MICK JAGGER'S CHATEAU (CENTRAL FRANCE)

The old potter told us
that Mick Jagger's chateau
was not far away,

so we drove towards
Poce sur Cisse in the hope
that we would find it.

We think we did,
squinting through some snatches
of space in a high, thick hedge,

a magnificent white building,
majestic entrance steps,
immaculately tended gardens.

But, alas, in our vain search
for a glimpse or two
of rock star action,

we failed to spot Mick
and we didn't get
no satisfaction.

 

WILLIAM SHATNER'S SUMMARY OF HIS CAREER CHOICES

 

In his wonderful 2008 autobiography “Up Till Now”, William Shatner gives a summary of his career choices: “I’m concerned about being overexposed, so I’ve been very careful to limit myself to acting on the stage and in dramatic television programmes, hosting documentary-type programmes and game shows, appearing in movies and commercials, endorsing products, doing voice-overs, charity appearances, radio programmes, Webcasts. videos, Star Trek conventions, horse shows and dog shows, writing books and songs, making albums, creating, directing and producing television programmes, performing at concerts, appearing on talk shows, competitive reality-type and award programmes.  But that’s where I draw the line.”

A MAN CALLED MALLON

 I wrote a poem about a man called Mallon. This is Belfast in the early 1970s. I have no idea why he popped into my head. Way back in the 1970s, we met, along with a close friend of mine, at a youth club. He came across as a great guy, an encourager of creative talent amongst young people. He was a great listener and was interested in what we did and what we had to say. He was a nice guy. One day he pitched the idea to my friend and I that we should make a film. So, off he drove us up the Black Mountain to make a weird, one-reel silent movie - that didn't make any sense. He was director and cameraman. My friend and I ran about a lot, gurned and tumbled. It was great craic. 

Cut to 2002 and Mallon, by now a bigwig amongst the Ulster-Scots, had been arrested in Chicago for grooming an underage girl (who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent). The cops raided his hotel room and found a video camera, sweets, a gold necklace wrapped in pink paper and a 12-pack of condoms. He was banged up in the US. 

I have no idea if he is still with us but he was a man, my friend, and I knew (and trusted) him, and a man we didn't know at all. The poem - oh, sorry, I can't print it because I've submitted it to a magazine.

Here's a link to a related news story: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ulster-scots-consultant-held-on-child-sex-charge-1.416925

In case you are wondering, nothing untoward happened to me or my friend. But........

BOOK REVIEW - NORTHERN PROTESTANTS ON SHIFTING GROUND BY SUSAN MCKAY

 

 

Northern Protestants On Shifting Ground

 

by

 

Susan McKay

 

The Blackstaff Press

Published 2021

https://blackstaffpress.com/northern-protestants-on-shifting-ground-9781780732640

 

I was raised a Catholic in Belfast from the mid-1950s.  From whatever age I became conscious of differences in religions and affiliations, I was aware of the notion of tribe. There was us and there were Protestants.  There were the Falls and Shankill roads. There was orange and green.  There was the tricolour and union flags.  There was graffiti to mark territory, and all sorts of other ballyhoo to keep “us and them” distinct from each other, and to a large extent, separated.

 

But, and this only really became apparent when I was reading this splendid book, I was never once told to be fearful of or frightened by Protestants.  There was no inherent bias in my upbringing.  No one told me outright or blatantly that I shouldn’t mix with “them ‘uns’.  The notion and reality of division seemed to be a given.  You might not have wanted to take sides but by the very fact you came from Northern Ireland, your birth identity was stamped inside your head.  A lot of it was and is nonsense, of course.

 

So, along comes Susan McKay’s book, Northern Protestants On Shifting Ground, a book that weaves around a hundred interviews mostly with ordinary people into a tapestry of honest commentaries on how Protestants are trying to steady themselves and their lives on the title’s shifting ground and pondering what the future holds.

 

Interviewees include religious and political leaders, former security force members, ex-paramilitaries, victims and survivors of many incidents from the Troubles, community and business leaders, students, writers and more, as fair a cross-section as a reader and analyser could wish for.

