George Melly dies. A truly great Character with a capital ‘C’. Met him a year or so ago, at a Mayfair dinner hosted by Maggi Hambling. He sang an impromptu bawdy jazz number a cappella for everyone in the restaurant. Impeccably dressed, of course: hat, striped suit, eyepatch. Having done the usual bit about saying how much I admired him, I asked him for a kiss on the lips, and he obliged. It seemed the best thing to do at the time. I’d read his books, so I thought about all the people – and all the parts of such people – those lips had met over the years. And what songs they’d sung, what conversations they’d had, what jokes they’d told, what wicked laughter.
Some news sources describe him as a jazz singer who also did other things, others as an author who also did other things. I think that’s a good sign. His various volumes of autobiography are a terrific read, though ‘Revolt Into Style’ is arguably just as essential, not least for the title. It’s certainly a motto close to my own heart.
Quentin Crisp: ‘Mr Melly needs to be obscene to be believed.’
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Something I’d really like to see in real life: a dog running past with a string of sausages in its mouth, chased by an angry butcher.
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Barely days since the change at Number Ten, and I already prefer hearing Gordon Brown’s voice on the radio, compared to Tony Blair’s. Mr Brown’s is a comparatively calming, sturdy and stentorian baritone, something of a tonic after a decade of his predecessor’s faux-ingratiating, nasal tones. Added to which the last couple of years had seen Blair’s speaking develop a strange system of pauses between every clause, if not every word. A statement. From Blair. Would sound. As if. It had been written. Like this.
If he had intended gravitas, the opposite effect was the case.
If both men were headmasters, Blair was one of those who ask the pupils to call him by his first name, who like to take off their jacket and tie at the earliest opportunity. Brown is more, dare I say it, old school. One almost imagines he’d be good at spanking. ‘This delights me more than it delights you.’
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Trying out London libraries as ever, I visit the Barbican Library. I first visited the Barbican Centre on a school trip, shortly after it had been built in 1982.
Now it’s the 25th anniversary of the place, and the library – which specialises in music and the arts – has a small exhibition to mark the sounds of 1982. In a display case are various vinyl pop records from the year, including Laurie Anderson’s Big Science, Cherry Red Records’ Pillows & Prayers compilation, Scritti Politti’s ‘Asylums In Jerusalem’, The Jam’s ‘Town Called Malice’, Madness’s ‘House Of Fun’, Bucks Fizz’s ‘My Camera Never Lies’, Tears For Fears’s ‘Mad World’, Wah’s ‘Story Of The Blues’, Haircut One Hundred’s ‘Love Plus One’… and David Bowie’s ‘Baal’ EP.
I suspect even Dame Bowie himself has difficulty recalling that latter disc; it’s hardly one to dominate his obituary. The information on its display label mentions ‘Source: Wikipedia’. Considering this is a professional, government-funded library in the heart of London using the amateur Internet encyclopaedia which anyone can edit, this is a defining sign of 2007, never mind 1982.
