Hooptedoodle #251 - Warm Feet

I am extremely fortunate to have sustained such sound health - I try not to take it for granted, and I suppose I moan a bit, like everyone else, but I really am grateful. All those years of running and hill-walking and playing squash, and a natural tendency to eat sensibly have all helped, I guess, but I am lucky enough to have been assembled with a good engine. I do not know by what justice or serendipity these things happen, but thank you, anyway - whoever.

I take a minimal amount of medication - nothing alarming, but it includes a daily 5mg of Amlodipine (and if I've spelled that incorrectly then I am secretly pleased, since it is evidence that I do not worry about it enough to remember). This little pill is intended to keep my blood pressure down - whether I need it or not is the topic of a gentle debate each year with my GP. Anyway, I take it. The blood pressure is OK, and the only noticeable side-effect of the pills is that I am almost always cold. I wear thermal underwear from September to April and I have developed a very close relationship with a microwaveable bean-bag which has become one of my best friends. My wife has obtained a cunning duvet which has dissimilar weights on the two sides, so that she does not have to suffer the weight and the heat which I need these days.

In short, I am well looked after, and my problems with temperature are trivial, but I have started to take the winters personally.

Not too long ago, the Contesse presented me with a pair of heavyweight knitted bed-socks. Most kind, but I thanked her and rather hurriedly stored the things away in the pyjama drawer. Bed-socks? I had a strong feeling that I would have to get a matching night-cap, Ebenezer Scrooge model, like the wicked uncle in Kidnapped. I have no problem with bed-socks, of course, except that starting to wear them might feel like another step on a slippery slope.

When a respectable time had passed, and the winds of January were getting ever colder, I discreetly dug out the socks one night. Well, just once wouldn't do any harm, would it? I was a bit concerned that they would feel unfamiliar, and would disturb me, but I had no problems. I now recommend bed-socks wholeheartedly, have felt warmer and more relaxed in bed, and have even asked for some more. I am, of course, still playing it a bit quiet. I do not intend to appear in any advertising.

On the coldest days I tend to wear two sweaters at the moment. My faith in knitwear is restored. The Contesse passed me the following picture - as a joke, but it does make you think.

On the hobby front, I have now based and flagged a regiment of Spanish light infantry which the Mad Padre was kind enough to paint for me (thanks again, Mike) and am looking at what painting I should do next myself. I am intending to persevere with my plans for an ECW siege (loosely based on Newcastle 1644), and I'll write some preliminary stuff on that, starting later this week.

Hooptedoodle #250 - Steve Jobs Says No

This is eventually going to develop into a gentle whinge, so whingeophobes should leave smartly. As a background project - more of a private ambition, really, I intend to improve my knowledge of the Thirty Years War sometime soon. I know some bits of the history and some of the names, but my line of thinking is thus:

This was an important period of European history, I don't know very much about it, and I think I probably should know a bit more. It might make me a better, more rounded person (unlikely) and I might find it interesting (less unlikely).

I have Peter H Wilson's highly praised The Thirty Years War - Europe's Tragedy, which I've skimmed and which looks very good. I bought it about 2 years ago. The main problems have been:

(1) The last two years have been a bit hectic for me - very little free time or peace of mind to settle to it, because - with the best will in the world...

(2) ...it is a big book. Substantial. It is a serious piece of work, to be approached with appropriately monastic dedication. Anything less would be selling both me and Dr Wilson short.

So I decided that I might be better to start with something shorter and higher level, so I can find some kind of timeline or skeleton on which I can hang a more detailed study. This is the Foy Approach to problem solving - start with some one-liners and a nice map or two, and then find where are the hooks and trapdoors to get closer to the details.

So I purchased CV Wedgwood's volume on the subject - a bit long in the tooth now, maybe, since it dates from 1938, and our collective view of Germany has evolved a little since then, but Dame Veronica is always a comfortable read, I find, if somewhat over-partial at times. I bought a paperback, American edition which set me back some £12 or so. It is smaller than Wilson's book, and I have actually started reading it. Good so far. The plan is, once I've finished it, to return to the worthy Europe's Tragedy with a few more lights on and greater enthusiasm.

