BatGirl: If Only...

 Bell back at his best...

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

 

Guardian 200 Years

Having killed off  Steve Bell's "If...", The Guardian is now being excessively self indulgent, as it celebrates 200 years.

It is all very self-congratulatory. Teeth-achingly so.

It will publish almost anything on the topic. And I fell for it yesterday. 

The Last Word from Monsieur l'Artiste

 

Sadly, the End of the Bell Epoque

 

A few years ago, I really enjoyed writing a master’s dissertation on Steve Bell’s ‘If…’ cartoons from the Falklands War. 

In addition to the blunt truths he spoke to power, what struck me then was extent to which he reused carefully-chosen references from popular and high culture to make his points.  The very first Falklands strip, as well as introducing us to Reg Kipling, was composed and drawn in the style of jingoistic boy’s war comics from the fifties and sixties.  In a few brief panels this effectively skewered the rhetoric of the pro-war commentators of the time.

He's continued to deploy such intertextual references, using deceptively fine draughtsmanship to evoke other works in his  political commentary.  

His rumbunctious collection of infeasible animals (penguins with teeth?) echo the Beano and the Dandy, of course.  And equally pleasing is his reuse of more establishment artworks, as recently when he presented the naked condom Cameron in full Greensill lobby mode, in a version of Manet’s ‘Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe’.

If this truly is the end of ‘If…’, the Guardian will be the poorer for it, but we should at least thank Monsieur l’Artiste for all of the rich pleasures he has given us over the years. 

And perhaps his most appropriate legacy will be if future cartoonists look back at Steve’s work, (in my view the great political cartoons of our time), and re-use John the Monkey, Harry Hardnose, and of course Prince Philip the Greek Penguin in their own attempts to challenge the next gang of charlatans that manages to win power, to similarly take the royal piss out of those who lord it over us. 

(With due credit of course).

Johnson Being Upbeat

 

Boris in Space

Back in July last year, Johnsom was waffling on about how, given that we could put a man on the moon in the 60s, how hard could Brexit be?  At the time, I thought the comparison was pretty stupid and revealed rather more than the man himself realised.  See my Letter on the topic.

Still pursuing the space metaphor, the chocolate teapot named his proposed ramping up of testing capacity in the UK as 'Project Moonshot' - only for it to be quietly cancelled a few days later.

And we also know that Brexit has already cost more than the International Space Station (see the London Economic Journal article).

Pleasingly, it at least gives Steve Bell the chance to take the piss.

Farewell Clare

A great newspaper doesn’t just have excellent Investigative journalism and incisive - and provoking - opinion pieces.  It also contains a penumbra of other features that build a sense of a broad, common community amongst its readers.  Over the years The Guardian (*my* newspaper) has achieved this  by nurturing a rich diversity of talented people, from Araucaria to Nancy Banks-Smith, Clive James to Jill Tweedie.  There was some resonance to the old classified adverts urging us to ‘Share a Flat with a Guardian Reader’.  

Arguably, this sense of a shared community comes through particularly in a newpaper’s cartoons.  In the last fifty years, this has been an area where The Guardian has excelled.  Brian McAllister’s ‘Little Boxes’, Polly Simmonds’ ‘Mrs Weber’s Diary,’ Garry Trudeau in his pomp, and many others are still remembered with enormous pleasure.  

So I was saddened to read that Covid cuts have led to the termination of Harry Venning’s ‘Clare in the Community’ strip, and thought Clare’s final comment particularly apposite (‘Clare in the community: farewell to social workers?’, 25/8/2020).  All the more so when I discovered that Steve Bell’s ‘If…’ cartoon will be ending next year, after nearly forty years of joyful rudeness to those in power.  

I fear my daily paper will be the poorer for these departures.

City Limits

Four and a half years or so ago, I was in the British Library researching early Steve Bell cartoons.

Specifically, I was looking at copies of City Limits magazine.  This was a weekly listings magazine for London that started as a result of the long-running industrial dispute at Time Out.  The latter had originally been run on far more egalitarian lines, and had had a definitely left-leaning, possibly socialist stance.

