Wednesday 21 December 2011

Barry Clayton

My friend Barry Clayton died this morning.

I first tracked Barry down twenty years ago.  Tracked down, because once I’d heard him, I had a professional need to find him  I had heard his voice on a TV commercial for a compilation CD of Heavy Metal hits.  Barry had many claims to fame and in the unlikely field of rock music he was known as the voice of ‘the beast’ in Iron Maiden’s single ‘The Number of the Beast, from 1982. The band’s original choice to read the lines was Vincent Price, who was too expensive, so Barry was selected.  I spent days telephoning around record distributors and advertising agencies in order to track down this voice and eventually I found it.  Barry was booked for my next commentary session - I was producing on-air trails for Bravo at the time - and, six weeks after hearing him for the first time, I met him.

Rather deprecatingly, he introduced himself as ‘Vincent “Cut” Price’, but his voice was so much better than that. It could be seductive, mellow, assured, authoritative and powerful within the span of a single phrase.  I came to work with him on a regular basis, and he became my voice of choice: we both revelled with him grasping, moulding and manifesting the commentaries I wrote, promoting Bravo’s extremely dubious range of movies.  “Wrath of the Wendigo” was the first shlock-horror voice he performed for me, and to this day I am proud to have his mellifluous tones on my showreel, promoting all kinds of films and television series and events.  I love his reading for the trailer for David Kronenburg’s ‘Dead Ringers’, marvel at the build-up he creates in ‘Fear, Fright and Fantasy’ (no amount of alliteration would ever put him off) and immerse myself in his confident, all-knowing delivery of the promos for the MTV series ‘Dead at 21’.  Our work together on ‘Hammer House of Horror’ won the Promax Gold Award for Best Trailer.

Not surprisingly our friendship beyond the audio studio developed, and we began to contrive reasons for lunch together after our recording sessions.  During these happy repasts (“I think we could squeeze in another bottle of Pinot Grigio, don’t you?”) I came to learn of his astonishing life story.

He was born in Sheffield.  Every time we met, he would greet me in a thick South Yorkshire accent, congratulating me on managing to escape from “Oop North”. (I usually did a Rita Tushingham impression in return, dumping my bag down on the busy pavement and staring up at the buildings as I whispered in awe: “Lunn-dunn…!”).  I was surprised to learn that he had been born with a cleft palate - not something one would expect in a successful actor, presenter and voice artist - because you could never tell. As a boy he was exceptionally close to his mother and he recounted to me an incredibly moving tale of how the two of them found themselves at the quayside in a northern French port the days after the Second World War broke out.  They were approached by a young Jewish woman whose only chance of survival was to escape to England.  Barry’s mother gave her her own passport... 

Barry was a socialist and an internationalist: the words probably ran through him like the letters in a stick of rock. I believe his father had fought in the Spanish Civil War. Barry grew up embracing the concept of a world without borders: in addition to an impressive repertoire of  European languages, he was fluent in Esperanto.  He trained as an actor and moved to Poland, where he became the English voice of Radio Warsaw. It was here he met his future wife and, from what I can make out, the fact that she was a nuclear scientist and he wasn’t Polish didn’t fit in too well with the authorities as the Cold War limped impotently forward. 

They returned to the UK where Barry joined Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in Stratford East - anecdotes he would recount from this time were hilarious.  He met Lindsay Anderson who recommended he contact Granada Television, which he did: he signed up and worked as a producer with the writer and journalist Brian Trueman and they spent many happy years reporting on the more topical daily life in the north-west of England in ‘People and Places’ the fore-runner of ‘Granada Reports’.  The two of them, tasked with ensuring the viewers saw their own world reflect on the small screen, would pore over the map of the region, identify a locality they hadn’t visited recently and then dig out the Good Food Guide, before setting off to the likes of Kirkby Lonsdale for a couple of hours filming followed by an award-winning and totally disproportionate dinner.  Barry was always impressed at the supportive way in which the Bernsteins took a personal interest in the way Granada's creative staff worked.

Yet London called, and Barry became producer and presenter on Capital Radio’s “London Tonight”, which he co-hosted with Anna Raeburn.   These were the heady days of commercial radio and Capital was the standard by which all other stations were measured.   Only the other day I found recordings of Kenny Everett, another star from the Capital firmament, and was delighted to hear Barry turn up as narrator in Everett’s ridiculously funny space serial ‘Captain Kremmen’.  “Oh yes,” Barry once told me, “Kenny would regularly stick his head around the office door, grab me and drag me behind a microphone to read something outrageous...”.  Barry moved on to BBC Radio London and launched ‘Black Londoners’ with Alex Pascall.  He also produced films on architecture, about which he was passionate, and he subscribed prolifically to a wide range of the arts.

He could not abide politicians and loathed the way the world ran itself.  Our meals together were spent lambasting the status quo, agreeing on the absurdity of people in power making such a mess of the world they contrive to improve.  We put the world to rights every time.

This last year wasn’t kind to Barry.  His advancing illness meant that during a happy and otherwise totally coherent conversation, he would begin to speak on a subject, not knowing he had already done so a few minutes previously.  I didn’t bring this to his attention and nor did I mind, because he was always such fun to listen to.  Perhaps he thought there was a chance he might get repeat fees - voice artists rarely do these days.

Barry died in a care home at 6 a.m., at the start of the shortest day of the year, and I’m terribly upset.  Because of this, I may have confused some of the details in what I’ve written above, but you get the picture.  He was a very special man, a kind and warm character, immensely talented, perceptive and a demonstrator of exquisite taste.  Even better, he cared about the world.

