Gruel Britannia

In the mid-1980s I worked in central London as a police officer and was often asked by tourists for good restaurants to eat in. I could usually answer their questions. All except one:

'Where can I get a good traditional British meal?'

It was a tough one to answer. There was a Beefeater Steakhouse and a Wimpey. There were pubs that served roast dinners or that specialised in pies (though nowhere near the quality found in some gastro pubs now). There were greasy spooneries where you could get a Full English. If you had a fat wallet you could try tea at The Ritz or visit Tiddy Dol's in Mayfair. But that was pretty much it. Plus, there was the unanswered question of what 'traditional British meal’ actually meant. Some people even scoffed at the idea that such a thing as British cuisine even existed. Wasn’t British cooking supposed to be dire? Didn’t Britons live on fried food and tasteless grey muck?

It annoyed me at the time that I had no direction in which to point them. A lot of British food is pretty amazing. The problem is that our cuisine is all so fragmentary. Go anywhere in France and you can get a great crepe Suzette. Can I guarantee a perfect cockle cake anywhere other than in Wales? Or a delicious Parkin anywhere other than Yorkshire?

I'm not sure if anyone actually knows how many different accents there are in the UK but I suspect it's in the thousands. In some rural areas, there are differences even between villages. On top of all of that, there are dialect words brought in from old Celtic, Norse and Anglo-Saxon and artificial accents like 'received pronunciation' that are more about class and aspiration than geography. Well, British cuisine is much the same; it ranges from whisky, haggis and neeps, cranachan and square sausage in Scotland right down to pasties and clotted cream, starry gazey pie, saffron buns and hog's pudding in Cornwall. Many counties have their own delicacies and so do many towns and cities.

 

 

A truly British restaurant chain would offer the finest produce and the best dishes from all over the UK. And what a fabulous restaurant that would be! Just think about the astonishing range of cheeses we produce, the chutneys and pickles, the glorious casseroles, roasts and stews. Imagine the choice of sausages and beers, ciders and game meats. Then there's what we do best - puddings. Not desserts but puddings; spotted dick, rhubarb crumble with properly thick custard (Creme Anglais? Pah!), Cornish ice cream, treacle tarts and bread and butter puddings. It's great to see chefs like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Fergus Henderson trying to get us back to eating great British food ... but I still can't spot the British restaurants in London's West End. Damn me, if I had the money, I'd open a chain of them myself. And I reckon we’d be full every night.

Interestingly, when I asked my friends, family and colleagues for their favourite Brit dishes, they nearly all suggested what I would call 'comfort foods'. So maybe I should open a restaurant chain called Morrisseys where sad people can come to cry and assuage their melancholy with artery-clogging delicacies 'like Mum used to make'. The music played gently overhead would be by Radiohead or The Cure or, on really tragic days, Dido or the Lighthouse Family. I'm imagining the menu now ...

My Hamster Died - Chicken nuggets served in a slowly spinning plastic wheel.

It’s not you, it’s me - Chocolate sponge cake with chocolate chips and chocolate icing served with chocolate sauce. Shaped like a boyfriend and served with a variety of very sharp cutlery.

No one understands me - A slice of your favourite pizza, dipped in beer batter and deep-fried.

The Jeremy Kyle Special - Only available in the trailer annexe. Everything on the menu served with Diamond White or Buckfast Tonic Wine. Fights encouraged.

Any suggestions for other delights at Morrisseys?

Let me see you shake your tail feather

We've known for some time now that dinosaurs had feathers and that the theropod dinosaurs were the ancestors of modern birds. The proof is quite overwhelming - particularly the large number of feathered dinosaur fossils found in recent years in China. And then, last year, the first dino-feathers trapped in amber were discovered near Grassy Lake in Alberta - dating from the Late Cretaceous period. And they told a fascinating story.

"We're finding two ends of the evolutionary development that had been proposed for feathers trapped in the same amber deposit," said Ryan McKellar of the University of Alberta. The team's find confirms that individual filaments progressed to tufts of filaments from a single origin, called barbs. In later development, some of these barbs can coalesce into a central branch called a rachis. As the structure develops further, further branches of filments form from the rachis. "We've got feathers that look to be little filamentous hair-like feathers, we've got the same filaments bound together in clumps, and then we've got a series that are for all intents and purposes identical to modern feathers," says Mr McKellar. "We're catching some that look to be dinosaur feathers and another set that are pretty much dead ringers for modern birds."

