David's Blog

Novels and illness - 26/02/2010

Well hello there, nobbbloggers.

A while ago...well, let's be honest, ages ago...I promised to let you into the secrets of a nasty illness from which I suffer.  At last I am ready to tell you about it.

But I also want to tell you why I have taken so long to tell you about it.  It's because I have been writing my new novel, and I have become a bit obsessed/inspired/deluded (choose any two of these three) and haven't been able to turn to other things.  I haven't finished the book yet, but I can sense you looking at my website day after day, and sighing 'No Nobbblog again'.  So today I will also tell you a bit about the state of play, Nobbs-novels-wise.

The illness first.  A lot of people are colour blind.  I am a bit myself.  I suspected it for the first time when I saw the film The Colour Green, found a very argumentative man sitting in my seat, entered into an altercation with him, saw yellow, and hit him.

But the illness I wish to tell you about is rarer than that.  It is acronym blindness.  I discovered I suffered from this when I was invited onto the Test Match Special cricket programme, to give an interview in their A View From The Boundary feature, or AVFTB, to use a singularly unsuccesful acronym, and was told that I was to be interviewed by CMJ.  Well I always thought that was a complaint caused by eating infected meat.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that CMJ was a famous cricket correspondent, very rare, only three of them in the whole world.

Anyway, I'd better tell you a bit about my new novel, in case you aren't interested in all this stuff about acronyms.

The new novel that I am writing is called LIFE AFTER DEBORAH, and it's my eighteenth!  What happened to the seventeenth, I hear you cry.  Well, I have good news.  My seventeenth novel, which is called OBSTACLES TO YOUNG LOVE, is being published by Harper on May 28th.  It's going straight into a paperback format, in keeping with coming trends, and I do hope you will all buy it as I have to say that I think it's rather good.  What's it about?  Well, broadly, it's about obstacles to young love.  But maybe you guessed that.  It's a romantic comedy with serious undertones.  I read it the other day, and I think it's rather good, but then I would, wouldn't I?

Seriously, I find it difficult to talk up my work.  I belong to an earlier tradition of wanting to let the work speak for itself.  But, having been taken on by Harper Collins with some enthusiasm, I have taken a hard look at my recent novels and felt that, though I know many people have enjoyed them, I can do better.  I get such lovely comments in emails to this website and the knowledge that there are people out there, all over the world, who look forward to my work really does inspire me.  Please look out for OBSTACLES TO YOUNG LOVE, and tell your friends. 

So, let me tell you just a bit about LIFE AFTER DEBORAH, the one I am writing at the moment, and which has caused me to delay telling you about my CAB (Chronic Acronym Blindness).  What is the new book about?  Don't all speak at once.  It's about life after Deborah.  It starts with a woman's death, and it ends at midnight on the day of her funeral, nine days later. There is still - I hope - a lot of comedy in it, but it is also - I hope - very emotional.  I don't want to talk too much about the content of the books, I believe in letting them speak for themselves.

I would just like to let you know a few simple things about how I keep myself excited and enthusiastic about my books.  Apart from the subject matter, and my desire to make you laugh and cry and sometimes at the same time, I am starting to vary my technique in order to keep myself fresh.  CUPID'S DART, the latest one of those in print, was my first book written in the first person.  OBSTACLES TO YOUNG LOVE, is my first book written in  the present tense.  LIFE AFTER DEBORAH is back to the third person and the past tense but the novelty here is a certain abstraction.  In OBSTACLES I describe places in some detail, and, where using actual places, with some accuracy, I hope.  In DEBORAH there is much less detail of place. A hotel is described, but not named.  Pubs, restaurants, streets, none of them are named.  In this book they don't need to be.  The change may not make a lot of difference to you, but it keeps me fresh. 

I do find, as I get older, that the time span of a book becomes more and more important to me.  GOING GENLY spanned a century.  CUPID'S DART spanned a year.  OBSTACLES TO YOUNG LOVE takes place over twenty five years.  It was time to write a novel that took place over a much shorter period, hence the nine days of this book.  All this keeps me up to the mark.

Anyway, back to the acronym blindness. I first found out about this when I was attending an important meeting, and there was much discussion about TSF's.  Apparently there were too many TSFs.  Or maybe there weren't enough.  I can't quite remember.  And the reason why I can't remember is that I haven't the faintest idea what a TSF is.  I missed that moment, 90 seconds in, when I should have raised my hand and asked, 'Excuse me, what is a TSF?'  I feared that I might make a fool of myself, that I had pages of unread literature explaining TSFs, that the whole thing was about TSFs, that I was the only person in the room not to be familiar with TSFs.

I haven't found out, to this day, what they are.  Well, I could hardly ask in the bar afterwards, could I?  'One thing puzzled me.  What are TSFs?' 

That reminds me, actually, of another, very different occasion when I lacked the courage to ask a question soon enough, with potentially disastrous results.  I year or so after I left Cambridge, I met a man in Tottenham Court Road, who hailed me and said, 'Hello, David' which led me to believe that, unless it was a lucky guess, he knew me.  After a brief chat, he suggested a drink.  I have never been known to say 'no' to such a suggestion.  We went for a pint and I started asking questions, rather hesitantly, thinking that they would lead to the revelation of his identity.  I got 'yes, still in the same line'  'oh yes, haven't moved' and quite soon the moment when I could say 'by the way, who are you?' had passed.  We had two pints and when we parted I was none the wiser.

A year later I met the same man in High Holborn and we chatted away for a bit and I still hadn't a clue and then he said, 'Where was it we last met, David?' and I said 'In Tottenham Court Road' and he said, 'What a memory you've got.'  I left while I was winning.

So, if you met me in Tottenham Court Road in the early sixties, and in High Holborn the following year, could you send a message to my website, telling me who you are?  I'd love to know.

Sorry about that diversion.  Back to the main theme.  Acronyms.  I've told you how I discovered that I had a problem.  Now I have to tell you of the occasion when I realised how serious it was.  I don't just not know acronyms.  I don't just forget them.  I muddle them up, as I did with poor old CMJ.

I was in my local pub one day, and somebody said that I seemed sad, and I said it was the terrible winter, and I must be suffering from SAE.  Well, nobody was ever depressed because they suffered from a stamped addressed envelope, so I felt a bit of a fool.  I explained that I'd just had a shock, I'd been calling on my friends Dominic and Connie, (they have a nice bungalow which they've named after the first three letters of both their names, I still think they should have chosen Domcon) he's a lorry driver, and I told the lads in the pub that he'd told me that he'd had a major health shock, he had been diagnosed HGV positive.  How embarrassing.

On another occasion a friend accused me of not being green and eco-friendly and all that kind of thing, and I said, 'Do you mind?  I'm a lifelong member of the RSVP.'  Well of course people laughed at me.

More serious still was the time when I issued an invitation to my wedding, and I put on it RSPCA by July 6th.  I got replies from three people, four rabbits and a hamster.

I know this isn't serious, but it is a bit embarrassing, and if any of you know a cure, please send me a letter and if you enclose a SAD and a stamp, I'll even reply.

That's it for now.  I'm grateful to you for reading this and for being so patient.  More soon.  That's a promise, or is it a threat?  I can't sign off without saying to each one of you, my faithful friends, my readers, my esteemed fans, and it's easy to say this, but I mean it, I really do, YMCA to each and every one of you.  

Oh Christmas - 19/01/2010

Well, Christmas is well and truly over and not a peep have you had out of me, despite all my promises.  I'm a disgrace.  Don't I care about my fans?

I do.  I love you both.

I've had a good Christmas in many ways, quiet, plenty of time for doing blogs.  So why have I not done one?  Inspiration, that rare and welcome visitor, called and stayed.   As if doing the second series of the New Reggie (does that sound a bit too much like New Labour?) I have been busy on my new novel.  That isn't the one that is scheduled to be published in June.  It's the one for the year after that.  And, admit it, you'd rather have one of my novels than a blog, wouldn't you?  No?  Oh well.

Almost fifteen years ago, my wife Susan and I moved to our present idyllic spot in a secret valley in Yorkshire.  It was clear that we really did need a four wheel drive car.  We had one for almost fifteen years.  We didn't need it, the world was warming up, cold winters were a thing of the past.  Until just before Christmas.

On the very first day of the snows, I was driving my four wheel drive car along a narrow, twisting road in the village we don't quite live in.  I put the brakes on, and nothing happened.  Then nothing else happened.  Then I hit the doctor's wife.  Luckily she was in her car at the time.

The accident happened at very low speed, neither of us were injured, and her car was still drivable.  Mine was too, I thought, and indeed I managed to drive home, but, when I got there, I found that water was pouring out.  My radiator had been holed.  That was the nineteenth of December.  We got the car back today.  Never mind, at least we can now brave the snows.  Wait a minute, though, there is no snow any more.  The final bit went yesterday.

Sod's Law is alive and well and living in North Yorkshire.

I'm not complaining, though.  Last winter we were recording Reggie Perrin in December and January.  This year it's March and April.  That bit of luck is rather more important than the minor inconvenience of not being able to get anywhere.  Or indeed anywhere else.

I'm a great fan of local pubs.  I eat in them, drink in them, talk in them, play dominoes in them.  There's a play on that I really want to see.  There are friends we want to see, friends we ought to see.  But, you know, when you can't go anywhere, you suddenly find that you don't want to.  Because there's no point in wanting to.  You can't.  We've been leading a very happy life these last weeks.  I've been sitting at my computer writing, working up a thirst, and in the evenings we've eaten and drunk, and watched television programmes.  We've seen thirty eight pathologists cutting into dead bodies in five languages, it's been terrific.  I wouldn't want that quiet life to go on for ever, but it was rather good to have the excuse for it during these recent days. 

Some days the weather relented a bit, and we were able to drive up the steep track that leads to the outside world, but there came a day when we got out and, as the weather deteriorated, felt it was too risky to drive back.  We now had a car stuck in the village, full of groceries.  The Renault Megane has its critics, maybe it doesn't drive as well as some other cars, maybe it isn't the most reliable of all cars, but I'll tell you something, it makes a very good fridge freezer.

Every day that week I struggled up through the drifts with my National Trust and World Wild Life shopping bags.  The scenery was very pretty.  Mostly it was snow.  I walked past white copses of white trees, beyond which white fields stretched towards...more white fields. What a master of description I am, well, I'm a writer, you know.

Every day I struggled back through the drifts carrying two bags of groceries.  Half the groceries, and three quarters of the weight, were in the form of food for the birds.  Ah, he's all heart, that Nobbs.

Also, because a car needs weight in it if it isn't to slide, I put the heaviest things I could find into it.  Not Susan, she doesn't like the cold.  But, of all things, our hoover, which isn't a Hoover.  And our spade.  So, when more snow fell, as it did very day, I couldn't clear the steep drive that leads to the steep track that leads to the outside world.  Also, we couldn't hoover the carpets.

Anyway, now it's all back to normal, and the question you're asking is, why did it take so long to get our car back?  You aren't?  Then I'll tell you.

In the first place, which was Japan, the factory that made one of the parts that we needed was closed for several days for Christmas and the New Year.  Now this surprised me because I thought that the British were lazy and the Japanese hard-working.  Now it turns out that the Japanese are lazy, and the British are...lazy too.

Because in the second place, which was Britain, snow drifts and black ice caused deliveries of parts to be suspended.  The part of our car that caused the most delay was the water bottle for the water to clear the front and back screens.

We kept ringing the garage to check progress, but they were so upset about the delays themselves that in the end we didn't have the heart even to do this.

Anyway, we've got by, and the snow was very pretty, though by the end we were just longing for the green, green grass of home.  We have a little paddock in front of the house.  No horse, just a paddock.  Yesterday the snow went and...there were the brown brown molehills of home.  Hundreds of them.  A scale model of the Western Highlands of Scotland, brilliantly done, but...oh well, the moles were around in these parts before we moved in, and they'll be around when we've gone and...maybe they have a sort of right to be there.

Susan asked me, just an hour or two ago, if I knew how moles managed to pass each other in their tunnels?  I imagine they make little wide bits, like the winding holes on canals, where they can turn and pass, but I don't really know.  Maybe they never need to turn.  Maybe they just go on and on, for ever, in the same direction.  One bit of darkness, after all, is very like another.

I could have been a mole, you know.  It's all the luck of the draw.  What a life I'd have led.  The excruciating tedium of burrowing under lawns, night and day.  No, they've got problems enough.  I haven't the heart to bang all the earth back, blocking their tunnels.

Bit of a swine, that Nobbs, promising you, in his last Nobbblog, insight into a rare disease from which he suffers.  Promises, promises, and not a word.

Patience, my dear friends, and in the meantime, aren't you glad yiour hero is kind to moles?  Aren't you thrilled that I'm all heart?

A Bit of a Do - 02/12/2009

Hello Nobbbloggers

A little blogette for your delectation.

Last week I did a long and serious blog about something I care a lot about - the world, the earth, the planet, the future, the human race, tomorrow's children.

Today I am going to do a very short blog about something else I also care a lot about - though, I'm glad to say, not quite as much as I care about the above.  It's me.  Little insignificant one day to be flooded if we believe in worst case scenarios me.

Quite a lot of people have asked me, over the years, why A Bit of a Do is not repeated, whether there are any DVDs etcetera.  Well, it is available this Christmas from Simply Entertainment in association with Radio Times.

The complete set, is available, on four discs, for only £17 99, reduced from £29.99.  (This is not because it isn't any good, everything else is reduced as well, the Darling Buds of May is reduced by ten pounds more!). 

If you have said, over the last few days, 'Blimey, mother, we've got a good Christmas programme lined up, according to my diary, but there is one nasty little gap of 10 hours 50 minutes', you need worry no longer.  10 hours and 50 minutes of entertainment is yours for the taking.

Order online at www.RTentertainment.co.uk or by phone on 0844 573 3866.  You know it makes sense.  The reference number is G662819.

The original and the new Reggie series are also available, but you all seem to know about that.

The Nobbblog will be back very shortly, with news of a rare disease suffered by its creator.  Don't raise your hopes, though.  It isn't fatal.

The Age of Stupid - 23/11/2009

Hello blogpeople

You are entering a joke free area.  I'm afraid this blog is too serious for jokes.  It's about global warming.  Yawn yawn?  Please don't. Not till after the Copenhagen summit (DEC 7-18 - not much time left) anyway.  After that we can all ignore the subject.  It'll be too late.  Seriously.  That's how urgent it is.

On Saturday I saw a film called The Age of Stupid.  It's a chilling documentary about the effects of global warming and the folly of our generations.  Is this the age of stupid?  Well, not universally.  There have been more than 30 million hits on the Age of Stupid website - www.ageofstupid.com.  To see the film I had to go to a small bar in the Leeds University Union, where of course I was easily the oldest person present.  My shock and fear must have been nothing compared to those of the students, whose lives from the age of forty are set to be ruined if we do not do enough NOW.

