From The Times
December 31, 2005
Philip Oakes
Writer and poet whose three-volume memoirs relate an odyssey from the prewar Potteries to journalism and literary life
January 31, 1928 - December 18, 2005
ON THE first page of At the Jazz Band Ball (1983), the third and last volume of his memoirs, Philip Oakes, aged 17, is making love to his girlfriend Sadie in the front porch of her digs. It was Arctic weather but it didn’t matter: “We were joined in a liquid heat which burned away all other considerations.”
This frozen moment might stand as a metaphor for Oakes’s life. He saw things not as they ought to be but as they were; but love was a sovereign remedy for its ills.
He was full of contradictions. He first made his living as a hard-nosed newsman, but went on to publish four volumes of pared and sensitive poetry. He was a macho metropolitan, at ease in the grime of postwar Fleet Street, and a gentle countryman who loved animals and birds and was a dedicated fisherman. He published six meticulously crafted novels, but was equally at home in film (he wrote the screenplay for Tony Hancock’s The Punch and Judy Man) and television (he worked on ABC’s teenage programme The Sunday Break).
But it is probably his autobiographical trilogy that is most cherished by connoisseurs of his honed and polished English. The first volume, on the 1930s, was called From Middle England (1980), and that phrase was to enter the language. The second, set in the 1940s, was Dwellers All in Time and Space (1982) — an echo of his religious upbringing.
Philip Barlow Oakes was born in 1928 and grew up in the Potteries, the son of a commercial traveller and the headmistress of an infant school. Both his parents were devout Methodists.
His father died when Oakes was 4, his mother developed a brain tumour, and at 8 he was sent to the Royal Orphanage School at Wolverhampton. However, four years later he was asked to leave, not for any specific offence, but because the headmaster thought him a bad influence.
He was then sent to a branch of the Children’s Homes in Lancashire, where at 15 he had a brief affair with his house mother, who was 30. He was flabbergasted when she told him later over tea at Lyons Corner House in London, where he had gone to start work, that she was expecting their child. Marriage was clearly not an option, but he was later to be on cordial terms both with the mother and their daughter Jo.
He began his career as a shorthand reporter in police courts, worked on an army newspaper during his military service, and then was invited by George Scott, its editor, to join the cash-strapped but lively weekly review Truth. Here he first met Bernard Levin, who, he later wrote, “looks about 16 and was phenomenally clean . . . the skin of his face was translucent like the Coalport dish my mother used to hold to the light to demonstrate its quality . . . he might have been on his way to a wedding.”
Another colleague was the young Alan Brien: “He reminded me of a Tartar chief with narrow slanting eyes and a massive head balanced on his shoulders like a stone ball on a gate post.”
It was during his early days in London that Oakes discovered jazz, and sang with the legendary Mick Mulligan and his band. But he could not match George Melly’s authentic voice: “I studied his gentian-smudged face and the tight arse of his trousers and wondered how a son of Liverpool, educated at Stowe, could sound so black.”
Oakes went on to work for the more lucrative Evening Standard, then got an ideal job as film critic for The Sunday Telegraph. The cinema, he said, had become his second home, the temple of his time, with its plush darkness and organist ascending in his glass chariot making celestial music, so that both body and soul were fed.
From there he went to The Sunday Times magazine, where he was a congenial colleague, despite his occasional rages against modern gadgets which always failed to work for him. He would hurl telephones across the room and once threw his typewriter on the floor. Secretaries adored him, and wives were enchanted by him, especially when invited to hear him read his own work at his poetry circle.
He wrote the Atticus column with his usual distinction, and found another niche for his talents as a guest on the radio programme Stop The Week with Robert Robinson. He went to live in Kent where he and his first wife, Stella, threw lavish parties. (It was quite possible for a guest to make a hearty supper from the buffet only to discover that this was only the starter.) But the marriage slowly foundered, and he married Gilly Hodson, with whom he moved to Market Rasen, where she ran a small PR agency devoted to Lincolnshire people, products and places.
Here they were both happy. London had ceased to enthral him (he was mugged on the Tube and twice burgled) and literary life had lost its allure. “I gave up calling myself a writer two or three years ago,” he wrote to one friend in 2003, “when a book I’d laboured on for much too long was cold-shouldered by all the bright young editors, and one agent told me it was a touch too slow and much too elegant for the present market.” He had no complaints; it had always been like this, he thought, but “in the glory days I was on the other side of the counter”. He consoled himself with country pursuits and wrote crisply on crime fiction, one of his favourite genres, for the Literary Review.
