the ottoman troops drag their ships across the land to attack the bay and made the wall of the Golden Horn vulnerable to attack. This was followed 7 days later by building a bridge between Ayvansaray and Sutluce. On the same day, the emperor rejected an offer of peace. It was a month later before Ulubatli Hasan erected the Ottoman flag on the Byzantine wall in Belgradkapi and towards noon on 29th May, the city fell and the Emperor was killed. The first act of Fatih Sultan Mehmed II was to turn Hagia Sophia into a Mosque
Finished picture:
This is a mosque in Fatih district in Istanbul, in the area that is named after the Column of Constantine, called “Çemberlitaş” and built by Sinan.This is part of the traditional and authentic Constantinople Proper and is enclosed by the wall, and close to one of the main sites where the wall was breached by the Turks in the conquest in 1453.
This is one of the background images we shall use in our film “Following Lear” It is also an image we are using in a series of cards we are preparing for the Istanbul council.
(22nd April: the ottoman troops drag their ships across the land to attack the bay and made the wall of the Golden Horn vulnerable to attack. This was followed 7 days later by building a bridge between Ayvansaray and Sutluce. On the same day, the emperor rejected an offer of peace. It was a month later before Ulubatli Hasan erected the Ottoman flag on the Byzantine wall in Belgradkapi and towards noon on 29th May, the city fell and the Emperor was killed. The first act of Fatih Sultan Mehmed II was to turn Hagia Sophia into a Mosque.)
The pictures above show the progress in drawing. The pictures below show the interior and architectural plans
I am much given to malapropisms so it was a pleasure to see a recent production of “The rivals” and once again witness the source of this bizarre linguistic illness. Shakespeare had already played this joke, by the way, with both Mrs Quickly and Dogberry in Much Ado, but Sheridan’s 1775 version sparkles especially with lines like “as headstrong as an Allegory on the banks of the Nile”. I had forgotten that one.
Here is a quick illustration of the characters:
Now an interesting fact: Tolkien played Mrs Malaprop for his old school in Birmingham just after he had gone up to Oxford in Autumn 2011. This is what the St Edward’s school chronicle wrote:
“the performance was a thorough success both artistically and financially (ed note – in my line of work both items very welcome!) J R R Tolkien’s Mrs Malaprop was a real creation, excellent in every way and not least so in make-up….”
While Mrs Malaprop lends her name to the problem, the first use of the word “Malapropism” is Lord Byron’s in 1814 though the OED cites something back in 1630 as well.
lecturing in Uppingham school: details to follow but, meanwhile, here are some pictures of Peter Vardy, Iris Murdoch and Parmenides! Parmenides provides the inspiration for Plato’s theory of the unchanging “One”, the Good.
Peter Vardy adapted Iris Murdoch’s views on the Ontological argument, but more on that one later!
I gave a talk yesterday about various aspects of Philosophy of Religion.
One of the points I made was about the Problem of evil. This is advanced first by Epicurus, but essentially asks how a Good God who also created us can allow the existence of evil, or indeed whether he might be held responsible for this. The traditional approach is to invoke one of two “theodicies”, that of Irenaeus and that of Augustine. Augustine’s defence of God rests on the value placed on our free will- that, in other words it is better for us to be free and have the opportunity to select an evil action, than for us to be automata that can only select and do good things. In addition, is the idea that evil and particularly the natural evils of ill-health, and natural catastrophes were brought on ourselves by the original sin of adam and eve or by the fall of the angels.
What I was interested in, however, was whether under British law, God might be held responsible for our evil actions. I imagined that there was a teacher in the audience who might murder me, and in the run-up to his actions, that he might confide in a pupil who was sitting fairly close. While there would be no question at all about the teacher’s guilt, we looked at the law regarding the guilt of the student- whose name was Will. (Apologies to Will for picking on him!)
This is some of the talk:
“it makes you an accomplice in the law and section 8 of the Accessories and Abettors act of 1861 (the bit that was not repealed in the criminal law act of 1967) means you are also likely to be charged
because you shared his counsel and you didn’t stop him, or didn’t alert anyone else.
It is a difficult case to prove- The actual law states: “Whosoever shall aid, abet, counsel, or procure the commission of any indictable offence, whether the same be an offence at common law or by virtue of any Act passed or to be passed, shall be liable to be tried, indicted, and punished as a principal offender.”