We also now know that feathers appeared much earlier in dinosaur evolution than first thought. Fossils of Ornithomimus edmontonicus - which looked something like ostriches but were not previously known to have feathers - have recently been found to have hundreds of traces of filaments along the body and limbs. Moreover, as the team reported in Science, while one of the two adult skeletons showed evidence of possessing a pennibrachium = a forelimb bearing long feathers that form a winglike surface - the third specimen, a juvenile dinosaur about 1-year-old, lacked this structure, although it still had numerous feathers along its body. This marks the first time that wings and feathers have been identified in ornithomimosaurs. "Our specimens are currently the most primitive dinosaur to show winglike structures," says Dr Darla Zelenitsky, a geoscientist at the University of Calgary in Canada, "And because ornithomimosaurs were fairly large, weighing 150 kilograms or more, these earliest wings did not initially evolve for flight - they were obviously not flyers or gliders. Moreover, O. edmontonicus does not appear to have developed its full plumage until it reached the adult stage, which suggests that the wings and feathers served some sort of adult reproductive function such as courtship and brooding."

Meanwhile, another study of a 150 million year old dinosaur fossil has revealed it had multi-coloured feathers. The research, published in the journal Science, compared the structures which determine colour in living bird feathers with those in the fossil. "This would be a very striking animal if it was alive today," said Yale University's Professor Richard Prum, co-author of the report. It is believed the colours would have helped the dinosaur attract a mate. Anchiornis huxleyi is a four-winged dinosaur which lived in the late Jurassic Period in China. Researchers chose this particular fossil to work on because the feathers were so well preserved.

And why shouldn't dinosaurs have been colourful beasts? Just look at modern birds, reptiles and amphibians. But, more than that, look at how dynamic our modern animals are. Doesn't it seem likely that dinosaurs were just as active in their competition, mating and sexual attraction displays?

Well, another recent study suggests proof of exctly that. In an issue of the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, three paleontologists posit that fossilised oviraptors possessed structural features that are characteristic of those found in modern birds with ornamental tails. For example, in the early oviraptor Similicaudipteryx, the last caudal vertebrae (the tip of the “tailbone”) are fused into a structure known as a “pygostyle," which was long thought to be a feature exclusive to modern birds. There is no evidence that Similicaudipteryx was a flying species, and the authors suggest that the bone and muscle structures that can be discerned from the fossil remains are consistent with those seen in birds with tail displays that don't aid in flying but do functional as flashy ornaments, such as peacocks, turkeys, and birds of paradise (note that these birds are not completely flightless, the tails just don't contribute to optimal flight). Some species do indeed favour form over function, and apparently the trend may have started way back in the Mesozoic.

These assertions are, of course, subject to scepticism due to the limitations of the fossil record. This is part of science - publishing new perspectives or conclusions and allowing the scientific community to contribute further analyses and information, ultimately either supporting or discarding the idea. What is unquestionable, however, is that this paper signifies just how far palaeontology has come in recent years. New finds and new technology have yielded broader and deeper information about the details of what dinosaurs actually looked like, how they moved, and how they might have interacted in their ancient world.

Sources:

SciLogs
ScienceMag
BBC News
BBC Science

Space Colony Art from the 1970s

NASA has very kindly put up and archive of hi-res, copyright-free, 1970s space colony artwork. Go and visit it here. It's out of this world!

 

 

OM(Flipping)G!

Wow. Wow. And thrice wow.

After I posted my New Year message in the shed yesterday things went decidedly barmy ... but in a good way, you understand, not in a monkey with a machine gun sort-of way. The Connectoscope is fully funded! A virtual avalanche of pledges, coupled with Christmas orders and some pledges from the most recent live event pushed me over the finishing line just in time for all that weird Scottish folk singing and crossed-shaking-arms business. I am absolutely astounded. What a great start to 2013! What with working on QI and the Museum of Curiosity this spring and summer, I was already expecting to have a great year, but this is the canine's nads, it really is.

So ... 'What happens now?' I seem to hear you ask through the fug of hangover. Well, the good news is that - unlike some of the books on Unbound - mine is already written. Therefore, all that needs to be done is some proofreading and double-checking, some cover designing and typesetting and then it's off to the printers to make your delicious hardbacks and e-books. The paperback will go into the shops later. I'm also going to record the audiobook this month so that will be available and FREE to all of you, no matter what level you pledged at.

Now, I haven't discussed deadlines with Unbound - I imagine they're all feeling 'tired and emotional' today having seen three books smash through the 100% funding barrier yesterday (Well done Jess and Kevin!). But I reckon it's not unrealistic to say that the book will be ready fairly soon.

