Farewell 2010

Milkshakes never tasted so good

A New Year’s Eve last sad farewell to some inspiring people who ascended this year…

• Malcolm McLaren – who helped make my teens the best music decade possible
• Tony Curtis – cinema doesn’t get much better than “I’m Spartacus!”
• Jean Simmons – great though the Love Theme in the aforementioned gladiatorial epic is (especially as played by Bill Evans), her highpoint for me was as Sargeant Sarah Brown,  the Salvation Army babe in Guys & Doll – and she had another brush with genius in Powell & Pressburger’s Black Narcissus. She was technically a local, born in Crouch End.
• Dennis Hopper – Apolcalypse Now is the best film made in my lifetime and Dennis played his part to perfection
• Eric Rohmer – the one and only time I went to see a film in the cinema on two consecutive nights was for Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune (Full Moon in Paris) at the now dead indy cinema in Camden High Street whose name sadly I forget now (think it belonged to Artificial Eye)
• Harry Carpenter – his connection with Frank Bruno was heart-warming
• J.D. Salinger – Catcher is something really special

Malcolm & Vivienne

Ones Born at Christmas

One Born at Christmas goes out live tonight at 8pm and punctuates the Big Day tomorrow from noon

Here’s a little something commissioned for the website to get you in the mood for Christmas babies…

And here’s its baby brother – Christmas cracker birth factoids…

For FoCs Sake

Juliette Forrest: What does ‘Foc’ mean?
Rigby Reardon: It’s a slang word. When a man and a woman are in love, the man puts his…
Juliette Forrest: No, no. Here: “F. O. C.”

LAST UPDATED: 12.xii.11 (EoC)

In the spirit of the earlier, still in progress 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain – and to avoid, in these troubled times, a ball of anger seasoned with irritation and sprinkled with misanthropy gradually turning into a malignant growth somewhere in this fine body the Big Man was kind enough to lend me – I’ve decided to start a list of the Friends and Enemies of Carlotta. Feel free to suggest candidates for either…

Enemies of Carlotta

• Corporation tax cheats: Google – they set the standards for taking no social responsibility in the territories they exploit, squeezing the most they can out of a morethansemi-monopolistic situation
• Corporation tax cheats/duplicitous businesses: Kraft – manoeuvring to take a progressive, visionary Victorian business out of the tax regime of the country which created it – Cadbury’s secret Swiss move will cost UK exchequer millions in tax
• Duplicitous individuals: Sepp Blatter – robbed £16M in broad Swiss daylight including the cash of hard-pressed city councils (looks like Morrison’s may take FIFA to court on this count in Switzerland)
• Duplicitous individuals: Jack Warner – not the cozy cop from Dock Green but the corrupt cock from Trinidad & Tobago – see Corruption Charges “FIFA’s auditors Ernst & Young estimated Warner’s family made a profit of at least $1 million from reselling 2006 World Cup tickets that Warner had ordered. Minutes of FIFA’s executive committee indicate that a fine of almost $1 million, equal to the expected profiteering, was imposed on the family. Despite numerous reminders from FIFA, only $250,000 has been paid. // After Trinidad and Tobago visited Scotland for the friendly match on 30th May 2004  in Edinburgh, Jack Warner asked SFA President John McBeth for the cheque for the game to be made out to him personally and not to the FA of Trinidad and Tobago. McBeth refused to issue the cheque to Warner.”
• Corporation tax cheats: Vodaphone – Watching the backlash from avoiding £6M of corporation tax #mademesmile – now people need to PAC a punch by moving their accounts away
• Wayne Rooney and the England World Cup 2010 football team – didn’t even look like they gave a damn when they got knocked out, sorry shower
• Rebekah Wade/Brooks – one can only hope she, Murdoch and the Sky deal get dragged down in the emerging News of the World phone hacking scandal to show how if you operate without morality with a bit of luck it eventually catches up with you (I know the world doesn’t work quite like that but we can dream) [22.i.11]
• Caroline Spelman, so called Environment Secretary – someone remind her she’s supposed to be protecting the environment, not selling it alongside her own grandma
• Brian Coleman – fat cat councillor/London Assembly member, mummy’s boy, too grand to walk
• Angela Knight, Chief Executive, British Bankers’ Association – excuses the inexcusable, especially around banking reform. I want my savings insulated from her members’ (in every sense) partially informed gambling.
• Subway franchise – What the fuck is that smell?
• Alain Rolland – What the fuck is that smell? The man who ruined the Rugby World Cup 2011 single-handedly (15.x.11)
• Thierry Henry – he got a statue outside the Emirates last week (w/e 9/xii/11) but he should be remembered above all as a tricheur, the man who robbed Ireland of their place at the World Cup Finals in South Africa (even though it was one of the worst World Cups ever)
• Colin Barrow, Leader of Westminster Council, who is pretending the proposed weekend and  evening parking charges in the borough are not motivated by revenue generation – perhaps he could start his money raising by paying back the money his hedge fund owes the council & Councillor Lee Rowley, cabinet member for parking and transport, some kind of moron with no experience worth talking of

Friends of Carlotta

• Voina artists co-operative in Russia – taking on the KGB and corrupt police with Art
• David Beckham – worthy (emotional and dignified) winner of BBC Sports Personality of 2010 Lifetime Achievement award – I was there when he was sent off against Argentina at St Etienne and how he came back not just as an even better footballer but as a very fine human-being
• Gareth Bale – bringing long lost joy back to White Hart Lane (or White Hard Lane as I saw on a West End ticket booth yesterday)
• Alastair Cook, cricketer/batsman – hero of the 2010-11 Ashes series in Oz with 766 runs to his name (with another innings still to play) and 189 today (5.1.11) to pretty much secure the victory
• Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, founder of Mary’s Meals, a Scottish charity which feeds and educates 460,000 children in developing countries every day.
• Rolf Harris – what a lovely man – soon to feature as the Art Teacher in Jamie’s Dream School
• more to follow