Tony Klinger

This is meant as a send up title, but you can bet that there will be readers who don’t get the joke, or simply don’t think its very funny. My publishers suggested that I needed to come up with another title for my book, and a front cover idea, and for suggest read, GET ON WITH IT!

I saw Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond film that just opened. Of course, you must accept my comments in the context of this film being a smash hit. After all, what do we, the audience know, when the box office numbers are so big, and contradict what we see with our own eyes. But having seen the film I still don’t really know what the title or the story was all about, and quite frankly, don’t care.

The truth is that the latest 007 offering comes up short on its James Bondness.

Where were the unique “Bond” ingredients we all love? For sure we all enjoyed some great Bond type action, and Daniel Craig has added to the thrill quotient with his sublime physicality. The man is a human pinball, I don’t know how he is still in one piece after some of the most dangerous stunts every performed by a leading man on screen.

The women are still beautiful, sexy, charming and available, and no red blooded man would say no in the unlikely eventuality of being alone in a room with such well rounded and alluring girls.

The script, music, photography, costumes, make up and hair are all fine, but none are great, and that’s the case with a lot of the parts making up this whole. They just are not exceptional.

Worst of all the direction is just a bit heavy handed, Marc Forster, is a really good technician, but not a great artist. He doesn’t, this time around, demonstrate a lightness of touch that Bond demands. To capture the hearts and imagination of a wide Bond audience you have to bring some charm to the event, and there is none in this stolid, somewhat stodgy concoction. The film feels long but actually is shorter than many recent Bond movies, and this is a very bad sign.

Daniel Craig is still a fine choice for the role of Bond, but he wasn’t well served by this screenplay or director.

Another fault with the film’s story structure is that it has Judy Dench as M, Bond’s boss, popping up all over the place to confront Bond. I stand at the front of the line of Dench admirers for her acting ability, but it simply made no sense in this story for M to be swanning around all over the world and it resulted in some very poor situations for the film.

I don’t want you to read this thinking that it’s all bad, far from it, the action sequences are electrifying in parts, and dizzying in others. It also seems as if Bond has cornered the market in climbing up and down buildings without the need for stairs, and this alone is probably worth the price of admission for younger parts of the audience. The car chase sequence is amazing, but you do find yourself thinking of other films like this which are out there these days, and cover the same kind of territory. Most clearly the rival for this market is now the team making the Bourne film franchise. It would be a very good idea for the Bond people to go back to their own roots before they allow Bond to become just another action flick series that will soon die from a lack of warmth at its human core.

Bond has become predictable, a bit too worthy and dark. It would be wonderful if someone reminded the cast to smile.

Now about that title…I know, I’ll write a list.

I was sent this Q & A by a friend from South Africa (thanks John) and I wanted to share it with you. It sums up banking, then and now.

First published in British magazine “Punch” on April 3,  1957:

Q: What are banks for?
A: To make money.
Q: For the customers?
A: For the banks.
Q: Why doesn’t bank advertising mention this?
A: It would not be in good taste. But it is mentioned by implication in  references to reserves of $249,000,000,000 or thereabouts. That is the money they have made.
Q: Out of the customers?
A: I suppose so.
Q: They also mention Assets of $500,000,000,000 or thereabouts. Have they made that too?
A: Not exactly. That is the money they use to make money.
Q: I see. And they keep it in a safe somewhere?
A: Not at all. They lend it to customers.
Q: Then they haven’t got it?
A: No.
Q: Then how is it Assets?
A: They maintain that it would be if they got it back.
Q: But they must have some money in a safe somewhere?
A: Yes, usually $500,000,000,000 or thereabouts. This is called Liabilities.
Q: But if they’ve got it, how can they be liable for it?
A: Because it isn’t theirs.
Q: Then why do they have it?
A: It has been lent to them by customers.
Q: You mean customers lend banks money?
A: In effect. They put money into their accounts, so it is really lent to the  banks.
Q: And what do the banks do with it?
A: Lend it to other customers.
Q: But you said that money they lent to other people was Assets?
A: Yes.
Q: Then Assets and Liabilities must be the same thing?
A: You can’t really say that.
Q: But you’ve just said it! If I put $100 into my account the bank is liable  to have to pay it back, so it’s Liabilities. But they go and lend it to  someone else, and he is liable to have to pay it back, so it’s Assets. It’s  the same $100 isn’t it?
A: Yes, but….
Q: Then it cancels out. It means, doesn’t it, that banks haven’t really any  money at all?
A: Theoretically……
Q: Never mind theoretically! And if they haven’t any money, where do they get  their Reserves of $249,000,000,000 or thereabouts??
A: I told you. That is the money they have made.
Q: How?
A: Well, when they lend your $100 to someone they charge him interest. Q: How much?
A: It depends on the Bank Rate. Say five and a-half percent. That’s their  profit.
Q: Why isn’t it my profit? Isn’t it my money?
A: It’s the theory of banking practice that………
Q: When I lend them my $100 why don’t I charge them interest?
A: You do.
Q: You don’t say. How much?
A: It depends on the Bank Rate. Say a half percent.
Q: Grasping of me, rather?
A: But that’s only if you’re not going to draw the money out again.
Q: But of course I’m going to draw the money out again! If I hadn’t wanted to  draw it out again I could have buried it in the garden!
A: They wouldn’t like you to draw it out again.
Q: Why not? If I keep it there you say it’s a Liability. Wouldn’t they be  glad if I reduced their Liabilities by removing it?
A: No. Because if you remove it they can’t lend it to anyone else.
Q: But if I wanted to remove it they’d have to let me?
A: Certainly.
Q: But suppose they’ve already lent it to another customer?
A: Then they’ll let you have some other customers money.
Q: But suppose he wants his too….and they’ve already let me have it?
A: You’re being purposely obtuse.
Q: I think I’m being acute. What if everyone wanted their money all at once?
A: It’s the theory of banking practice that they never would.
Q: So what banks bank on, is not having to meet their commitments?
A: I wouldn’t say that.
Q: Naturally. Well, if there’s nothing else you think you can tell me….?
A: Quite so. Now you can go off and open a banking account!
Q: Just one last question.
A: Of course.

Q: Wouldn’t I do better to go off and open up a bank?

This is an extract from the start of my new book, its first draft not yet complete, which I would like to share with you, I hope you enjoy it and find it enticing…

It’s West London, just puffing at the fag end of the Second World War. It’s a very different place to the vibrant, colourful London of the present. England is a shambling wreck of a place. It should be great, after all we won, but the price has been very high. Too many men who fought haven’t come home, or the experience of being away, fighting for so many years has changed them, lessened some, made others bigger, but blunted the edges of most.

The women got used to making their own way, earning their own money, making their own fun. Some of them have learned how to say no, and its from here, this point of time, that women realized they didn’t have to continue with the old ways anymore.

The children are going to be different, bound to be.

Post war London is pock marked with bombsites and unsafe buildings. Everything is grey and a bit dirty, dust seems to encrust our lives. There are still tram-lines in some parts of the town, and overhead wires for the trolley buses. Shiny lino is on the floor of our houses, and the fires are made with coal. There is little fruit out of season, and its exotic to have a black and white television. Radio is the national entertainment. Big girls still wear stockings and pointy bras. Bloody hell, they still ration some sweets!

Despite the odd unexploded bomb its considered safe to play outside with your mates. If there are any child molesters around we don’t know anything about them. Life for children is a perfect idyll; you play outside until it gets dark.

But the shops are shut tight on Sundays and after closing time, which is usually 6 sharp. There are hardly any people in England who are not white British people. Being a second generation Brit I am considered more than a bit exotic.

The country, the whole world, might be ready to explode into the sixties, but the fifties were, in fact the fag end of the war years and a mentality and class structure that was Edwardian.

I try not to crossover from one of my blogs or articles in one universe to the other. But I felt I had to do so on this day .

I have been commenting on the two BBC “entertainers” Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross here, there and everywhere I cannot draw a line.

