Disney is, reportedly, 'in discussions' with the BBC to acquire the streaming rights to Doctor Who. One immediately wonders, of course, whether these reported 'discussions' are similar to the alleged discussions that the Daily Lies once claimed Holly Valance was in to replace Sarah Michelle Gellar in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Probably not. The talks are 'in the early stages,' claim Bloomberg. 'And there is no guarantee a deal will be reached, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.' So, an allegation made by a suspiciously anonymous - and, therefore, likely fictitious - alleged 'insider'? This is sounding more and more like the kind of horseshit the Daily Lies specialises in all the time. Though it should be noted that Bloomberg are not the only source of these allegations - Radio Times (which used to be run by adults), The AV Club website, Movie Web, Collider, TBI Vision, Winter Is Coming and various other media outlets have also ran the story (or, variations on it). The BBC's popular, long-running family SF drama would, potentially, be broadcast globally on the Disney+ streaming service. As well as, obviously, on the BBC itself here in the UK. Disney, like other media companies is, Bloomberg alleges, 'looking to bulk up on established entertainment properties as it builds its global streaming service.'
There's a very good piece on the BBC News website concerning the ecstatic reaction to a showing of the first episode of Netflix's adaptation of The Sandman at Comic-Con. 'You could forgive Neil Gaiman for thinking that he was dreaming,' it begins. 'Plans to bring his epic comic series to the screen have come and gone for decades. Now, it's really happening. Hollywood first started trying to adapt Gaiman's work back in the 1990s. "They were trying to make a three thousand-page story happen in two hours of film time," says the writer. "And nobody ever cracked that because it was uncrackable."' This week has also seen the release on a new trailer for the series. Which is stunning, by the way. This blogger was going to watch the series anyway when it finally lands in early August but, he thinks the trailer pretty much seals it. Netflix have also published a load of new images from the series which you can view here and another online video containing further clips and explanatory interviews with From The North favourites Neil and Jenna Coleman.
Someone at the Gruniad Morning Star seemingly thought it would be a good idea to get together From The North favourite Professor Brian Cox (CBE) and From The North favourite award-winning actor Brian Cox (CBE). For a bout - no biting, no kidney punches, winner to be decided by two falls or a submission. The results are published here.
The sad news of the death, on Monday, of From The North favourite David Warner brought a sudden burst of bloggerisationism activity to From The North for a rare midweek update in tribute to one of this blogger's favourite actors. You may have noticed. But, on the off-chance that you haven't read it yet, dear blog reader, you can check it out here. This blogger also, once again, urges readers to have a butchers at the quite extraordinary career-covering interview David did with The AV Club in 2017. It's one of the finest actor interviews this blogger can remember reading.
And whilst you're about it, just to repeat, if you haven't seen David in Peter Hall's 1970 caper-heist movie Perfect Friday - with Stanley Baker, Ursula Andress and TP McKenna - you really are missing out on a treat.
Speaking of Stanley Baker, this blogger was delighted earlier this week to catch an afternoon showing (somewhat inevitably on From The North's station-of-choice most days of late, Talking Pictures) of Val Guest's superb and highly-regarded 1960 crime drama Hell Is A City. 'In comparison with the films that comprise the "kitchen sink" canon, Hell Is A City is unaccountably overlooked,' notes the BFI website. 'Critical snobbery towards its solidly commercial director, its genre status and the fact that it was a Hammer/ABPC co-production may have played their parts, but from a modern perspective Hell Is A City is as important a film as Room At The Top. Some of its success derives from Guest's imaginative use of the Manchester cityscape and his taut script. But above all, the film depends on the central performance of Stanley Baker, whose Harry Martineau is played as a world-weary and emotional man far removed from the gentlemanly senior CID Inspectors populating much post-war British cinema.'
It is a movie which this blogger has long admired since first catching it during the 1990s. It has been described - by the Gruniad Morning Star - as 'a cult classic' and that's jolly hard to argue with. Steve Chibnall and Alan Burton note in The Historical Dictionary Of British Cinema that the movie 'was partly inspired by the British New Wave films and resembles American Film Noir.' 'Pressure from [the] US distributors apparently led to the miscasting of the American John Crawford as Starling, but even the film's insistence that an Irish-American criminal and a Mancunian police inspector (whose accent keeps veering towards Wales) apparently shared a childhood is not enough to detract from its overall impact,' added the BFI.
Hell Is A City - filmed in 'Hammerscope' no less(!) - was something of a throwback to the kind of movies Hammer made a lot of in the 1950s before and between the success of their Quatermass films and their move into Gothic horror with The Curse Of Frankenstein and Dracula. Think Blood Orange (Terence Fisher, 1953), Murder By Proxy (also Fisher, 1955), The Glass Cage (Montgomery Tully, 1955) or The Snorkel (Guy Green, 1958) for other examples of the company's work in the crime field, though Hell Is A City is one the best of the type they produced. It is, perhaps, only matched by their subsequent Cash On Demand (Quentin Lawrence, 1962) which we have previously covered in depth on this blog.
With its black and white cinematography and the way Guest gets his film to look, Hell Is A City may well be the most American-looking movie ever made in Britain. It's a noirish manhunt thriller set in (and, almost exclusively filmed in and around) Manchester. Even with the Moors and the vast industrial factories as a backdrop, the film's excellent, naturalistic dialogue and impressive jazz score (by Stanley Black) pushes Hell Is A City towards Double Indemnity, The Naked City and Touch Of Evil territory. It's that good.
