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Hit Popular Songs Worth Their Weight in Gold in Successful Movies

July 3rd, 2011 | Add a Comment

Leonard Cohen Songs Used in Many Movies - Rama
Many song hits aren’t written specifically for cinema soundtracks, but songs and their writers get a new lease of life from being part of a profitable film.

Music/song reinforces movie action, stokes emotion, heightens terror. Popular songs increase chances of a hit movie, especially if soundtracks are released. Dirty Dancing (1987) soundtrack success surprised the record company, but “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” recorded by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes wasn’t a hit before the film. Most film-hits, though, are already song-hits.

Most Popular Artistes

Some artists see several songs featured in favourite lists. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” shot to Billboard Number 2 twenty years after release: it was in Wayne’s World (1992). Their “Don’t Stop Me Now” (1978) played in British horror comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004), while Queen’s with David Bowie, “Under Pressure” (1981), was prominent in black comedy, Grosse Pointe Blank (1997).

Bowie’s own songs sung in Portuguese on acoustic guitar by Sen Jorge were in The Life Aquatic, and “Ashes to Ashes” in the 2009/10 British TV series of the same name. “Young Americans” (1975) was used ironically in Brecht-style Dogville (2003), criticised as anti-American.

Canadian poet-singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen’s 1988 “Everybody Knows” was in 1990 comedy Pump Up the Volume; “I’m Your Man” was in rom-com/sadomasochistic Secretary (2002); “Suzanne” in Lars von Trier’s 1996 Breaking the Waves; bits of “The Future” and “Waiting for the Miracle” in Natural Born Killers (1994), and three tracks from Cohen’s 1967 debut album were in McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971) because director Robert Altman loved them.

Folk-poet Bob Dylan and his song “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” were in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), but he wrote it for the film. Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger’s solo in Performance (1968, released 1970), “Memo From Turner” was a hit post-movie , while the band got “2000 Man” (1967) into Bottle Rocket (1996) and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Tell Me” into Scorsese’s 1973 Mean Streets.

Fellow Brit Peter Gabriel had 1986‘s “In Your Eyes” in 1989‘s Say Anything. Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” was in 2000‘s Almost Famous, plus Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” ; 1973’s “Daniel” was in 1974‘s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and 1970s “Amoreena” was in Dog Day Afternoon, 1975.

Fred Neil’s 1966 song “Everybody’s Talking” got into 1969’s Midnight Cowboy sung by Harry Nilsson and his 1971 version of “Without You” into The Rules of Attraction (2002). Pink Floyd got “Hey You” (originally written for The Wall, 1979) in The Squid and The Whale (2005), and 1968’s “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” in Zabriskie Point (1970). Simon and Garfunkel reinforced early chart careers with “Mrs Robinson” in The Graduate (1968). Roy Orbison had his 1963 hit “In Dreams” portrayed in Blue Velvet (1986) and Frankie Goes to Hollywood had “Relax” (1983) in 1984‘s Body Double.

Reusing Old or New Songs Is Hollywood Tradition

Vera Lynn’s World War II, “We’ll Meet Again” returned in 1964‘s black comedy, Dr Strangelove. A Clockwork Orange included Gene Kelly’s “Singing in the Rain”; Sam Cooke’s version of 1934’s “Blue Moon” appeared in An American Werewolf in London (1981). Beetlejuice (1988) utilised Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat Song”. Bill Haley and the Comet’s 1954 “Rock Around the Clock” starred in Blackboard Jungle (1955).

“Venus in Furs” from 60s psychedelic band Velvet Underground went into Last Days (2005), about Kurt Cobain’s final hours. One-time Velvet singer, Nico, got “These Days” into The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), and another, Lou Read, got “This Magic Moment” into 1997’s psychological thriller Lost Highway. Nina Simone’s trad-spiritual “Sinnerman” was in Inland Empire (2006), and “Just in Time” in Before Sunset (2004).

The Big Lebowski (1998) used 1968’s “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition. The Bee Gees put existing “Staying Alive” into Saturday Night Fever (1977) with a host of future hits. Reservoir Dogs (1997) took Stealer’s Wheel’s 1973 folk song, “Stuck in the Middle With You”.

Goodfellas has “Layla” by Derek & the Dominos, aka Eric Clapton. Kill Bill Vol 1 (2003) took “Nobody But Me” (1968) by Human Beinz; Echo and the Bunnymen’s 1984 “The Killing Moon” appeared in 1998’s Gia and 2001’s Donnie Darko.

BJ Thomas’ “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” wasn’t a hit before Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (1969). Equally, Rocky III top-tenned Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”: it was written for the film. Taxi Driver lifted Jackson Browne’s “Late for the Sky”, Prince had “Partyman” in Batman, Louis Armstrong’s “Stardust” was obvious placement in Stardust Memories, while Air Supply’s “All Out Of Love” was publicised in Happiness.

The Who put “The Seeker” into American Beauty and “A Quick One While He’s Away” into Rushmore. A whole movie, Tommy, was made around their songs. Equally, with Abba, Mamma Mia was about their songs, and “Waterloo” featured in Muriel’s Wedding. The Beatles’ early 1960s’ “Twist and Shout” got into Ferris Beueller’s Day Off (1986).

Besides film songs by Tangerine Dream, Risky Business (1983) used “Old Time Rock and Roll” by Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart”. The Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” played over closing credits of The Adventures of Sebastian Cole (1998) and final scene and credits of Fight Club (1999).

The directors’ art uses existing popular songs to strengthen movie appeal. For pop song providers, the dream is songs covered and/or put in films. That’s show business. It will never end while cinema needs music and pop craves outlets. Fittingly, The Doors’ song “The End” is in Apocalypse Now.

First published on Suite 101, 12 June 2010.

Photo: Leonard Cohen Songs Used in Many Movies – Rama

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The Unintended, Unforeseen Consequences of Legislation

July 1st, 2011 | Add a Comment

Pit Bull: Dog Restricted By UK Law - jclutter
Good intentions in law-making to solve a problem are not always enough. Sometimes new laws can actually make things worse.

From battling oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, to the British government considering further gun bans after the latest outrage in Carlisle, to the dilemma of raising taxes/cutting expenditure by itself threatening further recession, rarely has the question of legislating out of a problem been so sharply in focus.

