I have loved Doctor Who since I was small, at least since I was 5 years old. I will talk about its history up to, and after, its cancellation later. There is a mini publishing industry of books with fans talking about their experience of Who. Most of it is awful and very samey. This is about Russell T Davies.
I was first really aware of Russell T Davies with the novel Damaged Goods. This was not a book for kids. It is grim, set on a council estate in Manchester and has an explicitly gay character. Not a big deal now but this was 1996 (and while Who has always had a big LGBTQ+ fanbase the BBC had always been very careful of its properties and this was only a few years after AIDs became a headline issue). It was part of a run of excellent books.
Davies made the explosive series Queer as Folk. Probably the first example of rimming being mentioned on British TV, as well as the other sexual practices that were unknown to much of the audience. It was exuberant and happy. The scene where Stuart and Nathan drop Charlie at school in a car with Queers graffitied on it in large letters, playing over the scene is Suede’s Beautiful Ones, a trademark Davies scene.
There were more excellent series from him. The Second Coming, starring Christopher Ecclestone as the new Christ (in Manchester) is thought provoking. Bob and Rose was the story of a gay man who falls for a straight woman. He still like no other women and they both leer at men when they are out together. He got some stick fort that.
Davies was a fan who got himself into the position that a lot of fans wanted. The BBC wanted him so badly they said that he could come and do whatever he wanted. Anything. And he chose to bring back Doctor Who. Sixteen years after the BBC had last made it (there was an American movie in the interim that they had co-produced).
Of course fans were worried about the approach. The BBC famously did not like Doctor Who. It had been a source of huge embarrassment when Who had won the prize for best BBC drama ever at an anniversary ceremony, beating out the assumed frontrunner, Eastenders.
Inside sources told us that it was going to be good – I was fortunate enough to know people who knew RTD, or maybe knew someone who knew him.
Picking Christopher Ecclestone was a key to it. One of the great actors of his generation (if you have not seen his death scene in Cracker you have to watch it). The surprise was casting 90s solo, manufactured popstar, Billie Piper as the companion. Her acting turned out to be a revelation.
Davies used his experience on soap operas to bring a different emotional sensibility to the show. He also used Joss Whedon’s structures from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to provide an overarching plot to the season.
It is not the best season of new Who, though it is Davies’ best season of Who. My biggest disappointment was that we had to wait so long for more non Who drama from him. Much as I love Who I prefer his non-Who work.
Fandom was (mostly) happy. It was back and it was about bloody time.
I was lent Namaste London to watch years ago as an example of a good Bollywood film. Quite apart from the hilarious scene where the male lead takes the female lead to see Charles and Camilla, pulling up outside Buckingham Place with them waving, I found the sporadic breaking into musical numbers totally off putting. It took me out of the narrative.
When I raised this with friends, I realised that all fiction usually requires some buying into the different internal logic of the fictional world. I could not deal with musical numbers but I was fine with the whole of The Lord of the Rings? That Doctor Who (in the original series) had all the alien invasions happening in Southern England?
I can accept this intellectually but. It is a big but. I hate bloody musicals.
Not just that I find watching dancing as boring as hell. I am not saying that it is not worthwhile. Not at all. I know people love to dance and to watch dancing. It just bores 50 shades of shit out of me.
As this is the case and musicals are mostly showtune style songs and dancing it is no shock that going to a musical is a pretty unique form of torture. I went as part of two trips as an extra to see musicals with students. Blood Brothers was disappointing as Willy Russell is a good writer. Compared to Guys and Dolls it was a joy.
Yet Guys and Dolls is set in a period I love. I should have been able to find something to like. Yet by the time the second half started I wanted to (to paraphrase) cut my own arm off and beat myself to death with it to get it over. The cast would not stop singing Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat. It had so many false finishes. The audience applauded at each one and I was willing them to stop.
There is one though.
Grease.
Anne took Alison and me to see it at the cinema when it came out (I wanted to go as it seemed like everyone in my class had been). It probably helped that the music was not show tune style and that Olivia Newton-John was so pretty. Alison and I raved about it so much that Mike wanted to see it (he had spent the equivalent of the ticket money on something else).
