The week in audio: Invisible Hands with David Dimbleby; Artworks: Talk Talk – Living in Another World; White Hot Hate; Luigi
The History Podcast: Invisible Hands with David Dimbleby (Radio 4) | BBC SoundsArtworks: Talk Talk – Living In Another World (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse CBCLuigi Wondery+
David Dimbleby is a broadcasting quality mark, isn't he? Not just a guarantee of intelligent content delivered succinctly and with style, but a host who's at once establishment and outsider. His eminent career – hosting Question Time and general elections, as well as commentating on royal jubilees and state funerals – means he is intrinsically connected to Britishness and holding Britishness to account.
His new Radio 4 series, Invisible Hands, unpicks a real establishment fundamental: capitalism and the free markets. Many people in Britain – me included, and I'm hardly a spring chicken – can barely remember a time when this country wasn't in thrall to the idea that the best way to run an economy is by handing power to a market where everything – strappy sandals, war weapons, water supplies – is up for sale.
The series starts with Antony Fisher, a second world war RAF pilot who took up farming after 1945. There's a touch of Jon Ronson in picking Fisher: the pinpointing of a flapping butterfly event that cascades into a future that could never be imagined. Here, the flap is to do with Fisher's frustration with the postwar Attlee government and its meddling in everything. 'The heavy hand of state,' says Dimbleby. 'Government bodies with dreary bureaucratic names like the Milk Marketing Board and the Egg Marketing Board.' At some point Fisher reads a Reader's Digest article by Prof Friedrich Hayek, in which Hayek argued that the government's micromanagement of the economy was actually 'pretty well what the Nazis had proposed', and actually what the allies had been fighting against. A light goes on in Fisher's head. The butterfly flaps its wings.
By the end of episode one, Fisher is in the US at a competition called the Chicken of Tomorrow(!) and everything is about to change. Invisible Hands covers a lot of ground, but it's well paced, and Dimbleby makes it all enjoyable and easy to understand. Politics students may be familiar with the Fisher story but I didn't know it, and the programme is an engaging way to learn how the Chicken of Tomorrow became the State of Today.
Also on Radio 4 last week, Elbow's Guy Garvey, the warm and eloquent 6 Music presenter, hosted an episode of the excellent series Artworks. The subject was British pop group Talk Talk and, specifically, their 1988 album Spirit of Eden: a great work, completely at odds with the times.
Garvey is a romantic, and he clearly delights in the bucketful of romantic tropes in this tale. Mark Hollis, Talk Talk's leader, was a musical genius unaffected by (capitalist) dreams of fame and fortune. After three albums, as stardom beckoned, he turned left; made a deliberate retreat from the commercial in favour of art. Spirit of Eden took nine months to make and was done in the literal and metaphorical dark. Every note had to be spontaneous, insisted Hollis, who kept the bad guys (the record company) at bay by simply locking them out.
The result? An album so groundbreaking and out of sync that the record company had no idea how to sell it. Talk Talk became unmarketable, Hollis and EMI sued each other (EMI said the album was 'not commercially satisfactory': lovely use of words there) and Hollis bid a retreat. And – yep, you guessed it – almost 40 years on, Spirit of Eden is lauded as a masterpiece.
It was interesting to hear the effect on Tony Wadsworth, then head of marketing at EMI, who worked his way up to become the company's boss. 'It was a great lesson that came in very useful later on with artists like Radiohead,' he said. And Hollis, a man who, outside the studio, was affable and companionable, said this: 'I can't imagine not playing music, but I don't feel any need to record music or perform it.' A message that's often forgotten: it's in the doing that the delight in art is found.
A couple of shows about US antiheroes for the single-minded-obsessive lovers among you. Actually, the first, White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse, about an undercover FBI agent called Scott Payne, reveals his very un-loner-ish approach. Though Payne is tattooed, bearded and leather-jacketed – all things that freak out many Americans – he's a fun guy, able to make friends easily. And his look and demeanour have meant that he has been able to infiltrate neo-Nazi cabals, biker gangs, dodgy fringe groups – though always with the fear of being discovered. Payne is painted as a tattooed angel on the side of the righteous, but whether or not you enjoy this show will depend on how much you warm to his convivial but rather egotistical company.