However, when the then-owner decided to change this, a lot of the journalists and commentators withdrew their labour - including Bell, who moved his Maggie's Farm strip across to the new magazine.

A few weeks later, City Limits was born.  It lasted some time (around 12 years, finally closing in 1993) but of course it is clearly no longer with us.  You can read about all this on various Web sites and there is a short Wikipedia stub.

City Limits included information about demos and marches, protests and similar events as well as films, plays and exhibitions.  There was a section on 'Agitprop'.  This was during the time of Thatcher, after all.  And the reviews were nothing if not provocative.  A far cry from today's Time Out, which is basically a throwaway collection of adverts with little critical content. 

I miss it.

So just for fun, here are a few snippets. 

Images courtesy of research in the British Cartoon Archive, at the University of Canterbury.   Highly Recommended. 

There are many more, and for sale as prints on Bell's own Belltoons site.  Go see now!

Caliban Farage

And so today Steve Bell has Nigel Farage (and his Horseless Carriage) quoting Caliban from the Tempest while drowning Cameron in a duck pond:-

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

(The Tempest Act III, Sc ii).

Just thought it worth a mention. It is quite funny.

Bell Review

I know we are meant to do a review of the year here at TANH, but first, here is Steve Bell's.

Bellisima

Hurrah!
Our Steve Bell alternative antimonarchy Jubilee mugs and T Shirts came today from Philosophyfootball.

Philosophia

We believe we have to recommend Philosophy Football - teeshirts, mugs and stuff from a left-wing socialist, soccery perspective. 

Currently promoting UnDiamond Jubilee memorabilia from Steve Bell.

2011

As is usual with the Reviews in the Trees, personal stuff is mostly left out, so losses, achievements and events amongst family and friends will not appear here.  Also, this quick-and-dirty retrospective cannot equal Charlie Brooker's  magisterial review of last year just shown on TV.

I began the year reading the excellent Bill Bryson book on Shakespeare. This is very good not least because he tries hard not to put in any speculation that isn’t rigorously supported by the historical record. Hence, also, a rarity.

Three other books I enjoyed were

• Graven with Diamonds by Nicola Shulman - about Sir Thomas Wyatt, his poetry, and mostly about his love lyrics. Although the core argument, that these had been neglected in the past, doesn’t really hold water, it was good to see a big bold book about Wyatt be favourably reviewed.
• The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen. He is very good on democracy as a complex set of attitudes and processes, not just an opportunity every few years to vote for one’s leader(s).
• The Disappearing Spoon: and Other True Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean.  I wasn't totally won over by how this book is organised, but the sories were good.

Three exhibitions were:

• The Steve Bell retrospective at the Cartoon Museum,
• The British Library exhibition of (mostly) British science fiction, “Out of this World.” and
• The Leonardo show at the National Gallery (which we just managed to get tickets for, and went to see on the last day of 2011).

And three shows:

• Ornette Coleman - playing live at the Royal Festical Hall
• Noises Off - at the Old Vic, and
• Ruddigore - at the Barbican

On TV, the usual suspects dominated (eg Outnumbered, Rev and Doctor Who), plus, perhaps strangely, Mark Cousins' The Story of Film, which became unmissable each Sunday evening.

We went to France to avoid the Royal Wedding, and then later to Paris and Berlin for hols.

As lots of commentators have said, there was an awful lot of news in 2011.  The Japanese Tsunami and Nuclear fires, the Arab Spring, the Libyan uprising and death of Gaddafi. Obama got Osama, Hackergate and the closing of the News of the World (well done, The Guardian!), Riots in English towns and cities (which we missed), Lansley (tosser!)'s pause and Cameron's non-veto.  The Euro problems. And Private Eye made it to 50 (years) while The Sky at Night made it to 700 (shows)..

