The Red Shed

I first discovered politics whilst sitting in an A Level Economics class with my two friends, Iain and Anthony. The qualification was my political awakening as each week we were told to buy a broadsheet and share what we'd learnt the following week. Up until that point, politics didn’t mean much to me. I knew my parents voted Blair in ’97, along with the rest of the nation, but didn’t know why my dad had stopped voting Conservative, nor why my mum was so pleased that a smile had come to office – I guess I just wasn’t interested. 

Studying Economics changed me. 

We learnt about the two different economic ideologies – Classical and Keynesian – and in nearly every debate I came down on the side of John Maynard Keynes. Classical economists believed that the sheriff should leave town and let big business slug it out in the market saloon. Keynes argued that this wild-west approach to economics was all well and good, but who would attend to the broken infrastructure and citizens that resulted from this free-for-all. Keynes wasn’t a socialist by any means – he promoted the market – but he appreciated that the State had an important role to play in society.

At university my friend, Al, would sit at the kitchen table with a can of diet coke, some roll-up baccy and a copy of The Guardian. The first thing I noticed about him was that he started at the front of the paper. Everyone I knew up until this point had started at the back, treating the text like a Manga comic. For me, the news was like eating my greens: I only consumed it because I was told that it was good for me. But Al devoured these greens in the same way I shovelled in the sport. It was there that I started picking up the paper, finding an affinity with the way it approached news stories. My family had always read the Daily Express  - still do, even though they both support immigration and have moved on from Princess Diana’s death; I guess it’s just become a habit for them. In reading The Guardian I was touched by the humanity of the reporting: how it called business to account and promoted the underdog. Even though the paper sometimes feels it’s beating you over the head with agenda, it remains a left-wing voice in a right-wing world; a noble whisper amongst the screams.

Along with Al the music I listened to informed my politics. Listening to The Smiths, Pulp and Arctic Monkeys turned me on to reading working-class writers. Reading Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner; watching Taste of Honey; listening to John Cooper Clarke made me realise that so many people were trapped in the system; and trapped, not by the content of their character, but by the cut of their class. Realising that people weren’t where they were through ability was a political awakening. From there I would go on to become a state school teacher, join a trade union, strike over pay and conditions, and read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists ­­– the socialist bible.

From The Ragged.

I’m of the left then. I will always be on the left. I don’t care how many people peddle the lie that the older you get the more right-wing you become, it won’t happen to me. I’m happy to have a system of high taxation and public spending. When I get my payslip at the moment I look at those National Insurance contributions and think, ‘my work in the classroom has helped build a hospital.’ (I’m very egotistical). If I’m honest, I barely look at the number in the bottom right hand corner; I think it’s a little unseemly to reflect on your own personal wealth when you’ve got a society to save. I do, however, appreciate that should I ever own a home - or a child - that I mightn’t welcome taxation with the same open arms, perhaps instead a begrudging shrug; the kind you reserve for a christening invite, where you go to please others and not yourself. So, I mightn’t always love being taxed, but I love what it does.

This week I went to see The Red Shed with my old comedy mate, Andy. The play is performed by comedian Mark Thomas, a man that you might not know from his 90’s Channel 4 show The Mark Thomas Comedy Product. I only heard Mark Thomas for the first time last year in his spellbinding show, Bravo Figaro!; a beautiful piece about his working-class father’s love of opera. I was touched by Thomas’ tale of how his dad, a common man, had fallen for the most esoteric of art forms. In it, Thomas is a natural raconteur, funny and congenial; but even his family story has a political edge: hearing about how dress code and prices sought to exclude his dad from attending the thing he loved makes the thing bubble with some anger.

The Shed in Wakefield.

The Red Shed is a more political piece than Bravo but no less personal. The Red Shed is a Labour club in Wakefield that Thomas has attended since he was a student in Yorkshire. During The Miners Strike Thomas and friends collected for the families by putting on plays and performances in the Wakefield club. He was so immersed in the struggle that he was awarded by the National Union of Miners one of two honorary badges to mark his support for the pitmen – his friend Pete was meant to get the other one but a young NUM lad mistook the Sandinista male for a female Tory (this acts as a running joke throughout the play) . The Shed is celebrating its 50^th birthday this year and to mark the occasion Thomas has decided to write a play. He wants to write about the exact moment he knew he was a Socialist.