He sent another old friend a card this year inscribed: “May your Christmas be full of friends and booze and no shocks.” He died of a heart attack three days later.
He is survived by his wife, his daughter Jo, and the son and daughter of his first marriage, Susan and Toby.
Philip Oakes, writer and poet, was born on January 31, 1928. He died on December 18, 2005, aged 77.
Sunday, 8 June 2008
Friends and Contemporaries
Philip Oakes Critic, novelist and poet with a gentle sense of observation of ordinary life
Philip Purser
Tuesday December 20 2005
The Guardian
Philip Oakes, who has died of a heart attack at the age of 77, was once playfully categorised as "poet and court reporter". This was, in fact, a neat summary of a 60-year career that encompassed journalism at every level, as well as poetry, memoirs, fiction and forays into broadcasting, filmmaking and the world of jazz.I first heard tell of him in the early 1950s, but we did not meet until 1957, sneaking guiltily out of some interminable verse drama at the Edinburgh Festival. Friendships were forged, and never faded.He was born at Burslem, in the Potteries. His father was a travelling salesman, his mother a teacher - "education raged through my family like strong drink," he would write. Both were staunch Methodists. But his father died when Philip was only four, and his mother developed a brain tumour, which, despite surgery, soon incapacitated her; so, at the age of eight, he was sent away to the Royal Orphanage school in Wolverhampton. Its headteacher, Oakes liked to recall, augmented his day job with club turns and radio bookings as the Midlands Baritone. Unfortunately, Philip fell foul of him and was expelled.He was sent next to the Methodist Homes in rural Lancashire, a scatter of small houses around a farm, each run by a young house-mother. While most of the pupils learned practical trades, Philip went daily to the local grammar school. At 16, complete with school certificate, he left for London and the traditional start in journalism, as a copy boy. What he did not know was that in the course of some tender consolation from his house-mother, he had impregnated her. Years later, they met again, and Oakes became firm friends both with her and with Jo, the daughter of that brief union.As the second world war was reaching its end, Oakes was called up for military service, sent to the Middle East and eventually coopted on to the staff of a troops newspaper published in Athens. On demobilisation, he resumed his career in London, working at first for a news agency that covered the police courts. Speed and getting the names right counted for more than literary skills, but out of court he was fast making a name as a poet with contributions to reviews and small magazines. He went on to publish half a dozen novels, three matchless volumes of autobiography and three collections of verse.His journalistic career was also soon on the up and up. He was one of the young lions - along with Bernard Levin and Alan Brien - on the political weekly Truth. In ensuing years, he worked for the Evening Standard, was film critic of the Sunday Telegraph and filled a variety of functions at the Sunday Times, including the Atticus gossip column.For ABC Television, he helped devise and produce The Sunday Break, a programme aimed at teenagers, and which inspired his novel The God Botherers. Another programme, Zoo Time, for Granada, led to a long collaboration and friendship with Desmond Morris. On the radio, he was a regular guest on Robert Robinson's Stop the Week. And an acquaintance with Tony Hancock, struck up when they lived in the same corner of Surrey, resulted in Oakes being asked to furnish the story and screenplay of the comedian's second feature film, The Punch and Judy Man.Philip and his first wife Stella had a daughter, Susan, and a son, Toby. Another child died in infancy. They set up wonderfully hospitable homes, latterly in Kent. The marriage seemed so solid that when they gradually drew apart - he to live in London, she to settle on the Welsh borders - their many friends were puzzled. Finally, they were divorced and Philip married Gilly Hodson, a film publicist. By this time London had staled for him, and he settled in Gilly's native Lincolnshire, tended the garden and reviewed crime fiction for the Literary Review.To every subject he wrote on - the cinema, wildlife or, in his poems, love, marriage and jogging along together - he brought burning enthusiasm. He is survived by Gilly and his children.
