The Crying Game(show)

Opinion is divided as to whether it was Gazza the footballer or the late Princess Diana who turned a nation of stiff upper lips into today's nation of quivering-lipped cry babies with all the backbone of a jellyfish.

As one who has applied to appear on some of the higher end reality shows, of the life or career transforming genre, I found it noticeable how I typically had to fill out a ten page personality questionaire as a part of the interview process with endless elements trying to ascertain by various means how emotional I was and what made me cry and, in particular, how often.

Needless to say when I confessed I didn't cry very often, any other characteristic that might have made me interesting or entertaining viewing was hastily dismissed. I came to realise TV companies are deliberately targetting the emoters, despite up to 70% of viewers now opining that they can't stand the constant crying and histrionics on TV and are beginning to turn off from such formats.

Well I am heartened to find that I am not the only one who can't take any more cringe factor on the X Factor or fake-off on the Bake-Off . As for Ruby's current antics on the Great British Bake-Off, it is nothing short of disgusting that she is turning on the waterworks to get her own way, and worse, being allowed to get away with it, unimpressed as Mary Berry looks (well as a fellow female, she does know all the tricks of the trade, even if Paul Hollywood is taken in.) Someone should also tell Ruth and her fellow over-emotional cooks that it is unhygienic to snivel unabated into one's cooking. Cookery shows should make it a disqualifier if entrants don't leave the kitchen before blubbing, not forgetting to put germy hankies away and wash their hands again before returning. Ditto spoon tasters who return said spoon to saucepan after putting it in their mouth.  And while we're on the subject, where are their hair nets? No one wants to find unwelcome ingredients in what is supposed to be competition-winning fayre.

Notwithstanding, these TV tactics are increasingly spilling over into real life. Last week for example I had a 20 year old female student in front of me weeping copiously and demanding to be released from her accommodation contract owing to the extreme damp which was making her ill. She was asthmatic she said, so it was 'dangerous' for her to remain there. I replied that the only way she could be released from her contract was to find another student with no pre-existing contracts with the university who could take over her contract. She stuck out her bottom lip. 'But how can I? It's not fit for human habitation!' she insisted. I asked her if she had reported the damp to her Hall Manager and she said that she had. I asked when they had said they would deal with it for her. She seemed vague. A male colleague affected by her tears moved to hand over the appropriate form. I stopped him, promising. 'Well you advertise your room and I will talk to your Hall Manager about getting this problem resolved. We can't have rooms with problems, whoever lives in them.' She looked unhappy, burst into further tears and left. Suspicious that a room fewer than five years old and which she had been occupying for a mere four weeks could be so damp in a Hall of Residence not previously known for that problem, I rang her Hall Manager and asked what the Maintenance team were doing about her room. She had reported no problem with her room to him. My male colleague looked stunned, but then he hadn't worked there as long as I had and seen it all. She was just another example of someone who believes that by bursting into tears or causing a huge fuss they will get their own way, never seeming to imagine that what they claim might be checked for its validity.

So not only is Britain becoming a nation of emotional incontinents, but a nation of people who use emotion as a form of manipulation, a smokescreen for untruths and even to facilitate blackmail. A friend who had fallen out of love with her needy and manipulative boyfriend tried to end it. He threatened suicide, but she insisted to him firmly but kindly that the relationship had run its course and they were obviously radically different people who would be much happier with other partners and not to be so silly. She didn't sleep for days afterwards for worry as he'd gone so far as to engrave surface nicks in his wrists with a penknife and turn up on her doorstep drunk and swathed in bandages when she'd tried to end it before, but reasoned as long as she was being bombarded with begging texts and emotive emails, he was still alive and kicking. Two weeks later, having said he couldn't live without my friend, he had found another girl. My friend was somewhat deflated by this after all his extravagant declarations, but certainly didn't cry that he'd got over her so quickly. Relief was the overriding emotion.

I fully concur with the view that we Brits were probably far too repressed in the past. But I find little authenticity in today's opposite extreme of falsely-inflated emotion and histrionics and fear it carries just as many drawbacks as the stiff upper lip, if not more, if those same individuals genuinely cannot deal with life by honest means the moment it goes even slightly wrong for them, or feel it is legitimate to resort to controlling others to get what they want through their moods. Chaotic lives and f***ed up out-of-controllers abound and are even encouraged by a surfeit of societal acceptance and,  in some cases, benefits.

Where will it end? How on earth would this nation win through another world war if one were to break out? I shudder to think.

Give me an individual with spirit and backbone as well as communication and emotional honesty any day of the week. But then I do like to have my cake and eat it...

The REAL Dowager of Downton Abbey

The real dowager of Downton Abbey is not the one portrayed by Dame Maggie Smith  (above) but a humble kitchen maid from Hove who left school at 14, went into service, married a milkman and didn't receive any further education until her mid-50s when her children left home and she decided to attend the University of the Third Age to 'better herself', studying for and taking English O Levels and A levels. She began to write about her experiences in service in the 1920s and 30s, something few individuals of similar humble origins had ever thought to do, assuming no one would be interested in their humble and, to them, humdrum lives, even if they possessed the creative urge. Notwithstanding the working classes were very much brought up to respect their 'elders and betters' in those days and accept that they were not supposed to 'get ideas above their station' in life. Not this former kitchen maid, who had always been a spirited girl with a mind of her own.

Much to her surprise her books were a hit and she became a housewife superstar, almost akin to a British real life Dame Edna Everage! Older readers may remember the familiar features of Margaret Powell who was seldom off the TV in the 1970s, and made regular appearances on Housewive's Choice. 

Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins openly credited her book 'Below Stairs' as being the inspiration for their hit series 'Upstairs Downstairs' in the 1970s and now Julian Fellows (creator of Downtown Abbey) has credited both Margaret Powell as well as Upstairs Downstairs as being the inspiration for Downton Abbey, which is essentially 'Upstairs Downstairs' transplanted to a country house! And while Willy Russell does not credit Margaret Powell as the inspiration for his hit play and film 'Educating Rita', it is highly probable that she was.

After her initial success with 'Below Stairs' in 1968 there was no stopping Margaret Powell and the books poured out of her; 'Climbing the Stairs', 'The Treasure Upstairs' 'My Mother and I', 'Albert, My Consort', 'Margaret Powell's London Season', 'Margaret Powell's Cookery Book', 'Margaret Powell Down Under', 'Margaret Powell in America', 'Margaret Powell's 'Sweetmaking for Children' all followed and Margaret was in endless demand for interviews, openings and all manner of other excuses to don a party frock rather than a maid's pinny. 

My favourite of her books is 'Albert, My Consort',  the touching story of her long marriage to Albert the milkman, a disarmingly honest account of married life and all its ups and downs through wartime and beyond. I also enjoyed 'My Mother and I' where she interviews her indomitable mother about HER life in service, dating from late Victorian times! I have re-read both books recently and they paint a vivid picture of Hove in the early twentieth century. Hard to believe compared to the Hove of today.

Critics scorned Margaret's writing style as somewhat 'coarse' but they couldn't deter Margaret's millions of fans who lapped up her charming and witty candor and relished every detail of domestic life and servant's eye view she furnished. And she had a way with words all her own, so no one could accuse her of not having forged her own distinctive style. I first came across 'Below Stairs' in my grandmother's house when I was about ten and asked if I could borrow it. I quickly became hooked and before I knew it, had ordered every last Margaret Powell from the library and read it. Some of her books such as 'Climbing the Stairs' remain in print to this day, over forty years after she first wrote them. Most authors would be happy with that kind of shelf life.

Margaret's life even inspired a successful sit-com 'Beryl's Lot' which ran from 1973-77 featuring 'Beryl Humphries', a Battersea milkman's wife and mother of three, who decides as her 40th birthday approaches that she needs to broaden her horizons, which she accomplishes by enrolling on a philosophy course at night school. The series dealt with how Beryl's new ideas, attitudes and outlook affected her family, friends and neighbours.

Last week I listened as a Brighton taxi driver on Sussex radio related fond memories of picking Margaret up from her favourite pub and driving her home after her Sunday afternoon tipple each week, regular as clockwork, but always as nice as pie and 'merry', rather than drunk. Always 'a real lady' (well she'd observed enough of them during her life!) She liked to let her hair down, did Margaret, even in her 70s, but shy as she wasn't, she never let her fame go to her head. Celebrities of today could learn a lot.

Here's the characterful Margaret being interviewed by Russell Harty.  Note how the original Brighton accent has a hint of cockney about it, something noticeable in my mother's elderly Brighton relations.

Fun With Dick, George & Mildred

While The Two Ronnies, Morcambe & Wise and Benny Hill are endlessly repeated, you will seldom see a repeat of either The Dick Emery Show or sitcom George & Mildred, yet in their day they were just as big, winning massive ratings for their channels.

I don't know why either Dick Emery or George and Mildred should have left such an indelible impression on a young child but they did. Perhaps because they contained such colourful characters and Dick Emery and Yootha Joyce (aka Mildred) had such wonderfully mischievous smiles with matching glints in their eye.

For a while it was impossible to obtain even tribute videos/DVDs, though these are at last available.

Watching them now it is easy to see why Dick Emery has fallen out of favour as his shows lampooning the little-Hitlerdom of railway station masters (oh where have they gone now we need them?), his man-eating females, insincere vicars and outrageously cliched homosexuals have dated badly, cutting-edge though they may have been when he first rose to stardom in the late 1950s. On the other hand they are also uproariously un-PC, and to be fair to Mr Emery, he always wanted to be more adventurous and develop his comedy more innovatively but a staid BBC refused to let him take risks with one of their biggest hit shows, insisting he carry on churning out comedy for mass consumption, forever employing his cast of tried and trusted characters. However Harry Enfield has more than once generously credited Dick Emery as his greatest inspiration, and when you watch Mr Enfield's shows you can see the comedy lineage. Here is a clip of 'Hettie' unselfishly thinking of others.







George and Mildred was a spin-off from hit-com Robin's Nest and G&M were originally cameo characters who played the neighbours of man-about-town Robin who rather daringly (for the 1970s) shared a flat with two hot chicks, albeit neither of whom actually fancied him, much though he tried to pretend otherwise to the world.

Mildred was the undisputed Queen of Brentford Nylon, childless and sexually frustrated and forever trying to seduce her hapless, sexually-terrified and underachieving husband George, whose job it was to try and dodge her amorous advances. A loveable monster, Mildred was a curious hybrid of traditional and liberated woman who aspired to better things but could never quite escape the 'you've made your bed so you must lie in it' doctrine of her parents' generation and admit that she'd married the wrong man. However she did break free when it came to fashion, wearing the most extraordinary clashes with her equally-loud floral wallpaper and wafting about in aforementioned glamorous negligee's of the nylon persuasion, teamed with colourful plastic earrings and occasionally macs as she led a life of loud-but-quiet desperation. George too managed to be so much more than a foil and was funny in his own right, and secretly caring and loyal too, despite living in fear of his overbearing wife. They had equally memorable neighbours in the 'perfect' middle-class Fourmile family who seemed to have everything Mildred had ever aspired to, including an absurdly precocious son Tristram, and to whom Mildred alternately sucked up and was green with envy towards. Here's a cute YouTube clip of George & Mildred babysitting, posted by the young actor featured.