POPPIN' OFF

Tonight at 8:30 on BBC Two, I'll be contributing to a television special from The Culture Show entitled The Secret Life of Mary Poppins...

he programme will examine the author of the children's book famously filmed by Walt Disney in 1964 and now the subject of a new film from the Mouse Factory, Saving Mr Banks...

And here (excavated from a long-buried box of cassette recordings) is P L Travers herself talking about the famous nanny and much else besides – including an account of one of her encounters with the Irish poet W B Yeats that I somewhat inaccurately recounted during my recent appearance on Radio 3's Night Waves...

LAST WORDS ON DIANE

Today's edition of the BBC Radio 4 obituary programme, Last Word, featured a tribute by me to Diane Disney Miller.

 

The programme is repeated on Radio 4 on Sunday (20:30) and remains available on iPlayer afterwards.

And here are links to my article on Disney, Poppins and Travers for Wednesday's Evening Standard...

...and, on the same day, my appearance on Radio London's Robert Elms Show.

POPPIN' AGAIN!

Today, I'll be poppin' up on Robert Elms Show on BBC Radio London at 13:40 and those who live near the metropolis will be able to pick up tomorrow's edition of London's Evening Standard in which I'll have an article about P L Travers and her magical nanny.

And I'm not popped-out yet!

Illustration by Mary Shepard

SAVING MR BANKS – DEFENDING MARY POPPINS

I'll be on BBC Radio 3's Night Waves tonight from 10:00 pm talking to Matthew Sweet about P L Travers, Walt Disney and Mary Poppins and the film that explore the early life of the author and her later tussles with Hollywood's Cartoon King, Saving Mr Banks...

The programme can be heard via Listen Again on iPlayer for the next seven days.

THE DAY OF THE LION

Later today, C S Lewis will join some of the greatest names in literature – Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens, Walter Scott, Jane Austen and Lewis Carroll – in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.

This honour marks the 50th anniversary of Lewis death and will be attended by many scholars, clergy and admirers of books as diverse as Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia and Out of the Silent Planet.

There have been a number of programmes on TV and radio marking the occasion and today there are two transmissions of my play, The Northern Irishman in C S Lewis with Geoffrey Palmer as Lewis.

The programme receives its first transmission at 10:00 am and is repeated at 15:00. You'll find details of the programme here, and the programme will be in the BBC iPlayer for the next seven days.

The Northern Irish Man in CS Lewis (Radio 4 Extra, 10.00am) is Brian Sibley’s elegant and insightful reflection on Lewis’s childhood, growing up in Ulster, enthralled by the wild tales of his nurse Lizzie, lonely when his brother was sent away to school and their mother falls ill, finding comfort in imaginary adventures. Geoffrey Palmer plays Lewis. 

Gillian Reynolds, Radio Critic of The Daily Telegraph

REMEMBERING DIANE

You can read my obituary to Diane Disney Miller in the Guardian newspaper here.

DIANE DISNEY MILLER

I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Diane Disney Miller following complications following a recent fall.

The eldest daughter of Walt Disney and his wife, Lillian, Diane was intimately involved in her father's career: with her sister, Sharon, she introduced him to the Mary Poppins books of P L Travers and, in the years following Walt's death, stalwartly defended her father's reputation in the face of assaults by adversely critical journalists and biographers.

A generous benefactor and philanthropist who furthered her father's commitments to the arts, she worked tirelessly to see the creation of Los Angeles' Disney Concert Hall and in recent years brought into being the acclaimed Disney Family Museum in San Francisco.

Married to Ron Miller, former CEO of the Disney Company, they had seven children.

I had the great pleasure and privilege of knowing Diane for thirty years and collaborating with her on a major series for BBC Radio 2 celebrating Disney's Women – both real and fictional who featured in Walt's life and movies.

Here is the first of those programmes...

 You can read more about a couple of my encounters with Diane here.