Some of the interiors were completed at Elstree Studios but the majority of the film was shot on location. Arthur Grant's camerawork captures a changing Manchester landscape where the Victorian slums incongruously blend with the post-war concrete of the city centre and where the roads are jammed with recent model Austins and Hillmans. The air of seedy decrepitude is reinforced by Starling's battered pre-war getaway car; his is not a smoothly professional gang with a Mark II Jaguar but, rather, an assortment of brutal, not particularly bright men on a limited budget. Most British films of this era used rural England as a form of escape from urban life. By contrast in Hell Is A City, the bleak and windswept Saddleworth Moor serve as an open territory where criminals are able to operate effectively at will. As a detective film, Hell Is A City may contain its fair share of melodrama, but the final shots of its hero wandering through the neon-lit streets of a newly re-built Manchester are as evocative as any in British cinema.
Scripted by Guest and based on a novel by former Manchester policeman Maurice Procter, Hell Is A City is really well written, crafting a tense but always believable city scenario. The atmosphere is very authentic throughout, aided by the movie's very (for the time) strong dialogue and believable characters; just about everyone in this story is a recognisable human archetype from the police characters to the villains and the bystanders, all of them flawed and vulnerable in their own ways. A particular surprise is the depiction of the betting shop owner Hawkins (played superbly by Donald Pleasence), who in another film may have been portrayed as a rather grubby, money-grabbing slimeball. Here, he is merely a hard-working businessman (with a wife that he doesn't realise is frequently playing away from home) who displays real sympathy for the family of the shop girl employee killed during the robbery. Guest also avoids turning the main villain into a one-dimensional 'evil' creature and Starling's use of force always has a purpose - the over-the-top violent extremes of the 1970s crime conceits aren't present here and that conspires to make the occasional violence which does erupt - particularly towards the climax - even more striking. (Guest, incidentally, had an Alfred Hitchcock-style cameo in the movie; he plays the bar customer seen ordering 'two bitters' in an early scene.)
The plot: Committed, seen-it-all police Detective Inspector Martineau (Baker) rightly guesses that after a violent jailbreak a local criminal, Don Starling (Crawford) will head back home to Manchester in an effort to pick up the spoils from his last job. Martineau is soon investigating the murder of a betting shop assistant (Lois Daine) during a street robbery which seems to lead back to the same villain and his associates. Martineau and his Sergeant, Devery (Geoffrey Frederick) soon get a break. Some of the money included in the bookie's takings was stolen and had been marked with a dye. Anyone touching that money will find their hands stained green. Using various local contacts (including Warren Mitchell, George A Cooper and Joseph Tomelty) to try and track the gang down, Martineau is also aware that he is not keeping his personal life together as well as he might. His wife, Julia (Maxine Audley), is tired of his long hours and preoccupations and the couple bicker incessantly.
'Come on, I'll buy you a drink,' Martineau offers his Sergeant at one point. 'Well, that's very nice of you,' replies Devery, 'but I'm afraid ...' Martineau doesn't even let him finish: 'Teach her to wait. That's one thing a policeman's girl must always learn.' It's not a bit of wonder his own missus is constantly complaining.
Starling threatens his way into the home of the betting shop owner (Pleasence) whose wife, Chloe (Billie Whitelaw) is a former girlfriend of the criminal. Eventually, Martineau breaks the case, sweating confessions out of Starling's accomplices (Charles Houston, Toby Blanshard and Charles Morgan). He tracks Starling to a city building - a furnishing store where he terrorises the owner's mute granddaughter (Sarah Branch) - and a rooftop shoot-out ensures. During this, both Martineau and Starling are wounded. Starling almost falls to his death but Martineau and his colleagues drag him to safety so that he can face trial and suffer the consequences of his nasty lawless ways.
Some months later, on the day that Starling is hanged at Strangeways, Martineau - who has recovered from his injures, been promoted to Chief Inspector and is due to return to work the next day, a hero - has another blazing row with his wife about the state of their marriage. Martineau goes into the city centre. He meets the barmaid of his local, Lucky (Vanda Godsell) with whom he shares a flirtatious relationship. Both seem to regret past missed opportunities for a romantic involvement that might have been ('you'll miss your bus', 'I think I already have'). Martineau is then propositioned by a lady of the night who, suddenly, recognises him as a famous policeman and scurries off. He meets Devery who offers him a lift but he says he'll walk as tonight is his 'last night of liberty.' Martineau wanders into the Manchester twilight, a lonely and driven man, doing the only job he can in the only way he knows.
The final scene, in fact, is one of the best in a movie full of great scenes - it reminds one (and, indeed, may have been a direct influence on) the end credit sequence of The Sweeney with Jack and George wandering the streets of Soho over a downbeat musical score. An alternate ending was filmed by Guest - at the insistence of Manchester Police and the local Watch Committee who had co-operated with and assisted the production (and are acknowledged on the opening credits). They were, one imagines, less than keen on the idea of policemen in their city being portrayed as lonely and driven individuals with marital problems. So a happier ending was tried in which Martineau and his wife were reconciled. There's no evidence that this alternate ending was ever used in cinemas but it was included as an extra on the 2012 DVD release which also includes a commentary by Guest and, unlike the US and Japanese releases, is uncut - leaving in a brief scene with Billie Whitelaw containing some nudity.