And he was a very, very good friend.

Tuesday 22 November 2011

On Street Art

The gathering dusk on Friday afternoon found me walking past the ugly buildings of Nelson Street in Bristol city centre.  I was delighted to discover that the dreary 60s monoliths that once accommodated faceless bureaucrats and now contain students (a nice transition) have been superbly decorated with giant graphic murals.  These dreadful concrete structures, totally without ornament, have their blind and blank expanses now covered with exotic patterns and wistful portraits many storeys high.

Bristol’s reputation for street art appears to have taken another step forward.  What were previously perceived as illicit forays with an aerosol have now been recognised as valid social decoration and, as such, the poachers have now been employed by the gamekeepers in order to brighten up the place they share. This enlightened change of council policy was worth investigation. The people with their finger on the pulse of Bristol’s street art would know.

It was a mild evening in Bristol and, as traffic darted up the atypically clear Cheltenham Road, lights glowed in the shop fronts of the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft. Adjacent to the PRSC headquarters in Jamaica Street, the launch of an exhibition of portraits of local residents was taking place in the old Carriage Works.  In true PRSC fashion everyone was made welcome and, over a free and toothsome pint of Butcombe Gold (generously provided by the brewery), I got into conversation with Chalky, one of the organisers. 

We talked about ‘See No Evil’, the city’s strategy last summer to bring street art to its centre.  Yet I was surprised that Chalky failed to share my appreciation of El Mac’s 10-storey high Mother and Child and its like.  He agreed the initiative had certainly delivered stunning imagery across one of the centre’s grimmest quarters but, for him and the stalwarts of the PRSC, the feast of art down the road left a bitter after-taste.  Apparently, commissioned by the Council, street artists were flown in from around the world in order to participate in the summer event.  Several of Bristol’s street art luminaries were also involved, and contributions of paint and materials were acquired from established practitioners of the city’s street art scene. 

The reason Chalky was so underwhelmed was soon made clear. Four months later, many artists remain unremunerated. Gallons of paint were used, yet bills remain unpaid. Chalky still hasn’t got his ladders back. I was given the impression that the Council appears to want the whole affair swept under the carpet. Yet many dozens of thousands of pounds are involved.

This is a familiar and disappointing tale.  Bristol is renowned for indigenous talent in this field yet, as in much these days, ‘authority ‘ felt it needed to stick in its oar and take over.  For a fraction of the cost, the city’s inhabitants could have authored and executed their own imagery.  Didn’t the Council know the world’s leading lights in street art were their own residents? Why wasn’t the work commissioned from community organisations such as the PRSC?  Was it that the Council wanted to cash in on its street art scene but didn’t actually want to engage with its own residents, with whom it may have endured the occasional skirmish over recent years?

This is a shame.  The self-imposed agenda of the PRSC is “to work with the nature of the built environment, to improve through painting, to act gently and to care for the fabric of the area”. It would have made a wonderful job of Nelson Street, employed dozens and saved the rate-payer thousands. 

And Chalky would have his ladders back, too.

Thursday 6 October 2011

On Where British Radio Went Wrong

In addition to TV, websites, publications etc., the BBC runs around eight national radio services plus a clutch of national, regional and local stations. Its licence fee also  supports the World Service, until recently funded by the Foreign Office, in addition to some of S4C and the costs involved in the switch from analogue to digital broadcasting.

New cuts will inevitably affect BBC radio, but if the Government hadn’t made such a terrible decision 45 years ago, the BBC wouldn’t be facing the dilemma it is today.

I believe that BBC radio was in its heyday back in the mid-60s.  Britain was a liberated, creative cauldron, exciting things were happening across all aspects of society, and the BBC was a means by which the nation could discover and explore what was going on.  It ran three national networks: the Home Service, the Light and the Third Programmes.  Journalism and drama formed most of the Home Service output, the Light Programme thrived on music and entertainment, and the Third Programme studied classical music and the intellectual world.  And that was it.

However, just over three miles out to sea, rusting hulks broadcast pop music to the millions ashore yearning for something different, contemporary and beyond the domain of the mandarins of Portland Place.  It was the success of pirate radio that prompted Harold Wilson to become suddenly aware that people were enjoying something that his Government couldn't control.  In a very British knee-jerk reaction, hasty legislation cut off the revenue stream to the pirate stations around the country, and reconstituted the BBC to serve their audiences.
 
It was a mess.  The Home Service became Radio Four, the Third Programme Radio Three, and the Light Programme an uncomfortable hybrid of Radios One and Two.  Uncomfortable because, in their early years, they shared programming: it was not unusual to find a programme exploring the depths of prog rock followed by 'The Organist Entertains'.  Pop music programming was rationed, because the BBC had no facilities to promulgate it.  Restructuring the behemoth to accommodate it would take time.

When the Conservative Government came on the scene a couple of years later, they opened up the airwaves to operators of local commercial radio stations, the first of which, LBC, opened on 8th October 1973: the first music station, Capital opened a week later.

It was this six year hiatus since the pirates were forced off the air on 15th August 1967 which skewed the development of radio in the UK irredeemably.  Instead of encouraging the commercial talent and opportunities the pirates offered by legalising their services and making them land-based, the Government prohibited them and used the hefty might of the BBC to create its own take on pop music broadcasting.  The innovative edge those maritime stalwarts brought to our transistor radios was lost forever.  Local popular music radio had to reinvent itself over the next decade, and by the time the whole country had its own pop stations in 1980 that fresh edge had withered and died.

