Kenny Everett - All In The Best Possible Taste

Tonight sees Kenny Everett receive the BBC4 biopic treatment, following the likes of Kenneth Williams and Sir Clive Sinclair in being dramatically immortalised. In some ways it’s surprising that it’s taken this long for Everett’s life to be dramatised as it lends itself so well to a narrative: feeble, artistic child, chafing against his working class upbringing, turned furious, boundary-pushing talent; arriving just in time to crest the wave of popular culture’s takeover and constantly rubbing shoulders with legendary cultural figures, but repeatedly prone to bouts of self sabotage. Having wrestled with his sexuality to the point of entering into a straight marriage, before eventually coming out and finding some kind of happiness, Everett was then swept away in the AIDS epidemic less than four years after his friend Freddie Mercury (who appears in the film as a sort of liberated Virgil to Ken’s more buttoned-up Dante).

As with all films of this nature now, the story is preceded by a warning that certain liberties may have been taken with the truth. But really, Everett’s story requires little colouring up. While the film has certain flaws – lead Oliver Lansley doesn’t quite nail Everett’s voice (a problem when he was such a unique aural presence) – it does a good job of capturing what was so exciting about him as a performer. Endlessly inventive both creatively and technologically, apparently hard wired to irritate anyone in a position of authority and genuinely anarchic, Everett doesn’t just seem weird with hindsight, but always seemed strangely out of step with the times. Apparently distrustful of the communal piety of the sixties pirate radio scene, he found more of a berth in the seventies, essentially playing a corrupted version of the DJs from his fifties youth. With his enunciation and mildly creepy ‘Hello boys and girls’ delivery Everett was like a pervy, pill-fuelled take on a Home Service announcer (David Bowie, who appeared on Everett's show in this memorable clip, was doing something similar with Ziggy Stardust, recreating a supercharged version of a fifties archetype having failed to get along with the hippies).

A commercial success and popular with a huge demographic at the time, Everett has been somewhat forgotten since. Partly it was that his febrile nature meant he never found a long-term role on any of the BBC’s flagship shows. A lot of his material hasn’t aged brilliantly in isolation – particularly in his later TV work, the joke started to take second place to the technological innovation. But he pioneered much of what now passes for standard fare in broadcasting – the fourth-wall breaking and knowing deconstruction of the premise, the involvement of viewers and crew, the cross pollination between TV and pop music, and the figure of an uncontrollable but hugely popular, desk-driving egomaniac which Radio One still struggles with to this day. Cuddly Ken was a genuine one-off who pursued his craft and his vision at no little personal and professional cost to himself, and a performer who instinctively understood that an artist’s job wasn’t to be a pet of the establishment. We could do with a little more of that spirit nowadays.

Mark Leckey's Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore

My piece on Mark Leckey's superb video homage to British Nightlife, FIORUCCI MADE ME HARDCORE is in today's Guardian. You can read it here.

Help the blind

I'm sure when I was a kid there were different variations on these - Twickenham High Street used to have one collecting for polio, complete with callipers. With hindsight, the fact that polio had been nigh-on eradicated in the first world by 1980 makes me a bit suspicious as to where the money was going.

Still, as this photo shows - there is a corner of Marylebone where the residents don't give a fuck about mocking the tiny blind. Personally, I'd have given him a labrador and really gone for the 'cute sympathy' vote.

The Young Ones: 25 years on

So, the 25th anniversary of The Young Ones is upon us. Was it actually any good with hindsight? And did it 'change comedy forever' as is sometimes claimed? 'Kind of' and 'no' are the short answers. For the longer answers, check my article in last Saturday's Guardian…

Once a tone-deaf yuppie prick, always a tone-deaf yuppie prick

Just seen this month's GQ magazine, which is even more conformist and self-congratulatory than usual. For some reason there's a piece on Duran Duran who almost look as bad as they sound these days. Anyway, all this hatred of Simon Le Bon reminded me of a piece I wrote for the Guardian a few years back reassessing the original Live Aid.

The suburbs are out of control: Part II

After the previous post on racist pub decor, more horror from the suburbs. Farmers feeding cows their own balls has finally had the predictable outcome, and even the deer of Bushy Park are no longer safe. Nice early Eighties vibe to this sign, though.

Smooth 80s soul jam of the day

Princess' Say I'm Your Number 1 got to number seven in the UK charts in 1985. Bit of lightweight pop from EFTE's childhood which, with hindsight, sounds like a note-perfect electrosoul jam that Joyce Sims would have been proud of. Great video with Princess (aka Desiree Heslop) throwing down with her bra out around The British Museum, Hyde Park, an open-top bus and the BMX-infested Westway. Love him or hate him, Peter Waterman was on top of his game for this one.

A bad end to a bad night, 1985

Interesting community seems to be building up on YouTube with people posting various recordings of the old 'closedown' segments from regional British TV (before the days of all night telly). This very subdued one is from Granada TV the night of the Heysel Stadium disaster. To his credit, the host segues pretty seamlessly from "A backstage look at the famous Moulin Rouge nightspot in Paris" to giving out the emergency numbers for people who didn't know whether their relatives were dead or alive. Wisely, they close down without the usual Granada jingle at the end.

Lost Film Classics: Radio On

Chris Petit's early Eighties road movie, Radio On is now available on DVD. There's a very good review of it here at the new Brithack film reviews site. I think the author's a little harsh on the film, but it's definitely worth checking. Superb use of Bowie and Kraftwerk throughout it.

The Russians Are Coming (Part 2)

Following on from the previous post about a possible homophobic nuclear strike hitting the Medway, it's worth boning up on the government's original Protect And Survive advice. You never know - maybe some sandbags and a wooden lean-to will be enough to get you through a ten megaton nuclear blast.

Still, while nuclear parnoia might have blighted an entire generation at least it gave us the possibility that with all the men dead at 'the front' the women of the UK might have had to descend into a crazed mutant lesbian orgy to survive (possibly one involving growing extra breasts, and being really tall). It was either that or just eating a raw sheep like they had to in 'Threads'.

Instant Depression

This is an LWT (London Weekend Television) ident from – I think – around 1987. The second I saw this, I was firmly back in the world of being 11 (a pretty boring age), when the weekend just seemed like an interminable gap of doing bugger all because you were too young to go out. And all the while were these crappy LWT idents, heralding another episode of compulsive gambling comedy drama'Big Deal' with Ray Brooks, yet more Play Your Cards Right with Bruce Forsyth, or another scary London Programme expose on Combat 18 (I'm sure it was Combat 18 every single week at one point).

Either way, this has just crushed me.

A good old fashioned bobby

Classic footage of a woman getting stomped out by a pack of police horses at the Poll Tax Riot in 1990. I remember seeing this particular clip at the time and being properly alarmed by it - although from what I understand, the woman was basically alright. As far as I know, horses will do pretty much anything other than tread on you, and you've got to expect a police horse to be better trained than some regular nag.

This clip, and that shot of a crusty ramming a scaffolding pole through a police car's window were the main news clips. I wonder if they ever caught that guy?