DIANE DISNEY MILLER

(1933-2013)

MAKING IT SNAPPY: CAPTION COMPETITION RESULTS!

This was the challenge: provide a caption or tell us what the child (or the alligators) might be saying...

The original photo already had a caption – "He won't bite you, Auntie" – although, surprisingly, only two entrants made any reference to that.

NOT surprising was the proliferation of entries playing with the word 'snap', several others had cross-pop-cultural references (including Hal Roach's Our Gang film series from the 1920s/30s, Disney theme-park attractions, the movies of Steven Spielberg and the Just So Stories); there were also one or two that I have to confess I didn't altogether understand!

Anyway, thank you all for – as always – some really funny offerings that were independently judged  (without the names of the entrants being revealed) by, on this occasion, Sophie Walpole and David Weeks.

We begin with the...

RUNNERS-UP

LEO N HOLZER:

Baby needs a new pair of shoes – and a handbag, too!

PHIL:

"'Scuse me, but do you happen to have seen a Crocodile in these promiscuous parts?" [With apologies to Rudyard Kipling] 

Family snaps.

"I urgently need a photo of my child, so make it snappy."

ROY MARSH:

"Are you sure you play 'snap' like this, Mum?"

JOHN VERNON LORD:

“I was always told that you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you."

“The other crocodile won’t eat potato crisps!”

 

PAUL VIGOR:

"Sausages!"

CHRIS HYDE:

And you thought your Christmas presents sucked!

"Are you sure the sign read 'Petting Zoo'?"

Cousin Kevin.

New White Star Service to Florida!

Prototype for Disney World.

Nature or Nurture?

"Dangerous? Nonsense! It's time to toughen up the lad!"

Brian was such a precocious child!

"There's no fee involved but we will provide lunch!"

ANDY CLOCKWISE:

"Be snappy and take the picture"

IAN THOM: 

"He followed me home - can I keep him?"

BOLL WEAVIL:

"Never bite the hand that feeds you – unless it's tastier than the stale bread it's holding of course!

"Just like that... what do you reckon? C’mon, I’m a dead ringer and you know it."

"Oh no! Another child ! Can't we send out for a take-away instead!'

"You do realise these creatures are not indigenous to this type of artificial scenery don't you?"

SATURDAY'S TOYS:

For Spanky's younger brother, even a date with alligators was safer than the Hal Roach Studios.

SUZANNE:

"Can I have my matching luggage now?"

"When you mentioned a crocodile walking to school, I didn't realise this was what you meant."

"For heaven's sake, hurry up with that photo... I've got three more crocs under this stupid dress!"

Croc (Singing): "How great it is to be bayouuuuuuuuuuuu."

ROGER OB:

[With reference to the original caption]

Older alligator (Reassuringly): "He won't bite you Audrey"

Small alligator (To older sibling): "Well, he looks as if he's already eaten the rest of our family"

BETH STILBORN:

"As God is my witness, I will never go on an outing with my nanny again!"

SHARON M:

"When Daddy asked me if I'd like to stand here for a few snaps, I didn't realise this is what he had in mind."

"If you think they look fierce, you should see what's under my outfit!"

EDITOR'S COMMENDATIONS

JOHN VERNON LORD:

“I always like feeding crocodiles with an aphrodisiac, when they’re on the job, in order to intensify their experience”.

CHRIS HYDE:

A young Jack the Ripper in one of his happier moments.

VERONICA ZUNDEL:

"When my parents said they were taking me to Jurassic Park, I thought they meant the movie..."

PAUL VIGOR:

"Auntie knows best!"

And now–––– THE WINNERS!

FOURTH PLACE

JOHN HENRY BREWER: 

"I do hope this doesn't become a caption competition photograph one day."

THIRD PLACE

STEPHEN NADLER: 

"Trust me –– they taste like chicken."

SECOND PLACE

BOLL WEAVIL:

"When I said I wanted a pair of ‘gaiters’ instead of this dress, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind!"