Alison and I volunteered to go again, though Anne drew the line at that. We had to sit in the stalls as you had to have an adult with you to sit in the balcony, and we enjoyed it again. I still do.
I think it is the first love story that I saw, but I was so disappointed that Olivia Newton-John was actually 30 when she made this and not 17. Of course I now know that this cast was probably one of the oldest school classes ever.
The Wonder Years was an American sitcom (with dramatic elements) set in the late 60s and early 70s. It was the story of Kevin Arnold growing up in turbulent times. One of the signature things about the show was the use of contemporary music to ground it in the period.
This made it difficult to release on video and DVD. I do not think it ever had a VHS release. Eventually there was a DVD release but some songs were replaced because of issues with clearances. The same problem was experienced by the British series Shoestring, it did not get released for years. (Shoestring was a private detective series set in the West Country based around a radio station; it finished when Trevor Eve moved on and the team produced years of the radically inferior Bergerac).
I know I am OCD about seeing the originals. I do not like bowdlerised versions of films or TV shows. Beverly Hills Cop was mauled to be transmitted pre watershed, to eliminate the huge number of uses of the word fuck. Even shows like Friends or The Big Bang Theory are hacked to be shown in the daytime. I hate that. It is not just that you are seeing some watered down vision of what the creators wanted but often you get jokes that don’t work or scenes that make no sense. In The Barbarian Sublimation episode of The Big Bang Theory Sheldon concedes Lesley Winkle’s expertise in the related fields of promiscuity and general sluttiness. During daytime this is changed to “the related fields of promiscuity.” Then there is a noticeable jump in the soundtrack. It has been done with all the skill of someone with a pair of scissors (though I know it is digitally done). Quite apart from not using the word slutty (and I am aware that slut shaming is not a good thing either) before the watershed who is it gong to affect? The Carry On films are shown on TV with the attitude that if you are not able to understand the joke then it is fine – I mean they made a film called Carry On Up the Khyber for Pete’s sake. Words are edited out of Friends yet they show the whole scene of Monica and Rachel arguing over who is getting the only condom in the apartment so they can have sex.
(I use Friends and The Big Bang Theory as examples because I know both far too well and both are repeated constantly on daytime TV, not because they are especially guilty).
There is one other thing that is becoming increasingly prevalent. It is shows and directors who produce incredibly unrealistic sex scenes. Again, some of the most egregious examples are in Friends. In The One Where They Are Up All Night and The One With All the Haste scenes open with couples having just made love (Chandler and Monica, Ross and Emily) yet they are all wearing 3 layers of clothing.
(Chandler and Monica immediately post-coital)
A show like Nip/Tuck was meant to have one of the leads being a lothario. They wanted to have sex scenes yet not to feature any nudity. So, in each instance there was fully dressed sex.
(A typical Nip/Tuck nude scene)
Now I am not arguing for more depictions of on-screen female nudity. The male gaze has been in place since the dawn of cinema. I am not advocating gratuitous nudity, like in season 1 of Sacred Games where there is a scene of a topless woman in bed, which is totally unnecessary. Yet even a stunning show like I May Destroy You, from auteur Michaela Coel shows that sex only takes place with tops on, even when it is a threesome.
What I hate is the lazy sodding direction. You can shoot a sex scene without showing nudity, close ups of the faces or long shots. No actor or actress should be forced to do nudity, but for heaven’s sake be creative – that is what directing is about. It would also be great if directors could cut down on the unnecessary sex scenes that add nothing to the plot, especially if they shoot them so badly.
Of course, you can be grown up about it and show nudity, like in Sex Education or Euphoria, but if your channel is too scared don’t do unrealistic, lazy crap.
When you’re an auditor you can have clients all over the place. Some big clients have audit teams there for months, Grant Thornton had mostly smaller jobs that would take a week or two. Somehow the firm ended up with jobs all over East Anglia, probably to do with low population density. We had a job in Beccles called Hutsons. Why Hutsons used an Ipswich firm rather than the far closer Norwich I never found out (maybe the owners supported Ipswich Town?)
There are time constraints for filing financial statements and Hutsons was pushing the limits for this due to the death of their Managing Director in 1988. The Finance Director was carrying out both his role and that of the MD, which meant that he was way behind. We were finally given the job for January in 1989, but it is a heck of a journey (East Anglia is not big on dual carriageways). Due to the time of year it was decided to put us up in a hotel for a week, more to make sure we could keep working even if there was snow rather than for our convenience.