Yet there had been a one-stop solution.  Frank Gillard, having exhaustively studied local radio in the US, was behind the BBC developing it in the UK: its first station opened in Leicester in 1967.   But the US model is a commercial one: how on earth did the government ignore this and give the UK local radio network to the BBC?

This disdain for commercial radio in the UK in the sixties precluded any new local radio stations from effortlessly assimilating the work of the pirates onshore.  The London-based BBC needn’t have been involved and would have continued excelling itself with its three national networks,  expanding over time to provide rolling news and sports services using existing facilities.  Popular music would have been left to the people who did it best.  Specialist stations would have eventually arrived, operated under the aegis of established operators (much as HD stations are in the US today) and accommodated within existing spectrum. 

Therefore, if Wilson’s Government hadn't taken such exception to the commercial sector offering the public something previously unavailable (and at no cost), the state of British radio would now be so much better.

And the hopelessly over-indulged  BBC wouldn't find itself today having to divest itself of 20% of what talent it has left.

Tuesday 26 July 2011

The Move to Manchester

Back in 1999 I was the Chairman of the BBC North Regional Advisory Council and, as such, represented the BBC North region on the BBC English National Forum, reporting directly to the BBC Governor with responsibility for the English Regions, Ranjit Sondhi.   Ranjit had mentioned to me in conversation that he and the other Governors were aware that the BBC appeared to be serving its London audience quite well, but that the rest of England failed to be responding to the same extent.  As a previously London-based employee of the BBC, now living in the North of England, I knew what he was talking about, so I suggested that I look into it.

Over a couple of months I researched and wrote a report "Poor Perception of BBC Services in the North of England", examining how the 'non-Home Counties' English audience regarded BBC services.  I found it fascinating.  I was given a lot of anecdotal evidence which, when combined, revealed an antipathy to the way the BBC presented itself.  Everything the BBC did, from assuming that estuary English was an accepted norm to the disgrace of its newsroom handing over to its 'North of England correspondent' (which it still does - one correspondent for 16.9 million people?), left audiences living over 100 miles from London feeling that the BBC was content stewing in its metropolitan juices and, whether they liked it or not, that was the way things were expected to stay.

(A year ago, and to illustrate this to Richard Deverell, the BBC executive responsible for coordinating the move to Manchester, I gave as an example of the BBC's London parochialism their tendancy, when showing what a bus stop looked like, to use one with the London Transport logo and the numbers 72 and 220 on it.  "Good heavens" he said, "I used to get the 72 to work..."  Of course he did: that's the bus stop in Wood Lane outside BBC Television Centre.  I suggested to him that it was probably what everyone in the BBC imagined bus stops to look like because none of them were aware of the world beyond White City).

The BBC was London. ITV wasn't because, even as the network de-federalised itself to become London-administered, the mainstay of its output remained diversely situated - and, also, a high proportion of its air-time (the ads) was local. The same applied to Channel 4.  Satellite television was perceived as having no geographical remit.

My report was circulated among the Governors and brought to the attention of both Andy Griffee, the Head of English Regions, and Pat Loughrey, Head of Nations and Regions.  I was invited to present the report to the two of them and was glad to find them so galvanised to respond to its findings.  Pat Loughrey instigated the BBC Northern Task Force which, with a budget of £24.5m, set about solving the problem of setting the BBC once again at the heart of its provincial audience.

And they completely missed the point.

My report revealed that people wanted local and regional production, which represented local and regional voices, interests and sentiments. Everyone now sniggers at the notion of 'Nationwide' ("Here in Norwich, we can do even better than that!") but, oneupmanship apart, it was seeing local colour make up the mosaic of the country that everyone wanted.  Something relevant to a family in Devon is relevant to a family in Cumbria.  What has happened now is that the BBC has dumped a whole load of departments into one location in Manchester - exactly the same as when it dumped Science Features into Kensington House back in 1970, or News and Current Affairs into Lime Grove a decade earlier.  Worse, and for some totally incomprehensible reason, it has decided to move London-based staff away from the capital to do this.  In possibly one of the BBC's worst-ever examples of metrocentric patronisation, it assumes two things: a) that only London staff can create BBC programmes (i.e. the rest of England lacks talent), and b) that it has solved its problem of provincial representation.

It hasn't.  Where are the local voices, the regional issues and the sentiment?  Still out there, one presumes.  They certainly won't be travelling up from W12.

During my research, I spoke to the widow of the drama producer Alfred Bradley who, in our conversation, said "One day, when Alfred was doing a radio play in Leeds..." and I thought that, in that one simple phrase, there was possibly no better way of encapsulating the whole, sad, missed, point.   Media can be produced anywhere these days.  It can be, and should be.  Greg Dyke was Director General at the implementation of the Northern Task Force and, although he stated that the days of the great regional studio centres were gone, he was vehement about modern technical kit and the advantages it would offer local talent and production.  He saw new technology as the catalyst for a resurgence in local and regional production - by any- and everyone, from any- and everywhere.  

Many other towns across the North also provided specific material for my research, yet all except Manchester fail to register on the new BBC radar.  The whole point of the research has been missed. BBC has created another of its distant, self-centred monoliths.  It has totally forgotten what the initial impetus was for its move up north.

Expect little change...

Friday 22 July 2011

But Is It Art?

It appears that, for a series entitled “At Large”, I’m spending a disproportionate amount of time discussing Art.  The question of ‘what constitutes ‘Art’’ is the basis for a project I am currently developing, so there was every chance that issues arising from the work I’m doing on that will provide the basis for something to talk about here.

