What We Call The Most

'Look, Mary, no hands!'

There's no question in my mind that Cliff Richard has made a lot of good records, but very few of them have the immediate dance floor appeal of his very groovy version of 'The Girl Can't Help It' as released on his 1970 LP 'Tracks 'n' Grooves'.

The Little Richard cover puts Cliff back in touch with his rock and roll roots, of course, but it's a slightly daring move as the lyrics are ridiculously and comically lascivious, with numerous metaphors for sexual arousal and climax.

To complement the saucy words, Cliff is given a loping, slightly sleazy arrangement to emote over, full of dirty bass and, yes, prominent horns. In an attempt to temper the relentless smut, a middle eight is inserted where a Hammond organ goes all churchy and Cliff suddenly declaims 'OH, HEAR ME NOW!' as if he were a hysterical evangelist working a tent full of gyrating snake handlers.

Nice one, Clifford, nice one, son.

Christ Almighty

Art therapy is an essential part of prison for those serving long sentences: they've got to do something, after all, and smearing a load of paint all over a canvas can be cathartic.

Ronnie Kray was a keen amateur artist, and his paintings (not all of which are as good as his 'Crucifixion' above) now sell for several thousand pounds each. Good news, Ronnie, wherever you are: people are still fucking mugs when it comes to your tawdry legend.

A tip of the cap to  Jonny Trunk who originally posted this on Instagram and made me aware of it. Now I can't think about anything else, so, yeah, thanks a lot.

What's In The Box?

'Crime and banditry, distress and perplexity will increase until
the Bishops open Joanna Southcott's box'

The Second Coming has always struck me as an administrative balls up waiting to happen. I mean, everyone seems to have a different idea of when it's happening, what Jesus will do and who will be affected, and they can't all be right, so I think there will be an awful lot of disappointed people and no little embarrassment on the part of the Messiah. What is clear, however, is where He will stay once he gets here: 18 Albany Road, Bedford, a neat end of terrace house owned and maintained by The Panacea Society.

The Panacea Society have been waiting for Jesus since the 1920's. The Society began as followers of Joanna Southcott, a Devonshire prophetess who died in 1814. Joanna used to make her predictions in rhyme, a bit like a cosmic Pam Ayres, but her apocalyptic pronouncements were taken very seriously in some quarters, and she gathered around a 100,000 dedicated acolytes.

Joanna's path took an even stranger turn in the last year of her life, when she claimed to be pregnant with the new messiah, Shiloh.  She was 64 years old at the time. Shiloh failed to materialise, however, and, within  a couple of months, Joanna was dead.  Ever mindful of the dangers of the future, she left her followers a sealed box containing prophesies that would steer the world once the Day Of Judgement came. Her strict instructions were that the box should only be opened at a time of national crisis and in the presence of 24 British Bishops. Failure to meet the strict criteria would result in disaster. Despite numerous crises and related attempts to assemble the required quorum, the box has remained firmly closed for almost 200 years, and the secret contents stay secret.  

In 1919, an unhappy and intermittently mentally unstable widow called Mabel Barltrop became fascinated by Joanna Southcott’s prophesies. In time, she realised that (somehow) she was actually Southcott's miraculous child, Shiloh, although she took the more feminine name of Octavia. Mabel, sorry, Octavia, presided over a community of up to around seventy followers, all based in Bedford which, they believed, was the site of the Garden of Eden. Bedford. Eden. Yes, I know. 

The Southcottians became The Panacea Society and Octavia began to speak to God every day at 5.30pm, writing copious notes and then passing on the messages to the faithful. The Society gained charitable status in 1926 and the Bedford community grew to around 70 people who spent their time amassing Southcott memorabilia, campaigning for the powers that be to facilitate opening the box, piecing together a multi million pound property portfolio (including ‘The Ark’, Jesus’ proposed pied-a-terre) and starting a Ministry Of Healing.

'The Ministry Of Healing' is rather interesting: Octavia would pray and breathe onto small squares of cloth which could then be sent all over the world. Once combined with water and drunk, the holy cloth samples would cure any sickness. Or not – surprisingly, there’s little empirical evidence on the results. Octavia obviously prayed and exhaled onto a lot of cloth, as they were still sending out samples until 2012, when the Ministry officially closed.

