The Storytellers One by Roger Mansfield (Schofield & Sims Ltd, Huddersfield 1971)

 

Maybe he wasn’t joking, Ernie thought. Bob was clever with hands and brain, the stop-gap of the shop with micrometer and centre-lathe, a toolmaker who could turn off a candlestick or fag-lighter as soon as look at you. ‘Do you mean it about a .303?’

Bob pulled into a lay-by and got out. ‘Keep clear of the headlights,’ he said, ‘but catch this.’ Ernie caught it, pushed forward the safety catch, the magazine resting in the net of his fingers. ‘God Almighty! Anything up the spout?’

‘I’ve a clip in my pocket. Strictly for rabbits’—Bob smiled, taking it back.

‘A waste,’ Ernie said. ‘The twelve-bore would do. Mixer-matosis has killed ’em all off, anyway.’

They drove on. ‘Had it since I left the army,’ Bob told him. ‘The stores was in a chronic state in Germany at the end of the war. Found myself with two, so kept one. I have a pot-shot with it now and again. I enjoy hunting—for a bit of recreation.’

Ernie laughed, wildly and uncontrolled, jerking excited shouts into the air as if trying to throw something out of his mouth, holding his stomach to stop himself doubling up, wearing down the shock of what a free-lance .303 meant. He put his arm around Bob’s shoulder by way of congratulation: ‘You’d better not let many people know about it, or the coppers’ll get on to you.'

‘Don’t worry. If ever they search, it’s a souvenir. I’d get rid of the bolt, and turn another off on the lathe when I needed it.’ ‘Marvellous,’ Ernie said. ‘A .303! Just the thing to have in case of a revolution. I hope I can get my hands on one when the trouble starts.’

Bob was sardonic: ‘You and your revolution! There wain’t be one in our lifetimes, I can tell you that.’ Ernie had talked revolution to him for months, had argued with fiery puritanical force, guiding Bob’s opinion from voting Labour to a head-nodding acceptance of rough and ready Communism. ‘I can’t see why you think there’ll be a revolution though.’

‘I’ve told you though,' Ernie said loudly. 'There’s got to be something. I feel it. We work in a factory, don’t we? Well, we’re the backbone of the country, but you see, Bob, there’s too many people on our backs. And it’s about time they was slung off. The last strike we had a bloke in a pub said to me: ‘Why are you fellows allus on strike?’ And I said to him: ‘What sort o’ work do you do ?’ And he said: ‘I’m a travelling salesman.’ So I said, ready to smash 'im: 'Well, the reason I come out on strike is because 1 want to get bastards like yo’ off my back.’ That shut ’im up. He just crawled back into his sherry.’

(From 'The Other John Peel' by Alan Sillitoe.)

Unhappy-Go-Lucky by Ian Pattison (Tindal Street Press 2013)

 

When people die, their memories die with them. But their memories are not their exclusive domain, encompassing as they must, the lives of others. Contained within our memorabilia, other people walk and speak, inhabiting our dreams and anecdotes. The only person one never sees in a memory is one’s self, since we are otherwise engaged, crouched behind our mental camera. Memories, therefore, are not only a personal but a social history. One of the things Vaughan had said to me that day on Byres Road was: ‘I wish I’d got it all down before she died.’ He was talking about his own mother. I’d heard that same utterance several times from different people. But why didn’t anyone ever take their own advice? The reason, in my case, was simple: who the hell ever listens to their mother? Like a Facebook home page, they talk in an ever-flowing, unedited stream of trivia, gossip, local news, repetition, received opinion, stale myth, whimsy and spite. To listen out for items of true interest amid the babble is to risk turning oneself into a crazed prospector panning for decades through murky silt in the hope of turning over a golden nugget or two.

I tried though.

I found out that in Tradeston Church, Kathleen Cairns had married Ivan Moss. The bride wore a white dress with matching white skin, patent black shoes and a discreetly visible foetus. Father looked dashing in his naval uniform with its braided cuffs and faint reek of engine oil. Father’s brother Rolf was granted shore leave to attend as best man. Father was overjoyed at the prospect of fatherhood.

'Are you sure it’s mine?’

‘Of course it’s yours,’ protested Mother. ‘Who else’s would it be?’

‘I was away for months, anything could’ve happened.’

‘That cuts both ways – do you want to swap separation stories?'