The year is 1985, the pitmen have been starved back to work after a year of being on strike. Throughout this time, miners depended upon charitable donations from their community- since Thatcher’s government had denied them social security payments. It was supposed to be a dispute that broke the government, instead it broke the will of workers and their families. Returning to work without getting the reversal on pit closures was a failure: the men felt it, their wives felt it and the community did too. In a dignified show of strength, the men walked through the streets, banners aloft, keeping the red flags flying high; the community came out to clap, to cheer in solidarity. Thomas was one such person. He remembers something even more poignant though: schoolchildren singing. Singing the union anthem, Solidarity Forever (‘Solidarity Forever. Solidarity Forever. For the union makes us strong.'). A student Mark Thomas cries. He knows that their fathers' loss is theirs. If the pit closes, then their history shuts too. These towns were built on flesh and bones industry, now they're being closed on cold hard commerce. Thomas wants to tell this story but in an era of post-truth he can’t be sure it’s true. He has embellished so many stories as a comedian that he’s worried he might have fabricated this one too. In an age of lies he reasons even the façade of theatre must tell truths; his mission is to find that village, that school, those children to find out whether it happened or not.

His journey begins in the Red Shed’s meeting room. Since The Miners Strike, the Shed has gone on to support the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, gay rights and workers rights. In regards to workers rights, The Red Shed was instrumental in unionising local food workers, and helping Wetherspoons staff picket against the EDL holding meetings in their pub. Over its 50 years the Conservative Club opposite has closed down, yet The Red Shed remains (if only this were a microcosm for the national political landscape) . During the meeting, Mark proposes his plans for his theatre show about The Red Shed and the children of the mining village. The committee members are played by the live audience, whom Mark has pre-selected and given face-masks to, to replicate the real-life characters. The parts in the meeting room are redolent of The Vicar of Dibley with petty squabbles about calendars segueing into big talk about issues. In one funny moment, Thomas is forced to rebook Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, because it clashes with the bingo.

Audience members in character.

After the meeting, he enlists a few of the members to help him find the pit village that accommodated the school that housed the children. Given there were hundreds of pit villages and Mark can’t remember which one, this is an arduous task. In his odyssey to reclaim the past, Thomas ruminates on the state of a nation. What were once pit yards are now McDonalds. Emblems of comradeship have been tarmacked over by corporate monoliths. With their grandfathers past erased is it any wonder grandchildren vote Tory? 

Over the course of the journey, Thomas wonders whether he will ever find the children that stirred his soul: in one choice moment, he even tells the audience members on stage,

 ‘It occurs to me  my memory may be wrong … and I wonder momentarily if I could lie and pretend to find the school… if you think I should lie and make the story better raise your hand.’

The fact that the audience votes for the lie over the truth might be why we’ve got Brexit. People would rather hear a narrative that appeals to their prejudice than facts that serve them. With this question in the middle of the play, we’re left wondering how true Thomas’ story is. What is fundamentally true though is that it is beautiful, and as Keats once said, ‘Beauty is truth,’ so I guess in a world that promotes lies sometimes that's all we can ask for.

The Red Shed is on tour now.

The Secret Life of Sue Townsend (Aged 68 and 3/4)

I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever.

(Adrian Mole)

As a teenager I considered myself an intellectual. For a start I was one of nine children in the school that regularly did their homework. I was one of four boys that read outside of class. And on Sunday evenings I was one of one that would sit down to watch a TV literary adaptation with their mum. Yet for all of that I was not clever. When I used to give essays in I would include words like ‘exacerbate’ despite not knowing what it meant: it was enough that I had heard of it, to hell with the context or definition. Like the career of Lady Gaga, all my work was ostentatiously overwrought, a look-at-me appeal for attention, a cry for artistic recognition' I was all thesaurus and no substance. I still worry that I write like this today.

I wrote like she dressed.

Preferring to spend nights in reading Cider with Rosie as opposed to being out drinking it in the park helped cultivate my intellectual persona. Why freeze your balls off drinking cheap apples when you could be inside imbibing sweet, sweet words? Better to fill your head with stories than flood your basin with booze, surely? I would look at the lads getting off with girls and think their’s was a hollow victory. They hadn’t had to work for it. Their mating ritual a caveman smash and grab. I bet they had asked the girl out in dull, leaden prose. I don’t imagine there was a Shakespearean simile in sight. I, on the other hand, believed in courtly love; in chivalry; in gallantry, in being exceedingly polite until the right moment arose to fire Cupid’s poetry their way.

Is it any wonder I loved Adrian Mole at this age?

Adrian Mole is the comic creation of Sue Townsend. He is the reason why I fell in love with reading. Oblivious to music through my teens, comedy was the North Star that guided me through these years. It was a revelation reading a book about someone my age that shared the same concerns I did: Would I ever fall in love? Was my penis large or just above average? Would my school essays ever be published? I laughed at the pomposity of Adrian; his naïve belief that he was in somehow special, then recoiled thinking, “oh, this is a bit like me.” But that was the thing: he was a bit like me, but more monstrous than me. Adrian made teenage outsiders feel less bad about our romantic pretensions because we could never be as bad as that. We could continue to write our terrible poetry because it would never be as woeful as, Pandora I adore ya/ I implore ye/ Don’t ignore me.