The film, based on widespread scientific advice and evidence, predicts that 2015 is the tipping year, the year by which, if we do not do enough, if we have not stabilised our enviroment by then, the greenhouse effect will be irreversible.  This is at the worst case scenario end of the world's predictions, but it would be a brave person to say that it is definitely wrong.

The film predicts that society will be beginning to break down to a serious degree in the 2030s.  Most of you reading this will not enjoy the splendid years of maturity that I am basking in, and as for your children, and your children's children, whom you love so much, well, their future is bleak.  If we don't do enough NOW.

The film's predictions are not wildly out of line with other predictions.  The Independent last week led with the news that scientists now say that we are on track for the worst case scenario, in which the planet's temperatures will rise by 6% by the end of the century.  It doesn't sound much, but it would be totally disastrous.  Our civilisation would be wiped out. 

The trouble is that nothing so very disastrous is going to happen by 2015, so I fear that people will just not believe that it is as serious, as terminal, as it will be if we don't do enough NOW.  People will be bored by it.  Oh no, not again, they will say.  Well, they shouldn't.  By the time the really serious effects kick in, it will be too late.  Far too late.

Well I will not be going back to the subject.  I will not go on and on, and bore you.  Nothing harms a cause more than the bores who bang on about it endlessly.  You will hear nothing from me after this rant.  There won't be any point anyway.  It'll be too late.

What can you do?  What can I do?  Well, do you know of the 10/10 initiative, whereby you sign up to cut your own emissions, your carbon footprints, call them what you will, by 10% in 2010.  My beloved Tottenham Hotspur (9-1!) have signed up.  So has the whole city of Stoke.  We can all save 10%, surely?  Look it up on www.1010uk.org.uk, where you will find out how to join and how to contribute.

Another way to contribute is by financially supporting those who are working for, going to, protesting at the Copenhagen summit.  Go to the age of stupid website - www.ageofstupid.com - and either click onto the on-line 'TV' programme on the main page or click onto http://www.ageofstupid.net/money.  If we don't support this cause, then one day it will not be possible to support any cause.

I am a pensioner.  I believe I am a member of the most fortunate generation ever to be born on this planet.  Too young to fight in the Second World War, too old to see the end of our privileged way of life.  I call on all pensioners and all people over the age of fifty to rally to the cause, save their 10%.  It isn't much.  I have many good friends who fly to Spain and Portugal many times a year with the very grandchildren whose lives may be going to be ruined.  One trip less next year? 

Ah, but the plane will still go, even if I'm not on it.  Not for ever it will.  Supply and demand.

What effect will my puny 10% have?  The Chinese aren't going to stop, are they?   Well, it just looks as if they might.  And it must help if we set an example.  It has to be done by us all.  Every man and woman of us.  

If we don't, and if in our lifetimes we begin to see that man has failed this, his greatest challenge, won't we feel even worse if we know that we did nothing, we didn't even try?

We can all drive 10% less, surely?  The Age of Stupid pointed the finger at the oil industry in no uncertain terms, and one oil company in particular. I won't name it, it would be invidious, as the others probably aren't much better.  Think how you can save money for yourself as well as cutting emissions, every time you shell out for some more petrol.  

Let's all try to put real pressure on our leaders to achieve something significant, something sufficient, at the Copenhagen climate conference.  Write to the Prime Minister.  Bombard him.  It really is the last chance saloon.

All the world's leaders will want to go down well in posterity.  It might be worth trying to persuade them that it's in their own interests to make sure that there is a posterity for them to go down well in.

I recommend that you click onto Copenhagen Climate Change Conference and browse around.  You might also try www.greetings.cop15.dk and try www.stopClimateChaos.org.

There are people of course who deny that there is such a thing as global warming or that, if there is, any of it is our fault.  But there are also people who deny the Holocaust.  Probably it is something that cannot be proved, though the scientific evidence, I would have to say, is overwhelming.  Well, we can't wait for proof, and does it actually matter?  We will be taking a huge risk if we do not work on the assumption of a worst case scenario.  And, even if we are wrong, I don't think it matters.  ALL THE THINGS WE WILL BE DOING TO COMBAT GLOBAL WARMING WILL BE GOOD IN THEMSELVES.

REGARDLESS OF CLIMATE CHANGE, WE CANNOT GO ON AS WE ARE.  The planet's resources are finite.  Our demands upon it seem not to be.  We will destroy our planet anyway if we don't change our ways.

I think I can justly claim not to be jumping onto a bandwagon here.  The first Reginald Perrin novel was published in 1975, and it included these words, spoken by Reggie in a speech to the British Fruit Association in their HQ, Bilberry Hall:

'Where was I?  Oh yes.  Progress.  Growth.  That's another one.  We must have growth.  Six per cent per year or whatever it is. More people driving more washing machines on bigger lorries down wider motorways.  More scientists analysing the effects of more pesticides.  More chemicals to to cure the pollution caused by more chemicals.  More boring speeches to fill up more boring conferences.  More luxury desserts, so that more and more people can enjoy a life increasingly superior to that lived by more and more other people.  Are those our just desserts?  Society functions best if I over-eat, so I buy too many slimming aids, so I fall ill, so I buy too many pills.  We have to have a surfeit of dotes in order to sell our surfeit of antidotes.  Well, it's got to stop.'

I relished putting serious thoughts in the mouth of a drunken senior sales executive in absurd circumstances, but, sadly, lots of people don't see the serious points in comedies.

Well, today in 2009, five and a bit years before what may be the tipping year, I echo Reggie's words, and I am sober. 

'Well, it's got to stop.'

I didn't get where I am today without knowing that, if the world doesn't do enough both in Copenhagen next month and in its own backyards day after day after day, my grandchildren and their children will have no chance of getting where I am today.

My worst speaking engagement - 23/10/2009

Well hello there, Nobbbloggers all

In my last Nobbblog I promised - or should that be threatened? - to tell you about the worst speaking engagement I ever endured.  And here it is.

It was at Whitemoor High Security Prison, in Cambridgeshire.  An inmate wrote to me, telling me that there were five great fans of mine in the prison, and they were all members of 'The Wednesday Club', which discussed the arts for three hours every Wednesday.

Five fans!  Flattery will get a writer anywhere.

Three hours!  If you've read the last Nobbblog you will know that I recently did 405 minutes to the same people, but in 45 minute sessions.  Three hours.  I was daunted even before I arrived.  I was then by no means as accomplished or as confident a public speaker as I have since become.

Susan drove me down to Cambridgeshire.  I know the county well, having been to the University, of which, every time it was mentioned, the much-mourned Peter Tinniswood used to say, 'Wasn't that where you did difficult sums, Dave?'  The wind blows without interruption all the way from the Urals over the flatlands of Northern Europe to Kings College Chapel and Ely Cathedral.  And Whitemoor High Security Prison.

I had been told to arrive half an hour early. 'for security purposes'.  I was greeted with friendly smiles, told to relax, told to undress, stood there shivering while my body was sesrched for hidden weapons, told to relax, shivered in a relaxed sort of way, put my clothes back on, doing up the buttons with shaking hands, and relaxed my way, escored by a warder who told me to relax, up stairs, along corridors and into a room where about fourteen members of staff were relaxing before their afternoon duties.

At two o clock, the time for my talk to begin, I was told to wait a few minutes longer, as at two o clock the sex offenders were moved to their afternoon tasks, and the rest of the prisoners weren't allowed to move till the sex offenders were safely out of the way, lest they tear them limb from limb.  'Just sit here and relax.'  By this time I was as relaxed  as a cobra.

Then it was time to go.  I found myself in a small room with sixteen large prisoners and one small female warder.  Goodness knows what would have happened if there'd been a riot over the literary merits of Iam McEwan.

One of the prisoners approached me and said that he was the fan who had written to me.  Sadly, he told me, the other four fans had been moved to other prisons and had been replaced by four Cypriots.  My heart would have sunk then, had it not sunk so far already.

The warder introduced me, I stood, and began.  Now I usually start my talks with a reference to the first really proud moment of my career, when I had my very first word in print as a professional writer.  It was in the Sheffield Star, the evening paper on which I began my career.  It was 'thives'.  'Thives who broke into the home of Mrs Emily Braithwaite stole....'  Yes, my career began with a misprint.  And. as I suddenly realised, my talk was beginning with a crime.  Couldn't start with that one, not in a prison.

Well, I stumbled on, leaving out a story the tag of which was, 'No, but I could murder a pint' and several other incidents which it seemed tactless to tell to prisoners.  Somehow, I got through an hour and a bit, which was longer than I'd ever spoken non-stop before, but which still left well over an hour and a half for questions.

Things got worse with the questions.

Often the first question will be 'Do you use a computer?' or 'Do you write every day?' or 'Do you have a daily routine for your writing?'  In the prison the first question was a little more demanding.  It was 'Why did they make such a bad film out of that very good book, 'The Bonfire of the Vanities?'  When I admitted that I hadn't read the book or seen the film, I could feel my credibility slipping out of the ends of my fingers.  I waffled a bit about other films based on books, but I knew, and they knew, that I hadn't answered the question.

Never mind.  It was a difficult question.  The next question would be easier.

The next question was, 'Which Cypriot novelists do you admire?'

I should have blustered.  I should have invented an author.  I should have said, with comviction, 'Stelios Thianopolos'.  When they said, 'Never heard of him', I should have said, 'Really?  You should hunt him out.  He's a giant of the interior monologue'.  By the time they found that he didn't exist, I would be far away.

But I didn't.  I said, 'I'm afraid I haven't read any Cypriot novelists.'  I was dying on my feet.  I could see that, mysteriously, even the non-Cypriots thought I should have read some Cypriot novelists.

The third question was put in an Ealing Comedy petty crook voice, laden with menace.

 'Have you ever met Prunella Scales?'

'Yes, I have.  She's a lovely lady.'

'I know she is.  That's why I'm going to marry her.' 

'I think her husband, Timothy West, might have something to say about that.'

'I've got plans to deal with him.'

I can't remember what came next, but it wasn't any better.  I limped on through that grey winter afternoon, the light slowly fading, my voice slowly fading.  One man, his voice as fruity as a Christmas cake, told me that he had also been in 'the media'  'I once trod the boards with Mike and Bernie Winters.'   I longed to ask him, 'What did you do, to have to give all that glory and glamour up, to end up here?'  I so longed to know.  But that was the question I was not permitted to ask.  I was with sixteen people who had fascinating life stories, and I couldn't ask them anything about why they were in prison.  Very frustrating, for a novelist.

Somehow I got through the rest of that withering winter afternoon.  I can't remember how.

Susan was waiting for me.  She had been to see Ely Cathedral.  She drove off, and we stopped off at the first place we came to.  It was a Little Chef.

I'll tell you how bad the afternoon had been.  I enjoyed the Little Chef.

AN EVENTFUL CRUISE - 07/10/2009

Dear Friends

I fully intend that this day, Wednesday , October 7th, 2009, will come to be known, in blogging circles, as the day that David Nobbs came back from the blogging dead.  Yes, I plan regular entries for my fans.  I hope you both enjoy them.

My excuse for not blogging you last month was that I was on a cruise.  I was a guest speaker on the good ship Artemis, one of the P and O fleet.  Why don't I resume activities by telling you all about it?

This was actually my fifth speaking engagement on board a ship, my third with P & O, but my first on Artemis.  This cruise was slightly different from the others, in that my wife and  I were classified as crew.  This was because I was getting a small daily fee in addition to a free Mediterranean cruise for two, and drinks at half price.  It was to have a couple of somewhat unfortunate consequences.

Before I go any further I must say that it was a superb trip and I really hope to be able to do another one next summer, when I seem to have a bit of what is known these days as a 'window' in my diary.  I must say that, because there are going to be one or two moments in this piece when it isn't going to sound as though it was superb.

The first unfortunate consequence of being classified as crew was that we had to get our own luggage onto the ship, no porters to help.  Now Susan and I had rather a lot of luggage, five pieces in all, and we have a combined age of 143.  We didn't look at all like a couple of muscular able-seamen swinging our bags onto the deck while singing jolly sea shanties.  I was too out of breath to even manage a guest speaker shanty.  In fact as we went through security I had to help another guest speaker even more decrepit than me lift his cases to go through the security screening machine.

Once on deck we were allotted a nice cabin at the back of the ship. or 'aft', as we crew members say.  It took three visits to get all our baggage to the cabin, which was locked, and although we had been told the key would be in the door, it wasn't.  Never mind, the cabin steward opened the door for us.  It was a very nice cabin, with only one slight snag.  There was an engineer in it, and he was travelling to Gibralter.  He seemed a very nice man, but I didn't intend to share a bed with him, and he was pretty good-looking, so I didn't intend my wife to share a bed with him either.

We were found another cabin, at the front of the ship, or 'forrard', as we crew members say.  This time we had help from staff and the engineer, and we were ready to enjoy the cruise.  We even managed to have lunch, the first of thirty three very enjoyable free meals on board.

The next day, at two p.m., was the time of my first talk.  It was a roughish night with a full gale blowing, and for the first time in my life I decided I needed to take a pill.  As a result, I was far from sharp at the appointed time.  I was actually booked to do P & O's first ever book club, and my first and last talks on the ship would be book club events.  I had chosen 'The Kite Runner' , by Khaled Hosseini, as my book, since I thought people would have heard of it due to the fact of its having been a film, and I had heard glowing reports of it from people whose opinion I valued, and it would allow a bit of discussion about the Afghan War.  But with my first talk I faced a dilemma.  It was almost impossible to talk about the book without pre-empting the event by saying what I thought about it.

I filled in a bit of time by talking about my woirst experience as a public speaker, when I did a three hour talk in a high security prison.  I must check if I've told you about that, and tell you if I haven't.  But there was still a bit of humming and hawing from me, and I didn't think I was particularly impressive.  It was a cruise, people were supposed to be having fun, the ship was pitching and tossing, and I had a horror of sounding like a schoolmaster.  I come from a long line of schoolmasters and mistresses (schoolmistresses, I mean - unfortunately) and I have inherited none of their ability.   Also, I wasn't sharp due to the pill. 

 Anyway, I got through it, and it can't have been too bad because the next day, when I began the first of five talks that would be purely entertainments, I had a very decent audience in the International Bar.  I don't know how many there were, but it holds 500 and they didn't look dwarfed. 

