A CAR FOR ALL SEASONS

1968: the Odeon, Bromley, and I'm sitting eagerly in the circle waiting for the main film to begin –– for the third time that week! Having seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang once, I'd no choice but to see it again – and again!

I was very far from being car-mad kid (apart from a small collection of vintage Corgi vehicles) and I eventually grew into a non-driver who gave up all attempts to learn to learn the necessary skills when I drove my Dad's car over a revolving sign in a petrol station, during a practice run, and did terrible damage to the gubbins underneath...

However, with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the 'fantasmagorical flying machine', it was love at first sight! And second... and third...

At the time, I not read the original book by Ian Fleming (published four years earlier in 1964), but, of course, I knew Fleming as the creator of the James Bond, and I had read books by the film's screenwriter, Roald Dahl.

But the real excitement about the movie was that it was the next best thing to getting a new film from my favourite fantasy filmmakers at the Disney studio. In fact, it actually felt like a Disney film – especially since it featured so many of the talented folk who, four years earlier, had given us Mary Poppins...

Only later did I discover that producer, Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli – who, after the success of Poppins was anxious to enlist the talents of the Oscar-winning song-writing team of Richard and Robert Sherman – had approached Walt Disney, and invited him to co-produce the film.

Walt declined, but generously released the Sherman Brothers from their exclusive contract with him while they worked on Chitty. Broccoli signed Dick Van Dyke to play Caractacus Potts, unsuccessfully tried to get Julie Andrews for Truly Scrumptious (settling, instead, for Sally Anne Howes who had followed Julie in the role of Eliza Dolittle in the Broadway run of My Fair Lady) and secured the talents of Poppins choreographers, Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Woods as well as Poppins orchestrator and conductor, Irwin Kostal.

The resultant was a charming confection, featuring Disneyesque whimsicality with a decidedly British twist represented by the genius production designer, Ken Adam (Night of the Demon, Dr Strangelove and, of course, the Bond movies) and cartoonist and mad-cap inventor, Rowland Emett, who designed Caractacus' crazy contraptions)...

There was also a great supporting cast of Brit character actors, including Lionel Jeffries, James Robertson Justice, Benny Hill, Stanley Unwin, Max Wall, Gerald Champion, Karl Madden, Richard Wattis, Barbara Windsor and Arthur Mullard.

Then there was that trio of Bond-folk: Gert Frobe (former Goldfinger) as Baron Bomburst, Anna Quayle (Frau Hoffner in Casino Royale) as his Baroness and Desmond Llewelyn (Q) as Mr Coggins the farmer from whom the wrecked Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is purchased.

And... and... and... the shockingly scary Robert Helpmann – one of the 20th century's greatest ballet dancers and choreographers – as the unforgettably sinister Child Catcher...

The film is full of weird moments of dark, Roald Dahl-concocted comedy, counterpointed by a wistful charm and one of the Sherman Brothers' finest scores: from the rambunctious title song to the haunting lullaby, 'Hushabye Mountain'...

Anyway...

All this is but a prelude to a plug for my forthcoming radio feature...

50 Years of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang 

broadcast tomorrow, Monday 20 October, at 4:00 pm on BBC Radio 4

The programme mentions the film (inevitably) but it is mostly a celebration of Ian Fleming's original book and tell the story of the exotic Count Louis Zborowski, who built and drove the famous original racing car 'Chitty Bang Ban'g (note: just the one 'Chitty') and how it inspired Fleming's imagination when he later came to tell bedtime stories to his son, Casper; and, later still wrote them down while recovering from a heart attack.

It's a story of happy memories and sad associations and I am joined in telling it by Fleming's nieces, Lucy Fleming and Kate Grimmond; bibliographer, Jon Gilbert; Alan Winn, Director of Brooklands Museum (where I got to ride in a vintage Bentley); children's writer (and Chitty sequel author) Frank Cottrell Boyce and my old friend, the legendary song-smith, Richard M Sherman – along with an archive snippet from a vintage Sibley interview with Roald Dahl – and a visit to artist, John Burningham who illustrated the original book...

