Discovering Gideon's Way

I have a new weakness - or rather I have revived an old one.

The Gideon stories were a series of police procedurals written, under the pen name J.J. Maric, by the extraordinarily prolific John Creasey between 1955 and 1976.

For some reason I took to them while I was at school even though they were already dating markedly by then.

Now I have discovered that the whole of the Gideon's Way TV series has been uploaded to Youtube. There were 26 of them made for ITV and broadcast in 1965 and 1966.

John Gregson took the title role, playing him as a world-weary liberal who sometimes had to reign in his keener subordinates - a sort of prototype for Morse and Wexford.

Gideon's family feature regularly. Political trivia fans may like to note that his younger son was played by Giles Watling, who was the unsuccessful Conservative candidate against Ukip's Douglas Carswell in the 2014 Clacton by-election.

One of the pleasures of Gideon's Way is spotting familiar actors in unfamiliar roles. I have watched only a few of the shows so far, but already I have seen Inspector Wexford masterminding a bullion robbery, Mrs Bridges from Upstairs Downstairs running a gang of pickpockets and fences, and Arthur Daley committing arson,

Then there are the pleasures of spotting actors on the way up.

This, for instance, is a young John Hurt on the run from prison. (You can see an even younger Hurt on this blog as an undergraduate in The Wild and the Willing.)

And this young man is now in the House of Lords. It's Michael Cashman, formerly of EastEnders and the European Parliament, in his first role. At this stage of his career his chief means of conveying emotion was hunching his shoulders.

Above all, though, there are the pleasures of the location footage. This is London before turbocapitalism and moral relativism. It's a city of quiet suburbs and decaying warehouses where the villains are cornered and the police inevitably round them up.

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Six of the Best 595

"A Crosby-ified Toryism can eke out victories against average opponents, but it is no guide to winning well or winning at a time when the capitalist system is being questioned; when Thatcherite and Reaganite orthodoxies are being questioned or when, in such places as Scotland (and now London), the Conservative brand is weak and needs rebuilding." Tim Montgomerie on the defeat of Zac Goldsmith.

Lenore Skenazy condemns the use of parents' fears for their children as a marketing tool.

Tony Broadbent rediscovers a murder that scandalised postwar London: the shooting of Alec de Antiquis in 1947.

"As you visit the Polling Station today you may be struck by the rather anachronistic posters which identify those buildings designated as such. Some local authorities have held huge stocks of these paper banners for much of the 20th century, and in some parts of the country those on display today may have been printed many years before you were born." Bob Richardson examines election day typography.

Hope you enjoy this article by Katy Waldman on why we omit initial pronouns.

Kelefa Sanneh explores the benign ruthlessness of Paul Simon.

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Malik Jalal on what it is like to find yourself living on a drone kill list.

Eight Labour candidates are standing for the Northern Ireland Assembly. Stephen Glenn asks if it is time for the Liberal Democrats to fight those elections too.

Anthony Painter explains his conversion to support for Universal Basic Income.

"At the time of its Berliner re-launch, the Guardian had a daily sale of nearly 400,000. Ten-and-a-half years later this has slipped to 165,000." Stephen Glover speculates on the future of what is, for all its faults, my favourite newspaper.

Chris Heather uncovers a sad tale of murder and suicide in the National Archives.

"Alighting from Swindon station in 1910, she hired a driver to take her to Coate but before arriving was dropped off so that she could amble to the farm and reservoir and immerse herself in the sights and sounds of so-called 'Jefferies Land'." Barry Leighton introduces us to Kate Tryon, an American artist and admirer of Richard Jefferies.

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Chris Lewis on life after cricket... and prison

Chris Lewis was one of many players christened "the next Ian Botham" to play for England in his era. Unlike most of them, he was an extremely talented cricketer.

That he played 32 tests and 53 one-day internationals and still left behind the feeling that he had not made the most of his talents is a tribute to just how apparent those talents were.

He was a lively opening bowler and a late order batsman who was good enough to score a test century. The video here shows him hitting his first test fifty.

In 2009 he was jailed for 13 years after being caught smuggling drugs. He was released last summer after serving six of them.

He is the subject of a long article in today's Leicester Mercury, which takes in his work talking to young players for the Professional Cricketers' Association:

Today is Tuesday and Tuesday means Nottingham and Trent Bridge. Fifteen grounds done, four more to go (that's 18 clubs and the MCC). Chris Lewis is visiting every one, every first class ground in country and talking to the nation's aspiring young cricketers about life, sport and all the bits in between they don't really think abut. 