Our first port of call was supposed to be Gibraltar, but a passenger fell gravely ill and the ship was diverted to La Coruna in Spain, where there is a first class hospital.  As a result we didn't have time to call ay Gibraltar.  Seconds after this had been announced, the phone rang in our cabin.  Would I give an extra talk?  No.  I couldn't.  My planned talks already covered everything remotely amusing that had ever happened to me.  O.K., but would I do an interview with the cruise director, Christine Noble?  Of course.  I would.  I did, and very pleasant it was.  Thank you, Christine.

I did hear one sour woman complaining bitterly about not being able to 'put in', as we crew members say, at Gibraltar. but the vast majority of the really rather elderly passengers were comforted, and really quite impressed, to find P & O putting a passenger's health first, at great cost and inconvenience.

Our next port of call was Palma, Majorca.  This visit passed without any problems.  The third one, however, was Marseilles.  I had really looked forward to this, having always promised myself that one day, before I died (well it seemed impractical to plan it for after I'd died) I would have a bouillabaise in Marseille.  The French had other ideas.  They decided that crew members could only go ashore if they had Seamen's Discharge Books.  Amazingly, none of the various guest speakers and instructors had Seamen's Discharge Books.  They didn't sound very nice, actually,, and at our age we would be lucky to have any semen to discharge (I hate jokes that don't work as well in print because you have to change the spelling, but never mind).  So, eight of us plus our partners had to spend the day on board ship.  The French didn't get our money, and, even worse, we boycotted French wine for the rest of the cruise.  That showed them.

Seriously, it was very irritating.  I love France, and regularly argue that the French are really perfectly pleasant, and then their petty officials, or 'petty officers', as we crew members say, do something as pathetic as that.  And we are EU members, and we had our passports.  Don't start me on the EU.  I'll be blogging for life, and where will my novels be then?

The next port of call was Calvi, in Corsica.  Here, we lost our main anchor.  In any case, we couldn't have gone ashore.  The port is too small for us to park, or 'moor', as we crew members say, so we would have had to go ashore by tender, and the weather forecast was for such strong winds that we wouldn't  have been able to get back on the ship that day.

Within seconds of that announcement, the phone rang in my cabin.  Could I give an extra talk?  No, I've explained that.  Well, could I do a question and answer session with the passengers?  Of course I could.  I did, and very pleasant it was too.  Thank you, passengers.

I don't want to leave you worrying about our anchor, so feel I must tell you that somehow, and rather brilliantly, I think, with the aid of a local diver, we got it back.  We were pleased about this.  We were attached to the anchor, as it should have been to the ship.

In the end, ladies and gentlemen, I did two book club events, five talks, an interview with the cruise director and a question and answer session, all to an audience that consisted largely of the same people every time.  405 minutes without repeating myself.  I felt fairly proud about that. Who else could do 405 minutes?  Don't all answer at once.  Ken Dodd.   And I got some heart warming comments, including a cry of 'We're loving you, David' from a lady in the main square of Valencia.  I've waited a long time for a cry like that in a European city.  Or a British one.  Or a town or village.  Or even a field.

Oh, and that wasn't all.  I also got roped in to do a ship's version of 'The Weakest Link'.  In the first round I got all my questions right and nobody got any right.  In the second round I was still the strongest link.  In the third round, feeling that I was being much too much of a clever clogs, I deliberately got my first question wrong.  I didn't know the answer to my second question, and I was chucked off.  That'll teach me.  Incidentally, even in a fun event, it's horrid hearing those words.  'Goodbye, you are the weakest link.'

Our later ports of call all worked without a hitch, we went on three of the splendid tours that the ship ran - to exquisite Siena, up into the hills of Sicily, and around the wonderful city of Valencia, with a beautiful old town and some sensational modern architecture that even Prince Charles would like.  We wandered around the lovely city of Lisbon.  We had a great time.

As I've said, we had very good food, and we were lucky enough to have a  very enjoyable dinner table, in the company of another guest speaker, Tony Gledhill, and his lovely wife Marie - Tony is an ex-policeman who won the George Cross for immense bravery, about which he was suitably modest, and he told interestsing tales about his police work, and about the brave people who have won the George Cross and the Victoria Cross. 

 Also on the table, until they 'disembarked', as we crew members say, were the comedian, Martin Gold, and the singer, Jane Beaumont.  Jane was lovely and Martin was delightful and very funny.  He commented, in his act, that if we thought our passengers were elderly we should have been on the QE2.  They had bifocal portholes and all night Sterodent parties.

Our table was completed by a very nice couple, Cyril and Jean, who were actually paying customers.  Dinner was an event to look forward to every evening.

The cruise also had a classical music theme and there were some fabulous concerts, featuring the delightful guest celebrity, Dame Felicity Lott, an extremely gifted pianist named Danny Driver, even an irresistible Rumanian string quartet from Galway (truly).

There was also bridge, line dancing, handicrafts, dancing instruction, light music, quoits, shuffleboard, quizzes, shops and daily specialist sales,and a casino.  Despite all this, there were people on the ship who claimed to be bored.

There were moments, in the early days, when I wondered if this was a cruise too far.  At the end I knew that I would miss it, and all the lovely people I had met.  I can't wait to be asked back.

That's about it, really.  'Bon Voyage', as we crew members say, not to mention 'Up Yours, Marseilles'.

Cheltenham Festival - 02/10/2009

Hello again after an appalling gap caused by technical problems.  Well, actually caused by my being unable to log in, as I had forgotten my user name.  Not my name, things aren't yet that bad, just my user name.

Anyway here we are again, with many apologies and much shame.

Normal and more frequent service will now be established.

This is just a very brief announcement of something that I've also added to my news items.  I'll be on again very shortly with news of a cruise I've just been speaking on.

URGENT NEWS for anyone living in or near Cheltenham or intending to visit the literary festival.  I will be there, in person, not a hologram, at the Everyman Theatre on Sunday, October 18th between 12 and 1 p.m.

And not just me.  I'm on a panel hosted by the great Jonathan 'Rotters Club' Coe.  The other panellists are Armando 'The Thick of It' Iannucci and John 'Spitting Image' O'Farrell.

Tickets are an incredibly reasonable £7 and can be purchased online at cheltenhamfestivals.com or from the box office on 0844-576-7979.

All this to hear a discussion of the question that is on everybody's lips.  Well, it will be after the 18th.  'How has the changing political and social landscape of Britain been reflected in comedy writing over the last 50 years?'

The others are a bit young, frankly, but I know.  I've been doing it for 50 years.

See you there.

The trivial and the important - 28/06/2009

Well well well, doesn't time fly?  Many people, I know, are wondering if I've died.  I'm delighted to say that I haven't.  I hope you're delighted too.

My long silence has been simply because I have been busier than at any time in my 46 year career as a professional writer.  There's been Reggie Perrin, of course, and my new novel for Haper Collins, to be published next year, and also a third series of my Radio 4 sitcom, The Maltby Collection.  The BBC love it, keep recommissioning it with amazing speed, then put it out at times when very few people are watching.  Do try hunting it out if you haven't found it yet - news of its transmission will appear in my news pages once it's confirmed.

I've been meaning to do a blog several times and then not finding the energy because the other writing is essential and this, fun and I believe important though it is, isn't.  And then I had a badly needed holiday to fit in.  We went to Skopelos, the Mamma Mia isle, though not becauise of that.  We went because we have a great friend there, Gordon Haskell, who had such a hit with Harry's Bar and 'How Wonderful You Are' a few Christmasses ago.  He and his lovely partner Sue took me and my lovely wife Susan all over that spectacular island in an open jeep.  I got stung by a wasp, couldn't drink for four days (ouch) and had lots of stuff injected into my left buttock by a very pretty Greek nurse (double ouch).  We also met a man who once threw Michael Winner down a flight of stairs.  I felt greedy.  Why hadn't it been two flights?

Since I last wrote, important things have happened in the world, and unimportant things too.  Among the unimportant things was the splendid news that in all the Viking remains dug up by archeologists, there were more combs than axes.  This gives a different picture of those manly types.  My hair's such a mess, I  can't do anything with it, I just don't feel at all like pillaging today.

 The most important thing that has happened, of course, has been the continuation of the credit crunch, and I have found myself having very serious thoughts about this.  I just don't believe that anything our despised politicians have done, in the rest of the world just as much as in Britain, has gone any way to really solving the problem.  They've just tinkered with it, in the hopes that it won't re-emerge until somebody else is in charge, which will be quite soon in Gordon's case.  (In The Maltby Collection I have a Greek chef who gets his sayings back to front.  'Do you think he has no pencil in his lead?' etcetera.  He calls the Prime Minister Brown Gordon.  I quite like that).

You see how I slip from the important to the unimportant.  Can't help it.  I'm a comedy writer.  But I really do  have enormous worries about our economy.  The number of people who make their money out of money is enormous and I don't think that can be healthy, or ethical.  I make money out of ideas, jokes, stories.  You may make money out of chutney or building oil rigs.  Great.  But out of money?  Dangerous.  And growing.  And unchanged.  It's enough to make a vain Viking tear his immaculately combed hair out.

I AM HAVING TECHNICAL PROBLEMS WITH THIS BLOG.  IF I DON'T FINISH IT, THAT'S WHY.

You see how I drfit from the important to the unimportant.  Can'ts help it.  I'm a comedy writer.  But I'm a comedy writer who cares a great deal about some very important things.  Call me naive if you like, but I can't see how a society in which millions of people make money from money can be healthy, let alone ethical.  I make money from ideas, jokes, scripts.  Perhaps you make money from chutney, or building oil rigs.  Great.  But so many people are in this great money industry, it's got completely out of hand, and what has really been done about it?  Have the bankers learnt their lesson?  I very much doubt it.  It's enough to make a Viking tear his carefully combed hair out.  Oh God, here's the unimportant slipping in again.

No, but seriously, I would go so far as to say that the whole basis on which shares work is distinctly suspect.  And there's another thing that I said in the first Reginald Perrin, and it was one of the few things to survive to the second Reginald Perrin. 

Private Joy, Public Woe - 31/03/2009

Dear friends (if any are left)

I think I've blown it.  I find that I haven't done a blog this year.  Why should anybody still be checking up to find one?  Especially when there are 893,567 other blogs to choose from.  And that's only in Yorkshire.

There are few things sadder than a neglected website.  (Actually there are millions of things sadder, but a neglected site, with grass coming up through the news entries, is pretty sad)

I make you a promise.  I'll work harder on my blogs, or I'll give them up.

Since I last blogged, I've been very busy.  We've finished the new modernised Reggie Perrin, I've completed the second and I hope final draft of my 17th novel, I've written a pilot episode for a potential new sitcom set round a golf club (but not really about golf, I hasten to add), and I've started on the third series of my Radio 4 sitcom, The Maltby Collection

Meanwhile, some of my friends are having a tough time in the credit crunch.  Perhaps I shouldn't be friendly with bankers and lawyers.

It's odd, but Reggie Perrin seems to coincide with dire economic times.  Things weren't so rosy between 1976 and 1979, when the three series of the original were shown.

Anyway, I've had a bit of a struggle through the boom times, and now I'm booming during the difficult times.  Long may it last.  My booming, I mean, not the difficult times.

The thing that really depresses me, and angers me, and stops me enjoying my boom times, is my increasing feeling that no public anywhere at any time has been so despised as the British public is today by the people who are supposed to serve us.  Which is a bit silly, because everyone is a member of the public.

I intended to do a blog months ago, during the snow, when the whole of London's bus system was closed down.  It survived two world wars, many terrorist outrages, and far worse snowfalls.  Eighteen inches fell over the new year early in the 60s.  This time there was only a fraction of that.   Our country has gone from Colonel Blimp to Colonel Wimp.  Although I suppose the reason isn't just wimpishness.  It's fear of litigation, of someone slipping and suing.  Whatever the reason, it struck me as pathetic.  Sorry I can't be funny about it, but I don't feel funny about it.

Anyway, I didn't write about it then, but in the last three days enough has happened to make me feel that I must share my anger with you.  It's unfair of me, I know, but unfortunately you're all I've got.  The people I should be angry with don't give a damn.  No point in writing to the bus companies, or Boris.

I can't even be bothered to comment on our politicians.  What a sleazy, self-serving lot.  If I was a comedy writer (I've just remembered, I am!) I couldn't come up with anything as awful as the home life of our Home Secretary. Supposing I'd written it.  'Please, David, the Homee Secretary's husband charging the taxpayer for adult movies.  Comedy has to be believable.'

Then there's the man, I can't be bothered to look up his name, who is to make recommendations about curbing the use of tax havens.  Don't tell me they've found out that he has lots of his money in a tax haven.  That would just be too obvious, too banal.  It's true?  Oh my god.  Comedy writers aren't needed.  Life is a comic genius.

Anyway, enough of that.  I want to write about something much nearer to home than politicians.  National Express East Coast.  We came back from Kings Cross on Saturday, and there were, presumably, engineering works between Doncaster and York.  I say 'presumably', because nobody mentioned them.  It was just that the train went via Wakefield and Leeds and took over an hour to get from Doncaster to York instead of the usual 20-25 minutes. Nobody told us that it was going to do this.  Nobody apologised for the time it took.  Nobody expressed regret.  In fact, once things got slow, we didn't see any staff any more.  You don't when things get difficult.  We're the British public, you see.  Not worthy of consideration.  Not worthy of even a smattering of concern.  Not at weekends, anyway.

 But I mustn't linger on National Express.  I want to talk to you about Travellodge.  Or Travelodge.  Some pretty nasty things have been said about their standards of cleanliness in Which magazine, but I needed a hotel near the Eurostar and I was prepared to brave their standards of cleanliness.  Yesterday I got onto their website.  I entered my requirements.  Back it went to the beginnijng.  Time after time I entered my requirements.  Time after time I was unable to actually process them any further.  So I rang their central booking 'service'.  I put the word 'service' in inverted commas.

Of course I got options.  Listen carefully, I was told, they'd been simplified.

They had.  When I pressed the number for booking, I got three options.  All for groups of varying sizes.  None for just one person.  I could have booked seven or fifteen rooms with no trouble, but one?  Not worth it, mate.

So I waited for an operator.  And got music.  And more music.  And a glowing announcement about Travelodge's facilties.  And then more music.  Even my bank tells roughly how long I will have to wait.  Nothing.  I could still be there now. but I rang off, and contacted Ibis.

I can't summon up much enthusiasm for the Ibis Hotel at Euston.  It's got not an ounce of charm, and it's charging me £125 for a dreary room and no breakfast, but I got straight through, and I got a female voice.  Foreign, almost completely incomprehensible, but human.  For that I can almost forgive them everything.

Sorry this isn't funnier, but I'm off tomorrow to the Ibis and Eurostar and my stepchildren in France for a few days and I wanted to connect with my blog again before I went.  I will do more blogs, more frequently, and better.  Because I do care about you, the |British public.