Father demurred. Though back on dry land, my guess was that he would have felt himself all at sea – things were changing too quickly, too decisively, for him to keep a telling grip on life’s rudder.

Mother was close to tears. Father tried to put her at her ease, with silken words.

‘If it’s backward, we can always bung it into an orphanage.’

Mother grew alarmed. ‘Why would it be backward?’

‘It’s a precaution. A first child’s either the pick of the bunch or the worst.’

‘You’re a middle child,’ observed Mother.

‘I know,’ mused Father, darkly.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver (Vintage Contemporaries 1976)

 

The boy rocked from one foot to the other and looked at his father, and then he dashed into the house and began calling, “Mom! Mom!”

He sat on the porch and leaned against the garage wall and stretched his legs. The sweat had dried on his forehead. He felt clammy under his clothes.

He had once seen his father—a pale, slow-talking man with slumped shoulders—in something like this. It was a bad one, and both men had been hurt. It had happened in a cafĂ©. The other man was a farmhand. Hamilton had loved his father and could recall many things about him. But now he recalled his father’s one fistfight as if it were all there was to the man.

(from “Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes”)

Psychocandy by Paula Mejia (Bloomsbury Academic 2016)

 

The pink-and-black skid mark Psychocandy left on culture is partially due to how utterly extreme this pop record sounds, from how it resonates with the body (and potentially shatters eardrums), to the dualities it forged into one album. It is at once the manic and the depressive, the sun covering the shadows, the life that distracts from the inevitability of death, the noise crashed against lilting pop: In other words, the psycho and the candy. Elements that shouldn’t work together somehow do on Psychocandy. “If Nancy Sinatra had Einsturzende Neubaten as a backing band, that’s how we wanted to sound,” Jim Reid recalled thirty years later. “We wanted to fuck with the genres.”

And they did. Dense clouds of psychedelia and drone, pummeling white noise, sugar-drenched pop harmonies, skittering proto-punk, galloping percussion, and the melodrama of Motown converge in Psychocandy, a cocktail of noise that shouldn’t even be palatable to our ears. It’s more than palatable, however. It’s desirable. One might say just like honey.

Never Stop: How Ange Postecoglou Brought the Fire Back to Celtic by Hamish Carton (Pitch Publishing 2023)

 

Unsurprisingly, the most infamous case of sheer Postecoglou ignorance was found on talkSPORT. The radio station specialises in bold ill-informed claims that tempt listeners into phoning up or sharing their clips on social media. In the days after Postecoglou’s name was first mentioned, a clip showed footballer turned broadcaster Alan Brazil mocking his credentials. At the time, there had been reports of the Aussie not having the required licence to manage in Europe.

Is this a wind-up? Breaking news from Scotland as Celtic have applied for an exemption with UEFA for Yokohama Marinos boss Postacoogloo [sic] to manage in Europe. He does not hold the required UEFA Pro Licence. Oh, this has got to be a wind-up. Dear oh dear. He’ll be a great manager. Where do they come up with these guys from?

(talkSPORT)

The former Scotland international had played against Postecoglou’s South Melbourne years earlier, not that he’d be likely to recall. As with virtually everyone in this chapter, he was found apologising at some stage over the following 12 months. A similar story of reprieve occurred with another former footballer who enjoyed his heyday in the 1980s – Charlie Nicholas:

There’s nothing wrong with having a plan B – but this is not plan B. This is desperation. I will give Postecoglou a chance because I’m a supporter but is the former Australia boss really the height of the club’s ambitions? It has nothing to do with his lack of knowledge of the Scottish game or me looking down on football in the southern hemisphere. It scares me just how unambitious the club has become, going from a position of strength to where they find themselves now. Luring Postecoglou from Yokohama F. Marinos is not quite the same as when Arsène Wenger left Japanese football to join Arsenal in 1996.

(Daily Express)

Nicholas was at it again in late September. Celtic had just been held to a 1-1 draw at home by Dundee United and had three league wins from seven matches. The knives were out for Postecoglou, with many reaching some wild conclusions:

Ange Postecoglou looks to me to be the new Ronny Deila. I am not sure Postecoglou has realised how big Celtic really are before he came in. I believe he has missed a pitch. I think Ange thought he would just come in here, and his playing style would get him over the line, no problem. But it is not about style. It is about winning.

(Daily Express)

Nicholas and Postecoglou would meet by chance in Glasgow months later. By that stage the Aussie had won the former Celtic striker over. Just as well:

We had a wee five-minute conversation where I thanked him for the job he is doing and what he is building at Celtic.