"Because I didn't think about it, when I was their age," he says. "I know I didn't. I want to tell them that the decisions they take now, the things they do today, can have a bearing on the rest of their lives." 

Sometimes, it makes little difference. He knows that. Sometimes, when you're speaking to a room full of 19- and 20-year-olds who all think they know best, it's hard to get through, to break the veneer of brio and swagger. 

"But sometimes, it gets through, you know, and you can see that you've reached them," he says.

I wish Chris Lewis well. As I blogged when he was convicted:

My favourite memory of Lewis is seeing him in the nets at Grace Road (Leicestershire's county ground) with a queue of boys waiting to bowl to him. 

Not many test players would bother to do that.

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Market Harborough: Big Brother isn't watching you

From the Leicester Mercury:

Council owned CCTV cameras in a town centre have not been working properly for nearly six months according to anonymous sources. 

It is understood the 17-camera network in Market Harborough has experienced difficulties since the control room was moved last autumn. 

The equipment belongs to Harborough District Council which has refused to comment on the problems. 

The screens are monitored from within the police station in Leicester Road but the force is refusing to comment too.

The question, of course, is whether there has been any increase in crime or fall in detection rates in the town since the cameras stopped working.

If there has not, it suggests the council could save a lot of money by scrapping the system.

Or at least by replacing it with dummy cameras made from egg boxes and sticky-backed plastic.

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The 1888 Jack the Ripper scare in Market Harborough

The Macabre Observer quotes the Market Harborough Advertiser of 20 November 1888:

THE WHITECHAPEL MURDER.

A man suspected at Market Harborough. 

Some excitement was caused in a certain part of Market Harborough on Friday on hearing that a man answering the description of the Whitechapel murderer had come from London that afternoon and had taken up his abode with a Mrs Green, near the British school. 

The police were communicated with almost immediately and a watch was set on his movements. During the evening the man went to the station (followed by officers in plain clothes) and returned with his luggage - a portmanteau. 

On his reaching home again the police entered the house and searched the portmanteau, but nothing was found to connect the man with the crime of which he was suspected. He said his name was Dietrich and that he was a doctor at one of the London hospitals and gave his address at 22, Howland Street, Tottenham Court Road. He wore spectacles and his overcoat was trimmed with astrachan. Not being satisfied with this information, Supt. Bott placed a cordon of police around the house and telegraphed to Scotland Yard for instructions as to whether the man should be detained or not. 

This was about 9 o'clock and an answer was expected within an hour or two. At 11.30, however, no reply had been received and it was not until 5.10 on Saturday morning that an answer was handed to the police. This was of a somewhat vague nature, but the police were on it's receipt withdrawn from the house and no further notice was taken of the matter. 

One thing which had excited the suspicions of the neighbours and the police also, was that the same man was in Market Harbough about three weeks ago and stayed at the same house. His movements were then considered peculiar and the neighbours were actually alarmed about him. While here, no murders occurred in London, but after he had gone back, the latest horror was perpetrated."

The British School still stands in Fairfield Road next to Old School Mews.

My own pet theory is that there was no Jack the Ripper. A number of East End murders were grouped together and sensationalised by the press, with the result that we are still talking about them today.

This Skeptoid page and podcast gives some reasons for taking this view.

One figure who turns up regularly in the more imaginative conspiracy theories in this field is the medium Robert Lees. Read about him in my post Jack the Ripper: The Leicester connection.

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Lord Lucan, John Aspinall and George Osborne

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A new theory about what happened Lord Lucan after he murdered Sandra Rivett in 1974 emerged this week.

According to the Daily Mail, he shot himself and was then fed to a tiger at John Aspinall's zoo in Kent.

I don't believe a word of it, but the Lucan story has always fascinated me.

The best picture of John Aspinall is to be found in John Pearson's The Gamblers, but a few quotes will suffice.

Here is the Daily Express from 2013:

"Aspinall was a total crook," says Sir Rupert [Mackeson] now. "He started in the days when gambling was illegal away from racecourses. His mother Lady Osborne was a real force behind the operation." 

Aspinall and his mother were charged with "keeping a common gaming house" but were acquitted on a technicality in 1958. ... 

Aspinall opened the Clermont in 1962 after gambling had been legalised and its founder members included five dukes, five marquesses and nearly 20 earls. 