 

Big subjects are tackled including the fall-out from Brexit including worries about the border and future polls on Irish unity as well as concerns about social justice and the impact of change on everyday lives.  The controversial debates about how to deal with the crimes and atrocities of the past, to erase guilt, give blanket amnesties, draw a line, are all piling on the pressure for Protestants (and Catholics too) to be realistic about identity and humanity over weather-beaten tribal genes.  It is complex and not as easy to resolve as some in Westminster think.

 

I thought this book would be an endurance test of the same old bickering, wait-a-wee-minute, dug-in-heels stuff that has tainted Northern Ireland, but it was nothing of the sort.

 

I was enlightened and greatly impressed by the openness and honesty of the interviewees and by Susan McKay’s skilful handing of the material.  As she says in her conclusion: “I think of the valiant people who have given me their ‘vulnerable testimony’ for this book, and I am grateful, as always, for open hearts and open minds.”

 

Open hearts and open minds.  That’s got to be the future, surely!

 

An excellent book on every level that deserves the time and attention of everyone of whatever stripe and conviction who cares about the future of Northern Ireland.

26 JULY, 2021 - PRESS RELEASE - AWARD TRIUMPH FOR THE MONO TRIO FEATURING STEPHEN DUNWOODY

Here is the official Press Release from The Mono Trio featuring Stephen Dunwoody.  I have known and loved Stephen's music for several years now.  He is as close to unique as you can get in his creations. (Put his name in the search box of this blog to read past posts I have written.  This latest project, having had a sneak preview of some of it, blew my mind in subject matter and performance.

 

Tinseltown mystery inspires award winning song

 

Belfast jazz and blues band The Mono Trio has won Best Jazz Song at this year’s Rome Music Video Festival.

 

Their song ‘17575 Pacific Coast Highway’ pays homage to 1930s film star Thelma Todd whose death at age 29 sparked one of Hollywood’s great mysteries.

 

Also known as the Ice Cream Blond, Todd was born 115 years ago on July 29, 1906.

 

Up until her suspicious death just before Christmas 1935 she starred in over 120 films, including Laurel and Hardy and Marx Brothers comedies. It was the Golden age of Hollywood and Thelma was one of the few who successfully crossed from the silent era to the talkies. 

 

Thelma Todd had strong links to Northern Ireland and she often spoke about her Irish heritage; her father John Todd was from Comber in Country Down before emigrating to Massachusetts where he became a prominent city official. Sadly, he dropped dead of a heart attack just before his daughter’s first film release in 1926.

 

But it was his daughter’s death a decade later that still resonates today. Following the discovery of her lifeless body slumped at the wheel of her Lincoln convertible in a locked garage, many newspapers, including the LA Times, claimed that she had been murdered.

 

A subsequent Grand Jury however, decided that there was insufficient evidence and concluded that carbon monoxide poisoning was to blame along with ‘suicidal tendencies’. This decision has been hotly disputed ever since.

 

The authorities were accused of a shoddy investigation due to the many inconsistencies outlined throughout the hearings.

 

There was no indication that Todd was distressed in the days leading to her death. There was also the problem of her two cracked ribs and bloodied broken nose, which the coroner wrote off as somehow caused in the course of her carbon monoxide poisoning. And then there was the line-up of shady characters who had motive: her abusive ex-husband who had ties to the Mob, her business partner, his wife, and even the West Coast mafia who wanted to use her restaurant as a late-night gambling den.

 

Thelma Todd was one of the very first celebrity restaurateurs opening her sidewalk café at 17575 Pacific Coast Highway in 1933, a popular haunt for the Hollywood film glitterati and day trippers hoping to see a famous face. 

 

17575 Pacific Coast Highway is, in fact, the title of The Mono Trio’s award-winning song. 

 

The band’s singer and pianist Stephen Dunwoody explains: “A few years ago I came across the name Thelma Todd when I worked as a journalist. At that time the Laurel and Hardy fan club The Sons of the Desert were trying to trace Thelma Todd’s relatives who lived in or near Comber. 

 

“Several years later, the name came back to me when we were putting songs together for an album entitled ‘Film Noir’. The Thelma Todd mystery just seemed a perfect fit.”