Every legislature churns out regulations, prohibitions, procedures and restrictions; most people assume a perceived injustice, error or outdated rule will be put right. US president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) defined democracy as ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’. People expect laws to right the wrongs.

However, Cass R Sunstein writing in Columbia Law Review 1994, says:‘minimum wage laws appear to reduce employment. Stringent regulation of new sources of air pollution may aggravate pollution problems, by perpetuating the life of old, especially dirty sources. If government closely monitors the release of information, there may be less information’.

Laws of Unintended Consequences

According to Rob Norton, former economics editor of Fortune magazine, the Law of Unintended Consequences is ‘often cited but rarely defined’. It means actions that have unforeseen or negative effects. Norton says that economists and social scientists heed that law; politicians and popular opinion ignore it.

He cites Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own self-interest’. This is the basis of the economic system, a benign unintended consequence of motive.

However, he believes that perverse, unanticipated consequences are more frequently the outcome of well-intended laws. In 1692, the English philosopher John Locke argued against a Parliamentary bill designed to cut maximum interest rate from 6% to 4%, on the grounds that some would avoid the rule and there’d be less credit for poor people.

In 1936 US sociologist Robert K Merton identified sources of unanticipated consequences as ignorance (true and wilful), error, immediacy of interest – and illustrated it by arguing that the US Food and Drug Administration’s regulating of pharmaceutical drugs and insisting on their efficacy, has over years delayed implementation which may have cost lives. It’s a case of deciding the greater good: tried and tested medicines later, or untested risk now?

He also described the paradox that the hard-work ethic eventually declines under earned wealth and possessions; and the self-defeating prophecy. When early 20th century predictions painted a starving world overwhelmed by population, it spurred scientific advances in agriculture to feed more better, so the gloomy prognostication didn’t materialise.

Laws That Have Not Turned Out As Expected

Government import-quotas protect companies and workers from cheaper imports, but make less cheap materials available for another industry. Some economists believe that safety nets of old-age social security prevent people saving and investing in pensions; so protection becomes disincentive, as when people are better-off on benefits than working. When a trade or profession is licensed to maintain standards, it restricts new entrants and can price services beyond the means of people who need them. In the UK, when a court’s Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) becomes a badge of honour, then the restrictive aim is subverted.

In the UK in the 1980s, there was a spate of laws pushed through Parliament in response (knee-jerk, some say) to disastrous problems. The tabloids demanded action following savage injuries to children caused by aggressive/uncontrolled dogs. The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 was the government response, outlawing ownership of certain dogs, with those registered being muzzled, leashed, insured, tattooed, microchip implanted and neutered. Such dogs have become weapon of choice for numbers of criminals.

About the same time, there was a problem with crowd behaviour at UK football (soccer) matches. Violence was growing, and the media featured organised gangs of hooligans. The response to the ‘something must be done’ outcry, was The Football Spectators Act (1989,) which introduced a compulsory football membership scheme to log every fan. Largely unworkable, it’s since been amended beyond recognition.

Salmonella became an issue in Britain in 1988, when Edwina Currie, a junior health minister, claimed all eggs were infected. The outcry caused her resignation, the slaughter of 2 million chickens, the near-collapse of the UK egg production industry and fresh laws about food hygiene, that may have enhanced food safety, but narrowed restaurant choice and raised prices.

Similar scares of foot and mouth disease in cattle and of ‘mad cow’ disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy led to mass slaughters across British rural areas compounding farmers’ economic difficulties, raising prices and increasing imports.

The June 2010 UK gun killings by Derrick Bird have reopened memories 14 years ago when former Boy Scout leader Thomas Hamilton shot 16 children and a teacher dead at a school in Dunblane, Scotland. That was preceded in Hungerford by gun fanatic Michael Ryan armed with an automatic rifle, a pistol and a hand grenade. He killed 16, including his mother.

Dunblane caused a tightening of UK gun ownership laws, that has not slowed the rise of gun crime, but has restricted gun sports-people. Shootings happen in many countries, including the USA, and children are as often as not the victims.

The question for law-makers is what is a measured response to massacre; how to balance control with freedom of choice? That is the conundrum that representatives are elected to solve.

First published on Suite 101, 7 June 2010.

Photo: Pit Bull: Dog Restricted By UK Law – jclutter

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The Diaries of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Reflect All of Life

June 28th, 2011 | Add a Comment

Reagan: One of Presidents Who Kept Diary - US Fed Government
For centuries people from every walk of life have kept accounts of their daily lives, which are at once historical masterpieces and exercises in hubris.

Mae West said: ‘Keep a diary, and some day it’ll keep you’. Oscar Wilde quipped, ‘Inever travel without my diary. I like to have something sensational to read on the train’. Both remarks suggest diaries are not only kept for private thoughts/remembrances, but may also be read in the future by others. This applies to the famous or those close to events, like politicians or creatives.

English 17th century diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) set the standard. He lived in interesting times, but also was privy to workings of the English crown restored in the person of Charles II after the divisive years of the civil wars, 1642-1651. He was a Member of Parliament and Chief Secretary to the Admiralty, famous for reforming administration and professionalism of the Navy.

But it was his coded diaries that have become a primary source of the period, containing eyewitness accounts of landmark events like the Great Plague and the Fire of London. The journals also catalogued intimate details of a lively, middle-income functionary, his love life and domestic arrangements and concerns.

Teenage Flight from Nazis: Anne Frank’s Diary

Anne Frank kept her diary while in hiding from the Nazis in German-occupied Holland in the Second World War. It has become a potent symbol of Holocaust resistance. She was one of the million Jewish children who perished in concentration camps.

She, her family and other Dutch Jews hid in a secret annex to an apartment in Amsterdam, provisioned secretly, keeping movement/noises to nights when the local business community went away. In a plain book, she recorded her perceptions, hopes, emotions and problems associated with the cramped hiding place where she lived for two years, in terror.

In August 1944, Anne Frank’s secret annex was discovered; they were arrested by the Gestapo and sent to camps. Anne and her sister died of typhus in March 1945, just weeks before British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen. Only her father survived, along with her dairy. It has been published worldwide and to this day, The Diary of Anne Frank remains an essential part of education across the world.

