Britain's Crime Capitals: Birmingham

Beverley Thomas by the grave of her daughter

The second episode of Britain's Crime Capitals goes out tonight at 9pm on Channel 5 (and, obviously at 10pm on C5+1). This episode focuses on Birmingham's gang culture and the steps being taken to change it.

I met Beverley Thomas, whose daughter Charlene was shot dead in 2003. We spoke at Charlene's grave. As we walked back to the car she pointed out the graves of at least four other young people whose lives had been cut short by street violence.

On another occasion I met an interesting character who was subjected to a sustained machete attack by a group of people he took to be his friends. They left him for dead by a park in Handsworth. We took him back there for the first time since it happened. The resultant interview is worth watching.

I hope you can spare the time to catch the programme tonight, or view it after transmission on Demand 5.

Top Ten Albums: This is the Sea

I was given this album on tape by a boy two years older than me at school. Mackey. His surname was Maclean, so we called him Mackey. He didn't like me very much.

One day he handed me a cassette. "You'll like this." he said. "Ignore the trumpety shit at the beginning. It's good."

Because the album had been copied, I assumed the "trumpety shit" was something that had been imperfectly taped over.

I took the cassette out of his hand. "Why the trumpets?" I asked nervously, for something to say.

"How the fuck should I know!" he bellowed.

"Er, okay. Thanks." I said, as he stormed off, muttering.

That night, I lay on my bed and put my walkman on. When I was a kid I always listened to as much new music as I possibly could prone, and in the dark. Especially new stuff. No distractions.

There is quite a lot of trumpety stuff at the beginning. One minute, twenty-seven seconds in all (I've just timed it).

What follows is the most thrilling guitar riff ever. That first time, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I lay, rigid, my arms by my side, my feet stretched out in front of me and my eyes staring straight up at the ceiling frozen in a kind of goonish ecstasy. What a fucking beautiful sound. How was it even possible to make that screeching, grinding, melodic, electrifying... noise? Sweet Mary mother of Jesus - how good is this?

The brilliance of the opening track (Don't Bang The Drum) isn't matched in sonic terms by the rest of the album, but there were enough gems in there to elevate This Is The Sea and The Waterboys to (nearly) favourite band status for a good few years.

If you have never come across This is the Sea before, here's a quick tour:

Be My Enemy and Medicine Bow are two straight-up roister-doistering this-is-who-we-are-and-this-is-what-we-do pop songs. The music is uncomplicated celtic-soul-rock, made outstanding by arrangement, production and performance. Listening back, the lyrics seem genetically engineered to appeal to fourteen year old boys, which is, funnily enough, exactly how old I was when I first heard them.

Medicine Bow is about going on an epic journey to somewhere epic, whenceforth everything will be significantly better than it has been before:

There's a black wind blowing
A typhoon on the rise
Pummelin' rain
Murderous skies

I'm gonna take my boots
I'm gonna wear my coat
I'm gonna find my scarf
And wrap it around my throat

And you can come with me
Through the driving snow
We gonna ride on up to 
Medicine Bow

Be My Enemy is a fantasy about tracking down someone who is being an almost biblical pain in the arse, and duffing them up. 

I've got goons on my landing
Thieves on my trail
Nazis on my telephone
Willing me to fail
And they were all sent by someone
Obviously you

(...)

Now from the slime on your tongue to the nails on your toes
From the scales on your skin to the stains on your clothes
You're gonna make me have to do something, I do not want to do
But if you will be my enemy, I'll be your enemy too.

Every line is thoughtfully metred and measured, and the result is almost cartoon-ishly spot on. This is an exercise in lyrical rhetoric, and it is up there with the very best.

My hands are tied, nailed to the floor,
Feel like I'm knocking on unknown doors.
Gun at my back, blade at my throat, 
I keep on finding hatemail in the pockets of my coat,

Oh I've been, trying to grow
I have been, cooling my heels
I have been, working on the treadmill
I've been, working in the fields...

And I, can't get to sleep...

And I, can't catch my breath...

I can't stop talking and I look like death,

But I will put right this disgrace.

