An Amusing History of the Gaffes of Prince Philip

ITN News put together this humorous video that aggregates all of Prince Philip’s famous gaffes into one place.

Hilarious!

Dispatches from the North: The Christmas Number One – British Christmas Number 1

One interesting thing about Christmas in Britain is how big of a deal it is to have “The Christmas Number One”, that means to have the top spot on the UK Charts the week of Christmas. Bookies even take bets on who will be the Christmas number one, it is just a massive deal here. There is really no reason why, the week of Christmas is no more important than any other week as far as music goes, in fact I would argue that having the top record in the summer during festival season is probably much more impressive than having the number one song at Christmas.

I heard a report on the radio the other day that many bookies have stopped taking bets on the Christmas number one since every year since 2005 the winner of the X Factor shoots straight to the top with the song they release the week of the X Factor final. The X Factor producers have  intentionally scheduled the show to culminate less than two weeks before Christmas, just in time for the winner’s single to be downloaded and requested on the radio enough to reach the top. The final single is actually chosen about a month before the final to make sure all potential finalists can sing it, and its usually recorded by each of the top three finalists the week before and the alternate versions from the runners up are discarded never to be heard and the winner’s version goes public only hours after the result is announced.

This year the Christmas number one is slated to be X Factor winner Joe McElderry or “Geordie Joe” who is a good North Eastern boy from South Shields. I was thrilled this past weekend when he won as I voted for him every week and think he was definitely the most talented singer in this year’s competition. This year the X Factor single is “The Climb” which was released by Miley Cyrus quite recently for The Hannah Montana Movie. I thought it was an interesting choice to select a song that has been in the charts by another artist so recently, but its definitely an improvement over last year’s X Factor Single.

Last year was an interesting dynamic because the X Factor winner sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” which was also released by Jeff Buckley, and the winner actually did the Buckley version. Many music fans, especially fans of Cohen and Buckley, thought the song was inappropriate for the X Factor finalist and that the diva belter Alexandra Burke who won last year delivered a version that wasn’t true to the spirit of the song and completely ignored the fact that its not a celebratory and triumphant song. I personally was on the side of the critics, I don’t think it was an appropriate choice. Its one of my favorite songs and I love it for its haunting quality and Alexandra’s oversung version showed no connection to the lyrics of the song at all. Its not her fault, its the X Factor producers who made the mistake of choosing a song that didn’t suit her style or the style of the show for that matter. Anyway, as a result of this last year Alexandra Burke’s “Hallelujah” was the number one and Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” was number two, which meant the same song was being played all over the radio by two different artists and when the recognizable piano intro began you never knew whether you would hear Buckley’s lamenting version or Burke’s diabolical version.

This year a campaign called “Rage Against the X Factor” has been launched to make Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” the Christmas number one. I don’t think this is really aimed at the X Factor contestants, its definitely a shot at the producers and really at the idea that something is preordained and inevitable. It takes the fun out of the Christmas number one if you already know who its going to be. However, I think its really unfair and doesn’t hurt the producers at all, it only spoils the fun for the X Factor winner who, lets face it, is just an ordinary Joe (pun intended) and doesn’t deserve that type of malicious meddling. By attempting to fix the Christmas charts I don’t think the people following the “Rage Against the X Factor” campaign are really any better than the music producers they are raging against.

If you have seen Love Actually you may remember Billy Mack’s attempt to beat out boy band Blue for the top Christmas spot with his hilarious Christmas song. Last year a similar bit of comedic genius happened. Comedian Peter Kay did a parody reality show called Britain’s Got the Pop Factor …and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice where his character Geraldine McQueen “won” the fake reality show and released two singles. One was “The Winner Song” (co-written with Gary Barlow of Take That) and another single “Once Upon a Christmas Song” which were both loved by all and made it pretty far up the Christmas charts with “The Winner Song” peaking at number 2 and “Once Upon a Christmas Song” peaking at number 5.  ”Geraldine” also made appearances on all of the chat shows and appearred everywhere throughout the Christmas season. I love that the ridiculousness of The Christmas Number One has a fun side as well and also Peter Kay donated all of the proceeds from Geraldine’s singles to the NSPCC, a charity that helps abused and neglected children in Britain. I think Peter Kay did it the right way by trying to mix it up without being malicious and also being charitable, which is much more than be can said for the Rage Against crowd.