What's wrong with me?

I'm still alive - 08/12/2008

Hi, blog-starved of Bedford and Bicester

I have had emails asking me, in view of the absence of new blog entries, whether I am still alive.  I don't know how I could tell you, if I wasn't, but I am, and thank you, both of you, for your concern.

I have done the thing that infuriates me more than anything else on other people's websites.  I have failed to update it.  There is no point in having one unless you use it, as the archbishop said to the actress, and the same thing is true about websites.

The reason that I have neglected you is that I have been extremely busy, gloriously busy, unexpectedly busy.  In particular I have been writing my next novel, and it's been going extremely well, and I have been loath to turn away from it until I have collapsed in such a state of exhaustion that I would no longer be capable of blogging with any enthusiasm.

Anyway, here I am at last, and this time I'm going to give you a very straightforward message about what I've been doing and am about to do, since it seems to me that you wouldn't be bothering to go to my website at all unless you hadf some interest in what I write.

Actually, the last few months have been so exciting that I can't even decide which of two events is the highlight - the new novel or the modernised version of Reggie.  Well, since Reggie is known to the vast majority of you, and the novel is still a secret between me, my computer and my publisher, I think I'd better start with Reggie.

It's been quite a while since the idea of doing a modern version of the sitcom was mooted by Objective Productions, but we're there at last, the location filming has been completed, and even as I write these words, the actors are rehearsing for the first episode in a draughty hall in Lambeth.  (No sitcom has ever been successful unless it has been rehearsed in a draughty hall).

Right at the outset, I had to face a difficult  decision.  Did I want to write it?  I found that I most certainly didn't want to let go of it completely.  It was my baby.  How could I trust anybody else with it?  Why should I trust anybody else with it?  On the other hand, I had given it my all.  I couldn't be sure that I had it in me to recreate the whole thing from start to finish on my own.  The decision was obvious.  I would write it with someone else.  But who?  The BBC came up with a couple of names and I jumped at one of them - Simon Nye.  I had never met the fellow, but I knew his work.  He seemed ideal.  I didn't know then what I know now - that he's an Arsenal supporter.

It wasn't necessarily going to be easy.  In the last thirty years I haven't collaborated with other writers, apart from glorious stints with Peter Vincent and Barry Cryer on sketches.  But to go back to collaborating on narrative material was daunting.  I hadn't done it successfully except right at the beginning of my career, with the late, great Peter Tinniswood of blessed memory.  Even that hadn't been easy.  There had been moments when it had almost cost us our friendship.

Anyway, Simon and I soon decided that we weren't going to sit at opposite ends of a desk and write every line together.  I couldn't have done that even if he'd supported Spurs.  So, we have worked on our own and emailed the results.

It seemed logical that Simon should have a go at the first draft of the first episode, as he was the new boy on the block, and, as he said, I had done the first draft in 1976.

He produced what I thought was a great script, finding modern equivalents of the original characters.  In a sense, therefore, he has created the template for the new series, and I have been working to that.  I have to admit that I haven't always found it easy.  Sometimes I've felt that the series isn't really mine any more. I have to admit that this modernised version is more his than mine, but the beauty of Simon's creations is that, however different they are, their roots are in the original, and the resultant series therefore seems to be to be truly a joint effort.

I was thrilled to see a leader in the Telegraph headed 'Not so super, Reggie', criticising the decision to bring it back on the grounds that the world has changed.  It's because the world has changed that we felt that we could bring it back.  There are new things to say, alongside a few old things that are still true. How could they have thought that we wouldn't move on?

Fans of the old series will soon realise that very few of the old jokes survive.  What was the point of doing it again unless we reinterpeted it?  No hippo.  No farting chairs.  No mother-in-law.  No Tom with his dreadful wines. Reggie and his new wife are childless, in fact.   

I've told you what there isn't.  I don't propose to tell you what there is.  For that you will have to watch it.  When?  Certainly not before April.

When we started on this project I must admit that I had my doubts as to whether it was sensible of me to get involved.  I thought that perhaps I was on a hiding to nothing.  It's clear that it can only go two ways.  Either it will be welcomed back with great enthusiasm or people will say, 'What a pity you bothered'.  However. I've realised that, far from being on a hiding to nothing, I personally am in a no lose situation.  If it's a success, lovely, I'll have done it again, or helped to do it again.  If it fails, then everyone will say how much better it was when I did it on my own.  I don't want that, of course.  I'd like it to be thought of as even better than the original.

I've often told the story of how the casting of Leonard Rossiter came about.  I went to see Jimmy Gilbert, the Head of Comedy at the BBC, and he said, 'Have you anybody in mind for the part?'  As I was writing for the Two Ronnies, I naturally said, 'Ronnie Barker.'  'Splendid,' said Jimmy Gilbert.  'Terrific.  Leonard Rossiter it is.'

People have always said that it would be impossible to replace Len, that his shadow would make the job of any successor impossible.  However, thirty two years have passed, and the Reggie of this version is not quite the Reggie of old.  He has a very different wife in Nicola.  He has a different job.  He dresses differently.  But none of those facts are the reason why I am not remotely worried on that score.  I am not worried simply because we have Martin Clunes, a big enough man to step into anybody's shoes.

I am indeed lucky to have two such Reggies.  There will be comparisons between them, but you will never hear me saying that I prefer one to the other.  They are too good to separate.  Besides, it isn't a competition.

I have to go now.  I'll have to start getting ready for the trip down to London for the recording of the first episode.  When I get back I'll add a bit more about my current activities, in particular the new novel and the third series of my radio sitcom, The Maltby Collection.

Yes, I'm still alive.

Save Our Pubs - 04/08/2008

A few days ago two more country pubs closed near us.  Perhaps that should read 'A few days ago two more country pubs near us closed'.  The first sentence suggests that they closed near us, which perhaps hints that they weren't near us until they closed, which is ridiculous.  But the second sentence may perhaps suggest that lots of pubs near us are closing, and that's not particularly true, because I'm there to save them..  Perhaps I should have put 'A few days ago two more country pubs closed, and they were both near us'.  But that's no good either, because at least eight pubs are closing every week, so I should have put  'A week or two ago another eight country pubs closed, and two of them were near us.' 

Why am I trying to make this vaguely grammatical point?  Perhaps because the more times I say that pubs are closing, the more you will feel how sad this is.  Except that you won't.  If you don't like pubs, you won't care, and even if you do the repetition will no doubt have irritated you 

Perhaps it is dawning on you that I like pubs.  I like proper pubs, pubs where drinkers are not regarded as an inferior breed to eaters.

A few months ago I appeared as a guest on the BBC4 quiz programme, 'Never Mind the Full Stops', which does for semi-colons what 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks' does for music.  I had to name my least favourite word and I chose 'gastropub'.  I told the studio audience that 'I don't want sun-dried tomatoes where once the darts board stood', and they applauded, so I must have struck a chord.

Eating is fine, you die without it. I like food as much as the next man, who just happens to be Marco Pierre White. Eating out is fine.  Restaurants are fine.  Food in pubs is fine, but not at the expense of the major function of a pub, which in my opinion is to provide drink in a convivial setting.

One day, in the not-too-distant future, there may be no proper pubs at all.  So I thought that I would talk today about my pub life.  It will be a longer blog than it would be if I talked about my sex life, but that's my problem.

The first pub I went into...no, in fact, I didn't go into the first pub I went to.  I was playing cricket for a school team against the village of Ramsbury in Wiltshire, and our bus stopped briefly at a pub.  I refused to go in!  My parents were Congregationalists, all my grandparents were non-conformists and teetotallers, and I felt that I owed it to them to conform and be a non-conformist too.

A year later we played Ramsbury again and I was a year wiser.  I was now on the road to atheism via agnosticism.  They say that beer is an acquired taste.  I acquired it with my second cautious sip.

During my national service in the Royal Signals I got drunk for the first time, in a pub in Loughborough, on dark rum.  I also drank four pints of scrumpy in a pub in Torquay and on my return to camp at Denbury in Devon I shouted 'Stand To The Guard', and that, as the ex-military men among you will know, is not a sensible thing to shout.  There was a very nice pub in Denbury itself.  I remember trying to put the glow-worms out by pissing on them during my unsteady return to camp.

In Germany I grew to love bierkellers, but when I went to Cambridge it was pubs again.  I had realised that a pub is about communication.  People stood around the bar and it was pretty easy to get into conversation with anybody.  That was the whole point of the pub.  It was somewhere where a commoner could talk to a king, a tiler to a merchant banker, a vicar to a bookie.

There were lots of pubs in Cambridge, including some lovely ones by the river where one sat on the grass and watched pretty girls punting.  I now learned that all pubs are pubs, but only one pub is one's local.  My local was the Volunteer, a nice little two bar pub up a narrow side street near my college.  I can still see the sign - Mine Hosts, Len and Pip.  Len and Pip, how very fifties.  I wonder what became of them.  I can still taste their liver sausage rolls.  A few years later I went back.  They say you shouldn't, and they're right.  It had become a typewriter shop.

During the summer vacations we went to stay in a friend's family cottage in Aldeburgh.  A few doors away was a splendid establishment called the Black Horse.  We got jugs of beer from the door marked 'Jug and Bottle' to drink with our supper and after our supper we went to the Black Horse.  We couldn't have had supper in the Black Horse.  It was a pub.  The beer was good, the company friendly, and after closing time it became quite lively.  The local bobby would knock on the door shortly before midnight and join us.  I went back a few years later.  They say you shouldn't, and they're right.  It had become Black Horse Antiques.  Oh, the sad sad gentrification of the English countryside.

There was another policeman in the Lord Palmerston, my local in Tufnell Park and a hotbed of shove-halfpenny, that long-dead pub game.  He was a lowly constable, but he cooked like a millionaire.  His whole salmon in aspic was a thing of beauty.  Well, I never saw it, but he said it was. You get people like that in proper pubs.

One of my greatest pub evenings was in the Station Hotel in Achnasheen, in the Highlands.  I was there with my friend John Aarons, on a motoring holiday.  It was autumn, it was cold, it was wet, and it was Sunday.  Over dinner, the landlord asked his four residents if they would be going into the bar that evening.  He would light a fire if we were, but because only residents and bona fide travellers were allowed to drink in Scottish pubs on Sundays at that time, there would be no other customers.  We said we would go in the bar, so he lit the fire.  At midnight there were forty eight customers.  What a night it was.  The landlord's schoolgirl daughter slept over the bar, and as she went to bed, we all gave a stirring rendition of 'Over the Sea to Skye' for her.  It was actually very moving.  What do they sing today?  'Speed bonny Renault over the bridge'?  John and I got involved in a darts match with two road menders from Portsmouth.  They were bad and we won.  'Fancy a quid on it?' they enquired.  We knew we were being conned but we were getting drunk and we were enjoying ourselves so we said yes.  They immediately began to play well.  So did we, and we won again.  I only made one mistake that night.  On getting into bed at half past one I found a huge stone hot water bottle in it.  I tried to pass it out over my head, and dropped it.  The headache the next morning had nothing to do with drink

So many memories.  Drinking with my great friend and comic genius Peter Tinniswood in the Rodel Inn in Rodel, or Raghadal as it has now become in this p c world, on the southernmost tip of Harris.  Or was I drinking with my friend Harris on the southernmost tip of Peter Tinniswood.  It was a long while ago, and we did have a lot to drink.  Well, only three pints, and a pleasant chat with the brother of the Lord Mayor of London.  The brother suffered from sleeping sickness and had been banished to Harris for the duration of the mayoralty.  We had an impassioned argument with him about the route of the 137 bus from West Hampstead.  You have discussions like that, in proper pubs.  And then suddenly the last bus of the day was there and we had no time for a pee.  Half an hour on the bus, and not a tree in sight as it wound among the rocks.  Neither of us had ever experienced pain quite like it.  Tarbert and its public conveniences grew nearer so slowly as the bus wound between the crags, and then we stopped for ages as they tried to get a goat into the boot..  I've never been able to look at goat straight in the eye again, and I don't think dear Peter could either.

I lived, in Barnet, in a house called Twixt, so called because it was between a Baptist Chapel and a pub,  Ye Olde Monken Holt.  Mine hosts, Fred and Brenda.  Every afternoon, after closing time, the bank managers and financial consultants of Barnet drank on.  At home they were ruled by their wives.  Here they were masters of their domain.  Fred memorably dubbed them 'The Lunchtime Heroes'.  He had a way with words, Fred Twilley.  I bought a long-handled type of shears, to cut fruit from the top branches.  One day I was chatting over the fence to the Baptists, who had cut down my hedge while I was out.  I weas trying to say that I was a good neighbour and a quiet citizen whom they should not have treated thus..  Fred didn't help by yelling out, 'Where are you|?  The beer's ready, Percy Longprong'.

 Percy Longprong left his long prong and moved to Herefordshire.  My favourite memories here are from the White Swan in Eadisland, which had a very amusing landlord, Richard Baldwin.  Richard loved a drink and was invited out one Sunday evening for dinner with a psychiatrist.  When I asked him how it had gone, Richard said, 'He's the meanest man I know.  He gave us so little to drink that I was driving under the limit for the first time for forty years.  A police car followed me.  I drove erratically, but the bastard didn't stop me.'  He would have dined out for ten years if he could have told how he was breathalysed and passed.

Two brief tales from that pub.  The roar of laughter from the public bar when a very posh motorist came in and said, in a voice as loud as it was posh, 'Excuse me, chaps.  Can you tell me, would you say I was half way to Aberystwith?'  A lovely gentle cowherd called Eric.  A couple of tourists complained about his language.  Richard told Eric.  Eric, genuinely contrite, turned to them and said, 'I'm so sorry.  I didn't fucking see you.'

Last Saturday evening I was in the Lamb and Flag in the next village, and a customer called Cliff arrived on his motorised invalid carriage.  Cliff has a false leg and so does his wife.  One day he entered the pub limping.  Potato Paul said 'You haven't fallen, have you?' and Cliff said, 'No, I couldn't find my leg.  I've borrowed Vi's.'  On Saturday he solemnly stuck a notice on the back of his vehicle.  It read 'Proud 2b gay'.  As we laughed, a taxi pulled up, and four monks got out.  Eight customers had been taking part in the St Wilfred's Day Procession in nearby Ripon.  The whole scene was bizarre.

Things like that don't happen in gastropubs.

. 

Island Paradise - 22/06/2008

Hello, blogpeople everywhere.

Susan and I have just spent thirteen nights in Mauritius, in a hotel rated by a leading Swiss guidebook as the second best in the world.  It cost us less than two thousand pounds, including drinks, laundry, drinks, massages, drinks and something else that I can't quite...oh yes, that's it. Drinks.