So if I am a good lawyer, you are also guilty of murder
this is actually a development of the old ancient roman law that would hold all my slaves responsible for my death- if you didn’t stop the assassin, then you effectively enabled him, and tomorrow morning, you would all be crucified in the gardens of your respective houses. So sorry about that.
Let’s just check the details of the modern law:
What constitutes abetting can be complex. It can be anything from presence at the scene of the crime to encouragement. After a 1971 case, merely being present at the crime, however is not enough (Clarkson) but being in a crowd can abet an offender (1951: Wilcox vs Jeffrey)
Now, the 1951 case established some guidelines- you can also abet by omission if 3 conditions are present-
you have knowledge of the actions of the murderer
you have a duty or the right to control the murderer
you deliberately do nothing.
Now I think your teacher has a position of authority in the school and as you, Will are a pupil in the school, we could make a convincing case to a jury that you are not guilty of abetting- because you do not have the right to control or to stop the teacher without risking an early morning detention-
So now we have had the pleasure of that salacious and purely hypothetical spectacle, let’s apply the idea to God.
Because if God knows everything, he knows about the evil that will happen, he knows about my murder. God is either the accomplice to the teacher or he’s an enabler. Either way, he should be charged and held to account for his failure to take action to stop it. God may be a good God, but if I am murdered, he has been an accomplice to a crime and he should go to gaol. Stephen Fry, formerly of Fircroft house would now be very proud of us for reaching the conclusion that, if God exists (which Mr Fry believes is seriously in question), then he is a criminal.
This is a way to embellish and flesh out the ideas in the Problem of evil. We should not rely solely on the text book to give us the answers to these issues. We also have to use our common sense and our own specific interests.”
—————
I also sketched in very quickly the background to Plato’s theory of forms, with reference to Parmenides and Heraclitus.
This was really an excuse to bring Philosophy down a level and point out that the central idea of Heraclitus, “You can’t step in the same river twice”, is quoted at the beginning of the Disney film “Pocahontas”. Here is a link to a youtube version! When we stop to think that this central plank in Western Philosophy is passed off as entertainment for 6 year olds, then we get things into perspective.
I had a very interesting meeting today with an old friend and I found we agreed on so many things, not least of all sympathy for Greece’s current situation and the strategies of Syriza. My understanding of Economics is not as good as his at all, and I tend to think that the whole story boils down to one larger country bullying another smaller country and that seems unattractive. But let’s have a go at analysing the issues….
The fear-mongers (John Mauldin, for instance, an American pundit, who compares Syriza to the Keystone cops) continue to dominate the press while the Greek Finance Minister is busy clarifying his aims and establishing that what was reported in the run-up to election is not quite what he intends to do- he is, of course, rather brilliantly making use of the natural ambiguity of anything that is translated from Greek, a language notoriously difficult to render with absolute certainty as many Biblical and classical scholars will readily attest. Greece remains the language of poetry and mysticism. German or Latin is the language of rules. I wonder which language best reflects “common sense”? Though in this case, after the election and directly on the BBC, the splendidly telegenic Finance minister can put his case very well in English.
The Greek situation still resembles a stand-off, but actually what Varoufakis says makes perfect sense. At least, it does when I am listening to him! He is admirably convincing. He should really take over here from Mr Osborne. (Osborne might have had a recent haircut but he has rarely spent time in the gym… oh and “haircuts”. More on that as a solution another day!)
So, two points- firstly about the result of a possible default and then about the right of Greece to default.
First Point:
The first point is that if Greece defaults, it surely does not have to leave the euro or indeed leave Europe, neither of which it wants to do –
1- There are countries, like Britain, that do not use the Euro and yet are part of the EU and there are countries like Kosovo, that are not part of the EU but, nevertheless, still use the Euro; Kosovo and the like can default because they do not have to abide by EU fiscal and monetary policy’s, in the same way, it should be possible and practical for Greece to default and still retain the Euro.
2 – Greece’s economy is much smaller, by some measure, compared to many companies registered in Europe, like, for instance, Deutchebank, BlackRock, BNP Paribas and so on and these can, like all companies, default, but they are not expected to give up the Euro if they do so.
3 – In the US, where the fiscal union is consolidated between the different states (i.e. an isolated default is much more dangerous), Detroit filed for Chapter 11 last year but still, it did not give up the dollar or leave the US union. The problem with Greece defaulting is not the Euro, but that Greece’s national debt is owned by various European governments who do not want to loose their money and have the power to make or bend the rules. It is essentially political and not economic. It is about bullies.
