I’m very sad to hear about the death of the great illustrator Ronald Searle. His black humour and scratchy, inky drawings pretty much defined English cartooning when I was growing up and, though he produced a lot of other work through his very long and brilliant career, he’ll be best remembered (much to his chagrin) for creating the girls of St. Trinian’s and illustrating the Molesworth books.
The great thing about the worlds of St. Trinian’s and Molesworth — and why we kids loved them — was they showed life in an English school as an only slightly more darkly exaggerated version of the reality as we knew it, a Darwinian jungle with useless teachers trying to keep a lid on total anarchy. I was a bully-hating daydreamer like Nigel Molesworth (though with better spelling I hope) and we all joked and sang songs about setting the school on fire the way the St. Trinian’s girls did.
Searle was a legend to me, one of the greatest illustrators — hell, artists even – that England has ever produced. As any fule kno.
Did anyone ever know Jimmy Savile (apart from his mother)? Behind the hair, the cigar, the tracksuits, the jewelry, the charity work, and the colourful, now then now then public personality he was a peculiar old bird with perhaps some dark and dodgy corners and a lot of whispers about his private life. But I don’t want to go there because I have no idea and neither does anyone else either, for someone who was famous for so long he remains a bit of an enigma. But his place in British pop history is secure at least because he was there from the beginning on our televisions and radios and, like him or not, was the face presenting many of our happiest pop memories.
All the old TOTP presenters liked to have pretty young girls standing next to them but none more than Jimmy (who sometimes veered into dirty old man territory) and this must have taken some determined organizing.
PS: Don’t Frida and Agnetha look terrific in this?
“The famous collage that Richard did was very exciting to me, and I suppose that when I try to analyse my own work, certainly some of the early songs were very collage like — where I’d actually throw different styles of music into the same song, or try to.” — Bryan Ferry Re-Make/Re-Model
Michael Bracewell (2007)
Very sad to hear that the great British artist Richard Hamilton has died. I think that the man who (probably) invented Pop Art, designed the cover of The White Album and was Bryan Ferry’s art teacher, certainly deserves a mention and a doff of the cap here.
Look at this beautiful young girl, brimming with promise and talent at the start of her career. If only you could go back in time and warn her.
Of course we don’t know what killed her yet but we can guess. A lot of people have been saying they saw this coming but I’m with Davy, it was still a big shock as I thought she’d get her shit together in the end, that the daughter of a London cabbie would be tougher and more sensible. So I’m stunned and sad and, I have to say, a little angry with her for pissing so much promise away — but that’s just me being selfish. What a tragic bloody waste.
Christ, they’re dropping like flies at the moment, now it’s producer Martin Rushent who’s popped his clogs. In case you’re thinking “Martin who?” and wondering why the hell is a producer so important. Well, he produced all these brilliant gems.
But his biggest claim to immortality was producing The Human League’s classic album Dare and changing the sound of pop music as we knew it.
Maybe not one of the “greats” but someone who had a big impact on British pop culture and on every man in the country of a certain age. Even though the routines were sometimes a bit silly, Flick and the girls only had the time between the Tuesday when the new chart came out and the Thursday when TOTP was filmed to pick a song and work out a dance routine so they did a pretty great job considering. She probably didn’t need to work so hard though, most of us would have been happy to have watched them standing there opening tins of baked beans as long as they wiggled a little bit while they were doing it.
Before she went behind the scenes Flick was also a member of Pan’s People herself, she’s the blond wearing the orange hot pants in this routine (I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed typing the words “orange hot pants.”)
The sentimental musings of an ageing expat in words, music, and pictures. Mp3 files are up for a limited time so drink them while they're hot.
Contact me: lee at londonlee dot com