The programme has been broadcast, but remains available to listen again on BBC iPlayer: CLICK HERE

 

THE WRITE STUFF

Before e-mail, young readers, there was something just called 'mail' –– letters, written by hand (and later by typewriter) and delivered by personal courier (and later by a government agency). Now, unless you are reasonably old, it may be difficult to believe in such a weird-sounding and obviously antiquated means of communication, but not only did it actually worked and led to the art of letter writing...

Shaun Usher created a marvellous website Letters of Note to share extraordinary, funny, touching and inspiring examples of this arcane craft with the children of the 'e-generation'. Then the website became a book, Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience and I have spent the past week delighting in it's engaging and diverting contents...

Within these covers are a collection of famous (and, occasionally, infamous) Men and Women of Letters – Queens, Presidents, film stars, authors, musicians and artists – writing to their admirers, enemies, lovers, and children and, in so doing, reveal something unique about their famous selves or offer life insights that are more than worthy of consideration...

The letters are not just quoted, almost all are reproduced: elegantly penned, neatly typed or erratically scribbled on hotel, airline or exercise book paper.

I began noting down my favourites but the list just kept growing, however, special gems include...

* Gandhi writing to Hitler pleading with him to avoid a war – intercepted by British intelligence, the letter was never delivered and, days later, Germany invaded Poland...

* Captain Robert Scott's last words home from the frozen wastes of Antarctica 

* Charles Schulz responding to a young reader of his Peanuts strips asking the cartoonist to get rid of a new character, Charlotte Braun, briefly introduced in 1955: "I am taking your suggestion regarding Charlotte Braun and will eventually discard her... Remember, however, that you and your friends will have the death of an innocent child on your conscience. Are you prepared to accept such responsibility?" The accompanying sketch shows Miss Braun literally getting the 'chop'...

* Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon's letter to the New York Sun asking if it were true – as her school friends had told her – that there was no such person as Santa Claus together with veteran newsman, Frances Pharcellus Church's famous reply beginning: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus... He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist...."

* A heart-breaking suicide note from Virginia Woolf to her husband, Leonard, on her second, successful, attempt to drown herself...

* Katherine Hepburn writing to Spencer Tracy – 18 years after his death...

* A blistering letter from Kurt Vonnegut to the head teacher of a school where copies of his book Slaughterhouse-Five had been burned in the school furnace...

* A young girl's letter to would-be President Abraham Lincoln suggesting he would stand a better chance of getting elected if he grew whiskers ("...all the ladies like whiskers") and honest Abe's reply: "As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin it now?" History shows he, nevertheless, took the advice...

* Mary Stuart writing to King Henry III of France on February 8th, 1587, just six hours before she knelt before her executioner...

*The letter that led to the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot...

* The tragic SOS telegram from the sinking Titanic... 

* Seven-year old Amy who, inspired by Roald Dahl's The BFG, sent the author a bottle containing one of her dreams (a concoction of oil, coloured water and sparkle) and received this perfect reply:

* Mario Puzo begging Marlon Brando to consider the role of Vito Corleone in the film of  The Godfather...

* Alec Guinness writing to a friend and complaining about the rubbish script he was being given as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars and mentioning co-star, "Tennyson Ford – Ellison – Harrison Ford - ever heard of him?"

* A chilling memo from William Safire to H R Haldeman with the text of the Presidential broadcast in the event of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing ending in disaster with the non-recovery of Armstrong and Aldrin...

* Molecular biologist Francis Crick writing to his twelve-year-old son to explain the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA...

One hundred-and-twenty-five fascinating letters from – among many others – Charles Dickens, Spike Milligan, Bette Davis, Mark Twain, Elvis Presley, E B White, Samuel Barber, Dorothy Parker, Louis Armstrong, Iggy Pop, Groucho Marx, Jack the Ripper and – perhaps most delicious of all – Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II writing to President Dwight D Eisenhower in 1960 to send him her recipe for drop scones as served at Balmoral!

I am also delighted that the book includes a letter I received forty years ago this year in response to a far letter sent to the American Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer, Ray Bradbury, that began a precious friendship that lasted until Ray's death in 2012...