(Daily Express)

A Prefect's Uncle by P. G. Wodehouse (A & C Black 1903)

 

Gethryn strolled to the gate, where the station-master’s son stood at the receipt of custom to collect the tickets.  His uncle was to arrive by this train, and if he did so arrive, must of necessity pass this way before leaving the platform.  The train panted in, pulled up, whistled, and puffed out again, leaving three people behind it.  One of these was a woman of sixty (approximately), the second a small girl of ten, the third a young gentleman in a top hat and Etons, who carried a bag, and looked as if he had seen the hollowness of things, for his face wore a bored, supercilious look.  His uncle had evidently not arrived, unless he had come disguised as an old woman, an act of which Gethryn refused to believe him capable.

He enquired as to the next train that was expected to arrive from London.  The station-master’s son was not sure, but would ask the porter, whose name it appeared was Johnny.  Johnny gave the correct answer without an effort.  ’Seven-thirty it was, sir, except on Saturdays, when it was eight o’clock.’

‘Thanks,’ said the Bishop.  ’Dash the man, he might at least have wired.’

He registered a silent wish concerning the uncle who had brought him a long three miles out of his way with nothing to show at the end of it, and was just turning to leave the station, when the top-hatted small boy, who had been hovering round the group during the conversation, addressed winged words to him.  These were the winged words—

‘I say, are you looking for somebody?’ The Bishop stared at him as a naturalist stares at a novel species of insect.

'Yes,’ he said.  ‘Why?’

‘Is your name Gethryn?’

This affair, thought the Bishop, was beginning to assume an uncanny aspect.

‘How the dickens did you know that?’ he said.

’Oh, then you are Gethryn?  That’s all right.  I was told you were going to be here to meet this train.  Glad to make your acquaintance.  My name’s Farnie.  I’m your uncle, you know.’

‘My what?’ gurgled the Bishop.

‘Your uncle.  U-n, un; c-l-e—kul.  Uncle.  Fact, I assure you.' 

One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters (Macmillan 1979)

 

Cadfael had persuaded every man of the guard to view his unknown, but none of them could identify him. Courcelle had frowned down at the body long  and sombrely, and shaken his head.

“I never saw him before, to my knowledge. What can there possibly have been about a mere young squire like this, to make someone hate him enough to kill?”

“There can be murders without hate,” said Cadfael grimly. “Footpads and forest robbers take their victims as they come, without any feeling of liking or disliking.”

“Why, what can such a youth have had to make him worth killing for gain?”

“Friend,” said Cadfael, “there are those in the world would kill for the few coins a beggar has begged during the day. When they see kings cut down more than ninety in one sweep, whose fault was only to be in arms on the other side, is it much wonder rogues take that for justification? Or at least for licence!” He saw the colour burn high in Courcelle’s face, and a momentary spark of anger in his eye, but the young man made no protest. “Oh, I know you had your orders, and no choice but to obey them. I have been a soldier in my time, and borne the same discipline and done things I would be glad now to think I had not done. That’s one reason I’ve accepted, in the end, another discipline.”

“I doubt,” said Courcelle drily, “if I shall ever come to that.”

“So would I have doubted it, then. But here I am, and would not change again to your calling. Well, we do the best we can with our lives!” And the worst, he thought, viewing the long lines of motionless forms laid out along the ward, with other men’s lives, if we have power.

Maigret Sets a Trap by Georges Simenon (Penguin Books 1955)

 

'What qualifications do you have?’

‘I began by doing painting, fine art.’

‘When was that?’

‘When I was seventeen.’

‘You have your baccalaureate, do you?’

‘No, when I was young I wanted to be an artist. The paintings you saw in our drawing room, they’re by me.’

Maigret had not been able to work out what they represented, but they had disturbed him by their sad and morbid character. Neither the lines nor the colours were clear. The dominant shade had been a purplish-red, combined with curious shades of green that made him think of light under water, and it was as if the oil paint had spread by itself, like an ink-stain on a blotter.

Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa (Picador 1993)

 

When he saw the Indian woman appear at the door of the shack, Lituma guessed what she was going to say. And she did say it, but she was mumbling in Quechua while the saliva gathered at the corners of her toothless mouth.

“What’s she saying, Tomasito?”

“I couldn’t catch it, Corporal.”