Quite a few rich and/or famous people seem to have died in the year.   Elisabeth (Sarah-Jane Smith) Sladen died of cancer in April at the relatively young age of 65 (63 elsewhere). She was probably most people’s favourite companion, and one of the few actors to work with several Doctors.   Gerry Rafferty, Peter Yates, Vaclav Havel, Henry Cooper (the great smelly brute) and Steve Jobs (who showed through his life that you can make huge amounts of money even if you have a crappy product, if you get the marketing right and make it shiny-shiny).    

Gilbert Adair, Christopher Logue, Christa Wolf, John Barry, Dick King-Smith, Joanna Russ, Pete Postlethwaite, January: Susannah York (a few months after I was her in a play in the West End), Elizabeth Taylor, Sidney Lumet, Janet Brown, Gil Scott-Heron, Peter Falk, Ken Olsen (DEC), Brian Haw and Eddie Stobart.   N. F. Simpson, Ken Russell, Anne McCaffery, Stan Barstow, David Croft, Jimmy Saville, Basil D’Oliveira and Dulcie Gray.  Perhaps too many.

Oh, and I saw a lot of trees...

Birthday...

So, it is the 90th birthday of Phil the Greek, or "Bonehead" as the Queen calls him in the Steve Bell cartoons...

There has been a huge amount of sycophantic rubbish written about the man, who is admittedly carrying himself well for a 90 year old, but who is also crass, offensive and unpleasant as a person.  As far as I can tell anyway, that appears to be true from the TV interviews I've seen.  Also from the one time I was relatively nearby when he met a colleague.   He was rude and objectionable about a project she had been working on for over two years, and left her in tears. 

About the only person I could see who refused to submit to the general kowtowing was the MP Paul Flynn, who said - regarding the proposed 'humble address' (a message of support and celebration from the Commons):

Why on earth is this a ’humble address’ in this age?

Are the royal family superior beings to the rest of us? Are we inferior beings to them? This was the feeling of the House seven centuries ago when we accepted rule under which we speak now.

We live in an egalitarian time where we recognise the universality of the human condition, in which royals and commoners share the same strengths and frailties.

He said the “humble address demeaned the honour of MPs’ elected office”, and continued:

If these occasions are to be greatly valued, it should be possible for members to utter the odd syllable that might be critical.

The sycophancy described by the Prime Minister... is something that must sicken the royal family when they have an excess of praise of this type.”

Well done that man!

Meandering

For reasons tedious to relate I ended up in Toytown last week.  I had a somewhat complicated, difficult meeting, but when I came out I was - of course - right next to one of the joys of Toytown. 

The trainset. 

Otherwise known as the Toytown Light Railway (TLR).  I was right by South Quay.  So I had to have a go.

The TLR was always a bit of a joke.  Seen as a 1980's Thatcherite dream of what public transport ought to look like, servicing a new land of Yuppies and Fat Cats.  Originally it didn't run on weekends and was often breaking down.

But in the afternoon sunshine last week it seemed far more benign.  It is a strange and beautiful railway.  Mostly built on stilts, it still swoops into tunnels; it rollercoasters around  ridiculously tight curves; and it often ducks and dives for no visible reason.  And the area around Westferry (? - I took no notes) is a topologist's dream.

So I spent an hour or so pootling around and generally enjoying myself on the world's largest and silliest model railway, and then decided to have a go on the East London Line. 

Because everybody's talking about it and I felt somewhat left out.

So I changed at Shadwell (interesting - I took a wrong turn from the TLR station and found myself in an Asian street market before retracing my steps and eventually finding the super-posh new ELL).  And everyone is right - the new line is super - and for me the best bits are the trains themselves, with carriages you can walk between just like the halves of a bendy bus.  I just had to stand at one end and look the entire length of the train as it moved sinuously along.  A thing of beauty and grace.

After a fair bit of this, I was heading south again when I took a quick decision and jumped off.  A few hundred yards walking and I was, really and truly, in Norton Folgate.   Just a little bit of this. 

Just a little distance from the unnecessarily huge station of Shoreditch High Street (which would have been a quarter of the size on the TLR).

