Posy was shipwrecked on Desert Island Discs, yesterday, Sunday 29th June 2008 (repeated this coming Friday). Posy lodged with Jill before either of them worked on The Guardian and part of the arrangement was that she collect Luke from nursery school.
Posy went to the Central School for Art and Design and the Sunday Times cartoonist Mel Calman, who spotted her work at her degree show, introduced her to Jill.
One of Posy's strips caricatured Alan. Jane Andromache knows which one.
See NPG 6247 Women's Page Contributors to The Guardian by Sarah Raphael. oil on paper laid on board, 1994. The sitters are:
Dame Elizabeth Anne Lucy Forgan Show (1944-), Journalist and media director.
Posy Simmonds Show (1945-), Cartoonist.
Mary Stott Show (1907-2002), Journalist.
Polly Toynbee Show (1946-), Journalist.
Jill Sheila Tweedie Show (1936-1993), Journalist.
Monday, 30 June 2008
Monday, 23 June 2008
Memories of Alan from Jo Simon
Visiting your Dad in hospital, I was daydreaming in the cafeteria gathering strength for the long journey to the ward when I heard someone say very softly 'it's der Teufel'.
It was Alan and Jane who had come down from the ward. Alan was quoting from his schooldays when he was indoctrinating a Jewish contemporary into Marxism.
The boy eventually invited Alan home for tea. The door was opened by his mother, who was possibly a rare breed of Sunderland Tory. Leaving Alan on the doorstep she shouted up the stairs 'It's der Teufel'.
It was Alan and Jane who had come down from the ward. Alan was quoting from his schooldays when he was indoctrinating a Jewish contemporary into Marxism.
The boy eventually invited Alan home for tea. The door was opened by his mother, who was possibly a rare breed of Sunderland Tory. Leaving Alan on the doorstep she shouted up the stairs 'It's der Teufel'.
Sunday, 22 June 2008
Game Shows
Take It or Leave It
Host
Alan Brien
Co-hosts
Adjudicator and question-setter: Brigid Brophy
Broadcast
BBC2, 7 November 1964 to 8 January 1971
A television literary quiz, with four writers and critics discussing books and poetry. A paragraph or verse would be read out, and the contestants asked to name the work and author. Contemporary writers suggested the enjoyment came not from instant recall, but the literary detective work employed.
Host
Alan Brien
Co-hosts
Adjudicator and question-setter: Brigid Brophy
Broadcast
BBC2, 7 November 1964 to 8 January 1971
A television literary quiz, with four writers and critics discussing books and poetry. A paragraph or verse would be read out, and the contestants asked to name the work and author. Contemporary writers suggested the enjoyment came not from instant recall, but the literary detective work employed.
Feliks Topolski R.A.
Feliks Topolski's 'Memoir of the Twentieth Century'
Alan Brien, Punch
"... his giant Memoir, in colour and on a grandiose old masterly scale, quartered in a brick dungeon like a Piranesi engraving, manages to distil the essence and apotheosis of his genius. Reworked and magnified from the thousands of sketches he has created hour by hour during an amazingly eventful career, they are for me one of our Century's great solid achievements."
Alan Brien, Punch
"... his giant Memoir, in colour and on a grandiose old masterly scale, quartered in a brick dungeon like a Piranesi engraving, manages to distil the essence and apotheosis of his genius. Reworked and magnified from the thousands of sketches he has created hour by hour during an amazingly eventful career, they are for me one of our Century's great solid achievements."
EVELYN WAUGH
EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER
Volume 7 Number 1 - Spring 1973
David Lodge, "The Arrogance of Evelyn Waugh," The Critic, 30 (May-June, 1972), 62-70, also a defense and explanation of the man, will interest casual readers but not Waugh scholars. His sources are principally Mr. Pinfold and Frances Donaldson, and though one of these is critically acceptable it has been exploited previously. He retells the standoff at White's between Waugh and Alan Brien, courtesy of Randolph Churchill - who really should have known better than to introduce anyone suffering from boredom to Mr. Brien, of all people. He quotes Harold Acton's "prancing faun" flourish, explains that Wormwood Scrubs is a prison, and concludes that Waugh's public image was the mask of a bored but decent man who valued his privacy. There is nothing at all wrong with this essay, but there is nothing at all new in it either.
