Spectator Life

On 24 May Bob Dylan turns 80 and that gives fans like me the perfect excuse to celebrate our love of the great man (not that we ever really need one, of course). As well as regularly listening to the records, I spend far more time than is probably healthy trawling YouTube for videos of Dylan in action. So, if you fancy joining me down a freewheelin’ wormhole, here is a small sample of my favourite live performances from across his career. Boots of Spanish Leather, 1963 This is a YouTube video to listen to rather than watch. It’s an absolute wonder, not only because it is a lovely version of one of Dylan’s great ballads, but also because we hear him at ease, perhaps even enjoying himself, in an interview that bookends the performance.

Yet again, Britain’s Eurovision entry has come last getting nul points from tout le monde. Yet again, politics is being blamed – but wrongly. The UK was simply outsung and outclassed by smaller countries who made more effort. Eurovision has always been a collision between politics, music and culture. Winners game that system, coming up with an act that crosses dozens of linguistic and national boundaries. It’s tricky. But Britain stopped trying some time ago. The BBC chooses our entry and doesn’t bother with a contest. It also struggles to pick (and prep) Eurovision winners. As a result, every year, Britain sends some unprepared soul to perish on the world stage. A strange, outraged jingoism usually follows Britain's Eurovision flops.

Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel The Underground Railroad is earning rave reviews. The 10-part Amazon Prime mini-series imagines an alternate history where the abolitionist route for escaped slaves prior to emancipation is an actual, physical subterranean railway. Incidentally, the fantastical railway trope is the chief feature of Netflix’s sci-fi show Snowpiercer (2020-), whilst the rocket-powered ‘Bullet Train’ is prominent in the last season of Amazon’s alt-history Man in the High Castle (2015-19). When looking at motion pictures dealing with the subject of slavery in the United States, one must be aware of the seismic shift from its early onscreen depiction in movies such as D. W.

This July will mark 60 years since the beginning of the chapter in our nation’s history known as the ‘Profumo scandal.’ It was this unhappy episode in which my mother Christine Sloane, formerly Christine Keeler, had a starring role, and is credited with the fall of Harold Macmillan’s government. The story of that affair is well known: Chris met John Profumo, the secretary of state for war, at a summer pool party at Cliveden. She found herself the focus of the world’s press attention two years later when her relationship with the Tory MP became public knowledge. She had also briefly been with a Soviet called Yevgeny Ivanov, prompting feverish claims that she had been passing him British intelligence from Profumo.

News that Apple has updated its emoji range to include pictograms specific to the pandemic may either disgust you or inspire you to send a volley of missives out immediately. As an emojiste, I am in the latter camp. I am delighted that I now have a bandaged heart, a dizzy face with spiral eyes, a face exhaling with exhaustion and, of course, a bloodless syringe in my emoji lexicon. My nearest and dearest WhatsApp interlocutors may groan but I simply don’t care. Far from an erosion of linguistic standards, I see emojis as an exciting semiotic advance. I only wish that Roland Barthes, the grand French semiotician of the last century, were around to decode it all. Emoji, which originated in Japan in the 90s, can be used in different ways.

Is Chris Addison a famous face? The honest answer, he admits, is it depends where he is. In mainstream Britain, he enjoys a decent enough profile as an affable comic and actor. Over in America, where he’s been making it as a director, he’s less recognisable. But in one London postcode, he’s a veritable A-lister. ‘It was like being in a Hollywood movie,’ he laughs, as he recalls a walk across Westminster shortly after starring in the first season of The Thick Of It as the hapless junior SpAD Ollie. ‘Everywhere I went people were going “it’s him! It’s him!” - much more than anywhere else I’d been.’ That cult fame has followed him ever since - at least in SW1. You can see why.

Last year, the apparently definitive biography of Harry and Meghan, Finding Freedom by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, was published, and immediately became a bestseller, despite Harry and Meghan only having reached the tender ages of 36 and 39. It seemed inevitable that as soon as the biography had hit the shelves, it would be superseded by events. Sure enough, in the light of the Oprah interview, Scobie and Durand have updated the book for its paperback publication. A news report suggested that extra chapters will cover ‘their interview with Oprah Winfrey, allegations against Meghan over the bullying of royal staff, which she denies, and Prince Philip’s death.