Political Diarists Set Their Record Straight Through Writing

US Presidents who have set down their experiences and thoughts include, John Adams (2nd), John Quincy Adams (6th), James Polk (11th), Harry S Truman (33rd) and Ronald Reagan (40th). Among British politicians given to secret jottings are: 1960s’ Labour Cabinet Ministers Richard Crossman and Tony Benn, and more recently, PM Tony Blair’s chief political adviser, Alastair Campbell.

Violet Bonham Carter, daughter of Prime Minister Asquith kept one, as did US General George Patton, Canadian Premier William Mackenzie King and Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels.

From the world of arts and creativity, musings survive from novelists Arnold Bennett; Germany’s Thomas Mann; Louisa May Alcott; Fanny Burney; George Eliot; Iris Murdoch, Sir Walter Scott; George Sand; Alice Walker and both Fyodor Dostoevsky and his wife Anna, and Tolstoy and his wife Sophia, who apparently read each other’s diaries.

Writers, playwrights and poets have shared their inner secrets through journals, including Sylvia Plath; Virginia Woolff; Vera Brittain; Siegfried Sassoon; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Max Frisch; Allen Ginsberg; Andy Warhol; George Bernard Shaw; Gerard Manley Hopkins; Beatrix Potter; Joe Orton, and English Romantic poet William Wordsworth’s sister, Dorothy.

‘Alice’ creator Lewis Carroll kept a diary, as did Buckminster Fuller, designer and engineer along with Che Guavara; British occultist Aleister Crowley; painter and film-maker Derek Jarman; Czech writer Franz Kafka; Swedish philosopher Kierkegaard and French philosopher Simone Weil; aviator Lindbergh’s wife, Elisabeth, and Russian ballet dancer and choreographer Nijinsky.

Musicians Pete Doherty, Kurt Cobain, Marianne Faithfull, Courtney Love, Canada’s Alanis Morissette, Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks, Cosima Wagner, second wife of composer Richard Wagner (who also kept an account) and daughter of Franz Liszt kept one each.

Famous Fictional and Infamous Fake Diaries

Since the public never seems to tire of private, often honest musings of people they know about, there has over the years been a ready market in fictionalising or fabricating diaries for publication.

Bridget Jones Diaries is a 1996 novel by Helen Fielding made into a movie in 2001 about a single woman in her thirties in London, and it chronicles her loves, friends and fantasies. There was a follow-up movie in 2004: The Edge of Reason.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ (1982) is comedic fiction written by Sue Townsend and is described by publishers, Penguin as “an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into the troubled life of an adolescent. Writing candidly about his parents’ marital troubles, the dog, his life as a tortured poet and ‘misunderstood intellectual’, teenager Adrian Mole’s painfully honest diary makes hilarious and compelling reading”.

Fabricated diaries, designed to con publishers and readers, include The Hitler Diaries. West German magazine Stern reported in 1983 the discovery in East Germany of 62 handwritten volumes of secret diary by Adolf Hitler. It sparked a storm of controversy and interest, but after time people realised they were the biggest historical hoax of the century.

Over the years since Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress Claretta Petacci were shot as the last war ended, there’ve been several fakes purporting to have been written by the pair. The most notorious made the claim that he had confessed to having 14 simultaneous lovers.

Faked or real, famous or infamous, diaries provide fascinating glimpses into the worlds of other people.

First published on Suite 101, 5 June 2010.

Photo: Reagan: One of Presidents Who Kept Diary – US Fed Government

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Some of the Known Costliest Mistakes in the World, So Far

June 26th, 2011 | Comments Off on Some of the Known Costliest Mistakes in the World, So Far

Oil Spill Disasters Can Be Beyond Cost - Agencia Brasil

From oil spills to war, anybody can make errors of judgment, but some lapses turn out to be eye-wateringly, jaw-droppingly expensive. And embarrassing.

According to Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich in Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes, people could avoid making major fiscal errors by application of what is emerging as a new science, ‘behavioral economics.’ This grew out of Israeli studies that were conducted thirty years ago; the studies examined the impact of rewards and punishments in judgment-making.

Belsky and Gilovich argue that in order to overcome blind spots that lead to financial errors, people must grasp the underlying psychological causes behind those decisions, both large and small – from buying/selling a house or stocks/shares, to grabbing supermarket bargains, betting and tipping. Decisions may turn out to be wrong only in retrospect; some decisions are made collectively and some decisions are concealed. When errors are revealed, they can be embarrassing or cause real anger, real hardship.

Britain’s Times reported in March 2010 that a Bugatti Veyron — one of the earth’s fastest, rarest, costliest (£380,000) cars — crashed while traveling approximately 100 miles per hour in an area with a posted speed limit of 40 mph. To date, this is the most expensive incident of car-related damage involving an individual’s family property.

Governments Make the Biggest Mistakes

In June 2006, ABC News reported that personal data on 2.2 million US military personnel was missing. Private details were stolen by a thief who grabbed computer disks in Maryland. A veterans’ group filed a lawsuit demanding the US government pay current and retired service men and women $1,000 each – that’s a total of $26 billion. Poor security is the most expensive error by government officials, yet.

In the UK, Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs dealt with a 2007 mishap involving mislaid disks containing confidential details of 25 million Child Benefit recipients. Over 15,000 customers of insurers Standard Life were put at risk of fraud when a courier lost a disk containing their insurance numbers, dates of birth and pension data. The disk was in transit between HMRC National Insurance in Newcastle and Standard Life’s Edinburgh HQ when it disappeared.

In the same year, a laptop containing sensitive information was stolen from an HMRC employee’s car. They claimed data was still secure, refused to say how many people were affected or to name the employee who carried the computer in a private car.

In other UK cases, military information has been left on trains and buses; private health data, bank details sent to the wrong people. For instance, in April 2007, tax documents were found in a Nottingham Street.

Significant Mistakes in History

US and UK officials are not alone in making catastrophic errors.

Ronald Wayne has been confirmed as the original ‘third founder’ of electronics giant, Apple. He was working at Atari in California when he was asked to take a 10% stake in the new Apple venture, acting as a tie-breaker, if needed, between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniek – they each held a 45% share.

