Lou Reed has died.

Member of The Velvet Underground (of whom it was said that not many people bought their records but everyone who did rushed out immediately and formed a band) and inspirer of David Bowie plus countless others.

He became well-known in the UK due to the song Walk on the Wild Side becoming a hit. Much, much later Perfect Day was turned into a magnificent BBC promo video.

I suspect everyone will be posting one or other of the above two tracks so here’s another of his better known songs.

Lou Reed: Satellite of Love

Lewis Allan “Lou” Reed:- 2/3/1942 – 7/10/2013. So it goes.

I spotted the sentence below on the BBC’s page about the Scottish Cup 3^rd round draw (my emphasis):-

“Two Lowland Football League teams who came close to knocking shocking senior teams on their own patch on Saturday have been given away ties.”

It seems the BBC thinks Queen’s Park and Stirling Albion are shocking.

Who am I to argue?

I’m changing the arbitrary rules on this category again with this one.

The Flashing Blade was a French TV serial (Le Chevalier Tempête) set in the 1630s during the War of the Mantuan Succession which the BBC broadcast in children’s slots in the late 60s, repeating it several times ending in the 70s.

It was dubbed into English – somewhat atrociously, which added to its charm.

The thing is, though, it was curiously watchable and benefited from a catchy theme tune which had driving guitars and drums similar to Joe Meek productions of the early 60s.

I can’t remember much more about it but this website claims the final episode was never dubbed into English.

According to Wikipedia the theme song was called Fight and was released as a single by “The Musketeers” in 1969.

Pity the You Tube uploader (The Ceefax Twin) put his – or her – logo over a few frames here.

The Flashing Blade theme tune

Another Graham Gouldman composition; but this one was most definitely a hit – for the almost anodyne Herman’s Hermits. In the US, where the Hermits had huge success, it was only released as a B-side but in the UK it reached no. 7 in 1966.

No Milk Today is lyrically very curious as a pop song, what with its emphasis on the down side of life. It has a very British feel to it, though, with its evocation of the daily morning delivery and terraced housing, “just two up, two down.” Nowadays the line, “the company was gay,” is likely to be read differently from back then!

For some reason I really like the bells in the “but all that’s left” sections of this.

Herman’s Hermits: No Milk Today

It seems the Hermits also recorded a version of Tallyman (see last week’s post) but it was never released, being thought not commercial enough by the group’s producer Mickie Most. This is a version they recorded in a BBC session. It’s introduced by the voice of Radio 2’s Sounds of the Sixties, Brian Matthew.

Herman’s Hermits: Tallyman

I’ve just noticed this on the BBC Scottish First Division webpage.

Raith Rovers 2-0 Livingston

Striker Iain Russell scored his seventh goal in as many games as Livingston defeated Raith Rovers.

Spot the deliberate mistake….

It’ll probably be fixed soon.*

*Edited (10/3/13) to add:- the website has the correct score now.

How pressured as a minority do Catholics in Scotland feel when every utterance of their spokesperson is trumpeted by BBC Scotland as an event of major importance as this assertion was on Tuesday?

Just wondering.

(The comparison of this oppression with that of blacks in the US in the 1960s was yesterday described as insulting.)

I first heard this parody on the radio. Along with my elder brother I used to listen regularly (every week without fail) to the comedy programme I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again (1964-1973) which along with Bill Oddie, the purveyor of this ditty, featured John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Jo Kendall and David Hatch. I can still utter quotes from it even today. (Once heard, who could ever forget the strains of the Angus Prune Tune?)

Episodes from the series can be found on the BBC’s Radio 4 Extra pages. Relistening, it is now obvious from where I got my love of outrageous puns.

The track is a reimagining of a traditional Yorkshire song about the dangers of wandering on Ilkley Moor without a hat utilising the style Joe Cocker employed in With a Little Help From My Friends. It was eventually released as a single in 1970 but I’m sure must have been in a late 60s episode of the radio show. As I remember it the radio version carried more bite, though.

Bill Oddie:- On Ilkla Moor Baht’at

The B-side was another parody.
Bill Oddie:- Harry Krishna

George Entwistle has resigned as Director-General of the BBC.

Why?

He wasn’t personally responsible for the output of any news programmes which the BBC has broadcast. And nor should he have been. It is not the Director-General’s job to second guess every jot and tittle of the BBC’s output.

The BBC (or more particularly Newsnight) has now been damned for not broadcasting allegations of sexual abuse (in the Jimmy Savile case) and now for broadcasting such allegations (against a Senior Tory.)

