On video: clockwise, Blake Harrison, James Buckley, Joe Thomas and Simon Bird with his hand up the beaver. (Video grab from Digital Spy)
❚ THE BEST INTERVIEW YET with The Inbetweeners plugging their film from the TV series went online today. Cue the movies editor at Digital Spy…
“ For the past few months, Digital Spy HQ has been home to a stuffed hand puppet. A beaver, to be precise (something to do with a Mel Gibson movie). With The Inbetweeners Movie hitting cinemas this week and with stars Simon Bird, Joe Thomas, James Buckley and Blake Harrison in interview mode, we thought we’d utilise our new furry friend on camera. Filling the animal with some bizarre questions, we got Simon, Joe, James and Blake to pluck the queries from the beaver… ”
Our lads at their premiere: three out of every four Inbetweeners wear a tie, shock! (PA)
Eagerly anticipated at the premiere: Will’s Mum (Belinda Stewart-Wilson – Wenn photo) and Neil’s Sister (seemingly a no-show by cricketing WAG Kacey Barnfield)
❚ A WEEK BEFORE LONDON EXPLODED with the most shocking violence in memory, 18-year-old Chavez Campbell predicted the reaction to cuts in local youth services. “There’ll be riots,” he said in a video interview [below] for Guardian Online six days before they actually occurred. He and other young Londoners were describing the bleakness of their daily lives.
Campbell, who has recently left college and is struggling to find a job, does not condone rioting but does represent a voice that has been rarely heard in the maelstrom of recent days. He saw the riots explode, but went home to stay safe. Today Guardian Online publishes a second video interview in which he expresses further concern: “I don’t think it’s over. Because everyone came together and created this massive war zone, I think it will happen again.”
Chavez Campbell six days before the riots: “There’ll be riots” (Guardian credits: Cameron Robertson, Alexandra Topping and Elliot Smith)
Manchester city centre: as arrests continue, police appeal for help. (BBC video)
❏ The police are asking for people to shop those who destroyed and looted stores across the country [above]… Trouble is, as witnesses point out, “there’s no worse crime than grassing” … and “They’ve given out sentences of four months and six months, it’s farcical. In four weeks’ time those people will be out on tag anyway. There’s no point sending them to prison.” ➢ BBC News video August 12: Suspects appear in court
Tony Hadley in Rome, spring 2011: a busy year as a solo artist. Photograph by Riccardo Arena
❚ ON SATURDAY SUAVE BRITISH SINGER Tony Hadley debuts his solo show in the United States, his first professional visit since winning the British TV reality show Reborn in the USA in 2003. Otherwise American audiences haven’t seen him live since he visited in 1985 as vocalist with Spandau Ballet, onetime New Romantics turned pomp-rockers. Following a busy summer of festival appearances, the American tour represents one of the biggest and long-awaited challenges in his career. The first of his six big-city dates is at New York’s Irving Plaza, after which the divorced but happily remarried father of four then plays the Rivers Casino Stage as part of a gay street festival in Chicago.
John Keeble: Spandau pal whose drums drive the Hadley band too. Photographed by Shapersofthe80s
He’s backed by his long-standing band featuring Spandau’s John Keeble (drums) plus Phil Taylor (keyboards), Phil Williams (bass guitar), Richie Barrett (guitar). In October they head down-under to Australia for seven more shows, with Go West in support at three.
Hadley split acrimoniously from his school-mates Spandau Ballet in 1990, since when the singer with the mighty and melodious voice has pursued a vigorous solo career which often involves 200 live shows a year. It has yielded six albums, the last in 2006 titled Passing Strangers moving into jazz-swing territory, though his 15 singles have seen only minimal chart success. In live concert he loves covering pop standards by Bowie and even Duran Duran. Today he’s a declared fan of The Killers and My Chemical Romance. He also enjoyed a stint in the musical Chicago in London’s West End.