Yes, after 44 years hard work at the wordface, I have at last had a bit of a freebie.  I now hope that the London bus syndrome will kick in, and there'll be two more very quickly.

Of course it's well known that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and there is certainly no such thing as ten free nights in a luxury hotel, with three more at a heavily discounted rate.  I had to work for my supper.

The hotel is Le Prince Maurice Hotel on the East Coast of the island, and we were there for the judging of the Prince Maurice Prize for Romantic Fiction. I was one of six judges, the others being Joanne Harris, Marina Lewycka, Sarah Waters, Simon Armitage and that well-known expert on romantic fiction, Irvine 'Mills and Boon'  Welsh.  We deliberated under the keen chairmanship of Tim Lott, and were joined by three Mauritian judges and our patron, who on this occasion was no less a person than Richard E Grant.  Yes, this is quite a prestigious prize.

Mauritius is largely trilingual.  I've always wanted to use that word, and have never had a chance before.  The basic language is Creole, most of their writing is done in French, and the official language is English.  The prize is for books in French and in English in alternate years.  The aim is to encourage a local literary culture in both languages, and to this end we had various other duties to perform between the cocktails and the sun loungers.

On our first day we spent the morning reading short stories written by Mauritian schoolchildren and the afternoon judging them, a task which we took very seriously.  We were a little taken aback by the content of the stories, which were full of car crashes, deaths, suicides, divorces, arguing parents and drunken fathers.  Where was the paradise island that we had been led to expect?

In the evening we were driven to the British High Commissioner's house where we were welcomed at some length by the Director of the British Council, an amiable man with the suitably British Council name of Simon Ingram Hill.  I daresay he will figure, thinly disguised, in at least six novels during the next two years.

The second day was as traumatic as any I have experienced in the last twenty years.  I had to do workshops in two schools.  Now my father was a deputy head master and taught maths.  My mother also taught maths.  My father's father was a headmaster and taught maths.  My mother's father was a headmaster and taught maths.  My paternal grandmother taught maths.  My maternal grandmother taught maths.  I am petirified even by the thought of facing a class of children.

I have to admit that I had done no great preparation, and at the first school, a girls' school, I was told that due to the comings and goings of large numbers of girls, a workshop would be inappropriate, a talk with questions would be best.  The school, the Sharma Jugdambi School in the small town of Goodlands, had contributed more stories to the competition that any other school in Mauritius  

I decided to make the event as interactive as possible, so after a short talk I asked for questions.  Nobody had told me that as well as being almost universally pretty and charming, Mauritian schoolgirls are very very shy.  There were hardly any questions, though one girl did ask which was moire important to a creative writer - observation of the imagination?  A very good question, but my answer 'You need both' still left me with about 50 minutes to go.

Then I was asked to sit in the audience, the curtains on the stage of the gymnasium parted, and I was treated to a performance of the wrestling scene from As You Like It, in English and in full costume.  The costumes were great, the physical comedy was superb but I couldn't hear a word as the shy girls spoke so quietly.

 The event limped to its conclusion, and I was painfully aware that this was a missed opportunity, and I had rather failed this splendid school.

Still, I would do better in the afternoon at the boys' school, Bell Village School, no doubt a charming little village school in a picturesque corner of the island. 

Alas for my hopes.  It's a tough school in a tough corner of the capital, Port Louis.  The teacher told me that not one boy was studying literature beyond the third year.  All they were interested in was football, and two teams - Manchester United and Liverpool.  I would be talking about literature to ninety boys who weren't interested - not surprisingly, perhaps, since the set book was the Mayor of Casterbridge.  This, in Mauritius? 

At first my talk went well, they listened and laughed, and jeered cheerfully when I told them I was a Tottenham Hotspur supporter.  But my planned talk suddenly seemed very short, and there was an hour still to go.  The boys were also shy about asking questions.  Their master stepped in to help, but he had a low voice and when I asked him to repeat his qyestion, the boys whooped.  Clearly his low voice was a school joke.  He stood up and repeated his question.  I said., 'You'll have to do more than just stand up.  You'll have to come closer.'  More whooping.  In the end we approached each other, and I made my fatal mistake.  I am just not one of life's teachers.  I am still a fourth former at heart.  I said, 'Shall we dance?'  There was no way back after that.

I was asked one amazing question, 'What do you think about life?'  My reply was 'It's a good thing.'  The master, perhaps seeking revenge, said 'Do you really think life is a good thing for millions in the third world?'  By now it was almost impossible for me to hear the questions or the boys to hear my answers, so great was the noise.  The master sensibly abandoned ship, I struggled on, and at last the ordeal was over.  The bell was answered with a violent stampede.  The master was nicer than I deserved and said it had been a lively discussion.

The rest of the week was much more calm.  We went to the British Council, where we had another speech (well more the same speech really) by Mr Simon Ingram Hill, and we took part in a very civilised debate about the novel and ate delicious canapes of curried meat, curried fish, curried shellfish, curried vegetables and curried eggs. 

On the Saturday, the final judging took place.  We had narrowed the books down to a final three in London, and now we sat debating in the only floating restaurant in the Indian Ocean.  It was quite windy and I later made up a story about the French writers the previous year dining in a gale and having their starters in Mauritius and their desserts in Madagascar.

The winner was James Meek for his book, 'We Are Now Beginning our Descent' , although there were votes for the other two finalists, Ewan Morrison for 'Swung' and Salley Vickers for 'The Other Side of You'.  The three books were all so different that it was like deciding between a pumice stone, a rabbit and an umbrella.

After a lengthy prize giving ceremony including another speech (well, more the same speech really) by Mr Simon Ingram Hill, there was a seven course gala dinner.  Susan and I sat at the same table as Simon and his wife and  in the unlikely event of his having time to read this blog I must emphasise that they are lovely, charming people.

This was the end of the events and it was time to sit on the beach and relax.  It promptly rained for three days.  However, our last three days were spent in lovely sunshine.  It was delightful to sit on the beach under thatched shelters, and sip thatched cocktails in the thatched bar.  We were discovering the main problem about touring in Mauritius.  The hotels are so superb that hardly anybody explores outside them.

There is doubtless quite a lot to explore and we hope to go back one day, though whether we will ever be able to afford the full cost of the magnificent Le Prince Maurice is doubtful.  We had learned quite a lot about Mauritius.  It may be an island paradise for tourists, but there are major problems for the inhabitants, and they are very similar to our problems.  They are the problems of the early 21st century - the rising cost of fuel, the rising cost of food, the increasing scarcity of fish, the breakdown of discipline in schools, increasing dependency on alcohol etcetera etcetera.

I forgot to mention that eleven boys from Bell Village School contributed stories to the competition, but only four admitted it.  Such is the effect of peer pressure.

But there wasa lovely postscript.  I have had an email from one of the boys, who has discovered my website and gave his name as 'Not a T Hotspur Fan'!  He apologised for the stampede and said that I mustn't think that all Mauritian boys are hooligans.

He also said that I had told them that the best thing to write from was experience, and that I had talked about my novel 'Sex and Other Changes', in which a married couiple both change sex and marry each other the other way round.  Was that from experience?  I think he'll go far.  (That reminds me of the time I told my mother that a writer must write about what he knows.  She wouldn't speak to me after she'd read the brothel scene in one of my novels)

Thank you, Not a T Hotspur Fan, for writing to me and making me believe that my visit to your school did have some effect at least. I suspect you must be one of the secret writers of Bell Village School.  I hope you have a very successful life and meet a lovely lady and become Mr and Mrs Not a T Hotspur Fan and live happy...well, no, not ever after, because we weren't judging that sort of romantic novel.

I have to report that the judges all got on extremely well and had a great time.  Irvine wants to arrange reunions and Sarah thinks we should hire ourselves out to judge the major prizes.  And Irvine paid me a lovely compliment.  It began 'David, over these last days I've been really impressed by your..'  How do you think it ended.  'Wit'? 'Charm?' 'Generosity'? 'Literary judgement'? 'Literary brilliance'? 

No. It ended 'capacity for alcohol.'  Oh well.  No, actually I felt rather flattered, that coming from Irvine of all people.

Another Apology - 30/05/2008

My very dear blog readers,

I can only apologise for the non-appearance of a blog in May.  I am glad to say that this is due entirely to my being very busy.  I hope to have an exciting announcement very soon. Be patient, fans.  I will do a new blog before the end of the week beginning June 16th.

I know.  Gordon Brown, the price of fuel, and now this.  I feel for you.  I really do.

Words beginning with F - 11/04/2008

Hi there, bloggers.

I did it.  I said 'Hi'.  It's a word I find very difficult.  I'm a hello man,  increasingly out of place in the world of 'hi' and 'hiya'.  I daresay in the end the more prestigious reaches of our education system will be known as 'hiya education'.

I have some random thoughts to share with you since I last blogged - a disgracefully long time ago - and in an effort to pretend that there was some attempt at a theme I decided to link them through words beginning with f.  Hence the title.  And now in two paragraphs I haven't used a single word beginning with f.  Get a grip, Nobbs.

O.K.  Failure.  My visit to Birmingham on March the 3rd was a dreadful failure.  I was booked to give a talk at an exhibition at MacArts, an arts centre in Birmingham.  This was in connection with an exhibition by Alistair Grant, who invented a character called King Shoddy who presided over a kingdom of rubbish as Britain sank into the sea in a tide of rubbish.  The exhibition was to a certain extent at least inspired by my Grot sequences in the second book and the second series of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.  The idea was that they would show two episodes of the second series of the sitcom, with my talk sandwiched in between.  I was looking forward to it.

I presented myself at the arts centre at six p.m. to meet a young lady called Alex Boyd.  She had gone home.  I was somewhat miffed.  Also neither of the two charming young ladies on reception had even heard of my talk.  I was remiffed.  I asked, somewhat tartly, if I might see somebody who knew something. 

They fetched the duty manageress, who said, 'What's your name again?'  'David Nobbs,' I replied.  She responded with just the words every author longs to hear after plying his trade for forty four years.  'It doesn't ring a bell,' she said.

 I was becoming uneasy.  I apologised to the ladies on reception for my slight tartness.  Could this in some way be my fault?  Had I forgotten that they had sent an email cancelling the talk?

My wife and I sat in the canteen, nursing cups of tea and coffee that we didn't want.  After quite a long time the duty manageress returned with a very tall man who bent down till his face was level with mine and said, quietly and sympathetically, 'Your talk is on April the 3rd, Mr Nobbs.'   My first really serious senior moment, and a failure indeed.

What would have put the tin lid on it would have been if I'd forgotten to go on April the 3rd, but I didn't.  Everything went very well, but that doesn't make a story.  Only the failures make good stories to comedy writers.

Next f word.  Folly.  And also farce.  Since the last Nobbblog you will all no doubt have read of the unfortunate daughter of Earl Spencer.  This lady desired to see her favourite football team, Chelsea.  The chauffeur was summoned, and off they set.  He entered 'Stamford Bridge' in his Satnav, and off they went to Stamford Bridge, a small village in Yorkshire, quite pretty buit singularly lacking in Premiership football matches.

O.K., one can understand that he didn't realise that there were two Stamford Bridges, but wouldn't you have thought that one of them would have noticed, on the long journey from Northamptonshire, that they were going North, and that London is not North of Northamptonshire?  You would have thought that she would have said, 'It's left for Leeds and right for York, are you absolutely sure we're going in the right direction?'  But, you see, he's her driver so she would trust him in matters of driving, and Satnav is technological so it must be right.  Much of the world of computer failure is explained by this sad story - the machine is only as good as the person who programs it.  My own fear - another important f word - is that farce of this kind renders poor comedy writers impotent - we just can't beat real life.

Next f word.  Parrots.  Parrots who use f words.  Those of you (that means most of you, surely) who are familiar with the full canon of my work will know that I have a fondness - nice f word - for the conversation of parrots (notably in Second From Last In The Sack Race, unavailable from all good bookshops).  Well there was a splendid parrot story this week, and in case you missed it, I must quote the Times in full.

'Nuneaton.  A foul-mouthed parrot has taught two other birds to swear, to the annoyance of the owner of a wildlife sanctuary.  Barney, a seven-year-old macaw, has been swearing so often in front od a pair of African greys, Sam and Charlie, that they have picked up his language.  Geoff Grewcock, owner of the Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary, said: 'They just sit there swearing at each other.  It sounds like a builders' yard.  These birds can live until they are 70 so there are potentially another sixty years of this to contend with.'  In 2005 Barney was placed in solitary confinement after he told the local mayor to "f*** off" during a civic visit and then turned to two poilice officers and a vicar and added "You can f*** off too."'

The f word for this is 'funny'.  If you don't find that funny, there's no hope for you.  The details are all so perfect.  Sam and Charlie are wonderfully ordinary names for African greys, annd as for Geoff Grewcock - you couldn't make it up.  Nuneaton, too, a town desperately in need of a few laughs.  Solitary confinement for a parrot.  Fantastic. And "You can f*** off too.'!  That "too" is sublime.  Barney really does understand what he's saying. And the insulted included those three classic butts - a mayor, a vicar and the police.  I tell you - those birds have got sitcom cracked. 

Next f word.  Fiasco.  It has to be Terminal 5.  My only comment on this utterly embarrassing farrago of folly, farce and failure is about the extraordinary fact that some of the suitcases have to travel down 27 kilometres of...of...chutes?  escalators?  Let's just say 'of whatever suitcases have to travel down'.  I am struck by an image I cannot get rid of - a suitcase winning Sunday's London marathon.

Final f word.  Flame.  Thousands and thousand of police guarding this wretched flame as it makes its way past rival teams of protesters  People are getting upset that the Olympics are being politicised.  For goodness sake, this journey of the precious flame is no great valued tradition. It was created by Adolf Hitler.  I can feel another f word coming on.

I don't want to know about the next Olympics even before they start.  I deplore what the Chinese are doing in Tibet.  But something else I worry about is the Olympics after the next Olympics.  What kind of a show will be put on by the nation that built Terminal 5?

Next f word - final.  A final thought.  Should Gordon Brown go to the official opening/closing?  The Nobbblog says that he should go to them all.  The Nobbblog believes that he should sit as close as possible to the Chinese leaders, plus a few other dignitaries, including President Sarkozy and Hilary Clinton, and he should take with him three new friends - Barney the parrot and Sam and Charlie, the African greys.

APOLOGY - 16/03/2008

Dear Nobblogg

I am so sorry to have been silent for so long, but I'm glad to say that the reason is that I have been so busy writing.  I'm afraid even this isn't a blog, it's just an apology.