I will RE-ARRANGE YOU!

('Cos if you'll be my enemy, I'll be your enemy too).

Love it. Trumpets I can take or leave, and I was never that sold on Old England or The Whole of the Moon, but The Pan Within is kind of groovy, and This Is The Sea is a perfect album ender - 12-string guitars and we're-all-flowing-downstream-through-life-and-then-we-reach-the-sea-which-is-when-we-die-but-it's-great-because-we're-all-one-intermingling-of-celestial-energy lyrical gubbins.

As someone who had already happily consumed The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and most of CS Lewis, the album's celtic-leaning spirituality and Yeatsian imagery was perfect fodder at the perfect time.

Once I'd acquired This Is The Sea on vinyl (Mackey wanted his tape back) I dug out the first two Waterboys albums. They weren't as good, but they didn't disappoint. The title track of A Pagan Place is still my favourite Waterboys song, but I don't think anyone would deny This is the Sea marks the band's creative high point, and it just scrapes into my top ten albums ever.



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Postscript:

When I started this project, Max Velody, top TV producer, made the following comment on Facebook:

"A question. Will your top 10 albums be, the albums you think are the best, or, the albums you play the most, or, are they one and the same for you? I ask because whenever I mentally draw up these lists, I am aware that the two don't always match and I wonder, should they. For instance - I don't think Iggy Pop's Lust For Life would make it into my list of the top 10 albums ever, however, I have played it a few times each and every year since it came out, 37 years ago, and I don't think that's true of any other album I own. So maybe it should be in my top 10, maybe it should be number one. I just don't know....."

Which obviously got me thinking. Am I really writing up my top ten albums at all? I rarely listen to This is the Sea nowadays, and certainly haven't at any time over the last 5 years. Musically and lyrically, I've kinda moved on. It is a great album, but it is something of a period piece.

This is the Sea is in the top ten because it meant so much to me at the time. But there are plenty of albums like that. What is the difference between those which meant a lot when I was younger and made it into the list and those that didn't?

The Damned's Phantasmagoria changed my relationship to music overnight. It created a step-shift in my aesthetic at a time when I was frankly floundering and set me off on a journey of discovery which basically opened up The Cure, The Cult,  The Cocteau Twins, The Sisters of Mercy, all of punk, The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Mission etc to me. But I was thirteen and it is a terrible album. I'm embarrassed I ever liked it and you don't need to hear it.

So I will admit, part of the reason for presenting you a top ten album list is in the hope you will have a listen to them, and this has inevitably had an impact on what they are.

If I had to do a top ten album list based on how much particular records may have meant to me at particular stages of my life, it would be a pretty stringy list. It would also not be a true reflection of what I consider to the ten best albums I've ever heard.

But if I took out all the ropey albums which meant such a colossal amount to me at the time and tried to look objectively at everything I've ever listened to, the result would be even more pointless than it is already because the albums on the list would be there for technical or cultural reasons, rather than personal ones.

So in answer to your question Max, my top ten consists of:

- some albums which meant a lot to me at the time, but in retrospect, aren't objectively that good, or ones I particularly listen to now, but have something in them which is worth sharing.

- some albums I genuinely love but don't really listen to any more.

- some albums I still listen to a lot and seem to be getting closer to as we grow old together.

It doesn't contain some albums which meant more to me at the time than many of the records in my top ten, but which are nowhere near as good as I thought they were, and aren't worth sharing.

If you think this is getting over-thought, wait until we get onto the subject of compilations.

If you have no idea why I'm writing this, please read my introductory piece.

Britain's Crime Capitals

Always nice to get a photo listing in the Radio Times

At 9pm on Monday 14 April, you can see the first programme in a new series I'm presenting for Channel 5. It's made by twofour productions - responsible for The Hotel Inspector, Educating Yorkshire and Splash, among many other fine shows.

The first episode focuses on Liverpool. Over the course of the series, we also visit Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester. Each city has its own problems and its own way of dealing with them.

