"He's Got 'Em On": a literary ramble

In Jerome K Jerome's “Three Men In A Boat” (1889)^[1] there is a passage where the men get lost and are relieved when they hear someone playing a popular melody:

"I do not admire the tones of a concertina, as a rule; but, oh! how beautiful the music seemed to us both then — far, far more beautiful than the voice of Orpheus or the lute of Apollo, or anything of that sort could have sounded. Heavenly melody, in our then state of mind, would only have still further harrowed us. A soul-moving harmony, correctly performed, we should have taken as a spirit-warning, and have given up all hope. But about the strains of “He’s got ’em on,” jerked spasmodically, and with involuntary variations, out of a wheezy accordion, there was something singularly human and reassuring."

Intrigued by this, I attempted to find out more about the song. This proved more difficult than I had expected. Via Google and Google Images, I now know it's from the Beefsteak Club's 1878 "Forty Thieves" burlesque, originally performed at the Gaiety Theatre (see W G Elliot, "Amateur Clubs and Actors" [1898] Chap. 6)^[2] and (I think) re-staged there from 1880 onwards. An image of the front page of the song sheet is on the V&A website at 

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1274591/hes-got-em-on-sheet-music-spalding-william/ ...

- but I couldn't find the words or music.

However there is a reproduction of the same thing in "The Hidden Consumer: Masculinities, Fashion and City Life 1860-1914" by Christopher Breward^[3], and there it says it's in the Bodleian's John Johnson collection under Entertainers and Music Hall Singers.

I emailed the Bodleian to ask for a copy/transcript of the lyrics and notation - and they replied the same day ! - but they only have the cover. I then use the V&A’s contact form and asked the same thing - silence, so far.

The  libretto of the Forty Thieves is still available^[4]. Written by Robert Reece,  W.S. Gilbert  (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) and a couple of others, it was a highly successful production which raised a lot of money for charity.

Having some experience of amateur drama myself I looked up Elliot’s book and then came across another that he wrote later in life called “In My Anecdotage” (1925)^[5] I bought the latter and have just finished reading it. It's a fascinating insight into the mind of an upper class man from less than a century ago.  Educated at Eton and Cambridge, Elliot was writing in 1924, two years after the foundation of the British Broadcasting Company (radio) and five years before the first UK television broadcast and the first British talking feature film.^[6] Cinema was only just beginning to replace live theatre as a profitable form of mass entertainment and Elliot could still recall a time when a theatre could make money even when only half the seats were taken.

In the late Victorian and Edwardian eras upper-class gentlemen and ladies were expected to have amateur personal accomplishments such as acting and singing and many a grand house would entertain its guests with skits and parlour games such as “dumb crambo” (a kind of Charades with costumes and props). The head of the household would lead the family in prayers and the country was run by a relatively small and tightly-knit group educated at a handful of public schools and Oxbridge.

But the UK had just (1924) elected its first Labour Government. Of women, so far only householders had been granted the right to vote (1918); Liberal and feminist sympathisers like Elliott welcomed their new freedoms while at the same time being somewhat taken aback by how some of them exercised it. Not far ahead were the General Strike, the Wall Street Crash, the Depression and another world war.

A rapidly vanishing world.

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^[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Men-Boat-Jerome-Klapka-ebook/dp/B004UJL1KK

^[2] Online text: https://archive.org/details/amateurclubsacto00ellirich

^[3] Page 224: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BjY0_hN-hOIC&q=forty+thieves#v=snippet&q=forty%20thieves&f=false

^[4] https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/1515113876/ref=tmm_other_meta_binding_new_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=new&qid=1501940736&sr=8-1

^[5] https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/in-my-anecdotage/author/elliot-w-g/

^[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clue_of_the_New_Pin_(1929_film)

Tom Marcus' "Soldier Spy": truth and narrative

At the airport I bought Tom Marcus’ “Soldier Spy” (Penguin edition, 2017)^[1]. This purports to be, and may be, an entirely true account of the life and work of an undercover MI5 officer. 

