PHAUDE.com

On the day that sees Jonathan Ross’s return to the nation’s television screens, and when every columnist and cultural commentator seems, yet again, to be tiresomely banging on about the BBC, its function and responsibilities (ugh), here are two sides of a different, though superficially similar, argument from the papers which I read recently:

“Surely we have enough horrors already in the daily papers – outrages and murders of little girls – and the broadcasting of this sort of thing only encourages the morbid tendency which leads to these crimes. I submit that the BBC is making a gross misuse of its powers.”

“Those who do not want this sort of excitement can always switch off and leave the others to their enjoyment. If the BBC is to make progress, it ought to be given a free hand and not be intimidated by minorities. Otherwise it will become a mere purveyor of the lowest common denominator in amusement.”

The first is from an unnamed correspondent in the Morning Post, the second a leader from the Evening Star. Both are from 16th January 1932 and relate to the first radio broadcast of Patrick Hamilton’s play, Rope. The controversy, such as it was, was deliberately fomented by Val Gielgud in order to provide free publicity for the broadcast, and shows that press manipulation and public debate about the rôle of the BBC has been going on since its inception and that, thankfully, wittering from either side of the debate was then ultimately as ineffectual as it is now: millions were entertained when they tuned in to listen.

Patrick Hamilton has been a favourite author of mine since a friend put me on to his 1941 novel Hangover Square when I was at university. Set in the growing shadows of Fascism before the Second World War, it’s a blackly comic if unsettling read, the story of George Harvey Bone, a lonely schizophrenic ill-equipped to deal with his own life, who falls for an archetypal wrong woman in whom he mistakenly sees an escape from his miserable existence. Inevitably, he descends ever further in to alcoholic madness as a result of his growing obsession in the face of her indifference to, and exploitation of, him. As a study in human frailty it serves as an extreme warning to all who find their hearts leading them in the wrong direction of what might happen if they can’t see when to abandon their folly. The power and compassion of Hamilton’s writing is such that, as you watch Bone gradually fall apart, you find yourself on his side even though you can see his mistakes for what they are and are desperately urging him to come to his senses. It is this which makes the ending truly tragic: it could all so easily have been prevented if only he had been more self-aware. Hamilton speaks to the victim in all of us, and Bone suffers vicariously on our behalf. If you haven’t read it then you’re in for a treat.

Most of Hamilton’s books are currently in print, as is Nigel Jones’ biography Through A Glass Darkly (published by the superb Black Spring Press, the small imprint which led the Kyril Bonfiglioli revival in the 1990s, and which also introduced me to the writings of Julian Maclaren-Ross, for which I will be eternally grateful).

I love inappropriate humour. To me there are few greater pleasures than having to stifle giggles at a time when decorous, ‘adult’ behaviour is demanded. The aftermath of real instances of accidental slapstick, especially the glorious way people attempt to regain their composure immediately after having fallen over (the best instance of which I saw being a pinstriped office-worker slipping in a spilled delivery of strawberry ice cream outside a branch of Baskin-Robbins in Marylebone: I defy anyone not to have roared as he floundered and cursed in a mountain of pink goo on the pavement), young children innocently swearing, or the simple joy of a good, old-fashioned, unseemly remark (e.g. Dr. Graham Chapman’s at Dachau): all are guaranteed to make me laugh.

But it’s very seldom that you find yourself reduced to gales of laughter in a cemetery. In North Sheen (aka Fulham New) Cemetery in SW London there is the most bizarre 20th Century epitaph I’ve seen, one which caused a fit of teary bemusement when I read it. Here it is:

Joan Winifred Keats

21.10.28 – 23.6.74

“For cystitis I was treated wrong

For more than three months too long;

Until cancer developed beyond control,

When euthanasia took its toll.”

The verse itself is bad, there’s no doubt of that – the last line in iambic tetrameter even recalls Butler’s famed Hudibras, the model of bad verse – but it’s the content that continues to baffle me. That this poor woman seems to have suffered horribly from a misdiagnosed cancer before consenting to a mercy-killing at the age of forty-five is of course no cause for merriment, but what on earth could have possessed her family to have erected this as a monument? It’s just weird. Did she write it herself and demand it be chiselled in to her headstone, an early version of Spike Milligan’s “I told you I was ill”? Is it even jocular? Am I being horribly insensitive in finding any amusement in this at all? Why else, though, would cystitis and euthanasia be mentioned? And such a bad poem being attributed to someone called ‘Keats’ is surely too much of a coincidence, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Someone please tell me more. There’s a story here and I really want to know it.

Regrettably I didn’t have a camera with me at the time of my visit and I can’t remember exactly where the grave is – I think sections 1c 2c 3c are a good place to start but be warned my memory is a little hazy. I’m sure it was around there somewhere.

Staring danger in the face makes your doom no less inevitable.

Sometimes I feel like this. Sometimes I don’t. Either way, it’s one of relatively few drawings of mine that I take much pleasure from looking at.

Hullo!

To me, blogging generally seems the textural [1] equivalent of standing in a public place and staring fixedly at your reflection in a puddle as you abuse yourself. Some people may choose to watch as you grimace and twitch, most will ignore you – and rightly so – whilst you will feel an odd mixture of embarrassment and pleasure from the experience of becoming a public spectacle. (I assume so at any rate – it’s not a social experiment I’d care to conduct.) The point is, it’s self-indulgent wank of the highest order. I know that. Really I do. And it troubles me that I should be narcissistic enough to leap aboard Onan’s electric bandwagon and keep a blog of my own. Yet here I am doing exactly that. Why?

Well:

a) because I was very kindly given the domain phaude.com for Christmas 2008 with the instruction that I should start blogging, so it can hardly be my fault if I’m only following orders, can it? (Ah, the classic abnegation of personal responsibility…);

and:

b) because I can. Simple as that.

I have no agenda and no expectations. I may write often, I may not. I may be interesting, I may not. I may be funny, I may not. I will undoubtedly waste your time. But if you’ve ended up here in the first place then that’s probably what you wanted, wasn’t it?

Until!

[1] textural in this context as in Webby/Webular/whatever other ugly construct you may hear people employ (cf. Latin: textus, -us: a web, as you’ll remember). Why in the world wide web is this not in common usage?  Promulgate, do.