We had a day of high culture last weekend, spending Saturday in a rain-soaked Middlesbrough, taking in its exceptional public art, and then visiting MIMA, the town's very impressive Museum of Modern Art.  Way back, around 1970, as a student living there,I remember Middlesbrough holding its first contemporary art exhibition. Radical, different and often unsettling imagery, presented in the converted doctor’s surgery that was Middlesbrough Art Gallery at the time, wasn’t something that this A-level Art student expected, but it was the precursor of a constant, innovative and improving engagement that the town has with contemporary art.  Today’s public art in Middlesbrough includes work from internationally acclaimed artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Anish Kapoor.

Bottle Of Letters
Oldenburg’s Bottle Of Letters (which, in my typically inattentive way, I’ve always known as Message In A Bottle - and you'll see why), graces one of Middlesbrough’s earliest central land clearances, and today is attractively surrounded by a lake and green open spaces.  More recently, and perhaps to create a lure to the proposed dock-side development scheme, Anish Kapoor was commissioned to produced his giant work Temenos, the first part of the world’s largest public art project which will straddle the Tees Valley.  It is huge.



Middlesbrough has always been at home with giant structures.  The famous 100 year old Transporter Bridge and, up the River Tees, the Newport Bridge are surrounded by equally dramatic flare stacks, blast furnaces, cranes and the ephemeral leviathans that make up the hardware of the steel, shipbuilding and chemical industries - massive, intriguing shapes, all of them. And it was these that reminded me of my unanswered question ‘what constitutes Art?’ and prompted me to think further.
Temenos

Temenos is a commissioned sculpture, a work in steel and wire, which are materials indigenous to Middlesbrough.  Yet adjacent to the sculpture is a shipyard's travelling crane. Redundant, and consequently derelict like so many of the tools of Teesside industry, its huge dimensions equate to Temenos, its lines clean and forceful, its effect on those who study it possibly equally profound.
Not Art

But does anyone ever actually study it?  It was never constructed to be ‘Art’: it’s a crane.  If Andy Goldsworthy can make an ordinary tree ‘Art’ by putting a frame around it, why should the crane - designed and crafted out of steel and wire by artisans - not be ‘Art’?   Or is Temenos only ‘Art’ because it set out to be in the first place and someone tells us that it is? 

Our day of high culture ended by savouring Teesside’s contribution to the world of haute cuisine, the Chicken Parmo.

But that's another story...

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Aphrodite At The Waterhole


Many years ago, as a distraction on a wet afternoon, I thought a visit to the local Art Gallery with T. might be a good idea. T. was in a push-chair and I think that it would be safe to say that, at the age of two, he was not particularly interested in the finer aspects of portraiture undertaken by Royal Academicians of the late 18th century.  Imagine my surprise then, as we turned a corner in the gallery and I propelled T. into view of a vast oil painting of luxuriantly endowed reclining nude.  “Whaaahay!” T. exclaimed loudly with a manic grin, squirming delightedly in his pushchair and waving his tiny grasping hands in the air.  The twelve-foot long splayed and voluptuous female torso obviously had a profound effect on him.

T. is now 20 years old and has an even greater opportunity to demonstrate excitement at work by the same artist, although I hope, in my heart of hearts, that he doesn’t (or, if he does, that I won’t be there with him). The art gallery, here in York, has recently mounted an impressive exhibition dedicated to the work of that same local artist, a painter who went on to national acclaim, William Etty.

Aphrodite At The Waterhole?
There is certainly a high incidence of gratuitous nudity in Etty’s work, and the exhibition takes an absorbing look at how such representation was accepted back in less relaxed times.  Providing there was a moral behind the image, it would be generally be acceptable.  The Bible, and the better known Greek tragedies came out well, but the imagery in one or two lesser-known fables was lambasted for its prurience, even if the technique used in its execution was perfectly adequate.  Yet strangely, this technique, although totally based on observation, does go awry on occasions.  Proportionally, some of Etty's figures are dubious, with giant thighs, extruded arms, small heads, rheumy eyes and strangely located ears.  But it’s a worthwhile exhibition, and a well-curated one. 

One particularly nice touch, garnering the involvement of visitors of all ages and abilities, is the positioning of this well-lit statue (not by Etty) for them to draw, much along the lines that he and other RA students would have done in years gone by.  I’m afraid I don’t recall the name of the work (although one might consider as a suitable appellation “Aphrodite At The Waterhole”, whom Tony Hancock set out to immortalise from a giant block of stone in ‘The Rebel’ - with Irene Handl as his model), but it is an attractive classical representation offering to the onlooker a combination of life drawing and still life opportunities.

Your Author's Rendition
It is encircled by benches, on which sketchbooks and pencils have been provided, and the statue has now been drawn many times from throughout 360º by visitors to the gallery.  The variety in drawing is impressive, from naïve scrawls and quick graphic doodles to observant and skilful tonal drawing.  I sent a suggestion to the Art Gallery that they use these images to make a lapsed-time animated sequence, travelling around the statue.  Whether they will or not, I’ll let you know.

In the meanwhile, here’s the statue, plus my own effort at recording it for posterity.  A bit presumptuous of me really because, if you think about it, whoever created the statue created it to do precisely that in the first instance. 

And even then, it was probably a copy.



Monday 11 July 2011

The Sky Monopoly - A Brief Background

The journalist and writer William Shawcross has been a lone voice of support for Rupert Murdoch, whose institutions and their working are so much at the forefront of news coverage these days.  Unfortunately, I think Mr. Shawcross's recent praise of what Murdoch has done for British media over the years is a little short of the mark, and I feel that some clarification and corrections are required.