Sarah Ellis was in charge and Dave Hornell was the junior – they were auditing the main part of the organisation, an abattoir. I was auditing the holding company, Hutsons Kwality Meats, (which was actually smaller than the abattoir) which owned the abattoir company and a number of butchers in the area. I did not know either of them that well as David was part of the latest group of recruits and Sarah had transferred from the Birmingham office when her husband got a job in Colchester.
Beccles is the gateway to the Norfolk Broads and a pretty place, but in a cold January not the best place to be. There were no other people staying in the hotel that week. After two days we discovered we were entitled to a free bottle of wine each night, we all studied in the evening after dinner, so it was drunk after that. At the time I was suffering from an ulcer and off alcohol, so it was good for David and Sarah.
(January 1989, Dave Horsnell and me in the bar of the hotel)
(January 1989 Dave Horsnell and Sarah Ellis).
The job was a nightmare. Hutsons was the biggest client we had who still used a manual accounting system. Sure, some of the small businesses did, but this was a big operation. The Finance Director (there were no other people who were allowed to) laboriously entered all the transactions in a ledger book, ruled them off, added them up and then ruled off the year. The year in question had ended over 12 months earlier and he was still doing them. We were meant to have complete accounts when we got there – we did not even have a trial balance.
(A trial balance is a list with the total balance on each account at the end of the year. This will usually need adjusting with accruals and prepayments, but is the start of the financial statements).
Hurried phone calls to the office and discussions with the FD agreed that we would produce the accounts as there was no way he would be able to. This meant a second week added to the job. Annoyingly the hotel was fully booked the following week for a convention of some sort, so we had to commute.
They put us in an outbuilding (a normal tactic to make every visit to see the FD a real effort and also so you could be spotted on the way so he could hide – this was not just Hutsons, lots of clients did it) with a view out onto the lorries loading.
(January 1989 truck of pigs from our audit room).
We got a guided tour of the facilities. Watching animals arrive, being slaughtered and then cut up. This was a test of our mettle to see if we would flinch or be unable to cope. The worst thing was that the floors were awash with blood and our shoes were all ruined (Grant Thornton refused to pay for this. Not a surprise). Dave and I still had steak for dinner but Sarah went vegetarian that night (for one night only).
So that we did not have to take all our stuff home we had secure boxes to leave papers in. Sarah kept the key as most senior team member. The second day of the second week we drove up (it was two hours each way) only for Sarah to realise she had forgotten the key. We actually considered going back to get it, but it would have meant starting work at 1pm, when we were planning to leave by 5pm. Also the client may have found out that we were off site and we did not want Sarah to get in trouble. We tried to pick the lock and considered trying to saw through the hinges (though how we would have explained that I am not sure)
I had driven so I went out and did visits to the butcher shops, which were sort of needed, it was a chance for me visit Kessingland. David and Sarah did what they could and we left at 3.30pm. David was staying with his girlfriend not far from Norwich, so Sarah and I drove back to her place with box. We opened it only to find the main file was not in there. Sarah frantically searched her car and flat but could not find it.
The next morning we drove up to Hutsons, getting there at 8am and searched the room for the file. It was in a carboard box of papers, so we could have worked the on it the previous day. We had just sat down when the manager, Sue, arrived. She had tried to contact us the previous day, but the receptionist had not been able to get hold of us. I expected Sarah to own up, but she brazened it out and blamed the incompetence of the receptionist.
Despite all this we had a lot of fun as we were in a room on our own. It meant that we could play music and we had lunch and dinner on expenses. Somehow, we got the job done and were even complemented for dealing with a tricky client and managing to get the job done by the partners.
Right at the end of my time at Grant Thornton the senior partner’s PA, Jan Hannaford, asked me for a favour. A client who lived the far side of Colchester from Ipswich Had won a prize at an event that was run at the Suffolk Show. She asked me to deliver it and save her a substantial drive. I had taken a day off but wanted to go to Colchester so I agreed.
