A Ghost Story For Christmas: A Warning To The Curious

East Anglia is an area of great beauty, but it is not a beauty of rolling hills and lush vegetation – it is a stark, washed-out and lonely beauty, where the dividing lines between land, sea and sky are sometimes blurred and the past is ever present in a landscape that has not significantly changed for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years.

There is a myth that the eastern coast of England is protected from invasion by three crowns, buried a thousand years ago. The story runs that whilst at least one of them remains under the ground, East Anglia, and Britain, will be safe. ‘A Warning To The Curious’ starts with the premise that only one crown remains, and that its safety is guarded by tradition and superstition so strong that it can extend beyond the grave.

Paxton (the sharp faced, gimlet eyed Peter Vaughan) is an unemployed clerk and an amateur archaeologist who is both obsessed with the ancient myth and increasingly desperate for money. Spurred on by information he has found in an ancient book, he makes his way to the quiet coastal village of Seaburg to begin the search for the remaining crown. Unhappily for him, he finds it…

Filmed on videotape, and with a minimal soundtrack of the sea, seagulls, crows, the wind and some muted electronics and strings, this short (50 minutes) film is a masterful example of clever people (Lawrence Gordon Clark adapted, produced and directed) making clever television for a sophisticated audience. Yes, it is a ghost story, but there are no white-sheeted spooks here or creaking floorboards: most of the supernatural activity takes place outside, during the day, in the bleak, flat East Anglian countryside, and is all the more disturbing for it.

‘A Warning to the Curious’ is an unsettling tale of unnerving simplicity. It moves slowly and matter-of-factly and despite a few genuinely shocking moments, prefers to create its effect by presenting a disquieting atmosphere that evokes a sort of low-grade fear in the viewer that grows into an oppressive feeling of quiet panic as the story slowly unfolds. I, of course, love that feeling, and actively seek it out, and I thoroughly recommend this to anyone else that likes to feel scared and uneasy in their own home.

A Recommendation For Christmas

Last Christmas, instead of giving you my heart, I had a bit of a rant about the bloody BBC and the madness of their policy towards archive material, specifically around the unavailability of the seminal 'A Ghost Story for Christmas' series.

This year, I'm happy to announce that these incredible programmes are now all available on a number of DVD's, or as one reasonably priced box set. Can you guess what I'm getting for Christmas, apart from pissed on Martini?

Four Great British Discoveries

The Split Atom. Ernest Rutherford to the right.

Steel.



D.N.A.



The Sandwich.

Yes, I know Rutherford was born in New Zealand, but he was British in every other respect.

Inventions For Radio, Part Two

As promised, please find below parts three and four of Barry Bermange and Delia Derbyshire's  Invention For Radio, 'The Afterlife'. The tracks are 'Light. Everywhere Is Light' and 'Death Is Just A Changing'. Some of you might be thinking 'this is all a bit morbid, Paul, 'tis the season to be jolly and all that' but, to be honest, I've always found death very Christmassy.

Three more sleeps. If you live that long.

Inventions For Radio, Part One

In 1964/5 playwright and actor Barry Bermange created a series of audio collages he called ‘Inventions For Radio’ for the BBC Third Programme (now Radio 3).

The 'Inventions' took the form of a number of recorded interviews with individuals on a given subject (Dreams, God, Dying, The Afterlife), which were then chopped up into soundbites and then woven together to form a narrative.

The human voices were further augmented by some filters and effects and an electronic background and sound effects from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop created by the totally wonderful Miss Delia Derbyshire.

The recordings are not commercially available, but I do have three out of the four. Here's the first two parts ('Death Is Going From Shadow To Reality' and 'It's Just Like Going To Sleep') of 'The Afterlife', originally broadcast on the first of April, a fairly frivolous date for a work described as 'a dream of Death'. The voices come from the Old People's Welfare Council in Hornsey. I find it very moving.



Part two tomorrow.

Interesting Postcards

Oldham Civic Centre.

Can you show me the way to Oldham? I hear they have an extraordinarily ugly Civic Centre, like Modernism meets The Flintstones. I hope it's nice inside.

Wish You Were Here

'One Way Trip' is another macabre midget gem from those morbid geniuses at the National Coal Board. I love its strange combination of bizarre fantasy sci fi imagery and tourism cliches, and the sting at the end is nicely done. A fair point well made.

Man Failure

The National Coal Board knew the power of film, using it to communicate key messages like ‘you’ve never had it so good’ and ‘try not to die’ to the thousands of miners it employed. The format they used is not dissimilar to a Public information Film, but differs in two respects: these films were not for public broadcast, they were for miners only; as a result, they are far more explicit in terms of content, including graphic deaths, pram accidents, sexual situations and equal opportunities nudity.

A PIF might show a man at work on a circular saw, for example, racking up the tension before juxtaposing images and music or sound effects to imply that he has just cut his fingers off – an NCB film shows you the severed fingers, and the bloodied hand they’ve just been parted from.

Case in point: ‘Man Failure’ from 1971. In it, the NCB basically say ‘we’ve made it safe for you – try not to mess it up’, giving two stark examples of what happens if you don’t pay attention. In this first part, our victim is brooding on an unpleasant and violent argument he had with his wife that morning. The argument is her fault, of course, but it’s his job to forget about it while he’s work. He can’t, so ends up dead, extravagantly spitting blood as he falls. As for his wife, well, she should have known not to put such a burden on a working man, so now she’s a widow, mouthy cow.

