◼ DIVERS HAVE DISCOVERED a new population of what may be the world’s rarest fish, possibly doubling the number believed to exist. Only 20 to 40 of the critically endangered Red Handfish (Thymichthys politus) were thought to live off the coast of Tasmania, Australia. Instead of swimming, the strange little fish scuttles along the seabed on four red pectoral fins that look like hands. Another population of at least eight fish a few miles away was announced this week by a team from IMAS and the Reef Life Survey (RLS) at the University of Tasmania. More detail on video here:
In tribute to Mark Edward Smith who died today, here’s his biggest fan, the legendary deejay John Peel, who was commissioned to summarise the uniqueness of The Fall in The Sunday Times’s partwork, 1000 Makers of Music, published 25 May 1997:
“ Nothing in the history of pop has been remotely like the Fall. Mark E Smith is not only the writer of lyrics that often boast more ideas in a verse than most bands contrive for an LP, but is also credited with what is often said about Viz, that it isn’t as funny as it used to be. Fall devotees are accustomed to hearing similar assessments of their favourite band but believe that, through a bewildering number of personnel changes, the Fall remains the band by which all others must be judged. Their dozens of records crawl with anger, insults, waspish poetry and roaring guitar/bass/drums/keyboards-driven music some have styled Manc-a-billy after their home town. We the faithful can argue that anything, from 1979’s Live At the Witch Trials to last year’s The Light User Syndrome, might be the best. Smith’s press interviews – ranting against political correctness and students (the song Hey, Student from the 1994 LP Middle Class Revolt is a Fall classic) – make marvellous reading. (Keywork: Hey, Student.)”
Customised version of the Bayeux Tapestry created using the Historic Tale Construction Kit
◼ DURING HIS UK VISIT THIS WEEK, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the loan of the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry which depicts events leading up to the Norman conquest of England in 1066 which ended in King Harold II’s death. This marked the end of the Anglo-Saxons’ reign of more than 600 years. The tapestry is 230ft long and and 50cm deep and some historians say it was created by teams of nuns across England – not France – possibly in Canterbury, Kent. It is on permanent display at a museum in the town of Bayeux, in Normandy.
The first loan of the tapestry outside France for 950 years was revealed by The Times which expected the exhibition venue in 2022 to be the British Museum. Our version here was created online using the Historic Tale Construction Kit. Note how the Saxon peasant at right has already pioneered the idea of kebabbed pigeon.
Maxine Peake and Johnny Marr: “You can’t avoid homelessness in Manchester. It touched us both”
Marr: “There are so many things about being working class that never leave you entirely. A certain gratitude. A kind of humility, whether it’s forced on you or not. You could even call it guilt, I guess: working-class guilt.”
“There is a guilt, yeah,” says Peake. “A friend said to me, ‘Are you sure you’re not a Catholic? ’Cos you’re riddled with guilt.’ It’s tied up with a work ethic. You’ve got to be seen to be grafting for what you’re doing. You know what I mean? Constantly.”
“ When the musician Johnny Marr met and the actor Maxine Peake in 2014, they “clicked straight away”, bonding over a mission to bring back socially conscious art. The first fruits of their partnership are now about to be released: a five-minute piece entitled The Priest, which has been turned into a short film, co-directed by Marr, set in the centre of Manchester, as a vivid first-person account of homelessness. Here they talk about shamanic rock stars, working-class guilt and how their spoken-word album about homelessness strives to be a modern Cathy Come Home. . .
Marr says of Peake at one point: “I’ve actually met someone who probably works even more than me, if that’s possible,” and Peake’s résumé suggests he’s not wrong. Next year will see the release of Funny Cow, in which she stars as a female standup trying to push her way through the grimness of 70s Britain, as well as the staging at the Royal Exchange of Queens of the Coal Age, the play Peake has written about the true story of four women resisting the closure of a Yorkshire coalmine. . . ”
PLUS MARR ON THE M-WORD
“ Marr says he was “crushed and heartbroken” by the vote for Brexit, whereas his former creative partner Morrissey seemed to rejoice in it. Though Marr has remained firmly on the political left, Morrissey now seems to champion the reactionary right. “I’ve stayed the same. I’ve never changed. But … people tend to forget that it was 30 years ago that we were in a band together. Stop and think about it: 30 years. It’s a long time. So I honestly don’t care very much. . . ” / Continued at The Guardian online
Immature? Alternative unused shot of 21-year-old Christine Keeler from the famous 1963 photo session in Lewis Morley’s Greek Street studio. . . Right, in 1990, a fully-clad Keeler returned to the pose she made famous for a photograph taken by Terry O’Neill
◼ “THEY NEVER STOPPED CALLING ME A PROSTITUTE.” So said the notorious “showgirl” who helped bring down a Tory government, quoted in today’s impressively well rounded Times obituary of Christine Keeler who has died aged 75. Despite posing naked for a now definitive photograph on a plywood chair in 1963, she fell victim to the mores of those times in the whole sex-and-spying soap opera enacted by a cast of deeply sleazy characters. Found guilty of perjury, she was sentenced to nine months in prison.
“Her only real crime was immaturity,” according to The Times obituarist. The war minister John Profumo lied “again and again” throughout the scandal, also according to The Times, whose own editor back in the day thundered that adultery “is a moral issue”. Well worth reading as a comprehensive slice of social history just as the Sixties began to swing.
Telling her own story – News of the World from June 1963
❏ One sympathetic reappraisal of Keeler’s reputation came with the powerful 1989 feature film Scandal directed by Michael Caton-Jones who created an even-handed and realistic evocation of the saga, with an immaculate cast. Best of all for pop-culture fans was its title track by the Pet Shop Boys who had the brilliant notion of bringing Sixties icon Dusty Springfield out of retirement and she rendered the vocals beautifully. Among a classic collection of tunes for the soundtrack, Chubby Checker even re-recorded The Twist because his original had been embargoed for rights reasons.
This video compilation intercuts clips from the film Scandal with authentic news footage of the rum cast implicated in the Profumo affair of 1963, all overdubbed with Dusty who sings the film’s soundtrack, Nothing Has Been Proved. And yet, nothing about the story was fake by today’s standards.
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MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
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❏ Header artwork by Kat Starchild shows Blitz Kids Darla Jane Gilroy, Elise Brazier, Judi Frankland and Steve Strange, with David Bowie at centre in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes
VINCENT ON AIR 2026
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch up on Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
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UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
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