It took a lot longer than I thought as it was a farm and even when I got there I had to find the farmer. His gratitude was underwhelming. I rushed to get into Colchester (for reasons I will explain below) and got whatever I wanted. Then I saw this copies of this CD in the window. I hadn’t even heard it at the time but I knew that it had gone straight into the singles chart at number 2 and then been the subject of legal action. Marc Cohn had written and performed Walking on Memphis, this song rewrote it into a rave anthem but had not got clearance (a few years later the Fugees had the same problem with Killing Me Softly, they changed the lyrics, but Roberta Flack did not approve it, so they went back to the original and had a huge hit),
I bought it. I think it is superior to Cohn’s original, others disagree, but they are both out there (as well as Cher’s, inferior, cover of the original).
I had to get back for a funeral. A group of teenagers had been in an accident and Abby Hicks had died. The driver, Ian Penrose, had survived, as had the other passengers. Alan Hicks and Mike Penrose were both big at Brightlingsea Sailing Club, prominent men in the village. Mike had dated Ian’s older sister for a couple of years.
There were a huge number of people at the funeral. The church was packed (and Brightlingsea does have a beautiful church).
Outside the coffin was lowered into the grave. The Penrose family were there, but it was as if they were pariahs. There was a space around them. They were untouchable, or rather Ian was. The accident was his fault and he lived, but poor Abby had not. He looked like a broken human being, some people did not think he should have come to the funeral and it took guts for him to be there.
Dad went over to comfort him. Alan was his friend. He had known Abby for years. But he knew Ian had not done it deliberately and was suffering impossible guilt and being hated for it.
A moment of humanity. Others followed. But Dad did it first, he led the way.
1993 was a good year for stag nights. In those days it was a stag night, not a weekend in Amsterdam or week in Prague, making the British look like thugs abroad and cavorting with prostitutes. The worst that happened to men in Brightlingsea was being chained naked outside the Swan pub.
First was Dave’s stag night. He had delayed this until just three days before the wedding as Neil, Ken and I had been to Crete. I came back on Monday morning, went to work for two days and then was off again as the stag was on the Wednesday.
(At the start of the stag – Neil Wigley, Richard Wigley, Andy Sadler and Dave Francis in The Swan).
Andy had made the prison costume for Dave, including a papier mache ball and chain. After trawling around the pubs we finished with a Chinese at the Sun Ho. On most stag nights you try to get the groom totally pissed, but this does not work with Dave as he has a phenomenal capacity for alcohol. Whether it is his size, or just his superpower, he would frequently outdrink us two pints to one on a night out. So, in the Sun Ho Dave and Andy tried to blow up condoms on their heads and then both tried to fill a pint glass by urinating in it (they went outside for that). Dave was more accurate. A lot more accurate.
We also paid a trip to Brightlingsea swimming pool. This closed at 8pm, but from around 7.45pm people would always be waiting at the back to climb over the fence and swim for nothing in the summer. This was without lifeguards, or light. A quick splash around and that was it – it was almost midnight by then and some people had not taken a day off work.
Dave got home unaided, though the ball and chain had disintegrated, and he was fine for the wedding. This was totally unlike my brother’s stag three years earlier where he had been given a number of spiked drinks and ended up throwing up heartily in the Freemasons’ toilet. Dad and I had to carry him partway home until Richard Wigley pulled up outside the Railway Tavern and gave us a lift the last few hundred yards. Mike’s head was out of the window (in case he was sick again).
Mike had crashed into the house with my Anne, Alison, Frances and my Nanna looking on in shock. Dad had pushed me in with him (a trick he learned from my grandfather doing it to him when they were drunk). Nanna told me my grandfather would be ashamed if he was still alive, I told her that if he was still alive he would have been out with us.
I had to sit up for ages with Mike to make sure he was not sick and killed himself. His hangover lasted all the next day and the day after that he got married.
Richard Wigley got married later in the year. The evening followed a similar schedule – without any costumes. Until we got to the Freemasons, where he had 5 JDs and coke, except no one told him they were doubles.
(Neil Wigley, Richard Wigley, Ken Berry, ???????? and Andy Sadler).
We left for the Raj Pavilion – Brightlingsea’s one Indian restaurant – and he seemed fine. He wasn’t and as the starters arrived he started to be sick. We had to help him out and get him home, leaving the group with all our food.
