'Now is the Summer of Our Discontent...'

So it’s possible that they may have found Richard III’s skeleton? Gosh.


I had the chance to visit the place where the Battle of Bosworth Field apparently didn’t actually happen (as recounted here) and as stated, just by the canal is a rather sweet little memorial at the spot where, tradition has it, Richard died. If memory serves, the small monument had an inscription to ‘the last English king’ which was odd as the Plantagenets were French. As the peerless 1066 & All That points out, the last English king of England was Edward the Confessor as after that we have Harold (Danish), the Normans and then Plantagenets (French) then the Tudors (Welsh) and the Stuarts (Scottish) and finally the Hanovers/Windsors (German). And people say that the English are insular.
It is thought that the skeleton might be Richard because it has signs of curvature of the spine. I had thought that version of him was Tudor propaganda (x-rays have shown that the famous portrait of him was later altered) and wonder what this will do for those people who believe him to be a highly maligned figure.

I’m sure you’ve heard about this, Richard was a good king who didn’t murder the Princes in the Tower (though I side with George MacDonald Fraser who, like Cicero, asked cui bono) and was an all-round good egg unlike the untrustworthy wife-executing and altogether a bit too Celtic Tudors. It’s one of those things that people get surprisingly wound up about to the surprise to outsiders. Other instances I’ve recently come across on the net include the behaviour of George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars films, the behaviour of the Doctor in the most recent episode of Dr Who and the incidental music in the last couple of seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation which apparently spoilt one poor chap’s childhood.

The observant amongst you, ie all of you, will notice that all these examples above come from the world of science fiction film and television. I do paddle in the shallows of that particular fandom and one of the attractions is the high emotions that it produces in a few unhappy souls. ‘But what about the pain Jackson caused me!’ wailed one commentator on a forum about the Lord of the Rings films in response to the moderator complaining that his increasingly vicious comments were causing pain to others. You get it with Sherlock Holmes fans as well where liking the recent Robert Downey characterisation is a sin beyond forgiveness or redemption. I know connoisseurs of horror cinema who still hold Barry Norman in open contempt for his many slights on their preferred genre.

In the meantime, here’s the excellent Horrible Histories programme doing old King Dick with full admiration and open worship to whoever came up with rhyming ‘can you imagine it’ with ‘Plantagenet’.

Oh it's a luvlee 'oliday with Marry

Listening to a topical satire programme on the radio a couple of weeks back, I was surprised to hear a comedian doing a routine on Dick van Dyke’s accent in Mary Poppins.

Now I know what you’re expecting and doubtlessly a smile is reaching across your features as you prepare for the chucklesomeness that comes from observing the failure of an actor to master an accent. But first consider this. Mary Poppins was released in 1964, which means that we’ve been chortling over Dick van Dyke’s accent for 46 years. That’s close to half a century. People, I put it to you that this joke is old and maybe it’s time to move on. I know it’s a bad attempt at cockney and while I didn’t notice it when watching the film as a child, it was genuinely startling the first time I heard it as an adult.

And it’s not even as though it’s the only bad accent out there. James Doohan’s Scottish accent as Scotty in Star Trek springs to mind (a tradition kept alive by Simon Pegg in the latest film version) as does Sean Connery’s attempt at Irish/American in The Untouchables and there are others including, I’m told, some remarkably odd attempts at Mancunian in an episode of Frasier. Yet still it is almost impossible to talk or write about Mary Poppins without referencing the accent. The Times recently printed a list of top children’s films, and even though only fifty words were allotted to each one, the accent was commented on. When Mark Kermode discussed the film in an article a few Christmases back it was startlingly noticeable that he did not mention it at all.

So why this defensive kneejerkery whenever Mary Poppins is mentioned? We are all aware of van Dyke’s deficiency in the cockney accent department and it’s not as if a new adult British viewer is liable to miss it. There really is no longer a need to point it out and, quite frankly, riffing about it on a topical comedy programme is downright bizarre. Come on Marcus Brigstocke, why not really stick it to Palmerston while you're at it and Mitch Benn can do a funny song about the charge of the Light Brigade. This is moving away from being humorous and drifting into the realms of OCD. Are we so desperate to reserve our cool in the face of an openly sentimental children’s film? Is it because it is cockney he cocks (sorry) up? Had it been Somerset or Geordie would there be such a fuss? I suspect not.

So here is my clarion cry, and I’m surprised how nervous I am making it. As John Cleese once commented, an Englishman would rather be told that he is a bad lover than that he has no sense of humour, but I shall be bold. Leave it people. The joke’s old and obvious and it’s time to move on. Let’s laugh at James Cameron’s name for the ultra-rare substance the humans are looking for in Avatar, ‘unobtainium’. Now that really is funny.

Happy Easter

Is this a topless tower I see before me jesting Pilate?

Saw the new Sherlock Holmes film yesterday. I enjoyed it, my companion was more lukewarm (if you can be more lukewarm) and we discussed it amiably over a pint afterwards. Today having several other things I needed to do as a matter of some urgency, I had a look at some of the responses to the film on-line and in the forums.

Golly, as a girlfriend I used to have would say at inappropriate moments.

The anger, the loathing, the darkness, the horror, the horror. I was quite startled at the depths of feeling this film has produced. I shouldn’t have been of course. I remember the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine/Babylon 5 war in the ‘90s. For those of you who had a life at the time, this concerned the rivalry between the fans of those two science fiction television programmes. Both series were set on futuristic space stations and each side was convinced that the other was a spoiler attempt or outrageous rip-off. It is said that there were death threats, it got so bad. In the end the widow of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, had to step in and appear as a guest star on the other show to try and get everyone to calm down. Odd.

The Holmes army seems to fall into three basic categories: only Basil Rathbone will do; only Jeremy Brett will do; they’ll both do but no-one else or we’ll start killing the hostages. These people, as my mother (silver hair for the use of) says, do not have enough to worry about. On The Guardian forum there’s a good solid dose of snobbery as well.

It is of course very peculiar to watch these violent disagreements going on if you have no strong feelings on the matter. When the aforementioned Guardian placed The Wire at number 14 of their fifty best TV series list the other day, one poster was unable to even type coherently he was so angry. As it happens, I haven’t seen that series and no longer intend to. After the hysterical praise given to it, it can only be a crushing disappointment, like Withnail & I.

Where else may one find such sound and fury? Dr Who? No, though some Tennant fans get a tad shirty if you gently point out that he didn’t so much act in his last episodes as swivel his eyes and hair in random directions as the mood took him. Liked his Hamlet though. James Bond? No, though there was some promising skirmishing when Daniel Craig was cast. Dracula? Nary a squeak to my knowledge. Incidentally, the best vampire film out there is the appealingly named Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter. No, honest, it was written and directed by the people who made The Avengers.

So where and what is my ignition point? What sets me off into incandescent fury? I’m not a football fan so nothing there. With a superior air that I like to feel I can carry off rather nicely, I assumed I was above such things and could look and laugh at all that.

I was wrong.

If you’re bored and you wish to reduce me to the kind of gibbering fury that so convulsed that Wire fan mentioned above, then suggest to me that Shakespeare did not write his plays. Suggest that Francis Bacon or Christopher Marlowe (current favourite with these braindead morons) did instead. I had intended to blog on this subject a month or so ago after some correspondent to The Times trotted out the Marlowe theory in the letters page but found I was actually unable to do so as I was so angry. I’m having difficulty now. I’ve no idea why this one so infuriates me, but it does. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a forum I need to add to…