For years I have been fascinated by the story of this enigmatic British comedian. Sadly, now almost completely forgotten, Sid Field, born in Birmingham on this day in 1904, enjoyed a meteoric rise to stardom in the war years, comparable to that of Reeves and Mortimer 45 years later. Not until middle age and the addition to his act of straight man Jerry Desmonde did Field’s star rise, and within a short time was performing to packed houses in the revue ‘Strike a New Note’ in London’s West End. Field’s droll sense of the absurd and superb comic timing, honed over many years treading the boards, coupled with the stagecraft of a great actor, made him the funny man to see in the mid 40’s.
As a child entertainer during the First World War his mother, to steady his nerves, gave him a glass of port before each performance and the young Sid was alchohol-dependent by the time he was 13. Even as a successful adult Field suffered chronic stage fright and was a compulsive drinker and worrier; weaknesses which may have contributed to his premature death from a heart attack at 45. Unfortunately the three films he starred in only muted his impact, which relied on an infectious cumulative interaction with live audiences, and do little to preserve his posthumous reputation. Perhaps a better legacy can be seen in the work of the generation of comedians which followed. Both Danny Kaye and Tony Hancock idolised Field, and he had a profound influence on stars such as Morcambe and Wise, Frankie Howerd, Spike Milligan and Leonard Rossiter. Bob Hope described him as ‘probably the best comedian of them all’. Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin and Bing Crosby were admirers. Even Sir Lawrence Olivier, no less, admitted that he held Field in such high esteem as an actor, that he had watched and studied Sid’s live shows many times not just for amusement, but in order to better emulate his technique.
After his death in 1950, Olivier; along with Kaye, Orson Welles, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Vivien Leigh, Peter Ustinov, Richard Attenborough and other notable stars of stage and screen were among a cast of 240 who performed in a matinee benefit for his wife and young children. Given all this, it is difficult to conceive and sobering to reflect on how quickly and completely the name Sid Field faded and slipped into obscurity.
Happy Birthday Elvis!
8th January 2019
Young Elvis looking mean and moody. He would have been 84 today.
Will Hay
29th November 2018
In contrast to his screen persona -that of the bumbling, incompetent and often immoral authority figure who invariably creates chaos and confusion around him; the real Will Hay was a rather serious, introverted and scholarly man. Peter Ustinov, who worked with Hay, once said of him ‘I don’t remember him saying anything memorable, nothing I could remember at all. He was very funny when you saw him on the screen, but in life all those people are very, very strange.’
He will be remembered chiefly for the series of classic comedies made between 1936-1940, which partnered him with Graham Moffatt, the plump, insolent schoolboy Albert; and wheezy, toothless old Moore Marriott’s character, Harbottle.
Of these, ‘Oh Mr Porter’ is generally considered the pick of the bunch and most enduring film and contains the much-quoted line ‘the next trains gone’. Sadly, after 6 films together, Hay felt compelled to end the partnership for fear of being overshadowed by his increasingly popular co-stars and moved from Gainsborough Studios to Ealing, but his finest films were already behind him.
Available to buy as a limited edition giclee print in shop.
The Wrath of Khan
3rd July 2018
Brave Knight of old, Sadiq Khan arrives on his trusty steed to rescue the silly people of Britain from their own ignorance. Recently the Mayor of London sought to further hamper the seemingly endless passage of the Brexit bill through Westminster, when he publicly urged M.P.’s to be ‘brave’ and do what’s ‘right’, by ignoring the will of the people and voting in support of amendments put forward by the unelected House of Lords. He also advocated staying in the customs union and advised our elected representatives to quote, ‘vote for what you think is in your best interest’. Perhaps someone should remind him that more people in London voted for Brexit than voted for him to become mayor. Not that he’d be particularly bothered. I chose to depict him wearing his favorite of the two facial expressions in his arsenal, which we could call ‘grim determination’. The other, in case you’re wondering, is called ‘compassionate concern’.
Controversial Exhibition Causes Controversy !
6th June 2018
I was surprised yesterday, to discover that one of the pictures in my current exhibition at a local Business Center had been removed at the behest of a gentleman who had taken offense to various images in the show, particularly one of a topless Kate Moss (see above).
The lady in charge who found herself having to defend the images had, at first, assumed the man in question to be joking, but was stunned by the dawning realisation that he was deadly serious, and wanted the pictures in question taken down. She valiantly argued that as a woman and one who considered herself to be fairly conventional in her tastes, she found nothing offensive in them. Furthermore, the likenesses depicted depended on the characters being shown in familiar guise. Needless to say, this eloquent defense was to no avail, the complainant prevailed and the worst offender was duly removed from display. It should be noted that the gentleman I refer to is a leaseholder of office space at the business center and as such, the administrators would have felt obliged to consider his opinions carefully.