Wayne gave up his chance after just a fortnight, fearful about borrowing money after a previous failed business experience. He signed away his stake and received $1,500 – less than one-thousand pounds. It’s believed that Steve Jobs is worth about £3 billion.

Wayne acknowledges he will be a footnote in history, but doesn’t entertain doubts about his 1976 decision.

Businesses are no stranger to mistakes and bad decisions. One case involves the San Francisco Chronicle, which reportedly turned down a deal that would involve paying $500 to the Washington Post for syndicated coverage from the Watergate scandal that ultimately brought down President Nixon, arguing that “there’d be no USA West coast interest.” The incident was reported in the UK’s Daily Telegraph in April 2010, though but there’s no confirmation on the news organizations’ websites.

There’s also the case of Elvis Presley, who was transferred to RCA by record company boss Sam Phillips for just $35,000. Decca Records passed signing The Beatles after an audition in West Hampstead, London, on the basis that in 1962 guitar bands were “on the way out.” That decision is now mocked as the greatest error in music industry history, though they were also rejected by several other labels, including Columbia, Philips, Pye and Oriel labels.

A total of nine separate publishing houses rejected JK Rowling’s manuscript for Harry Potter. Today, Rowling is estimated to be worth around £1 billion from her seven-book Harry Potter series.

Some Mistakes Can Turn Out Well

Not all mistakes are costly for the person or organisation responsible. The “Treskilling Yellow” postage stamp is worth about $7.5 million, as it is unique. It was printed yellow instead of green in Sweden in 1855. Nobody knows why or how, whether others were printed, or who was to blame, but none has come to light.

One bungle that the Washington Post described as ‘fortuitous error” occurred in US Congress in December 2005, when members, apparently eager to get home for Christmas, hastily drafted a bill to increase the interest rate paid by parents on guaranteed student loans. They applied it to banks and lending institutions, but not to the government-funded Direct Loan program.

They were set to simply amend the anomaly later, but had unwittingly unearthed the existence of working relationships between some schools and lending institutions, and discovered loans funded directly worked out cheaper for the taxpayer in any case.

Of course, in life, one person’s mistake is another’s opportunity.

First published on Suite 101, 5 June 2010.

Photo: Oil Spill Disasters Can Be Beyond Cost – Agencia Brasil

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Why Hair, the Tribal Rock Musical, Just Keeps on Grooving

June 25th, 2011 | 1 Comment

US Marine in Vietnam Era Uniform - User: KTo288

After a 2009 US hit run, Hair in 2010 is rocking London’s West End. This revival says a lot about both cultural history and political performance.

The New York Times called it: “Thrilling! Intense, unadulterated joy”. The UK’s Daily Mail said, “Enough mega wattage to light up London”. How can a 1967 hippie-fest be a hit on both sides of the Atlantic in the hard-bitten, austere early years of the 21st century?

Hair: the Tribal Love-Rock Musical is about The Summer of Love (1966, USA, 1967, UK) and a hippie community of both sexes and all races protesting about drafting into the US army, singing songs that chimed with the spirit of a new era, the dawning of the age of Aquarius, with flowers in the hair and much Eastern religion thrown in.

Resonance With Today

Individual impotence to stop war parallels today. In 1967 the Vietnam War was raging, embroiling American troops in a conflict which cost nearly 60,000 US lives alone. Today, US troops with Britons and others are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and while losses are mounting, they’re not yet at the Vietnam scale.

The big difference between then and now, though, is that today’s US and British troops volunteer. Men and women sign up to serve a military career. In the 60s, young US men were drafted; it was extremely difficult to avoid service. Even Elvis Presley, at the early heights of his rock career, was drafted into the Army.

The burning of draft cards by young American boys who preferred hippie music, dope and free love was the symbolic act of ultimate rebellion on which Hair’s plot hinges. The subsequent death of the central character who went to fight after all, is made all the more poignant because of his earlier defiance, encouraged by his peers.

Hair is a political musical, in the same way that Hairspray is, making unsubtle statements in the Brechtian style about war, racial integration and miscegenation, individual freedom, youthful rebellion, sex and relationships, drug-taking and respect.

The Ingredients of a Lasting Musical

Many long-lasting musicals survive over decades on the back of a few powerful songs rather than what nowadays is regarded as thin narrative. To take one example, South Pacific has’I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair’and ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ which have become perfect musical-popular standards with which audiences empathise.

In Hair , the title number ‘Hair’, ‘Aquarius’, ‘Good Morning Starshine’, ‘Ain’t Got No’ and ‘Let the Sunshine In’ all meet the criteria of being great numbers that not only evoke the hippie era itself, but are musically timeless.

It’s the ultimate ensemble show. The cast rarely leave the stage in their colourful, high-energy, youthful exuberance, as the visible band rocks out the high-octane soundtrack with gusto that’s integral to the experience, part of hanging out and having fun. Yet, from this crowd emerge individuals as selfish, self-motivated, idealistic, angry, frustrated, cruel as any people in any age. It reveals a truth about the hippie dream.

There is frequent interaction with the audience near the front in the stalls, hugging, stroking, comic asides. This spreads universal hippie love: make love, not war. In the second half, the feel-good nostalgia darkens. Claude’s body, in full military uniform, ends the show on a sombre note.

But then, out come handrails on steps into the auditorium (a neat comment on today’s health & safety obsessiveness). Stalls audience are beckoned on stage to groove with the cast. The good times return.

Youthful Rebellion

The long hair of the1960s was one outward sign of rejecting the normalcy of older generations. Unisex, garish, flowing, culturally diverse clothes served the same purpose: let it all hang out, tune in, turn on and drop out. Songs like’Hashish’ and ‘Sodomy’ reinforce rebellious shock.

The brief, tasteful nudity scene that closes the first half came the day after Britain’s Lord Chamberlain’s office lost its 230 year old power to prohibit any play “for the preservation of good manners, decorum or of the public peace”. In 1967/68 it was rebellion; in 2010 it’s artistic history.

The contraceptive pill encouraged the philosophy of free love: it was cool to sleep with anybody, any time, and even if pregnancies resulted, there was no obligation to look after the child or stay faithful. Equally, dropping out of the rat race in the late 60s was an indulgence not available to later generations born in more straitened economic circumstances, as Libby Purves points out in the Sunday Telegraph, 18 April 2010.