In 2004 Hadley wrote an autobiography called To Cut A Long Story Short which made clear how his worldview had always been markedly different from the other members of Spandau even at their peak of success. Hadley wrote: “I’m busier now [2004] than I was then [1983]… A couple of times I suggested we bring in a more experienced manager. I just thought it made sense to have someone working with us who knew more about the business than we did. No one else saw it that way.” In describing 1988, he devoted pages to a nit-picking analysis of the many cracks splitting the band, the last straw being the Kemp brothers, Gary and Martin, absenting themselves to star in the film about The Krays (notorious London gangsters), when all Tony wanted to do was sing his heart out on a stage. Then in 1999 the old school-mates found themselves daggers-drawn in an ugly court case over royalty payments, which Tony’s side lost. For years, the feud seemed irreconcilable. In 2005 Tony told me that by then he reckoned he personally was owed “about £2 million” to include interest.
Out of the blue in 2009 Spandau Ballet resolved their differences after Tony’s son Tom and Gary’s son Fin had met up in a pub and agreed to knock their dads’ heads together. The band reunited, they insisted, well, because all families have their squabbles and the old band of brothers from schooldays were really one big happy family again. It seemed just as pragmatic to assume that, as they were all approaching 50, the band knew a world tour might be their last chance to secure their pensions. What they agreed, though, was a one-year deal and it ended with an open-air show for 19,000 people at Newmarket racecourse on June 25 last year.
Hadley was always the non-Labour voter among the Spandaus and today at 51 he is a supporter of Conservative prime minister David Cameron. In recent years the singer harboured ambitions of becoming an MP. Given the horrendous violence that erupted this week on the streets of Britain, a remark he made in 2007 seems prescient. Tone was talking tough on crime to The Independent while attending the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool: “The fabric of society is torn. I walked through Blackpool and there were gangs walking the backstreets and 16-year-old pregnant women everywhere. What we need is Cameron to be like Thatcher, to say enough is enough, things have gone too far.”
This week as he packed for the States, Big Tone has given three lively online interviews, and here are some teaser quotes from him, which include news that his new solo album is now delayed …
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Liverpool Empire 1982: a fan and her handbag shin up a drainpipe to gain access to Spandau Ballet’s dressing room. Photographed by Shapersofthe80s
TH There’s so many. OK. We were playing the Liverpool Empire in 1983 [Actually 1982, Tony — Shapersofthe80s]. The dressing rooms were on the second floor and there were screaming girls outside going absolutely ballistic. So all the windows were shut and we’d just done the show. Suddenly there was a strange tap on the window. We opened the window and two fans had climbed up a drain pipe and shimmied up two floors just to get to us! If they’d have fallen, they would have been killed. We invited them in, signed all of their stuff and gave them something to drink. It was pretty wild.
QLeaving for the United States soon? TH I can’t wait. For some reason it has been very difficult to get into the States. An American agent saw my band in Europe and wanted to get us over there. We want to come to the States and prove ourselves. We are doing a handful of shows, then come back next year and do 20 or 30 shows.
QYou have a new album coming out this year, right? TH No, next year; I am a little behind on it. It will be the first album that is written by me. It will be 12 tracks that are classic pop rock. A few weeks ago I was in Miami for a private show and I was introduced to Barry Gibb from the Bee Gees. We are going to write together so I have to factor that in as well. How bloody brilliant is that?
Spandau Ballet reunited 2009: their first live performance for 19 years was on the Jonathan Ross TV show. (BBC)
QWill the Spandau reunion be ongoing? TH It was only meant to be a one-off, and from my point of view, it was just a one-off. But I always say ‘Never say never’. At the moment, I’m touring Britain, the States, Australia, New Zealand and Germany before Christmas, plus with the new album, there’s a lot going on, but maybe one day in the future.