So who will it be this year? Will Joe McElderry keep the tradition alive and claim the top spot or will it go to quite possibly the least Christmasy song ever?

Bright Young Things: The Making of Bruno Hat

Abstracts for Distracted Aristocrats

Whiskey flowed and banter flew on the evening of July 23, 1929, as England’s young and chic descended on a gray-brick Westminster mansion abutting narrow Buckingham Street. Approach to Hat read the catalogue handed out at the door. Inside, rooms were hung with the most daring sort of modern art — vaguely cubist compositions painted on canvas or cork, some of them framed in heavy rope. They whispered “Picasso” but were signed “Bruno Hat.”

London’s smart young socialites and their literary compatriots — collectively known as “Bright Young Things” — were more accustomed to wild soirees than seemingly sedate art shows like this one for “England’s first abstract painter.” But, in pampered lives like theirs, always on the verge of Existential Boredom, any party would do, so long as the hosts were of the Right Sort. Their antics helped hide the impending world  collapse behind a veil of champagne bubbles and cigarette smoke.

At the BYTs’ more typical galas, costumes were de rigueur, writes Mary Lovell in The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family: “A party where guests attended in ordinary evening clothes was just plain unsmart.” Clowns, Russia, book subjects and scanty clothing all provided inspiration for costume galas. In addition, “there were ‘baby parties’ at which guests arrived dressed as infants in prams or on hired donkeys, some even accompanied by reluctant nannies borrowed for the evening,” recalls Jessica Mitford in Hons and Rebels, a memoir. “There were treasure-hunts in which each guest was given a list of items he must retrieve: a lamppost, a St. Bernard dog, a policeman, a duck from St. James’s Park. The newspapers dubbed the participants the Bright Young People, and railed at these sons and daughters of the rich for fiddling while Rome burned.”

Rome itself was a theme, in fact, as was Greece. Hat-show hostess Diana Mitford Guinness dressed for one bash as Nero’s queen, Poppaea, in a daring bustier. Her friend, Brian Howard – another of Mr. Hat’s backers — hosted a BYOB bacchanalia in 1929 he dubbed the “Great Urban Dionysia.”

The Hat exhibition was just one of several soirées Diana hosted with her husband, brewery heir Bryan Guinness. Like the glittering young couple themselves, their parties left their mark. An 1860s-themed Guinness gala, for example, inspired Evelyn Waugh to write Vile Bodies, a satire that pinned and labeled the Bright Young Things like butterflies on display — irridescent, but doomed.

For this night, though, Waugh was discoursing on art, under the playfully punny pen-name, “A.R. de T.” “In overcoming for the first time what the artist himself admits as his extraordinary shyness, and opening her house to those who wish to see the works of Bruno Hat, Mrs.Guinness is attempting to do a service less to him than to the artistic public,” Mr. de T. enthused in the catalogue’s introduction to the previously unknown Mr. Hat.

Given boldface names like Mitford, Guinness and Waugh, and the posh Guinness digs as backdrop, news correspondents descended to cover the new artistic phenomenon. For an obscure, impoverished artist of Polish — or was it German — extraction (no one seemed to know), the mustachioed Mr. Hat was making a splash on the London scene.

But was there more to the scene than his refracted oils revealed?

Our Hosts

It was the “nuptials of the year” when, in January 1929,  the Hon. Diana Mitford married Bryan Guinness at fashionable St. Margaret’s church in Westminster. Guinness was not merely handsome and rich, but clever, friendly and poetically inclined, and he danced like a dream. He was clearly besotted with his 18-year-old wife, a celebrated beauty of their age and a lively wit. Diana was almost as delighted with Bryan as she was thrilled to have escaped the sheltered life of a country peer’s daughter.