Aspinall was determined to relieve the bluebloods of their money and use the funds to finance his private zoo where he bred tigers. 

"He employed crooked dealers and used a wide range of techniques for cheating," says Sir Rupert. "He encouraged rich people, young aristocrats and in particular rich divorcees, to come to his club. A lot of people were ruined. Lucan lost a fortune and so became a house player for Aspinall."

Some of the money Aspinall fleeced from the aristocracy went to fund his zoos and wildlife breeding projects. But lest you feel too warm to him about that, read this anonymous blog post:

Both Howletts and Port Lympne seemed to attract human disaster. Aspinall's daughter-in-law, Louise, was bitten by a tiger cub and needed 15 stitches. A boy of 10 had his arm ripped off by a chimpanzee at Port Lympne, and was awarded £132,000 in damages. Bindu, an English bull elephant, crushed a "bonding" keeper to death at Howletts and later Darren Cockrill, who was crushed by an elephant at Port Lympne in February 2001. 

In 1994, the local council banned the keepers from entering the tiger cages after one of their number, Trevor Smith, was killed at Howletts.

My reason for writing about Aspinall, beyond the Lucan and tiger story, is his mother. Because Lady Osborne is also the grandmother of George Osborne.

Her first husband was Dr Robert Aspinall and John was the child of that marriage (though John is said to have discovered in later life that he was not Robert's son and to have found and supported his real father).

Her second was Sir George Osborne. They had four children together, and George Osborne is the son of the third of them.

He was famously christened Gideon, but changed his name to George, in honour of his grandfather who was dead by then, at the age of 13.

So that is my Trivial Fact of the Day.

It also explains why you can find headlines like:

Lord Lucan 'told George Osborne's grandmother he was planning to kill his WIFE days before he murdered his nanny and then drowned himself days later'

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"There is only one conclusion that we can possibly draw ... if nothing changes radically between now and 2020, Labour is headed for disaster." Public Policy and the Past tells it like it is.

Zaid Jilani argues that our celebration of Martin Luther King today is based on a simplistic view of him that passes over his more challenging views.

"David Litvinoff was, by nature and temperament, a wanderer between worlds: between the Chelsea set and hardcore criminals, between Soho and the East End, between the Scene and Esmeralda’s Barn, between Lucian Freud, George Melly, Peter Rachman, the Krays, John Bindon, Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger." Jon Savage reviews a biography of a central but elusive Sixties figure.

What makes music sad? Ben Ratliff tells us, with particular reference to the songs of Nick Drake.

Lynne About Loughborough selflessly investigates the Leicestershire town's pubs.

"Not far from London’s Euston station is a slightly spooky old derelict building. The former London Temperance Hospital on Hampstead Road." Flickering Lamps takes us there.

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Barbara Windsor and Murray Melvin talk about Sparrows Can't Sing

Joan Littlewood was a renowned theatre director but made only one feature film. Sparrows Can’t Sing was released in 1962.

Here two of the film's stars, Barbara Windsor and Murray Melvin, talk about the experience of making it.

Among the subjects they touch on are working with Littlewood, the Kray twins, Stephen Lewis (Blakey from On the Buses, who wrote the play on which the film was based) and Queenie Watts.

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Oakham Reserves match abandoned after ugly crowd scenes

The Rutland & Stamford Mercury wins Headline of the Day with this disappointing story.

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Flashbak has some great photographs of British coal mining taken between 1930 and 1950.

Chris Sayer presents his choice of the 20 mightiest small bookshops in the UK.

The children's writer Peter Dickinson has died. Britain is No Country for Old Men pays tribute to him.

"Arguments take place in online forums as to where exactly the house stood. Some are determined that there is a bit of old wall remaining and that they have stood in the back yard of the house. Others argue (plausibly) that the street alignment was changed on rebuilding, making a drain cover the location." Sarah Miller Walters on !0 Rillington Place - the house and the film.

Trisha xx has been to see the new Star Wars film and gives it five stars. Did you know, incidentally, that Daisy Ridley is the great niece of Arnold Ridley from Dad's Army?

"A truly wonderful film of a summer holiday in Bude in 1955," claims Paul Walter. And he is right. It really is wonderful. No doubt it will appear on this blog after a decent interval has elapsed.

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Men in panda onesies carry out armed robbery in Lincolnshire

The Guardian wins our Headline of the Day Award.

But see the Louth Leader for all the latest updates.

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