Fifty years of Tory leadership contests

Chris Hallam's World View

It is easy to forget amidst all the current Labour leadership hoo-hah, that it is fifty years this month since the very first Conservative leadership contest. Generally more unpredictable than their Labour equivalents, let’s recall this and every such contest since…

1963: Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan falsely believing himself to be dying of cancer resigns on the eve of the party conference. The resulting chaos convinces most that the “magic circle” process of consultation needs to be replaced by an election of MPs. Macmillan’s successor Alec Douglas Home resigns after losing the 1964 General Election and begins devising the mechanism for the coming contest.

1965:

Edward Heath beats the favourite Reginald Maudling to win the leadership. Enoch Powell comes third.

The right choice?: Probably. Heath at least won the 1970 General Election. Maudling fell foul of his business connections. Powell with his inflammatory Rivers of Blood speech (and his…

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Going Solo: The early years of Han Solo

Chris Hallam's World View

Looking forward to the proposed Star Wars spin-off feature about Han Solo’s early years? Don’t bother. Everything you need to know about the early days of the roguish space captain is here…

SCENE 1

Even longer ago…

Medical droid: Congratulations Mr and Mrs Solo: It’s a boy!

MR SOLO: Well done luv! What shall we call him?

MRS SOLO:  I’ve got a list of the most popular boy’s names for last year: Anakin…Boba…Han… Jabba…Jago…Lando… Luke…Qui-Gon…

MR SOLO: Ho ho! Bloody ridiculous. “Luke” just sounds made up. How about “Han”?

SCENE 2

Fifteen years later…

Careers droid: According to the survey, you should try to become an accountant, a Storm Trooper or a smuggler/ship captain/ future leader of the Rebel Alliance.

Han: Hmmm. Accountancy’s boring but they do get paid well. I suppose I could do a Year Out first…

SCENE 3

Tatooine 15 years later again. Han is visiting Jabba…

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Book review: Easily Distracted by Steve Coogan

Easily Distracted by Steve Coogan

Published by: Century

Let’s be clear: Steve Coogan is not Alan Partridge.

There are similarities, obviously. They both look almost exactly the same. Both are totally car-obsessed.  Both have a love for James Bond. In one episode of I’m Alan Partridge…, Partridge memorably recreates the entire opening sequence of The Spy Who Loves Me. Coogan, meanwhile, admits to having a picture of Roger Moore in a safari suit on his bedroom wall as a child. As an adult, he was overjoyed to be mentioned briefly in Roger Moore’s own autobiography.

But the resemblance soon ends. Partridge seems to be always around ten years older than Coogan himself. Coogan has just turned fifty, Partridge must thus be now about sixty, although the age gap seemed to narrow in the film, Alpha Papa. Coogan is a left-winger with an understandable and fully justified hatred of our tabloid press. Partridge is much less politically sophisticated, a Daily Mail reader and “homosceptic” who supports the death penalty “for treason and murder”. Coogan has been much more successful with women than Alan, who makes largely inept romantic overtures towards beauty show contestants, much younger radio station employees and whose idea of a hot date is going to a “cracking owl sanctuary”. Oddly, Coogan attributes his success in this regard, which predates his fame to his essential geekiness: “they liked the fact that I wasn’t an alpha male. I was a bit square. A bit nerdish.” It has often ended in disaster, however.

There is far more to Steve Coogan than Alan Partridge, however, and despite an occasional failure (like his 24 Hour Party People character, his real life friend Tony Wilson) to wear his learning lightly and avoid pretension (“I’ve learned late in life to understand the true beauty of thoughts and reflections”), this is an enjoyable well-written book. The first section deals with various highs and lows: his recent triumph with the film, Philomena, his war with the evil forces of News International, the filming of Alpha Papa and an early nadir at the 1990 Edinburgh Festival during which he “spent far too much time imagining what it would be like to be Sean Hughes” then seemingly bound for superstardom, hard as it is to believe now. The second section is more chronological, describing his generally happy Irish Catholic northern English upbringing. His brother later had a top twenty hit with the Mock Turtles’ “Can You Dig It?”