Each generation’s rejection of social mores held dear by predecessors, occurs naturally throughout history. Rewriting the past critically (family & society breakdown, sexual diseases), or watching through rose-tinted spectacles from comfortable middle age, is why Hair is a smash.

Audiences in New York in 2009 and London in 2010 are from teenagers drawn by hype and music, to middle-aged, who may have seen Hair first time round, or think they did. How many find it ironic that nostalgic hippies are balding, unable to climb on stage to groove with guys and chicks any more?

First published on Suite 101, 4th June 2010, deleted by them in a Google algorithm purge, January 2012.

Photo: US Marine in Vietnam Era Uniform – User: KTo288

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Post-Apocalyptic Movies: Not Quite the End of the World

June 22nd, 2011 | 1 Comment

War of the Words Film Set: Disaster Strikes - Mr Bullitt
Are people attracted to doom-filled, survivor tales because they offer hope, or because they make real everybody’s deepest fears of an unknown future?

Movie observers assume people’s fascination with post-apocalyptic horror stories began after World War 2, when the nuclear arms race heated up and global war, or MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) seemed inevitable. More recently, man’s environmental destruction unleashes apocalypse.

Others point to Fritz Lang’s 1927 movie classic Metropolis showing social crisis between workers and owners. However, it began a century earlier in 1826 when Mary Shelley (who also wrote Frankenstein) published The Last Man, set in a future world devastated by plague.

Dystopian Movies

Dystopia is the opposite of utopia. Life is rendered harsh for many for the benefit of the few. Regimes enforce ruthless control over thoughts, actions, movements and relationships.

An example of this is 1984, sometimes Nineteen-Eighty-Four (1956; 1984), based on the 1948 George Orwell story when Thoughtcrime, Big Brother and Room 101 are realities. Logan’s Run (1976) is set in an idyllic future where life must end at 30.

Blade Runner (1982) has the central character track down and destroy four replicants who hijacked a spaceship to return to earth to find their maker. In The Running Man (1987) a wrongly convicted man must survive a public execution staged as a game show. Demolition Man (1993) shows an imprisoned cop brought out of suspended animation to track an old enemy loose in a non-violent future.

The Matrix series (1999-2003) imagines a future in which reality is The Matrix, a simulated reality created to subdue people to harness energy from body heat and brain activity. It’s philosophy as much as dystopian horror. Minority Report (2002) is set in 2056 in a world controlled by Precrime, police who predict behaviour, so ‘criminals’ are caught before they commit crime.

Other films include Distrct 9 (2009); Fahrenheit 451 (1966); The Handmaid’s Tale (1990); Soylent Green (1973); The Trial (1962) and Screamers (1995). There are, furthermore, alien controlled dystopias (Battlefield Earth, 2000), and corporate dystopias where big business replaces government as the controlling force. I, Robot; Robocop; Total Recall and Rollerball (1975; 2002) fall into this category.

There is debate about whether A Clockwork Orange (1971) is a dystopian movie. However, what most of these films have in common is an adaptation of old stories, many by one man, Philip K Dick, and it’s this branch of science fiction that feeds public appetite.

Apocalypses Great And Mega-Great

Following a disaster, nuclear, plague, war or natural, survivors attempt to form a new order against an encroaching dystopia. It may be immediately after the calamity, highlighting psychological flaws of survivors struggling in a changed habitat with only a remnant of former lives and technologies.

Or it may be years later, when dystopia is firmly in control and a return to old values may be desirable but difficult. New generations have only old world tales told to them, but no direct memory themselves.

The Road (2009) is a harrowing tale of a father and son walking to the coast in hope, fearing cannibalism in an anarchic landscape after an unspecified post-apocalyptic disaster. Waterworld (1995) sees a mariner surviving hostility from humans clinging to structures in a flooded world. Here too, characters are pre-occupied with a journey to a possibly mythical “Dryland” where they could live in safety and plenty.

Still with journeys, The Book of Eli (2010) features a lone man fighting across America to protect a book containing the secret to saving humanity. The Day After Tomorrow (2004) portrays a world beginning a new ice age as a result of global warming.

On the Beach (1959; 2000) follows survivors of a nuclear war which wiped out most of the northern hemisphere. Testament (1983) also follows a nuclear devastation. War of the Worlds (1953; 2005) is about Martian invasion of earth and human fightback. In I Am Legend (2007), after plague has killed most of humanity and monsterised the rest, a sole survivor struggles.

Cloverfield (2008) follows survivors of a New York monster attack. Watchmen (2009) sees an alternate 1985 where superheroes really exist. Planet Earth (1974) has a hero enslaved in a female-run society, while Zardoz (1974) is set in an unexplained post-apocalyptic world governed by Brutals and Exterminators.

WALL-E (2008) is a computerised animated sci-fi movie about a waste robot. Robot Holocaust (1986) is an epic battle of machine against mankind; a similar premise to Terminator: Salvation (2009).

After a mysterious, incurable virus wipes Britain, survivors find sanctuary in 28 Days Later (2002); in 28 Weeks Later (2007), the fantasy continues in London. Children of Men (2006) envisions a childless, futureless world and one pregnant woman who must be protected. In Day of the Triffids (1962; 1981) a meteor shower blinds people, so they cannot fight deadly triffid plants.

Like many movie plots, post-apocalyptic stories are remade and revisioned. The future is up for grabs in the imaginations of anybody and everybody. And why not? It’s not the end of the world.

First published on Suite 101, 1st June 2010.

Photo: War of the Words Film Set: Disaster Strikes – Mr Bullitt

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Madness and Genius Are Close Relations in the Creative Arts

June 21st, 2011 | Comments Off on Madness and Genius Are Close Relations in the Creative Arts

Van Gogh With Self-Mutilated Ear - Web Museum
It’s often said that there is a fine line between lunacy and brilliance, but mental illness can actually be an artist’s inspiration.

Writers, painters, film makers and composers are often assumed to be barking mad, or they wouldn’t create. Comedians suffer the same misapprehension. The fact is many creative people experience periods of mental illness and mood disorders, like depression and bipolar, Asperger’s and other forms of autism. Others draw on the results of thought experiments and mind-games to confuse, twist and alter normal perception.