I have to admit; I was genuinely surprised on hearing this story. These pictures have been exhibited publicly twice before and the general reaction has been favorable. Certainly no-one has raised such objections. You have to wonder, in an age of 24hr on tap hard-core porn, perpetual war, terrorist threats and an epidemic of casual violence of all kinds; what kind of sensibility can justifiably claim to be offended by a cartoon drawing of a bit of side-boob? (Which was certainly not gratuitous and only included in the first place in order to produce a more convincing likeness).
He also took exception to what he considered a stereo-typically racist depiction of a black man holding a gun, (a caricature of Denzel Washington in the film Training Day).
On reflection, this grates. This po-faced insistence that his opinion is more important and insightful than anyone else’s; that his particular aesthetic sensibility should enjoy precedence over others and as such, should result in the removal of pictures from public display. These are not assumptions on my part. That is exactly what he is asserting. Strange to say that he has every right to do so and may very well be correct!But– in the absence of any reasoned argument in support of his views, his opinions should count for nothing; that is, until they are put to and withstand the question. Moreover, I would argue that they are not really reasoned opinions at all, but feelings; and as far as he is concerned, his feelings are inviolable and therefore unchallengeable.
Nevertheless, the mentality of this particular gentleman is of some professional interest to me, not least because he is representative of countless haughty opportunists who seek to impose severe restrictions on freedom of expression in the name of what might be termed standards of decency, but could equally be called challenging hate speech or any other conveniently vague label. If he hates seeing anything containing nudity or relating even indirectly to amorous congress, it is because he thinks there is something sacred in it. This shows that he is a sensualist, although he hasn’t the insight to see it, because when a man considers something sacred he does quite a lot of thinking about it. For my part I would argue, offensive images are just the scum on the surface of my mind, which is skimmed off by the act of drawing them, though he would doubtless dispute that claim.
It is conventional these days for those who take offense to claim that they do so on behalf of others whose interests motivate their concern. This is usually a facade. Their lazy insistence that others should bend in acquiescence to their will is mostly a petty power-grab and nothing more. Orthodox professional complainers know all too well the moral codes they like to think they abide by, are hardly ever called into question; their confidence supported by the mistaken assumption, underlying everything, that the offended are honest, well-intentioned, reasonable and infallible.
Apart from the occasional bout of whining or a venomous drawing, I don’t react to the hundreds of things which annoy and offend me every single day. Where would you start? Who would you hold to account? All you can do is to hold these things in contempt and struggle to rise above and beyond all that.
These images are caricatures and, as such, are meant to be sardonic and vigorous, witty and nuanced not serious and charming. It would be deluded to expect otherwise.
His opinions are just assumptions, with no sure basis. Where he sees a damaging, stereotypical portrayal of a black killer with a gun, I see Denzel Washington, the black man in question, playing the role of a psychotic, murderous, crooked cop in the film Training Day a role Denzel Washington chose to play. It quickly becomes absurd. Is Denzel Washington a racist for accepting the role? Is the Academy of Motion Pictures racist for awarding Washington the best actor Oscar for the same role? Is he planning to write to Warner Bros to insist the film be removed from circulation? Is he going to protest outside the National Gallery until all the Botticelli’s are removed? No, he would never attack what he considers high art, which of course, mine ain’t. What he sees when he looks at mine is a soft target.
Change is in the air though. More and more people are growing weary of feeling compelled to modify their speech and behaviour in order to appease the virtue signalers and perpetually offended. The more I think about it, the more I think I should perhaps consider the complaint a backhanded compliment, after all, doesn’t the complaint implicitly acknowledge that the images have some power? Hey- ho. Anyway, judge for yourself.
Harry France R.I.P.
5th May 2018
Exactly 100 years ago, after years of enduring life on the western front; surviving the Hohenzollern Redoubt, Mash Valley on the Somme, Arras and Cambrai amongst other places, Harry France’s luck finally ran out as he fell victim to the German spring offensive, just outside the small village of Bouzincourt, northern France. He may have been killed during the heavy bombardment of British forward positions, sustained during the early hours of April 5th 1918 or, more probably when German infantry entered the British trenches later that day and vicious hand to hand fighting ensued, during which around half the Battalion perished.
The photograph shows a composed, proud young man around the time of enlistment, who could have had no idea of the sustained waking nightmare he was about to enter on the other side of the channel. A unique historical convergence of set-piece fighting formations and obsolete tactics largely unaltered since the Napoleonic era, combined with new weapons and military technology designed to inflict wholesale slaughter.
Walking past a building site on the edge of town, I notice that recently excavated trenches dug for the ground works, are water-logged. Overnight rain has added to the foot and a half of cold, brown soup in the pit. Looking around, the earthworks have removed all traces of vegetation for perhaps a hundred yards in three directions.
For a moment I am struck by the resemblance of the terrain, superficially at least, to the grainy images of WW1 battlefields at the Western Front which have always held a macabre fascination for me and idly wonder if it would be possible to photograph the scene in such a way as to convincingly simulate those desolate landscapes of a century ago, with the aid of some careful cropping and craftily deployed Photoshop filters.