However, as a reader I have the lingering suspicion that I am being played. As with accounts by soldiers of the SAS, a work like this requires official permission to be published and the question arises, what reason would MI5 have to allow this into the public domain? 

I think it has to do with public reservations about MI5’s past and present behaviour. For example, there is the alleged role of MI5 in the case of Binyam Mohamed,^[2] who claims that they were complicit in his illegal “extraordinary rendition” to Morocco at the behest of the United States in 2001 and that they supplied information and lines of questioning for his torturers.

Then there is the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician who was shot dead by undercover agents on the London Tube in 2005. The press release from the BBC's Panorama programme the following year^[3] says that the decision to pursue and kill him was a consequence of the implementation of operation Kratos, a policy approved at MI5 headquarters in 2003. The shooting of Menezes came 15 days after the 7th of July attacks on the London public transport and it has since been alleged that Menezes was armed with a pistol and far from being an innocent electrician was involved in preparing the explosive mechanisms used in those attacks.  However, these allegations by Michael Shrimpton in his 2014 book “Spyhunter” may have to be taken with a pinch of salt, firstly because they come so late after the event and secondly because the author himself appears to have crossed the line somehow or other - perhaps not relating to this case - and ended up in jail.^[4]

Generally there is growing public concern about the intrusion of the intelligence services into the daily activities of (so it seems) almost everybody in the country. Many will still recall former agent Peter Wright’s claim in his 1987 book “Spycatcher” that MI5 agents “bugged and burgled their way across London at the State’s behest while pompous, bowler-hatted civil servants in Whitehall looked the other way."^[5] Perhaps readers will also recall how hard the British State fought in court against the publication of Wright’s book. Since that time 30 years ago, we have seen massive growth of spying on personal electronic communication and social media via GCHQ and its foreign intelligence partners.

So true or not, Marcus' book comes to us in a social and political context and therefore has to be seen as playing a part in a “narrative”, to use a term favoured by such media spinners as Alastair Campbell. The postmodern approach to truth is that it does not exist and to me the implications open the road to madness, for what are we to make of the beliefs held by the spinners themselves? Further, at the same time as taking account of the public’s perceptions and attempting to mould them into a story favouring the powerful, other elements are carefully excluded and if an attempt is made to introduce them into the public discourse there are sustained attempt to discredit the objector. For example the admittedly colourful George Galloway’s opposition to the developing momentum for the second war on Iraq  was turned into insinuations of his having sympathy with terrorism, as indeed more recently have Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's remarks  past and present on similar subjects. The “military industrial complex” must be somewhat discomfited by the fact that Corbyn's views on Gulf War Two, which he consistently opposed, now appear to be held by the majority of people in Britain.

Either Marcus is a gifted writer or he has been expertly edited. He has certainly been professionally presented for a target audience. The cover of the paperback edition shows the lower half of a face with no visually distinguishing marks as per SAS requirements and half obscured by a hoodie which he also wears for TV interviews.^[6]  Perhaps the hoodie is a subliminal appeal to directionless youngsters, similar to the way in which Andy McNab appears to nod to boys and gang lads by featuring them in some of his stories. The lower cover also shows a lone figure standing in mid-road in a cityscape, rather as in a typical Jack Reacher tale.

Like McNab’s Nick Stone, the character of the protagonist in “Soldier Spy” starts out as a loser from a broken home, but is saved by his determination, intelligence and physical ability together with his courage, all qualities to be refined and used by the Army and subsequently the Intelligence Services. He almost forces his way into the Royal Engineers and soon makes his commanding officer retake the physical fitness test, as a result of which the CO pushes him in the direction of the SAS.  He is later handpicked by MI5, a rare honour. The descriptions of his undercover work with all its danger and privations are highly thrilling but also underscore the importance of what he does to protect the public.