The third segment deals with Coogan’s rise to fame through college, Spitting Image and radio and TV up to the mid-nineties. There is perhaps not enough about Coogan’s actual career since he achieved fame: Around The World In Eighty Days isn’t mentioned, perhaps understandably as it was a big flop, nor is Dr Terrible’s House of Horrible. But successes like Cruise of the Gods and Coogan’s Run are barely mentioned either. Coogan will also doubtless surprise many by admitting to liking Saxondale more than Alan Partridge.

Comedy is a vicious business but while he admits to rightly loathing Bernard Manning who he has met, On The Buses and to not personally being a fan of Michael McIntyre (“not my cup of tea”), he is remarkably generous about almost everyone he has worked with, usually only encountering tension with them if they are unable to work with him again for some reason. He admits to finding Chris Morris “odd” and was “hurt” when John Thomson, by then a big star thanks to The Fast Show and Cold Feet understandably no longer wanted to be Paul Calf’s sidekick “Fat Bob” anymore. Coogan also once almost came to blows with early collaborator Patrick Marber (a regular on Alan Partridge’s sofa, who in one guise was accidentally shot dead on TV by Alan on the last episode of Knowing Me, Knowing You…”) and the two seem to have drifted apart, despite reconciling afterwards. Marber is now better known as a writer and screenwriter but Coogan is still clearly immensely grateful to him. “God bless Patrick Marber,” are words unlikely to crop up in Lee and Herring’s memoirs. They appear here.

In A Cock and Bull Story (and later The Trip) Steve Coogan’s character is continuously annoyed when Rob Brydon repeatedly adopts an Alan Partridge voice to impersonate Coogan. In truth, he seems far more at ease with his inner demons than tabloid mythology suggests. Let us hope so. He is a national treasure.

And the book? Lovely stuff.

A Very British Coup Revisited

Chris Hallam's World View

From the outset, there were doubts about the Labour leader’s left wing agenda:

“Withdrawal from the Common Market. Import controls. Public control of finance, including the pension and insurance funds. Abolition of the House of Lords, the honours list and the public schools…’consideration to be given’ to withdrawal from NATO…there was even a paragraph about ‘dismantling the newspaper monopolies’”.”

Jeremy Corbyn in 2015? No, Harry Perkins n 1989, the fictional Prime Minister created by Chris Mullin in his 1982 novel A Very British Coup. Perhaps it’s no surprise following Corbyn’s victory that Mullin has announced that he is considering writing a sequel.

The book tells of how Perkins’ government, despite winning a landslide election win soon finds itself under collective attack from an extremely hostile media, intelligence services (at home and in the US) and the establishment in general.

Perkins’ dress sense is different to Corbyn’s but even on the…

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Book review: Whoniverse – An Unofficial Planet By Planet Guide To The Universe of Doctor Who, by Lance Parkin

Book review: Whoniverse – An Unofficial Planet By Planet Guide To The Universe of Doctor Who From Gallifrey To Skaro by Lance Parkin.

Published by: Aurum Press

Out: October 22nd 2015

The Doctor is in. And he is is likely to remain in for some time. Even ignoring the inconvenient interruption of the years from 1989 to 2005 (when generally speaking, Doctor Who was not on TV), the series nevertheless has an impressive legacy, stretching back to 1963. And the universe within the show, helpfully covered by Lance Parkin here, obviously covers countless millennia and numerous imaginary worlds and timelines.

It perhaps goes without saying that this is a book for true fans of the series, starting as it does with almost academic sounding chapters entitled “the structure of the universe” before launching into accounts of the likes of Kaldor, Peladon and The Shadow Proclamation. This is not a history of the series or an episode guide but a guide to the wider Who universe. In truth, I am perhaps not a big enough Who fan to fully appreciate it. Many others would.

That said, with great pictures throughout taken from the show and the long running Doctor Who Magazine, this would be a worthy addition to any coffee table.

Book review: Where’s The Wookiee?

Where’s The Wookiee?

Published by Egmont

Out now

Make no mistake: you definitely wouldn’t miss a Wookiee if you ever saw one in real life. They are tall, hairy and look like yetis. If you’ve seen the character Chewbacca in Episodes IV to VI (as in, the old, good ones) or in the trailer for The Force Awakens, you’ll know exactly what they look like, for he is the most famous of them all. There’s also a bunch of them in the most recent proper Star Wars film, Revenge of the Sith.