The plot is pretty straightforward and effective, moving the story forward with considerable pace and keeping the audience's interest and sympathy throughout. To find his nemesis, Martineau follows the money trail thanks to the dyed notes that the criminals have stolen. Whilst this was an intelligent plot device for a 1960 film (later to become something of a genre cliché), the method of using the dye on the hands of those who have touched the money does get slightly preposterous after a while. Particularly as none of the criminals seem to notice that they are walking around with green hands.
The tightly-wound cadence of the movie, juxtaposing the tough good guys and very rough bad guy is effective, as is the smoothly shifting locale from busy central Manchester to the suburbs and the outlying Moors. The city is depicted as harsh and unforgiving, a place of greed, duplicity and frustrated hopes and it's really nice, for once, to see a British city other than London playing such a prominent role in a film of this era to the point that it's almost a character in and of itself. (There were decidedly few productions which ventured beyond Watford in search of locations. Two other roughly contemporary examples that spring to mind were Basil Dearden's Violent Playground (1958), also featuring Baker and filmed in Liverpool and Sidney Hayers' Payroll (1961), also starring Whitelaw, shot in and around Gateshead and Newcastle.) Most effective of all, the brawling rooftop climax features, what was, for 1960, some really raw violence; Film Noir had more or less finished in the US by this stage but this kind of stylistic, gritty, dark and morally ambiguous crime thriller was just reigniting in the UK via the British New Wave.
The Refuge Assurance building on the corner of Oxford Street and Whitworth Street was the key location in the film's climactic chase sequence and the scene in the attic with the vicious killer relentlessly stalking a defenceless girl who is unable even to scream is as harrowing and suspenseful as something Hitchcock might have dreamed up.
Hell Is A City 'captures an uncertain nation in the trough between austerity and affluence and deserves a place in the same Northern league as Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, A Taste Of Honey and This Sporting Life, all of which it precedes,' wrote the Gruniad Morning Star's Phillip French. The movie is 'unusually vivid and punchy for a British crime film of this era,' added the Cinema Essentials website. 'There's barely any wasted screen time in a brisk and well-paced ninety eight minute film ... [that] is lean and mean, with nicely etched supporting characters and some interesting actors among the cast.' Empire magazine called it 'a gritty, urbane and stylish Brit thriller' and that's about right.
As has been noted elsewhere, in the 1950s a working class regional accent would usually have confined an actor to playing supporting parts, comic characters or villains, but Stanley Baker was one of the first who managed to escape those limitations. Alan Bates, Albert Finney, Sean Connery, Michael Caine and others are usually seen as leading the way in changing the image of the British film star, from gentlemanly upper middle class RADA-accented types to the working class hero from the regions, but it was Baker who got there first. Dark, brooding, a little rough around the edges and far more obviously virile than some of his contemporaries, Stanley is terrific in this and his probable influence in a couple of generations of future portrayals of maverick, ends-justify-the-means policemen (from Z Cars to The Sweeney to Law & Order and beyond) is worth noting. Hell Is A City was a decent-sized commercial hit and something of a critical success at the time, nominated for two BAFTAs (Best Screenplay and Most Promising Newcomer for Billie Whitelaw). It has lost little of its edge in the intervening years. Perhaps some of the accents wouldn't convince a Mancunian and it has to make an effort to avoid contravening the censor of the time both in the colourfulness of its dialogue and depiction of on-screen violence. But, like several of its characters, it punched hard and the climax still has real tension.
We moved now, dear blog reader, to what seems to have become, of late, the most popular part of From The North, Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s. Picking up with Number Thirty: Vanessa Howard: 'We'll all be taking potshots. At you! And we won't be using cues.' Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly.
The two biggest disappointments that this blogger had when Keith Telly Topping was writing A Vault Of Horror were, firstly, that he couldn't, quite, find the space to include A Clockwork Orange, Performance and Repulsion - all of which he wanted to get into the book. Specifically to irk the purists. He had set himself a limit of eighty movies to be discussed and it would've meant dropping two or three which this blogger felt were essential to the story he was telling since the rationale behind the book was reviewing movies which had affected and influenced this blogger as a teenager rather than those he came to in his twenties. If Keith Telly Topping was writing the book now, bugger it, they would all have been in and this blogger would have left out something like Kiss Of The Vampire which would have really irked the purists!
The second - and really major - disappointment was that try as he might (and he tried damned hard), this blogger simply couldn't lay his hands on a copy of Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly. I mean, it featured Vanessa Howard in schoolgirl outfit, dear blog reader. What's not to love?