In the armoury

On Monday we visit a police ballistics facility (above) somewhere in England. I was allowed to fire a Glock handgun, using the same hollow point bullets Oscar Pistorious used to kill his girlfriend. 

To demonstrate the damage one of these bullets can do, I fire one into a block of custom-made "ballistics soap", designed to have the same consistency as human muscle. 

Even in a sterile and controlled environment, it's possible to get a sense of the catastrophic injuries these weapons are capable of inflicting on their targets.

I hope you can spare the time to watch or record Britain's Crime Capitals on Monday, or stream it on Demand 5 after transmission.

The England Football Shirt

is worth what people will pay for it.

There appears to be a small child trying to escape from Wayne Rooney's abdomen

The pricing point is aspirational. Not for the manufacturer, but the buyer. When you are dealing with something as ubiquitous and easy to produce as a polyester t-shirt, only a fraction of the value lies in the physical artefact. The drivel about  "engineered mesh" and "laser cut side panels" is just dismal marketing screed. It's made from recycled plastic bottles, same as the cheapo unbranded top I wear to the gym.

Most of the value of the product is bound up in the price. The higher the price, the more people aspire to own it, the more valuable it becomes.

There is, of course, a cut-off point at which a majority of potential customers will walk away, and this is where it gets clever. Ninety pounds for an England shirt is most likely well above that cut-off point. But who is actually going to pay the full amount?

Only the rich and stupid will be ordering them full price from the Nike website. No retailer is going to be buying these shirts in at £45 per unit, giving them huge scope for discounting. Many thousands of people this summer will be wearing official £90 football shirts they picked up from a discount retailer for closer to £60, believing they have won themselves a bargain in the process.

Ninety quid for the 2014 England Football Shirt is nothing to do with profit margins and everything to do with marketing and PR. Given the likely minuscule manufacturing cost, it barely matters to Nike's accountants whether they sell a million shirts at ninety quid or two million at forty-five. Announcing  the new England shirt at an essentially unaffordable price is a strategic decision made in order generate acres and acres of publicity.

And it's worked. The new rip-off England shirt is now part of the national conversation. The media is happy because it's got something to talk about, the politicians are happy because they can position themselves as being on the side of the poor football fan, incapable of not buying a new shirt every time it comes out. The fans are happy because they've got something to moan about. The retailers are cock-a-hoop because they've got so much scope for discount, yet can still preserve their margins.

The manufacturers are happy because any lingering idea that Umbro made England's shirts (which they did for more than 50 years) is being swiftly blown away. The Nike and England brands are in the process of being indelibly associated with each other.

And of course, everyone knows there is a new England shirt out. When we see it on sale for £60 at our local retail shed, we will at least go and have a look to see what the fuss is about. Ker-ching.

Yes it is another example of multi-national conglomerates turning powerful notions of identity, pride and common national experience, into a grubby, exclusionary, commercial process. Yes the whole sordid charade strips another shred from the twitching corpse of uncommodified social experience. Yes by explicitly introducing the concept of first ("match") and second ("stadium") class supporters the manufacturers are suggesting those who can't afford the top dollar shirts are not fit to wear them. Yes the wholesale capture of sport by capitalism is a degrading and dehumanising thing.

But we keep going back for more, don't we?

So who's the sucker?

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Showreel

A brief idea of what I've been up to over the last twelve months with some bonus pre-BBC Surrey news reporting at the back.

If you would like to get in touch directly, twitter is probably the best way. If you want to speak to my agent, his name is Chris North and his email address is chris@northmediatalent.com

(if you can't see the embedded video in this post, the showreel itself is hosted here on youtube. Please contact Chris if you require a DVD)

Bank of Scotland investigation

First broadcast: BBC1 Inside Out South, 3 March 2014

Copyright: BBC News

Info: A transcript of the film as broadcast is available here. The version above has had minor edits due to time constraints.

If the embedded video does not appear above, please watch it via this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z0ZDT1gC8s

A wander round Liverpool

Look carefully and you can see Gerry Marsden being held captive on the bridge

I was filming in Liverpool on Thursday and finished relatively early, so I had a bit of time to myself before catching a pre-booked train to Euston. 