On Sky News, and In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, Mr. Shawcross claimed that it was Murdoch who took on the print unions and therefore was responsible for dragging the industry, kicking and screaming, into the late twentieth century.  Certainly the virtriol flowing at the gates of News International (NI) in Wapping back in the 80s was as a result of Murdoch introducing new technology and working practices, but it was Eddie Shah, and his newspaper Today that instigated the new approach some time previously.  Murdoch had simply been watching from the the sidelines.  As Shah took all the initial flak (from which Today was to eventually succumb: it was later absorbed into the NI empire and subsequently closed down) Murdoch bided his time, before moving forwards in the smoother waters of a wake that had been cleared for him.

And it was a similar strategy that Murdoch used with Sky Television.  Mr. Shawcross claimed Sky broke the 'monopoly' (sic) of the BBC and ITV: he is wrong.  Since 5th November 1982 Channel 4 was also on the scene, and the UK had four, not two, national terrestrial channels.  Yet other channels also existed, and the fact that Murdoch unscrupulously eradicated all of them - or forcibly absorbed them into his own empire - has gone unmentioned in the current melée.  So let's look at Sky, within Mr. Shawcross's context that monopolies are a bad thing.

Sky Television was not Rupert Murdoch's idea.  Invented by a British scientist, it began life as Satellite Television Limited, and was a single channel uplinked from Molinare in Foubert's Place in Soho. Initially the channel was then downloaded and redistributed by cable television service providers across the UK.  In the mid-80s these were few and far between - Westminster had one, Milton Keynes another etc., - and media entrepreneurs saw the chance to create their own branded 'channels' which would be distributed across these small networks without having all the usual regulatory and transmission difficulties.  These channels were often little more than repeated two-hour compilations of old cinema films and outdated TV series, delivered - by road, on cassette - to the cable head-ends for distribution to homes. The opportunities then starting to arise, of delivering via satellite to the cable operators, would offer flexibility, cost-effectiveness and a greater number of markets for the same product. Business plans relied on an ever-growing number of subscribers, the subsequent increase in revenue from which would be invested in better quality programming: a virtuous circle.

Then Astra came on the scene, a satellite operator offering broadcasting directly to domestic receivers.  Only when the opportunities offered by this 'Direct-to-Home' (DTH) satellite broadcasting arrived, did NI enter the fray.  It bought out Satellite TV and renamed it Sky.  At the same time, the US networks who had recognised the potential of the UK's cable systems, also saw the possibilities offered by DTH in the UK and Ireland, and started their own services.  MTV, TNT (as CNN, TCM and Nickelodeon), Discovery and others gradually bought space on Astra.  DTH had been identified as the future of TV in the British Isles.

Inevitably, the British Government, meddling for no good reason, stuck its oar in here and decreed that any UK regulated DTH should be transmitted using D2MAC, a more sophisticated (i.e. complex) transmission system than the PAL system already in use terrestrially.  Murdoch took a risk: he had set up Sky as a pan-European channel and did not need to comply with the notions of the UK government. He  rented transponders on Astra and broadcasted in PAL.  It worked - and was cheaper and more acceptable to the market because it used technology everyone already had.  Four times as expensive, the 'squarial' based D2MAC system was dead in the water.  British Satellite Broadcasting, a consortium of major ITV broadcasters, publishing groups and UK technology industries championed by the UK authorities, stood no chance as, for a short time, the two incompatible systems ran side by side.

No-one benefitted.  Eventually, and as money haemorraged from both operators, the authorities, committed to encouraging satellite broadcasting but determined to be able to regulate it, forced a merger.  The 'Satellite' in BSB became 'Sky' and the essence of what we have today came about.  Murdoch currently owns 39% of BSkyB.

However, in his desperate race to achieve the critical market saturation NI desired, Murdoch threw money at product: he bought out film studios, movie catalogues, a US TV network and changed the face of sport - not least UK football - forever.  In doing this, he also ruined any chances for other UK based organisations to seek to provide alternative programming.  Priced out of programme markets, any channel lacking the funding Murdoch could contrive to lay his hands on would disappear from sight.  They disappear even to the present day, as NI continues to pay over the odds for programming and rights, not just to ensure an audience but to eradicate all chance of competition.

Remember Superchannel?  It, with others such as Premiere, Matinee and HVC were among the first to go as Sky forced its presence onto the market.  Following the formation of BSkyB, its channels Galaxy, The Power Station (with Chris Evans presenting chart shows from the seaside on sunny days), The Movie Channel, The Sports Channel and Now soon disappeared.  Ever since, alternatives outside the Sky monopoly have been short lived, their survival dependent on either being absorbed into the Sky empire or paying through the nose to be delivered via the Sky transmission platform (and its lucrative electronic programme guide).  Powerful operators such as Discovery, MTV, National Geographic and Turner are too big to stay in Murdoch's sights at the moment and their programming currently complements Sky output, but others such as Setanta, U>Direct, Men & Motors, Virgin/Channel One and Bravo have all since passed into oblivion, manipulated into extinction by Sky's obsession with being the sole provider.

Bearing all this in mind, Mr Shawcross' s claim that Rupert Murdoch did wonderful things by breaking the BBC/ITV monopoly rings a little hollow.

Thursday 7 July 2011

An Inappropriate Acronym

I've just been updating one or two aspects of my website (www.w3kts.com, for those of you who didn't get here by means of it) and, in these days of joined up thinking - or, rather, the aspiration to be considered a joined-up thinker - I thought it wise to include details of the other ways by which I and my work can be accessed.