This blogger even somewhat cheekily wrote to the movie's director, the great Freddie Francis (via his agent), asking (politely) if he happened to have a VHS copy which this blogger could borrow for review purposes. (Keith Telly Topping never got a reply, unsurprisingly! And, to be fair, he didn't really expect one.) A few months after the book came out, in 2005, bootleg video copies of Girly were ten-a-penny. Just this blogger's luck.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s. Number Thirty One: James Fox: 'I need a bohemian atmosphere! I'm an artist, Mister Turner. Much like yourself.' Mick Jagger: 'You ... juggle!' Performance. One of the most quotable films in movie history, mostly through snatches of its dialogue being use as samples by the likes of Big Audio Dynamite and Happy Mondays, admittedly. ('You're a comical little geezer, you'll look funny when you're fifty'; 'We've been courteous!'; 'You're Jack The Lad!'; 'I like that, turn it up!' et cetera). And, also, a bloody masterpiece and one of this blogger's favourite movies, horror or otherwise.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s (Or, In This Case, The Late 1960s). Number Thirty Two - and, The Single Worst "Self-Aware" Moment in Horror Movie History - comes from Curse Of The Crimson Alter. Virginia Wetherell: 'It gets a bit creepy sometimes. It's a bit like one of those houses in horror films.' Mark Eden: 'Yeah, I know what you mean ... Boris Karloff's going to pop-up at any moment.’ And, five minutes later, what do you know? He does. Crap. A good if, somewhat flawed, movie (Vernon Sewell somehow managed to underuse the majority of the extraordinary cast that he'd assembled) but, dear blog reader, with some really rotten dialogue!
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s. Number Thirty Three: Damien Thomas: 'What's the meaning of this, Weil? Out witch-hunting again? You've come to the wrong place.' Peter Cushing: 'We seek the servants of The Devil.' Damien Thomas: 'Well, you've found one. Me! Now get out!' Twins Of Evil. One of the first horror films that this blogger ever saw, as a twelve year old. And, like lots of other twelve years olds, it was a movie that explained to him, in very simple easily-to-understand terms, the concept of breasts!
Specifically, these ones.
Couple of additional points to make (besides the Collinson sisters' astonishing cleavages, obviously). Twins Of Evil entered production a mere nine weeks after the death of Peter Cushing’s beloved wife, Helen and, at times, the actor's overwhelming grief at her loss seems abundantly evident in his haunted performance. This foreknowledge helps to lend a touch of pathos to a role which, even by the genre's standards, is very dark and nefarious. That Hammer's most beloved savant should be portrayed, as Cushing's Gustav undoubtedly is, as a sadistic, albeit righteous, child-abuser is quite startling to modern audiences. Yet, when he says 'I have tried, always, to be a good man,' you want to give him a hug.
Secondly, this blogger's favourite daft bit of the movie; Joachim (the excellent Roy Stewart) Karnstein's mute servant, rushes into Karnstein Castle and mimes that the villagers are coming intent on hacking Karnstein into little bits. And, he further mimes, they are armed. With crosses and stakes and axes. Almost as ludicrous, is Karnstein's reaction to receiving this information via the medium of mime ('they've got crosses? And stakes? And axes?!'), as though it had never occurred to him until this moment that the villages would bring such implements with them on a torchlit vampire hunt!
Oh and, given that in this the Eighteenth Century and a young woman's education, if she even got one, normally concluded at around the age of twelve, this village seems to have a class featuring the oldest (and, most attractive-looking) group of schoolgirls in all Europe. Other than those featured in Lust For A Vampire, obviously.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s. Number Thirty Four: Joan Crawford: 'Malcolm, get me my hypo-gun. Quickly.' Trog! Some of the films featured in this on-going series, dear blog reader are great; most aren't though they are flawed-but-vastly-entertaining; some are okay; some (quite a few, actually) are of the 'so-bad-they're-brilliant' type. One or two are not much cop but do have a few redeeming features. This blogger thinks that Trog! might be the first one (and, yes, this blogger is including Son Of Dracula in that) with no redeeming features whatsoever. Even Michael Gough couldn't save this one.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s. Number Thirty Five: Tony Beckley: 'I baptised her, mother!' The
Fiend.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s. Number Thirty Six: Rosalind Ayres: 'Do you think I could have a little drink?' David Warner: 'Yes, of course. Whiskey?' Rosalind Ayres: 'Lovely. Nothing like a drop of the hard stuff to turn me on.' From Beyond The Grave. This blogger had lined this one up for an appearance much later in this on-going series but, it seemed appropriate to feature it this week . Mainly as a reminder that, in addition to being one of the great stage, small and big-screen actors of his generation, the late David Warner could also be admirably daft.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s. Number Thirty Seven: Patrick Wymark: 'Ralph here claims he discovered a deformed anatomy in those furrows. Knew you of any such?' Anthony Ainley: 'Not since Meg Parsons died. But strange folk have been seen to pass this way from time to time.' Blood On Satan's Claw. In view of the fact that it was shown on Talking Pictures as a recently as last Friday and because it's a bloody great movie (by any definition of what can be considered a great movie).
It was a film some of whose dialogue this blogger once, ahem, 'adapted' for a line or two in The Hollow Men. Also, it's worth including because it gives this blogger the chance to talk once again about the memorably idiotic typing error which he once saw it described as in the TV listings of a certain broadsheet newspaper with a penchant for typos (yes, that one): 'Blood On Stan's Claw' [sic]. True story! It could've been worse, one supposes; it could've been 'Blood On Santa's Claw'. Plus, thinking about The Goddess That Is Linda Hayden got this blogger through some long and lonely teenage nights.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s. Number Thirty Eight: Beryl Reid: : 'It must have been in 1933 when Daddy died. Well, he’d been in bed for over a year so none of us missed him very much.' The Beast In The Cellar.