The Civil Guard addressed her in Quechua, indicating with gestures that she should speak more slowly. The woman repeated the indistinguishable sounds that affected Lituma like savage music. He suddenly felt very uneasy.

“What’s she saying?”

“It seems her husband disappeared,” murmured his adjutant. “Four days ago.”

“That means we’ve lost three,” Lituma stammered, feeling the perspiration break out on his face. “Son of a bitch.”

“So what should we do, Corporal?”

“Take her statement.” A shudder ran up and down Lituma’s spine. “Have her tell you what she knows.”

“But what’s going on?” exclaimed the Civil Guard. “First the mute, then the albino, now one of the highway foremen. It can’t be, Corporal.”

Maybe not, but it was happening, and now for the third time. Lituma pictured the blank faces and icy narrow eyes that the people in Naccos—laborers at the camp and comuneros, the Indians from the traditional community—would all turn toward him when he asked if they knew the whereabouts of this woman’s husband, and he felt the same discouragement and helplessness he had experienced earlier when he tried to question them about the other men who were missing: heads shaking no, monosyllables, evasive glances, frowns, pursed lips, a presentiment of menace. It would be no different this time.

Reach for the Stars: 1996–2006: Fame, Fallout and Pop’s Final Party by Michael Cragg (Nine Eight Books 2023)

Spoken-word intro

I’m going to start with a confession. As a closeted teenager in the early ’00s I did some things I am ashamed of. I went to see the Libertines. I was a fan of post-Kid A Radiohead. I once went to Ireland to see Travis only to be hit on the head by warm beer and, at one point, an inflatable armchair. For a while, I thought hiding in indie music would help me keep my secret for a bit longer when in fact it just fed my covert obsession; glorious, shiny, ludicrous pop. I’d secretly gorge on the Latin flavours of ‘Spice Up Your Life’ or get a delicious sugar rush from ‘Don’t Stop Movin’’. Later I’d sit with my proudly pop-obsessed uni housemate and listen to ‘hard-edged’ ladband Five and the high street R&B of Blue, before hitting the local indie club. I’d carelessly align myself with the throng of NME readers trying to justify their love of Girls Aloud or the Sugababes via the prism of credibility (‘It’s pretty good for a pop song!!!’), when in fact I owned all their albums and distinctly remember singing along to the former’s pearlescent six-minute epic ‘Untouchable’ in a full-length mirror, willing myself to be who I was.

Perhaps because I only lived this UK pure pop boom – instigated by the Buffalo boot-stomping swagger of the Spice Girls in 1996, which is where this book starts – on the periphery, when I started writing about music as a journalist years later, I immersed myself fully. As pop shifted through the gears over the following two decades, taking in post-ironic synthpop, Lady Gaga, gloom wobble dubstep, drop-obsessed EDM and Billie Eilish-adjacent mope-pop before settling on a sort of generic streaming-friendly dance-pop sound, I often found myself harking back to the weightlessness of, say, Liberty X’s ‘Just a Little’ or Five’s ‘Keep On Movin’’ or A1’s ‘Caught in the Middle’. Like most people, this rose-tinted nostalgia – hey, this book is about the late ’90s and early ’00s, get used to it – ramped up as a pandemic-ravaged world went into lockdown. Gazed upon from a modern world seemingly on fire, this prelapsarian era suddenly represented even more of a refreshing change. A time before the threat of nuclear war, climate crisis, global financial collapse, social media, culture wars, Piers Morgan’s TV career, TikTok and, of course, the pandemic.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (Penguin Books 1945)

 

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.

For the Love of Willie by Agnes Owens (Polygon 1998)

 

Foreword

Two patients sit on the veranda of a cottage hospital run by a local authority for females with mental problems, some of them long-term and incurable. Peggy, stoutly built, middle-aged, and with a hard set to her jaw, rises and stares down through the high railings at a bus shelter below.

‘A man in that shelter resembles someone I once knew,’ she tells her companion.

‘Really?’ says the companion, elderly and frail but known as the duchess because of her imperious manner. ‘It beats me how you can remember anything.

'I remember lots of things. That’s why I’m writing a book.’

‘A book? You never told me. What’s it about?’

‘About my life before they put me inside,’ says Peggy. She adds wistfully, ‘I had one, you know.’

‘I can hardly imagine it,’ says the older woman, whether referring to Peggy’s earlier life or the book not being clear. ‘Anyway,’ she says snappishly, ‘if you do manage to write a book who will read it? They’re all simpletons here, including the staff.’