TWO NEW BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ITEMS
D.S. Gallagher of James Cook University of North Queensland, who is well-known to EWN readers for some brilliant bibliographic investigations, has discovered a hitherto unrecorded Waugh letter to the editor by following up a clue in Alan Brien's "Permission to Speak..."
Evelyn Waugh, "Self-denial," Truth, October 15, 1954, p. 1729. Response to anonymous Profile: "Waugh Among the Ruins," Truth, October 8, 1954, pp. 1242-1243.
Gallagher observes that the author of the anonymous "Profile" appears to have been Alan Brien. His "Permission to Speak, Captain?" Spectator, CCXVI (April 15, 1966), 463 contains the following sentence: "My mind was packed with information I had laid in for my profile."
Gallagher notes that Truth was a London journal of comment which ceased publication around 1957. In his letter Waugh asserts that, contrary to the statement made in the "Profile," his home is not open to visits by the paying public.
Volume 7 Number 1 - Spring 1973
David Lodge, "The Arrogance of Evelyn Waugh," The Critic, 30 (May-June, 1972), 62-70, also a defense and explanation of the man, will interest casual readers but not Waugh scholars. His sources are principally Mr. Pinfold and Frances Donaldson, and though one of these is critically acceptable it has been exploited previously. He retells the standoff at White's between Waugh and Alan Brien, courtesy of Randolph Churchill - who really should have known better than to introduce anyone suffering from boredom to Mr. Brien, of all people. He quotes Harold Acton's "prancing faun" flourish, explains that Wormwood Scrubs is a prison, and concludes that Waugh's public image was the mask of a bored but decent man who valued his privacy. There is nothing at all wrong with this essay, but there is nothing at all new in it either.
TWO NEW BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ITEMS
D.S. Gallagher of James Cook University of North Queensland, who is well-known to EWN readers for some brilliant bibliographic investigations, has discovered a hitherto unrecorded Waugh letter to the editor by following up a clue in Alan Brien's "Permission to Speak..."
Evelyn Waugh, "Self-denial," Truth, October 15, 1954, p. 1729. Response to anonymous Profile: "Waugh Among the Ruins," Truth, October 8, 1954, pp. 1242-1243.
Gallagher observes that the author of the anonymous "Profile" appears to have been Alan Brien. His "Permission to Speak, Captain?" Spectator, CCXVI (April 15, 1966), 463 contains the following sentence: "My mind was packed with information I had laid in for my profile."
Gallagher notes that Truth was a London journal of comment which ceased publication around 1957. In his letter Waugh asserts that, contrary to the statement made in the "Profile," his home is not open to visits by the paying public.
Footlights
from The Mausoleum Club Forum
Tangocow
posted on 21-5-2007 at 11:25 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
26/10/79 - Alan Brian - Russell Davies, Harold Evans, Sponooch, Jilly Cooper, Prof Peter Townsend, Lord Melchett, Peter York, Lynda Hayes, Will Elsworth-Jones, and Jeremy Child, Norman Bird, Ronnie Brody in a sketch.
16/11/79 - Cambridge Footlights - Martin Bergman, Hugh Laurie, Robert Bathurst, Emma Thompson, Peter Cook.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who's Alan Brian? I can't find anything on him anywhere. (Maybe it was journalist Alan Brien?)
And is that a list of the Footlights members, or were they the guests?
andrew martin. posted on 21-5-2007 at 03:22 PM
Yes, it's Alan Brien.
Martin Bergman sat at the desk for the Footlights show, presenting - the others did sketches, Cook was a guest.
Tangocow
posted on 21-5-2007 at 11:25 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
26/10/79 - Alan Brian - Russell Davies, Harold Evans, Sponooch, Jilly Cooper, Prof Peter Townsend, Lord Melchett, Peter York, Lynda Hayes, Will Elsworth-Jones, and Jeremy Child, Norman Bird, Ronnie Brody in a sketch.