Not a very good film, despite the excellent performances from Beryl and Flora Robson (and, Tessa Wyatt in a naughty nurses uniform, obviously). This blogger's main problems with The Beast In The Cellar are two-fold. Firstly, Ellie's reminiscences about a winter circa 1915 (of which the above dialogue is a part) is accompanied by shots which are clearly intended to be part of this flashback (note, for instance, the subsequent scene of Joyce, Ellie and their mother at the railway station to meet their father returning from France). Yet the children playing in the snow are all, clearly, dressed in 1970s-style clothing which shatters the illusion completely.
More importantly, having been walled up in a cellar for thirty years, one would expect Steven to be quite weak (he was fed, Ellie notes, but was frequently drugged and can't have had much exercise). Indeed, when we see his body at the end, he looks positively emaciated. Yet he somehow escaped his prison and developed the superhuman strength to kill a bunch of fit young servicemen. What's that all about? Basic training in 1970 was, clearly, not what it was a couple of decades earlier when there was a war on.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s. Number Thirty Nine: Robert Hanna: 'When there are people like Leung Hon in the city ...' Robin Stewart: 'Well who's he, sir?' Robert Hanna: 'A sort of Tong leader. Awful blackguard.' Robin Stewart: 'How very jolly!' The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires.
One of the daftest movies included in this on-going series. Particularly the glorious overuse of dry ice during the possession sequence which could only have been salvaged by some necessary irony - for instance, if Kah and Dracula had both emerged through the smoke coughing, spluttering and waving their arms about. That would've been funny.
But, mainly, this blogger wanted to include it as an excuse to quote, at length, from Charles Shaar Murray's infamously brilliant review of the movie for Melody Maker: 'The Legend of The 7 Golden Vampires is, perhaps, the worst film I've ever seen ... The part of Christopher Lee is played by a gent named John Forbes-Robertson, who is not over-endowed with either presence or charisma and looks like an old queen whose make-up has run. The part of Peter Cushing is played, rather reluctantly and without much enthusiasm, by Peter Cushing. The part of a pair of big tits with a Swedish accent is played by Julie Ege ... Why do otherwise intelligent people pay money to see this garbage? I don't know. That's why I'm going to see it again next week.' Michael Carreras was, reportedly, so impressed with this review that he had it framed in his office!
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s. Number Forty: Michael Parkinson: 'He did, in fact, play The Invisible Man, but this is daft, isn’t it?' Madhouse. Probably the least well-known of Vincent Price's early 1970s renaissance to the non-Horror fan, but it's still a little corker of a movie with lots of good film industry jokes. It's also interesting to see Peter Cushing in a villainous role for a change. It is, however, as this blogger's fiend Young Malcolm pointed out, the least convincing portrayal of Michael Parkinson ever. By Michael Parkinson.
Of course, once again, the question of what, exactly, constitutes a horror movie and what doesn't came up during this blogger's discussions with his Facebook fiends. This blogger, for example, has previously seen some people argue that to be considered a horror movie something supernatural has to happen in it. So, using that rationale, Psycho isn't a horror movie, Death Line isn't a horror movie, The Haunted House Of Horror isn't a horror movie (despite it's title!), Repulsion isn't a horror movie, Fright isn't a horror movie ... et cetera. For what it's worth, this blogger has always taken the view that if a film's intention is to scare the living bejesus out of its audience then that qualifies it to be described as horror. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter but, for the purposes of this on-going series, the definition of what is a horror movie is, basically, 'whatever this blogger says is a horror movie!' Other dear blog readers are, of course, free to start their own version of this format on their own blog(s) and used their own individual definition(s). Democracy, as it were, in action.
It has been a bad week for us losing national treasures, dear blog reader, what with David Warner leaving us on Monday and then, three days later, the sad news of the death of Bernard Cribbins. A multi-talented performer - actor, comedian, singer and raconteur - Bernard had a go at everything from Shakespeare to pantomime, Hitchcock's Frenzy to Fawlty Towers and Jackanory to Top Of The Pops. He was the voice of The Wombles, Catherine Tate's cuddly grandfather in Doctor Who and the irate-but-soft-hearted station master in The Railway Children.
When he was nearly ninety, Bernard published an autobiography looking back on his years in show business in 2018. Its title was Bernard Who? Seventy Five Years Of Doing Absolutely Everything - and his advice to his readers was impressively simple. 'Do your best and be grateful for every single job.'
Bernard Joseph Cribbins was born into a working-class family in Oldham in December 1928, the son of cotton weaver Ethel (1898 to 1989) and World War I veteran John Cribbins (1896 to 1964). These were hard times. Bernard's mother worked barefoot in a local factory; his father was a champion clog-fighter - a 'sport' which involved kicking an opponent's shins, really hard, until he submitted. Bernard had two siblings, alongside whom he grew up in near poverty. Home comforts were few: a cold-water tap, a tin bath and an outside toilet that Bernard nicknamed 'the long drop.' He described his father as a 'jack of all trades' who also dabbled in amateur dramatics. Cribbins left school at the age of thirteen and found a job as an assistant stage manager at a local theatre, where he also took some small acting roles and then served an apprenticeship at the Oldham Repertory Theatre. He recalled '4 January 1943, is when I became a professional actor-cum-thespian.' The war did not affect him too much, he said, though at night he could hear and see the blitz over Manchester and Salford.
