjoyed as a young man before he became - as Charles Dickens describes him - "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!"


The song is sung by Scrooge's former employer, Mr Benjamin Fezziwig, his wife, family and guests and - although written by a later hand - is truly the embodiment of the seasonal spirit which Dickens was attempting to invoke in writing A Christmas Carol...

Of all the days in all the year
That I'm familiar with
There's only one that's really fun
December the twenty-fifth!

Ask anyone called Robinson
Or Brown, or Jones, or Smith,
Their favorite day and they will say
December the twenty-fifth!

December the twenty-fifth, m'dears
December the twenty-fifth
The dearest day in all the year
December the twenty-fifth!

At times we're glad to see the back
Of all our kin and kith
But there's a date we celebrate
December the twenty-fifth!

At times our friends may seem to be
Devoid of wit and pith
But all of us are humorous
December the twenty-fifth!

December the twenty-fifth m'dears
December the twenty-fifth
The dearest day in all the year
December the twenty-fifth!

And now, before you set about your own festivities, enjoy the original film rendition of 'December the Twenty-Fifth' as it was energetically performed by Laurence Naismith and Kay Walsh as Mr and Mrs Fezziwig, throwing themselves into the spirit of the day with total abandonment whilst being observed by Albert Finney as Ebenezer Scrooge and Edith Evans as The Ghost of Christmas Past...

So, from David, buttons and myself may we wish You and Yours...

A Very, Very
HAPPY CHRISTMAS
m'dears!

***

Images: San Marco on Christmas Eve © Brian Sibley; Title-cards from Scrooge by Ronald Searle. You can see more of Searle's artwork for Scrooge and Dickens' A Christmas Carol at Perpetua - Ronald Searle Tribute.

And buttons offers his own seasonal greeting here.

For more Venice imagery, visit my website to view the album Venice Observed and then follow the links at the foot of that page to three further albums of photographs.

'TIS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS...

Don't forget, dear readers, that - right now - Santa is going through those lists to find out who's been naughty and whose been nice! If you doubt it, check out this report - c. 1932 - from Santa's Workshop...

Here in Venice...

Children are obviously more nice than naughty since there are clearly enough of them to require Santa calling on the assistance of a couple of look-alikes...


Elsewhere, the question remains: how on earth (and all around the earth) does Santa manage top get all those deliveries made in just one night?

Well, at long last - courtesy of a couple of penguins and my friend, the illustrator GORDON FRASER - I can now reveal the secret, for so long hidden, behind Santa's extraordinary annual efficiency!

Click image to enlarge

You can see more of Gordon Fraser's fun artwork on his blog Empire of the Gothtwinz.

Now, off you go like good little children and get to sleep and if you happen to hear any unusual bumps in the night, tonight --- no peeking!!

***

As for any grown-ups who've got time on their hands today - unlikely though that may seem - you may care to tune in to my Christmas radio dramatisation of P L Travers' seasonal fable, The Fox at the Manger, starring Dame Wendy Hiller and Alec McCowen, which is receiving a repeat on BBC Radio 7 at 10.15 am and 9.15 pm today and at 2.15 am tomorrow morning, Christmas Day.

To help you, here's all you need to know about BBC Radio 7; what you need to know about how to listen to Radio 7; the current 'What's On' page for Drama and how to listen again on-line via BBC iPlayer where the play will be listed on this page following its first transmission and can be heard for the following seven days until New Year's Eve.

Images: Venice Santas by Brian Sibley and Santa & Tardis by Gordon Fraser

For more Venice imagery, visit my website to view the album Venice Observed and then follow the links at the foot of that page to three further albums of photographs.

BUON NATALE!

Well, here we are in Venice!

...and, as the song says,
it's beginning to look a lot like

CHRISTMAS!

Click on images to enlarge

Images: Brian Sibley & David Weeks © 2007/8

For more Venice imagery, visit my website to view the album Venice Observed and then follow the links at the foot of that page to three further albums of photographs.

A CHRISTMAS GIFT

I'll never forget the Christmas - too long ago now to attach a date to - when I spotted a book in my local bookshop entitled The Fox At The Manger. It was written, it said on the cover, by P L Travers, the author of Mary Poppins.

Although, at the time, I had yet to read any of the books about Miss Poppins, I knew and loved the Disney musical film based on her exploits whilst serving as a "practically perfect nanny" in the household of Mr and Mrs Banks in Cherry Tree Lane.

The Fox at the Manger, I discovered, was nothing like Mary Poppins - except that it was a tale shot through with magic! It re-told the events of the first Christmas - familiar from every nativity scene - but with an unexpected twist.

The animals in the Bethlehem stable - donkey, cow and sheep - who witness an unusual birth in the midst of their straw-filled little world are dismayed and alarmed when an alien creature enters their domain: a red, furry, fox - the chicken-stealing outlaw of the countryside. But the fox has come to the manger to bring his own, unique gift to the Christ Child...