One (debatable) brainwave was the idea that I might augment my efforts with an audiobook - I listen to audiobooks a lot when I'm out in my van, so I thought that might be useful. We might discuss how an audiobook would work without any maps to hand, but you can see what I was thinking. So I went to the excellent website of Librivox, and downloaded a suitably hefty, three-part freebie, which is an unabridged reading of a translation of Schiller's great standard history.

Now that is a very fair pedigree, you have to admit. I could feel the scholarship gland swelling just at the idea - sadly, the reality was less happy. The product is free, so it almost seems above criticism, but I could not warm to the narrator, the language (translated, at that) is ponderous in the extreme. Indigestible. I found I could drive along quite happily, thinking about something else, while the pearls of Schiller droned on in the background. So I'd run it back a bit, and try to locate the point at which I had lost the plot (so to speak), and the same thing would happen. I also had a faint worry that I might become a danger on the roads if I paid more attention to the goings-on in Germany.

In truth, the main problem is the text - in whatever tongue, Schiller's work comes from a period when it was necessary for historians - nay, scholars of all types - to write in a lofty and long-winded manner which demonstrated their stature and their great wisdom. The actual transmission of knowledge seems so much a lesser objective that at times I wonder whether they even thought it was necessary.

Schiller/Librivox - strike. Not for me.

Being a stubborn sort of fellow, or a slow learner, if you prefer, I located an unabridged audiobook version of CV Wedgwood's history, narrated by one Charlton Griffin. I listened to an extract, and it really sounded very promising, though the issue about the maps remains, of course. Good-oh - so how do I get one?

Well, my friends at Amazon offered me a free download copy, no less, but I would have to subscribe to Audible, which is Amazon's audio-book version of the age-old book-of-the-month-club racket, and would cost me £7.99 a month indefinitely thereafter. No, thanks - I do not care if I then have access to 200,000 audiobooks - I do not wish to even think about 200,000 audiobooks. I swerved that solution.

Next up, I found that I could download the same book for about £8 from iTunes. OK - after some thought, I did this. It comes down as M4P files, which will only play on an Apple device and which cannot legally be converted to more mainstream MP3. In fact I had a pretty good idea this is what would happen, and I do have an iPhone and an iMac, and we have the iTunes player app installed on various other devices, but not, alas, on my van. I could, of course, hook up my iPhone to the van's BlueTooth, or even just plug the beggar in, but it is more hassle than I would choose.

Now we get to sanctimony, so I tread warily here. I can understand that audio and music files should be protected in some way, not just to boost Apple's profits, but to maintain any chance of the recorded music industry surviving. It is customary at this point to bleat on about how I have purchased these files, and thus am the owner, and should be able to play them on anything I want - I would quite like it if this argument carried some weight, but the reality is that I have paid £8 for a set of files which are intended only to play on Apple kit or via Apple's licensed software. I knew this before I bought them, and that is what I have bought - I have no further rights.

On the other hand...

On the other hand, it is worth bearing in mind that Steve Jobs, before he became a lay saint, was not the least sanctimonious person in history. It should also be remembered that an operating system upgrade for one of the early iPhones (or it might have been an iPod - I don't actually care which) deliberately deleted any non-iTunes musical files from the customer's device, even if he had purchased the tracks legally from some other source. I believe Apple did get into hot water over this, and rightly so, but the logic was originally that Mr Jobs felt he should protect Apple's financial position by making it impracticable for i-device owners to buy their music elsewhere (though there was no such Term or Condition of use accompanying the sale of the device), and - primarily - because Apple thought they could get away with it. Given the background, I do not find the idea of someone ripping them off so terrible.

If anyone has any idea how to convert M4P files into MP3, so I can listen while I'm driving, then - entirely out of academic, theoretical interest, of course, I would be happy to learn. Not that I would ever do such a thing, you understand.