So, once again, thank you so much for helping to make the Connectoscope a reality. I really could not have done it without every single one of you.

S
x

Ooh Magneto!

Following on from yesterday's post about the Carry On films, here's British comic artist Chris Weston's brilliant poster for a film that never was ...

 

Then there's Paul Garner's Carry on Zombie, which I'm sure would have happened ...

 

 

If the Carry Ons did still exist I wonder what other films, franchises and/or people and institutions they'd have lampooned? Carry On Prime Minister perhaps? They never did do a good political spoof. Carry On Trekking? With Sid as Captain Berk and Kenny Williams as Mr Spunk?  Or Star Wars ... I can see Bernie Bresslaw as Chewbacca and Babs as Leia. Mind you, Mel Brooks did already do that with Spaceballs. Harry Potter perhaps?

 

Oh dear lord ... 50 Shades of Carry On ...

What's a Carry On?

It being the Christmas holidays, there is a surfeit of classic Carry On on the television. In the past couple of decades, these films have become synonymous with Bank Holidays and there's always one or two playing. Yesterday I found myself watching one of my favourites - Carry On Screaming - and a sudden thought struck me ... what makes a Carry On film a Carry On film?

I'm sure if I asked the average Jamal or Janet in the street they'd say 'the cast'. But is it? Carry On Screaming is a case in point; there's no Kenneth Connor, no Sid James, no Barbara Windsor, no Hattie Jacques. Charles Hawtrey's role as a cloakroom attendant lasts all of four minutes and Bernard Bresslaw's Socket the butler gets even less screen time. Joan Sims only gets about 10 minutes on film, a third of which is spent as a waxwork. The stars of the film are Harry H Corbett (in his only Carry On role), Fenella Fielding (two appearances in Screaming and Regardless), and Jim Dale (appeared in 11) with Peter Butterworth (16) and Kenneth Williams (26). Yet it is still undeniably a Carry On.

I would imagine that most of us have an idea of who we consider to be the 'Carry On Crew'. But, interestingly, some people on your list made very few appearances across the 31 films in the series. Barbara Windsor only made nine Carry On films plus the 'clip Show' - That's Carry On! Terry Scott made just seven and Leslie Phillips made four. And yet Patsy Rowlands made nine, Peter Gilmore made 11 and Michael Nightingale appeared in 13. Would you have included them in your list? Could you even say you know what Michael Nightingale looks like? Here he is:

 
 

Marianne Stone made nine, Billy Cornelius made eight - you may not know their faces either -  Julian Holloway also made eight and Valerie Leon and Margaret Nolan made six. Joan Hickson made five, as did David Lodge and Bill Maynard. Interestingly, two Doctor Whos have been in the Carry Ons too - William Hartnell appeared once (Sergeant) and Jon Pertwee appeared in four. Then, of course, there's Carry on Columbus, made in 1992, long after most of the original Carry On crew had died or retired ... but is still considered part of the canon.

So, if it isn't the cast, maybe it's the people behind the films?

That might be true but it doesn't explain films like The Big Job (1965) which featured Sid James, Joan Sims and Jim Dale, among others, and was directed by Gerald Thomas, who directed the Carry On films. It was produced by Peter Rogers, who produced the Carry On films, scored by Eric Rogers who scored the Carry On films, and scripted by Talbot Rothwell ... who scripted the majority of the Carry On films. So it's a Carry On in all but name (and was briefly re-badged as What a Carry On) but isn't considered one of the series. And it isn't alone; there's Watch your Stern (1961) which, despite being directed by Gerald Thomas, produced by Peter Rogers, and starring Kenneth Connor, Sid James, Hattie Jacques and Leslie Phillips also isn't a Carry On. And nor are Please Turn Over (1959), No Kidding (1960), Raising the Wind (1961), Twice Round the Daffodils (1962) and Nurse on Wheels (1963), which all share Carry On cast and production teams. To confuse matters still further, there's also a Carry On Admiral (1957), which stars Joan Sims, and a Carry On London (1937) starring future Carry On performer Eric Barker ... and neither have any connection to the Carry On franchise whatsoever.

Clearly, what makes a film a Carry On isn't just the choice of director, producer, writer, composer and/or cast. There's something else at play here. Maybe it's the movie company that funded them? It is true that the first 12 films (Sergeant to Screaming) were put out by Anglo-Amalgamated before the franchise moved to the Rank Organisation for the next 17 films. But when Rank cut their ties, Emmanuelle was funded by Hemdale Pictures and Columbus by Island World (part of 20th Century Fox). Meanwhile, The Big Job was made by Anglo-Amalgamated. So was Watch your Stern.