Therefore, I apologize to those of you who usually read me at http://www.bcreativelimited.blogspot.com/

You could have already read a substantial part of the following article.

It is becoming clear that the BBC is now mounting a huge damage limitation and charm offensive, and this is clearly long overdue. One of the most annoying aspects of this whole matter is the huge arrogance and contempt of the BBC higher echelons towards the public who pay their wages until a scandal breaks upon these smug fiefdoms of self centered mutual mental masturbation. How can the BBC management be this out of touch with the public consensus about what is decent and acceptable and what is not?

It seems fairly obvious that Russell Brand isn’t too concerned about anything other than the publicity this storm in a teacup is generating since today, not too remorseful, he is stepping on a jet to appear in his next American movie. Both Brand and Ross are, no doubt, being advised what to say, and how to say it, by expert PR spin doctors, and that is also an unappealing aspect of this stage of the farce. They both appear to be patently insincere in their apologies, however fulsome the words. I have had many a meeting with these PR gurus in their Soho clubs, and this kind of situation is their meat and drink. The PR teams and the lawyers will be rubbing their hands in glee at the huge fees they are about to charge all concerned.

Jonathan Ross is reported to fear that he has lost his BBC career. Many years ago there was a man called  Simon Dee, and he lost his job on TV for being offensive to his bosses. Dee was the spiritual god father of this kind of presenter as a personality broadcasting. Dee thought, like Ross and Brand, that he had become bigger than the medium he inhabited. He found out, to his great cost, that this was not the case, and he never recovered professionally or personally.

I like Jonathan Ross as a presenter most of the time, particularly on the radio, where he can be very funny, but he needs to know he is not bigger than the media that allows him such fame and fortune. There is no need to be cruel to be funny. It’s time to grow up Jonathan.

We are now witnessing the ritual public humiliation of those found to affront the public taste. They are Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, two very naughty man boys, Russell now in his thirties and Jonathan in his late forties. Their BBC paymasters suspended them, on full pay. They had broadcast a very offensive radio 2 show and it has created a tsunami of a reaction and become an even bigger issue this week than the credit crunch.

Russell Brand said, “I think it was a really, really silly thing to do. It happened in the spirit of the moment, I didn’t want to upset Andrew Sachs, particularly because I really admire him and his work as an actor. I didn’t want to apologize publicly before because it might seem I was apologizing for the reaction rather to the person I had offended. The reason I hadn’t apologized to Georgina, and I do intend to, is because I’m frankly embarrassed to do so.” It’s a great pity that Brand waited until there was a huge public revulsion before he offered a proper and fulsome apology.

Brand then resigned from his radio show. A contrite looking Brand went on to say, “ I was silly enough to speak without thinking, and I shouldn’t have done so. I apologize to Andrew Sachs for any upset I might have caused him.”

Andrew Sachs, the main offended party said, “These are two performers, I’m a performer, sometimes, you get it very wrong, and then you have to do better.” His granddaughter, Georgina, who Brand and Ross had said intimate things about said, “I’m thrilled because justice has been done.”

Ross’s Friday show recording was cancelled tonight. As Ross said, “It was juvenile and a stupid error of judgment.”

Of course something had to be done, and seen to be done. I called for the dismissal of both these men for their outrageous, illegal and obscene phone calls to the actor Andrew Sachs. I won’t recount the whole incident; you can look up my previous blog, and the millions of other articles and blogs that this controversy has generated in the last days.

Suffice it to say that the men have, apparently now realized that they have really screwed up. The BBC went into full grovel mode, with a succession of their middle and finally most senior management issuing total and self abasing apologizes.

Of course this was too little and too late. The BBC has been behind the curve on this issue throughout, which is incredible in these days of emergency preparedness for any and all contingencies. If they had dealt promptly with this unfolding problem would have been diminished to almost no significance.

As it is the number of complaints to the BBC has, so far, topped 27,000 with something like 99.5% apparently against Brand and Ross. There are also some people, almost all younger, and mostly the more youthful demographic of radio 1, who argue that these are just edgy comedians pushing at the limits of what’s acceptable as modern comedy is meant to do.