‘I was hoping you might read it,’ says Peggy, ‘you being a highly educated woman with a superior knowledge of the frailties of the human heart.’

Her irony is lost on the duchess who says with a condescending smile, ‘I might, if I’ve nothing else to read. But wouldn’t it be better to get it published? Otherwise the whole thing could be a waste of time.’

‘What does it matter?’ asks Peggy. ‘I’ve plenty of time to waste.'

Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused by Melissa Maerz (Harper Collins 2020)

 

Richard Linklater: When I was in high school, our school had a ’50s day, where you could dress up 1950s and roll cigarettes up in your sleeve. My uncle had been a teenager in the ’50s, and he was like, “You guys like the ’50s, but let me tell you, the ’50s sucked.” I took that in for Dazed, like, yeah, the ’70s kind of suck, too.

Tom Junod: Many people who grew up in the ’70s felt that they had missed out on growing up in the ’60s. Linklater nails that so accurately. The second-phase baby boomers, the people who came of age in the ’70s, were almost Gen X precursors, because we felt that the real meat of the revolution had happened before we got there. In the ’60s, people had protested. They had stopped a war. They  had pioneered using drugs. They had pioneered rock music.

By the time that stuff made its way to us, it was simply as lifestyle choices. You weren’t making a political statement by smoking a joint. The few times we did protest, we were already self-aware enough to look at it ironically. The movie nails that with perfection.

Chris Barton: By the time you get to 1976, when Dazed takes place, the Beatles are done. The Rolling Stones haven’t had a great album in years. The economy was not great. In a couple of years, Carter would use the word “malaise” in his televised speech from the White House. I could see how you might think the best stuff has passed you by.

Tom Junod: My generation was guilty of nostalgia way before they got old. I was class of 1976. When I think of my own experiences in the ’70s, it’s like, Happy Days was on. Sha Na Na was an act that people my age went and paid money for, even though it did not in any way memorialize their own time. American Graffiti was a really popular movie with people who graduated high school in 1976 rather than in 1962. And it was the same way with Dazed being popular with people who graduated in the ’90s.

Brian Raftery: When they were making Dazed, I don’t think they realized there was ’70s nostalgia on the horizon. By the early ’90s, the ’60s revival had reached a saturation point. We had The Wonder Years. We had Oliver Stone relitigating the entire ’60s, whether it was Vietnam or the Doors. I think the height of the ’60s nostalgia was an infomercial for a record set called Freedom Rock, with two grizzled hippies who were like, “Turn it up, man!”

There was a weird rewrite of the ’60s because the boomers had taken over the media, and these guys were like, “Hey, we were the second-greatest generation!” and it became insufferable by the end of the ’80s. So Dazed was definitely a turning point. It was like, the ’70s? That sounds cool.

Richard Linklater: I think teenagers are looking to escape the misery of their own time, whatever that time is. It’s like, “It had to have been better back then.”

120, rue de la Gare by LĂ©o Malet (Pan Books 1943)

 

Prologue:

Germany 1940-1941

Ushering people in was just the job for Baptiste Cormier. He had the soul of a flunkey as well as a name like a butler.

But he’d lost some of his starch since he left his last situation, and at present he was lolling in the doorway, gazing dolefully at the ceiling and picking at a tooth with a spent match. Then suddenly he abandoned the mopping-up operation and straightened up.

‘Achtung!' he shouted.

We all stopped talking, and with a scraping of benches and clatter of boots stood up and clicked our heels. The Aufnahme officer had just come on duty.

‘At ease!’ he said with a strong German accent, saluting and sitting down at the table that served him as a desk. We sat down too and went on with our conversations. There was still a good quarter of an hour till work was due to begin.

But after a few minutes spent sorting out papers the reception officer got up again and blew a loud blast on a whistle, indicating he had something to say to us. We stopped talking and turned to listen.

This time he spoke in German, then sat down again while the interpreter translated.

First came the usual instructions about the work, plus thanks for our efforts the previous day, when we’d registered a particularly large intake. He hoped that at this rate we’d be finished by tomorrow at the latest. As a reward each man was to be issued with a packet of tobacco. 

Some awkward Danke schons and stifled laughter greets this pleasantry: we were to get what had earlier been confiscated from the chaps we were about to register.

At a sign from the interpreter, Cormier abandoned his teeth and opened the door.

‘First twenty,' he called.

