OTHERWISE ENGAGED

Since I'll be in hospital for the next few days (hopefully not longer) the posts you'll be reading will have been written and scheduled in advance.

Any comments you post, therefore, may be delayed rather longer than usual - at least, until Mr W gets round to seeing them and approving them. But, sooner or later, it will be done!

I'm not really sure if this note ought to count as a 'genuine' post in the run up to 1000 posts - or whether, maybe, I'll now have to delay suspending the blog until 1001!!

HAPPY BLOGDAY!

Yes, it's three years since I started blogging and, as you'll see from my first post it was scarcely an earth-shattering debut! I had intended to make this my last posting - if not for good then at least for a while - but, after 983, posts it seems a pity to stop so close (and yet so far) from a nice round 1000!

So, I'll be going on for a week or two longer until that not-unimpressive total has been reached!

In the meanwhile, thanks to all my readers and comment-leavers who've kept me at it and made it more fun than I could have ever imagined.

KREEPY KIDS

Funny how advertising images from the past linger in the memory. For example, that kid with his scrubbed-shiny face and 'fifties hair cut with a mouthful of Rowntree's Fruit Gums and and a mischievous twinkle in the eyes.

He was the kind of boy who'd hang out with (Just) William Brown or go to the same school as Jennings and Derbyshire and, in the school holidays, would get involved in some prankish exploit such as we read about, when young, in books like The Otterbury Incident or saw in films like Hue and Cry. He was - to those of a certain age - one of us!

Not so some very creepy kids that Irascian came across on the net the other week on a site devoted to period (and therefore 'strange') advertisements.

Take this young man with teeth that suggest he might just be the young Hannibal Lecter...


What is he eating? And is it still alive? If it's not, then why is it struggling to get off the fork? And are those bread sticks on the table beside him or sausages... or what??

As for this young lady, I can't help feeling she probably oughtn't to be fed too much red - orf even pink - meat...


While, scariest of all, is this young miss whose rapture at seeing all that red stuff (which may only be jam although, personally, I doubt it!) would suggest the imminent need to send for an exorcist!


A lingering question remains: did these commercial children actually sell any of the products they were advertising. I have to say, I doubt it - unless, of course, those products were birth control aids!

A DATE TO REMEMBER

Well, it's 19 years, today, since Mr W and I first shared a significant evening in each other's company.

It wasn't quite what you'd call 'a date', not even a first meeting since we'd already met before on various occasions with mutual acquaintances. It was more in the nature of a getting together in a pub - the Sydney Arms in Chislehurst, for those who like historical facts - for a drink and a chat about various people in our lives (and known rather too well to us both) who had left us hurt and confused. However it started out, it ended up with both of us speculating on the possibility - likelihood, even - of our getting together...

And so, as can happen, one thing led to another and not long afterwards we began a relationship that's sailed (sometimes lurched, but mostly sailed) along for almost two decades.

Thanks, David, for all the loving support and encouragement over those years and - in more recent days - for your patience and tolerance in coping with my various disabilities. I hope we never forget what it was -- whatever it was! -- on that day, nineteen years ago, that brought us close enough to move closer...

And guess what, friends? We've got something very special lined up by way of a celebration today! Yep, I'm spending the day at King's College Hospital being assessed for a hernia operation on Thursday!

Still, next year...

POSTCARDS FROM THE BLUE LAGOON

You might have loved her or loathed her, but the one thing you couldn't ever do was ignore Margaret Thatcher!

The Grocer's Daughter, The Milk Snatcher, The Iron Lady, Attila the Hen - she was a gift to the barbs of the satirists and cartoonists as can be seen from a new exhibition, Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! Margaret Thatcher - Mother of the Nation or Monster from the Blue Lagoon, at London's Cartoon Museum.

On show are many of Thatcher's career-defining moments as defined by the finest (and, sometimes, cruelest) of Britain's political cartoonists who, for over a decade, charted Thatcher's rise and rise and her sudden, meteoric fall.

Co-curated by former minister, Kenneth Baker (who served his term - or should that be sentence? - in the Thatcher administrations), and cartoonist Steve Bell (who saw out the Thatcher years at the drawing board), the show contains cartoons by Cummings, Gibbard, Scarfe, Steadman, Trog and others - that not only depict the life and times of the Lady who was Not for Turning but also chart the ups and downs of national and international life during her eleven years as Premier.

Despite being subtitled Mother of the Nation or Monster ['Creature', surely] from the Blue Lagoon, it has to be said that the cartoons are, by and large, more monstrous than motherly.

In fact, it is fascinating to note the increasing proportion of vitriol to ink with which Thatcher was depicted with, eventually, an almost total disregard for the respect that, once upon a time, would have been shown to the holder of the high office of Prime Minister.