All countries in the Euro pay different interest rates although there is a single monetary policy – Different member states in the Eurozone are perceived by the market to have different risk levels, and so, they borrow money from investors at different rates of interest. The central interest rate set by the ECB is there as a regulator for the banking industry (private not public) and, indeed, all banks across the Eurozone, by law, can borrow at the same rate at the ECB, regardless of their exposure or Nationality. It is the ECB which sets the rate of interest for the financial sector to borrow money, NOT the Governments, no matter how powerful (or self-righteous) they may feel at the moment.
Second Point:
Secondly, and Finally, local democracy must count for more than the authority of a foreign, though powerful state like Germany. The culture or limiting choice because of the repercussions of bad decisions is an invasive one. If the citizens of Greece have expressed a wish in the ballot-box to stop the austerity and default, it is undemocratic to put pressure on them to not do so and it meddles with their rightful and respected sovereignty. Is default a good decision? Probably not, but we must, nevertheless, tolerate their wish to do so and probably more than that, facilitate that wish- in other words, make it easier for them and for us to negotiate the path towards a default.
There are many companies, peoples and governments that go bankrupt over and over again, and the people and businesses and governments that had lent money to them, thereby lose their money. Nevertheless, the right to declare bankruptcy is a constitutional right and the investors must accept their losses – after all, when making an investment, the investor accepts the return while also taking on the risk. Why should different laws apply for Germany! Why, in other words, should it be impossible for Germany’s creditors to default! It sounds to me like Germany is behaving like a Mafia boss in 1930’s Chicago. Time for a flustered Mrs Merkel to embrace reality. In a time of crisis, she could take a few tips from the man who simply comes across as cool- Yannis Varoufakis.
In defeating the Nawab of Bengal, Clive of India used a rather dodgy ruse. He had been working with a messenger, an equally dodgy businessman called Umichand who negotiated between his officials and Mir Jafar, one of the Nawab’s senior commanders who was in reality a turn-coat and who would eventually profit from the arrangement by succeeding Siraj Ud Daulah and becoming Nawab himself. To his credit, he was very generous both to Clive and to the British thereafter.
At some point, Umichand threatened to tell Siraj what was going on, so he needed to be bribed into silence. All worked out well in the end.
Still, the dodgy deal remains despite the positive outcome.
Because Umichand was untrustworthy, Clive allowed a document to be drawn up promising £300.000. However, it was signed in Clive’s absence or not signed at all…Nehru said later that Clive won the Battle of Polashi “by promoting treason and forgery”. Despite this, (and even because of this) Clive of India became a National hero.
Now, clearly, if I understand it correctly, Gordon Ramsay has been caught out today by something very similar. A deal for the York & Albany pub near Regent’s park signed in his absence by his Father in Law, Christopher Hutcheson, leaves Ramsay with a bill of £640,000 per annum. I have no doubt that Gordon knew nothing about the way his signature was being used, yet the judge did not believe him or more to the point, did not think it mattered. He called the ruse “entirely implausible”. Of course, Ramsay could say with certainty that the signature was not his- it was done by a machine, and in his absence, but despite this, he is now held to be liable for the restaurant. The Judge said, “the machine was routinely used to place his signature on legal documents.”
“I do not accept his evidence to the contrary.” Ramsay remains married to Hucheson’s daughter and they have 4 children. Hucheson was sacked as Ramsay’s manager in 2010. The Judge concluded that, however much Ramsay regrets his association with Mr Hutcheson, he nevertheless remains committed to the lease for 25 years. He was ordered to pay about a million in legal costs.
Is it that we have learnt something from history? Who knows. These signature machines seem very ingenious. If I remember correctly, Admiral Watson refused to sign the document for Clive, so there was a second document to tease the Indian businessman – today, Clive might have used a machine. Would any judge have believed him? Would there have been statues of Clive around London had he come before Mr Justice Morgan?
Here is a drawing of Ramsay and of a slightly paunchy Clive after the famous painting by Nathaniel Dance-Holland in The National Portrait Gallery. Neither looks very happy.
developing a caricature of Andrea Leadsom, MP for South Northamptonshire and now a junior minister in the Treasury
the new “treasury look”
I had drawn a picture of Andrea Leadsom along with others who opposed Gay Marriage and the new cross country high speed rail link, HS2. While I share a concern about both the time wasted on the gay marriage debate- which seemed to me to be simply about re-branding civil partnerships and an opportunity for some very nasty people to pontificate about bits of theology they did not understand at all or to vent homophobic prejudice (often thinly veiled behind claims that “some of my best friends”, but Putin tried that one too!), and while I share concerns about the HS2 cost and proposed route, I am astonished that for all the noise she made, particularly about the rail link, she ducked out of the crucial commons’ vote.