Finally, brace yourself, ladies, there's a podcast about Luigi Mangione. Of course, no show can ever go deep enough on the man accused of killing the CEO of United HealthCare in December. The circumstances – and, to be honest, Mangione's looks – trump any banal insights offered by friends and neighbours. He might have been brought up with 'a strong foundation of community', have been 'a friendly, lovely young man' with 'intelligence and ambition', and had 'a relentless, grinding struggle' with back pain, but that's not really why people will listen. It's for Mangione's hood-up smile before he allegedly committed the murder, and for the Italian loafers (no socks) he wore while in court. Fans can never get enough of this kind of thing, it seems. Still, this four-part series has the right amount of silly schlock to keep the Luigi legend bubbling.
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The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
My grandmother grew up brushing her teeth with radioactive toothpaste
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The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
I haven't fallen over on stage yet, says Del Amitri's Justin Currie
'I suddenly realised that in between taking mouthfuls of sushi, my hand was shaking and it looked like I was sitting there by myself, conducting a tiny orchestra in between mouthfuls with my chopsticks. Sometimes you can see people looking at you wondering what's going on.' Gavin - the name Currie has given his Parkinson's tremor - knows what's going on. He's been gradually making himself known in the singer's right hand for the last few years, and now he's started taking a real interest in the rest of the 60 year old's body too. 'My balance isn't what it was and if I turn too quickly I get quite disorientated,' said Currie, sitting in a coffee shop in Glasgow's west end, without chopsticks, and remarkably balanced in more ways than one. 'I haven't fallen over on stage yet, but if I do, then I'll probably joke about it.' Read more This wry stance is nothing new for followers of Justin Currie. He's been writing poison-tipped songs about self-inflicted pain for decades, spinning pop gold from imagined tales about being the last to know, taking adulterous roads to ruin, kissing things goodbye and nothing ever happening. Followers of his enjoyably sour online tour blogs have grown familiar with his on–the-road nihilism since he first booted up his laptop in 2008, a vent which will take the form of a book to be released later this summer. Its title, The Tremolo Diaries, is nicked from the Radio 4 documentary he made last year when he came out as a Parkinsonian, as he calls his fellow sufferers Subtitled Life On The Road And Other Diseases it deals with the fall-out from a hellish triumvirate of turns even he would have thought too heavy for any of the characters in his songs. And, funny stories about chopsticks in sushi restaurants or not, Currie has suffered. In a few dreadful weeks at the end of December 2022, he lost his mother to cancer, saw his girlfriend severely debilitated by a stroke and received the dreaded confirmed diagnosis of a condition which has been robbing him ever since of the talent which has made him one of the country's most popular and successful songwriters and live singers. No surprise, perhaps, that one day a few months later, he couldn't get up in the morning. And it had nothing to do with the disease's depletive impact on his motor skills. 'They give you a leaflet when they tell you you have Parkinson's,' he said. 'It's actually a really good leaflet, and on page five it says that everybody who gets Parkisnon's gets depressed. I've never been depressed before, but one day, a few months later, I couldn't get out of bed.' Del Amitri (Image: free) A combination of antidepressants and 'talking about it' helped Currie put his feet back on the ground a few weeks later. 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'But having gone through all the shit with my mum dying, then Emma's stroke and my confirmed diagnosis, it's all coming from real life rather than invented dramatic scenes. I've written lots of songs about death and disease in the past. Those sorts of songs are easier to write now. One's mother dying at 86 is sad but it isn't tragic. All three things coming at once was traumatic, although I didn't think it was until I started writing songs about it.' As before, the bitter comes wrapped in the sweet. Even at their bleakest, Del Amitri know a hooky melody. Read more 'It definitely has the tunes,' said Currie of the new LP, still in early gestation. 'I was wary at first, but I really like it now.' Whether the Dels will play any of the tunes at this month's gig under the big top at Queen's Park in Glasgow is anyone's guess. Currie doesn't know how well he'll perform, let alone what. 'It's harder with Parkinson's. I can't play as well as I used to, and that's endlessly frustrating.' 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The National