Her parents, David Freeman-Mitford, Lord Redesdale, and his wife, Sydney, had frowned on the engagement, mostly on account of Diana’s youth. But their frugal tendencies, born partly of necessity, also contrasted sharply with the Guinnesses’ free-spending ways, as Diana’s sister Jessica recalled in Hons and Rebels. “We gathered that Muv’s main objection centred on the fact that Bryan was ’so frightfully rich’,” Jessica wrote.

Indeed, Diana went from home-baked bread and home-sewn frocks to a lavish wardrobe of Paris couture, purchased right after her wedding. She briefly played at tracking expenses in a ledger from her mother, leather-bound “with my initials in gold,” she said. But the practice horrified her new mother-in-law, the eccentric Lady Evelyn. ‘How barbarous of Bryan,’ she exclaimed, assuming it had been her son’s idea. Diana “never thereafter returned to this barbarous occupation,” she admitted, even when she no longer had Guinness millions to splash around.

Spring found the newlyweds ensconced in their first home, near St. James Park, with a skittish dog named Rubbish. The dog was a gift from the bride’s father; the house was a gift from the groom’s. While “modest” by Guinness standards, 10 Buckingham Street (now Buckingham Place) wasn’t cheap: Its yearly property taxes alone, at £910, surpassed the income of most of Diana and Bryan’s friends, Lovell notes. It had been assembled from several townhouses in the early 1900s by renowned architect Edwin Lutyens, famed designer of the Thiepval memorial and other prestigious commissions. (A prior owner was Muriel, Countess de la Warr, descended from Delaware’s founding family.)

Lady Evelyn, product of an American textile fortune, was that rare mother who worried that her son was underspending his allowance while at university. Like their house, most of the young couple’s furniture came from his family. As Lady Evelyn’s decorating tastes favored kitschy medieval flourishes and ersatz “aging” (in her own manors, she served meals on pewter and encouraged smoky fires to appropriately blacken the panelling), she generously provided heavy items like an austere refectory table for the dining room. Pewter jugs and Jacobean glasses served as ornament. Only in subsequent homes would Diana exercise her flair for airy, pastel rooms and light, Edwardian furnishings.

Diana “was now a Beauty with a capital B. Photographs of her stared from the covers of the society weeklies with great regularity,” recalled her sister, Jessica. Jessica and the other cloistered younger sisters pined for their playful sibling but mostly followed her activities through the society pages. They feared Diana had become affected, but her friends considered her anything but.

More than lace, central heat and baronial homes, what Diana relished in her new life was the largesse she could offer the smart crowd of friends she’d made with her brother, Tom, an Etonian, and elder sister, Nancy, a sharp-tongued writer. Though less learned than her Oxford-educated cohort, Diana outdid them in warmth, curiosity and joie de vivre. She was the life of the party and knew how to have fun in the daytime, too.

These overlapping cliques of aesthetes, aristocrats and intellectuals included the esteemed Bloomsbury writer Lytton Strachey, theater folk of the Noel Coward ilk, and early jet-setters, like American-born Emerald Cunard, of the cruise-line dynasty. Admirers like Waugh would come sit on her bed to chat in the mornings while Diana sipped tea and handled correspondence, and then accompany her to lunch and outings. She and Bryan were regulars at the Savoy’s restaurant during his law school lunch breaks, where pals likewise joined them. Dinner, too, was a social event, often followed by theatre, if no party was on tap.

It was amidst this gay whirlwind that Bruno Hat emerged.

The Scene: Why you wish you’d been there

“Artistically, we are incurably unpunctual,” archly wrote A.R. de T., slyly chiding the English for lagging Europe in its embrace of modernists like Picasso, Gris and de Chirico. Perhaps the effort to redress this unpunctuality inspired the swooning reception for Hat’s work, or perhaps it was the bold-faced names and tony surroundings that stirred the press to raptures. Waugh did his best to stoke the passion, with high-toned commentary that called Hat “the first signal of the coming world movement towards the creation of Pure Form.”

A writer for the Sunday Dispatch hailed the impending show and described its inception. Bryan Guinness had discovered  Hat, she explained, near Clymping, Sussex, in a village shop. “[E]ntering by mistake the wrong room, he found a number of very good paintings in the modern French style. The paintings were done by the son of the old lady who keeps the store. … I have seen one or two and they are surprisingly clever.” His absent father was German, she reported, but Hat had never travelled, so his work was wholly untutored and original.