Anyway, Mrs Leadsom has been elevated to the treasury and in the process has had a political make-over- the hair is straighter, and more boring so the the nose seems more pronounced and sharper. I fear she is trying to ape Mrs Thatcher but she quite lacks both the Lady’s charisma and that astonishing beak of a nose. the problem is that it simply makes her look as if she has a permanent cold: she seems to be forever trying to suppress a sneeze, poor dear! Still, it is good to see her making a Go of it. Above is my completed image and here are some rough sketches of her:
A few years ago, I fell into the constituency of Andrea Leadsom and I went to see her about student visas. I was concerned and remain concerned that a student is sponsored by the institution that both teaches that student and monitors his or her attendance. In effect, the institution acts as judge, jury and executioner and it cannot be right! In most cases there is no problem, but some “colleges” and “schools” are shabby and the system, as it stands, holds the student hostage. If they are paying for an education that was arranged by an agent in a far-flung country, they can have no idea what they have let themselves into and the process of legally changing from one institution to another is fraught with difficulties and requires expect advice and management. I was equally concerned about the rash imposition of sanctions against Russian big-wigs. I taught a few of their children and these same children repeatedly told me they were worried that- as their parents were on the “list”, they, too, as family-members, ran the risk of being expelled from the UK during their GCSEs or A levels or half-way through their university career should the Government sanctions become more draconian. I wrote to my current MP who, to his credit, responded promptly (in start contrast to Leadsom’s approach) and passed me on to a Home office lackey who, after a couple of months, bragged that there were no problems and that we had a record number of foreign students anyway. This rather missed the point: because students are well-documented, they are easy prey to anyone who wants to count student numbers and put the squeeze on one of the few groups that can be used to demonstrate action against irregular immigration. Students, by the sheer weight of their doggedly-devised paperwork, can be monitored and controlled in a way in which illegal immigrants and EU migrant workers cannot. What these various officials fail to take into account and what I have emphasised again and again is that the students who we attack today- and particularly those who come from wealthy, influencial families, will be the leaders of business and politics tomorrow and we will have to do business with them in ten years’ time. If we continue to bully them in the way we are currently doing, I cannot imagine they will be singing the praises of the UK or indeed want to deal with us when it comes to trade or issues of national security. We are squandering such a good opportunity! In the past, the students who passed through our educational system could be relied upon to think well of us and share our values. Today we are more likely to be breeding resentment.
Anyway, Leadsom used to lead the “Fresh Start” programme. This was a moderate Tory initiative to re-negotiate the EU commitments we signed up for in the early 70s under Heath. What is often neglected is that we only had a referendum about the membership of the Common Market which few parties want to quit. What we never had an option over were the hidden treaties binding us to greater political and financial interdependence and these are the bits of the EU that seem to have got out of control.
The Fresh start programme advocates a series of measures- to take back control of our finances, social and employment laws, to further opt out of those policing and criminal justice agreements not yet covered by the independence clause in the Lisbon treaty, to allow us to freely trade beyond the EU without discrimination, and to abolish the Strasbourg part of the EU parliamentary calendar.
This seems to be fiddling with the curtains while the Dining room burns. It seems, like the obsession with the Australian points’ system to be approaching the EU crisis in terms of bean-counting and penny-pinching, rather than to recognise that some of the treaties we have signed up for are simply out of date and dangerous. Whatever reservations one might have about the lady and her solutions, however, we cannot fault her blunt description of the problem in the forward to the Green paper, “Options for Change”.
Here it is:
Here is my earlier cartoon of Andrea Leadsom, the Archbishop of Canterbury and others!
The crime of injuring the monarch, whether physically (which would be treason), or verbally, is a serious one. I wonder whether caricatures fall into this sphere and indeed this very question was debated a deal in the 18th Century when George III and his son were routinely held up by the early political cartoonists as figures of fun.
Defacing banknotes even today I think is a crime based on the principle of Lèse-majesté.