At least as edited, Marcus is at pains to repeat that MI5 is the best in the world at what it does, which might be disputed by the Israeli intelligence services and perhaps former members of the RUC, to name a couple of alternative contenders for the crown. This is where a little bell rings:  I recently read “Soldier Five” by Mike Coburn,  one of the members  of the now famous 1991 Bravo Two Zero SAS patrol in the Iraqi desert. This account acts as a corrective, sometimes with embarrassing implications, to some of the earlier accounts by other members. At the end of his book Coburn recounts the difficulties he had in getting his book published against the wishes of the British Establishment.  It appears that an important motive of the latter was to preserve the reputation of the SAS for the purposes of saleability of their services. Part of the court transcript^[7] runs:

WT: In your view, this case is all about enforcing the [secrecy] contract to safeguard the employability of the Regiment, keeping ahead of its competition within the UK and to protect your customer base…

ST: Yes the reason I hesitate to answer it kind of is putting a market spin on this...

WT:  They are words in your cross brief document…

 ST:  Which words?

WT:  Employability, customer base, protecting the market, competition...

ST: Yes.

In line with what I take to be MI5’s preferred narrative, Marcus omits mention of the cockups and issues that might detract from the overall message of the State as guardian angel. Is there an element of brand protection and promotion here, also?

Even his motivation is slightly incoherent, for more than once he tells his superiors that he is not doing the job for Queen and Country but simply because he is good at it, yet he concludes his story with a theatrically jingoistic flourish, a message to the country’s enemies that “we are strong and united; that strength has been built on thousands of years of hardship and if you even think about trying to hurt us my friends will find you and f****** destroy you. Semper Vigilat.”

Just as with the latest interpretations of Batman and James Bond,  our hero is flawed and vulnerable, having his career cut short by post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a suffering to which Andy McNab also refers in his books,  noting that the support given to its Service victims in the UK compares unfavorably with that provided to American Special Forces. Again, Marcus's misfortune may be perfectly true but it fits into the way that modern hero narratives are told, appealing to our sense of shared personal weakness and confusion while at the same time increasing our admiration for the hero.

In all these tales of derring-do there is an element of deliberate presbyopia: we are encouraged to focus on the challenges immediately before us and allowed a certain blindness as to the conditions that gave rise to them. Our attention is diverted by fear and hatred from a consideration of how not to get into such situations in the first place. Undoubtedly there are enemies who now have to be dealt with, but there might not have been so many had we conducted ourselves in a fairer and juster manner. If I had to choose between the life of a secret agent fighting an endless succession of foes, and that of a public protester like Brian Haw^[8] trying to obviate the need for conflict (and see how the GLA and Parliament unsuccessfully tried various sledgehammers to crack his little egg^[9]), I hope I would follow the latter. We in the UK, who are the most CCTV-watched in the world, might then have greater privacy and personal freedom.

“Soldier Spy” is a skilfully packaged and well-sweetened coating for a pill that treats symptoms rather than causes, and has undesirable side-effects.

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^[1] https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/297921/soldier-spy/

^[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5061702/Binyam-Mohamed-MI5-torture-and-terrorism.html

^[3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2006/03_march/08/panorama.shtml

^[4] http://terroronthetube.co.uk/2015/08/20/de-menezes-the-real-story/

^[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycatcher

^[6] E.g. on 5 News, October 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13sacW50T34

^[7] Page 302 in the hardback edition: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Soldier-Five-Truth-About-Mission/dp/184018907X

^[8] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2005478/Brian-Haw-Anti-war-protester-camped-Parliament-Square-dies-aged-62.html

^[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Haw#Legal_action

FRIDAY MUSIC: Bryan Ferry, by JD

Not the finest of crooners but he does it with great style and having spent forty years in the business he must be doing something right. Behind all the glamour and glitz is, in fact, a very serious and professional exploration of musical genres from 'glam-rock' to jazz to avant-garde, all of which are reflected in the following videos. Like most artists at the top he can and does pick the best for his backing musicians (we can excuse a bit of nepotism with his son Tara Ferry on drums, although he is rather good) and some of those musicians are new to me; Jorja Chalmers on saxophone and a very, very good guitarist in Oliver Thompson.