Shaun Usher's Letters of Note is a veritable treasury of wit and wisdom interlaced with deeply moving testimonies to the indomitable human spirit and a book to which you will return again and again. The British edition can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk and the US edition from Amazon.com

COOKING THE BOOKS

Of course I'm not going to take part in Come Dine With Me, but - just supposing - I were, what would I serve?

The obvious answer has been provided by Roger and Sheila (many thanks) in the form of a copy of Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes inspired by various odious episodes from Dahl's vivid (and often lurid) imagination and depicted, of course, by Quentin Blake

Among possible dishes that I might have tackled (if I were going on the show, which, of course, I'm not!) are Snozzcumbers (cucumbers stuffed with tuna and poppy seeds), Stink Bugs' Eggs (hard boiled eggs with the yolks mixed with cheese, curry powder and chopped gherkins sprinkled with Asafoetida, an Indian herb that, apparently, smells of sweaty socks) and Crispy Wasp Stings, Wormy Spaghetti, Hot Frogs (served on a pool of green custard) and Mosquitoes' Toes and Wampfish Roes Most Delicately Fried which - because it's more fun - I'll leave you to imagine for yourselves.

The book is full of recipes on which children, in our obsessive age of health and safety, probably ought not to be let lose! For example, there are instructions for making Candy-Coated Pencils for Sucking in Class without any warnings to stop sucking when you get down to the paint and lead! And as for the Enormous [Savory] Crocodile...


...that uses a baguette and a wire coat-hanger (without its hook) to keep the 'jaws' open!

Suitable beverages include Frobscottle - liquidised kiwis and limes, drinking yogurt, lemonade, cream soda and a Redoxon tablet added just before drinking. This would be perfect for a Come Dine with Dahl experience, following which guests could settle down to a hilarious whizzpopping contest!!

Is to late, I wonder...?

Messrs Dahl & Blake (by Blake)
enjoying frobscottle and snozcumbers

MEETING MR WONKA

It starts out as the interview from Hell and ends up with a passionate conversation about the joys of chocolate over a Tupperwear-box crammed full of Smarties, Crunchies, Mars Bars and Kit-Kats…

It is 1988, and I am travelling to Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire to interview Roald Dahl for the BBC. I go with numerous warnings hammering in my head: the creator of Willy Wonka and the BFG is known to be difficult with interviewers. If he doesn’t like you or your line of questioning, you can easily find yourself being shown the door quicker than you can say “Oompah-Loompas!”

Of course, I know my stuff (I’ve been reading Dahl long before the writer achieved his status as the country’s premiere children’s author), but I’m anxious - TOO anxious - to impress… So, I have thoroughly boned up on dozens of articles about the man and made copious notes drawn from other people’s assessments of Dahl’s genius. I am absolutely determined to leave nothing to chance…

I arrive and am shown into the sitting room, where I set up my recording equipment. A few minutes later, Dahl enters wearing a cardigan and smoking a cigarette. He is considerably taller than I’d expected and I am intrigued by the way in which he sits down, collapsing his considerable height into an armchair rather as you might close up a large umbrella. The atmosphere is polite, if a little frosty; the eyes are gimlet-sharp rather than twinkly.

And so, the interview begins…

Referring to my numerous notes, I say in as confidant a tone as I can muster: “One commentator has noted that, essentially, your characters are all archetypes----”

I get no further.

“Are WHAT?” growls Dahl suspiciously.

“Archetypes…” I repeat lamely…

“Oh! That’s not a word I’m accustomed to using myself,” snaps Dahl waspishly. “What exactly does it MEAN?”

“Well…” comes the fumbled reply, “It means - um… That is - er… Well, an archetype is…”

The gimlet eyes bore deeper and my voice trails away.

“I see!” snorts Dahl. “You don’t seem to know what it means either! So, do you have anything YOU want to ask me, based on your own knowledge, as opposed to other people’s opinions? Or shall we forget this interview, rather than waste any more of each other’s time?”