He found himself appearing in a succession of small parts. They were just 'two lines and a smile,' he recalled, but it was enough to give him a taste. Little could dent his ambition, even an horrific accident during a production of Macbeth. The play ended with the usual sword fight between Macbeth and Macduff. To save money on expensive fake swords, real ones were used instead. The actor playing Macbeth, Harold Norman, was fatally stabbed in front of Bernard. His eight-year stint in Oldham was interrupted by National Service, where he served with the Parachute Regiment in Palestine during the 1947-48 crisis. 'Six months of getting shot at; I don't recommend it,' he said, many years later. When appearing in Doctor Who, Cribbins proudly wore his regimental badge on the front of his woolly hat. His experiences of being under fire in Palestine were even written into one of the scripts after he mentioned it to showrunner Russell Davies.
There were further spells in local theatre, where he turned his hand to Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams. In A Streetcar Named Desire, he played Stanley Kowalski - the part made famous on screen by Marlon Brando. For Cribbins, the role may have been too far a stretch. 'On the first night I took my T-shirt off and wiped myself down with it,' he said. 'A man in the front row was sick.' In 1956, he made his West End debut in a musical production of A Comedy Of Errors, moving on to a number of leading roles in plays such as Salad Days. He co-starred in the first West End productions of Not Now Darling, There Goes The Bride and Run For Your Wife. He also appeared in the revue And Another Thing and recorded a single of a song from the show, 'Folksong' (Parlophone R4712, November 1960).
'There was no plan,' he told one interviewer, 'just a succession of musicals, comedy roles and revue, all of which I loved.' He was versatile and, therefore, rarely out of work. The same year, he discovered his aptitude for children's television when he appeared in a live BBC production of David Copperfield. He had already had a first film role, as a sweaty naval rating in the acclaimed wartime drama, The Yangtse Incident (1957). To his surprise, Bernard found that he enjoyed the big-screen as much as being on stage. 'It was quite different from the theatre,' he told The Stage, 'requiring more thought and stillness. I remember the cameraman telling me not to blink during a tight close-up otherwise my eyelashes would look like a couple of giant condors taking off.'
He went on to act alongside Peter Sellers in Two Year Stretch, a classic comedy about a group of convicts planning to break out of jail, rob a train and then return to their cells to establish the perfect alibi. Crime - on screen at least - continued to pay as he followed that up with The Wrong Arm Of The Law (1963, again with Sellers) and Crooks In Cloisters (1964). In 1962, he released two superb comedy records: 'The Hole In The Ground' and 'Right Said Fred', both of which reached the UK top ten and were produced by George Martin with music by Ted Dicks and lyrics by Myles Rudge. A third single, 'Gossip Calypso' was another top thirty hit whilst his Parlophone LP, A Combination Of Cribbins was also something of a triumph. It demonstrated not only his skill as a comedian but, also ,a fine voice on covers of standards like 'My Resistance Is Low' and 'I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face'. Bernard ultimately decided to quit the novelty record business although he continued to make the odd single over the next few years (a version of 'When I'm Sixty Four' from 1967 was especially noteworthy). 'Novelties tend to wear off after a while,' he said. But, years later, he was asked to sing 'The Hole In The Ground' at George Martin's memorial service at St-Martin-In-The-Field. 'Everybody enjoyed it,' said Bernard proudly. 'It got huge applause and Elton John gave me a hug and said: "Why didn't you do 'Right Said Fred' as well"?'
A natural comedian, Bernard came to the attention of the Carry On team - playing Midshipman Poop-Decker in Carry On Jack. Carry On Spying followed, a production that suddenly seemed less fun when Cribbins was 'shot, point blank, in the face by an extra with a gun.' He was offered a role in the subsequent Carry On Cleo but turned it down. Other movies during this period included Hammer's She (1965), the disastrous adaptation of of Casino Royale (1967, in which he got the best line in the movie. Peter Sellers jumps into the cab Bernard is driving and asks to be taken to Berlin. 'East or West? Bernard asks, dryly) and the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Frenzy (1972). Later appearacnes included the title role in ITV's Dangerous Davies - The Last Detective (1981) and Blackball (2003).
He also appeared in Dunkirk (1958, uncredited), Tommy The Toreador (1959), The World Of Suzie Wong (1960) Passport To China (1961), The Girl On The Boat (1962), Dick Lester's The Mouse On The Moon (1963), Cup Fever (1965), Bob Hartford-Davies's The Sandwich Man (1966), Don't Raise The Bridge, Lower The River (1970) and The Water Babies (1978). On television, he featured in episodes of The Army Game, Interpol Calling, Play of The Week (a 1960 adaptation of The Night of The Big Heat), Comedy Playhouse, The Troubleshooters, Theatre 625, The Avengers, Space: 1999, Get The Drift, the second adaptation of Eric Sykes's The Plank (1979), Shillingbury Tales, Worzel Gummidge, a particularly good Tales Of The Unexpected (The Memory Man), High & Dry, Super Gran, Dalziel & Pascoe, Last Of The Summer Wine, Old Jack's Boat, Midsomer Murders and New Tricks. Plus his own 1969 BBC series, Cribbins.