Surely, no previous premier was so viciously portrayed - certainly not Churchill, Macmillan or Wilson and scarcely even Heath - and the lampooning of Thatcher (as in the Scarfe cartoon, right, which is not in the exhibition) established a trend of fearlessness that continue through the grey Major years and into the reigns of Blair and Brown. I doubt that our national leaders have been so outrageously - though, doubtless, justifiably - abused by the artists of Grub Street since the time of Gilray and Cruickshank. Which is a decidedly healthy state of affairs!

Memories - often funny and sometimes tragic - are stirred by these cartoons which (as is always the case with exhibitions at The Cartoon Museum) remind us that this seemingly ephemeral art form is a vital part of the chronicling of our history as well as being great graphic art.

Here are few of those memories...

The return of the 'Snatcher': Margaret Thatcher had earned one of her earliest sobriquets, 'Thatcher the Milk Snatcher' when, as Education Secretary she discontinued free school milk to children over the age of seven. On 11 February 1975, Les Gibbard in The Guardian marked the occasion when Thatcher snatched a real prize: a majority in the ballot to defeat Ted Heath for the leadership of the Tory Party. Loser, Willie Whitelaw, is shown attempting to milk the runaway cow...

Demagogue in waiting: When the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical Evita opened in London in 1978, the newspaper headlines declared (of Elaine Paige's performance in the title-role) A STAR IS BORN.

Trog (Wally Fawkes), drawing in The Observer on 25 June 1978, imagined Thatcher dreaming her own dreams of 'stardom'. After seeing Evita, Thatcher wrote to her speech-writer, Ronnie Millar: "If a woman like that can get to the top without any morals, how high could someone get who had one or two."


Bowled OUT!: At the Lord Mayor's Banquet on 12 November 1990, Margaret Thatcher made a speech in which she compared herself to a batsman: "I am still at the crease though the bowling has been pretty hostile of late. And in case anyone doubted it, I can assure you there will be no ducking the bouncers." The following day, Geoffrey Howe resigned from the Thatcher government saying of the PM's vetoing future involvement over economic and monetary union with Europe that it was "like sending your opening batsman to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls were bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain." Charles Griffin's cartoon on the front page of the Daily Mirror on 14 November 1990 was accompanied by the headline: HOWE'S THAT!


Final stake-out: After initially endorsing Tony Blair and enjoying tea and tête-à-têtes at Number 10, Thatcher turned on her successor in 2000 calling one of his policies "an act of monumental folly". Blair responded that it was now time to "move British politics beyond the time of Margaret Thatcher." The death knell of their relationship was commemorated on 23 November 2000 by Steve Bell in The Guardian.

And let's not forget the work of Luck and Flaw and the Spitting Image gang...

The exhibition is accompanied by a splendid catalogue (£10.99) which reproduces all the exhibits and contains essays by Messrs Baker and Bell along with cartoonists, Gibbard and Griffen, Michael Foot and the Lords Tebbit, Carrington, Howe, Steel and Owen.

You can visit The Cartoon Museum at 35 Little Russell Street, London WC1A 2HH (Opening times: Tuesday- Saturday 10:30-17:30 Sunday 12:00 - 17:30, closed Mondays including Bank Holiday Mondays) Admission: £4.00 for adults, £3.00 for concessions; Free to Students, under 18s and Friends of The Cartoon Museum

A series of special events will be taking place in connection with the Thatcher exhibition:

Tue 16 June 6.30 – 7.30pm
Margaret Thatcher - A Unique Phenomenon
Kenneth Baker
From 1985 to 1990 Kenneth Baker served as a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s administrations. He is a collector and writer on cartoons and caricatures and co-curator of the exhibition Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!

Tue 23 June 6.30 – 7.30
Where There is Discord: The Mrs Thatcher Show
John Minnion
Caricaturist for The New Statesman throughout those years, John Minnion has put together this entertaining and informative presentation, using caricatures and music to tell the story of the Thatcher years.

Wed 1 July 7 – 8 pm (Note later time)
Maggie – the Monster from the Blue Lagoon?
Steve Bell
The chief political cartoonist on The Guardian since 1990, Steve Bell began drawing Margaret Thatcher in ‘Maggie’s Farm’ (1979-86) and later in ‘If…’. He talks about his three decades of drawing Mrs T.

Booking is essential Tickets £5, Concessions £4, Friends £3
Telephone 0207 580 8155. Email: info@cartoonmuseum.org

You can find more information about this, previous and forthcoming exhibitions, publications and how to become a Friend at The Cartoon Museum website.