The Freemasons had a great jukebox in those days and we always played Epic by Faith No More and this track.
Graham was the first person I knew who had a computer – a ZX Spectrum (I think it was that rather the ZX81). We played a game called Time Gate on it and it seemed amazing. The games were loaded from audio cassette.
Our family’s first computer was a VIC 20. Neil had one and we figured we could swap games. It only had 5kb of memory but you could add an expanded memory. The games were incredibly simple. We had one called Asteroid Mining, where you had to buy resources for a mining colony; excavate ore and then sell it. The game parameters meant that your colony usually failed after a few rounds. Mike and I worked out how to edit the BASIC code to change this and ensure that we set progressively higher records. Initially we just changed it to keep going (always remembering to restore the original code so other people could not duplicate our achievements) and then when we got bored setting it to stupid levels.
Colne High School had just one BBC Microcomputer. I saw it a couple of times, but I did not do computer science so did not get near it.
John Hawkins I did do computer science and the Colne High computer then was a Commodore (a PET variant I think) that had an integral monitor. The BBC units needed a TV to plug into I believe – like most home computers then. I don’t think the BBC micro was out yet when we did CS at school. That would have been around 1982-ish, after we had done our ‘O’ levels.
Richard W wrote quite a sophisticated game on the school computer (all in BASIC) called Wigaski. Concept was a downhill skier trying to avoid objects like trees etc. Pretty playable for a student attempt. It had pseudo-random movement that the player had to counteract to avoid losing. Funnily, the thing I remember best is the message you got when you lost asking if you wanted to play again. Richard had not proof-read his text and it asked: “Do you wang to continue?”. Could have been worse I suppose 🙂
I still have our Spectrum +2 (built-in tape deck, WooHoo!!) and all the games we bought for it. Well over 100 of them, including driving and racing games (some were pretty good to play), “Track and Field” and the various clones of arcade games like Punchy which was a Spectrum clone of Hunchback and even had voice synth of a kind. You really had to concentrate to make out what it was trying to “say” but for a mono-phonic sound system it wasn’t bad. I keep meaning to get it out of its box and set it up so the kids can see what we gaming pioneers had to go through to get them what they have today 😂
St. Catherines had just one computer too – in the basement of one of the old buildings. Dave Carter used it for a bit and he had a more sophisticated version of Time Gate. You had to fight swarms of invading aliens and find the Time Gate to take you back to an earlier period. This process was repeated several times until you could destroy the aliens before they became a menace. Game play was like asteroids, except that you had to periodically dock with a mother ship to refuel. I completed the game around 3am, then never played again.
Apart from that the only game I really ever finished was a world cup football game where you had to beat seven opponents. The first couple of levels were easy and in 90 seconds I could win by 7 or 8 goals. Then the easy scoring cut off and I kept getting stymied. Luckily our hotel in Faliraki in 1995 and one of them (and the price was a measly 100 drachma a go). I completed it by the end of the holiday.
My first home computer was an IBM desktop with 8mb of memory – underpowered at the time. It was a thank you from the College for my work. No internet access. I mainly used it to work at home, so they got even more out of me.
Disc drives have now gone – most people do not even realise they were called floppy discs because the original ones were. They were like the flexi discs given away by record magazines. These were replaced by the smaller rigid discs and then USBs.
Now I have my own laptop. A Surface. An iPad. An iPhone and a Kindle. My TV is connected to the net. I have a watch that has more memory than those early computers. This was not the future than we imagined in 1981. Our cars still stick firmly to the ground. There are no jet packs. No one had been back to the Moon since 1973 and no one has been to Mars. Robots maybe coming, but it seems that massive strides are being made in robot sex toys rather than elsewhere (the internet was the same – it was pornography that was the financial engine for internet expansion)
Kraftwerk are widely acclaimed as the most Avant Garde group of the 1970s. Their music was still sounding contemporary 10 years after it was released when they had their only number one single. The album Autobahn is a magnificent achievement. This is my favourite track from the album.
It is John Bonney’s fault. Introducing me to a brilliant author who tanked his career so badly he stopped writing novels. For a while.