Firmly established as a versatile character actor, he appeared alongside Jenny Agutter in what became a classic, his friend Lionel Jeffries' adaptation of The Railway Children in 1970. The climactic scene sees Bobbie - played by Agutter - meeting her father on the platform. 'If you don't shed a tear when she shouts, "Daddy, my daddy!" you're made of wood!' said Bernard. 'I always well-up when I watch it. But Jenny, who remains a close friend, doesn't. Hard as nails, she is!'
He also became a regular in pantomime, especially as Widow Twankey - and found enduring fame as a voice actor: narrating road safety films as Tufty The Squirrel and - in 1973 - becoming the voice of The Wombles. Based on Elizabeth Beresford's books, the stop-motion animation series ran for sixty episodes, with Cribbins voicing all of the, environmentally friendly, characters. Including the female French one. 'They were lovely to do' he said. 'Although there was one who didn't appear that much, MacWomble The Terrible - the Scottish one, second cousin to Great Uncle Bulgaria. He sounded like Bulgaria on something.'
Besides voicing The Wombles, Bernard was a regular on BBC children's television in the 1970s as host of the panel game Star Turn and its spin-off Star Turn Challenge. These usually concluded with Cribbins narrating a detective story as the recurring character 'Ivor Notion', with scripts by Johnny Ball. He starred in the BBC's 1975 Christmas production Great Big Groovy Horse, a rock opera alongside Julie Covington and Paul Jones. And he regularly appeared on The Good Old Days recreating songs made famous by the stars of Edwardian Music Hall.
He played the character of The Water Rat in a BBC radio adaptation of The Wind In The Willows and narrated the audio recording of the Antonia Barber book The Mousehole Cat. He also voiced Buzby, the yellow bird that appeared in a series of commercials, first for the Post Office and then its telephone successor, BT. And he made a noteworthy appearance in an episode of Fawlty Towers as the verbose spoon salesman, who is mistaken for a hotel inspector by an increasingly manic Basil Fawlty. Bernard became a fixture on the BBC's Jackanory, becoming the longest-serving story-teller on the series with over one hundred appearances. He was later critical of the BBC's decision in 2006 to revive the format using electronic animation. 'I do wish that it could be brought back in the form that it used to be, with someone sitting one-to-one with a camera. It's like you are talking to your children at bedtime, they look at you and don't see anything else - they don't see flashing lights and CGI and all the rest of it.'
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he continued to work in films, television and radio, including a part in the poorly received Carry On Columbus (a decision which became the source of several self-deprecating jokes he made during an appearance on Would I Lie To You? some years later). There was a brief spell as the lecherous Wally Bannister in eleven episode of Coronation Street, before gaining a whole new generation of fans in 2007, starring as Wilf Mott in the Doctor Who Christmas special, Voyage Of The Damned. Bernard had first appeared alongside a Time Lord in 1966, with Peter Cushing playing 'Doctor Who' [sic] in Daleks Invasion: Earth 2150 AD. In 1974, was one of several actors interviewed with a view to taking over from Jon Pertwee in the title role before the part went to Tom Baker. With Wilf later revealed as Donna Noble's grandfather, he was a Doctor Who regular during David Tennant's final couple of years in the role (2008 to 2010).
In 2009, Bernard was awarded a special BAFTA to mark his contribution to children's film and television. An OBE followed two years later. Away from work, he was a keen fly fisherman who voiced a number of fishing documentaries and shared a house in Surrey with his wife, Gillian McBarnet, whom he met and married while they were both at Oldham Rep in 1955 until her death in October 2021. They lived in Weybridge and had no children, with Bernard revealing in 2018 that they 'lost one quite early on and that was the only time [they] got near it.' In November 2018, it was announced that Bernard would portray Private Godfrey in a series of re-creations of lost episodes of Dad's Army. However, Bernard left the production in February 2019 citing 'personal reasons.' He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2009, but said in 2018 that he was 'in good health' at the age of ninety with the exception of a 'nagging back condition.'
Still working in his late eighties, he was asked if he had any future ambitions. The man who had done just about everything still had one. 'I'd still like to do a Western,' he said. 'I could play Clint Eastwood's dad!' His final screen appearance will be in next year's Doctor Who sixtieth anniversary episode alongside Tennant and Catherine Tate.
England's Euro 2022 Semi-Final victory over Sweden at Bramall Lane was watched by a peak overnight television audience of 9.3 million - the biggest of the tournament so far. There were two million streams of the four-nil win across the BBC iPlayer and the BBC Sport website and app. Both were higher than the figures for the Quarter-Final against Spain, which had a peak TV audience of 7.6 million and 1.5 million streams. The Lionesses will face either France or Germany in Sunday's final. The highest peak TV audience for women's football in the UK is 11.7 million - for England's World Cup Semi-Final defeat by the United States in 2019.
The latest Tory leadership debate between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss on Tuesday was extremely cancelled after the presenter fainted, on-air. Yeah, this blogger often does that when he's in the presence of evil. The Sun and TalkTV debate, hosted by the (alleged) journalist Kate McCann, was abruptly halted around halfway through after a loud crash was heard off-screen. TalkTV said that McCann was 'fine' but the channel had 'been given medical advice' not to continue. Mind you, that was probably before they even started. 'We apologise to our viewers and listeners,' the channel added. All four of them. It was, however, really nice to see That Awful Truss Woman displaying the sort of unflappable and 'calm in a crisis' response which will, one imagines, be needed on a daily basis should she actually gets The Big Job.