On Tuesday I went to London, had a good time at the Oldie Awards, then went to the readthrough of the scripts for the second series of my Radio 4 sitcom, The Maltby Collection.  It's a bit special to me, is this.  In fact I've enjoyed writing it more than any scripts since A Bit of a Do.  There was a great atmosphere and a lot of laughter and I thought, 'Right.  Not much work to do here.  Now at last I can write to my dear friends, the Nobbloggers.'

Then came the blow.  Five of the scripts were too short.  What could I do?  I had to write extra stuff, and I am only just going to be able to get it done in time for the recordings, and of course I have to be at those.

So I've no time to write to you properly until early April.  Watch this space.

A GREAT NEW PRIZE, BLOGGERS - 21/01/2008

In recent days a few people have told me that they have enjoyed my blogs, and I've thought, 'Oh my God, I've forgotten to do one for ages.'   I have to confess, you see, that I am not a natural blogger.  When I get the writing itch, I turn to a novel or a play or an episode of a sitcom, and my webside gets out of date.  And I know, from my perusal of other people's websites, that there is nothing more depressing than an out of date site, untended, forlorn, covered in virtual dust.

There is another reason for my neglect - my utter technical ineptitude.  After a certain number of minutes my computer disconnects and all my blogging gets lost.  I get round this only by transferring my text to the blog every few minutes, hoping that there won't be thousands of you logging on and finding a curiously unfinished paragraph.  I'm off now to transfer this bit.  Bye.

Hi there.  I'm back.   I wonder how long blogs and blogging will survive.  I wrote a play for Yorkshire Television, later adapted as a BBC sitcom, called 'Dogfood Dan and the Carmarthen Cowboy.'  It was about two lorry drivers. One of them took dogfood from Hull to Carmarthen and came home empty, the other took dogfood from Carmarthen to Hull and came home empty.  (Satire)  The title referred to their handles.  Remember handles?  They were the names you used on Citizen's Band radio.  What a craze that was for at least a fortnight.  Will blogs go the same way?  'Old Nobbsy's so out of touch up there in Yorkshire.  He's still blogging.'  'No!'

Anyway, in an attempt to compensate you for the irregular updates to the Nobblog (blogging is an ugly word, so let's make it even uglier) I have decided to hold A GREAT COMPETITION with THREE WONDERFUL PRIZES - just for you.  Only those who access the Nobblog will know the competition even exists.  I don't have all the details yet, but it will involve some kind of general knowledge quiz.  I have decided on the prizes, though, and they are fantastic. 

I wonder if any of you have noticed how many marvellous men have surnames beginning with B.  Well there will be three prizes, each featuring a long weekend with a marvellous man whose surname begins with B.

Yes, folks, you will have a chance, an unparalleled, never before offered chance, of spending a long weekend with either Michael Barrymore, Gordon Brown or Paul Burrell.  I know.  I'm generosity personified.  All that I need to do to fix this great competition is to persuade the three man to play ball.

But first I need a bit of input from you.  I just cannot decide which of the three prizes should be first prize, second prize and third prize.  It's so hard to separate them.  Perhaps you can help.

Talking of plays for Yorkshire Television, I also write a play called Cupid's Darts, and that has formed the basis of my latest novel, Cupid's Dart, the paperback version of which will be published by Arrow Books seven days before Valentine's Day, giving you the chance to buy it for your beloved at any good bookshop, and even at some bloody awful bookshops.  The play starred Robin Bailey and Lesley Ash, whose first starring role it was.  She was brilliant, utterly captivating, and for that alone I could have dedicated the book to her, but the real reason was my sorrow and anger over the horrible infection she picked up in hospital and which has left her needing to walk with a stick.   Since I dedicated the book to her she has of course been awarded five million pounds.

I'm not going to debate whether this is a fair sum - money can never fully compensate for any degree of loss of one's health and beauty - but I am going to debate the economics.  Few things in our depressing country depress me more than the fact that one is liable to become ill by going to hospital.  For one thing, a land of which that is true is hard to satirise.  We liive in a land of self-satirisation.

Why do people get ill by going into hospitals?  Because, in order to save money, cleaning has been contracted out.  I visited five hospitals last summer during 'The Nosebleed Weeks (Soon to become a Feature Film)'  Some of the hospitals were good.  York District Hospital was truly excellent.  Except for the cleaning.  The cleaning was of a pathetic standard in all five hospitals, and nobody in the hospitals dared to say anything about it.  Saving money cost Lesley's five million and millions more besides.  The Nobbblog (I've added an extra B to make the word uglier still) says that this the economics of the madhouse.

Another dreadful instance of this contracting out occurs on the railways, with the maintenance of the lines entirely separated from the running of the trains.  This means that when the train is very very late you''ve nobody on the train to blame, which is intolerable.  I used to read a Dick Francis novel on the train, because it was just the right length for the journey from York to Kings Cross and back.  Since Network Rail things have changed.  Last week I took War and Peace, and finished it at Retford.

I did consider contracting out some aspects of my novel writing.  I held discussions with a firm in Yeovilton which specialise in character development, and even went so far as to meet Plots Are Us of Preston.  But in the end I decided that the whole thing should be done by one organisation.  NHS and Network Rail, take note.

As I pen this edition of the Nobbblog, it is raining outside.  Thank goodness it's outside.  And of course there are floods.  Now this week it hasn't actually rained any more than in many other weaks in the ghastly whinters of this beknighted island  ( I knew I shouldn't have trusted Spellcheck of Staines).  So what's gone wrong?  After exhaustive, not to mention exhausting, discussions with the man on the Clapham Ominbus (how does that service survive with only one male passenger?) the Nobbblog has come to the conclusion that part of the problem is that rivers used to be dredged far more than they are now.  Why are they dredged less?  To save money.  What is the result?  Vast expense.  The Nobbblog says that prevention should be the name of the game, and it says to Gordon Brown,  'Get your finger out, Gord, or Barrymore and Burrell will leap ahead of you in the great long weekend prize stakes.'

Another depressing thought about this depressing island - today, the third Monday in January, is regarded as being the most depressing day of the year - has suddenly struck me.  Immigration.  There is a vast amount of legal and illegal immigration.  I'm not making the usual points about this.  I'm just saying, 'Oh my god, things must be even more depressing elsewhere.'  That is a thought.

Still, one thing that has been there to cheer us all up this winter is the dear old Beeb.  Suddenly, in the midst of all the gory series about serial killers (The Nobbblog says, 'Bring back One Man and His Dog') we have had some really rather good costume dramas.  Costume dramas are like London buses.  You wait for months, and then three come along - Cranford, Sense and Sensibility, and Lark Rise to Candleford.  If you don't pay attention you can get very confused about the plot, especially as a lot of the same actors are in them all.

I began my career, all those years ago, on 'That Was The Week, That Was'.  Oh, for it now.  I would love to write a nice little utterly confused costume drama sketch.  The title?  'Lark Rise to Cranford'

Never mind.  Why give these gems to millions?  They are for you and your eyes only, because, bloggers, you are very special to me, both of you.

It's raining inside now as well.  I must find a new roofer.

See you soon.

This edition of the Nobbblog was written for David by the Bromsgrove Blog Company. 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS - 25/12/2007

On this my very first web Christmas I want to give a huge thank you to all those who have contacted the site and even more to those who have sent a web enquiry to me  They mean a lot to me.  If you haven't received a reply it means that your email address must have been given wrong or, as happened a few times, I received no name or message whatsoever.  The contact with you means a lot to me, and I always reply if I can.

I hope you will all have/have all had a marvellous Christmas and a great 2008.

More very soon.

PC World - 01/12/2007

When I heard the news about the teddy bear in the Sudan, one of my first thoughts, after my horror had subsided, was that in the modern world there can be no place for satire and perhaps no place for comedy.  Comedy writers are redundant  The world is creating its own comedy as it goes along. On reflection I realised that events like that make the need for satire and for comedy more urgent than ever.  People who have no sense of humour easily lose all sense of proportion and all relationship with common sense. 

Political correctness has made life quite difficult for those of us who work at the word face.   Since I last communicated with you - too long ago, but I get bound up with whatever I'm writing and forget about the internet, I am still not truly an IT person, IT to me is something you used to add to gin - there has been another, much smaller story which also seems to do the satirist's work for him (or her - this is all about pc). 

Sarah Kennedy, of Radio 2 fame - and widely heard, as I know because she was kind enough to praise a comment of mine and so many people heard it and mentioned it to me - told listeners last month that her car had almost run down a black man because she didn't see him until he opened his mouth and she saw his teeth - or words to that effect.  The BBC received complaints that this was racist and made an apology.

What is racist about that?  The man was black.  That is a fact.  The fact that he was black is also germane to the story.  If she had said that she nearly ran over a man because she couldn't see him until he opened his mouth, it would have been pretty lame.  She had to say that he was black.  There is nothing offensive in that unless you think that it is offensive to call people black, that black is an insulting word.  Clearly the people who complained do.  They are, I would suggest, the racists.

I read of at least one council whose councillors voted to ban the use of the phrase 'black coffee' as being offensive.  That is an even worse case of racism, though presumably they would be too thick to understand that.  Oh dear.  Is that remark thickist, or councillorist?

When I created the hippopotamus joke in Reggie Perrin, I received no complaints.  Would that be so today?  Wouldn't it be regarded as dreadfully sexist, or even mother-in-lawist, and perhaps, if you were a wild life enthusiast with a horrible mother-in-law, hippopotamusist .

I recently took part in a 40th anniversary tribute to The Frost Programme.  One of the sketches shown was a lovely little joke from Barry Cryer.  A man goes into an icecream parlour and asks for an icecream.  The assistant says, 'You're Jewish, aren't you?  We don't sell icecream to Jews.'  'That's outrageous,' says the customer.  'I'd like to speak to the manager.'  'Mr Cohen?' calls out the assistant.   Mr Cohen arrives.  'This man is complaining that we don't serve icecream to Jews,' says the assistant.  'That's right,' says Mr Cohen.  'We don't.'  'But that's outrageous,' says the customer.  'You're Jewish yourself.'  'Have you tasted our icecream?' says Mr Cohen.

This is a splendid Jewish joke and went down very well when recorded 40 years ago.  When it was replayed to the 2007 auudience I sensed a feeling of unease, tension, broken of course when the tag line was spoken.

We are all so much more sensitive now.  On the same recording of the Frost report, there was a tag line consisting of one word - 'rapists'.  I can't remember the joke, but it had received a big laugh 40 years ago.  I would guess that it wouldn't today.  When I edited the TV series, 'Sez Les', we had a gag in which Les, dressed as a Viking, rushes into a village of straw huits wielding a primitive club amd shouting, 'Rape.  Rape.  Rape.'  He bangs on one of the huts and a very elderly crone emerges.  'Pillage.  Pillage.  Pillage,' cries Les.

That joke is sexist, ageist, almost every kind of ist.  Thirty years ago, in that absurd context, with the sublime sight of Les as the world's least likely Viking, the joke caused no offence whatsoever.  I am pretty sure we would not have even attempted such a joke today.  In this particular instance I am on the side of political correctness.  Rape is just not funny.  It is less a matter of principle, in deciding what is and what is not funny, more a matter of common sense and above all a sense of proportion.

I must confess a secret weakness here.  I love making cannibal jokes.  'I had the chance to meet some cannibals once, and I must admit I was really looking forward to a good dinner, I've always fancied eating people.  Just my luck.  They weren't having dinner, it was a finger buffet.'  Offensive? 

My conclusion about comedy and political correctness is that it has had some good and necessary effect but that it has been taken to such extremes that it is in danger of disappearing up its own earnestness.  I'd like to end with a return to the vexed question of the adjective 'black'.

I once gave a few seminars on comedy at Leeds Metropolitan University.  The first one, I freely admit, was pretty hopeless.  One or two of the students were black, and that is a fact, not an insult.  One of them objected to my use of the term 'black comedy' as being offensive.  I said that it had always been known as this and that it was nothing to do with the colour of skin, the reason for the name was that the night is black (I have no idea whether that is true, but it seemed convincing at the time).  Anyway, he didn't accept it, and began to treat me with hostility as well as contempt.  At the end he asked me, in tones of heavy sarcasm, 'From your vast experience of writing comedy, could you give us just one sentence of helpful advice?'  I groped, and suddenly heard myself say, 'Yes.  Enjoy your writing.  Then at least one person will have.'  Unexpectedly, he liked this reply, and suddenly grinned with real friendliness.  Which has nothing to do with political correctness, but then surely an occasional touch of complete irrelevance is welcome?  It's all a question of proportion.

YET MORE HOSPITALS - 22/10/2007

I promised/threatened (delete whichever word is inappropriate) to continue my tales from a hospital bed, and so here I am again.

My next spell in hospital was in Hereford, where I had a prostate operation in the 1980s.  Hereford and Herefordshire are both lovely, and characters abound, so perhaps it's not surprising that I have more memories connected with this hospital than with any other.

I was admitted on the evening prior to the operation, and sought comfort in the day room.  I didn't find comfort there.  Instead I found a man who told me, 'Oh, I had a prostate op six weeks ago.  They told me it would be simple, and here I am still.  I've had all sorts of complications.'  Terrific.  Thank you very much.

Shortly after I came round from the op, I heard the following conversation.

'Do you remember the ginger haired man who served on the cheese counter in the market on Tuesdays?'

'Yes, haven't seen him lately.'

'You wouldn't have.  He's dead.  Do you remember the bald bookie who always shouted in a very squeaky voice at Hereford races?'

'Yes, he wasn't there last time I went.'

'He wouldn't have been.  He's dead.  You know the one-legged newspaper seller who stood on the corner of High Town?'

'Yes, I haven't seen him lately either.'

'You wouldn't have.  He's dead.  You know who I mean when I mention the very rude, fat man who served in the fish shop?'

'Yes.  I haven't seen him either.  He's dead, is he?'

'No.  He's moved to Kidderminster.'

I promise you I wasn't hallucinating.

As I began to recover, I couldn't help noticing the strange behaviour of the man in the end bed opposite.  He was so creepy and crawly to the nurses, 'Thank you so much, my darling' and 'May I ask a little favour, my love, if you aren't too busy?', but the moment they had gone he would insult them under his breath.  'Fat cow.'  'Ugly bitch'.  And worse.  When it was time for him to go home, a nurse rang his wife and said she could come and collect him.  The nurse told me what his wife replied.  'I'm not going to collect hi.m  I suppose if you send him I'll have to accept him, but I'm not going to collect him.'

In the bed next to this man there was a younger man who didn't talk much, and then only very quietly, so I didn't speak to him until it was time to clean the ward and the beds in one half were moved into the middle so that the cleaners could scrub the floor under where the beds had been.  That tells you it was a while ago.  Nobody cleans under beds any more.  No wonder there are so many infections in our hospitals.  The cleaning is a national disgrace.  It's murder by contracting out.  Anyway, my bed was now close to this man's, and he spoke to me for the first time, very quietly.