“[T] our joy not only all our friends but also the critics came in droves,” Diana recalled in her memoir, A Life of Contrasts. “Photographers elbowed their way in with immense cameras and were firmly directed by Brian away from [Hat] and persuaded to photograph the art.” Cocktails were being served when, along with the literati and glitterati, reporters from the Dispatch and its competition descended upon the show. Milling with guests about the Guinnesses’ pompously “period” rooms, they pondered some 20 abstracts with titles seemingly torn straight from the National Gallery’s collection: Still Life with Pears, Adoration of the Magi. “Lytton Strachey bought a picture,” the Magi, “to please me, and I stuck a red spot on it,” Diana wrote in Contrasts.

The only off note was Hat himself, who proved gruff and uncommunicative. As The Talk of London column put it, “Mr. Hat sat in a wheeled chair, a morose, taciturn figure, with a marked German accent, a moustache worthy of Harry Tate and smoked glasses. In one hand he held a thin cheroot, in the other a glass of iced coffee, and as he sipped and puffed he grumbled about the colour of the walls and about the publicity he was receiving.”

The work was well received, nevertheless, which amused the hosts, because Bruno Hat was a fraud.

For those in search of perpetual entertainment, pranks are a good standby. While Guinness was touted for “discovering” Hat, it was the other Brian, Brian Howard (note the initials), who hatched the idea and brought the works to life in the studio of his friend, painter John Banting. It was Diana’s brother Tom who donned the wig and whiskers for the show, affecting that mittel-European growl. The “bath chair” he sat in had been “a mad idea,” Diana later decided, for, if  Hat was “a cripple … how was that it he had managed to paint all the large pictures which covered the walls?”

The hoax made all the papers. Among the cognoscenti who had fallen for it, there appeared to be no hard feelings. (Many claimed later to have been in on the joke, as Strachey clearly was.) “An excellent Hat trick,” chuckled the Daily Express.

The Scene: Why you’re glad you missed it

The sparkle of Hat-induced laughter couldn’t last long for the Bright Young Things, as Waugh foreshadowed in Vile Bodies. Like a knife slashing through canvas, doubt, betrayal and a world at war destroyed their bright veneer, and death, dissipation and divorce all too quickly ruptured their playful bubble.

The “death” of Bruno Hat, for starters, also put paid to the artistic dreams of his supposed benefactor, Brian Howard. Seeing Hat’s work treated as no more than a prank, “I believe in his heart of hearts Brian was very disappointed,” Diana wrote. “He had hoped for a Hollywood-style miracle, and that he would be ‘discovered’ by an astonished art world as a master.”

But Howard, a noted dilettante, lacked the diligence to yoke his artistic talents. Though he took credit for the Hat oeuvre, the paintings most likely owed their finesse to the far more skilled Banting, Howard’s friend and a modernist painter of some renown (who sometimes frames his own canvasses in rope). “In later life,” according to the Leicester Galleries essay on Bruno Hat, “Banting played down his part in [the paintings'] execution. In 1964 he was to write: ‘as there was not quite enough work to show, I filled in the empty spaces in Brian’s unfinished canvases.’”

More than paintings testified to the sadly unfulfilled promise of young Howard, who dared to live about as openly homosexual a life as his era would tolerate. (The bond with Banting was platonic.) Writer and critic V.S. Pritchett recalled him as dangerous and brilliant, “a plaguing character of wasted talent.”

“It is hard to say why he achieved nothing at all,” Diana mused of Howard. “I suppose he wanted the palm without the dust, but more disastrously he despised what was within his range. He might have made a success in journalism, or even fashion, but he aspired to greatness and thought such things beneath him. He wanted to be Rilke, or Nietzsche, or Picasso.” Instead, depression, drugs and discontent plagued him until his death from an overdose in 1958, the faithful Banting at his side.