16/11/79 - Cambridge Footlights - Martin Bergman, Hugh Laurie, Robert Bathurst, Emma Thompson, Peter Cook.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who's Alan Brian? I can't find anything on him anywhere. (Maybe it was journalist Alan Brien?)
And is that a list of the Footlights members, or were they the guests?
andrew martin. posted on 21-5-2007 at 03:22 PM
Yes, it's Alan Brien.
Martin Bergman sat at the desk for the Footlights show, presenting - the others did sketches, Cook was a guest.
Saturday, 21 June 2008
Sunderland, circa 1940
The following is a transcription of a tape sent to Alan by Gladys Glascoe (maiden name unknown) in 2005 after coming to Alan's 80th birthday celebrations at The Spaniards.
I hope someone will recognise, and correct, names and places which I transcribed phonetically.* See Comment.
Dear Alan,
I'm afraid it's proving too difficult to pay a visit and arrange a meeting for the time being but Joan [sic] tellls me you're busy writing your memoirs. It occurred to me it might amuse you to hear my recollections from the far past. So here goes.
I was in the winter of 40, back from evacuation, in the lower sixth form, and getting ready for A levels, when my brother, Randal, made a friend Tom McNichol [spelling], whom I quite liked because he had red hair, and his family had a flat that was for the time unoccupied, and unheated I may say, and he and Randal used to go and sit there and talk and have the odd cigarette and Randal persauded me to join them and we used to sit there and talk and I heard Tom mention someone called Adam. And when I said 'who is that?' I didn't get a very clear answer except this was someone who was a person of distinction. One of a kind. But I still wasn't clear in what way.
Now later I met Nancy and Eric Clavering and became involved in the YCO and frequented the old rooms in Coronation street. Do you remember? I don't know if it was there that I met you or at the Claverings, in their ...top floor flat I think it was. I know we had parties there and meetings. Trying to think when I heard of you next. I can't remember when I first met you. I just can't. I remember having the impression, because of course you were two years younger than me, but that didn't seem to weigh in your reputation. My recollections of seeing you, whenever that was, was that you were tall and thin, and shabby, as many of us were in those days.
Now, you were friendly with Lesley Jolly [spelling], of whom I was greatly enamoured for a long time, and I remember Lesley Jolly and you having a conversation about the fact you used to get up early and since you passed the library on your way to school, you would stop in there and read all the newspapers, now this impressed me, I must say, and it obviously impressed Lesley.
A story I have in connection with Lesley Jolly is that he persuaded you to take part in an apprentices' strike in the ship yards. My clearest memory was of you reporting back to Les - he was coaching you, what you have to do and what you have to say - he said now keep your hands in your pockets, cos your hands are obviously not those of someone who has done manual work. Taking a rest now because my voice gives out easily.
PAUSE
Don't expect these impressions to be connected or organised at all....
You told me your father went over to Ireland with the black and tans and came back on the other side, because of his experiences. I once met your father while you were away in the airforce. I called because I hadn't heard from you for a while. I found him a lovely person. I really liked him very much.
Now what else...? We smoked, and how we smoked, whatever we could lay our hands on. There was a kiosk near the station and when shortages were most severe we found this girl who sold us cigarettes that no one else had ever heard of. There was one particularly throat searing brand called Robin. You remember? When she sold it to us she was really quite triumphant she'd be able to supply our needs. I haven't smoked for twenty years but I still.. . I've dreamnt ocassionally that I was smoking, and after a good meal I get that sensation in the chest, that I would love a cigarette or better still a cigar, but I don't, not worth it....
After we took to - they call it hanging out together these days - but I think the expression we would have used was knocking about together, in a desultory way. We went to the Havelock once to see 'Stormy Weather' with Lena Horne, singing of course, looking absolutely gorgeous. You said 'I wouldn't mind marrying her', to which I replied 'Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn't it?' You said 'well some people would object because she is black', and I was really surprised that you should even jokingly allow the existance of that sort of prejudice.
Another thing that comes to my mind is that you, and I, and a third party, whom I don't recall except in a vague and shadowy way, took to - you may disbelieve this but it's true - took to breaking into unoccupied houses. I think only three times at most. God knows why we did it... On one ocassion the three of us were crossing a sort of conservatory and suddenly you disappeared up to your knees. You'd stumbled into... I think it must have been a pond originally, dry fortunately, full of leaves and rubbish... we were very luck we weren't caught...