A note on the avant-garde aspect of Roxy Music: In my view Roxy's work in this genre, as in the last video here, is far superior to the more famous names such as John Cage or Dane Rudhyar or Stockhausen to name a few. "For Your Pleasure" is a complex and mesmerising piece of work and ends, appropriately enough, with the voice of Judi Dench whispering "You don't ask. You don't ask why."

FRIDAY MUSIC: Nordic Night, by JD

And now, a selection of music for listeners-in to the northern light programme, from JD...

NSU: The End Of The Road, by Wiggia

Sometime ago I mentioned in a small piece that was an adjunct to a quiz on what make my first motorbike was, that the company had an illustrious history in motorcycle racing and motorcycle production.

NSU, an abbreviation of the town of Neckarsulm near Stuttgart, originally started its life in 1873 as a producer of knitting machines. After rapid growth they started making bicycles and by 1892 bicycles took over all the production. The first NSU motorcycle appeared in 1901 and the first car in 1905.

They never managed to break through with their car production so that by 1932 under pressure from the banks the car factory at Heilbronn was sold to Fiat for assembly of Fiat cars in Germany. The company continued to make an increasing range of motorcycles, some innovative including supercharged race models up to the Second World War. During the war they made a half track motorcycle that saw service mainly on the Russian front; this was continued in civilian form after the war:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SdKfz_2

It was after the war that the company regrouped and the totally bombed out factory started production of the pre war models, but in ‘49 the new designs starting with the Fox appeared These were revolutionary, using a pressed steel monocoque frame. In ‘53 the Max appeared with a 250cc four stroke engine that had the overhead cams driven by con rods and by ‘55 NSU was the biggest motorcycle manufacturer in the world. Many will remember the original moped, the Quickly, that sold Europe-wide in huge numbers.

At the time of the Max coming on stream NSU were breaking world speed records for motorcycles at the Bonneville salt flats and in ‘56 an NSU became the first motorcycle to top 200mph. In the same period they entered Grand Prix racing with a very advanced 125 and 250cc twin cylinder Rennmax machines that were at the time in a class of their own. This is the ‘53 250cc Rennmax  - the later racers had full “dustbin” fairings:

In ‘54 NSU stopped factory racing but had developed a race version of the single cylinder Max known as the Sportmax that in a private rider's hands became the only production racer to win a world championship. Only 32 were ever made and went to selected riders with a spare engine. They became the mainstay of the 250 class for many years, and alongside many road going Max’s were converted to racers with Sportmax parts; these too had many successes in club and international racing.

Sadly by ‘63 motorcycle production finished for NSU as the drive towards car production was seen as the way forward for the company, plus by then the ominous presence of the Japanese companies was beginning to be felt.

To complete this short section on NSU's racing pedigree, one of the selected riders to become a Sportmax owner was John Surtees. He won numerous races on his and set many class lap records. His lap record for the old Crystal Palace circuit stood for over twenty years, something unbelievable in today's racing: he also won the 1955 Ulster Grand Prix on his version.

In 1957 Surtees' father, a friend of Mike Haiwood's father, was pressured to sell the bike for Mike to ride.He took it to SA for a winter's racing and won every race he entered, setting many lap records. In ‘58 aged 18 he won 25 races with the Sportmax and his first world championship points and his first TT podium.

Surtees was known to always want to retrieve the bike for his collection but it sadly never happened: in 2014 the motorcycle was sold at auction for £69,000, a record for the marque. It must have a unique pedigree with the two owners being two of the greatest of all time on two wheels.

Here it is in all its glory with the Hailwood team colours:

 

So in ‘68 NSU ended its association with making motorcycles. In ‘57 NSU had re entered the car market with the Prinz, a small car with a doubled up version of the Max engine. This as a small runaround was fairly successful and was produced until ‘68 but in the meantime NSU was preparing for something totally different, a car with a rotary engine designed by Felix Wankel.