Desperate measures are clearly called for…. Abandoning my notebook, I blurt out the first thing that comes into my head: “At the end of George’s Marvellous Medicine, you say that George felt as if he had reached out and, with the very tips of his fingers, had touched the edge of a magic world… Is that what you want your young readers to do?”

There is a long pause. Dahl gives a wry half-smile. I await the inevitable explosion. Instead, comes a question: “Do you drink?”

It has just gone 10.30 in the morning, but I nod.

“Whisky?”

I nod again.

Two large glasses are filled and the interview begins all over again - as if the uncomfortable prologue had simply never taken place - and continues for an hour-and-a-half, with Dahl talking freely and incisively about his books and how he writes them: "Whatever age group I'm writing for, I can instantly and precisely project myself back into what it felt like to be a child of three or seven or nine and then write for that child..."

He talks his philosophy of life: his love of libraries and good teachers and his passion for chocolate which stems from a childhood ambition to work as an inventor in a sweet factory just like the one in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for which he wrote the screenplay: "Oh, God, but that was an awful movie!"

His ultimate appraisal of the books he has written is almost self-deprecating: "I think one or two of them may outlive me and even come to be thought of in a 'classicy' sort of way..."

He also reveals some of his pet-hatreds which include - in addition to the unthinking use of such words as ‘archetypes’ - virtually everyone involved in politics, bad teachers, bad parents and all instances of facial hair, such as the beard sported the terrible Mr Twit and, indeed, by the hapless interviewer!

“I have to tell listeners,” Dahl confides into my microphone, “the gent who is talking with me now has a face COVERED in fungus! It’s really quite DISGUSTING! I can even see part of his breakfast in there! I dare say if it wasn’t smothered in all that ghastly hair, it would be quite a NICE face, but there’s absolutely no way of knowing!”

“Do you have a razor?” I daringly quip.

“Shave in your own time, not mine!” parries Dahl with a chuckle.

“I wasn’t thinking of shaving,” I instantly reply, “I was thinking of CUTTING MY THROAT!”

Dahl roars a long, deep, smoker’s laugh.

At the end of the interview, Dahl signs my copy of his very first book, The Gremlins that was originally to have been made into a Disney WWII animated film.

He inscribes it “With love, Roald Dahl”, asks my date of birth and then adds it to the inscription - but cunningly backdated six years to 1943, the year of publication.

“There!” he bellows triumphantly, “If they come across this after you’re dead, that should screw things up nicely for whoever’s trying to sort your affairs!”

Not wishing to push my luck, I make my thank-yous, pack up my tape-recorder and prepare to leave -- only to be invited to stay for lunch!

A deliciously long and jolly meal eventually concludes with a dessert in the form an outsized Tupperware-box stuffed with sufficient sweets and chocolate bars to satisfy even the great Mr Wonka!

An unforgettable encounter - and a most valuable warning against the irresponsible use of the word ‘archetype’!


© Brian Sibley 2006
[Illustrations (except 'The Gremlins'): © Quentin Blake]

TASTEFUL WRITING

In my book, the test of a good writer is his or her ability to write about food so that I can actually TASTE it!

Enid Blyton, for example, was constantly hauling out the picnic basket and dispensing the proverbial lashings of ginger beer and the books of Roald Dahl, Beatrix Potter, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, A A Milne, J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis are FULL of nosh and noshing! And for ever book I mention, you could probably suggest a dozen more...

Of my many favourites, the one I savour the most is in Kenneth Grahame’s incomparable ‘The Wind in the Willows’.

I read it first - and in one day! - when I was nine years old. Grahame clearly loved his food and the book contains several substantial meals. But it is the simple snack that the Gaoler’s Daughter takes to the hapless Toad when he finds himself incarcerated in “a dank and noisome dungeon” that sets my taste buds dancing:

“She carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled high with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with butter running through the holes in it in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender; of the purring of contented cats and the twitter of sleepy canaries…”

Now, that’s how toast ought to be! If only Mr Russell Hobbs had read ‘The Wind in the Willows’…

[Illustration © Ernest H Shepard]