What else did we do? Sit about in each other's homes. On one occasion I recall we were in an icecream bar, sitting either side of one of those cubicles. On the side opposite to me a woman appeared over the top of the barrier waving for, requesting a light.....which I, I reached across and asked you to pass to her. You expressed great surprise that I'd been so observant as to notice her. I'm prepared to accept that I was a horrid and really quite stupid girl but I wasn't that stupid I couldn't see someone waving, climbing over a barrier and waving.
Every now and then I have to stop because my voice gives out.
PAUSE
Do you remember going to socialist summer school at Malham? Do you remember that? I remember one character who was staying there telling us about his visit to the pub the night before, saying I came back, on the way I bent down, I could hear the sound of someone being sick and it was me. I don't think either you or I drank to that extent, certainly not then...
I remember when we arrived, going for a walk along a stream where there were swans, it was a lovely setting, beautiful fresh clean air. You took the train part of the way and biked for the rest. I remember on the way back, seeing you out of the window, where the road rang alongside the railway track, peddling furiously to keep up, which you did, and you managed to get into the train at the next stop.
Do you remember we had a spell - I don't know who the third party was - of pretending to talk common? 'tack and common' [spelling]. The character, alderman Chalk [spelling] and we put about to each other scurrilous reports of alderman Chalk and the council. I can't remember who we played these games with. It may have been David Maccaby. I often wonder what happened to David. An amazing family that. There was Lorna and there was HZ. HZ was a formidable character. I gathered ... I think I met him once briefly. We didn't know him as well as David. I once heard an argument reported, an argument with him, reported, that you had had. You told him Marxists don't believe in formal logic. The only way you could half way win the argument.
PAUSE
I remember when my unrequited passion for Lesley Jolly reached a point where he was...when we were engaged, after a fashion. I mean I didn't realise... It took me a long time to realise his problems, or his cast of temperament. It wasn't until he and I had split up and he was involved with Julian Meckelfeld [spelling] that I fully realised the strength of the passions that could be aroused. I remember walking down the street between the two of them and it was as if I wasn't present at all. They sort of gravitated together. I remember when I told you Lesley Jolly had told his mother he was engaged to me. You said you weren't surprised. You know I expected her to be surpirsed. You said, 'Well it's better than getting engaged to Colin and Brighton [spelling].'
These recollections are very scrappy I'm afraid but I do ask if you want amplification on any of them, say so, I may not be able to give it but I'll try.
PAUSE
I remember quite vividly a happy week that we had when you suddenly turned up on the doorstep, home on leave, and in airforce uniform, and if I may say so looking very good in it,... towards the end of the school summer holidays. We spent the time going about, just sitting and talking, and when you went back, I understood - I don't know how true this was - that you had overstayed your leave and that you were in trouble when you got back. I remember you writing your ambition was to be a columnist like Alexander Woolcott. God forgive me, I wrote back and said 'wanting's one thing, being's another.' I like to think this spurred you on. ...You were a rear gunner and when your plane was damaged, or landed badly, the rear gunner's pod broke away and bounced you across the air field. A shocking experience.
PAUSE
Well Alan these reminiscences are proving very scrappy and uncoordinated but I'll give you two or three more and then post this off and see what you think of them.
I seem to remember... you coached my brother, Colby [spelling], in maths... I'm not very well acquainted with that period as for some reason you and I weren't speaking to each other. I can't remember why and I cant imagine why.
There was a time when... I think it was the party held a dance in the lake, or it may have been the soviet committee, something progressive or we wouldn't have been there and I turned up in my one and only evening dress, which I rather loved, it was cyclamen, it fitted to the waist and flared out to full length and I was very pleased with myself. I tried to get you to dance and you claimed not to dance. At that time I didn't realise that there are lots of reasons why young men didn't want to go onto the dance floor. But you did say that I had a nice waist. No longer I'm afraid.