So what is it? What makes a Carry on?

I think the answer lies in satire. Now, while you may not immediately think of the Carry Ons as satirical films, they do all share one thing in common; they lampoon tradition and aspects of British life, whether it's the army, the NHS, camping holidays, seaside beauty contests, the unions, the Royal Navy or package holidays. They also spoof popular films such as Burton and Taylor's Cleopatra, Lawrence of Arabia, Beau Geste, The Scarlet Pimpernel, the James Bond films, Westerns, and the Hammer Horror movies. Even the Carry Ons that didn't get made, for whatever reason, fit this pattern. Among them were Carry on Smoking (Fire Service), Carry On Escaping (Colditz and various POW films) and Carry On Dallas. By contrast, The Big Job was a simple crime caper in the mould of films like Two Way Stretch, Too Many Crooks and The Lavender Hill Mob. And Mind your Stern wasn't taking the mickey out of the Navy; rather it was a 'man in wrong place at the wrong time' type scenario, like you'd find in some Norman Wisdom films and classics like The Mouse that Roared or Arsenic and Old Lace.

So maybe the reason that Carry On Columbus didn't really work, despite a great cast of comedians, was that it wasn't a satire; it was a string of predictable jokes clumsily built around modern politically-correct sensibilities and loosely attached to the fact that it was the 500th anniversary of Columbus's 'discovery' of the Americas.

So, is there a future for the Carry On franchise? There have been a couple of worthy attempts to make a new film in the recent past and they were in the satirical tradition; Carry On London was a 2003 project helmed first by Peter Richardson and later Ed Bye and starred people like Keith Allen, Vinnie Jones, Shane Ritchie and Daniella Westbrook. It told the story of a limousine company - Lenny's Limos - hired to take actors to the Herberts, a British spoof of the Oscars. It re-appeared in 2009 with the alternative title of Carry On Bananas with Charlie Higson rumoured as director and names like Paul O'Grady, Meera Syal, Liza Tarbuck, Frank Skinner, Lenny Henry and Jennifer Ellison attached ... but nothing came of it. And, in 2010, there was talk of a movie called Carry On To The Next Round, a kind of X-Factor/Pop Idol type spoof, with Russell Brand being lined up to play a Simon Cowell type character who becomes bsotted with a contestant played by Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding. It also has failed to appear. At least not yet. And I'm not sure they ever will.

You see ... satire has moved on and I do wonder whether a new Carry On film could ever hold its own against things like Yes Prime Minister, The Thick Of It, The Day Today or Drop the Dead Donkey.

Secondly, there is the fact that the Carry Ons thrived on stereotypes: the saucy 'dolly bird', the frumpy secretary, the big thick bloke, the dirty old man, the battleaxe wife, the camp effete, the innocent unworldly young man, the henpecked husband, the matronly larger woman. These days we frown upon such stereotypes even though they will always be there and it is in our nature to recognise them. Sexual politics have changed. So too has the diversity of people in the UK. In the era of the classic Carry Ons, it was acceptable for Bernard Bresslaw to 'black up' as a native African bearer or an Arab tribesman and for Kenneth Williams to put on the accent of an Indian potentate. Rightly or wrongly, this was part of the films' humour. The few well-known black actors of the time, like Kenny Lynch or Rudolph Walker, were relegated to support roles. These days that would be completely unacceptable. The Carry On franchise was built upon white working class seaside postcard humour of a kind that has all but disappeared.

Which is why I think that maybe it's better to say ... Carry On no more.

The Carry On films are still great fun ... at least to people of my generation. But my kids - all in their 20s - are utterly bemused by them. They were firmly of their time. So why try to recreate them? And why bother? I remember hearing someone say once that, 'People don't really want The Beatles to reform ... they just want to feel young again.' I heard similar sentiments when the Star Wars prequels came out; the adults all derided them but kids loved them - even Jar Jar Binks. I saw the original Star Wars when I was 16 and it was magical and brilliant. No matter how much money or skill George Lucas threw at The Phantom Menace, he could never have made me feel like that again because time had moved on ... and so had I.

So I suspect that the Carry Ons are no more possible to resurrect than is Monty Python's Flying Circus. Both franchises occupy a place in our hearts and cinema/TV history that simply isn't reproduceable. Monty Python - the Next Generation? I very much hope not. Carry On 21st Century style? I really don't think that it's achieveable.