Adrian.

The reason I write about Adrian Mole after all these years is because last night Sue Townsend was the subject of a BBC2 documentary. Sadly, Townsend died two years ago following many battles with illness; however, she left a life story that is remarkable. Born on a Council Estate she left school aged just 14. She quickly met a sheet metal worker and married. Unable to hold down a job, she flitted between occupations. Whilst working in a clothes shop she was sacked for reading Oscar Wilde in the fitting room. Her husband thought education belonged in the classroom and disapproved of her intellectual pursuits – she was forced to hide her writing under the cushion to curb his opprobrium. By the time she was 23 she was a single mother with three children. Despite this responsibility, she continued to read and write with a voracity that would put her creation to shame. On meeting her second husband she found a person that would give her the confidence to join a writer’s group, which gave her the drive to become published.   

Once Adrian was published her writing career burgeoned. In fact, Adrian was so popular that it was the best-selling British book of the 1980’s; the follow-ups enjoying huge success too. In watching the documentary though I realised there was more to Townsend than her zitty hero: she was also a playwright who wrote vital pieces on immigrants and women’s issues. She wasn’t afraid to upset the status quo, penning The Queen and I, a scabrous imagining of what life would be like for the Royals if Britain adopted a republic. Despite making millions, she stayed in Leicestershire and remained loyal to her Socialist values. She was wonderful, brilliant and funny.

Townsend.

It seems fitting that this pseudo-intellectual blog should be concluded by Adrian Mole, another pseud like me.

• ·      I'm not sure how I will vote. Sometimes I think Mrs Thatcher is a nice kind sort of woman. Then the next day I see her on television and she frightens me rigid. She has got eyes like a psychotic killer, but a voice like a gentle person. It is a bit confusing.
• ·      [Good Friday] Poor Jesus, it must have been dead awful for him. I wouldn't have the guts to do it myself.
• ·      My father was reading Playboy under cover of the candlelight and I was reading Hard Times by my key-ring torch. 
• ·      My skin is dead good. I think it must be a combination of lucozade and being in love.

The Secret Life of Sue Townsend (Aged 68 and ¾) is available on iPlayer now.

A Man's World: The Double Life of Emile Griffith

One of the podcasts I listen to a lot is the brilliant Irishman Abroad presented by comedian Jarlath Regan. Each week he interviews a guest that has some personal connection with Ireland (originally it was people who were born in Ireland and moved abroad, thence the title, but because of the popularity of the show the parameters have relaxed and he now pretty much speaks to anyone. Last week for example he had Jerry Butting and Dean Strang, the Defence Attorney’s in Making a Murderer). The episode I want to touch on this week is the one he had with Guardian sports journalist, Donald McRae.

In listening to the conversation I was in my element. I’ve always loved sport, admittedly channeling most of my passion into football, but I have a working knowledge of different ones too. The South African McRae is a three-time Interviewer of the Year winner, feted for his interviews with the likes of Chris Gayle, Usain Bolt and Andy Murray. You may remember that Gayle was in trouble a few months back for propositioning a female interviewer after a game, McRae did not let him off the hook, calling ‘bullshit’ on the cricketer’s assertion that he wouldn’t mind his daughter being treated this way. He’s an interviewer that admires his subjects but not to the detriment of asking the vital questions. His skill is turning the interview into a conversation, whereby he as an interviewer shares some of his life to get the subject to share theirs. The mistake that many interviewers make, he says, is that they go in with an agenda: the talk feels like an interrogation, leading the defendant to call ‘no comment’ in the form of platitudes and evasion. McRae doesn’t forget to bait his rod with a compliment before casting it into the water – the result? he often lands his catch.

The bulk of the interview with Regan involved them discussing McRae’s book, A Man’s World: The Double Life of Emile Griffith. Regan was obviously enthused by the biography, which made me want to read it too. The pair spoke of its genesis with McRae talking about how as a child he’d sneak into boxing matches. This was a dangerous venture for a young white boy, given how most of the contests were held in black townships. Although McRae was on the right side of apartheid, he hated the injustice of it, vowing to get out of South Africa as soon as possible. Until he could make his getaway to a foreign land, he would drink up as much black music and sport as he could, remembering of course to hide the ensuing bottles under the bed. So a love of boxing was born in South Africa, a love that has seen him go on to write two pugilist texts.