Oh yes... Another flattering bit. You and Lesley Jolly were discussing knowledge of marxism and one of you asked what I'd read? 'Only Tommy Jackson's [spelling] Dialiectics'. And one of you said 'You've made it go a long way.' How far that was a polite rejoinder and really concealed a contempt for my ignorance. I don't know.
I think I shall close now and say look after yourself. Love to Joan [sic]. And I will either tape something more if I remember anything more or I'll write.
I hope someone will recognise, and correct, names and places which I transcribed phonetically.* See Comment.
Dear Alan,
I'm afraid it's proving too difficult to pay a visit and arrange a meeting for the time being but Joan [sic] tellls me you're busy writing your memoirs. It occurred to me it might amuse you to hear my recollections from the far past. So here goes.
I was in the winter of 40, back from evacuation, in the lower sixth form, and getting ready for A levels, when my brother, Randal, made a friend Tom McNichol [spelling], whom I quite liked because he had red hair, and his family had a flat that was for the time unoccupied, and unheated I may say, and he and Randal used to go and sit there and talk and have the odd cigarette and Randal persauded me to join them and we used to sit there and talk and I heard Tom mention someone called Adam. And when I said 'who is that?' I didn't get a very clear answer except this was someone who was a person of distinction. One of a kind. But I still wasn't clear in what way.
Now later I met Nancy and Eric Clavering and became involved in the YCO and frequented the old rooms in Coronation street. Do you remember? I don't know if it was there that I met you or at the Claverings, in their ...top floor flat I think it was. I know we had parties there and meetings. Trying to think when I heard of you next. I can't remember when I first met you. I just can't. I remember having the impression, because of course you were two years younger than me, but that didn't seem to weigh in your reputation. My recollections of seeing you, whenever that was, was that you were tall and thin, and shabby, as many of us were in those days.
Now, you were friendly with Lesley Jolly [spelling], of whom I was greatly enamoured for a long time, and I remember Lesley Jolly and you having a conversation about the fact you used to get up early and since you passed the library on your way to school, you would stop in there and read all the newspapers, now this impressed me, I must say, and it obviously impressed Lesley.
A story I have in connection with Lesley Jolly is that he persuaded you to take part in an apprentices' strike in the ship yards. My clearest memory was of you reporting back to Les - he was coaching you, what you have to do and what you have to say - he said now keep your hands in your pockets, cos your hands are obviously not those of someone who has done manual work. Taking a rest now because my voice gives out easily.
PAUSE
Don't expect these impressions to be connected or organised at all....
You told me your father went over to Ireland with the black and tans and came back on the other side, because of his experiences. I once met your father while you were away in the airforce. I called because I hadn't heard from you for a while. I found him a lovely person. I really liked him very much.
Now what else...? We smoked, and how we smoked, whatever we could lay our hands on. There was a kiosk near the station and when shortages were most severe we found this girl who sold us cigarettes that no one else had ever heard of. There was one particularly throat searing brand called Robin. You remember? When she sold it to us she was really quite triumphant she'd be able to supply our needs. I haven't smoked for twenty years but I still.. . I've dreamnt ocassionally that I was smoking, and after a good meal I get that sensation in the chest, that I would love a cigarette or better still a cigar, but I don't, not worth it....
After we took to - they call it hanging out together these days - but I think the expression we would have used was knocking about together, in a desultory way. We went to the Havelock once to see 'Stormy Weather' with Lena Horne, singing of course, looking absolutely gorgeous. You said 'I wouldn't mind marrying her', to which I replied 'Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn't it?' You said 'well some people would object because she is black', and I was really surprised that you should even jokingly allow the existance of that sort of prejudice.
Another thing that comes to my mind is that you, and I, and a third party, whom I don't recall except in a vague and shadowy way, took to - you may disbelieve this but it's true - took to breaking into unoccupied houses. I think only three times at most. God knows why we did it... On one ocassion the three of us were crossing a sort of conservatory and suddenly you disappeared up to your knees. You'd stumbled into... I think it must have been a pond originally, dry fortunately, full of leaves and rubbish... we were very luck we weren't caught...