So, on the 'contact' page, in addition to my company address, land-line and mobile telephone number I now include an 0845 number.  This has been allocated to me, at no cost, by my telephone service in the hope that callers from beyond my local exchange area will use it, to the financial benefit of my service provider. All well and good - an enterprising initiative.

And there are other contact details for me to include.  This blog that you are reading now is relevant, so I've created a hyperlink to it which can be accessed by clicking on the 'Blogspot' logo.  My professional details and CV appear on my 'Linked In' listing, so there's another hyperlink to that, accessed by clicking on its logo.  And, for those with a relatively short attention span - i.e. around 140 words or whatever it is this week - there's my Twitter account, available by clicking on the twitter icon.

Naturally, as I claim to have a designer's orderly mind, I have arrayed these logos in alphabetical order. And that's where the problem arises.

My website now proclaims "BINT".





'Bint' isn't a particularly attractive word.  It is a corruption of the arab word meaning 'daughter' and its current definition ranges from "a naïve female, often considered stupid" to stronger terms for the derogatory "tart". Hopefully, people who know me will a) know me to be the wrong gender and b) wouldn't in any case have thought of me that way, even before I brought it to their attention. Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive.

Besides, I've now added a You Tube icon to the row to lessen the impact.

Tuesday 28 June 2011

5.53 a.m.

Even while we sleep, the world runs with precision.

I considered breakfast, up until a few years ago, to be a slick and well-organised operation.  In the time it takes to boil an egg, I would leave the house, walk down the street, cross the main road, enter Lockwood's the newsagents, buy a newspaper, cross the road, walk back along the street, enter the house and turn off the boiled egg.  The timing was perfect.  Assuming the traffic lights were working and that there wasn’t a long queue in the newsagents, the egg would be just as I liked it.  But then things changed.

Mr & Mrs Lockwood retired and closed the business: it became a hairdresser's.  The nearest newspapers were now available from a local Sainsburys, but that was slightly further away and queues were rife.  Even at breakfast time, whereas some of us wanted a paper and nothing else, others plainly couldn’t start the day without a six-pack of Strongbow, twenty Bensons, a lottery ticket and a Sporting Life whose barcode refused to be scanned.  As a result, breakfast became unsatisfactory, a disjointed, slow and drawn-out affair.

Then we discovered another newsagent, a proper one, who offered a delivery service - even to our house, over half a mile away.  We signed up, and ever since, with a squeak of the flap on the letterbox and a comfortable thud on the doormat, the newspaper arrives in our hallway every morning.  I now boil the egg in the time it takes to eat a bowl of fruit salad.  But while I do that, my thoughts are of the remarkable timekeeping involved in the newspaper’s delivery to our door.

It comes through the letterbox at precisely 5.53 a.m.  Not 5.52, or 5.54, but 5.53 a.m.  Every day.  How?  What rigid schedule determines that number 10 is reached at that precise moment every day - and why?  Surely a delivery time as early as this doesn’t need to be precise?  Yet it is.

We have never met our paper boy.  We are pretty certain that it isn’t a boy at all, but a man.  Solitary footprints in the fresh winter morning snow reveal the impressions of rugged size-13 boots.  One of the children thinks he might have long hair.  A card on the doormat with the newspaper one Christmas was “from Anthony”.  But that’s all we know.

Those footprints visit another house in the street, but ours is the furthest they achieve before turning and heading back, so we are at the extremity of the route.  I have visions of our paper deliverer, probably an ex-SAS operative, a renegade perhaps down on his luck, with his steely gaze fixed on the cold, dank pavements ahead of him, the hem of his Army greatcoat fringed with melting slush and swinging in his wake as he hits the green man at every traffic light without a change to his stride.  He takes in the time from clocks on refrigerators and cash registers in the back of darkened shop premises you and I will have never noticed, in order to verify he is meeting his uncompromising schedule.  Every day, his journey is wended through sleeping and empty streets with accuracy and determination.  The newspaper will arrive at number 10 at 5.53 a.m.  That is the way it will be.

The rest of us can sleep soundly in our beds.  Precision is key.  The world belongs to Anthony.

Friday 24 June 2011

Ready Or Not...

I spent an interesting evening at a Private View at Leeds College of Art yesterday, where a wide range of graduates’ work was on display as part of their wittily-entitled Degree show "Ready Or Not, Here We Come".  Comparing the ideas and execution of work across the disciplines undertaken in an art school is always worthwhile, although I apologise now for my forthcoming exclusion of several of them: I attended last night with my own areas of expertise in mind, and it is about those that I write here.  

By definition, anything on exhibition under the aegis of ‘Creative Advertising’ should define creativity.  The only way it can do this is by allowing itself to be compared with all the other advertising we see around us that we acknowledge as being creative. 

Fair enough, but if what is on exhibition manages to match what we already know to be creative advertising, it isn’t ‘more’ creative: it’s as good as what already exists.  Is this good enough?  Not really. An analogy would be “next year, we want everything to be above average”.  If everything is above average, then the average becomes higher… so everything isn’t above average at all but, rather, part of what the new average has become. 

The young people who have spent three or four years at Art School training to be the Creatives of tomorrow shouldn’t be content to see their work matching the work of industry Creatives of today: they should be already knocking down walls, pushing boundaries and exploring new areas of perception - and worrying a lot of people by doing so.  I didn't really see this yesterday.  How can delivering more of the same ever be justified as being ‘creative’?