A Man’s World is a story for our time. Today in sport homosexuality is still a thing that people don't do. The Welsh rugby player, Gareth Thomas, came out after national retirement, so too German footballer, Thomas Hitzlsperger. It is admirable the stand these men have taken, but how devastating that they’ve only felt able to after they’ve left the spotlight. In life, in entertainment, in politics we appear to welcome all sexuality, yet in sport homosexuality isn’t allowed past the turnstiles. Simply in macho sports the risk is too great for players: how will their manager react? Will their teammates cope? What might the fans say? These men are imprisoned by their gender and can see no way out.

Eight years later Justin Fashanu committed suicide.

Imagine then how difficult life would be if you were a black gay boxer in the 1960’s? Life for gay sport stars today is difficult, but homosexuality is now legal with gay rights enshrined in law. It wasn’t always this way. Up until 1962 homosexuality was illegal in America: loving another man could land you in jail. Not only that but it was regarded as a mental illness. If you were gay, you were an abomination, a sick fiend that needed exorcising. In the Land of the Free so many were contained by others prejudice. If it wasn’t hard enough that Emile Griffith was gay, he was black too. His was a life of segregation within segregation. In being born into such prejudice Emile Griffith had been dealt a very bad hand; his life is a testament to how hard he played it.

Griffith was born in the Virgin Island to an unstable home. There were many children and an absent mother trying to make bread in America. As a young boy he was sexually abused by his uncle, a crime that led him to flee home. Eventually Griffith received the draft notice from his mother that he was expected in America. On arriving he worked at a hat factory where his bulging torso caught the eye of his boss. It wasn’t long before Griffith was sent down the local gym to be trained for the Golden Gloves Championship, an amateur tournament that he fared well in. Enjoying the factory work, Griffith was nonplussed by the boxing game but as his stock grew so too did his interest. It didn’t take long for him to rise through the ranks and become a contender for the major championships.

Emile Griffith.

His most famous fights were against Benny Paret. Paret was from Cuba which only intensified the rivalry between these two superpowers. In fact Castro by this point had banned professional boxing, meaning Paret had to relocate to Miami. Despite this, Paret was Cuban and therefore the enemy. If Griffith won he would become an American hero. The first fight was fought with good grace with Griffith coming out on top. The second was a nastier affair that Paret took on a dubious points decision. The final episode would be remembered as one of the darkest days in boxing history. 

The lead up to the bout was mired in hurtful name calling: Paret shocked the establishment by branding Griffith a ‘marcion’ – Spanish for ‘faggot.’ It was an open secret by this point that Griffith frequented different bars to other boxers. In Greenwich Village there was always a stool for the champ. The gay community adored Griffith because he showed you could be strong and gay. Although he could never be out as a homosexual, he had a home in Greenwich. Nearly everyone in the boxing business knew he was gay, but they knew exposing would open up a Pandora’s box of shit they simply couldn’t deal with. America was not ready to hear anyone was gay, let alone a boxer.

The famous feud.

Going into the 24^th March 1962 bout with these taunts fresh in his mind, Griffith battled hard. Unfortunately, he battled too hard. Just as a round was threatening to peter out, he launched a spring offensive so vicious that people cried at their television screens. Uppercut after uppercut besieged Paret’s defences rendering him all but obsolete. When Paret could lift his hands no more, Griffith raised his murder weapons one last time, unleashing a torrent of jabs that brought an end to the fight - and the life of Benny Paret. 

Paret was dead. Griffith had killed him. For years his ghost stalked him.

Acknowledging that death was on his hands but knowing that he had mouths to fill, Griffith continued to wade in blood like a Scottish king. Those initial fights were hard: every time he had a boxer against the ropes he saw Paret’s face staring back at him. To second-guess your instincts in any job can prove stifling; in boxing it can be suicidal. Fortunately, Griffith’s street smarts took him through this mourning period, allowing him and his opponents to come through unscathed. Over time he learnt to live with the death of Paret: he reasoned that the insults had angered him but not enough to want to kill him. It was just terrible luck. The hardest fight remained his sexuality, something that he had to keep under his gloves until late in life.

Paret Jr. later forgave Griffith for his father's death. 

The Emile story is being made into a film by the brilliant Lenny Abrahamson (Room) and will hopefully depict a brave man that fought the times he lived in and survived. In some worlds - and certainly in Griffith's- sometimes survival is the greatest victory of all.

A Man’s World: The Double Life of Emile Griffith is available now.

