john-tyrrell-SPIN

A powerful end to what has been a great winter season at the Royal Exchange: Dr Faustus, The Lady From the Sea, The Bacchae, Zach and now the world premiere of Vivienne Franzmann's Bruntwood Award winning play, Mogadishu. Set in an inner city London school, the play is performed throughout within a somewhat battered rusty wire cage. It is fast moving, well directed and superbly acted by a young cast.

It is now nearing the end of its run at the Royal Exchange, but is transferring to the Lyric, Hammersmith. Anyway, even if you have no wish to read the rest of this blog, I strongly recommend that you look at this rehearsal video.

I was struck by the different modes of discourse that take place within the cage - the fast and at times incomprehensible language of the street in which every other sentence seems to end with "innit", the angry exchanges between children and adults, and the bureaucratic discourse used by the school authorities in their efforts to protect children and maybe their own backs.

The audience was white, middle class and predominantly grey haired! Regrettably that is not untypical of theatre audiences, unless a GCSE set text is being performed. The following advert from the theatre programme maybe gives the game away!
There were perhaps some young people there: at any rate two of the young male black actors received wolf whistles! The disconnect between subject of the play and audience is probably even better illustrated by the programme's usual advertisement for Manchester Grammar School, where I am sure the multi ethnic children who largely commute in from the outer parts of Greater Manchester still communicate using the language of Burke and Gibbon.



Anyway a powerful, gripping play. I cannot recommend it too highly, and I urge anyone who lives near London to go and see it at the Hammersmith Lyric.

Why Mogadishu? As is noted in the play , it is a place, although none of the kids can locate it. In a piece headed "Battleground", the programme associates the word with chaos and danger. In trawling the net I found the following comment written by an angry man who like most of us has probably never been there but is an expert nevertheless:

Mogadishu is a shithole because the people who live there is genetically inclined to be violent and criminal.
I’m not racist, but this is the historical truth.
We should throw a nuke bomb on that den of fanatics.
They don’t deserve any help from western countries. 
Within 20 or 30 years they will extinguish.

It is urprising how many people I know went to see the much heralded King's Speech as soon as it was released. Even non-Royalists, in whose number I count myself, could not be failed to be moved by the performance of Colin Firth as the painfully stammering future King.

The film did nothing for the reputation of the Prince of Wales/Edward VIII, who came over as a rather cruel cad. He and Mrs Simpson were clearly the bad guys in this story.

The one complaint I had was the role of Winston Churchill, played by the ubiquitous Timothy (Wickes: It's got our name on it) Spall. Anyone who saw the film and knew nothing about the history of the period would assume that Winston Churchill was a great supporter of the Duke of York during the abdication crisis. In fact this was the reverse of the truth. One of the greatest misjudgements of his political career was to speak in support of his friend the Prince of Wales in the House of Commons at the height of the crisis. It would I suppose have been bad for the American market had Churchill been portrayed as being on the wrong side!

A few weeks before seeing the film I picked up a Souvenir of the 1937 Coronation of Our only lawful liege, George the Sixth (picture above). In it there is much mention of The Empire, including a map showing India, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, and all points in between. I was surprised though that in his speech on becoming King, George VI used the more modern British Commonwealth of Nations rather than British Empire. He also used the quaint biblical word my helpmeet to refer to his wife, played in the film incidentally by the delightful Helena Bonham Carter.


The inhabitants of the Empire were listed as follows: 365 million Indians, 70 million whites, 42 million blacks, 7 million Arabs, 7 million Malays, 1 million Chinese, 1 million Polynesians and 2 million others! One gets the impression that relatively few of the non-whites would have been at the Abbey to witness the Coronation. The United States though sent a special mission, which included General Pershing, who had led US Expeditionary Forces in the Great War.

I particularly loved the advertisements:

for Ovaltine, The National Beverage for Health: May this year of rejoicing take us appreciably nearer the national ideal of a Fitter Britain;

for Mansion Polish, Brilliance for the Happy Occasion: In the home, also, the housewife will desire to maintain a spirit of brightness befitting the happy occasion ..;

for Marconi, Only All-Wave Radio can bring you this year's great exchange of Empire Broadcasts ..;

for Cadbury's Bournville Cocoa a more demotic appeal,the Food Drink of the People, suitably positioned on the back page;

a page showing wholesome women wearing the unrevealing underwear that was the order of the day and that one could imagine was worn by the new Queen herself:


and from Drages of Oxford Street an advertisement extolling the virtue of buying furniture on installments : Miss Everyman: I had somehow thought that Payment-out-of-Income was associated with the cheaper, shoddier kinds of furniture.