In this second part, an older man is paired to work alongside a much younger man – a mistake initially made by the foreman, but fatally compounded by the old man who tries to keep pace with his more energetic colleague, and by the younger man, who is constantly distracting him with tall tales about picking up hippy chicks on his chopper, skinny dipping (cue nudity) and sex. When sudden, violent death comes to the old geezer, as it surely must, it’s actually a relief for us all, although not immediately for the poor man, who has to undergo some painful looking crushing first.

'Man Failure' is a well thought out and highly imaginative short film, professionally made and with a simple and uncompromising message: don't get married, don't get old and, for fuck's sake, don't get killed.

Terrible Elegance

"The sound of the moment of atomic fission is a thin compulsive music, the indefinable orchestration of immense invisible forces disciplined inside of a kind of terrible elegance".

From 'Today In Britain' (1964).

The Stamp Of Quality

The design evolution of a set of stamps to commemorate the maiden voyage of Concorde on 2nd March, 1969. I'm not a philatelist, but I have a framed set of these in the house.

The stamps featured are the 9d and the 1s 6d, both designed by David Gentleman (the fellow in the screenshots), who also created the equally iconic World Cup 1966 stamp with 'the sexy footballers kicking their legs up in the air' (as David Hockney once described it) and the wonderful set commemorating The Battle Of Hastings. In fact, it was Gentleman who more or less invented the British stamp as we know it, writing to postmaster general Tony Benn in 1965 to suggest that, if Her Majesty didn't mind not having her head so large on every stamp, a more interesting and varied approach could be taken. Good work, David.

Mr. Gentleman also designed the mural at Charing Cross tube station, which is lovely and folky and well worth a special stop.     

Dr. Who: The Ambassadors Of Death

‘The Ambassadors Of Death’ is an unusual, long, complex and slightly rambling story from Jon Pertwee’s first season of ‘Dr. Who’ (1970). It’s very adult in tone (no, Liz doesn’t flash her knickers, although her skirt is phenomenally short) and contrasts sequences of violent action with a slow but fascinating internecine tale of government conspiracy and xenophobia in its most expansive form, i.e. fear of (literal) aliens.

Originally written for Patrick Troughton’s Doctor, ‘Ambassadors’ is interesting for a number of reasons, not least because it makes some structural changes to the way the story is presented – little, unique touches like the recap taking in place in the middle of the credits, or the title card that reads ‘The Ambassadors’ followed by the zappy twang of a ray gun and the legend ‘OF DEATH’. The feel is different, too, darker and more thoughtful. The aliens are used sparingly and only briefly seen in their full, blue faced glory as the real villains here are humans, either mad, prejudiced men like General Carrington operating out of a warped sense of 'moral duty', or ruthless hired guns like the despicable Reegan (one of the nastiest bastards to ever appear in the programme).

At seven episodes, it is probably at least one episode, maybe two, too long, but I rather like the leisurely approach. The central element of the story clearly references the first ‘Quatermass’ story (the spaceship that goes off the radar then returns to Earth carrying something different to what it set out with), and I like that too. I also like Ronald Allen as space controller Ralph Cornish. You may remember Ronald from his long running role as David Hunter in the infamous soap opera 'Crossroads'. I love watching him in anything because he keeps the straightest possible face under all circumstances, and his permanently pained expression, combined with his deep, sonorous voice is just really funny.  I believe he was rather a fun loving chap in real life, so I like to think he's very much in on the joke. Here's a trailer --

The first two seasons of Pertwee Who are particular favourites of mine. Confined to Earth, the serious tone and reliance on location shooting on wasteground and in semi-derelict factories seems to reflect the grim milieu of early 70’s Britain (although the stories are set a few years in the future), a place permanently under siege and, it seems, under attack, a place where you can trust no-one and, as we discover in ‘Terror Of The Autons’, even an armchair can kill you.

The Film Wot Slade Dun

Hairy black country rockers Slade were phenomenally successful in the early seventies, so it made perfect sense for them to make a film. ‘Slade in Flame’, however, is a strange one: it’s gritty and violent and depressing and ends not in triumph but in defeat, not with a bang but a whimper.

Originally invited to do something more in keeping with their lovably thuggish public demeanour, the group instead invited the director and the writer to accompany them on a gruelling US tour. Realising that pop life was more sweat than sequins, and inspired by the group's tales of their own and others experiences, the story of a group called ‘Flame’ evolved, a sort of composite of any number of bands struggling to make it in the hectic and hugely competitive music scene of the late sixties.

Flame's rise to fame has all the glamour of a blocked toilet in the services at Newport Pagnell, full of grind, scabby dressing rooms, shit deals, piss ups, punch ups and Johnny Shannon as a nasty bastard gangster manager who ditches them when they're down only to come back to suck them dry when they start to make some money. It's not without humour, and it's not without charm, but, overall, it's dingy and dark - a cautionary tale rather than a success story. It's a shit business.

Slade acquit themselves well, especially as they are asked to act a bit rather than simply chirrup the odd line and not bump into the furniture. Noddy Holder is particularly good, certainly the only one able to hold his own with proper actors like Tom Conti, and with so much hair he looks like a ginger Womble. 

I’m not a big fan of Slade’s music by any means, but they’re at their best here: loud, fast, cocky, lewd and full of energy and aggro - and Noddy's Benson and Hedges falsetto is a thing of improbable wonder.

Slade In Flame