He lent me Fevre Dream. A novel about 19th century vampires on a Mississippi riverboat. He was totally right, it is a great novel. It was before the Vampire explosion that was kicked off by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and was continued by Twilight and True Blood. (It is interesting that as the financial crash happened in 2008 the monster of choice transitions from moody, sexy vampires to nasty, stinky zombies. Remember The Walking Dead was originally a comic). I got a remaindered copy of the book in Stratford Upon Avon while I was at university. I was not at university in Stratford, I was visiting a girlfriend.
I found his follow up novel in a second hand shop while at university, but actually in Cambridge. The Armageddon Rag is a horror/ fantasy novel that examines the flower power movement of the late 1960s. In the world of the book there were three great hippie festivals. Woodstock, Altamont (where the Rolling Stones set is punctuated by a murder by the Hells Angels) and the fictional West Mesa concert which ended even more apocalyptically. The matter of fact style made me wonder at the time if this was something I just did not know about.
The band in it are called the Nazgul and their lead singer is called Hobbins. This was written at a time when only gamers, hippies and a few others had read The Lord of the Rings. It is a brilliant book – straddling fantasy, horror, mystery and sixties music.
Of course it bombed so badly George R.R. Martin gave up novel writing for years and did TV writing.
Thankfully he returned to novel writing and has produced five novels of his A Song of Fire and Ice series. Famous worldwide as A Game of Thrones (the title of the first novel in the series).
Now do not get me wrong the TV series is a tour de force. Visually stunning, populated by great actors filling well rounded characters and it looks like it cost every bit of £10 million an episode. The problem is that Martin has only finished five of the seven novels (and he is even threatening there maybe eight). It was immediately obvious when the TV series was running out of material as the standard of the writing fell substantially, leading to the less than stellar final season. I do think it would have been hard to get to an ending that everyone liked, but it was not a happy ending, which people had been hoping for.
On the other hand Martin fared far better than many other authors. For instance, Stephen King has written a huge number of great novels, but the good TV or film adaptions are very few.
The books are a much deeper story than the TV series. Most people do not want to invest that much time, but it repays the investment. Martin takes characters who are initially vile and invests them with humanity to the point where you are rooting for them. Most surprisingly with Jamie Lannister who starts as a man who is sleeping with his own sister (the Queen) and protects their secret by throwing an eight year old boy to his death (though he survives he is unable to walk again).
The biggest problem is that Martin is not a young man. Now 71 and he is somewhat overweight (not fat shaming, just in a Covid-19 world it makes him higher risk). The sixth book in the series has been forecast for publication for several years, the last book was published in 2011. The latest estimate is that the Winds of Winter will be published in 2021, that still leaves at least one more novel of 1500+ pages to write. I have a forlorn hope that the delay is because he is writing both books to tie the series up and they will be published a year apart. Well I can hope.
Read these two. If you like them wait until A Song of Fire and Ice is finished, then read that.
This is the track that I saw at the same time as the Offspring’s Pretty Fly (For a White Guy). I saw the video rather than just heard it. The video (see below features two groups riding through the desert to play rock, paper, scissors. One group is a band of Luchadors.
Lucha Libre is Mexican wrestling. Probably the most famous luchador is Rey Mysterio Jr. In Britain wrestling probably means Big Daddy and Saturday afternoons on World of Sport. Usually from somewhere like Warrington Town Hall with grannies at the front trying to hit the heels (bad guys) with hand bags,
If you are a bit younger you may remember the British Bulldog or Steve Regal, both were successful in America.
Wrestling is most familiar from World Wrestling Entertainment on TV (it was the World Wrestling Federation but the World Wildlife Fund though people might get mixed up between two beats fighting and their organisation, so the wrestling group had to change their name).
The owner of the WWE has a certain vision for wrestling. Huge muscular monsters lumbering around. More reliant on storylines and interviews than physical talent. Typified initially by Hulk Hogan, then it became more violent and Stone-Cold Steve Austin became an international superstar. This was more due to steroid scandals than any change of taste. He was followed by the man who is probably the most famous wrestler in history – Duane Johnson, known as The Rock. He is now the highest grossing film star on the planet.
In America female wrestlers were consigned to being eye candy – performing in matches where the aim was to strip their opponent to their underwear – until recently.