What that gift is you must read for yourself --- or discover it by listening to a radio dramatisation that I made of the story some years back and which is being repeated this Christmas on the BBC.

The Fox at the Manger which stars Dame Wendy Hiller as the storyteller and Alec McCowen as the Fox is being broadcast on BBC Radio 7 at 10.15 am and 9.15 pm on Christmas Eve and, again, at 2.15 am on Christmas Day morning.

It will also be available to hear, on line, via the BBC's iPlayer for seven days following transmission.

If you'd like to hear The Fox at the Manger, here's all you need to know about BBC Radio 7; what you need to know about how to listen to Radio 7; the current 'What's On' page for Drama and how to listen again on-line via BBC iPlayer (the play will be listed on this page following its first transmission and can be be heard there until 1 January )

***

And, while on the subject of Sibley radio shows, And Yet Another Partridge in a Pear Tree... my 'Cautionary Tale for Christmas Showing that it is Better to Give than to Receive' can still be heard, on-line, via the BBC's Radio 7 iPlayer (you'll find it on the alphabetical listing of shows) but you've only got today and tomorrow to tune in...

***

Meanwhile...

Tomorrow we go to VENICE, so any delays in approving blog-comments will be due to changes in European time zones or, more likely, my inability to get on-line!

It has been said of the city which the Venetians call La Serenissima...

"Other cities had admirers,
Venice alone has LOVERS."

- Paul de Saint-Victor

But it has also been said...

"The abuse that the city suffers derives
from its own fatal gift for manufacturing
endlessly seductive clichés."

- Jonathan Keates

So, welcome to one of the most complex cities in the world!

As for buttons, he can't wait to get there!


Images: The Fox and the Raven from Aesop's Fables (and later The Fox at the Manger) by Thomas Bewick; Venetian Masqueraders © by Brian Sibley

A VERY ROCKWELL CHRISTMAS

Among my favourite Christmas images are those created by the great American artist and illustrator, NORMAN ROCKWELL.

Even though he has been dismissed by many as an arch-sentimentalist whose portrayals of 20th Century American life were overly sweet and thus not worthy of being considered real art, it is impossible not to admire the meticulous precision of his designs and the detailed naturalism which he achieved in his paintings.

Many of Rockwell's most memorable pictures adorned the front covers of popular American magazines - most notably, Saturday Evening Post to which he contributed for over forty years.

Rockwell (1894-1978) created numerous iconic images, many of them celebrating the Christmas holiday season and, in particular, the personage of Santa Claus, of which the following St Nicks are just a representative delegation...






Norman Rockwell also illustrated several Dickensian scenes and characters such as this trio of Christmas Waits...


A cherubic Mr Pickwick en route to Dingley Dell with a laden Christmas hamper ...


And, from A Christmas Carol, Mr and Mrs Fezziwig dancing the Sir Roger de Coverley...


And - of course - Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim...


You can read more about the artist at the Norman Rockwell Official Web Site and at that of the Norman Rockwell Museum.

***

FINAL REMINDER!!

Don't forget... Time's running out if you want to hear Penelope Keith in my seasonal entertainment, And Yet Another Partridge in a Pear Tree...

This 'Cautionary Tale for Christmas Showing that it is Better to Give than to Receive' can be heard, on-line, via the BBC's Radio 7 iPlayer (And Yet Another Partridge... will be found on the alphabetical listing of shows) but you've only got today and tomorrow to tune in!

Also, you can read the full text of the Bracegirdle letters on my website, Brian Sibley: The Works.

AND...

ROGER the LIBRARIAN has just uncovered yet another, American, parody on 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', though of unknown date and authorship...

Twelve Days After Christmas

The first day after Christmas my true love and I had a fight,
And so I chopped the pear tree down and burned it just for spite.
Then with a single cartridge, I shot that blasted partridge,
My true love, my true love, my true love gave to me.
The second day after Christmas, I pulled on the old rubber gloves,
And very gently wrung the necks of both the turtle doves.
My true love, my true love, my true love gave to me.
The third day after Christmas, my mother caught the croup;
I had to use the three French hens to make some chicken soup.
The four calling birds were a big mistake, for their language was obscene.
The five gold rings were completely fake and they turned my fingers green.
The sixth day after Christmas, the six laying geese wouldn't lay,
I gave the whole darn gaggle to the A.S.P.C.A.*
On the seventh day what a mess I found,
All seven of the swimming swans had drowned,
My true love, my true love, my true love gave to me.
The eighth day after Christmas, before they could suspect,
I bundled up the eight maids a milking, nine pipers piping,
Ten ladies dancing, 'leven lords a leaping,
Twelve drummers drumming and sent them back 'collect'.
I wrote my true love, "We are through, love", and I said in so many words,
"Furthermore your Christmas gifts were for the birds!"

* American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals