Auntie

As we gird our loins for another week of endless fun in work, so we also pay due homage to the dear old BBC, whose television service launched at Alexandra Palace (Ally Pally) 90 years ago today! Among the events on offer is an unveiling of a "World Origin" plaque at the palace this evening [we won't be going, despite the fact it's "around the corner" (just a couple of short bus journeys away), as it would be a bit much for a Monday].

Speaking of which - on this Tacky Music Monday, I have discovered a real gem! Someone, way back in the early 1970s, thought that assembling a motley crew of stars from assorted European countries to sing together on a tribute song to "Auntie Beeb" [on what was then the 50th anniversary of its first ever (radio) broadcast] was a great idea. The results are - ahem - interesting...

Hildegard Knef, Alice Babs, Demis Roussos, Enrico Macias, Vicky Leandros, Sandra & Andres - Auntie

Have a good week, dear reader.

And did those feet in ancient times

The BBC Proms, the world's biggest classical music festival - more than 80 concerts over more than two months, up and down the country, covering everything from Marvin Gaye to Mahler, Puccini to Prog Rock, Disney to Dvořák - certainly knows how to throw a party to say "goodbye".

The Last Night of the Proms is an institution, when all the rules are thrown out of the window, and we love it! Last night's Last Night was no exception. Admittedly, we did miss the first half [including that Dvořák aria], but it is the second half - leading up to the flag-waving finale - that matters most, so we weren't too upset.

It opened with a bang - of course - with the much-anticipated tribute To Dolly, With Love, opening with an uplifting singalong 9 to 5 led by Sheridan Smith, Jolene sung by country duo Ward Thomas, and the most fantastic version of I Will Always Love You by Beverley Knight, who (wisely) avoided the temptation to do the horrid "Whitney Wibble" version, and stuck to Dolly's own far more gentle arrangement [Bev has starred in the stage adaptation of The Bodyguard, so it was a blessed relief to us]. Truly amazing.

In a jolt to the emotions, we went straight from that into a venture into British patriotic music [ahead of things to come], with Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity from Holst's The Planets, including a burst of its vocal version I Vow To Thee, My Country in the middle. It would have been a bit better had the over-excited Promenaders not let off rocket balloons just as it hit its quietest, most beautiful moments. "Quiet" isn't exactly, however, an adjective that could be applied to much of Alexander Tsfasman's Jazz Suite for Piano and Orchestra that followed. With the masterful piano artistry of Yuja Wang, this suite veered everywhere from Shostakovitch- or Weill-esque jazziness to Rachmaninov-style orchestral lushness. A tour-de-force!

Then it was back to the party, as the delightfully camp tenor Nicky Spence embarked upon a remarkable medley of Scottish songs, Scotch Snap, which incorporated such unlikely bedfellows as My Love is Like a Red, Red, Rose, Roamin’ in the Gloamin’ and Loch Lomond with Donald, Where’s Yer Troosers?, the Proclaimers' 5000 Miles, and even (for some reason) Yes Sir, I Can Boogie - including a "reveal" when Mr Spence's trousers ripped off to expose tartan trews beneath, (of course) a bagpipe player, and lots of energetic dancing [Nicky's a mover, even given his fuller figure!] and flirting going on. It was hilarious!

Only the Last Night programmers could possibly have followed that with a world premiere of a new choral work by former Art of Noise alumnus and film music composer Anne Dudley, Iris of Life - a melancholic and somewhat eclectic piece that I doubt will be referred to in posterity as a "classic". But we were soon distracted from all that by the return of Nicky Spence for a rip-roaring take on Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat from Guys'n'Dolls. Faboo! If all that was the aperitif, the "full meal" launched soon after with the traditional opener, Sir Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs, culminating in Mr Spence's triumphant and full-voiced return for Arne's Rule, Britannia! - dressed in a full OTT Scottish outfit, replete with a Loch Ness monster across his shoulders... and a concealed rainbow flag in his kilt!

Next up, the biggest of all Last Night sing-a-longs, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, better known, of course, as Land of Hope and Glory - the national anthem this country never had, but should have! We were hoarse by the end of it.

Conductor Sakari Oramo took the opportunity in his traditional speech to both praise the greatness and goodness of Dolly Parton, and to lay into A.I. at the same time. To him, it should stand for Authentic Integrity: music that’s live, acoustic and imperfect. Bravo! The speech was, of course, merely the lead-in to that universal favourite, Parry's Jerusalem [cue more singing-along here at Dolores Delargo Towers], then - all rise! - the National Anthem, and, with the ever-engaging Auld Lang Syne, that was it for another year...

A night of pure enjoyment and pure pride.

Unusually, this year the Beeb has not posted any footage nor clips from the evening on YouTube, just on its own iPlayer. Thankfully, one enterprising fan has grabbed the whole two hours of the second half, so I do have something to share with you, dear reader [until Auntie's lawyers get it deleted, of course]. Hopefully you can see it in your country (and skip through it to see the highlights, as you see fit):

[UPDATE, 17th September: All gone from the Interwebs. Auntie Beeb's snoopers work fast!]

Same time, same place, next year? I think so!

RIP-ping Yarns

RIP The Duke of York's Theatre, soon to be renamed the Tom Stoppard Theatre after the great playwright

It's another snippets post today, dear reader:

• RIP: the Halifax Building Society, as its parent Lloyds Banking Group announced it plans to scrap the 173-year-old brand, and either rename its branches as Lloyds or else merge standalone outlets into one. Shame.
• RIP: The World Tonight, one of my favourite news programmes on BBC Radio 4 at 10pm every weekday - which is being axed (after 56 years!) as part of sweeping cuts by Auntie's new Director General Matt Brittin, to be replaced by Newshour, currently only available on the World Service. Why not the other way around, I say? Let "Johnny Foreigner" listen to the kind of quality journalism that has made TWT the yardstick by which other news outlets should be judged, and is aimed at a British audience! Hint to Mr Brittin: "British" is in the name of your organisation, in case you didn't notice when you arrived in post fresh from fucking Google...
• RIP: Humphrey Smith, patriarch of the Sam Smith brewery and pub chain - who ran the organisation in an eccentric, borderline draconian manner. No music, no TV, no dogs, no kids, no mobile phones, no swearing, coal fires, lots of dark wood, only "own-brand" drinks on sale - all this, and more, made any Sam Smith pub instantly recognisable. However, by all accounts, working for the man must have been a nightmare - he lost several tribunals on the grounds of unfair dismissal; he would often pay a visit to one of his many pubs and if he experienced anything not to his satisfaction, close it down then-and-there, with the result that his estate has many pubs that remain shuttered today. Let's see what happens to all this "Victorian values" stuff now Yorkshire's answer to "Mr Burns" is dead.

• And, finally, RIP: Victor Willis, founder-member, lead singer and songwriter of The Village People, who has strutted off to the glitter-ball strewn eternal discotheques of Fabulon, just ahead of our own Gay Xmas (Gay Pride) in London this weekend. He made his name as part of an iconic camp band, yet he was such a paranoid weirdo that - regardless of the group's obvious references to 1970s gay stereotypes/Tom of Finland erotic fantasies, despite their name being a tribute to the then gay heartland of New York Greenwich Village where the recruitment of the band took place, despite the flamboyant gayness of their performances, despite the innuendo-filled song titles such as Cruisin’, Macho Man and so on - he threatened legal action against any media outlet that dared to call his and the group's biggest hit Y.M.C.A. a "gay anthem"! He even allowed that Tangerine Twat in the White House to shake his wizened senile carcass to the song at his rallies. Mr Willis, you were responsible for some memorable choons, but let's face it - nobody in the world could ever think any of your songs were actually about "straight black male solidarity" at all. I rest my case with this:

Village People - In the Navy

And the weather? Proper summer sunshine. I love it.

Of a bonk-buster queen, floral vibrators, a radio legend, reincarnated Daleks, snake oil, a cuddly rat and wife-carrying

I'm very sad to discover that the very lovely Lauren Henderson aka "Rebecca Chance", doyenne of the "bonk-buster", Polari stalwart, raconteur and very funny lady has departed for Fabulon, aged just 59. A great loss. RIP.

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• Catch that buzz news: Attendees at this year's Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show (from 19th to 23rd May) may be in for a double shock - there will be a sex-themed garden on show sponsored by a company that sells vibrators(!) and the "ban on garden gnomes" has been lifted. Not sure which is going to cause the most uproar amongst the blue-rinse brigade!
• Another sad departure news: The utterly faboo Liza Tarbuck, host of our absolute favourite Radio 2 show every Saturday, is leaving after 14 years at the helm. Nobody understands quite why, least of all Michael Hogan in The Telegraph, who wrote:

  The funniest show on British radio is no more. News that the unfailingly hilarious Liza Tarbuck has left her Saturday evening programme on Radio 2 after 14 glorious years has left listeners distraught and colleagues stunned. The talent exodus from BBC radio in recent years has been worrying enough. Tarbuck’s exit represents another nail in the coffin... there remains an air of mystery around the reasons for Tarbuck’s typically unconventional departure, which seems to have blind-sided bosses. Had the 61-year-old broadcaster fallen foul of BBC management? Are rumblings of ageism relevant? Does that enigmatic line, “imagine what else we could do”, tease a surprise new chapter for this maverick talent? There are few clues at this stage.

  ... Since 2012, Tarbuck’s joyous blend of eclectic songs and freewheeling chat sound-tracked listeners’ Saturday sundowners, supper-making or domestic pottering... So how did a weekly gossip session, helmed by a self-effacing midlife woman, become appointment listening for so many? It was all down to the riotous brand of mayhem and mirth that Tarbuck created. It’s not hyperbole to describe her as one of our last radio geniuses. This is why her loss to the national airwaves is so deeply sad. If the Corporation can’t retain such one-off broadcasters, we all suffer.

• Exterminate!? - not quite - news: Two lost episodes of Doctor Who featuring old foes the Daleks, unseen since airing in the 1960s have been discovered in a cardboard box belonging to a deceased film aficionado - and one of the co-stars (alongside the First Doctor William Hartnell) of that early series, the [gulp!] 87-year-old Peter Purves was treated to a surprise showing at the premiere of the restored archives at a cinema in Leicester, where they were found. Regeneration, indeed.
• Snake oil news: Want to lose weight? Try ingesting extract of python! There's no mention of side-effects. A sudden craving for live mice, perhaps?
• G'Day, Possum! news: A real, live possum startled shop staff when they discovered it hiding amongst the stuffed toys on display at the main airport in Tasmania, Australia. Beats bloody Labubu dolls, hands down!
• And finally: A Finnish couple won a barrel of local ale after finishing first in the the annual UK Wife Carrying Race! I said Dorking was a strange place...

And the weather? Bloody lovely - just in time for the Spring Equinox tomorrow!

Of knights, Queens, Auntie Beeb, totty, Sir David, explosions and Lulu again

Arise, Sir Becks (and Lady Posh)! I'd kneel before him.

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• Stylish Queens news: To mark the centenary year of the late HM The Queen, an exhibition titled Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style will arrive in the King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace in April 2026. We will be booking to see this! From an article in Artnet:

  The show will be the largest display to date of the former monarch’s clothing, some of them never before seen. The checklist of nearly 200 pieces features items from all 10 decades of her life alongside outfits by contemporary British designers Erdem Moralioglu, Richard Quinn, and Christopher Kane, who took inspiration from her royal wardrobe. These pieces confirm the queen’s enduring influence on British fashion, even in the wake of her 2022 passing.

• The BBC axe falleth again news: The excellent journalist and broadcaster Matthew Sweet is departing Radio 3’s Sound of Cinema, a programme he founded. As Chris Bennion in The Telegraph says:

  All good things must come to an end, even in radioland where maintaining an illusion of permanence is paramount to the gentle rhythms of our day. So, just as we are processing the news that In Our Time will be presented by someone other than Melvyn Bragg, we learnt last week that Matthew Sweet is departing Radio 3’s Sound of Cinema, 12 years after he launched the programme. Much as In Our Time is Melvyn Bragg, Sound of Cinema is Matthew Sweet. His successor, Edith Bowman, has a tough job on her hands. Will she be more Roger Moore or George Lazenby?

  In Saturday’s final episode, Sweet referenced that radio-specific aversion to anything that looks like change. “When we began the show in 2013,” he said, that Hull accent jumping in every now and then like an eager child, “some people thought Radio 3 wasn’t the right place for a film-music programme. Twelve years later, I don’t hear that argument so much”. I would wager that’s because 12 years ago, the Radio 3 listeners didn’t know Sweet so well. “Film music demands serious attention,” said Sweet. And that’s exactly what he brought.

  A film-music programme on Radio 3? We all had the same sinking feeling. John Williams, The Lord of the Rings, Hans Zimmer, more John Williams, Chariots of Fire, The Godfather, yet more John Williams. We’ve got Classic FM for that soft-soap stuff, thank you very much. Yet Sweet defied us all, combining a cineaste’s enthusiasm with academic depth, delving far below the surface to add serious value to your listening.

• Too sexy for his shirt news:

The lovely Jonathan Bailey - whose career has rocketed from the West End [he did the most brilliant Not Getting Married Today when we saw him in the gender-reversed production of Sondheim's Company in 2018] via Bridgerton to big-screen stardom in Wicked - has been named as People Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" 2025.

• Greed is good news: Computer chip manufacturer Nvidia's value now exceeds the GDP of every country except the US and China, according to data from the World Bank.
• World-famous dog news: The original image upon which the iconic HMV record shops logo is based - a painting titled His Master’s Voice, of "Nipper" the dog listening to a gramophone - has been purchased by The Huguenot Museum in Rochester.


• National treasure comes to the rescue news: The Wildlife Trusts and Northumberland Wildlife Trust bid to complete the purchase of the Rothbury Estate - a 15-sq-mile (38.8-sq-km) tract of former grouse moor, woodland and farmland, with plans to boost wildlife, restore bogs and promote nature-friendly farming - has seen a massive surge in donations since Sir David Attenborough released a video backing the appeal.
• And finally: Happy Bonfire Night! Yes, every year, we Brits celebrate the arrest and execution of Guy Fawkes and his gang, caught trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament in "The Gunpowder Plot" of 1605 - by lighting bonfires and igniting the wicks of thousands of tons of, erm, explosive fireworks! To celebrate, this:

Lulu with Take That - Relight My Fire

And the weather? Still exceptionally mild for early November.

Will you do the Fandango, the typewriter, or the arrows of desire?

That frock! [click to embiggen]

From the Financial Times:

At the end of the (Proms) season the BBC always likes to blow its own trumpet — this year it reported surging numbers for online viewing and listening — but what other festival of mostly classical music can fill a venue of 6,000 capacity (including standing places for Prommers) on so many nights over eight weeks?

The closing jamboree was the most fun Last Night for years. Those who get offended by classical music being mixed with rock, musicals and comedy, look away now.

Indeed. For in a second-half opener like no other I can remember [and we did only watch the second half of the Last Night of the Proms] - as opposed to something in the classical or romantic canon, the orchestra revved up for a tribute to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, which was released fifty years ago this year [gulp!], and the excellent lead singer Sam Oladeinde was joined by Sir Brian May on his guitar, and Roger Taylor on Britain's biggest gong!

Wow.

From one camp melodrama to another, as the BBC Symphony Orchestra launched into Shostakovich's Festive Overture, then followed it...

...with the arrival on stage of our soprano for the night Miss Louise Alder as "Eliza Dolittle", for a 60th anniversary tribute to My Fair Lady! [As I said in yesterday's blog post, this was the second time in two days we were treated to the greatest hits from the movie musical.]

Typically for The Proms, there always have to be some more avant-garde moments in any concert - and the final ever live performance by ace trumpeter Alison Balsom with some virtuosic riffs from Bernstein's Prelude, Fugues and Riffs certainly fitted that bill. There also has to be at least one premiere work, and Rachel Portman and Nick Drake's rather disappointing The Gathering Tree ticked that particular box.

However, in-between, there was another genuine treat in store - as comedian and "national treasure" Mr Bill Bailey dead-panned his way through Leroy Anderson's quirky classic The Typewriter:

He's faboo!

All that out of the way, it was time for our conductor Elim Chan to lead the celebrations and get the traditional flag-waving, party-atmosphere finale started, opening (as it always does) with the "Promenader-pleasing" Fantasia on British Sea Songs, arranged by the season's founder Sir Henry Wood, followed by the return of Louise Alder - in that frock! - with a remarkable rendition of Thomas Arne's Rule, Britannia!

Gob-smacking!

By this stage, we're on a roll, flags a-flapping - and straight into another beloved piece (and contender for "the best National Anthem we never had") Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, better-known, of course, as Land of Hope and Glory:

Our throats hoarse from singing along - in our living-room - it was time for the traditional conductor's speech, closely followed by the most famous and beloved of all hymns [if it can be called such, given that its words were from an allegorical poem by William Blake], Hubert Parry's Jerusalem:

With the singing of the (real) National Anthem [and we still can't get used to it being God Save the King, rather than Queen], that's generally it by the time we get to Auld Lang Syne - but no! - Mr Bailey (and the Royal Albert Hall's massive organ) had the last word...

For bringing us an utterly tremendous evening's entertainment, and indeed, for the previous eight weeks - all hail, the BBC!!

Play that funky music 'till you die

Oh, thank fuck for that - the weekend's nearly upon us!

It's pay day, and a three-day weekend, to boot - just what the doctor ordered after my first week back after a faboo fortnight's holiday...

Time to plan for that party - and to get ourselves in the party spirit, why don't we just don some ill-matching primary colours and flap around randomly on a stage to an all-time dance classic funk choon - just like the hapless [and thankfully soon-to-be-replaced - this was their last-ever routine on Top of the Pops] Ruby Flipper?

Thank Disco It's (Spring Bank Holiday) Friday!

Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry [Top Of The Pops, October 1976]

Have a faboo weekend, dear reader!

Weekenders on our own, it's such fun

Crocus explosion!

Another glorious sunny day in the garden, and things are looking better all the time. Madam Arcati was up far earlier than I and sorted out the pile of old pots that we had plonked under one of the benches, and swept up the clag that had accumulated at that end of the garden. I got some more repotting and pruning done, a task that's always satisfying. Four bin bags filled with old compost, leaves, weeds and crud later, and we're pleased with the results!

Incidentally, today would have been the birthday of the marvellous Lou Reed, so I think this one is most appropriate for our "Sunday Music" today, don't you?

Lou Reed, David Bowie and friends - Perfect Day [original BBC Children in Need song, 1997]

Fuck! That faboo ensemble version is 28 years old!
[I see dead people...]

Of sackings, shoes, Tallulah and Darragh

It's another snippets post, dear reader...

• Dance with the Devil news: Poor Prince William had to put on his best statesmanly grimace for a meeting with President-elect Trump in Paris to discuss "the special relationship" between the UK and the US.

• Auntie Beeb does it again news: In another in a long line of "let's really piss our loyal audience off" moves [see also Paul O'Grady and Clare Teal], one of our favourite broadcasters, host of Radio 3's In Tune for 27 years Sean Rafferty has been unceremoneously replaced axed! We are so pissed off. Again.

  Mind you, the "send-off" on his last show on Friday was a remarkably emotional show of support - as the "great and the good" of the classical world and beyond turned up to play and sing music, and make toasts all dedicated to him, including Ailish Tynan, Marcus Farnsworth, Nicky Spence, Barokksolistene, Anna Tilbrook, Dame Sarah Connolly, Angela Hewitt, Elena Urioste, Tom Poster, Guy Johnston, fellow Radio 3 presenter Tom Service, and none other than Dame Joanna Lumley!

• It'll still be dry as fuck news: Xmas turkeys are on sale in Holland Park in London [Eddie and Patsy's neighbourhood], ranging from £81.13 for a 6lb bird to a whopping £363.38 for a 28-pounder! I think we'll stick to pork. Or duck. Or anything that tastes nicer than turkey.
• Pity she's a whore news: Remarkably, an archaic police power - the issue of a "prostitute's caution", that, unlike any other similar sanction, remains on record for life - is still being exercised in the UK today! No wonder the girls are angry about it.
• There's expensive shoes, and then there's bloody expensive shoes: Those ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland that went to auction with a pre-sale estimate of £4 million? Ah, yes. They sold for $28 million (£22m)!! There's some rich queens out there...

• And finally: RIP, Broadway trouper Miss Helen Gallagher, at the ripe old age of 98. She wasn't exactly a "household name", but I discovered this marvellous little video of her performing as Tallulah Bankhead which suggests she would indeed have been "our kind of girl"...

Helen Gallagher in Tallulah

And the weather? Another cunty "named storm" - Storm Darragh - has battered the crap out of Wales and the West of England, and even here in London the gales are fierce!

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STOP PRESS:

Sorry, Krampus!

...we missed your "Nacht"!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

The biggest party of the season - the Last Night of the Proms - certainly lived up to its reputation! Yesterday evening's eclectic concert included a bit of everything - from Saint‐Saëns to spirituals, from powerful Puccini arias to the Pink Panther, from William Walton to Welsh nursery tunes (arr. Grace Williams), and from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's wistfully appropriate Summer Is Gone to the Match of the Day theme (part of a faboo new work Extra Time by Ian Farrington).

This year's soloist, US soprano Angel Blue charmed the pants off the Promenaders, not least with her wickedly flirtatious Al pensar en el dueño de mis amores (Carceleras) (from a zarzuela (operetta) Las hijas del Zebedeo by Ruperto Chapi) [no video of the night, unfortunately, but here she is performing it in 2016], during which she tossed flowers into the audience and even handed one to our conductor Sakari Oramo, who then proceeded to try and conduct with it (until it broke)!

Musical arranger and star pianist Sir Stephen Hough was also centre-stage and, as an encore, performed a hilarious and breath-taking arrangement of tunes from the Sound of Music mingled with bits of Beethoven and Ravel, as well as providing superb accompaniment to Miss Blue's gorgeous vocals.

Following the interval, it was time for the real event - as the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and BBC Singers launched themselves into the traditional opener by the Proms founder Sir Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs. Then it was time for Miss Blue to make her triumphal return - complete with Union Jack "joker hat" - for the first of the three songs that make up the finale [any of which could, and should, be our National Anthem], Rule, Britannia!:

...closely followed by a second, Land of Hope and Glory:

After that exhausting double-bill, it was time for Mr Oromo's conductor's speech - in which he compared the successes of the Proms season with the equally-triumphant-for-the-UK summer of sporting events, including the Olympics. Three cheers for Sir Henry, and it was on with the show! The triumvirate of flag-waving, sing-a-long numbers concluded with the classic Jerusalem:

With that, God Save the King, and Auld Lang Syne, it was all over for another year. After eight weeks of serious musicianship, and seventy-three concerts up and down the country, it was just what we deserved...

A live and lively broadcast

It is the centenary today of the birth of one of the greats of the genre known as "light music", Mr Alyn Ainsworth. Conductor and arranger with the BBC Northern Dance Orchestra for many years, he conducted at the Royal Command Performance three times, and the orchestra for the Eurovision Song Contest on five occasions, as well as contributing the music to a whole load of light entertainment shows with the likes of Cilla Black and Lena Zavaroni.

And here he is to provide today's "musical interlude", in the all-smoking, all-cardigans, hi-tech world of the BBC!

Alyn Ainsworth and the BBC Northern Dance Orchestra - Make Way for Music

How many "celebrities" did you spot, dear reader? Tee Hee.

The Prom, Prom, Prom! Where the brass bands play, "Tiddely-om-pom-pom!"

What do Daniel Barenboim, Doctor Who, Dvorak and Disco, Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, Benjamin Britten, Bruckner, Brahms and Burt Bacharach, Kirill Petrenko, The King’s Singers and the Kanneh-Masons, Sir Simon Rattle, Symphonie Fantastique, Sakari Oramo, Sarah Vaughan, Sam Smith and Smetana, Henry Mancini, Handel and Holst, Charles Villiers Stanford, CBeebies, Carmen and Clara Schumann, Antonio Pappano, Anne-Sophie Mutter, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Angel Blue, the Paraorchestra, the "Pathetique" (Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6), Purcell and Puccini, as well as Mendelssohn, Marisha Wallace, the BBC Singers, VOCES8, Fauré, Nick Drake, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Laura Mvula, Yo-Yo Ma, Stevie Wonder, Wynton Marsalis, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Verdi's Requiem, Florence and the Machine, Jules Buckley - and Rule, Britannia! - have in common?

Yes, of course - the mightiest musical "festival" on Earth, the BBC Proms Season has been announced, and every one of  'em is in the mix of delights on offer...

The Proms 2024 is coming!

Read a basic guide to The Proms, its history and other associated bits'n'pieces, courtesy of Country and Town House magazine.

The comprehensive guide to the entire season on the BBC.

The Proms Season opens on 19th July, and the Last Night of the Proms is on 14th September 2024. Enjoy!

Dropping like flies, part 2...

A young Laurie Johnson and Petula Clark, 1955 by Harry Hammond

Laurie's music touched the lives of millions around the world. Throughout his illustrious career, he composed numerous iconic scores, themes and soundtracks that graced our lives across film, TV, theatre and radio. [His family's statement to the BBC yesterday].

Indeed he did. Among the many, many all-too-familiar theme tunes for which we have to thank the man are these:

Laurie Johnson - This Is Your Life theme

Laurie Johnson - The Avengers theme

Laurie Johnson - The Professionals theme

Laurie Johnson - Animal Magic theme

And finally, a little something I stumbled across courtesy of the Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show on BBC Radio 6 Music, that seems most appropriate to feature here:

AC Soul Symphony - The Philly Avengers [New Avengers theme remixed]

[NB "AC Soul Symphony" is the latest nom-de-plume of the artist formerly known as Joey Negro, DJ Dave Lee]

So many childhood memories. Sigh.

RIP, Laurie Johnson (7th February 1927 – 16th January 2024).

"What the hell is it about radio that it has to be male?"

Sad news again. Another little piece of my childhood has gone, with the departure of the lovely Annie Nightingale for the rave tent in Fabulon.

Famously, she became the first female DJ to appear on BBC Radio 1 (in 1970) - and she was still there more than 50 years later (her most recent show went out in December)!

Her Sunday Afternoon Request Show (that was on straight after the Top 40 in the 70s/80s) was essential listening when I was young, and it was after she took over hosting duties on The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC 2 television (and the show's music changed to more contemporary stuff) that I first discovered two of my lifelong passions, Blondie [see here] and Gary Numan/Tubeway Army!

With her eternal love for new and diverse styles of music - everything from X-Ray Spex to the Chemical Brothers to Skrillex - even at her venerable age she was always ahead of the game. Every generation of Radio 1 listener (and every lover of music) owes her a great debt of gratitude...

RIP, Anne Avril Nightingale (1st April 1940 - 11th January 2024)

My brain thinks blog-like

I said very similar things in a blog post here way back in 2014...

...but here we are, a decade on, in 2024 - and I must admit I whooped when I read this piece by Simon Reynolds in The Guardian!

I’d do this even if no one read it. Blogging, for me, is the perfect format. No restrictions when it comes to length or brevity: a post can be a considered and meticulously composed 3,000-word essay, or a spurted splat of speculation or whimsy. No rules about structure or consistency of tone...

...one of the great things about blogging, for a professional journalist, is that you can write about topics that aren’t topical. You are unshackled from schedules. An old record or TV programme you’ve stumbled on, or simply remembered, is fair game...

My brain thinks blog-like: the digressive rhythms, the lurching between tones, it’s how my mind moves when it’s not behaving itself in print... blogging should be the opposite of work. But (even) if it’s not compelled, blogging is compulsive: an itch I have to scratch.

Amen, sister!

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So, in the true spirit of blogging, here an esoteric selection of bits and pieces I read about recently...

Sad news - the young woman who (with her then-boyfriend) was the subject of one of the world's most famously-photographed snogs Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville (Kiss by the Town Hall) [taken by French photographer Robert Doisneau] has died at the ripe old age of 93.

Good news - Slag Lane is to keep its name, after a ten-year battle when a "local resident" lodged a complaint that it was "rude".

Scary news - the roof hatch on one of the pods on the London Eye was blown open during Storm Henk, with people in it!

And finally, some cosy news - the Shipping Forecast is one hundred years old!

One of the most comforting sounds for land-lubbers to listen to as they settle down to sleep, nevertheless its importance to shipping remains of paramount importance. Perhaps not quite so serious, this version still makes me snigger:

BBC Radio 4's Brian Perkins reads Les Barker's version of The Shipping Forecast

Of course, some people reading this [notably the denizens of our former colonies and dominions] will have no idea what on earth that was all about, so instead, here's the programme's soothing theme tune:

Alan Perry/William Gardner Orchestra - Sailing By [Ronald Binge]

Lovely.

And did those feet in ancient time

[click to embiggen]

A long-standing tradition of ours here at Dolores Delargo Towers is to celebrate the time-honoured end of the "Summer Season" with that flag-waving, patriotic sing-a-long, the Last Night of the Proms!