Hooptedoodle #249 - Not the Eighth Dwarf

A propos of absolutely nothing, I was going through my folders of family photos, and came upon this one, taken while on holiday in Sorrento in 2000 (goodness me - is it that time already?).

We went for a walk up to St Agata, which is a good climb above Sorrento, and then on to the ancient convent of Il Deserto, which is on the road over the hill to Massa Lubrense. Past the convent there is the Hotel O Sole Mio (no, really), which in 2000 used to cater almost exclusively for German tour companies. The only reason I mention this at all is to explain the picture - along the side of the road was a line of plastic gnomes - I think they were Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, though now I study the photo I'm not so sure - and I was amused by this homely touch in a land of treasures and fine art. The entrance to the hotel car park was adorned with a plastic statue of Jesus, as you see, which struck me as a rather idiosyncratic complement to the group.

This is all mere whimsy - a fleeting moment of quirkiness in a pleasant holiday from years ago. In passing, I might mention that we last visited the area in 2010, and naturally we couldn't pass up on the chance of retracing our walk to Massa, but the little road had been redeveloped a good bit - the hotel had been replaced with a nice new one (and, it has to be said, the old one looked a bit of a dump), and Snow White and her augmented entourage were no more.

I am also reminded that in 2000 a local dog insisted on attaching itself to us, despite everything we tried to discourage it, and walked all the way with us from just past Il Deserto to Massa Lubrense. I was very concerned that the poor thing would be lost forever. When we went into a cafe in Massa for a well-earned drink (we took the bus back), the dog happily sloped off back up the road. I have to assume/hope that it got home safely; in fact, it probably joined tourists for the walk over the hills every day.

Another photo from the same holiday - maybe even the same walk - reveals a strange, slim version of MSFoy with rather more hair - scary - now that seems far longer ago than the holiday! It looks as though I may have been worrying about the dog...

Hooptedoodle #248 - an Organisation and Methods approach to the Music Hall

I’m not sure why I was thinking about this. Having thought about it, I reminded my wife about it, and I had a good laugh (again) – there is a faint risk that I have mentioned this story here before, since I am fond of it, but I don’t think so.

The underlying theme is the ancient world of the English music hall theatre – and especially of the seaside variety show. The significance of the seaside thing is simply that it was always a tradition that audiences when on their holidays would laugh at or applaud anything, even if

(1) It was rubbish

(2) They hadn’t understood it

(3) They hadn’t heard it properly

(4) They had heard it – last year, same theatre, same act

Hence the longevity of all those tap-dancing children, idiot ventriloquists and performing seals – and so on. Life forms which could not have survived for an instant in any other environment.

The focus of our study tonight, my friends, is the 2-man comedy act. Everything was very formalised – you might say formulaic. There will be a Funny Man and there will be a Stooge (who is even less funny than the Funny Man), and there is a classic form of (terrible) joke which has a very strict format. The following well-known examples will serve:

Funny Man: I say, my wife has gone to the West Indies.

Stooge: Gone to the West Indies? Jamaica?

FM: No – she went OF HER OWN ACCORD….

FM: I say, my dog has no nose.

Stooge: No nose? How does he smell?

FM: TERRIBLE….

FM: I say, there’s a man outside, stealing your gate.

Stooge: Stealing my gate? Did you try to stop him?

FM: No – I DIDN’T WANT HIM TO TAKE OFFENCE….

And that’s quite enough – you will certainly know other examples, and they will all be funnier than the chosen three.

To get to the point, my musician friend The Hat and I got to discussing this form of joke, over a beer. We felt that, though it might be traditional, it was due a bit of a makeover. First of all, we considered simply changing the expected punchline, since no-one would notice and they would laugh anyway, since the joke form has a kind of rhythm which makes it obvious in which gap the laughter is required. If, we reasoned, the first example (the Jamaica one) ended with the FM saying, “No – she went to Trinidad” then it completely defeats any last trace of humour, since the wretched pun is cancelled, but we were pretty sure the laughter would be undiminished – in fact, we ourselves would laugh along quite loudly, so it might actually be increased a little.