Mabel / Octavia died unexpectedly in 1934 (like I said, she breathed on a lot of cloth), and her followers kept hold of her body for three days just in case she came back. She didn't. Like many religious organisations who lose a driven, charismatic and supposedly divine head, the Panacea Society slowly began to decline in terms of membership and dynamism, circling around the same ground and waiting, always waiting for the moment promised to them to materialise. 

In 2002, the charities commission ordered the Society to sell some off some of its assets or lose their charitable status. This subsequently led to a fundamental reorganisation and a rebranding as a charitable trust outside of the now-defunct religious society.

It is believed that there are only two original Panacea Society members left, presumably pretty elderly now, but still faithfully waiting for the new tenant to move into number 18. I wonder if He'll have to leave a deposit to cover any damage? 

Real Wolves

The story of The Process Church is a strange, fascinating, scary one, but one told extremely well elsewhere, and from an insider’s perspective.  

A recent publication gathers together some of the Church’s quite astounding literature / propaganda, magazines that they hawked on the streets of London to raise funds. Brilliantly designed, philosophically challenging (to say the least), the publications were themed around the big questions of the day (indeed, of any day): Sex, Fear, Death…

The ‘Sex’ issue contains an interview with Jimmy Savile conducted in 1969, a little of which I’d like to reproduce here.

Q. Are you moral?

A. I would say that I am moral during the day, and even higherly moral during the evening but of course we won't say anything about the night time, because that is when all real wolves like myself rise from the darkness and leap about causing chaos left and right.

Q. What do you feel most strongly about?

A. Girls. I feel that they don't realise that I am here and available. When I see lovely young ladies walking about that don't take advantage of me, I think they are missing a great thing in their lives. This is why I keep getting my face slapped. Other than that I feel most strongly about getting back to nature, and I'm all for getting back to nature and my case comes up next Thursday.

His case, of course, didn't come up for another forty three years, at which point he was already dead.

God Comes To The Midlands

Talking of Sir Basil Spence, it's often forgotten that as part of the commission for his astonishing Coventry Cathedral (above), he also designed three parish churches in the area at the same time: St. Oswalds, St. Chads and the Church of St. John the Divine. Variations on a theme, the churches are part secondary school, part temple: a eminently practical arrangement that I'm sure Jesus would approve of. I particularly like the large crosses at the front of two of the churches, designed to be back lit and to project out into the community, like the beam from a lighthouse.

St. Oswald's

St. Chad's

Church of St. John theDivine

I'm not a religious person, but if any of these were my 'local', I'd go.

Strange Motives

'Witchfinder General' is a brutal experience from the first lynching to the last eye gouging and axe swing. Based on actual events, it was filmed in the beautiful countryside of rural Suffolk, mostly around the very pretty little village of Lavenham where I once had a memorable dirty weekend. When I remarked to my girlfriend that the film had been made there, she asked to see it. She was appalled by the violence and relentless grimness of it, and we split up shortly afterwards.

Described as an English Western by director Michael Reeves, it was received with anger and distaste by the critics (it made little Alan Bennett feel dirty, poor love) who obviously felt that the story of a man who tortured innocent women and then murdered them in the name of God and the state should have been a gentle rom com, perhaps starring Patricia Routledge.

Reeves was stung by the hostile reception and died of a barbiturates overdose shortly after the films release in circumstances that remain a mystery. My ex-girlfriend now works for Social Services in Norwich. She says 'Hi'.

Witchfinder General

Sinner Meet Your Maker

Fiendish moments from the original lobby cards. 

Beauty Beware

When I am dead and gone, say only this of me: he really, really liked 'The Fiend' ('Beware My Brethren' in the US). Like it? I love it. I love the music, the performances, the brown and olive world of the early 1970's, Tony Beckley, Patrick Magee, I love it all.

Beckley plays Kenny, a deeply religious security guard who lives with his aged Mum and, in his spare time, is a perverted sex killer. He's grown up twisted as a result of belonging to a very odd (but pretty funky) cult led by the ever bonkers Patrick Magee. The resulting tale is one of the most entertaining in the British horror canon, and it's just come out on DVD, so go and get it got immediately.

Here's the opening sequence of the film, which should probably clear up the whole 'shall I - shan't I' debate immediately. Bloody marvellous.

The Fiend