In ‘64 NSU offered the public the world's first rotary engined car, the Spyder:

A version of the Prinz followed, one having a twin rotor engine. At the time many believed this was the dawning of a new age in automobile propulsion but under the surface problems were already beginning to emerge: unreliability in the rotary engines was mainly caused by unsuitable materials to seal the rotor tips and rapid wear was causing failures and the warranty bill was rising.

It was in ‘67 with the unveiling of the company's first hopefully mass production car with a rotary engine that the clouds of failure started to gather. The NSU Ro80 was a very modern design with independent suspension and disc brakes and the twin rotor engine giving 115bhp and for then a very modern design one that has stood the test of time.

Virtually every car manufacturer in the world had taken out licenses for the rotary engine, though only Citroen who had share of the hopeful engine plant built a rotary car. The model was aborted. NSU had had great hope that royalties would pay for their investment in ever increasingly costly development, but it was not to be: there were several prototypes built by other companies including a Corvette by General Motors with quad rotors, but nothing went into production.

Despite winning the car of the year award in ‘67 and several design awards, the car had slow sales:

- and the increasing heavy costs of engine replacements even at low mileages was sinking the company. In ‘69 the company was taken over by VW who used the factory for Audi production though the Ro80 staggered on until the last NSU was produced in ‘77. The name was never used by Audi after that time.

The only other company to produce a rotary engined car was Mazda, in fact under license they pre-dated the Ro 80 as a mass production car with the Cosmo, a sports car that stayed in production for twenty years:

Mazda have persevered and improved the rotary unit over many years, even largely overcoming the main problem rotor tip sealing using ceramics. In 1991 Mazda won Le Mans, the only Japanese manufacturer to win Le Mans; they had overcome reliability problems with earlier race efforts:

Le Mans promptly banned the rotary engine from competing again, though the ban has since been lifted, to late to save a unique exhaust note.

Mazda have of course until recently persevered with the rotary and the last model the RX – 8 had overcome most of the reliability issues and this lovely car deserves a successor, but the fuel economy was still poor compared to peer cars and the emissions , that are now such an issue were also sub standard,  Mazda stated that they would come back with a rotary engined car in 2019, but that is with the charge towards electric and hybrid vehicles now in doubt.

So now all that effort to produce a better fuel driven power unit for automobiles has come to naught, save a very prestigious Le Man win which Felix Wankel would have been ecstatic to see as proof his design worked; for NSU it was a very costly venture.

Footnote

Some years back I saw a Rs80 on the road when I lived in Essex,:very modern and distinctive in style, many of the cars having used up their engines were converted to Ford V4s the engine being short enough to fit in the smaller rotary engined bay, it was probably one of those.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Screamin' The Blues, by JD

In a previous music post featuring some of the original Blues artists I had included Screamin' Jay Hawkins but then changed my mind because he was more than a Blues singer.

http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/friday-music-original-blues-by-jd.html

He was hoping to be an opera singer but instead turned to popular music, presumably to follow his idol Paul Robeson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamin%27_Jay_Hawkins

It is also possible that Opera was too 'serious' for him. Starting out as a straightforward blues singer and piano player he soon developed his own style which was less than serious: very theatrical shows with great humour and, above all, a wonderful sensational voice. His most famous song is the first one here "I Put A Spell On You" which has been covered by everyone from Nina Simone to Bryan Ferry. But he could be serious when he wanted to as the final video here proves.

So fasten your seat belts and pin back your ears to be 'assaulted' by the most electrifying and outrageous performer I have ever seen. I saw him in the sixties in one of those dingy, sweaty beat/jazz clubs and these videos do not do him justice!

FRIDAY MUSIC: Let's Go To Le Hop, by JD

Ce soir, c'est musique 'jazz' des grenouilles:












We hope you enjoyed these cloves of Gallic.

Pour le dessert - these are not French, they are Italian but alors... que faire?