If you want to see real wrestling looks like, then you should watch matches by the best female wrestler in history. Scratch that – the best wrestler in history. She has wrestled more top rated matches with more different people than anyone else in history. Twice she received the accolade of having the best match of the year (1993 and 1995) – once on her own and once in a tag team match with her long-time partner Toshiyo Yamada. This was against two other great performers. Mayumi Ozaki and Dynamite Kansai.
Her finishing manoeuvre – the Japanese Ocean Cyclone suplex – is stunning. Conversely, I have never seen anyone take as many fall on their neck or head as Toyota.
Toyota is always in black, Yamada is in purple with Ozaki in red and Kansai in lime green. The tag match (the second one) runs from 13 to 36 minutes of the link, from 33 minutes out it reaches its climax with a moonsault to the outside, a missile drop kick off the ring post to the floor followed by the Japanese Ocean Cyclone suplex, spectacular.
Wrestling is predetermined, but not fake. The athleticism and danger are real. Toyota’s performance in the ring are the best in history it is a shame that most wrestling fans haven’t even heard of her.
It is a dangerous business. Death rates are high. Vice have done a series called The Dark Side of Wrestling. It covers several premature deaths – Bruiser Brody (stabbed), Owen Hart (fell from the top of an arena), Road Warrior Hawk (addiction) and Chris Benoit (suicide after murdering his wife and son due to brain damage). Even if you are not a fan it is a compelling series.
Wrestling was very 1990s for me, as you can imagine finding Japanese stuff was not easy, but there were people who got video tapes. I hadn’t seen these matches, or Manami Toyota, for over 20 years until writing this.
So should this be on the list? Queen and David Bowie. Bowie solo has done a huge number of better tracks (and will be featured near the top of the list). If I did not accept this track as being by Queen then they would not be on the list. It is on a Queen album – Hot Space, and marks the beginning of their 80s success. Queen had got into disco with tracks like Crazy Little Thing Called Love and synths with Flash. Hot Space was not a success and they moved back to rock with The Works in 1983.
Queen are possibly the most over rated group in history. I don’t think they have ever produced a great album. There have been popular tracks, a lot of them. Bohemian Rhapsody was generally different, but I never get the urge to listen to it. There is a lot of hype about their performance at Live Aid, yet at the time they were not considered the standout. Their publicity and Freddie Mercury’s sad early death have created a legend (I imagine most people just buy their Greatest Hits now). Not that the legend has stopped Brian May and Roger Taylor fucking the desiccated corpse of the group with any singer they could find to keep going. For some reason John Deacon has shown some class and avoided it.
So, these are some other artists who will not be on the list and my favourite track by them.
Elton John. Probably Philadelphia Freedom, but better to listen to real Philly music. Along with Queen the most overrated artist I can think of.
Prince. Not overrated, but no killer track. Either Little Red Corvette or Thunder. Avoid the film Purple Rain – it is garbage.
Abba. They were rightly looked down on, but somehow got rehabilitated about 20 years ago. Their album The Visitors is mildly interesting as the title track is about the Stasi. Their later material is much more interesting (with the exception of the relatively early Fernando, but that is a sad song), either The Winner Takes It All about the divorce or The Day Before You Came.
Boney M. Rasputin is a camp classic. Watch a video of it😊
Robbie Williams. Not the ubiquitous drunk karaoke Angels, but Let Me Entertain You. Phenomenally overrated too.
Spice Girls. A cultural phenomenon that was as important as a shoelace musically. 2 Become 1.
All Saints. William Orbit sparkled magic onto Pure Shores.
George Harrison just missed the cut – My Sweet Lord.
Paul McCartney. Live and Let Die, but Guns ‘n’ Roses do it better.
Bananarama. Robert DeNiro’s Waiting, incredibly deep for this group to do a song about rape.
Fun Boy Three. Our Lips Are Sealed, but the Gogos do it much better.
ZZ Top. Southern boogie, they had a commercial success for a couple of years – Got Me Under Pressure.
Kim Wilde. You Came. It is not politically correct but Jonathan Ross’s comment when she appeared on his show made me laugh.