However, we realised we were really just playing around with the idea, and that it would make more sense if we set ourselves some serious objectives – made our improvement more worthwhile in some way. Well, most English seaside resorts these days are a bit short of money, so we thought that if somehow we could simplify the jokes a bit – shorten them – it would get them over quicker. Since they weren’t funny to start with, the cash saving of not having the janitor hanging around for quite so long (waiting to sweep up), might be very welcome. We quickly became aware that our new, streamlined versions of the jokes were not funny at all, but the originals were not noticeably funny either, so we persevered.

The first modification was to cut out a line – this meant that the Stooge now delivered what served as a punchline (or at least the last line in the exchange, even if it lacked punch). Thus, with some change in job titles, the first example now reads:

FM1: I say, my wife has gone to the West Indies.

FM2: Gone to the West Indies? I bet she went of her own accord.

You may debate whether this ranks as an improvement – certainly the cost accountants on the council are very pleased – the comedy act now only lasts 4 minutes in total.

We think the new format will become accepted, though it may take a little while to bed in with the more conservative audiences, but we have not been idly resting on our laurels – we have an even shorter version in the laboratory – the most efficient joke form yet developed:

FM: I say, my wife has gone to the West Indies of her own accord.

Or, another of our examples:

FM: I say, my dog smells terrible.

Good, eh? You getting the hang of this? The council will love it, because we’ve actually got rid of one complete employee, and the delivery time is even shorter. Fantastic. We think it still needs a little work, but maybe you could all do a little offline testing for us – convert some jokes of your own to this new, efficient format, and try them on your friends. In the pub, if you like. I’d be delighted to know how you get on – The Hat and I are dedicated to continuous improvement, and we appreciate any help we can get.

Hooptedoodle #247 - Hmmm

This was passed to me - I have no idea where it came from, and certainly no right to borrow it, but - at the end of a Christmas holiday which seems to have been dominated by arguments about how much time my son might be able to spare from his computer games and his new phone - it does have a certain wistful quality.

Of course, why should we care about the thoughts of an old man, with wrinkly skin and unconditioned hair? [No - I am referring to Albert...]

Hooptedoodle #246 – Donkey Award – A Matter of Identity

I'm not quite sure what this man is doing, but the process of providing acceptable
proof of identity often feels very like this. I must get one of those hats.

Recently my mother has moved into a residential care home, and I’ve been busy selling her house and sorting out her various financial affairs – there are, as a trivial example, a considerable number of organisations who have to be notified of her change of address.

I have had Power of Attorney (PoA) in place for some 8 years or so now – for which I am very grateful – when the time comes for you to use it, it can come in a hurry.

A recurrent issue in the last few weeks has been the need to establish identity – usually mine (as agent or attorney), but – for purposes of money laundering and the actual sale of the house – proof of my mother’s identity has also been required.

Now this security thing is a weird industry – I know all about why this has to be done, why organisations have to be certain that they are dealing with the people they think they are dealing with, but it does seem that the traditional proofs which are acceptable are increasingly out of step with current reality. I’m only part-way through the task, but I’ve seen the same request for the same information many times. Someone will want to see a couple of recent (original) utility bills or bank statements with the individual’s name and address thereupon, and some form of photo ID which identifies the bearer – passport and/or driving licence are the norm. Often someone will also wish to see the original documentation for the PoA – a certified copy is often not accepted – which requires delay, hassle and return registered mail.

Well I can manage most of that, except that just about all my personal business is carried out online these days, so recent paper statements and invoices of appropriate solemnity are not so easy to find. I have been looking after a lot of my mum’s business online in recent years too, but her situation is worse in that she does not have a passport – hasn’t had one since 1985 or so – and she hasn’t had a driving licence for many years. Because she has been housebound she doesn’t have photo ID in the form of a disabled person's parking permit or even an in-force bus pass. This is not a trivial problem.