Philip Barlow Oakes, poet and writer, born January 31 1928; died December 18 2005
Philip Purser
Tuesday December 20 2005
The Guardian
Philip Oakes, who has died of a heart attack at the age of 77, was once playfully categorised as "poet and court reporter". This was, in fact, a neat summary of a 60-year career that encompassed journalism at every level, as well as poetry, memoirs, fiction and forays into broadcasting, filmmaking and the world of jazz.I first heard tell of him in the early 1950s, but we did not meet until 1957, sneaking guiltily out of some interminable verse drama at the Edinburgh Festival. Friendships were forged, and never faded.He was born at Burslem, in the Potteries. His father was a travelling salesman, his mother a teacher - "education raged through my family like strong drink," he would write. Both were staunch Methodists. But his father died when Philip was only four, and his mother developed a brain tumour, which, despite surgery, soon incapacitated her; so, at the age of eight, he was sent away to the Royal Orphanage school in Wolverhampton. Its headteacher, Oakes liked to recall, augmented his day job with club turns and radio bookings as the Midlands Baritone. Unfortunately, Philip fell foul of him and was expelled.He was sent next to the Methodist Homes in rural Lancashire, a scatter of small houses around a farm, each run by a young house-mother. While most of the pupils learned practical trades, Philip went daily to the local grammar school. At 16, complete with school certificate, he left for London and the traditional start in journalism, as a copy boy. What he did not know was that in the course of some tender consolation from his house-mother, he had impregnated her. Years later, they met again, and Oakes became firm friends both with her and with Jo, the daughter of that brief union.As the second world war was reaching its end, Oakes was called up for military service, sent to the Middle East and eventually coopted on to the staff of a troops newspaper published in Athens. On demobilisation, he resumed his career in London, working at first for a news agency that covered the police courts. Speed and getting the names right counted for more than literary skills, but out of court he was fast making a name as a poet with contributions to reviews and small magazines. He went on to publish half a dozen novels, three matchless volumes of autobiography and three collections of verse.His journalistic career was also soon on the up and up. He was one of the young lions - along with Bernard Levin and Alan Brien - on the political weekly Truth. In ensuing years, he worked for the Evening Standard, was film critic of the Sunday Telegraph and filled a variety of functions at the Sunday Times, including the Atticus gossip column.For ABC Television, he helped devise and produce The Sunday Break, a programme aimed at teenagers, and which inspired his novel The God Botherers. Another programme, Zoo Time, for Granada, led to a long collaboration and friendship with Desmond Morris. On the radio, he was a regular guest on Robert Robinson's Stop the Week. And an acquaintance with Tony Hancock, struck up when they lived in the same corner of Surrey, resulted in Oakes being asked to furnish the story and screenplay of the comedian's second feature film, The Punch and Judy Man.Philip and his first wife Stella had a daughter, Susan, and a son, Toby. Another child died in infancy. They set up wonderfully hospitable homes, latterly in Kent. The marriage seemed so solid that when they gradually drew apart - he to live in London, she to settle on the Welsh borders - their many friends were puzzled. Finally, they were divorced and Philip married Gilly Hodson, a film publicist. By this time London had staled for him, and he settled in Gilly's native Lincolnshire, tended the garden and reviewed crime fiction for the Literary Review.To every subject he wrote on - the cinema, wildlife or, in his poems, love, marriage and jogging along together - he brought burning enthusiasm. He is survived by Gilly and his children.
Philip Barlow Oakes, poet and writer, born January 31 1928; died December 18 2005
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Bernard Levin
In France, en famille, holidaying with Bernard. At the end of an unforgettable meal (as retold by Alan), Bernard saying "I could happily die now". Alan saying " I could eat it all over again."
Randolph Churchill
Hoping, nay expecting, we can fill some of the holes in the biography. The time Alan spent travelling and staying with Randolph Churchill, ghost writing some of his books, eating nectarines and caviar for the first time, dining with Onassis, challenging Evelyn Waugh in Whites club....His blistering diatribe against Malcolm Muggeridge used by Miles Kington to open 'Saint Mugg' on The Archive Hour, 19 April 2003. More of this please.
Northumbrian Fishing Song: "The Harrins Heed"
Oh what'll wi dee wi the harrins heed. Oh what'll wi dee wi the harrins heed. We'll mak it inte loaves of breed, Harrins heed loaves of breed and all manner of things. Of all the fish that's in the sea. The harrin is the one for me. How a ye the day, how a ye the day, how a ye the day. Me hinny oh. It goes on with verses of Harrins guts a pair of beuits. Harrins fins needles and pins. Harrins tail a boat that sails. Harrins eyes puddins and pies. Harrins scales a barrel of ale. Harrins belly a lass called Nellie.
Alan sang this song to me in the vernacular.