So it was good to move on to look at what Fine Art had to offer.  Here (and although in this instance one might have to re-interpret one’s definition of the word ‘creative’) things were alive and well.  Ideas flourished and evidence of skill was apparent.  Even distorted, abstracted work revealed traces of drawing ability, imagination and craftsmanship. There was bullishness on display: “I want to do this, and here it is”.  Unlike their confrères in Creative Advertising, the work shouted “I don’t care about what you tell me: this is what I think”.  

(Whether the students would actually lapse into such simplistic terms themselves is, however, questionable.  The exhibition brochure is packed with potentially award-winning and wonderfully pretentious claptrap.  Someone talking about “the sentient aspects of mental phenomena, under-pinned by the notion of Cartesian dualism, being the impetus to (their) practice” and expecting the audience to empathise wholeheartedly might be a little disappointed).

Depressed by the conformity of Creative Advertising and intoxicated by the hedonistic insouciance of Fine Art (oops - slipping in to the same trap myself now…), it was with trepidation that I moved on to Graphic Design.  Illustration plays little part of contemporary graphic design courses, so, unlike Fine Art (and, surprisingly, a lot of the Creative Advertising), what was on display here was squeaky clean. 

Pure and elegant typography, considered use of space, tone and colour meant that clarity abounded.  There were a couple of instances of obfuscation (where, for example, the design of a typeface might be so contrived as to cause it to lose legibility), but many of the works were engaging, some to the point of being absolutely fascinating.  Paul Mitchell’s calendars are just waiting to be featured as next year’s number one promotional freebie from some prestigious corporate multinational; the elegant Penguin Classics' covers of Pearl Singer cry out to be picked up and lovingly leafed through, and look out for ‘Foxx’, a confident typeface from Carl Holderness, to start appearing on magazine covers, posters and packaging at anytime soon.

Will you ever get to see this work? I hope so. 

Perhaps it was because it was the end of a long week of custodianship, standing next to work with which they become progressively over-familiar, but I was aware that many students were failing to acknowledge the opportunities that a Private View brings.  This is the time when that vital ‘next step’ can take place.  Several alumni of the Royal College of Art were circulating, and local creative industries were well represented.  The work looked good: its creators were present yet, for the visitor, identifying which student was responsible for what was difficult and students failed repeatedly to take the opportunity of introducing themselves to outsiders demonstrating an interest in their work.  The notion that a pile of business cards (or a QR link) will lead to further enquiries is not enough, and although their work might have showed initiative, on this occasion the students didn’t.

In their defence, the event was the culmination of their university course and students, being students, were naturally distracted by the generous hospitality on offer.  But had they already been offered their ideal job?  Were the rest of us being left to our own devices because the Class of '11 had already successfully mapped out its future?  Is that why they had started celebrating?

Maybe.  There didn't seem to be much drink left for the rest of us.

Friday 17 June 2011

'Ey-Up: Pay Up!

Weary families, dressed in shorts, T-shirts and ill-chosen hats, stumble along a busy roadside, dragging suitcases through a biting wind and sheeting rain.  

There’s a distinctly third world edge about arriving at Leeds Bradford Airport (LBA) these days.

Since the start of June, vehicles entering the drop-off car park outside the terminal at LBA find themselves being charged £2 for up to 30 minutes when previously it was free.  Angry drivers challenge implacable security staff to no avail.  Last week I drove in, unloaded, bid farewells and was away, from entrance to exit barrier in 25 seconds dead.  £2. Last month it was free.  Pay up.

For the first week or so, only the smallest of added lettering to the main signs indicated this change has taken place whereas now emergency signs have been set out at the roadside as a result, one assumes, of the outcry by users of the airport.  Don’t say you haven't been warned.

Yet surprisingly, bus and taxi operators have not been excluded from the price hike.  They now have to subscribe to a season ticket to access the front of the airport, the costs of which are passed on to passengers accordingly. No-one is happy.

The airport’s response is that other airports have recently introduced charges for drop off, and LBA is simply following suit.  The examples they cite include London Luton, East Midlands and Newcastle.  However, none of these airports have a minimum charge as high as £2, and all of them offer a much more comprehensive range of alternative access by public transport.  Regular bus services, metro and train services, with courtesy coaches where necessary, ply throughout the operating hours at all of them.  At LBA however there’s an hourly bus to Leeds railway station in the evening, one to Bradford, another to Harrogate… and that’s your lot.  To get to and from LBA a taxi or car is essential. 

LBA states that up to an hour’s free waiting time is now available at Long-stay Car Parks 1 & 2, at a distance which they describe as ‘walkable’.  A visit this week indicated that no access is available to the nearer Long-stay 1, which is closed off behind a large barricade.  Long-stay 2 is the best part of half a mile from the arrivals concourse but, once there, no mention of the waiting facility is indicated on its entrance.  Can drivers be sure they can enter - and leave - for free?

Elsewhere around the airport site double yellow lines abound (why not red ones?) and lamp-posts are festooned with ‘No Waiting’ signs.  Luminous-vested parking attendants patrol the roads, ready to chastise and move on any erring driver who attempts to pick up or drop off passengers.  Unsurprising then, that walking to the (closer) roundabout on the A658 is acknowledged as being the least worst option for those who rely on loved-ones to pick up or drop off by car. 

If LBA wants to promote itself as an efficient, attractive gateway to Yorkshire, it needs to think about how it presents itself to its business and leisure customers alike.  The county’s international airport has started to display some some regrettably Yorkshire traits. To charge so much to people who have no choice is curmudgeonly, mean and little short of punitive.

LBA  needs to think again.

Monday 13 June 2011

Eat Late

Why is it that when someone arrives late, they are always jollier than the person waiting for them?