Savant Syndrome is characterised by remarkable artistic, mathematical or musical skills. UK’s Stephen ‘Human Camera’ Wiltshire has perfect pitch and paints uncannily detailed cityscapes from memory after short viewings.

Madness is a somewhat outdated, catch-all phrase to describe behaviour which some see as eccentric, strange or plain weird. The music of Leonard Cohen is frequently described as the soundtrack to suicide. Keats’ poetry arose from his need to be miserable. US poet Sylvia Plath’s suicide arising from her mental torture has become indistinguishable from her verse.

The Madness May Not Be Permanent

Sufferers may have a brief and invented bout, like David in the Bible, (1 Sam. 21.13), where to escape a fearful situation he feigned insanity, making marks on the gate and letting saliva run down his beard. This prompted one of the funniest lines in the Bible from King Achish of Gath, who demanded of his servants ‘“Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me?”

People can suffer mental illness at some point in their lives, rather than being permanently afflicted. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was inducted into the US Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 as “one of the few undisputed geniuses in pop music”. Overwhelmed by cocaine, over-eating, chain smoking and neglect, unable to cope with fame and lead-creativity in the band, he suffered growing detachment, acute depression in the late 60s, early 70s.

Controversially prescribed antipsychotic drugs over a long period, he was dismissed as a madman, out of it, fried. More recently, his health has been restored. Others suffer mental breakdown through bereavement, war, fear, situational and relationship pressure. Contemporary English poet Geoffrey Hill, suffering an undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder was treated with anti-depressants. Suddenly his poetry began.

Fictional Madness

There are fictional characters who experience insanities. Shakespeare recognised the creative power of lunacy. King Lear goes mad. Macbeth, after murdering King Duncan and hearing prophetic utterances from the witches goes over the edge, as does his wife, unable to mentally wash her hands free of the blood she shed.

Hamlet successfully convinces others he is mad, yet perhaps his problem is that he sees things too clearly. The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003) is a novel by Audrey Niffenegger, in which the central character suffers a genetic disorder obliging him to disappear into his own and his daughter’s past and future. He and those around him are condemned to see little clearly, but to be at the mercy of his brain function.

Filmed in 2009, it’s classified as both romance and science-fiction. Either way, it’s unique insanity creates literature. Equally, UK’s Mark Haddon wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) about Asperger’s Syndrome, among other issues like acceptance/difference. His play Polar Bears (2010), includes bipolar disorder amongst its issues.

Ken Kesey’s (novel 1962, stageplay 1963, movie 1975) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest came after he took peyote working as an asylum orderly. The central character fakes insanity to escape prison.

Some Creatives May Have Suffered

Among creatives believed to have suffered Asperger’s or other conditions on the autism spectrum, are artist Andy Warhol, Irish poet WB Yeats, writer George Orwell (real name, Eric Blair), composers Beethoven and Mozart and all-round creative genius Michelangelo.

English poet John Clare (1793-1864) spent years incarcerated in mental asylums, suffering depression and delusions, yet created what is now regarded as some of the greatest rural poetry about an England in change and a man isolated from reality.

The state of mind of any artist dead for more than a century is subject to debate and controversy. Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh is believed to have suffered a range of conditions, starting with bipolar disorder, evidenced by his feverish output of paintings followed by manic depression, exhaustion and ultimately suicide.

It could have been temporal lobe epilepsy, because he experienced seizures, and was addicted to absinthe. Treatment by digitalis can cause the patient to see in yellow or yellow spots. It may have been poisoning by thujone, from absinthe, or lead poisoning from paint or drinking kerosene to kill himself, which causes light to be seen in circles like halos.

Some believe his leaving over 800 letters is evidence of hypergraphia, a disorder linked to epilepsy and mania, causing one to write continuously. Even sunstroke is cited as a cause of his mental turmoil, since he frequently painted outdoors and had a lot of stomach problems.

Whatever the causes, he left behind a body of work that is unique to this day. The question is, does the making of art send people mad, or do only mad people become artists in the first place?

First published on Suite 101, 31 May, 2010.

Photo: Van Gogh With Self-Mutilated Ear – Web Museum

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Bringing Comedy to Audiences Is No Laughing Matter

June 19th, 2011 | Comments Off on Bringing Comedy to Audiences Is No Laughing Matter

One Person's Comedy Is Another's Tragedy - Dutchovensupreme
One person’s comedy may be another’s tragedy. People don’t always laugh at the same things, but no serious performance student can ignore comedy these days.

Some performers claim they don’t do comedy, or are not funny on stage, and some training establishments frown on comedy. However, if one can be funny with friends, then a true performer can get a laugh out of an audience. It is hard work, unless a person is naturally gifted in the art of self-mocking willingness to endure the prat fall, of being the butt of the gag, of publicly suffering error, failure and defeat and of enjoying the tears of the clown.

Peter Ustinov, the late Russian raconteur who made a career on stage and screen playing pompous English gentry, described comedy as, “simply a funny way of being serious”.

No comic entertainer ever takes it lightly, but nurtures the gift for coaxing laughter from the crowd, as assiduously as any other artiste practises his or her art form.

The History of Stage Laughter

Clyde Park has posted on the web a theory that primitive man, sitting by a cave eating badly cooked meat and farting is not funny, but primitive man sitting by a cave eating badly cooked meat and farting with at least one other person present is funny. Thus, he argues, comedy was born.

Greek and later Roman theatres echoed to the sound of crowds laughing and crying, probably in equal measure, although many held the view that comedy was tragedy’s poor relation. After an intense period of mourning, like at a funeral, people often find themselves hysterically amused later, in relief and contrast, sharing the joys of being alive.

The symbols of the ancient Greek theatre were the pair of masks – the comic and the tragic. Globally, today, the iconic image represents theatre. In medieval times, the jester was as much a part of life as the cook, the swordsman and the blacksmith.

Like most genres of arts, now there is much more fusion, less definitive boundaries between the two apparent extremes of comic and tragic.

Shakespeare wrote plays that are tragedies (such as Othello, Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Titus Andronicus); and plays that are comedies (like Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Taming of the Shrew and Love’s Labours Lost). However, he also wrote comic scenes into tragedies and Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well which contain mixes of comedy and tragedy.