Example 1: I have attempted to set up an online account for her with the Tax Office (HMRC), since she will now receive her savings income gross and will have to settle the tax liability each year. I got nowhere – if she has neither passport nor current driving licence then the system cannot verify her against other government records, so she doesn’t exist. Thus paper tax returns it will have to be. Hmmm.

Example 2: Two days ago I phoned her pension supplier – the young man was quite firm that he could not accept notification of change of address over the telephone unless we went through the entire rigmarole of sending my PoA forms so that I could be formally registered as the attorney, so that I could notify them of a simple address update – since all the bank account and payment information is to remain the same, this seems a lot like the tail wagging the dog. We’ll gloss over how delighted the young man was to be unable to help me. While I was waiting to be put through to him, however, the voice server system had suggested that I might like to set up an online account with the pension fund. Bingo. Thank you very much – that’s the answer. I set up an online account for my mother (I have all the paperwork here) and simply changed her address online. No problem – I/she/we even got an email thanking me for my trouble.

Excellent. I am adopting the same procedure with her major utility suppliers – create an online account, and use it to notify a change of address and the cessation of the supply. These organisations are delighted that you are doing the work yourself – no-one seems at all concerned that I might, in fact, be an unauthorised alien making free with some poor old lady’s identity. I’m not going to make ripples here – if it works, let’s do it. My handling of her bank accounts is similar – all done online, though if I wished to do it over the counter or on the phone we’d all be frozen in amber until the PoA forms came back from The Legal People, who live far, far away.

My point is only that proving identity is becoming a central theme in our lives, that most people’s lives have moved away from a set-up which readily provides the traditional paper proofs, yet the identity checking built into online customer self-management is (usefully, in this  case) negligible.

How awfully silly.

Hooptedoodle #245 - St Stephen's Day - Odds & Ends

Boxing Day.

Over the years there have been changing scripts, but it was always a going-somewhere sort of day. When We Were Very Young it was the day we visited my other Grannie for another helping of turkey, not to mention more presents. Later, as the family thinned out and people went their own ways, it remained a day for going to a show, or watching football, or just going for a cholesterol-chasing walk in the Pentlands.

Celebrating the Feast of St Stephen in Italy, where they do things properly

Recovering.

Today is going to be a quiet day, if we ignore the remains of Storm Barbara howling around the roof windows. We are pretty much tidied-up after yesterday, but there are no real commitments – I expect I’ll listen to the football later on, and I want to do some work on drawing up some more Spanish flags for the newer units in my 1809 army – I’m a bit behind on that.

So I’m up early, heading for the first coffee of the day, and all I have to offer in the blog line are a couple of lightweight stories which are going around my head – entirely, of course, for my own amusement. The only connecting themes are a loose thread of topicality and that recurrent Sod’s Law thing about best intentions. All right – I admit it – the stories have nothing in common…

First tale concerns the singer George Michael, who, sadly, died at a very early age yesterday. I was never really a fan, though I did appreciate the gentleman’s talent, and I know my wife will be upset. This story is really not about George at all, it’s about SDB, whose story it is anyway. I met SDB and his wife on holiday in Tuscany, a good few years ago. They were the most excellent fun – he was one of the most engaging, charismatic people I have met. We kept in touch for a little while afterwards, but, ultimately, I guess my first wife and I were neither rich enough, outgoing enough nor metropolitan enough to be especially interesting, so everyone moved on. Such is life.

SDB was then a director of Morton’s, the dining club in Berkeley Square. His members included a good many famous people, as it happens, and one day he was approached by one of them – George Michael, no less – to arrange a very private business luncheon meeting at the club, involving some important guests. Michael was in the process of falling out with Sony Records at the time – I don’t really know the details, but this meeting was such that there would be trouble and controversy if it became public knowledge.

Being a man of tact and discretion, an experienced helper of the rich and mysterious, SDB had a brainwave and – taking advantage of the fine weather – he decided against simply allocating a private room, and placed the luncheon party on a private balcony in the sunshine, above the gardens – probably above the nightingales, if there had been any. Perfect, except that, just as the soup arrived, an open-top tour bus full of Japanese tourists passed by, and an amplified voice announced, “Oh look, everyone – there’s George Michael!”, which was followed by a rush to the appropriate side of the bus and a mighty clicking of cameras.