More specifically, I found myself in the beautiful Water Poet pub on Folgate St. - recommended in the sleeve notes of the album, and rightly so.  Huge and airy, with an open space at the back (I hesitate to call it a garden).  Stuffed sofas and a pool table.  Smashing. 

The pub is named after John Taylor, a water boatman and poet who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries, and who was known as the "Water Poet." 

According to Wikipedia, as I write, he was also at the Siege of Cadiz (1810-1812).  Surely shome mishtake?  I suppose I ought to go in and change it - they mean the capture and sacking of Cadiz by the English in 1596, not the French siege of the then-Spanish capital as part of the Peninsular War - but I probably won't.

Taylor also appears to have been one of those people who invents their own languages.  His was Barmoodan, which he claimed to have translated into Utopian.  From VRZHU:-

And here’s a bit from his Poem in the Utopian Tongue (1613), which I take to be his nonce language, Barmoodan:

Thoytom Asse Coria Tushrump codsheadirustie,
Mungrellimo whish whap ragge dicete tottrie,
Mangelusquem verminets nipsem barelybittimsore,
Culliandolt travellerebumque, graiphone trutchmore.
Pusse per mew (Odcomb) gul abelgik foppery shig shag
Cock a peps Comb sottishamp, Idioshte momulus tag rag.

He also wrote on poetry publishing and the politics of the water boatmen.

And then I went home.

Bizarre Penguins

A few days ago in the Rye Hotel (a Nunhead Pub, by my definition), they decided to have what they called an "'80s evening". Now, I suspect this was mostly to do with the music they chose that night, but the bar staff also dressed up in what they imagined/recalled of the clothes of the '80s. Bubble-gum day-glo coloured tights for the girls and big hair. Quite unpleasant.

Which made me begin to think about the common themes of the decade that I could recall. Certainly opposing the iniquitous and incompetent Thatcher government was one of them, but I was looking for something iconic that crossed the political and the cultural domains.

Steve Bell obviously comes to mind - the greatest newspaper cartoonist of the period, and one who conveyed a real sense of outrage about politicians and all their works. Which leads us straight to The Penguin:

Aka Prince Philip of Greece/Pulp (later Lord) Quango. Born in the Falkland Islands in 1981 to a family of enthusiastic Empire Loyalists (hence the first name), the Penguin met Reg Kipling at the height of the Falklands war and never looked back. Essentially a free, anarchic though exceptionally cynical spirit who would by his own admission "do anything for a piece of fish", he was smuggled home by Kipling when hostilities finally came to an end. They lived in a flat in Peckham, which they later shared with the Penguin's partner, Gloria and their offspring Prudence and Percy. By coincidence Monsieur L'Artiste occupied the flat downstairs.
(According to the Guardian Website)

Note however, that unlike most other penguins, Bell's has teeth.

So now I was on to something. Where else in the decade did I remember a penguin from?

And then it came to me: my favourite film of the period, Gregory's Girl. I don't need to say much about this at all, ' cos it is just so wonderful. The boy in the penguin suit wandering around the school - marvellous. And of course it features the inimitable Chick Murray, as here:


And finally, to bring it up to date, the Bell Penguin is back on the Falklands and 'drilling' (see the strip a few days ago in the paper); also this week it was the 30th anniversary of Gregory's Girl and this picture - sad but sweet - was in all of the papers:
There was a special screening in Glasgow, and to quote The List:

Bill Forsyth captured teenage life and love with a perfect balance of humour and insight that touched audiences around the world – apparently it’s one of Scorsese’s favourites – and it was lovely to see that even today everyone involved is flabbergasted at the impact Gregory’s Girl continues to make. Special mention should also go to the penguin that made an appearance at the screening; as Gregory himself John Gordon Sinclair said, with tongue firmly in cheek, "If you don’t know what the penguin means, you don’t know Gregory’s Girl”.

And so I rest my case. The '80s was the decade of strange penguins.