In Shakespearian times, a comedy meant a play with a happy ending, a lighter story than a tragedy or a history play. Nowadays, people think more of comedy as stand-up, satire, parody, circus clowning in live theatre, sit-com or sketch-comedy on TV or rom-com in the movies.

The 16th Century Italian art form commedia dell’arte out of which grew circus clowning, pantomime and English Punch and Judy succeeded because it contained the lifeblood of laughter: stereotypes like rogues, authority figures and sexy women, wrapped up in physical theatre and miming.

Poking fun or deliberately being offensive or political, has long been part of the repertoire of performance comedy. In Britain in the 1960s, That Was The Week That Was, the TV satirical programme paved the way for Spitting Image in the 1980s, where the famous and powerful were reduced to laughing stocks through latex puppet likenesses.

Comedy Is the Essence of All Performance

What makes people laugh ranges from nerves/embarrassment, to enjoying somebody else’s misery (what the Germans call schadenfreude), to being glad it isn’t them in a given situation, to recognising themselves in some farcical situation, to physical theatre/miming comedy to toilet humour, either verbal or physical.

Funny is the thing going on behind somebody; the slip on the banana peel, the tumble down the open hole; the mistaken identity; the secret revealed; the loss of control or authority; the clumsiness, awkwardness, embarrassment of life and relationships; and it is the exaggeration of mannerisms, characteristics, beliefs, values whether serious or absurd.

In his UK published book, Why Is That So Funny?, (Nick Hern Books, 2006), John Wright argues that comedy and tragedy are co-dependent. He says that as comedy can wreck the serious, deflate the arrogant, trivialise and debunk anything, it’s essential it is explored in theatre, developed and used to benefit society beyond the arena.

Wright claims comedy is a revolutionary force: live theatre is a tightrope act, and while people admire the skills and courage that go into the performance, many harbour a secret wish to see somebody fall, or ‘come a cropper’ in English.

Besides stand-up, there is alternative comedy, which particularly knocks the establishment and improvisational comedy which is usually done without preparation, in early commedia tradition. Impressionists have long been a favoured vehicle of satirising celebrities.

The film industry recognises within the broad genre of comedy film a number of sub-genres: gross-out, parody, screwball and slapstick, black comedy.

Laughter is, it is assumed, the best medicine. It is also as much as applause, the fix for performers.

First published on Suite 101, 30 May 2010.

Photo: One Person’s Comedy Is Another’s Tragedy – Dutchovensupreme

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Postmodernism Can Be Both Bewildering and Inspiring

June 15th, 2011 | 1 Comment

David Bowie: Postmodern Musician - Elmar J Lardemann
Is postmodernism a handy catch-all phrase for eclectism, or an end-of-history movement? Either way, every art form seems to be irredeemably affected by it.

Some postmodernism began in the 1960s, entering academic study in the 1980s. Perceptions of modern scientific viewpoints, identity, unity and authority was modernism. Postmodernism is distinctly a rejection of previously accepted objective truth, stressing language, redefining absolute definitions and boundaries. It merges black/ white, present/past, gay/heterosexual, and almost any opposites/differences. It absorbs diverse times and cultures in a cross-genre world, mixing and sampling everything.

It is evident in music and drama, painting, media, linguistics, architecture and cultural identity. It uses contextuality and sometimes scepticism to underline unwritten theories. One exponent, Fredric Jameson, claims it as the ‘dominant cultural logic of late (post-second world war) capitalism’.

The Fingerprints of the Genre

The unpredictability of postmodernism is one of the first things to strike audiences. Different performance elements are juxtaposed to heighten contrasts, and the increasing accessibility of technology means artists experiment widely. Narrative and linear structures are often fragmented.

English choreographer Lea Anderson produced Flesh and Blood (1989), from her visual arts background, basing it on the film The Passion of Joan of Arc with religious icons, gender issues and daily life. Although set in a cathedral, the music includes an Australian didgeridoo, and the piece reflects a contrast of dance styles and high and low art with, at times, zany humour.

Equally, her Car (1995/6) has many postmodern hallmarks: site specific and mixed images. It explores car images and sex used to sell them, evolution via Ninja warriors, a robotic future and Kennedy’s 1963 assassination with his wife Jackie beside him in the open-top car.

Events, people and fictional characters from the re-contextualised past are imagined alongside the living, rendering history itself meaningless. Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls (1982), set in Thatcher’s Britain brings together 9th century Pope Joan; Lady Nijo a thirteenth century Japanese emperor’s courtesan; Patient Griselda, the obedient wife from Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale; Isabella Bird, a nineteenth century traveller and Dull Gret, direct from a Breughel painting. She frequently collaborates: another postmodern feature. Her work with Joint Stock Theatre has been mutually productive.

Two postmodern composers are Glass and Reich. Philip Glass, with his degree in mathematics and philosophy, believes music doesn’t have to go anywhere, but is a repeated moment in time. He harnesses eclectic styles from western and eastern cultures, each on different beats. Strung Out (1967) exploits additive rhythm, repeating and elongating phrases in the minimalist style. American Steve Reich, also from the minimalist school of music-making, uses world music and constant repetition of sounds and caught voice fragments. He initially used tape loops, but now has digital technology to hand. Different Trains (1988) and It’s Gonna Rain (1965) incorporate recorded spoken phrases. Piano Phase (1967) repeats with instruments, in what is called phase-shifting, using past music materials in a new way.

Many Practitioners Are Devoted to the Genre

Intertextuality is merging different genres/texts to create an often ironic comment on society. Leonardo Da Vinci’s iconic 1498 painting The Last Supper, was reinterpreted with English footballers replacing Jesus and the disciples, as a publicity stunt to launch 2006 World Cup TV coverage. Taking advantage of the internet, users have created trailer mash-ups, where footage from one film is cut with sound/footage from another. In 2003, NY University students cut Kill Bill with The Passion of the Christ, creating a spoof trailer, Kill Christ.

Akram Khan choreographed Rush in 2000, an abstract piece inspired by free-falling paragliders, using Indian cycle of nine and a half beats base for dance, music and space. Samuel Beckett’s very short play Come and Go (1965) is written with exquisitely choreographed movement/stage directions. David Bowie’s career of reinvention and killing off invented personas forms the backdrop to his borrowing from the past: Diamond Dogs (1974) from Orwell’s 1984 (1948).