But who knows? I could be wrong. They've reinvented Doctor Who and James Bond for the 21st century. They may yet pull it off.

Hyuk yuk yuk.

Bad, Bad Sex

Nancy Huston has won the 20th annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award for Infrared, a novel whose central character, Rena Greenblatt, is a photographer who enjoys nothing more than taking infrared snaps of her lovers mid-canoodle. The award – established in 1993 by the late Auberon Waugh (son of Evelyn) to draw attention to the “crude, badly written or perfunctory use of passages of sexual description in contemporary novels, and to discourage it” – could hardly have had a more deserving victor than Huston. Here is one of her offending (not to say offensive) passages:

“He runs his tongue and lips over my breasts, the back of my neck, my toes, my stomach, the countless treasures between my legs, oh the sheer ecstasy of lips and tongues on genitals, either simultaneously or in alternation, never will I tire of that silvery fluidity, my sex swimming in joy like a fish in water, my self freed of both self and other, the quivering sensation, the carnal pink palpitation that detaches you from all colour and all flesh, making you see only stars, constellations, milky ways, propelling you bodiless and soulless into undulating space where the undulating skies make your non-body undulate…”

Glorious, eh?

Here are the runners-up:

The Adventuress: The Irresistible Rise of Miss Cath Fox by Nicholas Coleridge:

“In seconds, the duke had lowered his trousers and boxers and positioned himself across a leather steamer trunk, emblazoned with the royal arms of Hohenzollern Castle. ‘Give me no quarter,’ he commanded. ‘Lay it on with all your might.’ Cath did as she was told, swishing the twigs hard onto the royal bottom.”

The Quiddity of Will Self, by Sam Mills:

“ … oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, Will, oh, yes, oh, semen-bedizened blood-pusillanimous bed onanistic quiddity fulcrating pelvic thrusts smoke thick typewriter’s click-clack-click Will Our Cock is Spent screaming loving Will is pleased Will is Saved I have done it I have done I am the Chosen One I am his Chosen One oh Will for ever I am yours for ever I am yours for ever I am.”

The Divine Comedy by Craig Raine:

“And he came. Like a wubbering springboard. His ejaculate jumped the length of her arm. Eight diminishing gouts. The first too high for her to lick. Right on the shoulder.”

Noughties, by Ben Masters:

“We got up from the chair and she led me to her elfin grot, getting amongst the pillows and cool sheets. We trawled each other’s bodies for every inch of history. I dug after what I had always imagined and came up with even more.”

Back to Blood, by Tom Wolfe:

“But then the tips of her breasts became erect on their own, and the flood in her loins washed morals, despair, and all other abstract assessments away in a cloud of some sort of divine cologne of his. Now his big generative jockey was inside her pelvic saddle, riding, riding, riding, and she was eagerly swallowing it swallowing it swallowing it with the saddle’s own lips and maw”

The Yips by Nicola Barker:

“He knows her body now, even tightly sheathed and slippery as it is; a ripe, red plum, its yellow flesh pressing out against the smooth arc of its cool, fragrant skin. He understands the basic groundwork, has visited the orchard like a hungry finch, has gorged on the fruit and rejected the pips, has explored the geography.”

Rare Earth by Paul Mason:

“He switched to some ancient steppe language as he ejaculated, blubbering and incoherent. Chun-li faked an orgasm, keeping her mind focused on an eighth-century lyric of sadness, and her face still as a lake in winter. Khünbish collapsed below the neck of the horse, where he clung now, like a forlorn circus rider, as the steppe cacophony segued seamlessly into the kind of trickling-stream-plus-birdsong music they play in mental hospitals to calm things down.”

First published in The Independent.

Need to use up that left-over Sellotape?

Left over Sellotape or Scotch Tape is no problem for photographer Wes Naman. He uses it to make his friends look ... different:

You can see loads more on his website here.

And, as if to prove the old adage that 'great minds think alike', here's Turner Prize winning Douglas Gordon's 1997 piece 'Monster':

Mary Crispness!

Wood you believe it?

Would you spend $25,000 dollars on this?

Or this maybe?

How about if I tell you that they are sculptures, carved from a single block of wood and meticulously painted? No, really, they are. New York artist Randall Rosenthal starts with a single block of wood and turns it into these amazing sculptures. Here's one he made earlier:

Isn't that extraordinary? Here are a couple more. It's really hard to believe that what you're looking it is a single piece of carved wood isn't it? The quality of his painting is wonderful too.

Want to see more? Visit his site here. He also does amazing wall sculptures and architectural objects. Worth a visit!