QWhat would you say to more casual fans in the States that only know the softer side of Spandau Ballet? TH In America [in the 80s], Spandau really cocked it up unfortunately. America’s a country where you have to tour and tour and tour to prove yourself and we didn’t do that. For whatever reason, whether it was management, thinking we were clever or whatever, we just didn’t play it right. I love playing live, and the thing is now I want to prove myself in America. Some people will think “This guy sang that sweet little song True” but when they see us live, they might be surprised that it’s a lot heavier than they imagined.
➢ Tony’s US dates 2011 — Aug 13 Irving Plaza, New York; Aug 14 Northalsted Market Days Festival, Halsted Street, Chicago; Aug 16 House Of Blues, West Hollywood, Los Angeles; Aug 18 Ramona Mainstage, San Diego, CA; Aug 20 Fremont Experience, Fremont Street, Las Vegas; Aug 21 Red Devil Lounge, San Francisco.
➢ Tony’s Australia dates 2011 — Oct 26 Hindmarsh, South Australia; Oct 27 South Morang, Victoria; Oct 28 Doncaster, Victoria; Oct 29 Chelsea Heights, Victoria; Oct 30 Rewind Australia, Wollongong, NSW; Nov 3 Coolangatta, Queensland; Nov 4 Penrith NSW.
London riots, Saturday: Fire rages through the Carpet Right store in Tottenham, north London, after an arson attack
London riots, Saturday: three text messages sent via the BlackBerry BBM service by some organising hand to rally looters. (BBC)
❏ Tottenham Hale retail park, Saturday-Sunday: One looter asks the cameraman to look after his bike so it didn’t get nicked while he went inside the shops (by viceuk1)
❏ Fires over north London: Time lapse filming as Tottenham buildings burned into early Sunday morning (by itdrewitself).
❏ Update Aug 10: The photographer Amy Weston took this dramatic shot on Monday night in what she called a “war-zone”, meaning the outer London borough of Croydon where the House of Reeves furniture store was ablaze [below]. It was published on the front page of Tuesday’s final editions of the Guardian, Times, Sun, Daily Mirror and Daily Telegraph and in many other papers. Weston says: “In front of me was this fire with six or seven riot police and this lady falling from a window, but directly behind me was Surrey Street market where the larger stores sell electrical products… As I turned around it was like a war-zone… People were turning on each other and beating each other up, and mugging and robbing each other. That’s when I took my cardigan off and wrapped it round my camera so nobody could see what I had and I ran as fast as I could through that crowd back to my car.” Listen to the full four-minute interview for BBC Radio 4’s Media Show here:
London riots, Monday: the 144-year-old House of Reeves furniture store ablaze in Croydon, south London. A 33-year-old man was later charged with arson. (BBC)
❏ Driving through London riots: Video of looters ruling in Clapham about 21:30 Monday before police took control of the situation (by RussiaToday).
“Woodstein” the investigating double act: Robert Redford cast as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein in the colour-coded Washington Post newsroom built in Hollywood for the 1976 movie All the President’s Men
Fingertap. Clap hands. — Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee expressing his elation in All the President’s Men, after finally approving Woodward and Bernstein’s story of the century: “Run that baby!” [Exactly the same gesture that Charles Wintour would give at the London Evening Standard when elated]
◼ ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN should be compulsive viewing for everybody in public life in the UK right now. This, Robert Redford’s greatest achievement as producer, is also the greatest movie about how good journalism works. It examined the greatest crime in the history of American politics: the Watergate conspiracy that disgraced the White House in 1973. The scandal gave to our language the all-purpose suffix “-gate” for any corrupt activity in public life.
The film showed American journalism at the height of its power, and gave the language the team nickname “Woodstein”, derived from the two 30-year-old reporters who scooped the world, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Their investigations would lead in 1975 to the takedown of the highest office in the land: the presidency of Richard Nixon.