What message does this send to the BBC news outlets? Keep your head down. Which I believe is precisely the point. No-one in government likes the BBC poking its nose into their business. This is true for governments of either stamp. It was Greg Dyke of the BBC, not anyone in government, who resigned over the David Kelly affair.

And so again. How come in all this saga has the only person to go been at the BBC?

And do you see any other news organisations beating themselves up over mistakes they have made (News International I’m thinking of you) as the BBC does?

David Cameron (aka Mr Irresponsible) said on ITV’s This Morning last week that he didn’t want a witch hunt (of people who happen to be gay.) I agree that witch hunts are unedifying. But a witch hunt of the BBC has been exactly what has occurred since the Savile allegations broke.

When he appointed Andy Coulson to his staff at Number Ten Cameron himself made a much greater error than any George Entwistle might have. This put Mr Cameron in the frame of a scandal that reached into the heart of British society as it involved the possible (nay, probable) suborning of the police by news editors and journalists – possibly the most egregious of activities in a democracy. I have yet to see Mr Cameron resign over his association with that.

To the BBC I say; stop going along with the news agenda of those who have it in for you. To those who attack it I say; you may not miss it when it’s gone, but plenty will.

I see and hear a film has been made about a certain former Prime Minister of the UK.

I must say at the outset that I shall not be going to see it – not least because the good lady (my good lady) is still too scarred by that woman’s actions that she cannot bear or contemplate anything to do with her.

I gather the film portrays its heroine as frail and dotty. (I suspect this may be a dramatic necessity for the purposes of making the film.) I have heard a speaker on Radio Scotland – a Tory MP – English of course – complain that it went beyond good taste as the person concerned was still alive and it therefore compromised her dignity. Well, that was rich.

Firstly and brutally, if she is frail and dotty she won’t know, will she?

Secondly, did she in her prime give a shit about the human dignity of all those she condemned to hardship and penury, everything she destroyed, as a result of her policies? You could call it karma.

In any case there were signs in her late Premiership that she was unhinged, if not deranged, so it’s not surprising she’s not all there in her dotage.

Yet none of this is to do with the thrust of this post.

Coincidentally I read an article from Tuesday’s Guardian that, as part of the setting up of Sky, Thatcher made the BBC pay £10 million a year to have their channels broadcast on Sky’s platform. Yet one more example of the baleful influence the woman had on British public life. And these payments persist: they are happening now.

Is this circumstance more widely known? Because I was outraged.

Does any other broadcaster – anywhere – have to pay another to have its own programmes shown on that other’s channels? Surely not.

Doesn’t the BBC sell programmes/formats around the world rather than pay others to broadcast them? Don’t the BBC, ITV and Channels 4 and 5 pay to the originator for US (or Australian or whatever) generated programmes? And doesn’t Virgin have to pay Sky to have Sky channels on its (Virgin’s) service? Doesn’t Sky itself pay HBO hefty amounts for their programmes?

We all know the reason why there would not have been much protest from the BBC at such an arrangement. The perceived power of the Murdoch Press. The pusillanimity of politicians of all parties with respect to that power.

That power may now be a busted flush and despite the Tories’ antipathy to anything that smacks of public endeavour surely the BBC ought to be demanding an end to this public subsidy of a private company. For that is what the arrangement amounts to.

As it stands it is – and always has been – a total waste of licence fee payers’ money to throw it away on Sky for no content in return.

The boot should be firmly on the other foot. Sky ought to be paying the BBC – and handsomely – for any access at all to BBC programming. Not to mention providing adequate compensation for all the years in which money has been shamefully drained away from the BBC in this way.

Edited to add:- my good lady says the speaker on the radio was none other than Jeremy (H)unt – her parentheses.

Yesterday afternoon I glimpsed a programme called Grand Tours of Scotland. I wouldn’t normally have watched this (mainly because the good lady thinks the presenter, Paul Murton, has an unappealing voice) but we were in someone else’s house at the time.

It was episode 6 of the series, the only one I’ve seen and Murton was “following the sun” up through the East of Scotland’s sea-side resorts. On the way he visited Stonehaven Swimming pool which has featured in my Scotland’s Art Deco Heritage posts (see link above.)

He ended up at the Beach Ballroom, Aberdeen, which is in my Aberdeen Art Deco Heritage posts. Murton undertook some dancing inside the Ballroom. The interior still retains Art Deco features.

Anyway the programme is available on the BBC iPlayer, but only until Wednesday 21/12/11, so if you tune in you can catch some glimpses yourself.

Also on the iPlayer (till tomorrow 20/12/11) is a piece, about 25 minutes in, from The One Show on the Midland Hotel, my post on which you can see via the link.