Bryan and Diana, too, unknowingly faced dark times. Though they joyously parented two cherubic boys in short order, Diana soon after committed marital hara-kiri by falling in love with  a charismatic  politician, Oswald Mosley. Mosley,  a handsome cad, hewed to a warped set of ethics that said he could sleep with Diana but never leave his wife. (Never mind that he had slept with both his wife’s sisters.) Diana didn’t care. She leased a small house in which to receive her lover and sought divorce from Bryan, who, though humiliated, proved surprisingly sportsmanlike. (He later remarried.)

Diana’s commitment to Mosley consigned her forever to the fringes of society, less for deserting Bryan than for loyally following Mosley, politically as well as personally. Founder of the British Union of Fascists, he was an ardent fan of Hitler and Mussolini. After he was unexpectedly widowed, he and Diana married — in the Goebbels family’s parlor.

The British upper classes, and Diana’s family in particular, were rife with Nazi sympathies before the war. But Mosley took matters too far by creating the British Union of Fascists, complete with goose-stepping, black-shirted goons. When war broke out, he and Diana were locked up as “politicals.” Interned at the grim Holloway Prison, Diana characteristically introduced as much party atmosphere as grim conditions allowed. She shared with her mostly working-class fellow inmates the occasional creature comforts — like a Victrola and occasional food packets — afforded her through the efforts of well-placed friends and relatives (including Winston Churchill).

Years later, one of the wardresses remarked, “We’ve never had such laughs since Lady Mosley left.”

The Mosleys lived their later years in comfort near Paris, where they socialized frequently with those even more notorious Nazi sympathizers — Wallis Simpson and the former King Edward VIII, known since his abdication as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Diana referred to him jocularly as “the Dook.”

Of “Bruno Hat” himself — or, more accurately, his bewigged portrayer — there is even less to report: Despite admiring Nazi Germany, where he spent happy sojourns throughout the 1930s, handsome Tom Mitford joined his country’s army when war  began. In 1944, having fought in Italy and North Africa, he sought a posting in the East because, he told a friend, “he does not wish to go to Germany killing German civilians whom he likes. He prefers to kill Japanese whom he does not like.”

Assigned a staff position on arrival in Burma, he quickly maneuvered to join a fighting unit as brigade major. In March 1945, he took several bullets when his Devonshire Regiment came under fire. One of them, in his spine, left him paralyzed. Surgery was planned but, before the month was out, Mitford was dead from pneumonia.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family, by Mary Lovell.

Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History

Essay on Bruno Hat from Peter Nahum At The Leicester Galleries.

A Life of Contrasts, by Diana Mitford.

Hons and Rebels, by Jessica Mitford.

Photo of Bruno Hat, "Still Life With Pears," courtesy of Peter Nahum At The Leicester Galleries.
Photos of 10 Buckingham Place courtesy of The Lord Taverners, a current occupant.

Anglophile Reviews: Fawlty Towers Remastered DVD Set

I’ve made it quite known that my favorite British Comedy of all time is Yes, Minister. However, there is a new contender in the runner: Fawlty Towers.

I was provided a copy of the new Remastered DVD Box set to review by the kind folks at the BBC and took to watching it right away. My wife and I got through it in a matter of days – watching 6 episodes in a row at one point.

Simply put, this show is hilarious. Fawlty Towers follows the trial and tribulations of hotel owner Basil Fawlty – played brilliantly by John Cleese. He’s a bit high strung and prone to making situations far worse than they need to be to comedic effect.

The cast of characters is rounded out by Sybil, the wife that Basil is always afraid of, Polly the hapless maid and Manuel the idiot Spaniard valet who understands more English than he lets on.

All the characters have great chemistry together and there wasn’t an episode that wasn’t funny. I just love finding a gem from 30 or so years ago and discovering a new show to love.

My favorite episode is “The Germans.” You can imagine the hilarity that ensues when a few Germans come to visit the hotel. It’s where the classic phrase “Don’t Mention the War” comes from.

Here’s a clip from “The Germans”:

The DVD set itself is very impressive. All the episodes have been remastered and they look great despite their age. However, they don’t look TOO great – the show still looks real. Oftentimes when shows get remastered they don’t that great. They look great here.