Does this crime ever result in actions- well, yes, there was a Polish case where a man was fined about £6000 for insulting John Paul II during one of his last visits to Poland. The specific words used in the offensive article are these- that John Paul II was “an impotent old man offering a spectacle of horror to the public,” though the article itself was entitled “The Walking Sado-Masochist”. In the article similarities were drawn between the Pope and the dying Leonid Brezhnev. This, in turn, was heavily criticised by the international press and especially “Reporters sans frontières” which argued that freedom of expression was effectively denied to Jerzy Urban and that Poland had agreed to freedom of expression when it joined the EU in 2004. More recently, there was a case where a man farted to express concerns about the Prime Minister lech Kaczyński, one of the twins and the man who was killed on the way to commemorate the Katyn massacre in the plane crash in 2010.
Now, it is one thing to gag the press or to try to cork the wilder expressions of political discontent, but it is quite another when a senior politician is heard mouthing off about his monarch. School-boy gossip, gloating is not really something we should tolerate from a statesman. So in the UK, there is a clear example of Lèse-majesté in the garrulous stupidity of our own Prime minister. I cannot see that an apology can really explain the smug contempt of the word “purred”. Alex Salmond spoke quite clearly about his shock at the way Cameron openly discussed what he had said to the Queen. Salmond is right and Cameron wrong. But it goes further. If Cameron cannot be trusted to respect the Queen, how can he be trusted to respect the Country?
Here is an earlier Cameron cartoon. I think this one is better actually:
Personally, I must confess that this leaves me in a bit of a dilemma: I had intended to stand for some form of Political office with a Conservative ticket in May and had gone through the struggle of selection. I am really not sure this would be right now. I have never liked Cameron – I remember being encouraged by one of his Eton contemporaries in Oxford to cross the street so that we might avoid meeting him – but now I am afraid I think he is a twit and a liability. If Boris were leading, it would be a different matter, but with Cameron there… well, I have to think very seriously! This is not just a gaff; it exposes the way the man thinks and it is not a pretty image I am afraid. Mrs Thatcher (she of the deepest curtsey ever) would be shocked, shocked, shocked.
Just two rapid paragraphs- the first about the odious deputy leader of the far Right Golden Dawn party. I discussed this in a post a few weeks’ ago about a Greek island policeman caught in a photo doing a nazi salute. Now, Kathimerini reports that the deputy leader has been coaching his children into giving the fascist salute, not only that- getting them to say “Heil Hitler!” at the same time. It makes it impossible for these people to turn round now and say that they were giving a “Roman salute” rather than a Nazi salute however absurd that distinction may have been in any case. There is a fuller review of this in Damian Mac Con Uladh’s excellent blog here: http://damomac.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/video-shows-golden-dawns-no-2-teaching-children-to-chant-sieg-heil/
and here is damage recorded to foreign cars in Pireus: Golden Dawn was implicated in the attacks.
Here is a photo of the Golden dawn leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos being arrested after the stabbing of rapper Pavlos Fyssas in Sept 2013:
golden dawn leader blessed by archbishop of Greece Ieronymos
To his credit, Archbishop Ieronymos is also on record shunning Golden Dawn, so it is naivity rather than Political dodgyness of which he is guilty. This at least marks him out from his ghastly predecessor, Christodoulos
christos pappas, deputy leader of Golden Yawn as a young boy giving salute (published Kathimerini 21st Sept 2014)
Vodafone
Today there is news of a rescue of Phones 4U workers. EE have offered some of them jobs and vodafone have also offered jobs taking over 140 of the retail outlets rebranding them as Vodafone stores. Indeed, in the press today, vodafone which originally put these jobs at jeopardy comes out smelling of Roses. Does it not make you sick!
The former owner of Phones 4U, John Cauldwell, who sold the company in 2006 for £1.5bn apparently told the BBC that the company had been a victim of “unprecedented assassination”. Vodafone has rejected suggestions that it acted inappropriately during contract negotiations.
Incidentally, at some point I must write about the Greek “watergate” scandal which involved vodafone tapping 106 phones including a number of government phones in advance of the Olympic Games. Kostas Tsalikidis, (Κώστας Τσαλικίδης) was the network planning manager who killed himself or was murdered- no one really knows- following the discovery of the fraud on 9th March 2005. He was found hanging in his apartment. There was no suicide note, no autopsy was conducted nor fingerprints taken at the scene. Vodafone kept his personal computer and personal effects. Regarding the wire-tapping, Vodafone spokesperson Ben Padovan says “We have never discovered anything like this before or since.” The key word in this statement is “discovered”.