Whilst staying in Exeter the other evening, we went to an Italian restaurant for a meal.  It was a popular venue, and we took the last remaining table, at around 7.45pm.  Around us, diners were making their orders, tucking in, knocking back the wine, asking for the bill,  and all were chatting away to their respective companions.  There was a busy atmosphere in the place, it was attractive and bright, the service attentive and good-humoured and the food very good.   However, I slowly became aware of a rather unsettling fact. 

Nobody laughed. None of the women looked happy.  None of the men showed any expression. Everyone talked and had issues in mind which they were discussing, often gravely, with their partners. The more I looked, the more no-one appeared to be enjoying themselves.  Despite having made efforts to look presentable, attractive even, eyes were tired, make-up faded, faces drawn.  Fashions proclaimed 'contemporary middle-age', but looks told of a life of woe.

It was only later, after nine o'clock, when the restaurant had cleared somewhat and late diners were arriving, that things changed.  Couples sat down already engaged in animated, upbeat conversations.  They were busy with the detail of engaging with their companions and the atmosphere in the restaurant became brisker, lighter and flowing.  People smiled, eyes glinted, conversation became punctuated by laughter and sent on tangents by inconsequential pleasantries.  Sparkle had been injected into the evening and people actually wanted to enjoy each other's company.  They attracted attention, and were attractive as a result.

So why the change? 

None of the early diners appeared to have over-faced themselves with food, or had consumed so much red wine that a stupor was setting in.  Conversely, none of the late arrivals gave an impression of having spent the past few hours knocking back aperatifs to get merry beforehand. The reason for the difference was not gastronomic.  Nor was it particularly age-related: young and old made up both groups.

It crossed my mind that time could have played a part.  The blanket statement "it's gone 7.00 p.m., so it's time we have to eat" could have applied to the early diners:  "Listen, it's nine o'clock - why don't we meet in / go to that restaurant...?" to the late ones.  Working back from that presumption, perhaps I was right.   The early diners focussed on having to eat, the later ones wanted to. More than that, the early diners ate together because they had to eat, whereas the later ones wanted to be together and sharing a table in a restaurant was a great way to do so.  

Absent from the restaurant on our arrival was all sense of aspiration, of direction, of enthusiasm. Even friends who had met to catch up, as were the two ladies at the table adjoining ours, showed little cheer during their discussions.  The muted talk was about problems, about issues, about mundanities.  Whatever the subject was, conversations were lack-lustre because the enthusiasm to talk about it in any other way was missing. 

Yet if identical subjects were discussed later on, it would be with optimism, brio and confidence. That these late arrivers were 'late' - coming in from elsewhere, with less time before they'd have to move on - would suggest more urgency to their demeanour, and with urgency comes direction and objectivity.  Unlike earlier, inertia was no longer on the menu; vitality, less restraint and emotion were order of the day.

So, when the early diners moved on, would it be to a more positive and uplifting place?  I don't think so.  One or two may yet have their damascene moments but most will be destined to repeat the same cheerless regime until such a time as they become an empty seat at a restaurant table - and the subject of someone else's next morose conversation.   

Perhaps it is because a lack of animation has become so commonplace that this social melancholia is failing to be recognised. Torpor appears acceptable as long as it is well behaved and remains innocuous.  Sharing any thought that you are thinking of changing is unacceptable, because change means being different and being different is not acceptable either.

Perhaps all the early diners were talking about the problems of having to conform so much.  The late arrivals probably didn't have time.

We had a lovely meal - although next time, I think we might eat a little later.

Thursday 2 June 2011

Losing Inclination

Sprinkled across the schedules of BBCs 2 and 4 are episodes of the quite pleasant series "Walks with Julia Bradbury' - the word "Walks" usually preceded by a word describing the particular genre of location.  For example, when the thing started, the word "Famous" would have been appropriate, as la Bradbury set out on the Ridgeway, the Lyke Wake Walk or the Pilgrim's Way. 

Once these were under her belt, and galvanised by the success of the initial series, the brief became more challenging. "Country", naturally, but "Mountain" would not have been out of place, and one can imagine for the best part of a decade Julia's camera crew quite happily trolling the Munroes (all 283 of them) in her wake.

But after a while, one mist-swathed mountain peak looks (if you can see it) very much like any other.  Time takes its toll and these gruelling achievements gave way to the more sedate "Railway" walks.  Not a bad idea at all, because rarely in the UK will there be an abandoned trackbed rising on more than a 3% gradient and, by their very nature, a railway line will afford access points to the public along its route. The programme ceased being remote and gained social credentials.  Altitude - and achieving it - played a diminishing part in the story.

But since the 1970s and the crazy notion of installing supermarkets on every available square metre of disused railway land, the number of routes has become limited.  So Ms. B's team ruminated further and discovered that canals, which tend not to get built on (by dint of being full of water), also afforded good walking access across the country.  Off they set again, following routes that were even flatter than a railway, where two centuries ago the commerce of the nation lethargically drifted its way between mill, forge and factory. Julia's stride remained impressive, but only on the level.

So you'll see that, as time passes, this laudable programme is becoming increasingly two dimensional. The camera needs now only to pan where before it tilted.  Ms. Bradbury's rippling recti femoris have done their work and the feats they accomplished are now just a fond memory.  Like life, when enthusiasm and endeavour captivate the younger heart before time and experience prompts its gradual lapse into pragmatism and expediency, the programme has matured.

Look out for the next series to be entitled "Lincolnshire Beach Walks with Julia Bradbury".  And don't expect many corners either.