Traditionally it formed a key part of the annual Proms in the Park concert that "our gang" gathered for in Hyde Park, but that no longer exists. And what with COVID and the Queen's death there hasn't been a full Last Night with an audience for the past three years, so the anticipation for Saturday's event was palpable.

It was worth the wait! Madam Arcati and I only watched the second half of the evening's entertainment (on the BBC, naturally), which opened with a world premiere of Laura Karpman's theme for the forthcoming MCU film The Marvels. [We noted that the entire Royal Albert Hall audience was wearing snazzy LED bangles that changed colour - red, white and blue, naturally - in time with changes in the music; someone must have sponsored them, so we assume it was Disney and that's why the unusual inclusion of that corporation's film score on the programme.]

Our star "players" cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and soprano Lise Davidsen were both utterly remarkable, taking the eclectic selection of openers Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Deep River, a Hungarian showgirl's song Heia, heia, in den Bergen and the aria Cantilena from Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras in their stride, before the traditional "party" really kicked off!

The reliable lineup of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Chorus and BBC Singers proved once again that they are the best in the business, and "mistress of ceremonies" was American conductor Marin Alsop, commemorating the 10th anniversary of her being the first female conductor to lead the Last Night - and so the world-famous all-British finale-to-beat-all-finales began, of course, with the traditional "Sea Shanties".

All bobbed-out, it was time for the audience (and their klaxons and balloons and amusing costumes and all) to welcome Miss Davidsen back to the stage - wearing what could only be described as a scarlet battleship (she's 6'2", and towered over the orchestra, and especially the tiny Ms Alsop)! - to belt out Thomas Arne's most bombastic should-be-national-anthem:

An even bigger "audience sing-a-long" followed; Elgar's finest:

Marin Alsop's (mercifully short; some go on forever) "conductor's speech" focussed on her hope to see even more inclusiveness and diversity in the Proms, hailing its founder Sir Henry Wood as a pioneer of "progress" in this regard [to this day, there are always £8/10 tickets available to stand - or "promenade" - at every single one of the season's eight weeks of concerts, including this one] and, in thanking the participating ensembles in turn, elicited a huge ovation for the BBC Singers, only recently under threat from budget cuts.

This done, it was back to the patriotism [despite the presence of so many damned EU flags, given out for free by determined - and ineffably smug - campaigners for the "Rejoin EU Party"], with Hubert Parry/William Blake's "hymn", another national favourite:

And, with the (actual) national anthem God Save the King [the first time "King" has been sung at the Last Night since 1951] and the customary Auld Lang Syne (complete with red, white and blue ticker-tape), it was all over.

Same time, next year? I should bloody well think so!

---

PS We didn't see any footage of the rest of the season (although we listened to quite a few Proms on BBC Radio 3).

This would have been a great one to go and, see, I'm sure...

Vula Malinga - Tainted Love (Northern Soul at the Proms)

BBC Proms official site.

Ja als ie maar groot is, twee vingers hoog is! *

"And so we're back. From outer space..." well, Amsterdam actually.

What a fantabulosa time we had, too!

We (Madam Arcati, Baby Steve, Houseboy Alex and I) always "do it large" when we spend a long weekend in fair "Mokum" - but this time, as an ongoing part of my 60th birthday celebrations, we literally "pushed the boat out"...

...for the Madam had only gone and got us a trip around the grachten in our own private vessel!!

Mooi!

To top it all, we disembarked at the private jetty of Amsterdam's premier grand Hotel Americain afterwards, where we were entertained by a lovely band playing Jazz/Swing standards and had a slap-up steak dinner. I felt even more like a Queen than usual...

Other than that special Sunday, the weekend was a whirlwind of meandering this beautiful city, taking in the wonders of the wonky canalside buildings, the historic Red Light District (where our hotel The Anco is located), the magnificent architecture of my beloved Tuschinski Theatre, the shopping streets, the Dam, the brown cafés on De Spui square, and (of course) visiting our favourite gay bars - Café 't Mandje, Spijker Bar, the Queen's Head, Amstel 54 and the best of 'em all, Montmartre - as well as doing as the locals do by eating mainly at FEBO and Van Dobbens [not a shred of roughage to be had!].

Ending with a bang, on Monday - our last day while waiting to get our flight home - we actually managed to catch the camp-as-tits Hartjesdag parade of men-dressed-as-women and vice-versa:

Hartjesdag Zeedijk Amsterdam 2023 deel 2: De Parade met Hartjes en Queens

I could not have asked for more for my milestone birthday!

Did we miss anything while were away?

