John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn and Clare Grogan reminisce about the making of this 1980 film in a discussion recorded last year.
If this were the Daily Mail I would be astounded that they look a lot older 35 years on.
The making of Gregory's Girl
John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn and Clare Grogan reminisce about the making of this 1980 film in a discussion recorded last year.
If this were the Daily Mail I would be astounded that they look a lot older 35 years on.
Tragic Magic: The Life of Traffic's Chris Wood
Thanks to someone who has found that old post and left a couple of comments, I can tell you that Tragic Magic: The Life of Traffic's Chris Wood has now been published.
The book's blurb says:
Traffic was the most enigmatic British band of their day. Formed in early 1967 by Chris Wood, Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi and Dave Mason, they rejected the bright lights of London in favor of a run-down, supposedly haunted, cottage in the country - a place to live communally and write music.
With Chris especially intent on channeling the vibes of England's landscape into their sound, days would be spent getting high, exploring, playing and working in varying proportions. Against all odds, this eccentric model paid off - songs such as "Dear Mr. Fantasy" and "John Barleycorn Must Die" would lift Traffic into the upper echelons of the rock world.
As they brushed shoulders with Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, and the Grateful Dead, and with Dave dropping in and out of the band, Traffic's music evolved from a synthesis of Steve's innate musicality, Jim's atmospheric lyrics and Chris's special brand of congenial mysticism. Record sales boomed and tours carried them back and forth across the Atlantic, everything seemed to be going to plan - a dreamlike fairy tale come true.
But for Chris, a toll would be exacted.
Amid the clashing egos, wearing road trips, stressful break ups and a complex personal life, he vacillated precariously between bursts of exquisite creativity and torrents of self-destruction; a paradoxical dance which continued until his death in 1983. For a man who found artistic expression everything, and for whom suffering for it was an expectation, Chris would stare fully into the Medusa's face of the music industry, paying a higher price than perhaps any of his contemporaries.
Researched and written over a ten-year period, "Tragic Magic" offers the only definitive account of Traffic's story and Chris Wood's quietly extraordinary life.
One-legged animal porn pervert told he has “walked into trouble”
Our Headline of the Day competition sees a victory for Lincolnshire and the Gainsborough Standard.
Like all the best headlines, it was nominated by a reader. Thank you.
Like all the best headlines, it was nominated by a reader. Thank you.
Boudicca Rising wins Name of the Day
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| A cat yesterday |
Googling the case I came across the excellent organisation South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty (SNARL), which is leading a campaign to catch a suspected attacker, and its organiser Boudicca Rising.
She wins our coveted Name of the Day Award.
Emma Thompson shows how not to win the European referendum
Which may be a problem. While professionals arrange the harmonisation of qualifications across the continent to make it easy for them to take up agreeable employment abroad, the rest of us are faced with an influx of people who will work harder and expect lower wages.
That, incidentally, why it is bizarre that David Cameron's demands centre on benefits for people from Poland. It is the Poles in jobs that British workers are afraid of.
But if you are trying to dispel the idea that Europe is an elitist project then you don't want someone like Emma Thompson describing Britain as:
"a tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe, a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island."It is possible to love Britain and be in favour of our membership of the EU, but you wouldn't grasp it from her words.
And I don't understand what is wrong with cake. With the success of The Great British Bake Off, it is all the rage these days and isn't a love of curry as much a marker of Britishness these days anyway?
Perhaps we should look at John Carey's The Intellectuals and the Masses, where he dissects the horror of the likes of the Bloomsbury Group at the food of the workers. My dear, tinned food!
Let me end by quoting my review of Phil Norman's A History of Television in 100 Programmes:
The essay on The Magic Roundabout called to mind the family legend that my father was a school friend of Eric Thompson. My mother says he would occasionally smile at the airs Thompson later gave himself, given the humble home he came from. Goodness knows what he made of Emma.
Paedophile activist suspended from the Labour Party
Last night The Times broke the news that Tom O'Carroll, the public face of the Paedophile Information Exchange around 1980, had joined the Labour Party.
To Labour's credit, he was suspended today.
But his brief presence was in line with the Corbynistas' attempt to return Labour to the early 1980s.
When I worked in Birmingham in 1981 and 1982 it was possible to find literature from the PIE among that from other municipally approved good causes in the city's central library.
The idea that the professional left was the scourge of child abusers did not arise until some years later.
To Labour's credit, he was suspended today.
But his brief presence was in line with the Corbynistas' attempt to return Labour to the early 1980s.
When I worked in Birmingham in 1981 and 1982 it was possible to find literature from the PIE among that from other municipally approved good causes in the city's central library.
The idea that the professional left was the scourge of child abusers did not arise until some years later.
Charles Sydney Buxton and Eric Avebury were cousins
When I blogged about the Liberal flyer from the first 1910 general election I bought on Sunday, I said Charles Sydney Buxton and Eric Avebury were kinsmen.
A little research shows that they were cousins - or half-cousins, if there is such a relationship - as they had the same grandfather.
That grandfather was John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, who had 11 children from two marriages.
Charles was the son of his eldest child Constance Mary Lubbock. She was the daughter of John Lubbock's first wife Ellen Frances Hordern.
Eric Avebury was the son of his youngest child, Maurice Fox Pitt Lubbock. He was the son of John Lubbock's second wife Alice Fox-Pitt.
When I set off for the antique fair on Sunday I had just heard of Eric Avebury's death - just one of those odd coincidences.
It is striking to come across cousins who died more than a century apart and also strking that Eric Avebury eventuallly inherited his grandfather's title despite being born to the youngest of his 11 children.
Disused stations in Nottinghamshire
The Nottingham London Road here is the vanished Higher Level station. The Lower Level one is still there, now occupied by a health club and spa.
There are lots more of these videos on this blog. Find them on the Disused Stations label.
Rabbit hutch stolen from Shropshire field - but the rabbit is left behind
Our Headline of the Day comes from the Shropshire Star.
The judges were unanimous, but I can't help thinking this is rather embarrassing for the rabbit.
The judges were unanimous, but I can't help thinking this is rather embarrassing for the rabbit.