Cirque du Soleil has created in the Mirage, Las Vegas, Love: a poetical evocation of 27 Beatles’ songs. But the band did it themselves in 1967. All You Need Is Love closes with bars from their earlier hit, ‘she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah’. Nothing is sacrosanct; it can be re-imagined. Spanish artist Picasso’s name is used on Citroen people carriers, an artist reduced (or elevated) to merchandise.

Steve Berkoff, writer, actor and director creates theatre in a world of contradictions, borrowing from the past (Kafka stories) and pushing his mixtures into the face of a sometimes uncomfortable public. He is far from alone as a moderniser, updating the past.

The politically correct movement has also reinvented some past. Thomas the Tank Engine with female engines; Winnie the Pooh with a female Christopher Robin; slimmed Friar Tuck beating obesity; Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster eating healthy food and Noddy reborn anti-sexist, anti-elitist and anti-racist.

Postmodernism is anything people want it to be. Another fingerprint is incomprehension. Critics and some audiences claim such work cannot be understood. For some practitioners, that’s success.

First published on Suite 101, 12 May 2010.

Photo: David Bowie: Postmodern Musician – Elmar J Lardemann

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Ex-MPs: Life After (Parliamentary) Death

June 15th, 2011 | 1 Comment

Defeated MPs Miss Palace of Westminster

With a new UK Parliament, a record number of former MPs are in the jobs market. Some stood down; others were pushed by the voters. Most must find new work.

Before the 2010 election, 97 Labour and 35 Conservatives declared they’d not stand again. Some faced near-certain defeat after recent expenses scandals, some retired naturally, others just fancied the resettlement grant, worth up to £65,000 for longest-serving members. The election created 232 new MPs: 148 Conservatives, 66 Labour, 10 Liberal Democrat, 8 others. This scale is consistent with a big swing from one party to another. In 1997’s Labour landslide, 160 Conservative MPs lost their seats. As many gain new jobs, others lose theirs.

Thrown on the Scrapheap

Few people are sacked in the public arena surrounded by singing and dancing opponents and the media as defeated MPs are at their Declarations. Because an MP’s work is unique, both in the constituency and the Westminster/Whitehall village, it’s a shock to be removed, even if opinion polls predict it.

Some describe it as a bereavement, lost identity. Cutting off at the knees, depriving of oxygen, deserted, being neutered, becoming the undead – all convey the devastating loss of the privilege of Commons membership. Parliament is often described as the best club in the world, and to be excluded is a hammer-blow.

Average MP’s term-expectancy is around eight and a half years. Once booted out, instantly gone are salaries, offices, staff, legislative input, making a difference in people’s lives by solving problems. The status is vanished, loyalty is not in evidence. As many say, ‘there is nothing as ex, as an ex-MP’.

Former Labour MP Joe Ashton who stood down from Bassetlaw in 2001 after serving 32 years, conscious of the struggle some former MPs had when suddenly isolated, ignored or even ridiculed, formed a support group, an association to help them recover from the trauma and look to a new future. Several had severe alcohol problems, depression and financial difficulties. Few talk about the experience, even years later.

For weeks after, they’re expected to wrap up constituency business and casework, passing to the new incumbent whatever is necessary to serve the public, but there are no enforced rules. They then watch their replacement constantly in the local papers, on TV and radio, out and about in an area previously regarded as the former Member’s. Despite predictions, most refuse to accept until they see the piles of ballot papers at the count, believing they will swim against the tide.

To take just one illustration: Keith Bradley, Labour’s Manchester Withington representative for 18 years and a minister, before student opposition to tuition fees, Liberal Democrat electioneering and Conservative tactic of choosing a candidate also called Bradley, led to him losing in 2005. At 55 with three children to support and having been a minister, no new career was automatically obvious.

Born-Again as Something

People wonder how years in Parliament qualify a former Member for other work. Many join advertising or public relations, putting Parliamentary/campaigning experience to good use.

Others work tirelessly in the political wilderness to retrieve the seat they lost, like David Evenett (Bexley Heath and Crayford, out in 1997, back 2005, returned again 2010). Some work for a safer seat; a few are elevated to the House of Lords by grateful party leaders. MPs re-elected after a gap are affectionately known as retreads, or come-back kids.

The notion that an MP is only associated with one seat was disproved by Winston Churchill who in his time won five seats, was defeated twice, de-selected once and crossed the floor of the House twice before becoming Prime Minister.

Some former MPs end in prison, like Jeffery Archer (Louth, 1969-74) and Jonathan Aitken (Thanet East 1974-83; South Thanet, 1983-97), both for perjury and perverting the course of justice. Some, like Michael Carttiss, (Great Yarmouth, 1983-97) seek election to local government, in his case becoming Chairman of Norfolk County Council.

Most find new berths in the choppy waters of the media world. Ministers David Mellor (Putney, 1979-97), Michael Portillo (Enfield Southgate, 1984-97; Kensington & Chelsea, 1999-05) and Edwina Currie (South Derbyshire, 1983-97) went from Conservative benches to TV & radio punditry/presenting. Gyles Brandreth went from broadcasting to politics (City of Chester, 1972-97) and back to broadcasting. Labour’s Brian Walden (Birmingham All Saints, 1964-74; Birmingham Ladywood, 1974-77) and Robert Kilroy-Silk (Ormskirk, 1974-83; Knowsley North, 1983-86) did the same, with Kilroy-Silk winning a stint as a Member of the European Parliament and hosting TV quiz show, Shafted.

Conservative Sebastian Coe (Falmouth & Camborne, 1992-97) went to the Lords and carved a new career fronting London’s successful campaign to host the 2012 Olympics. Matthew Parris (West Derbyshire, 1979-86) left politics to became a national journalist with occasional forays onto TV screens.

The fact is, eventually most make a life after Parliament. They get scant public sympathy. Almost all stood in the first place from mixed motives of ambition and public service. As most political careers end in failure, it becomes time for others to have a go.

First published on Suite 101, 9 May 2010; updated 2 October 2010.

Photo: Defeated MPs Miss Palace of Westminster (Maurice)

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