Overall a fascinating glimpse into what now seems an archaic world.

I don't feel comfortable writing about football. I have neither the technical knowledge of the game nor perhaps the passion, but I admire good football writing when I see it.

One of the best pieces I have seen for some time is on a blog written by an Ipswich born Arsenal supporter, Nick Ames. Eschewing the seemingly obligatory analysis of Roy Keane's "hamartia" - a word I had to look up! - he concentrates on the footballing decisons that Roy Keane made, particularly in the transfer market ("Roy Keane’s 7.5 million fatal flaws"), which ultimately led to his downfall.

For my own part I am a little sad that Roy Keane has gone. For Ipswich Town supporters it has been a bad decade, perhaps a bad quarter century. Since Bobby Robson left in 1982 there has been little to cheer about. George Burley flattered to deceive. 5th place in the premiership and European football was swifly followed by relegation, administration and near oblivion, until the club was rescued by the mysterious Marcus Evans, who is more reclusive than Greta Garbo. So the coming of Roy Keane in 2009 seemed too good to be true, and indeed it was.

Often over the past 20 months I have reflected on the fact that the only other great player that has managed Ipswich was Jackie Milburn, and his short period as manager was far more traumatic. As far as I recall he was on the way to a nervous breakdown when relieved of his job. Roy Keane is made of sterner stuff, and is far wealthier than players of that era could ever hope to become.

I have also often reflected on the fact that the only other previous Ipswich Manager with Manchester United connections was Scott Duncan. In 1937 he left his job as Manager of Manchester United for Ipswich, who were then in the Southern League. I seem to remember reading that his wife wanted to leave the smoke of Manchester for the clean, healthy air of Suffolk! Anyway Scott Duncan took Ipswich into the Football League and remained in charge until 1955. Even then the club kept him on another three years as Secretary until he finally retired at the age of 70. Those were indeed the days.

Anyway I wish Roy Keane well. Anyone who has followed his press conferences over the past two years cannot fail to recognise his honesty, his intelligence, and his fortitude in adversity. I do not think we have heard the last of him.

The reaction of the British media and a fair section of the public to FIFA's decisions to select Russia and Qatar for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups has for me been embarrassing.

On one web site that I frequent a football fan responded to charges of arrogance by saying that England was entitled to be arrogant - we have won every war except one in 500 years and virtually every modern sport originated here! What a great sales pitch that would have been. Given that almost super human record it is hard to explain how we lost the Empire and perform so badly in most international competitions!

I have to say that I found the involvement of the grandson of the Queen particularly embarrassing. His joking reference in his sales pitch to the forthcoming royal wedding and the accompanying slide of a festive Buckingham Palace seemed to fall flat, and deservedly so. Of course we know that the UK is second to none in putting on an impressive show, but to its credit FIFA is looking for more than that: it seems to have its eye on the future rather than the past.

Personally I was impressed by the Qatar bid - particularly its promise to dismantle most of the stadiums after the world cup and to rebuild them in poorer countries. I am all for spreading the oil wealth around.

To combat the extreme heat which is a feature of Qatar and also most of the world's poorer countries, the planned stadiums will have revolving roofs, air conditioning and, most importantly, will be powered by solar energy.

To my complete surprise I find that the pilot 500 seater stadium which was built in less than four months and obviously impressed FIFA was designed by a British Company, Arup Associates. Now that seems to me to be a real cause for celebration and an achievement in which we can take some pride. Unfortunately it does not sell newspapers.

I would never have read this book had the author not shared the same surname as me. It is a harrowing tale.

Peter Tyrrel was born on a small farm in Ireland in 1916 to a feckless father who would do anything for his neighbours but nothing for his family - "God is good" was his stock answer when funds got low.

Along with a number of his brothers Peter was taken from the family and sent to the Letterfrack Industrial School when he was only eight years old.

In the book he describes the endless beatings by the Christian Brothers, and evokes the horror of an institutionalised childhood which marked him and many others for life. As far as I can gather he did not once see his parents during the eight years he remained at Letterfrack.

On leaving he worked for a time as a tailor, but like many young Irish before and since he left for London, and in 1935 joined the British army. He served in Malta, Palestine and India, and in the latter stages of the war was fighting on the continent when he was captured by the Germans and spent time in a prison of war camp, where he felt he was treated better than at Letterfrack.