After the Beginning, Before the End

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”

(Marcel Prost)

Memory can be a bugger. It can’t be escaped. During the good times you forget it's there, you’re only in the here and now, the past a foreign country you can’t get a visa to. However in the hangover mornings, the isolated evenings it strikes again - Banquo hauntings at every turn. Happy memories don’t get a look in: their evil twin brother has kicked them into muteness. But at least you can hide the bad ones, lock them in a safe, one you only know the combination to. What happens though if someone’s memory of you is wrongly unpleasant? What then? What happens if they then tell someone else, and so on? Before you know it you’ve got a shit snowball with your reputation in the middle. The problem is you can’t control what other people think of you. (Well, you can but you need political office, a big budget and control over the means of communication, and I don’t know about you but I haven’t got those things in my kitchen.)

This idea of memory is the thematic concern of Daniel Kitson's brilliant download, After the Beginning, Before the End. The show is not a new one; it was recorded in 2013. In fact I went to see it with my old flatmates Dec and Beth in the Oxford Playhouse. This week an e-mail came through from Kitson announcing its release on Bandcamp. Now an e-mail from Daniel Kitson is as good as a telegram from The Queen as far as I’m concerned – it has more jokes in it for a start; although it is similar in that you have to ask for it (sign up to the mailing list). 

Note: until recently I didn’t know you had to notify The Queen to receive a telegram. What happens if you haven't got good friends and family to do it for you? It seems a bit needy requesting your own birthday message- like ringing Simon Mayo on ‘All Request Friday’ and dedicating a song to yourself. I just think the palace should think of the Eleanor Rigby’s of this world when thinking about telegram delivery.

It's a bit vain that The Queen puts a picture of herself in the card, isn't it? It's not her bloody day. It's all 'me, me, me' with her.

Anyhow, I bloody love Kitson and always look forward to reading his missives. Like I said, this week’s one was about him releasing a stand-up show. Now fans of Kitson will tell you that this is exciting news indeed. The man doesn’t release DVD’s, as a result there is barely any output available. To see what he does you have to go. Then after you’ve gone it’s gone- never to be relived, never to be revisited. For a man that creates two or three shows a year there are such few recordings available; this one is his newest one since 2007 show The Ballad of Roger and Grace. Awaking early this morning, The Girl next to me but faraway in Sleepytown, I decided to put on my earphones and slide into Kitson’s world.

The show begins with an ambient coil of electronica that will form the backdrop for his words. The effect is at first disorientating, given time absorbing, allowing you to recede into the language like a patient going under. Only in this piece it’s Kitson putting himself under the knife. He is uncomfortable with his friend Issy’s memory of him, causing him to question the essence of identity. After each chapter in the show, Kitson returns to this so we find out a little more about the story that incorrectly paint him in the worst light. In the intervening episodes Kitson walks a Modernist line, allowing theories of thought, knowledge and identity to seep into one another, ignoring the conventions of a narrative thread.

This is what Daniel Kitson looks like.

Despite sounding pretentious, this isn’t a cod-philosophy lecture. Amongst all the ruminations on life, the universe and everything else, Kitson has brilliant jokes about coffee and parsnips. He is a man that wraps up profundity in silly sticky tape. Take his meditation on loneliness where he talks about the difficult decision of wanting to stay up when you're tired.

“I could have a fucking coffee. I live on my own. I do want I want. I’ve got no one looking at me whilst I’m grinding the beans, saying "are you sure you should be doing that? You’re not going to sleep well." Really, I never sleep well. I’m too lonely and sad to sleep well. If I want a night java, I’ll have a fucking night java. I don’t fear the bean after dark."

Here Kitson exposes his false argument for autonomy. Yes when you’re single you’re able to make your own choices but that’s no replacement for the happiness you feel when you’re with someone. His skill as a linguist is evident with ‘java’ and ‘bean’ acting as the punch lines. For this comedian the thesaurus is a weapon of choice, resistance in the face of such language futile.

Cover art.

Ultimately this is a show where Kitson digs into his psyche to question how he thinks and other people think of him. In a telling episode he recounts a time when he took his video projector apart because it wouldn’t work; being a phrase maker with a craftsman eye for detail doesn’t equip you with the practical skills needed for reassembling, therefore he packs all the tiny pieces into a box where in the loft they now lie. He says this is a metaphor for how he sees his brain, “I got a bit curious, opened it up, and now I haven’t got any clue on how it functions.” This analogy is only half-true: unlike the projector, Kitson’s brain doesn't gather dust. His cerebrum is shinier than a spring clean in spring. Kitson might be oblivious as to how the whole thing comes together, but I hope he pontificates over the pieces for many years to come.

The download is available for £5 here: https://danielkitson.bandcamp.com/album/after-the-beginning-before-the-end