 

Stephen adds, “Although her death was almost 85 years ago, writers still discuss the case. What I thought was particularly sad, and something that completely rules out suicide, was that Thelma had bought around 100 Christmas presents that had been wrapped and ready to send to family, friends and staff at the Hal Roach Studios where she was popular with everyone she came in contact with.”

 

Mono Trio’s song and accompanying video will be released on the band’s website www.themonotrio.com this week to coincide with the movie star’s birthday.

 

The album ‘Film Noir’ will be released this autumn and features band members John Convery on double bass and Graeme Arthur on drums.

 

View video here on HD www.themonotrio.com

Or here https://youtu.be/XLxct1dDPmw

 

Notes:

The Mono Trio are also in the running for the Moscow and Paris music and film awards later this year. They play regularly at Bert’s Jazz Bar.

They released a live recording of songs by Nina Simone in 2020.

 

Contact: Stephen Dunwoody 07810 264345 

BOOK REVIEW: ONE MAN, TWO WORLDS BY RICHARD NEEDHAM

 

One Man, Two Worlds

A Memoir of a Businessman in Politics

by 

Richard Needham

 

The Blackstaff Press

Published 2021

https://blackstaffpress.com/one-man-two-worlds-9781780733159

 

Of all the literary genres, memoir is my favourite.  I like people’s life stories, even if they are not always great reads.  Of the many memoirs I have read throughout my life, some have been insufferable ‘look how great I am’ puff books, some have sagged in the middle and become plodding chores, some I have not looked forward to have been surprisingly satisfying ultimately and some I have looked forward to ended up as damp squibs. 

 

But when a really good memoir appears and hooks you in from the beginning and carries you along with pace, wit, anecdotes, interesting facts, insights and a healthy dose of self-deprecation, you have discovered literary gold.

 

Such a book is One Man, Two Worlds by Richard Needham (that is Sir Richard Francis Needham, 6th Earl of Kilmorey: “I came from a family of barely solvent aristocrats.”).

Eton-educated, Needham has been, amongst other political posts, an MP, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Jim Prior), Parliamentary Under- Secretary of State, Northern Ireland serving Margaret Thatcher and John Major and Minister of State for Trade under Major.  His business experience includes running his own companies and stints working with James Dyson, GEC and Gleneagles healthcare.  

 

In both of these worlds, he was a globetrotting bundle of energy, full of vision, ideas and charm, championing the Theory Y style of leadership and management (encouraging optimistic, positive and inclusive teams) rather than Theory X, a style that focuses on a more authoritarian and controlling approach with heavy-handedness from the top.

 

Of the many interesting chapters in this superb book, Needham’s work in Northern Ireland, two stints over seven years or so, held my personal interest as a Belfast kid.  He worked hard to find ways to regenerate battered Belfast.  A challenging initiative was the development of what became known as CastleCourt shopping centre in Royal Avenue.  It opened in 1990, but during construction, progress was disrupted by IRA bombs.  The bombs continued in the years after opening, with a plague of incendiary devices disrupting trade.  CastleCourt is still operating, attracting around 17 million shoppers a year.  The tenacity of Needham and others paid off.

 

In one of the chapters, Studying the Past, Needham portrays four men in particular who “must be largely held responsible for the chaos, division and civil war that have impoverished the island over the last hundred and fifty years.  The four must take their place in the hall of infamy.  They have made a divide deeper, bitterer, bloodier, more poisonous and infinitely harder to resolve.”  His appraisals of Edward Carson, Eamon de Valera, Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley are punchy and highly critical: “If there is one trait they all share, it is cruelty.”

 

Richard Needham has written a thoroughly great memoir that shows his humanity, humour and determination.  He highlights successes and failures, his drive to overcome frustrations and obstacles and his fearlessness as a straight-talker, applauding the heroes in his life and condemning the villians.

 

As I finished the memoir, I was saddened to remember that we don’t seem to have a Theory Y Richard Needham-type to play a part in current politics.  This book has the power to inspire the next generation of leaders in business and politics to encourage optimism, positiveness and inclusivity.