Emily Mortimer’s BBC1 adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s classic The Pursuit of Love is proving a hit with viewers, demonstrating that the antics of our social betters continue to fascinate many of us. Downton Abbey may have helped pave the way for this interest, but there is far more to the upper classes than Julian Fellowes’ occasionally jejune televisual guidebook to snobbery, etiquette, and unforgivable social faux pas. Without further ado, ten movies where we ‘Non-U’s’ are given a privileged insight into the lives of the ‘U's’. The Scandalous Lady W (2015) Amazon Buy Only https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Boris Johnson has announced that the government will permit hugging from Monday 17 May. In subsequent weeks, it is expected that permission will be granted for people to hold hands, kiss and, perhaps, engage in even more intimate acts of mutual appreciation. However, the authorities remain cautious about mutant variants and their ability to spread through rampant hugging.  Former SAGE expert and BBC commentator, Neil Ferguson, has played a key role in government policy throughout the pandemic. Initially responsible for producing forecasts that led to social distancing policies, Ferguson is also rumoured to have performed a series of covert, close contact experiments with his married girlfriend.

One of my favourite Alan Partridge moments — and there have been many — is the now infamous scene from I'm Alan Partridge, where north Norfolk's most beloved DJ — Alan's words not mine — is chased down a remote country track by a psychotic stalker. On reaching a dead end our hero leaps over a fence and lands in one of those awkward forward lunges where in order to avoid tripping over you have to run to catch up with yourself.  This brief but beautifully realised moment encapsulates everything that made this particular incarnation of Alan Partridge such an excruciating but enjoyable watch. Here we see the cowardly little man desperately trying to maintain a modicum of dignity as his world collapses around him.

As national irritation continues to simmer over what many viewers felt was the disappointing denouement to BBC1’s hit police drama Line of Duty, here's a look at ten shows that bowed out on a more satisfying note. A good ending is comparatively rare, as the tendency in TV is to squeeze every last drop out of a hit series until audiences are in terminal decline; witness AMC’s The Walking Dead, which continues to limp on. In contrast to shows that drag on beyond their natural lives, many felt that Game of Thrones’ final 8th season was a rush job, prompted by the desire of showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss to cash-in with deals for Star Wars movies and their own series.

There’s a movie scene forever etched into the minds of young adults. It’s probably as vivid as our parents’ recollection of the moon landing, or Maxwell House ads. In American Pie, hopeless high-schooler Jim decides to copulate with an apple tart. You don’t think he’s going to do it, but he does. And then, because the filmmakers know we’re on the ropes, they show us the mangled remains in the dog bowl. It’s also a moment that truly embodies the ‘gross-out Teen Comedy’, Hollywood’s fleeting junk food binge that began with the release of American Pie in 1999 to Road Trip, 10 Things I Hate About You, all the way up to 2007’s Superbad. More in the bawdy tradition of Animal House or Porky’s than Breakfast Club.

The 76th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe will take place on the 8 May; although in fact the conflict continued for days (if not weeks) after this date with heavy fighting in parts of the former Eastern Front and areas newly occupied by Soviet forces. Indeed, anti-communist resistance groups in the Baltic states, Poland and other satellite countries continued to launch guerrilla attacks well into the 1950s. The final months of the war in Europe were amongst the bloodiest in the struggle, as Hitler resolved to pull the ruins of the Third Reich down around him in a faux-Wagnerian exit from history.

Bluebell season is beginning. In the next few weeks, woodland floors will have a fine blue mist hovering above them. This flowering season is so sensuous: there’s the sound of bees buzzing in and out of the flowers, the smell of their blooms, the cool spring breeze in the woods where they grow, and that magical blue colour. These plants are protected and you can’t pick them, though it is a mystery why anyone would want to when a bluebell bouquet droops so quickly and looks miserable compared to the sea of flowers it has been stolen from.  You also can’t really enjoy them through pictures alone. Clever photography does bring you an idea of what a bluebell wood is like, but it is still a pale imitation.