What would it feel like to experience what they went through? Even standing there and with an immense effort of the imagination, there is no way to grasp it, or to even come close; because the hellish aggregate of all the ingredients which made up life on the Western Front is so far removed from our comfortable existence, that it is an impossibility. I can imagine crouching low in that trench to shelter from the enemy, but to imagine doing it for days, weeks or even years?
For the average soldier, life was a wretched, mostly subterranean existence, characterised by an endless series of deprivations and discomforts; boredom and frustration alternating with fear, longing, exhaustion, despair and often, sheer terror. The indescribable mental strain produced by exposure to the sustained pounding of modern artillery shredded the nerves. The ground itself shook with continual reverberations from shell-fire and each dawn welcomed in the certain knowledge that it could very well be your last. The smells; of insanitary latrines, cordite fumes, chemicals and the rotting corpses and body parts of old pals ‘gone west’, irretrievable, just yards away over the parapet in no-mans-land.
At Passchendaele Ridge the earth itself became the enemy and many men, unfortunate enough to stray off the duck-boards, were to suffer a dreadful slow death, inch by inch, in the treacherous quagmire which covered the featureless landscape. Like the lice which infested clothing and tormented the afflicted to the point of madness, mud was everywhere and covered everything, when having a clean and well maintained rifle was a matter of life and death. Firm friendships were formed and then ended- suddenly and violently, with no fanfare. The only chance of escape was copping a ‘Blighty’ one. Those ‘fortunate’ enough to endure these conditions through to the bitter end, came back changed men. Physically intact, but mentally broken.
No maniac could ever have dreamed a worse hell.
I have posted these images for the sake of posterity and by way of a tribute to my great, great uncle, Sergt. Harry France and the forgotten heroism of the dead, and as a reminder of what hell on earth looks like.
Amber Rudd
2nd May 2018
With the realisation that her reputation (such as it was), would not survive even the simplest line of questioning, Amber Rudd elected to jump before she was pushed. Still, you have to wonder if she wasn’t sacrificed in order to protect her predecessor.
Test Card Theresa (featuring Michel Barnier)
20th April 2018
Long ago in the dim and distant past, before the advent of 24 hour TV, was the test card. Those of a certain age will remember seeing this image when programmes were off air. I recall staring at it as a very young boy, half expecting it to suddenly come to life, confusedly wondering what this strange image represented. Was it something to be deciphered for hidden meanings? To amuse small children? To be viewed as modern art? Who was the girl?
My incomprehension was due to the assumption that simply because it was on the telly, it must have tremendous significance. Of course, it didn’t. The truth is more mundane. The image is a photograph of a hastily arranged set up put together by an anonymous BBC engineer who needed an innocuous space filler at short notice. The girl was his daughter. That’s it. Its purpose was to fill the screen during downtime and to test colour signals and the quality of the transmitted picture.
Many of those who voted for Brexit will have done so out of a sense of duty, not of hope. The shambolic sequence of events they have been forced to witness in the subsequent months will have done nothing to allay their scepticism. If this whole process is, as we are frequently told, akin to a divorce; then it is one of those where each party is, regardless of legalese, perpetually bound to the other by shared custody of the children, proximity, a common social circle and complex ongoing financial agreements. The attachment may still be deep enough that occasionally they get drunk and fall into bed together, despite knowing they will bitterly regret it the next day.
Those still hopeful of redressing the balance of power in Britain would be advised not to pin their hopes on Theresa. Like the test card, she is just stalling until the real programme starts.
Michel Barnier Inked
1st April 2018
Ready for his role in ‘Test Card Theresa’.
Tattybye !
20th March 2018
By way of a tribute to much loved comedian Ken Dodd, who said a final tattybye last week at the age of 90. Went to see him a few years ago in Dudley and remember that the first hour seemed to consist mainly of jokes about the length of the show. It was well past midnight by the time he eventually came off stage, but no-one seemed to mind. I heard that whenever he added a new joke to his act he simply tagged it on to the end without shortening it anywhere else. With his passing we have lost the last of the old-time music-hall variety acts.
I’ll post a couple of almost forgotten British comedians soon.
For years I have been fascinated by the story of this enigmatic British comedian. Sadly, now almost completely forgotten, Sid Field, born in Birmingham on this day in 1904, enjoyed a meteoric rise to stardom in the war years, comparable to that of Reeves and Mortimer 45 years later. Not until middle age and the addition to his act of straight man Jerry Desmonde did Field’s star rise, and within a short time was performing to packed houses in the revue ‘Strike a New Note’ in London’s West End. Field’s droll sense of the absurd and superb comic timing, honed over many years treading the boards, coupled with the stagecraft of a great actor, made him the funny man to see in the mid 40’s.
Young Elvis looking mean and moody. He would have been 84 today.