With a rattle of hobnailed boots a group detached itself from the crowd lined up in the hut and the day’s work began.

The entry consisted of men who’d arrived from France a couple of days before. My job was to sit at one end of a table, extract certain information from each of the newcomers, put it down on a sheet of paper, then pass it along to the other eight Schreibers. When the paper and the person it referred to reached the other end of the table, the POW officiating there completed the form and appended a print of the subject’s forefinger.

The dabs-taker was a young Belgian, and his task was lengthier if not more difficult than mine. At one point he asked me to slow down because he was getting submerged.

So I told Cormier not to send anyone to our table for a bit, and went outside to stretch my legs on the not-so-good earth.

It was July. The weather was fine. A warm sun shone on the barren landscape and a gentle southerly breeze was blowing. A sentry paced back and forth on his watchtower, his rifle barrel glinting in the sun.

I lit my pipe, and after a while went back to my table, puffing pleasantly. The Belgian had emerged from his traffic jam and we could get on.

Fletch Won by Gregory McDonald (Vintage/Black Lizard 1985)

 

“Society.”

“Society?”

“Society. Seeing you’re so quick to identify deceased people who never accomplished a damned thing in their lives, and point out to the public first cousins who intend to marry each other, I think you might have a little talent for covering society.”

“You mean society, like in high society?”

“High society, low society, you know, lifestyles: all those features that cater to the anxieties of our middle-class readers.”

“Frank, I don’t believe in society.”

“That’s okay, Fletch. Society doesn’t believe in you, either.”

Fletch by Gregory McDonald (Vintage/Black Lizard 1974)

 

“What's your name?”

“Fletch.”

“What's your full name?”

“Fletcher.”

“What's your first name?”

“Irwin.”

“What?”

“Irwin. Irwin Fletcher. People call me Fletch.”

“Irwin Fletcher, I have a proposition to make to you. I will give you a thousand dollars for just listening to it. If you decide to reject the proposition, you take the thousand dollars, go away, and never tell anyone we talked. Fair enough?”

“Is it criminal? I mean, what you want me to do?”

“Of course.”

“Fair enough. For a thousand bucks I can listen. What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to murder me.”

Thatcher Stole My Trousers by Alexei Sayle (Bloomsbury 2016)

 

One of the unexpected ways in which my upbringing as the son of Communists had helped prepare me for the challenges of celebrity, an advantage that my fellow comedians didn’t have, was in the matter of staying true to yourself. The idea of the traitor, the sell-out, the apostate was central to Joe and Molly’s state of mind. Even when I was quite small we would be out shopping in town and  my mother or father would gesticulate towards some harmless-looking individual and say in a whisper, ‘See him over there trying on gloves, he left the Party over Hungary in 1956 and now he’s . . .’ Here they’d pause before revealing the full horror. ‘A Labour councillor!’ Or, ‘Don’t look, but that woman by the bacon counter, she used to be in CND but now she’s . . . joined the Air Force!’ At first I couldn’t see anything different about the people my parents pointed out but over time it did seem to me that they possessed a certain haunted quality, an air of sadness, and though their mood probably wasn’t helped by being whispered about in shops by a red-haired woman and a man in a trilby hat accompanied by a silent watchful boy I sensed that the main critical voice was within their heads, that they themselves were aware on some level of the abandonment of their younger more idealistic self and it corroded them from the inside.

I did not want to end up like that. The trick it  seemed to me was to not be blind to the many faults of the left while at the same time to try and stay true to those core values of workers’ rights, social justice and equality.

Me doing fund-raising benefits for left-wing organisations was an attempt to stay connected with those ideals.

As a left-wing entertainer it was accepted that you would inevitably perform unpaid at concerts in aid of various radical causes – doing benefits had become a sort of national service for alternative comedians. There was very little pleasure in appearing at them though. I did a bit about benefit concerts in my act: how you told a joke, then there was a pause while the audience vetted the joke for its political content, possible sexism, any hints of neo-colonialism, adherence to the theory of dialectical and historical materialism, and only once it was cleared would they laugh – it was like doing your material over a faulty phone line.

I went up to Sheffield to appear in a show at the Crucible Theatre in support of Nicaragua’s revolutionary, anti-American, pro-moustache Sandinista government. Following the show the cast and their friends were introduced to the guest of honour – David Blunkett the radical left-wing leader of Sheffield City Council. After the line-up Linda said, ‘I don’t like that man, there’s something funny about his eyes.'

Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton by John Lahr (Open Road Media 1978)

 

'I used to write false blurbs on the inside of Gollancz books,”Orton remembered. ‘Because I discovered that Gollancz books had blank yellow flaps and I used to type false blurbs on the inside.’ Halliwell told the police: ‘I saw Orton typing on the covers of books. I read what he typed, and I considered it a criticism of what the books contained.’ The target for most of this mischief was Dorothy. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey whodunits:

When little Betty Macdree says that she has been interfered with, her mother at first laughs [Orton wrote on the flap for Clouds of Witness]. It is only something that the kiddy had picked up off television. But when sorting through the laundry, Mrs Macdree discovers that a new pair of knickers are missing she thinks again. On being questioned, Betty bursts into tears. Mrs Macdree takes her to the police station and to everyone’s surprise the little girl identifies P.C. Brenda Coolidge as her attacker. Brenda, a new recruit, denies the charge. A search is made of the Women’s Police Barracks. What is found there is a seven inch phallus and a pair of knickers of the kind used by Betty. All looks black for kindly P.C. Coolidge…What can she do? This is one of the most enthralling stories ever written by Miss Sayers.

It is the only one in which the murder weapon is concealed, not for reasons of fear but for reasons of decency!

READ THIS BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. And have a good shit while you are reading!

'My blurbs were mildly obscene,’ Orton admitted. ‘Even at the trial they said they were only mildly obscene. When I put the plastic covers back over the jackets you couldn’t tell that the blurbs weren’t printed. I used to stand in corners after I’d smuggled the doctored books back into the library and then watch the people read them. It was very funny, very interesting.'

Quick Change by Jay Cronley (Doubleday 1981)

 

Grimm didn’t feel like a clown, but he handed the kid a balloon, anyway.

“Is that a light bulb on your nose?” the kid asked.

“Get lost,” Grimm said.

“That doesn’t sound like clown talk to me.”

“You want the balloon or not?”

“You’re the meanest clown I ever met.”

“Listen, kid. You’re getting on my nerves.”

The suit was hot and the makeup smelled like turpentine, and wearing tennis rackets would have been easier than the floppy shoes, but a plan is a plan.

One thing Grimm hadn’t particularly counted on was the number of greedy children following him along the sidewalk. You can't think of everything. The children couldn’t follow him into the bank, that was for sure.

“Hey mister clown, stand on one finger.”

Grimm took some change out of his front pocket and threw it in the grass in front of the bank; so much for the children, they zeroed in on the money.

He walked into the bank, exactly the way it had been drawn on the practice paper.

You just don’t rob a bank. You try that, without a well-conceived plan, and they'll gun you down—that is, if you aren’t electrocuted first. In the modem bank, there are wires hooked to plants, and cameras behind clocks.

The plan is what separates the pros from the cons.

And whereas the plan might be that you rob the bank of millions of dollars and live happily ever after, there are many sub-plans that determine whether you will have to give the money back, or live happily ever after in jail.

Grimm knew about a guy who lost a button on his pants at a very bad time—when he was stealing some money. This guy reaches down and his mask slips off and the next thing he knows he is banging a tin cup on the bars, asking for more swill.

A plan is equal to the sum of its parts. Somebody stubs his toe at the wrong time, and this triggers an electronic device that drops the bars around you.

For example, you have to start somewhere, like with the mask.

It's obvious a man has to wear a mask so his face won’t be on the evening news. Money is no fun if you have to spend it down in the sewer or somewhere as dark. You don't put a burglar's mask on and walk three blocks to the bank. Somebody might say, “That guy is going to rob the bank.” You don’t put the mask on right outside the bank, either. This attracts attention, and you might be clubbed by the guard. So whereas a mask sounds like a simple proposition, it isn’t. You have to think it out.

It was Grimm’s idea to go as a clown. Clowns don’t rob banks.

“Hi there, mister clown,” the guard said.

“What’s your name?” Grimm asked.

“Hugh,” the guard said. “Hugh Estes.”

“Have a balloon, Hugh.”

“Thanks.”

There was some doubt whether Hugh Estes could draw his gun inside five minutes. And if he could get it out of his holster, he would have to figure some way to get it over his gut. A bank guard’s primary responsibility is to keep rich old women from bumping into the window's.

“Hugh,” Grimm said. “I have terrible news for you.”