The US justice department is reported to be examining now extremely former President Mister Rump's actions over attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. They say federal prosecutors have, it is claimed, asked witnesses directly about the behaviour of the extremely former US President and hairdo. So far, they have not opened a criminal investigation into Rump himself. So far. Rioters stormed the US Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January 2021 in an effort to overturn the president's erection defeat by Joe Biden. You might have noticed, dear blog reader, it was on The News and everything. No former US President has ever been indicted for criminal conduct. Yet.
The space jacket worn by Buzz Aldrin while flying to The Moon has sold at a New York auction for 2.8 million bucks. Adorned with a US flag and NASA logo, From The North favourite Buzz wore the white in-flight jacket while speeding through space in Apollo 11's command module Columbia. It is one of sixty nine personal belongings that the ninety two-year-old has decided to put up for sale. The jacket was sold by Sotheby's and becomes the most valuable American space artefact ever sold. Buzz spent the majority of the six-day journey in space wearing the inflight jacket, changing out of it only to get into his pressure suit for stepping on to the lunar surface itself.
Russia says that it will withdraw from the International Space Station after 2024 and build its own station instead. With blackjack and hookers, presumably?
And now, dear blog readers - with a dreadful inevitability of the dreadfully inevitable - we come to that part of From The North dedicated to this blogger's on-going medical-related shenanigans. For those dear blog readers who haven't been following this on-going saga which appears to have been on-going longer than Coronation Street, it goes like this: This blogger spent some weeks feeling rotten; had five days in hospital; was discharged; received B12 injections; then more injections; somewhat recovered his appetite; got a diagnosis; had a consultant's meeting; continued to suffer fatigue and insomnia; endured a second endoscopy; had another consultation; got (unrelated) toothache; had an extraction; which took a bloody long time to heal; had another consultation; spent a week where nothing remotely health-related occurred; was given further - painful - injections; had an echocardiogram; had more blood extraction; did another hospital visit to see his consultant; had the usual - whinge-worthy - insomnia and torpor continue; he returned to hospital for more blood letting and had a rearranged appointment to get his latest 'sick' note from his doctor. On one of the hottest days in living memory.
This week ... ? Well, a sour whinge which this blogger posted to his Facebook fiends on Monday may give dear blog readers a general idea of this blogger's current state of mind and body: 'Oh, sod this bloody fatigue, it's getting worse. Some days are better than others, admittedly, but [this blogger] was awake at 4am through the insomnia then, by ten o'clock he could barely sit upright without nodding off.' Keith Telly Topping tends to have a quick nap each day for an hour or so, around noon but, on that particular day - which was another exceptionally hot one (with a torrential downpour during the afternoon) it was been one nodding-off session after another.
It wasn't helped by the fact that there's not really an awful lot to watch on telly in the wee-small hours of the morning - Talking Pictures' 'at-the-crack-of-dawn' re-runs of Get Some In! notwithstanding.
It was recently suggested to this blogger by one of his Facebook fiends that, perhaps, From The North could become a vlog with each week's latest, if you will, vloggerisationism updates appearing on You Tube. This blogger, politely, declined the offer; quite apart from having no wish to inflict his ugly mush on the unsuspecting public, Keith Telly Topping also observed that 'the last thing I want to be is "a You Tube personality"! That's almost as bad as being "an influencer". I'm old school, I'll leave that sort of thing to the younglings out there.'
A member of a gang of monkeys that has terrorised residents of a Japanese city for weeks has been caught and lightly killed, officials say. The macaques have injured almost fifty people in Yamaguchi. The male primate was found in the grounds of a high school on Tuesday evening by specially commissioned hunters. It was tranquilised and later executed when it was identified as one of the animals responsible for the attacks. Authorities have been hunting the monkeys since the attacks began on adults and children about three weeks ago. Most injuries have been mild scratches and bites. Incidents are still being reported and the search continues for other members of the gang, an official at the local agricultural department told AFP. 'Eyewitnesses describe monkeys of different sizes, and even after the capture, we've been getting reports of new attacks,' he said.
Now, dear blog reader, the nominations for the latest From The North Headline Of The Week award. And the nominees are ... BBC News for Chess Robot Breaks Seven-Year-Old Boy's Finger During Moscow Open. 'The robot broke the child's finger,' Sergey Lazarev, Moscow Chess Federation President, confirmed to the Tass news agency. 'This is, of course, bad.' You think?
Also, Wales Online for Dad Who Has Had Wind Since Eating Sandwich At Christmas Market Sues For Two Hundred Thousand Pounds. This blogger thinks it's the explanatory caption the website included with the illustrating photo that makes it art.
Then, there's the Huddersfield Examiner's Yorkshire Woman 'Sent Nuts By Three-Year Strange Hum' Has To Listen To Coldplay And Rainforest Sounds To Help Her Sleep. At last, a use for Coldplay. Let there be celebrations throughout the land.
The Hull Daily Mail's Man's Feet Smell So Bad His Trainers Gassed A Frog To Death, Says Wife.
Metro's Angry Man Made Even Angrier After Someone Stole His Angry Signs.
And, another triumph for BBC News, Man Fleeing Wiltshire Crash Scene Attacked By Emus.