After the war he moved around a number of English cities looking for work. Keen to expose the horrors of the industrial school system and to seek justice for those whose lives like his had been ruined by it, he came into contact with Senator Owen Sheehy Skeffington, who was fighting an almost single handed campaign against the widespread use of corporal punishment in Irish schools. He sent Senator Skeffington a number of envelopes containing his story. These documents were fairly recently discovered among Senator Skeffington's papers in the Irish archives, and in 2006 were published.

Peter burned himself to death on Hampstead Heath on 26th April 1967. It took a year before his body was identified. But for the fragments of a postcard bearing the words "Skeffington" and "Dublin" it is probable that his body would never have been identified.

A dreadful story, and unfortunately not an unusual one. Whilst reading this, and without taking anything away from the systemic horrors that have been exposed in Ireland, I could not help reflecting on other horrific examples of offically sanctioned child abuse and ruined lives that have come to light in recent years in countries that have a more liberal reputation than Ireland: the shameful treatment of the Norwegian children who had been fathered by German soldiers during the second world war; the forced emigration of thousands of orphaned British children to Australia, Canada and elsewehere.

From the age of 11 until I reached 21 I was educated at male only institutions. Although I have lived most of my life with women since then, and indeed have two daughters, I have to admit that the fairer sex remains something of a mystery to me. But I obviously like Scandinavian women, or one at least.

They tell me that Scandinavian women are the most beautiful in the world, said the late great George Melly when I asked him to sign a record for my wife.
I am sure of it I foolishly replied.
I'm not! said George.
That was the end of that conversation. I haven't seen him since.

Anyway my wife was amused by the following which I found on the web. Norwegian Women


What are Norwegian Women Like? asked Gary from the U.S.

I have thought about getting a bride from Norway. I am so tired of American women. I guess Norwegian women and Scandinavian women are more traditional, just like Russian women. I think Norwegian women look more beautiful than American women. I have heard that they are better at cooking, more submissive, dress better, are more innocent, don't drink as much, don't smoke as much etc. Is it true? I have also heard they are not wearing pants, due to their viking culture. Do they dress like that everyday?
http://www.paperdollreview.com/catalog/images/norwegianbunad.jpg
http://www.slowtrav.com/blog/chiocciola/bunad.jpg
I really want to discover Norway. Where could I go look for a Norwegian woman? Are Norwegian parents very strict? How do they react on their daughter marrying an American man? Should I go to Oslo the capital or should I go to some more far-away place? Where do I find the traditional norwegian vikingladies?
And is Norway cheap? Do they have bank automats? And are there good standards?

One of the many delights of living in Manchester is being able to visit the Royal Exchange Theatre.

Over the years I have seen some tremendous performances - one that sticks in my memory is the world premiere of Ronald Harwood's "The Dresser", with Tom Courtenay in the leading role.

There have been many more, as well as a few not so memorable ones. This year I have been fortunate enough to see "1984" and Marlowe's "Dr Faustus".

I have never seen a production of Ibsen that I have not enjoyed, and "The Lady from the Sea" was no exception.

Full of humour, which we tend not to associate with Ibsen, it is nevertheless a powerful play which still resonates in our time. Ibsen's comments reproduced in the programme will stay with me: The Norwegians are under the domination of the sea and fjords make philosophers of us all.

He was a remarkable playwright, writing of course at a time of exceptional creativity in Norwegian history.

The Royal Exchange has a tendency to produce over elaborate and expensive sets which though technically admirable do not seem to me to be necessary or perhaps even appropriate for theatre in the round. Happily the set for this play was minimal: light was used to depict water. The last time it was played here I believe that the stage was flooded.

Last time also the lead role was played by Vanessa Redgrave - a hard act to follow. I liked Neve McIntosh's rendition of Ellida. Not all reviewers did. I agreed with the comment from one that her soft Scottish accent and celtic appearance help to give her that aura of an uncomfortable outsider.

Apart from performances at the theatre, the building alone is always worth a visit.

A board high up on the west side still displays the closing prices in Liverpool and New York, and is a reminder of its previous role as a cotton exchange which came to an end in the 1960's.

There have been a number of buildings on the site since 1729. The largest, built in the early twentieth century, was destroyed in the second world war. Its successor, built soon after after the war, was itself seriously damaged by the IRA bomb that exploded just outside in 1996. On this site Engels used to work as a trader in his father's business, smiling on bad days in anticipation of the demise of the capitalist system.




Set in the floor are small metal plaques that supporters of the theatre have purchased to commemorate deceased relatives. The most notable name is that of John Thaw, better known perhaps as Inspector Morse. Often I walk over one commemorating a lady with whom I shared an office when I first came to Manchester many years ago.