Now the BBC must hold a very fast enquiry and tell us how this pre-recorded program was allowed on air?

Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross were clearly bouncing off each other, and the safety net is supposed to be the production team.

So how was it then possible that the producer could play this material and then OK it for broadcast?

What kind of training did this producer receive?

How could the producer have made this judgment after telephoning Andrew Sachs to discuss his feelings about what was proposed, and despite Sachs asking the producer not to broadcast it?

Why were there no BBC guidelines for this scenario in place for an obviously inexperienced producer?

It’s bad enough that this kind of show could get on air, let’s make certain it doesn’t happen again. But we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We still want comedy, and edgy is fine, but that doesn’t mean its open season on those that can’t defend themselves.

I don’t mind a bit of wild humor, in fact I like it a bit dark and edgy. I don’t even mind the odd profanity in the right place, but not as a replacement for something funny.

What I don’t like is what happened over the weekend to Andrew Sachs via the Russell Brand radio 2 show which Brand was hosting with Jonathan Ross as his guest. On a recorded program they telephoned Andrew Sachs, purportedly to talk about the latter’s time playing the part of the put upon Spanish waiter, Manuel, in the classic TV series, Fawlty Towers and his later career.

Remember this was a recorded program.

When the two comedians and BBC star personalities called, for some reason the 78 year old Sachs was not at home to answer. Instead of replacing the receiver, no harm done, after all this was all being recorded and not going out live, Brand and Ross proceeded to make obscene remarks about Sachs to their audience.

Brand claimed that the elephant in the room, what Andrew doesn’t know is, I’ve slept with his grand daughter, a claim the young lady, Georgina, has since vehemently denied. Ross then calls out, “he f….d your granddaughter!”

This wasn’t enough for the pair of jolly japers who went on to leave another three, increasingly explicit messages. Brand and Ross went on to sing songs on the same explicit theme and then, in the background Ross sings, “Your granddaughter….she was bent over the couch.”

The broadcasters then went one step further, in which they imagined Andrew Sachs committing suicide because of their sketch.

I have listened to the broadcast and the truth is that it just isn’t funny, it’s a stream of consciousness that was going wrong from its start. However, there was a way out for the BBC, because, BEFORE it was broadcast they had two opportunities to pull this section of the recording.

First the powers that be were played this section of the show and they allowed it on air, but not before the producers telephoned Andrew Sachs to ask if he was offended by this pre-recorded segmant. He told them that he was, he specifically asked for the calls not to be broadcast to the show’s 2 million listeners but the producers went ahead anyway.

Sachs also sent a formal e-mail of complaint to Lesley Douglas the radio 2 Controller and didn’t receive a reply.

The BBC now admits it made a mistake and apologized as did their two star broadcasters. There were 69 initial complaints and the MediaWatch spokesman, John Beyer stated , “permission should never have been given for the calls to be aired.” He added, “What were they thinking? How would Mark Thompson (BBC Director General) feel if these kind of comments were made about his daughter?”

Has the BBC totally lost its way that it didn’t see anything wrong in this kind of cruel and inhumane behavior? It is, I suppose, somewhat understandable that their two big headed comedians, pumped up with too much self importance, too much fame and too much money think they’re above the rules and laws and regulations that govern the rest of us. But the BBC is an organization that has to know better. It is our national broadcaster, and we pay for it.

We have the right to demand it meets its self imposed rules as a minimum. A belated apology is not sufficient, and quite rightly there needs to be punishment, and it needs to be obvious. How about, instead of sacking a sacrificial lamb of a lowly producer or two, sacking either Brand and or Ross, or at least fining them a piece of their salary to be paid to a charity of Mister Sachs choice. After all, Ross at £6 million per year, and Brand at £1 million a year, can afford to show us some generosity, and that way we can all get to laugh!

What would really demonstrate contrition is the BBC demonstrating it has not lost all its morality by sacking Roos and Brand, the two jerks deserve it. Failing which I believe there are ground for a prosecution against Brand and Roos and their producers and the BBC for making obscene phone calls.