'They'll start to come in soon.' he said.

'Who?' I asked.

'Them.'

'Them?'

'Ministers.  Vicars.  Priests.  Rabbis.  Trying to cheer us up.  Armies of them.'

His tone expressed equal disdain for them all.  No prejudice here. 

 Shortly after the cleaning was over, a young C of E vicar did indeed appear.  He was red-faced, embarrassed, nervous, wet behind the ears, palpably new to this kind of thing.  My soft-voiced friend pointed at him and yelled, at the top of his voice, 'It's started'.  The young vicar hurried on as fast as his little legs could carry him.

By the time of my next hospital visit I was living in North Yorkshire, and had to have a biopsy of the bladder.  I didn't stay in overnight (and I'm glad to say that nothing sinister was found), but I did have a general anaesthetic so I think I can count it as a proper hospital admission.  I was only in the ward for a couple of hours or so, but there was still time to over hear one classic conversation.

A shy young black doctor came to examine a dry, deaf, elderly Yorkshireman.

'Have you got a cough?' said the doctor.

'You what?' said the man.

The doctor looked round the ward, and then drew  the curtains round the man's bed, as if he believed that we would no longer be able to hear.  We heard every word.

'Have you got a cough?'

'You what?'

'Will you cough for me?'

'You what?'

'Cough for me.'

'You what?'

By now the doctor was really shouting.

'Cough for me.'

'Oh!  No, thanks.  I've just had a cup.'

We move now from Hereford and Harrogate to another city beginning with H.  Ho Chi Minh City.  My wife and I were on a Swan Hellenic cruise, and I passed out in the restaurant.  I was taken to the ship's medical centre, where a female doctor, I won't call her a lady doctor, said to me, with all the bedside manner of Adolf Hitler on a bad day, 'You've either had a heart attack or you are going to have a heart attack.'  I was taken down a cvery steep gangway on a stretcher by very small and panicky Vietnamese ambulance men and rushed to an international clinic through the teeming streets at a speed guaranteed to give anyone a heart attack.

A beautiful Vietnamese lady doctor, I will call her a lady, soon assured me that I hadn't had a heart attack.  I did have a heart irregularity, but it turned out to be nothing to worry about, and we later deduced that I had passed out by lunching in a hurry in a combination of great heat and humidity on a hot Madras curry and a large glass of red wine, all of which led to dehydration and lowering of the blood pressure.

One day we were on the cruise of a lifetime, the next I was being told by an Australian doctor, 'I'm sending you to Bangkok General.'  It was a low moment, but eventually I was so stable that they decided to send me home instead.  It took more than ten days to find a medical escort.  He flew to Bangkok from London, and  Vietnamese doctor escorted us to Bangkok. 

On the way to the airport we passed a football stadium and he became very animated.

'David Beckham play there?  Only twenty minute, but I have een him.'

I was about to say, 'What do you mean - "een him", when I realised that the doctor couldn't say his esses.  There follwed a bizarre conversation.

'You like football.'

'Very much.  I love the Premierhip.  I watch recording every Unday.  I upport Charlton Athletic.'

'Charlton Athletic?  Why?  Nobody supports Charlton Athletic even in Charlton.'

'Charlton Athletic very good team.  Cott Parker make big mitake go to Newcatle United.  Big mitake.  Alan Curbiley very good manager.'

I don't remember any extraordinary conversations in the clinc, but I will never forget that one with the doctor.  I think it speaks volumes about the strange and illogical fascination men have with football. 

Two hospitals to go.  Hang on in there, we can make it.

Charing Cross next, this summer, after a nosebleed that lasted four and three quarter hours.  I was only in two days, and I only recall one conversation now.  On the lunch menu there was, among other delights, cod with parsley sauce.  A somewhat obese lady waddled up to the nurse's desk and said, 'Do you have anything for really bad indigestion?'

'Why?' asked the nurse.  'Do you have bad indigestion?'

'No,' said the lady, 'but I will have this afternoon.  Cod with parsley sauce always gives me bad indigestion.'

'Are you sure?' asked the nurse - rather foolishly, I thought, to be honest.

'Of course I'm sure,' said the woman.  'I have it every week.  I should know.'

I should have kept quiet, but I didn't.  As the woman waddled painfully past my bed, I asked, 'If cod with parsley sauce gives you such bad indigestion, why do you order it?'

She looked at me as if I was mad.

'I like it,' she said.

My last hospital stay, in York District Hospital, occurred just a couple of weeks after that, towards the end of August this year, after sanother violent nosebleed.  This time, although still on the NHS, I got a room to myself.

Nothing interesting happened at all, and I kept feeling, quite wrongly - I have nothing but praise for this hospital, ublike some of the others, that I was being neglected, forgotten, overlooked.

Private room?  No, thank you.  So boring.

Hospitals - 10/10/2007

I'm sorry to have left you so long without an update.  How have you been able to bear it?  The cause, of course, was my nosebleeds, which got worse after my last blog before they got better.  I ended up in hospital on saline drips and oxygen, and with the transfusion service ready if needed.

Anyway, my nose is all behind me now, as the contortionist said, and I've had a nice long rest, and I'm writing again.

I realised two things about hospitals during the nosebleed time.   I realised that I quite like them, and that I've been in quite a lot of them.  I think of myself as a very healthy man indeed, yet I  have been in no less than eleven hospitals in my life.

Probably I like them because I've always been ill when I've been in them.  I only like being a patient.  I hate them when I'm visiting patients, even if I only have to stay an hour.  But when I'm ill the fact that all decisions are taken out of my hands is really rather enjoyable.  In fact I get thoroughly institutionised in a very short time.

So I thought today that I might tell you a bit about my various stays in hospital. 

The first one was Petts Wood Maternity Hospital, in Kent, in 1935.  I don't remember anything about it.

Next came the Royal Naval Hospital in Plymouth, in 1954.  I was doing my national service, in the Royal Signals.  I suffered from the skin complaint psoriasis.  I was in the Depot Regiment at Denbury, near Newton Abbot, awaiting embarkation for Cyprus along with the other eleven members of my draft.  On the day before we were to leave I was told that I couldn't go outside Europe, because of my psoriasis, so all my mates left without me.  I was devastated, and went to the camp doctor, who told me that the best cure for the complaint was sea bathing and sunshine.  'Wouldn't I get this in Cyprus?'  'Of course.'  'Then why can't I go?'  Because you're in the army.'

I demanded treatment, and to my surprise I got it.  I was sent to the Royal Naval Hospital in Plymouth, and in seven weeks they cured my skin complaint with coal tar and baths.  It returned as soon as I left hospital, of course.  I liked the Royal Naval Hospital, except for the twice daily tot of rum that was on offer.  I couldn't even abide the smell of it, because it was on dark rum, in Loughborough, that I first got drunk. I spent one of the worst half hours of my life in a hedge just outside the town.  I've never gone near dark rum, or indeed that hedge, or even Loughborough since that evening. 

One day it was my turn to collect the lunches for the ward.  It was a self-service hospital.  I set off, with twelve lunches in a trolley, and got stuck in the lift.   I didn't go hungry, but the ward did.  It was three and a half hours before I was released.  After about an hour and a half some engineers arrived.  I could hear them working on the mechanism far below.  It sounded as if they were hacking at it with axes.  It was a very tense afternoon.  I ate four lunches to calm my nerves, and that evening I almost drank my tot of rum.

1955 saw me in two more hospitals, both military ones.  I can't remember which one came first, but let's say it was the British Military Hospital in Munster, Westphalia.  My complaint was not the sort one boasts about.  I had boils in both ears.  These came from wearing earphones in connection with my work as a morse radio operative.  Boils in both ears and psoriasis.  No wonder the nurses weren't turned on.  Now, when I think of it, I'm reminded of John Cleese in Monty Python as the chemist coming out to a crowd of people waiting for their medicines and saying, 'Which of you is the boil on the bum?'  The only strange thing that happened in this hospital was that the man in the next bed told me that he was on a charge for losing a tank.  I think that must have been quite an achievement.

The next hospital was a Canadian Military Hospital, in Iserlohn, in the Ruhr.  Well, I think it was a Canadian hospital.  Everyone else in the ward was Canadian  I was there for my psoriasis, the boils having yielded to treatment.  There is no doubt that this was the most extraordinary of all the wards I've been in.  There were four Canadian soldiers in there who had nothing wrong with them at all.  They slept all day, didn't eat anything, but late in the evenings they all got up, climbed out of a window, dropped to the ground and disappeared, to return a few hours later carrying several dead rabbits, which they then proceeded to cook in the ward kitchen.  A good scam if you like rabbit.  I looked at them with awe.  These were real men.  My little skives seemed pathetic by comparison.

Back in civvy street, I actually survived for more than twenty  years before needing further hospitalisation.  Then, one Monday, I drove from my home in London to Manchester to attend a read through of a TV sitcom pilot I had written.  It was called 'The Glamour Girls'.  I knew the moment the rehearsals started that the two leading girls (not Brigit Forsyth and Sally Watts, who eventually played the parts and were splendid) were utterly and totally wrong. After the day's rehearsal I went to somebody's farewell party, and began to feel as if it was my own farewell party.  I went off to an Italian restaurant with one of the actors, my great friend James Warrior, who was the only survivor from the pilot to make it to the actual series.  I felt more and more ill and told him that I was going back to my hotel.  Outisde the restaurant I fell and cracked my head.  I tried to stand.  My legs were like rubber.  Several times I tried and fell.  I told a passing couple that I was ill, not drunk, and they, bless them, went into the restaurant to find Will, as James is called, and he, bless him, rushed out and drove me to Salford Royal Hospital, where they pumped steroids into me and probably saved my life.  A doctor told me I'd got Hodgson's Disease.  I said, 'Has he got mine?'  Unfortunately this was probably just as funny as most of the lines in the sitcom.

I spent several days in that hospital.  What was wrong with me?  Well,   It had been a long tense day, I had endured too much stress, and my blood pressure had plummeted.  This is known to laymen as a panic attack, to doctors as a cardio-vascular incident, but when I was asked what was wrong with me I said that I was suffering from a severe case of bad casting.

 While I was in that elderly but splendid hospital, Mrs Thatcher was elected to power for the first time.  Several of the nurses wept.  It was a very moving and disturbing indication of just how politically divided Britain had become.  Now, I fear that we would all weep whoever was elected.

The next hospital to take me into its crumbling depths was the Middlesex Hospital in Goodge Street in London.  Again, the cause was a panic attack.  Again, this was associated with a read through, for the pilot episode of my Channel 4 sitcom, Fairly Secret Army.  It went well.  The cast were splendid.  But I suppose I knew subconsciously that it was a difficult show, depending for a great deal of its humour on the ridiculous pseudo-military language of its main character, played by Geoffrey Palmer.  'Tricky cove, Johnny Conversation.  Never quite got the hang of the blighter.'  Some people found this absolutely hilarious.  Many offices took to talking in that style.  Reviewers, those who liked the show and those who hated it, reviewed it in that style.  I suppose I knew, that morning, that this was a cult show in the sense that it would appeal a lot to a few people but not at all to the majority.  I suppose this realisation caused me stress.  Down went the blood pressure.  Once more I crashed to the pavement, this time outside a pub.

My one memory of the Middlesex is my last night.  Two very nice nurses came to my bed and told me, very gently, that they were moving my bed next to the Indian.  Nobody could stand more than one night next to him, so they put people beside his bed on their last night.  Should I even mention this in these politically correct times?  Well, yes, because it was true, and it wasn't because he was an Indian that people could only stand one night of him.  He didn't smell of lamb dhansak and have appalling sanitary habits.  He was very well spoken and extremely fastidious and polite.  The problem was simply that he talked...and talked...and talked.  And boasted.  When he discovered that I was a writer, he took no interest whatsoever in my work, but told me of all the writers he had known.  'Lawrence.  I'm speaking of D.H.  I only met T.E. once.  What talks D.H. and I had.  Frieda would bring us a mug of chocolate and say, "I'm off to bed, chaps" and we'd jaw on about this and that till half past two.'  Had he ever met D.H.Lawrence?  Did it matter?  How could I stop him?  I very nearly had another panic attack. 

There are still five hospitals to go - Hereford, Harrogate, Ho Chi Minh City, Charing Cross and York.  Hereford was particularly rich in eccentric patients, and Ho Chi Minh City was quite an experience too.  Watch this space and I'll tell you about them next week - unless I'm in hospital, of course.                                                      

Nosebleeds - 15/08/2007

I've never really thought of nosebleeds as being serious - until this summer.  My nosebleeds began a month ago, and they are the reason why I have taken so long to write this latest instalment.

My summer hasn't been all about nosebleeds, of course.  I do have pleasant memories to talk to you about - our village feast, my trip to the Montreux Jazz Festival, the marvellous remarks made to me about my work by an elderly lady in a crowded London room.  But the nosebleeds do dominate.

For those of you who like detail, they were from the right nostril only.  My left nostril has behaved impeccably throughout.

At first I didn't take the nosebleeds particularly seriously.  They weren't pleasant, but they did stop.  Then, on a Monday morning, a couple of weeks ago, I woke in our hotel room in London with a real pearler.

It began at twenty five past five, and went on and on and on.  And on.  If you don't like the sound of blood, close your eyes while you read the next bit.  Blood even poured from my right eye and down my throat with such power that it forced its way through my lips.  O.K., you can open your eyes again now.

I sat pinching my nose in the approved fashion, and trying to think about pleasant things, like our village feast.  It's called the Feast Day, but, this being Britain, it isn't a feast at all.  There is a procession behind a pipe band, there's a fancy dress competition for the children, and there's a fun fair

The fair is small and old-fashioned, but innocent - and fun.  Local osteopaths stand hopefully beside the dodgems, keeping an eye open for customers.  In the pubs, which are open all day only on such special occasions, dentists offer their friends pork scratchings. It's a sweet occasion, but not quite exciting enough in this modern era to keep me from thinking about my nosebleed.

From time to time the flow of blood eased, but back it always came, and in the end we decided I would have to go to A and E.  Susan had to help me dress, because I couldn't remove my hands from my nose.  I didn't look at my most dignified.  I trted to think about the nice remarks of that elderly woman, who had liked my work so much, but it was no use.

I tried to amuse myself by recalling the moment, early in my time in our village, when I was asked to present the prizes at the flower show.  Luckily I wasn't asked to judge them.  Our village isn't part of the Midsomer group, where John Nettles would investigate at least four murders after a flower show, but it can still get pretty fraught if you insult somebody's giant marrow.