In 2006 a thorough and thrilling half-hour TV doc appeared titled Telling the Truth About Lies, reporting on the making of the 1976 feature film, All the President’s Men, directed by Alan J. Pakula and written by William Goldman. The doc directed by Gary Leva is as steeped in the integrity of the screenwriters and film-makers as much as the feature movie itself faithfully tries to honour the diligence and persistence and courage of everybody at the Washington Post, under the editorship of Ben Bradlee and the enlightened direction of its publisher Katharine Graham. Leva was of course finally able to report the identity of Deep Throat, Woodstein’s anonymous senior source in the FBI, which had remained a mystery for three decades.
Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post for three decades: here with reporters Carl Bernstein, left, and Bob Woodward in 1972. She put Ben Bradlee in charge and gave him “remarkable freedom in the newsroom”. (Copyright Mark Godfrey. Estate of Katharine Graham)
It was ATPM that inspired Nick Davies, the Guardian’s key reporter who has dug deep into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, to become an investigative journalist. Given the current climate of ineffectuality and guilt spreading through Britain’s parliament, police and press — as documented in this week’s Spectator under the claim that “The omertà of Britain’s press and politicians on phone-hacking amounts to complicity in crime” — All the President’s Men should be a reminder to everybody in the British press today of the campaigning John Pilger’s famous charge that the first duty of journalists is to be “tribunes of the people”.
Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee in All the President’s Men: click on image to run video clip
❏ Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee: “You guys are about to write a story that says the former attorney general, the highest ranking law enforcement officer in this country, is a crook. Just be sure you’re right.”
❏ ATPM on video — “We haven’t had any luck yet” — “Get some.”
❏ Producer and star Robert Redford who played reporter Bob Woodward: “I had to be extra diligent on being authentic. I spent so much time focussing on detail — the tiniest, tiniest details were important.”
❏ Bob Woodward on writing the book on which the film was based: “Carl Bernstein and I were going to do a standard narrative about Watergate from the perspective of the Nixon White House” . . . Redford: “I said my interest is different, my interest is you guys and how you worked” . . . Bernstein: “Woodward came up to me one day and said he’d gotten a call from Robert Redford, and I said what the hell about? And he said, well, he thinks the story is really us. At the time we were still reporting the story and we sure didn’t think the story was really us.”
❏ Redford on the Woodstein team: “One guy was a Wasp, the other guy was a Jew. One was a Republican, the other guy was a radical liberal. They didn’t really care for each other but they had to work together. Now, that dynamic is character driven.” It is also so often the truth about working relationships in a newspaper office. You don’t have to like each other to produce first-class journalism.
❏ The Washington Post was sceptical about cooperating, Redford said, because the film could turn out to be “Hollywood crap”. Screenwriter William Goldman: “I was terrified because you knew that everybody who was going to talk about this film had at one time or another been in a newsroom. We knew if we Hollywooded it up we would be in terrible trouble.” The film nevertheless won four Oscars in 1976.
EPIC FINAL SCENE: 9 AUG 1974, NIXON RESIGNS
❏ ATPM on video — Ben Bradlee: “Nothing’s riding on this except the first amendment of the constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country.”
BEN BRADLEE INTERVIEWED IN 1996
Allan Gregg In Conversation (above):Did you see a change in behaviour of politicians post-Watergate?
Ben Bradlee: “I thought I did for a few years afterwards. 1974 brought in a whole new young idealistic breed of congressman. For a while their ethics cast a shadow on the American political scene. It’s taken some years for them to work their way out of the system.
“But I don’t think I saw a fundamental change. I saw an increase in the fear of getting caught. I saw an increase in the quality of journalists joining the business – it attracted a lot of good young energetic people who were bright and dedicated. But, in long haul, I’m quite discouraged about the ethical content of American political life… Lying has become second nature to people; to fib first, and then lie.”
➢ Choose “View full site” – then in the blue bar atop your mobile page, click the three horizontal lines linking to many blue themed pages with background article
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
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU at page top to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH scroll down this sidebar
❏ 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
SEARCH our 925 posts or ZOOM DOWN TO THE ARCHIVE INDEX
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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