WHAT'LL WE DO WITH THE HERRINGS' HEAD?
V1:
(Leader): What'll we do with the herrings' head?
(All): What'll we do with the herrings' head?
(Leader): Make it into loaves of bread,
(All): Herrings' head, Loaves of bread,
And all manner of things.
Chorus (Sung): Of all the fish that live in the sea,
The herring is the one for me!
(Spoken): "How are you today?"
"How are you today?"
"How are you today, me Finny-O?"
V2:
(Leader): What' ll we do with the herrings' eyes?
(All): What'll we do with the herrings' eyes?
(Leader): Make them into puddin' and pies,
(All): Herrings' eyes,
Puddin' and pies,
Herrings' head,
Loaves of bread,
And all manner of things.
V3:
What' ll we do with the herrings' fins?
What'll we do with the herrings' fins?
Make them into needles and pins,
Herrings' fins,
Needles and pins,
Herrings' eyes,
Puddin pies,
Herrings' head,
Loaves of bread,
And all manner of things. Chorus:
V4:
What'll we do with the herrings' guts?
What'll we do with the herrings' guts?
Make them into pairs of boots,
Herrings' guts
Pairs of boots,
Herrings' fins,
Needles and pins,
Herrings' eyes,
Puddin pies,
Herrings' head,
Loaves of bread,
And all manner of things.
Chorus (Sung): Of all the fish that live in the sea,
The herring is the one for me!
(Spoken): "How are you today?"
"How are you today?"
"How are you today, me Finny-O?"
V5:
What'll we do with the herrings' tail? (2x)
Make them into barrels of ale,
Herrings' tail,
Barrels of ale,
Herrings' guts,
Pairs of boots,
Herrings' fins,
Needles and pins,
Herrings' eyes,
Puddin pies,
Herrings' head,
Loaves of bread,
And all manner of things.
Chorus (Sung): Of all the fish that live in the sea,
The herring is the one for me!
(Spoken): "How are you today?" "How are you today?"
"How are you today, me Finny-O?"
Alan sang this song to me in the vernacular.
WHAT'LL WE DO WITH THE HERRINGS' HEAD?
V1:
(Leader): What'll we do with the herrings' head?
(All): What'll we do with the herrings' head?
(Leader): Make it into loaves of bread,
(All): Herrings' head, Loaves of bread,
And all manner of things.
Chorus (Sung): Of all the fish that live in the sea,
The herring is the one for me!
(Spoken): "How are you today?"
"How are you today?"
"How are you today, me Finny-O?"
V2:
(Leader): What' ll we do with the herrings' eyes?
(All): What'll we do with the herrings' eyes?
(Leader): Make them into puddin' and pies,
(All): Herrings' eyes,
Puddin' and pies,
Herrings' head,
Loaves of bread,
And all manner of things.
V3:
What' ll we do with the herrings' fins?
What'll we do with the herrings' fins?
Make them into needles and pins,
Herrings' fins,
Needles and pins,
Herrings' eyes,
Puddin pies,
Herrings' head,
Loaves of bread,
And all manner of things. Chorus:
V4:
What'll we do with the herrings' guts?
What'll we do with the herrings' guts?
Make them into pairs of boots,
Herrings' guts
Pairs of boots,
Herrings' fins,
Needles and pins,
Herrings' eyes,
Puddin pies,
Herrings' head,
Loaves of bread,
And all manner of things.
Chorus (Sung): Of all the fish that live in the sea,
The herring is the one for me!
(Spoken): "How are you today?"
"How are you today?"
"How are you today, me Finny-O?"
V5:
What'll we do with the herrings' tail? (2x)
Make them into barrels of ale,
Herrings' tail,
Barrels of ale,
Herrings' guts,
Pairs of boots,
Herrings' fins,
Needles and pins,
Herrings' eyes,
Puddin pies,
Herrings' head,
Loaves of bread,
And all manner of things.
Chorus (Sung): Of all the fish that live in the sea,
The herring is the one for me!
(Spoken): "How are you today?" "How are you today?"
"How are you today, me Finny-O?"
"All his days he was on fire" Harry Pollitt: a biography by John Mahon, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976. One of the last books Alan pulled off the shelf.
The Ballad Of Harry Pollitt
Lyrics: Traditional
Music: Traditional
Sung acapella by Robert Hunter, probably at a 1961 performance with Jerry Garcia and Marshall Leicester. It took place at the Boar's Head coffeehouse, in a loft above the Carlos Bookstore. There is some doubt whether this Robert Hunter recording might be from another night.