He frowned. “I don’t get to keep the balloon?”

“Worse than that. Come over here.”

Hugh Estes got up from his desk. Grimm put his arm around the old fellow and led him toward the door. “How’s your heart, Hugh?”

“Never better. You with Easter Seals?”

“No.”

“United Way?”

“Hugh,” Grimm said. “I’m a criminal. I’m robbing this bank”

Grimm had his left arm tightly around the guard’s neck. “That’s funny,” Hugh Estes said. “You’re one of the best clowns I ever saw.”

“I’m no clown. Clowns don’t talk. Underneath this calm is a guy who’s getting a little nervous. I’ve got dynamite taped all over me, Hugh, so if you don’t want all these people blown to bits, just do what I say.”

Hugh Estes thought. They had taught him about this sort of thing in bank guard’s school. One out of approximately 475 people who say they are loaded with explosives actually detonates himself or herself.

“I’ve got a terminal illness,” Grimm said. “So it doesn’t matter what happens to me.”

That was the one who blows himself up!

Hugh Estes was getting real nervous real fast.

This would look very bad on his resume.

“Lock the door,” Grimm said.

Hugh Estes looked back at his desk, where the alarm button was. “You can’t rob this bank. There’s only one way out. This bank has never been robbed. It’s foolproof.”

“Yeah, but I’m no fool,” Grimm said.

Drowned Hopes by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1990)

 

Dortmunder said, “How long were you in, Tom, all in all?”

“All in all?” Tom made that sound again. “All my life, all in all. Twenty-three years, this last time. It was supposed to be for good, you know. I’m habitual.”

“I remember that about you,” Dortmunder said.

“Well, the answer is,” Tom said, “while I been eating regular meals and getting regular exercise and a good night’s sleep all these years on the inside, the world’s managed to get worse without me. Maybe I’m not the one they should of been protecting society from all along.”

“How do you mean, Tom?”

“The reason I’m out,” Tom said. “Inflation, plus budget cuts, plus the rising inmate population. All on its own, Al, without any help from yours truly, society has raised up a generation of inmates. Sloppy ones, too, Al, fourth-rates you and me wouldn’t use to hold the door open.”

“There is a lot of that around,” Dortmunder agreed.

“These are people,” Tom went on, “that don’t know a blueprint from a candy wrapper. And to pull a job with a plan? When these bozos take a step forward with the right foot, they have no really clear idea what they figure to do with the left.”

“They’re out there, all right,” Dortmunder said, nodding. “I see them sometimes, asleep on fire escapes, with their head on a television set. They do kinda muddy the water for the rest of us.”

“They take all the fun outta prison, I can tell you that,” Tom said. “And the worst of it is, their motivation’s no damn good. Now, Al, you and me know, if a man goes into a bank with a gun in his hand and says gimme the money and a five-minute start, there’s only two good reasons for it. Either his family’s poor and sick and needs an operation and shoes and schoolbooks and meat for dinner more than once a week, or the fella wants to take a lady friend to Miami and party. One or the other. Am I right?”

“That’s the usual way,” Dortmunder agreed. “Except it’s mostly Las Vegas now.”

“Well, these clowns can’t even get that much right,” Tom said. “The fact is, what they steal for is to feed their veins, and they go right on feeding their veins inside, they buy it off guards and trusties and visitors and each other and probly even the chaplain, but if you ask them why they ignored the career counselor and took up this life of crime for which they are so shit-poor fitted, they’ll tell you it’s political. They’ll tell you they’re the victims.”

Dortmunder nodded. “I’ve heard that one,” he said. “It’s useful in the sentencing sometimes, I think. And in the parole.”

“It’s a crock, Al,” Tom insisted.

Gently, Dortmunder said, “Tom, you and I’ve told the authorities a couple fibs in our time, too.”

“Okay,” Tom said. “Granted. Anyway, the result is, inflation makes it cost more to feed and house a fella in the pen in the manner to which we’ve all become accustomed, and budget cuts—Did you know, Al,” he interrupted himself, “that health-wise, long-term cons are the healthiest people in America?”

“I didn’t know that,” Dortmunder admitted.

“Well, it’s the truth,” Tom said. “It’s the regularity of the life, the lack of stress, the sameness of the food intake, the handiness of the free medical care, and the organized exercise program. Your lifers are the longest-lived people in the society. Any insurance company will tell you so.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said; “that must be some kind of consolation, I guess.”