Rod Stewart. Not his fault that the establishment lied that Sailing was number one over the Silver Jubilee, rather than the Sex Pistols. Tonight I’m Yours is so awful, but fun. The video is cringeworthy. Every cover version he does is worse than the original – a special talent.
Phil Collins. Should have stuck with Genesis, bland white soul really, his cover of You Can’t Hurry Love is a million times worse than the original. Easy Lover.
Squeeze. Not one of their famous tracks but Annie, Get Your Gun.
KC and the Sunshine Band. Give It Up is a guilty pleasure.
The Trammps. Disco Inferno is a very disco track.
The Undertones. John Peel was wrong – the best track is Julie Ocean.
Joan Armatrading. Love and Affection should be played far more than it is.
Robert Palmer. Johnny and Mary is a clever track about Hitler and Eva Braun, better than anything The Power Station ever did.
Bruce Hornsby and the Range. The Way It Is has been almost totally forgotten.
Edwyn Collins. Former lead singer of Orange Juice, another forgotten gem, Keep On Burning.
XTC. Sad about their lead singer – Ball and Chain.
Chinacrisis. Christian is a beautiful track and is used really well in The Dark Side of the Sun TV series.
Haircut 100. Totally lost it when Nick Heywood left and were better when his poppy sensibility was the main force rather than the jazz funkers, Nobody’s Fool.
UB40. If It Happens Again for the lyrics, Food For Thought musically. Probably One In Ten overall.
Dollar. Really good for the period Trevor Horn produced them, if I had to pick one Give Me Back My Heart.
The BeeGees. Massachusetts beats all their disco tracks.
Altern 8. The group that anticipated mask wearing – Evapor8.
Snap – obvious, but it has to be The Power.
The Fugees – Ready or Not is way better than Killing Me Softly.
The Herd. I know little about them but you should listen to I Don’t Want Our Loving To Die.
Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Has to be Fire, what else did they do?
Jefferson Airplane/ Starship. White Rabbit is so powerful and much better than the formula 80s pop.
The Lovin’s Spoonful. Summer in the City.
Yazoo. Nobody’s Diary beats their better remembered songs, they sound very dated now.
Kajagoogoo. They were the new Duran Duran and then Limahl left. They were better without him and having Nick Beggs on vocals – The Big Apple.
Erasure. All their tracks are very samey to me, Oh L’Amour.
Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Great concept and fun to watch – Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy.
Thompson Twins. Doctor, Doctor but then the huge success of TT is inexplicable to me.
Chic. Good Times, Quincy Jones is a giant.
Michael Jackson. I was wrong about Queen and Elton John, this is the most over rated artist ever. Not just because of the self-promotion and the allegations of paedophilia. His music is popular because it is inoffensive and the best of his material is due to Quincy Jones. Beat It.
Jackson 5. Can You Feel It? is a great drunken dance song.
The Belle Stars. Had two hits and gone, Sign of the Times.
David Soul. Shamefully I like both his number ones, but Silver Lady is the better one.
Spear of Destiny. Never Take Me Alive, but SOD are not as good as Kirk Brandon’s first group, Theatre of Hate.
Voice of the Beehive. A year of success and then obscurity – Don’t Call Me Baby.
Peter Godwin. No success commercially, but Images of Heaven is a classic.
Adele. Mostly overblown trash but Set Fire to the Rain is ok.
Right Said Fred. I’m Too Sexy is horrible but Don’t Talk Just Kiss is lovely (if dodgy politically).
Fuzzbox. International Rescue is a lot of fun.
The Beautiful South. Any group that annoys Pete Waterman like they did with Song For Whoever deserves respect. 36D.
Bucks Fizz. A manufactured group but the Land of Make Believe is a little gem.
Eddie Grant. Electric Avenue is good but Gimme Hope Jo’Anna is better.
London Boys. Requiem is severely under rated.
White Stripes. Has to be Seven Nation Army.
Depeche Mode. A Question of Time – though that late 80s period is a good one for them all round.
The Primitives. Crash, but they sound just like a cut price Transvision Vamp.
Free. All Right Now just missed the list.
Mariah Carey. Whitney Houston. Responsible for all those over emoting idiots on talent shows. Avoid.
S Club 7. West Life. Steps. One Direction. JLS. Unremitting shit.
Five Miles Out 