The journalistic and broadcasting world mourned the loss of a national treasure, the greatest chat-show host this country ever had, Sir Michael Parkinson, whose eponymous BBC show was a peak primetime hit that spanned all the way from 1971 to 1982 and again from 1998 until its final iteration (by then on ITV) in 2007. In that long, long run he interviewed myriad top stars including Bette Davis, Dame Edith Evans, Kenneth Williams, David Bowie, Peter Ustinov, Muhammad Ali, Liberace, Fred Astaire, Orson Welles, James Stewart, John Wayne, Mickey Rooney, David Niven, Gene Kelly, James Cagney, Robert Mitchum, Billy Connolly, John Lennon, Tina Turner, Madonna, Dame Edna Everage, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Redford, Joan Rivers, Oliver Reed, Helen Mirren, Ingrid Bergman, Dustin Hoffman, Bette Midler, Luciano Pavarotti, Peter Cook, Miss Piggy, and many, many more besides. And was sometimes upstaged by some of them:

Lily Savage on Parkinson

Needless to say, the big news for football-loving Brits (and British media) was the fact that the women's team lost their World Cup attempt to Spain in the final; there was acres of coverage (as there has been for months) of the horrific trial of child serial killer nurse Lucy Letby, which ended in her imprisonment for life; the furore over the (probably) criminal fire and subsequent demoltion of The Crooked House pub in the Midlands continued to enthral the meejah; and there was a rather dramatic turn of events in the ongoing war in Ukraine, with the destruction of a high-tech Russion bomber way inside its own territory. Good.

However, as always when we come back from holiday I hear you cry, dear reader, "But what did you bring us back, Jon?!"

How about this?!

Lawineboys ft. Rocky Vosse - Pretty Belinda

You do, of course, need to be fairly tanked-up on lager and Flugel shots to really "get" it I suppose. Try this one:

Ferry de Lits - Viva Cerveza

If that one doesn't get you going, you are just going to have to come along with us next time and experience the sheer buzz of a crowd sing-a-long to songs like this in Café Montmartre on the Amstel to see exactly why we adore it so...

Is it good to be back?

No!!!

[* "Ja als ie maar groot is, twee vingers hoog is" = "Yes if it is big, two fingers high!" - an extract from the lyrics of Viva Cerveza]

At Auntie's party tonight

On this wet, miserable, cold October July Saturday, I'm mostly lounging around the place listening to BBC Radio.

How about a little celebration of that Great British Institution by Iain Farrington - A Party with Auntie? That'll do nicely...

It may be a little unfair on our Yankee chums, but this piece contains no fewer than fifteen famous BBC programme themes - how many can you name?

Knob-twiddling

"Broadcasting is a development with which the future must reckon and reckon seriously. Here is an instrument of almost incalculable importance in the social and political life of the community, in affairs national and international."

"It was the combination of public service motive, sense of moral obligation, assured finance and the brute force of monopoly which enabled the BBC to make of broadcasting what no other country in the world has made of it."

"He who prides himself on giving what he thinks the public wants is often creating a fictitious demand for low standards which he will then satisfy."

This week a century ago, the appointment of a certain gruff, irrascible and uncompromising son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister John Reith (later Lord Reith) as the first general manager of the British Broadcasting Company (as it was then to be known) changed the course of this country and the tone and importance of its national broadcaster forever.

The arrival of radio in everybody's home in those early days of the 20th century also became a bit of a "fad", as Miss Dorrie Dene explains...

Dorrie Dene - Twiddling With the Knobs On the Radio

Keep twiddling, dears!

[See also my blog post on the centenary of the BBC]

To a dear Auntie, Happy Birthday, your loving niece

We have another centenary to celebrate today, dear reader - that of dear old Auntie Beeb, the BBC!

The world's oldest national broadcaster, it was born out of a desire by the government's licencing authority (then the General Post Office (GPO)) to avoid the chaotic situation in the US (where literally hundreds of rival commercial broadcasters were all licenced in different ways and it took ages to sort out the clashing airwave frequencies), and to create a single entity out of a consortium of former rival companies.

Its birth pre-dated television, of course, and it was to the array of educational and entertainment radio programmes it offered to a boggled nation that Britain (and later the world) became hooked.

Here are just a few of their enduring themes:

Desert Island Discs theme (Eric Coates - Sleepy Lagoon)

Mrs Dale's Diary theme (Eric Coates - Springtime Suite - Dance in the Twilight)

Dick Barton, Special Agent theme (Devil's Galop by Charles Williams)

The Archers theme (Arthur Wood - Barwick Green)

Of course, the "golden age of the wireless" wasn't to last - the era of television was upon us, and with it, myriad more classics. This selection can merely "scrape the surface"...

Vision On "Gallery" theme (aka Left Bank Two by Wayne Hill)

Ski Sunday theme (aka Pop Looks Bach by Sam Fonteyn)

Last Of The Summer Wine theme (by Ronnie Hazlehurst)

Morecambe And Wise - Bring Me Sunshine (by Arthur Kent and Sylvia Dee)

The Sky at Night theme (Sibelius: At The Castle Gate)

Monty Python's Flying Circus theme (John Philip Souza - Liberty Bell)

Grandstand theme (by Keith Mansfield)

Quatermass (Holst: Mars, Bringer of War from The Planet Suite)

Are You Being Served? theme (by Ronnie Hazlehurst)

Doctor Who theme (by Ron Grainer)

Many happy returns, the British Broadcasting Corporation (born 18th October 2022)

The BBC on Wikipedia