So much for secrecy – SDB said that there was trouble, sure enough, and plenty of it came his way. Oh well.

Jenners

Story 2 is much less elevated – my old musician mate, Fergie (whom I also haven’t seen for years – maybe that’s the real thread), used to keep us entertained on band trips with tales of the shopping exploits of his wife. She was a devoted warrior of the Edinburgh Boxing Day Sales, and, though Fergie enjoyed the peace and quiet while she was out warrioring, he was less enthusiastic about the trophy ritual when she came back, at which point her purchases would be paraded for his delectation – an edgy procedure, since he was not encouraged to express any opinion beyond breathless admiration.

On one occasion he was unwise enough to comment on a very distinctive, red, green and white sweater in a Jenner’s bag (now there’s an Edinburgh tradition). Yes, he was told, it was reduced from £145 to only £85, so it was a particularly splendid buy.

Fergie, never knowing when to quit, stuck to his guns.

“Just a minute,” he said, “I’ve seen that sweater before – don’t you have one like that already?”

I can sense the reader flinching in anticipation. This provoked a disagreement which eventually drove him upstairs to the wardrobe for more evidence. He returned, in triumph, with another Jenner’s bag, containing an identical red, green and white sweater. The receipt was still in the bag – it had been bought in the previous year’s Boxing Day Sales, and had never been worn. Also, to cap everything, last year’s specimen had been reduced from £145 to £75.

The subsequent discussion was not especially constructive, we were led to believe, but Mrs Fergie, as ever, got in the last word as she swept out of the room.

“I may be a bit dippy at times,” she said, “but at least you can’t deny that I have consistent taste.”

Hooptedoodle #244 - Seasonal Exercise in Self-Indulgence

A week or so ago I was stopped in my tracks by a painting in one of the local high street galleries - I liked it so much that I bought it as a Christmas gift for my wife.

As I mention here frequently (ad nauseam?), the Contesse and I are both very keen on our local wildlife - she in particular is a very skilled photographer - and I knew she would love this picture. It is an original, acrylic on natural linen, by the Scottish artist, Helen Welsh. Helen is based in Perthshire, a little north of here; she worked for many years, very successfully, as an illustrator for the Dundee-based publisher, DC Thomson (no, she didn't draw the pictures in the Beano), and has now retired to concentrate on her original passion, painting Scottish wildlife.

Anyway, by any standards a piece of original art is a bit of an extravagance here at Chateau Foy, but we are very pleased with it, and I thought some of you skilled wielders of acrylics out there might appreciate it also.

Here, then, is A Hare in Winter, by Helen Welsh. Let it serve as a simple, locally-themed greeting card to all readers of the old Aspic blog - I wish everyone a happy, peaceful, comfortable Christmas, and may next year be a little less crazy than 2016 turned out. All the best!

Hooptedoodle #243 – Dear Mummy and Daddy

Clearing out my mother’s house has now reached a greater level of detail – I am now spending more time with my head in boxes of stuff, sorting out what should be kept. I take care to have my name and address written on the soles of my shoes, in case I need to be rescued.

Paper.

My mum seems to have every postcard that she was ever sent, and a great heap of birthday cards and letters, accumulated in large manila envelopes, with not the slightest trace of classification – a trip into one of these envelopes is just a mind-numbing exercise in randomness. She certainly has no idea what’s in there, and I’m not sure if she remembers many of the people who sent them, so it’s a little complicated – though interesting in its way.

Recently I found some letters from me, written when I was very young. Mostly letters about forgotten trips, written by a child I cannot really remember having been. About the earliest of these dates from a week I spent in hospital – I had some stomach problems – certain foods made me sick, and the doctors decided that my appendix had to come out. To this day, I’m not convinced there was anything at all wrong with my appendix, but at that time the medical profession was just itching to separate kids from their tonsils, adenoids and appendices (?) at the slightest excuse.