Of course, as they don’t actually exist in real life you’re unlikely to ever see a Wookiee outside a science fiction convention. This fun children’s book, essentially based on the format Where’s Wally or if you’re American, Where’s Waldo, allows you to spot a Wookie (and indeed other characters) amidst a busy but charming array of nicely illustrated crowd scenes. Sometimes you’ll spot him instantly. Sometimes it will take ages. But he’s always there. That’s just the way the Wookiee crumbles.

A great way to keep the children quiet for a good while then, especially if they love Wally (which by the way is no more a typical British name than Waldo is) and/or Star Wars.

As Chewbacca himself would say: “Yeeaarraagh grruuughhh muurraa yaarg!”

Book review: Those Were The Days by Terry Wogan

Terry Wogan has been a feature of the media landscape for so long now that it is almost impossible to imagine how it ever existed without him. The author biography on the inside cover of this book states that his “stellar career in TV and radio has spanned forty years”. Given that it is now 2015 and Wogan has been working non-stop in the field since at least the mid-1960s, this seems like something of an understatement.

Is this funny, slight novella, almost more a collection of short stories really “the best of the best” as actress Joanna Lumley claims on the cover? Not really. Would this book have been published were Wogan not already a household name? I doubt it.

But I’m glad it has been for this is as Lumley also notes a “funny, touching and charming” book which centres on thee reflections of an ageing Irish bank manager (yes, really). Given that Wogan himself worked in the Bank of Ireland early in his career, one wonders if he is musing on the alternative life he might have had. One of the characters indeed, does desert his hometown for a career in radio.

But, though short, and less Christmassy than its cover suggests, this is a book as charming and highly readable book, as whimsical and inoffensive as the persona of the author Wogan himself.

Those Were The Days

Published BY: Macmillan

Release date: October 8th 2015

Book review: Thatcher’s Secret War: Subversion, Secrecy and Government, 1974-90

Thatcher’s Secret War: Subversion, Secrecy and Government, 1974-90

By Clive Bloom

Published by: The History Press

The Thatcher era was probably the most radically divisive in recent political history. The period is fascinating and has, of course, been well documented.

But what about the secret state? What was going on behind the scenes?

Thatcher has been out of power for almost a quarter of a century now and dead since 2013, but no one would expect all of the secrets of Britain’s espionage activity during her tenure to be revealed yet (or, indeed, ever) and Clive Bloom doesn’t claim this. This is nevertheless a fascinating and sometimes chilling read.

The book opens in 1974, at a time when Thatcher herself was still in Edward Heath’s shadow cabinet. The nation, however, was already starting to experience the intense political polarisation which would characterise her time in Downing Street. It was a time of intense paranoia with groups of retired officers plotting a coup should the nation take a sudden leftward turn. Airey Neave, Thatcher’s confidante, who would himself be assassinated by the IRA shortly before Thatcher’s victory in the 1979 General Election reportedly threatened Tony Benn with assassination if the latter ever became leader of the Labour Party. Bloom claims the chances of Benn ever becoming leader were “slim”. We now know of course that he never did. But would this have been obvious at the time? It seems doubtful: Benn might well have led his party had he stood in 1980 or had he not lost his seat in 1983. But anyway…

In 1976, Harold Wilson resigned as Prime Minister and soon began talking to journalists like this:

“I see myself as the big fat spider in the corner of the room. Sometimes I speak when I’m asleep. You should both listen. Occasionally when we meet I might tell you to go to the Charing Cross Road and kick a blind man standing on the corner. The blind man may tell you something, lead you somewhere.”

Wilson was clearly long past his best: an alcoholic and probably suffering from the early stages of dementia. But MI5 had been plotting against him when he was in power. It was a fact.

Under Thatcher from 1979, the government’s enemies were clearly defined: the IRA, unions, the Soviet Union, British socialists and the Left, the last few often viewed as effectively in alliance. The enemy within. The government even took the view that the inner city rioting of the early Eighties could be blamed on left wing politicians stirring things up.

Covering everything from the still emerging scandal concerning high level paedophilia, to the battles with the IRA, the miners and the Soviets, to the alarming number of suspicious looking and unexplained deaths, this is the book not of a conspiracy theorist or even a polemicist but a balanced and well written insight into the world of those who lived and worked in the shadows during the most interesting decade (or so) in modern British political history.