George Formby and an audience with the Pope

I was having a George Formby session on my ipod this morning while getting the Sunday lunch ready, which meant I was peeling potatoes and wiping tears of laughter from my eyes at the same time.  NB;  don’t confuse which hand is holding the tissue and which the potato peeler.  That is painful.

I love George.  I remember reading an article by Clive James he wrote years ago on the strength of a TV documentary about Wigan’s favourite son.  Clive James noted (with more than a hint of wistfulness) that after years living in Britain, he never felt more Australian and un-British than when he listened to George Formby. Clive, who isn’t exactly short of a sense of humour, just couldn’t get it.  When George was at the height of his fame, everyone, from the King to the cleaners with coal miners, clerks, clerics and cashiers in between (I could go on listing jobs that start with K or C but you get the point) loved him, but not Clive.  Not a titter.  Perhaps the ability to riff off a few bars of When I’m Cleaning Windows could become part of the Britishness test (a profoundly unBritish sort of idea) that Ye Gov talk about.

My favourite George Formby songs are, as you might have guessed, the funny ones. Here’s some of the lyrics from Hi-tiddly-hi-ti Island.

In Hi-tiddly-hi-ti Island, everybody wears a smile; Hi-tiddly-hi-ti Island, everybody lives in style The girls out there are full of sport, and wear their frocks a trifle short, Some are simply wrapped in thought In Hi-Tiddly-Hi-Ti Isle.

Yeah, OK.  Maybe you have to have the music and the voice to go with it, but it makes me laugh.

It was one of George’s sincere songs though, that made me have A Thought. It’s I’m Leaning On A Lamp-post. Here’s the link to the You Tube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e53eJBwiKw

Because, you see, Lucy, home from Uni for the weekend, wandered into the kitchen to see what I was laughing about.  Lucy (bless her) is deeply tolerant of my ipod habits and well versed in G. Formby’s output, but she does listen to more up to date music, too.  Lucy loves Elbow, for instance.  She listens to my songs and I listen to her’s.  Fair enough.  One of Elbow’s songs which I love is An Audience With The Pope as in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4d7oMxsBMI

And – wait for it – here comes The Thought.

The theme of An Audience With The Pope and I’m Leaning On A Lamp-post are exactly the same.  Wow.  And that bears out the truism, so well known to anyone who’s ever taken a stab at a creative writing class, that there aren’t any new ideas, just new ways of telling the story.

Frankie's Letter

I Spy....



The big news of the week is that Frankie’s Letter is published!  It’s available from Amazon, from me (have a look at the Books page on the website) and, as they say, all good bookshops.  If the bookshop you’re in hasn’t got it, then you have my absolute approval to query if the aforesaid bookshop is as good as purports to be.  Unless, of course, it’s one of those specialist bookshops selling books only about Neuroscience, Horses, How To Grow Grass That Your Neighbours Will Envy, Tiddlywinks or whatever.

Frankie’s Letter isn’t a Jack story but a spy thriller set in the First World War.  I originally self-published it on Kindle, but was delighted when Severn House decided to buy it.  The cover, I think, look great, and there’s something about holding a “real” book that the Kindle, despite its many virtues, just can’t match.

One of the challenges of writing a spy story set in the First World War is conveying to the reader just how new (and amateur) the Secret Service was.  We’re used to James Bond and his gadgets and Smiley’s smoke-filled rooms, but this is a different era, an era where an individual not only made a huge difference to the Service but actually was the Service.

I thought the best way to explain the time and the atmosphere of the story was to write an introduction.  Here it is.  I hope you enjoy it and I really hope you enjoy Frankie’s Letter

Historical Note

Frankie’s Letter is, of course, fiction, but one of its chief characters, Sir Charles Talbot, is based upon a real person.

William Melville, the man who would become the Secret Service’s “M”, was an Irishman, born in poverty in County Kerry in 1850.  He ran away from home and in 1872 joined the London police. He made a name for himself as a quick-witted and capable officer, who, among other things, arrested Fenians and anarchists, was involved in the search for Jack The Ripper and was appointed as the Royal bodyguard.  He retired, at the peak of his career, in 1903, with the rank of superintendent.

The retirement was fictional; what Melville actually did was to set up a small office near Scotland Yard under the name and title of W. Morgan, General Agent. As W. Morgan, he looked after both espionage and counter-espionage. His job was entirely hands-on.  That not only suited Melville’s character, it was necessary.  As he had agents but no staff, he had little choice.

In 1909, the service expanded, taking on Captain Vernon Kell, of the South Staffordshire Regiment and the flamboyant, sword-stick wielding ex-Naval officer, Mansfield Smith-Cunningham (“C”) to run various sections of the infant service.  All three men, in their separate offices strung out along the Thames, were unofficially supported and officially unacknowledged by the government – a state of affairs which suited the modest William Melville very well indeed.

If anyone is interested in finding out more about this fascinating man, I can recommend Andrew Cook’s M: M15’s First Spymaster as a reliable and thoroughly absorbing account.