Myrtle Street hospital, a few years after I was there

So my stay in the Liverpool Children’s Hospital, Myrtle Street, was one of the very earliest times I was separated from my mother. I have remembered some things about this episode, and more came flooding back when I saw the letter.

(1) A stout lad named Gordon, who was in the next bed – he had some horrifying sort of drain in his knee, but his main claim to fame was that he used to lend me some pretty raunchy American comics he had inherited from his big brother

(2) Ribena – aargh – they forced gallons of blackcurrant flavour squash down us – served up in aluminium mugs. Woe betide anyone who didn’t finish it. I still can’t stand the stuff.

(3) The smell of hot tar. It was fine, warm weather, and throughout my stay the City Council was pulling up the old tramlines outside in Catherine Street and Myrtle Street, and laying tarmac – a very big project. A week with an asphalt cooker outside your window is not recommended.

(4) Most exciting - we had a visit from Roy Rogers. Now then – my lifelong devotion to celebrities got off to a flying start. This is the thing I wanted to recall here.

Roy Rogers (1911-98), in case you are not old enough to have heard of him, was a very big deal at the time – children all over the world just loved him – it said so on his publicity posters. Born Len Slye in Cincinnati, he was a Western cowboy movie star, recording artist (he was, to be fair, not a bad singer if you like that sort of thing) and a complete merchandising operation – very impressive – he even had a string of restaurants named after him. Me and my mates were not too convinced about Roy. When we went to the Saturday morning cinema matinee (at the Gaumont in Allerton Road, which was a bit less rough than our local flea-pits), the cowboy films we preferred starred Lash LaRue (which sounds a bit dodgy now), Monte Hale, Rocky Lane, Tim Holt – we were definitely less keen on the more showbiz style productions starring Roy Rogers or Hopalong Flaming Cassidy – though Rogers’ movies were normally in colour, which was unusually luxurious for that market.

Roy was doing a European theatre tour at the time, and he visited Liverpool. It seems remarkable now, but this caused about as much excitement as if the Pope had come. Crowds lined the streets to greet him, and he and his trusty horse, Trigger, were accommodated at the Adelphi, which was probably Liverpool’s only worthwhile hotel at the time. It has become a matter of Merseyside folklore that Trigger had his own room, which I’ve always dismissed as celeb goss (darlings) – I assumed that Trigger had stayed in the Adelphi’s stables. However, it seems that he was installed in a room – at least the official records claim that he was. Trigger duly appeared on a balcony, to acknowledge the cheering fans below. You get the idea – these were rather dismal days, I guess, and Liverpool was pretty close to the Third World.

Roy and Trigger enter the Adelphi

Trigger signs into the hotel (surely not?), and visits his master, who was laid
low with influenza, apparently - maybe this disrupted his schedule. 

You may imagine the breathless excitement when Roy and Trigger were to visit the Children’s Hospital during my stay. The place was cleaned and then cleaned again – no comics or spare plates or anything were to be in sight – the nursing staff had their best No.1 kit on, starched and flawless, and everyone was very tense. Including me, of course – I was prepared to swallow my normal disbelief in Roy’s marketed persona, just to bask for a moment in the glamorous world of Hollywood. The word was that the Liverpool Echo would send a cameraman, and photos would be taken with the kids. How cool is that?

Well, it really turned out to be an early lesson in How Things Rarely Turn Out As You Hoped. The official party was 3 hours late. Trigger was not allowed in the hospital (probably just as well), and Rogers made a very fast pass through the wards. I had a brief, distant glimpse of a rather uninteresting-looking, hatless, middle-aged man in a pale grey business suit, who waved from the door of the ward (a ward which was about the size of a football field). So much for celebs. My contempt for the Roy Rogers brand was confirmed and reinforced – he was never forgiven.

This clip is maybe a little more like the sort of extravaganza I expected to see during the visit. Not a bad singer, but as a tough-guy cowboy hero he was a bit of a girl's blouse, wasn't he?