We are slowly getting on with the animation of our short film based on “the Music hall”. “Burlington Bertie” is one of two films, both of which feature a song by the first world war composer William Hargreaves in arrangements by David Watson of Kanon. Bertie is odd though because all the references in the song are to Queen Victoria and the “Prince of Wales,” Edward VII who had died by the time the song was even first performed by Hargreaves’ wife, Ella Shields in 1915. It was then later done by Julie Andrews in the film “Star”. When she comes off stage after singing the song for the first time as a pregnant understudy, one of the other actresses standing in the wings asks “how was that?” she says, “It was marvellous!” and that rather seals her fate- sacrificing a private life to the demands of her theatre-public (1968) The film, sadly- some of which was shot in the Hackney Empire where we are setting our own film- was not a great success but it has some great scenes in it! Well worth watching. The final number “Jenny” has an irritatingly repetitive lyric but Dame Julie is as game and joyous as ever. According to her memoirs (the very readable “Home”), she had been offered the part of “Lady in the Dark” early on in her own Broadway career but turned it down. I think she was worried about comparison to Gerty Lawrence, so it is ironic that she went on to do a bio-pic of her life.
Here is a colour snippet from our version of “Bertie”:
Now, this is the reason for the out-dated references: The “Bertie” song by Hargreaves is actually a pastiche of a much older song by Harry B Norris which was famously sung from 1900 onwards by Vesta Tilley, the darling of the lesbian set. The original song is fairly patriotic too with a great chorus that is well-worth repeating. Here is the end of the last verse and the end of the final chorus. Suddenly, reading this, you can see how the bunting would go flying and why Vesta Tilly earned such a reputation during the First World War!
Altho’ absent minded, he does not forget That Englishmen always must pay off a debt. He drops all his pleasures, the polo, the hunt And just like the rest, he is off to the front; Altho’ he’s a johnny, he’ll fight in the ruck, He’s wealthy and foolish, but if you want pluck – …
What price Burlington Bertie, the boy with the Hyde Park drawl, What price Burlington Bertie, the boy with the Bond Street crawl? He’ll fight and he’ll die like an Englishman. Forgive all his folly we can; Says old John Bull ‘I plainly see These Burlington boys are the boys for me!’
There are a few dodgy lyrics though here- I hate the laziness, for example, of “always must” * but the rest is priceless! (*The inversion is clumsy- It’s almost as lazy as the lyric: “I just called to say I loved you”- the word “just” has no purpose there at all. It is included for the scansion alone.) The Bertie here is a Gent down on his “uppers”. He’s not from Bow, he’s from South Ken!
The Hargreaves’ version plays around with patriotism, too, and we will certainly make use of this in our animation- but it focuses much more on the idea that his Bertie, in contrast, is a “down and out” pretending to be a toff. There is alot of pride in this “tramp” too: The same stock character/characters, in effect, turn up in “Easter Parade” with a song by Irving Berlin. Check out Judy Garland’s “Little Titch” shoes here…a tremendous tribute to the music hall/vaudeville!
And for the potency of the tramp character in music hall, look no further than Chaplin!
and frankly, it is the same idea that we find in “Hello Dolly” when Cornelius Hackl, Barnaby Tucker and co elect to walk to Harmonia Gardens “because it is more elegant”. There’s a charming version of this song here:
The Lady Diana at the end of the Hargreaves’ song would be Lady Diana Cooper, not of course Diana Spencer. Bertie comes from Bow which makes him a genuine Cockney. He is idle, drunk and smokes too much- he enjoys hobnobbing with the idle rich in the West End. This is a slightly different character to the one in the Norris song. In the original song “He rents a swell flat somewhere Kensington way” and has frittered away his inheritance on “Brandy and Soda”. But his biggest failing seems to be that he is always ready to help. When a girl wants a present she wonders “who can I touch” and along comes the rousing chorus,
What price Burlington Bertie, the boy with the Hyde Park drawl, What price Burlington Bertie, the boy with the Bond Street crawl? A nice little supper at the Savoy, Oh! What a duck of a boy, ‘So free’ says she, ‘with L.s.d., Burlington Bertie’s the boy for me.’
The LSD line gets a new meaning I suppose after the 60s.
Below is a recording of the Hargreaves song with some very elementary movements and then follows a line test of the coloured version at the top of this post. I am afraid there is a long way to go…. I will add some updates soon and some images of the backdrops which are also coming along nicely!
(I am not sure how Bertie’s pose is actually “ironical”- I suppose because he is picking up fag ends from the strand and strutting around wearing a monocle. Maybe there is more to it than that? I welcome any observations!)
animate-tim.com 