Images © Gerald Scarfe, Les Gibbard, Trog, Charles Griffin and Steve Bell

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR BENNETT

Yes, that National Treasure, Alan Bennett is 75 today.

It's rather hard to imagine him having a 'bit of a time' on this significant date, since he always appears - though it's doubtless only a cultivated image - somewhat lugubrious in his outlook on life in general and his own in particular.

Personally, I confess to being a Jekyll-and-Hyde Bennett fan: I like and am annoyed (or maybe just irritated) by his work on about a 50/50 basis, but the 50% that I like, I like enormously - possibly as much as 75%!

He has contributed generously to both the worlds of Art and Entertainment - I say both because Bennett is equally capable of writing stories and plays that are blissfully moving and transcendent as he is of tossing off sixth-form squibs and over-the-garden-gate music-hall comedy. Whatever form it takes we are, as a result, all the richer for his presence among us.

So, here's wishing him many more years of touching our emotions and tickling our funny bones and here are one or two priceless Bennett quotes from the man or his characters...

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.

If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.

I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. the shore has a point. The sea has none.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to read and often thinks they have.

Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?

We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.

I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.

The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it's on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when there is nobody looking, that the spirit falters.

I'm all in favour of free expression as long as it's kept rigidly under control.

Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.


See! That one even made Mr Bennett laugh!

RINGING TRUE

While we all wait with (relatively) bated breath for the Peter Jackson-Guillermo del Toro two-part film based on The Hobbit, those fiendish fans of Middle-earth have stolen a march on the professionals by producing The Hunt for Gollum.

This 40-minute film based on J R R Tolkien's appendices to The Lord of the Rings fills in some of the untold events that befell between the end of The Hobbit (with Mr Bilbo Baggins having unwittingly carried off the One Ring from its then 'owner', Gollum) and the beginning of the saga of the War of the Ring as recounted in The Fellowship of the Ring.

When dramatising the BBC radio version of The Lord of the Rings, I incorporated material from the appendices into the opening episodes (to the horror of some fans I might add!) but it was largely ignored by the screenwriters of the Jackson film trilogy.

Those omissions have now been plugged by an astonishing amateur film created by a talented team of Rings enthusiasts that brilliantly presents Tolkien's 'back-story'. What is amazing beyond belief is that the filmmakers have managed to produce their film for -- read this and weep, Mr J! -- just $500!!

A loving homage to Tolkien, Jackson (and, on its soundtrack, Howard Shore), The Hunt for Gollum - received its premiere - on-line - a few days ago; so, if you haven't yet caught up with this remarkable achievement, take a look at the trailer...

...and then make tracks for the The Hunt for Gollum website where you can watch the entire 40-minute epic. The film, for copyright reasons, can only be viewed on-stream and will never be available to be down or uploaded. So, don't miss it!

Then pop back here to watch the documentary about how the film was made, with (in the tradition of the Rings movies' 'extras') lots of fun behind-the-scenes footage...

And see some of the secrets revealed behind the film's exceptional special effects...

There's just one thing I want to know --- why I wasn't asked to write the 'Making of...' book?!!

STONE AGE ETHICS

Following on from my recent post about the animated TV series of Hanna-Barbera, I recently stumbled on an aspect of one of my favourite H&B shows, The Flintstones, that those of us who watched the programme in Britain never saw --- the sponsorship commercials advertising Winston cigarettes...

Times have certainly changed since the neolithic 'sixties!

How would one describe such a commercial liaison in this more politically correct age of ours? Yabba-Dabba-Doo? I think not! 

Today (as SharonM suggests in the comments below) it would be a more a case of Yabba-Dabba-DON'T! 

PIP PIP!

Just heard on The Food Programme (BBC Radio 4) that Brogdale Farm in Faversham, Kent, home of the National Fruit Collection, sells a variety of ciders in its shop, which is called --- Tiddly Pomme!

HIGH-LOO

On the subject of loos, here's one that has a severely limited use but is, nevertheless, a hell of an eye-catching movie ad...


OK, I'm sure someone will tell me that this ambient advertisement for Spiderman 2 is a photoshoped hoax, but it ought to be true!

And, just think: if Spidey did have his own designated urinal, gents' public loos might finally become fly-free!

And, for fans of Peter Parker and his alter ego, here's a glimpse what became of his life after the lad finally went and tied the knot with Mary Jane...

Click image to enlarge

This piece of art (actually a cartoonist's retort against a piece of sexist comic book merchandise showing a busty Mary Jane bent over the tub washing Spiderman's suit) was the work of the talented J Bone, although - be warned - his style may be rather too gay and raunchy for everyone's taste.