The name of our village is Burton Leonard, but a few days before the show I received a letter addressed to Bert and Leonard.  In my speech I said that I could picture them only too well.  Leonard was a 59 year old classics master at a public school, Bert was a 35 year old lorry driver and his bit of rough trade.  This wasn't quite the right note for a village flower show, luckily, so I've never been asked to open, close, or judge anything again.

I tried to take my mind off things with something more substantial - the Montreux Jazz Festival.  Susan and I spent three glorious days there in July with her daughter Briget and husband Mark and two Northern Irish friends, Janet and Alan.  The sun shone endlessly, lighting up the snow on top of the mountains.  The water on the lake was like glass.  The bars were crowded with happy music lovers of all ages.  There were stalls of food from all over the world, and one wandered to one's concert eating meals none of which cost more than 15 francs.  And not a nosebleed in sight.  Oh no.  Even this memory isn't working.

We had tickets for two concerts, and on the Saturday afternoon we spent four hours on a 'Hot Brazilian Boat', salsaing our way round the lake in a temperature of 34 degrees, to the music of four great Brazilian bands.  I felt so young and fit that day, utterly unaware of the nosebleeds to come.  Oh no!

Truth to tell, the two concerts were rather diappointing compared to the previous year, when we saw B.B.King's final concert in Europe, at the age of 80.  To mark the occasion, at the end of the concert, he brought friends up from the audience for an impromptu jam session.  When I tell you that these friends included Randy Crawford, and a pipless Gladys Knight, you'll know just how privileged we were.

The main acts of our two concerts this year were Sly and the Family Stone, and Jeff Beck.  Both disappointed us, even though two of our party, guitarists both, were great fans of Jeff Beck.  But, sadly, Sly Stone was simply past his sell-by date, too old and too ill. He reminded me of a famous oak tree of great age in my cousin's village of Great Yeldham.  It's held together with several metal bars.

The first supporting act on the second concert was a man called Raul Midon.  None of us had heard of him.  He was sensational.  He was born in New Mexico to an Argentinian father and an African/American mother.  He and his twin brother were premature, and were put in an incubator.  The eye protection was inadequate and both were blinded for life.  The brother, Marco, is a Nasa engineer.  Raul is a great star in the making.  What a story.  How pitiful to worry about nosebleeds.  Oh no.  They're back.

Think about Raul - his glittering guitar playing, the way he accompanies himself on an imaginary trumpet, making amazing sounds with his lips and mouth.  Think of his haunting songs, written by himself, many of them about blindness, none of them remotely mawkish.

Any of you who know me will be thinking, what is David on about?  The man knows nothing about music.  He's tone deaf.  Well, it's practically true.  When I was working on the Les Dawson show I was the only person there who didn't know why they were laughing at his piano playing.  But even I could thrill to the talent of Raul Midon.  There wasn't even a hit parade when I was at school.  I've come to music late in life and I intend to make the most of it.

I have to get back to the nosebleeds now.  Susan's back, she's got a taxi, soon we are at Westminster and Chelsea's A & E.  There they cauterise the nose, unsuccessfully.  Then they block it, which is horrible.

 While they are blocking it, to take my mind off it, I reflect on the remarks made by the elderly lady.

'You're my favourite author in the whole world,' she said.  I could only just hear her above the noise.

'Well, thank you very much,' I said.

'A friend put you onto me and I've read every single one of your books.  They're all brilliant.'

'I don't know what to say.'

'Don't say anything.  Just bask in the knowledge of all the pleasure you've given.'

'I will.  I'll bask.'

'I'm seeing my friend tomorrow for coffee.  Just wait till I tell her that I've actually met David Lodge.'

There are moments when nosebleeds don''t seem too bad.

Apology - 27/07/2007

Dear Readers

Many apologies for not having updated my blog for so long.  This is due to a combination of Switzerland, a cracked rib, rain, more rain, nosebleeds, deadlines. a bad case of CDD (Campbell Diary Depression) and the dreaded Blog Block

A new blog will appear here before the end of next week.

Keep smiling.

.

The arts, and David Dimbleby - 19/06/2007

In the last week or two I've been doing three very contrasting things.  I've been presenting an evening of arts programmes on SkyArts - to be shown later, watch this space - I've been listening to my Radio 4 sitcom, the Maltby Collection, which is set in a fictional art gallery cum museum, and I've been watching David Dimbleby travelling round Britain in a pink shirt and a Land Rover, admiring our beautiful buildings.

For the SkyArts evening, I had to choose four programmes.  I didn't choose any comedy, that seemed too obvious.  I wanted both the viewers to see The Other Side of David Nobbs.  No, I shouldn't joke about the size of the audience.  I believe it's quite respectable (as indeed are most of the viewers) and the fact that it's rather small  says more about the state of British taste in this age than about SkyArts.

One of the programmes I chose was a profile of David Hockney, entitled 'Pleasures of the Eye'.  Ever since I chose it he has been very visible on our screens, looking not a day older than he did twenty years ago - art keeps you young - banging on about the modern world's intolerance to smokers and the fact that people don't use their eyes any more.

How right he is.  I will risk your ridicule, but I have to tell you that one of the most exciting activities of my childhood was looking out of  windows.  That's what I did on trains.  It's true that there wasn't much else to do, but when I look at people on trains today I see the world passing by unnoticed while they look inwards, listening to music or having conversations on their mobiles so empty and trivial that I'd be ashamed to be overheard.

Even tourists don't look out of the window.  The main line from York to Edinburgh passes, on the right, York Minster, the glory of Durham cathedral and castle, the bridges of Newcastle, glimpses of the exquisite Northumberland coastline, the beautiful estuary and town of Berwick-on-Tweed, and yet more tantalising glimpses of coastline in Scotland.  On the left there are fields.  There is variety, some of the fields are big, some of them medium-sized, some of them small, but the entertainment isn't exactly exciting.  Just as many people sit on the left, with the fields, as on the right, with all the highlights, and it probably doesn't matter anyway as most of them don't look up at all.  They are reading guide books of their next destination or next year's holiday.  They only look at the things they're told to look at.  They have lost the capacity to use their eyes imaginatively.  Which brings me back to David Dimbleby and his pink shirt.  Or shirts.  I hope for the sake of the people he interviewed that it wasn't the same shirt all the time.

The other three programmes I chose for SkyArts were a profile of Arthur Miller, a film of the great blues guitarist B.B.King in concert, and a Finnish biopic, in Finnish, about Sibelius.  This has very strange subtitles, with many of the speeches coming up in in pairs, so that as Sibelius begins to speak to a pretty girl, the caption will come up, 'Will you marry me?' 'Of course I will'.  It rather spoils your emotional involvement with his shyness in asking the question when you already know the answer. 'Get on with it, man, of course she will', you think.  However, I hope that if you watch my evening of programmes, you will persist with the film, as in the end it becomes very moving.

Sibelius had two major problems.  He was bad with money and he drank too much.  I could identify with both of these problems.  The second one wasn't a surprise.  Finns are known for their drinking.  When I toured the youth hostels of Italy several decades ago, there was a huge noise of tuneless singing outside the hostel in Venice.  A drunk gondolier?  No.  Somebody said, 'That'll be the Finn.  There's one drunk Finn at every youth hostel in Europe.'  A shamblic youth entered and collapsed against a wall, slowly sliding to the floor.  'Where are you from?' I asked him.  'Helsinki,' he said, and passed out.  A great friend of mine, the warmly remembered Eric Stevens, who worked for ITN news and wrote and drank with rare talent, once told me that he was dreading the evening because it was going to be so alcoholic.  'You, Eric, dreading drink?  What sort of an evening is it?' I asked.  'The inaugural meeting of the Irish-Finnish Journalists' Friendship Association,'  he said.

I understood his fears.

One of the programmes that I didn't choose was 'How We Built Britain' with David Dimbleby.  I love architecture.  I think it's the most important of all art forms, because it's the one we can't avoid, however small is our interest in art.  We may not have paintings, we may  have never read a book, like. we are told, the Beckhams  (which small thing apparently doesn't stop Posh wanting to write them, what cheek, what hubris), but almost all of us live in a building.

Some of the buildings of Britain are exquisite, so I settled down for a visual feast.  And, intermittently, we got it.  Then we got another quite lengthy shot of David in his trusty Land Rover, driving past flat fields beneath endless skies.  'Clocked the colour of your shirt, now get on with it.' I wanted to cry.

One of the troubles about the programme is that he simply doesn't tell us much about the actual architecture.  He comes over all adjectival.  Things are vast, awesome, breathtaking, exquisite.  Ely Cathedral is absolutely fascinating architecturally, but he tells us nothing about this, clearly we are not trusted to be interested in anything about the history of architectural styles.  Social history, yes, and there's the other problem.  Everywhere he goes he has to talk to somebody, sometimes a resident - 'This must be a lovely place to live.'  'It is.' - but usually a humble craftsman.  I've grown to dread it when I see a workman looming up.  'How long have you been bodging?'   'Was your father a pargetter?'  'How long does it take to sweep all the chimneys?'  He presumably thinks he does this well, but to me he looks about as comfortable with it as a minor royal celebrating the centenary of an abattoir.

I'm not intending to make a personal attack on Uncle David.  I actually find him curiously endearing in the programme, and of course there are stunning bits, since we have some stunning buidings.  It's the concept I'm attacking.  This is dumbing down at its most stark.  Make it all human.  Reduce it to the audience's level.  I suppose I should be grateful that there isn't a phone in, which would enable somebody to make lots of money and would fill hours of screen time at no cost while we see all the buildings again as we vote for our favourite, helped/hindered by comments from Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell.  Dear God, what has this country come to?

Much of the art world is irritating, absurd, pretentious, but what an awful world it would be without art, and perhaps dumbing down is even worse than being pretentious, although both spring from a conviction that other people are less clever and receptive than oneself.

I try, even in my sitcom (if I may bring the subject back,. as I close, to one of my greatest interests, myself) to teeat the arts seriously.  I had, in my first episode, the foillowing lines, lines that express something I feel most deeply.

'What do we remember of ancient Egypt?  Their financial consultants?  Their insurance salesmen?  Their mortgage rates?  No.  We remember their art.  Art is what lives on.  Art is what binds us humans together.'

TITLES - 11/05/2007

I SWEAR BY IT - 09/04/2007

Attention Spans - 05/03/2007

I actually have a website! - 08/02/2007

I find it hard to believe that I have actually opened a website and am writing a blog.  Until about two years ago I didn’t even have a computer.  But then until last year I didn’t have a personal trainer either.  There are two things to be done about going old.  Fighting it or accepting it.  I find that I’m a fighter.
For most of my long career I have written everything in longhand, doing at least two drafts, and then typing it out.  I have gone on record as saying that I am an artist, that I need to feel the shape of the words as they flow through my fingers.  Oh dear.  What pretentious rubbish!
The truth is that the typewriter was an inflexible, primitive piece of technology.  There was almost no capacity for editing on it.  All that horrible Tippex, and those ghastly correction ribbons that never quite concealed the alteration, which I always wanted to make on the last line of the page, so that I had to type the whole page again, ugh, don’t go there, David.
It was because I could edit as I went along that I liked writing in longhand, and now I have that capacity in spades on my wonderful, darling computer – my God, am I really writing this?
Anyway, welcome to my website and welcome to my first blog.  Blog!  Great idea, horrible, inelegant word, like a lavatory for learners.  But there are so many inelegant words in our modern culture – bling, chav, asbo, they’re the literary equivalent of old, torn jeans and scruffy tee-shirts.  Britain was such a snobbish country for so long that we just have to accept that our crass, celebrity-mad, street-cred-conscious society is an inevitable reaction against all those years of stiff upper lips, contemptuous lower lips, and dressing for dinner.
I used the word ‘culture’ in that last paragraph.  What does it mean?  To the Culture Minister it means casinos.  I’ve been on the left of British politics all my life, but I find that just one more contemptible decision by Tony Bling’s government. 
And what about the use of the word ‘reality’ to describe collecting together a group of carefully contrasting people with small brains and huge egos and putting them in a room together and paying them lots of money to humiliate each other and getting the public to vote on who to eject?.  It may be entertaining, I don’t know, I haven’t watched it, I might not feel so angry about it if I did and that would be terrible.  But it certainly has no connection with any reality that I recognise.
So is this what my blog is going to be?  The outpourings of a grumpy old man.  I hope not, although it will be rather nice to be able to let off steam from time to time.  But I hope there will be a few likes along the way as well as dislikes.
I’m writing this the day after a snowfall which deposited at least a quarter of an inch of the white stuff onto the fields outside my house.  The prospect of this caused people to stock their trolleys in the supermarkets as if the outbreak of war was imminent.  
Oh dear, I’m grumbling again, but we are getting a bit wimpish, aren’t we?  We’ve moved from Blimpish to Wimpish.  It isn’t all our fault, though.  It’s the way we’re treated.  It’s Health and Safety Britain.  Oh, dear I can feel another grump coming on.
A few weeks ago in London I stayed in a hotel room with two large picture windows and a balcony.  There was a Health and Safety sticker on the windows, explaining that they couldn’t be opened because there was a balcony.  It’s almost as bad as America, where a new brand of stepladder has the word ‘Stop’in large letters on the top step.
You may not have noticed, but last Saturday, on a programme called ‘The Comedy Map of Britain’, I appeared naked on British television for the first time.  This produced record ratings for BBC1.  Unfortunately I was on BBC2.
This startling event took place at West Bay, near Bridport in Dorset.  It was at West Bay that Reggie Perrin left his clothes on the beach in ‘The Fall and Rise...’ and we went there to discuss the location and to re-enact the opening credits, in which Leonard Rossiter took all his clothes off, disappeared behind a bank of shingle, and was replaced by a stunt man who swam off into the sea.
I volunteered to do the stunt man bit as well, but all hell broke loose, they had to get the permission of my doctor, who was on holiday, and in the end it was deemed too dangerous on Health and Safety grounds.  I suppose they were frightened of a law suit if I collapsed and died.
Even taking my clothes off involved getting police permission, which was given grudgingly on condition that everyone on the beach was told that a man was going to take all his clothes off.  There weren’t many people on the beach, it was a weekday morning in October, but this ensured that we had a small crowd to watch the great event. 
It all went off fairly speedily, and I was concentrating so hard on getting it right and avoiding a very painful collision between private parts and shingle that I didn’t have time to feel embarrassed.  As I started to put my clothes on a lady’s voice rang out from the nearby pier.  ‘Can he do it again?’  Can he do it again?  Is there a catch-phrase lurking there?  Anyway, I felt quite flattered.
So what did I think of it all when I watched it?  I haven’t watched it.  We were out last Saturday, and I forgot to record it.  That’s what I’m like with machines.  It’s amazing really that I’ve managed to do this blog.