Harry Pollit was a worker, one of Lenin's lads
He was foully murdered by those counter revolutionary cads
Counter revolutionary cads, counter revolutionary cads
He was foully murdered by those counter revolutionary cads
Old Harry went to heaven, he reached the Gates with ease
Said, "May I speak with Comrade God, I am Harry Pollitt, please"
I'm Harry Pollitt please, I'm Harry Pollitt please
May I speak with Comrade God, I am Harry Pollitt, please
"Who are you?" said Saint Peter, "Are you humble and contrite?"
"I'm a friend of Lady Astors," "Well, OK, that's quite alright"
OK, that's quite alright, well OK, that's alright
You're a friend of Lady Astor, well OK that's quite alright
They put him in the choir, but the hymns he did not like
So he organized the angels and he led them out on strike
Led them out on strike, Led them out on strike
He organized the angels and he led them out on strike
One day when God was walking around heaven to medidate
Who should he see but Harry, chalking slogans on the gate
Chalking slogans on the gate, slogans on the gate
Who should he see but Harry, chalking slogans on the gate
Well, they brought him up for trial before the Holy Ghost
For spreading disaffection amongst the heavenly hosts
Amongst the heavenly hosts, amongst the heavenly hosts
For spreading disaffection amongst the heavenly hosts
Well, the verdict it was guilty, Harry said "Ah, well"
And he tucked his nightie 'round his knees and he drifted down to hell
Yes, he drifted down to hell, he drifted down to hell
He tucked his nightie 'round his knees and he drifted down to hell
Now seven long years have passed, Harry's doing swell
He's just been made the first People's Commissar of Soviet Hell
Commissar of Soviet Hell, Commissar of Soviet Hell
He's just been made the first People's Commissar of Soviet Hell
Well the moral of this story is easy for to tell
If you want to be a Bolshevik, you'll have to go to hell
If you want to be a bolshevik, you'll have to go to hell
If you want to be a Bolshevik, you'll have to go to hell
Lyrics: Traditional
Music: Traditional
Sung acapella by Robert Hunter, probably at a 1961 performance with Jerry Garcia and Marshall Leicester. It took place at the Boar's Head coffeehouse, in a loft above the Carlos Bookstore. There is some doubt whether this Robert Hunter recording might be from another night.
Harry Pollit was a worker, one of Lenin's lads
He was foully murdered by those counter revolutionary cads
Counter revolutionary cads, counter revolutionary cads
He was foully murdered by those counter revolutionary cads
Old Harry went to heaven, he reached the Gates with ease
Said, "May I speak with Comrade God, I am Harry Pollitt, please"
I'm Harry Pollitt please, I'm Harry Pollitt please
May I speak with Comrade God, I am Harry Pollitt, please
"Who are you?" said Saint Peter, "Are you humble and contrite?"
"I'm a friend of Lady Astors," "Well, OK, that's quite alright"
OK, that's quite alright, well OK, that's alright
You're a friend of Lady Astor, well OK that's quite alright
They put him in the choir, but the hymns he did not like
So he organized the angels and he led them out on strike
Led them out on strike, Led them out on strike
He organized the angels and he led them out on strike
One day when God was walking around heaven to medidate
Who should he see but Harry, chalking slogans on the gate
Chalking slogans on the gate, slogans on the gate
Who should he see but Harry, chalking slogans on the gate
Well, they brought him up for trial before the Holy Ghost
For spreading disaffection amongst the heavenly hosts
Amongst the heavenly hosts, amongst the heavenly hosts
For spreading disaffection amongst the heavenly hosts
Well, the verdict it was guilty, Harry said "Ah, well"
And he tucked his nightie 'round his knees and he drifted down to hell
Yes, he drifted down to hell, he drifted down to hell
He tucked his nightie 'round his knees and he drifted down to hell
Now seven long years have passed, Harry's doing swell
He's just been made the first People's Commissar of Soviet Hell
Commissar of Soviet Hell, Commissar of Soviet Hell
He's just been made the first People's Commissar of Soviet Hell
Well the moral of this story is easy for to tell
If you want to be a Bolshevik, you'll have to go to hell
If you want to be a bolshevik, you'll have to go to hell
If you want to be a Bolshevik, you'll have to go to hell
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