FIRST PLACE

MICHAEL GOLDBERG: 

Capt. James Hook as an infant

Many congratulations and thanks to everyone who entered. There will be another caption competition along very soon...

NO THANQUERAY!

Browsing through an old diary from 1971, I came across a piece of doggerel I wrote in the style of Ogden Nash...

The Second Mrs Tanqueray

or

Once Bitten, Bite Back

The second Mrs Tanqueray

Indulged in hanky-panqueray;

Without so much as thanqueray,

She took from Mr Tanqueray

The money in his banqueray,

Then turned to drink and dranqueray,

While Mr T's hopes sanqueray.

His form grown lean and lanqueray

(Within his breast a canqueray),

He bought a knife and sanqueray

The blade in Mrs Tanqueray,

Which – to speak quite franqueray –

Stopped her hanky-panqueray

But hanged poor Mr Tanqueray. 

SON OF RETURN OF THE CAPTION COMPETITION!

Yes! 

It's another opportunity to give vent to your weirdly distorted imaginations and come up with CAPTIONS for this delightful souvenir of what was, obviously, an idyllic childhood...

Leave your entries as comments below or (if you can be asked to run the gauntlet of blogger's security system) e-mail me them.

You can have as many attempts as you like at adding an explanatory caption or telling me the words or thoughts of the child –– or, indeed, the alligators...

 Closing date for entries: Monday 18 November.

"MY PEACE I GIVE YOU..."

Sometimes profound thoughts can be prompted by the most trivial and commonplace of circumstances. Thirty-three years ago, in October 1980, I had a radio programme broadcast by the BBC to mark the then 60th anniversary of the founding of the League of Nations.

It was entitled Peace, Perfect Peace and took the form of a symposium of great minds across several millennia discussing the elusive nature of peace...

I had spent many hours in the place  where I always did my research in those pre-internet days – the British Library Reading Room at the British Museum. I called up books of speeches, essays, poetry and polemic in search of intriguing and inspiring quotes on the  topic of peace and its perennial enemy, war...

All this had slipped from my mind until, the other week, I came across one of the British Library book application slips that I had kept from that project. Why I retained this yellowing souvenir from a long-forgotten programme...?

Then I remembered.

The book requested was called quite simply Peace or War and had been published in 1898, the year that saw the outbreak of American-Spanish War...

The crosses in the bottom right-hand corner indicate that the British Library were unable to supply the book for reasons shown on the back of the slip.

And that reason was...?

Yes...  

Destroyed by bombing in the war!

So here,on this Remembrance Sunday (and sans, of course, anything from that bomb-destroyed book) is that programme....

PEACE, PERFECT PEACE

PICK OF THE PIX: SWAN

Another favourite photograph, this time from 2006: a swan on the Serpentine at sunset...

DEAD TIME

The on-going sorting of a life-time of miscellaneous 'stuff' has recently yielded up a selection of badges celebrating Dia de Muertos – the Day of the Dead...

Celebrated today in various forms in different cultures around the world – and connected to the Christian festivals of All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day – the Day of the Dead has, at its ancient roots, a yearning to answer one of civilization's oldest obsessions: what happens to us when we die and a deep-seated desire to comprehend the transience of flesh and the enduring spirit of human life and love through the memories of the living...

One of my long held ambitions – becoming more and more unlikely (this side of the grave) – would be to travel to Mexico to witness this extraordinary festival that does not hide death or shun him as the black-swathed scythe-wielding reaper of souls, but acknowledges death and its rightful place –– in the very midst of life...

You can read more about The Day of the Dead, here, here and here.

AND now...

To offer you a more discomforting encounter with Death, here – set South of the Border, down Mexico way – is my radio adaptation of a favourite short story by that master of the magical, mysterious and macabre, Ray Bradbury. First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 31 December 1992 as part of the popular 'Fear on Four' series, it is entitled...

THE NEXT IN LINE

I am indebted to my old friend 'Boll Weavil' for preserving this 'lost' Sibley drama.