5 days ago
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Britain 'extension of Scotland', medieval texts uncovered by historian suggest
Research by the University of Glasgow's Professor Dauvit Broun has revealed that Scottish historians and writers in the 1380s and 1520s regarded the Scottish kingdom as equivalent to Britain, adding it was not as common as the tendency to refer to Britain as England, but it was similar in effect. Professor Broun argues that this discovery challenges the modern understanding of British identity, and that the research suggests that Scottish independence can be entirely compatible with being British. He added that the findings also question whether, rather than a shared Britishness, there have for centuries been distinct Scottish, English, and Welsh versions of being British. READ MORE: Glasgow set for skyscraper boom as new guide identifies suitable sites Professor Broun's revelation comes from a recently discovered booklet from the early 16th century, which helps to reveal the unexpected relationship between Scottish independence and British identity that has been overlooked. While England's identification with Britain has existed for over a millennium, Professor Broun has discovered a parallel tradition where Scots envisioned Britain as "an extension of Scotland". Writing in the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, which was published on Wednesday, three Scottish writers outlined a vision of Britain as a kingdom ruled by the Scottish monarchy – effectively a Scottish kingdom expanded to island-wide scale. Scottish History professor Broun said: 'A close reading of work by medieval Scottish historians and scholars shows they firmly believed that Scottish independence was entirely compatible with British identity. 'In this era, Britain was not seen as an English-dominated kingdom, as is often how it is viewed today, but rather a space that could be ruled by the Scottish monarchy. 'This idea of Britain as fundamentally Scottish is a surprising and provocative viewpoint in today's often polarised debates around national identity.' The so-called 'founding father of Scottish unionism', John Mair, was a key figure in Professor Broun's analysis as he held a vision of a Scottish kingdom which expanded to include England. While advocating for a marriage-based union between Scottish and English royal houses, Professor Broun argues that Mair envisioned this primarily from a Scottish perspective with the assumption that a Scottish king would rule Britain. Professor Broun's analysis includes a previously unpublished manuscript booklet – St Andrews Chronicles, which is now held at the University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums, from around 1511 which provided a rare insight into how ordinary educated Scots engaged with these ideas. (Image: University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums) The homemade booklet contains a collection of historical texts about Scottish and British origins, king lists and chronicles which suggested British-Scottish connections were of interest beyond elite scholarly circles. Researchers said the physical characteristics of the booklet suggest it was created for personal use. The booklet also appeared to have copied an earlier compilation, which itself may have expanded upon an even earlier collection of texts, Professor Broun said. He added it suggests that British Scottish historical perspectives were being transmitted and expanded by ordinary educated Scots over time. The arrangement of historical material in the booklet combines Scottish royal dynasties and events with outlines of Britain as a kingdom from ancient times similar to Mair's approach but predating his work. The manuscript's significant focus on Malcolm III and St Margaret – appearing twice in different sections – mirrors the view that the Scottish royal line's connection to Anglo-Saxon royalty gave Scottish kings a claim to Britain as a whole. Professor Broun said it reinforces the distinctly Scottish-centric view of British history articulated particularly by the Scottish historian John of Fordun in the 1380s. Writing in the journal Professor Broun said that 'appropriating Britain as an extension of your country was not, therefore, unique to England: the Scots did it, too'. Professor Broun finishes by asking 'if there is such a thing as a shared Britishness beyond the mere fact of inhabiting the same island: are there only Scottish, English and Welsh British identities, each with their own spectrum which have only occasionally intersected to become a common Britishness?'