What else did we do? Sit about in each other's homes. On one occasion I recall we were in an icecream bar, sitting either side of one of those cubicles. On the side opposite to me a woman appeared over the top of the barrier waving for, requesting a light.....which I, I reached across and asked you to pass to her. You expressed great surprise that I'd been so observant as to notice her. I'm prepared to accept that I was a horrid and really quite stupid girl but I wasn't that stupid I couldn't see someone waving, climbing over a barrier and waving.
Every now and then I have to stop because my voice gives out.
PAUSE
Do you remember going to socialist summer school at Malham? Do you remember that? I remember one character who was staying there telling us about his visit to the pub the night before, saying I came back, on the way I bent down, I could hear the sound of someone being sick and it was me. I don't think either you or I drank to that extent, certainly not then...
I remember when we arrived, going for a walk along a stream where there were swans, it was a lovely setting, beautiful fresh clean air. You took the train part of the way and biked for the rest. I remember on the way back, seeing you out of the window, where the road rang alongside the railway track, peddling furiously to keep up, which you did, and you managed to get into the train at the next stop.
Do you remember we had a spell - I don't know who the third party was - of pretending to talk common? 'tack and common' [spelling]. The character, alderman Chalk [spelling] and we put about to each other scurrilous reports of alderman Chalk and the council. I can't remember who we played these games with. It may have been David Maccaby. I often wonder what happened to David. An amazing family that. There was Lorna and there was HZ. HZ was a formidable character. I gathered ... I think I met him once briefly. We didn't know him as well as David. I once heard an argument reported, an argument with him, reported, that you had had. You told him Marxists don't believe in formal logic. The only way you could half way win the argument.
PAUSE
I remember when my unrequited passion for Lesley Jolly reached a point where he was...when we were engaged, after a fashion. I mean I didn't realise... It took me a long time to realise his problems, or his cast of temperament. It wasn't until he and I had split up and he was involved with Julian Meckelfeld [spelling] that I fully realised the strength of the passions that could be aroused. I remember walking down the street between the two of them and it was as if I wasn't present at all. They sort of gravitated together. I remember when I told you Lesley Jolly had told his mother he was engaged to me. You said you weren't surprised. You know I expected her to be surpirsed. You said, 'Well it's better than getting engaged to Colin and Brighton [spelling].'
These recollections are very scrappy I'm afraid but I do ask if you want amplification on any of them, say so, I may not be able to give it but I'll try.
PAUSE
I remember quite vividly a happy week that we had when you suddenly turned up on the doorstep, home on leave, and in airforce uniform, and if I may say so looking very good in it,... towards the end of the school summer holidays. We spent the time going about, just sitting and talking, and when you went back, I understood - I don't know how true this was - that you had overstayed your leave and that you were in trouble when you got back. I remember you writing your ambition was to be a columnist like Alexander Woolcott. God forgive me, I wrote back and said 'wanting's one thing, being's another.' I like to think this spurred you on. ...You were a rear gunner and when your plane was damaged, or landed badly, the rear gunner's pod broke away and bounced you across the air field. A shocking experience.
PAUSE
Well Alan these reminiscences are proving very scrappy and uncoordinated but I'll give you two or three more and then post this off and see what you think of them.
I seem to remember... you coached my brother, Colby [spelling], in maths... I'm not very well acquainted with that period as for some reason you and I weren't speaking to each other. I can't remember why and I cant imagine why.
There was a time when... I think it was the party held a dance in the lake, or it may have been the soviet committee, something progressive or we wouldn't have been there and I turned up in my one and only evening dress, which I rather loved, it was cyclamen, it fitted to the waist and flared out to full length and I was very pleased with myself. I tried to get you to dance and you claimed not to dance. At that time I didn't realise that there are lots of reasons why young men didn't want to go onto the dance floor. But you did say that I had a nice waist. No longer I'm afraid.
Oh yes... Another flattering bit. You and Lesley Jolly were discussing knowledge of marxism and one of you asked what I'd read? 'Only Tommy Jackson's [spelling] Dialiectics'. And one of you said 'You've made it go a long way.' How far that was a polite rejoinder and really concealed a contempt for my ignorance. I don't know.
I think I shall close now and say look after yourself. Love to Joan [sic]. And I will either tape something more if I remember anything more or I'll write.
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