The extras are a lot of fun too. There’s exclusive interviews with all the main cast of characters – some which were recorded this past year. The first time they’ve all been interviewed together. Each episode features insightful director’s commentaries. There’s a hilarious selection of outtakes and an interesting little documentary of Torquay -where the show is set.

Overall – I recommend picking up this box set if you want a good laugh. It’s affordably priced ($34.49) and will provide hours of laughs.

I give it 5 out of 5 Union Jacks!

Click here to buy it in the Official Anglotopia Store.

What’s your Favorite Fawlty Towers Episode?

Fawlty Towers has been Remastered for its 30th Anniversary

Classic British TV comedy, Fawlty Towers has been remastered and released on DVD for it’s 30th anniversary.

From the BBC Blurb this past week:

Join the BBC in celebrating the 30th anniversary of John Cleese’s (Monty Python’s Flying Circus, A Fish Called Wanda) legendary TV series, Fawlty Towers!

Named the #1 television series of all time by the British Film Institute, the BBC celebrates this comedy classic by releasing the deluxe, special edition DVD box set –
Fawlty Towers Remastered: Special Edition. Each episode was painstakingly restored from the original program masters to present this farcical sitcom in crystal clarity as never seen before. Along with every episode of the series, this must-own DVD box set comes loaded with fresh bonus material including newly recorded commentary from Cleese, all-new cast interviews, and much more. The 3-disc Fawlty Towers Remastered is in stores now for the suggested retail price of $49.98 ($62.48 in Canada) and is available online at
BBCAmericashop.com for $42.98.

Fans everywhere can join the celebration on Facebook by entering the accompanying lookalike contest and share their love of Fawlty Towers with the world! John Cleese himself will be selecting the winners, with prizes including signed DVDs and lots of other goodies. Go to the Facebook fan page to make your reservation today!

STAY UPDATED & CONNECT WITH OTHER FANS
Join our Facebook Fan Page or follow us on Twitter @FawltyTowersDVD for the latest news surrounding the 30th Anniversary. Want to be involved even more? Use our #fawltytowers hashtag on Twitter.

LOOKALIKE CONTEST
Did you always think you looked like Basil Fawlty? And your dog had the air of the Major? Or perhaps your mom is a dead ringer for Sybil? Well now’s your opportunity to prove it to the world and John Cleese! Fans can submit a photo on the Facebook fan page for a chance to have their entry be one of 3 favorites chosen by Mr. Cleese himself! For extended details and official rules, please go here.

ABOUT FAWLTY TOWERS
Hot off the runaway success of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, John Cleese embarked on his now-legendary sitcom, Fawlty Towers, . One of the most memorable and best-loved characters in British comedy, Basil Fawlty is a much put-upon, hardworking hotel manager whose life is plagued by dead guests, hotel inspectors and other assorted riff-raff. Of course his biggest headache is his “little nest of vipers,” his nagging wife Sibyl, the unflappable Polly and the trainee waiter from Barcelona, Manuel, who has marginally more intelligence than a monkey.

Premiering in the UK in 1975 and airing in continuous PBS syndication ever since, , Fawlty Towers, has received three BAFTA Awards, Best Comedy Performance for John Cleese and two for Best Situation Comedy. In addition, the beloved sitcom is the BBC’s top-selling comedy series of all time on DVD.

Fawlty Towers Remastered DVD Features:

• All-New Digital Restoration from the original program masters
• All-New Commentary by John Cleese
• All-New Interviews with John Cleese, Connie Booth, Andrew Sachs and Prunella Scales
• Outtakes
• A Visit to Torquay, Home of Fawlty Towers
• Additional Interviews and Featurettes

Fawlty Towers Remastered: Special Edition TV’s funniest series looks and sounds better than ever! Sharp-tongued, short tempered, sycophantic and sadistic, Basil Fawlty (John Cleese, Monty Python films) is a beleaguered hotel manager whose life is plagued by dead guests, hotel inspectors and other assorted riff-raff. He possesses equally little patience for his nagging wife Sybil, unflappable maid Polly and dim waiter Manuel.

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