I studied in Liverpool and worked for twelve months at the Liverpool Students' Union (LSU), running the student radio station, Shout FM. I had good times there, but I've only been back twice in the last eighteen years.

St Luke's church

So at 4.30pm on a chilly spring afternoon, with a couple of hours before my train, I checked my suitcase into left luggage at Lime St station and took myself up Renshaw St towards St Luke's church (the bombed out one).

Caesar's Palace, an insanely cheap burger restaurant which opened when I was there twenty years ago, was still doing business. Hurray.

They've turned Grand Central Hall into a Liverpudlian Affleck's Palace, and I enjoyed a quick browse, staring at all the clothes I wanted to buy but couldn't afford in the nineties. Now I can afford them I am too old to wear them.

Then up Hardman Street to its junction with Rodney St. There were three places still in business that I remember from 1996, the chippie, the 10 til 10 offy and the Valparaiso restaurant. The Valparaiso was always too expensive for my student budget, charging around £18 for a main course - quite fantastical prices in those days.

(l-r) 10 til 10, chippie, another offie and the Valparaiso restaurant 

I saw it almost every day for three years and wondered if I would ever be able to afford eating there. I did eventually cross the threshold when taken there by my girlfriend for a 21st birthday celebration lunch. As a pair of scruffy students, we looked a little out of place. Unfortunately I had drunk so much the night before, when I took my first bite of complimentary hors d'oeuvres I realised I was going to collapse, or throw up, or both.

Aldham Robarts. Beware. Books.

My girlfriend had the job of explaining the situation, whilst the waitress (who assumed I had taken one look at the menu prices and was engineering some kind of fit) tried to tell us there was a cheaper fixed price menu on the blackboard.

Maybe it wasn't meant to be. I walked north along Rodney Street and up towards the Aldham Robarts library (where I should have spent a lot more time than I did) and the Liverpool Students' Union. 

There was no security on the door, so I went in and had a look. Externally the building looks exactly the same. Internally, they've had a lot of work done.

Liverpool Students' Union, once known as The Haigh

Main bar. Where is everyone?

The bar (which received more of my custom over four years than any bar had or will) has had a refit. The other bar, in which I once saw Bill Bailey do a turn, was almost unrecognisable.

Main bar, looking from Maryland St end towards the bar

Was this really the room in which Matthew Bannister, then Controller of Radio 1, had to pause his session at the 1996 SRA spring conference every 4 minutes because the water squirting from the automatic flusher on the stainless steel gents urinals was so loud he couldn't hear himself think? Yes, friends, it was.

The other bar. Note shiny, wipedown floor.

I was just leaving when I thought I'd go and say hello to the union president. I went upstairs and saw a floor plan for the building. On the first floor was... no... could it be... a student radio station?

Shout FM closed down in the late 90s. It lost a lot of funding and someone did over the studios. With no kit or cash, things were always going to be problematic, so that was that. Although I never made enquiries, I always hoped I might see an SRA awards entry from Shout FM or a rebranded Liverpool John Moores University version thereof. 

Shout FM (and Shout magazine, which gave the station its name) are dead. In their place stands a magazine and radio station I thought might be LOO-preville, before settling on Looper Evil. 

DJ Daniel Fagan on the ones and, er, computerised playout system

As no one had yet stopped to ask me who I was and what I thought I was doing, I decided to see if there was anyone at the studios, and regale them with tales of how it was all very different in my day.

The door to the studios was (thank god) locked, but I heard music and voices within. I knocked. A very shy, polite man called Danny Fagan opened the door. He invited me in, and being very polite, allowed me to see the new radio desk and let me tell him how it was all very different in my day.

He also told me it was LOOPreville, or as I had yet to notice, "Liverpool" backwards. Danny didn't know much about the radio station, other than it had been going for three or four years and now broadcast online. He apologised for there not being many people around, explaining that because he was a first year he got the early show. I looked at my watch. It was 5.15pm.

Danny was politely engaged in giving me the station manager's email address when a song began to fade out. "It looks like you might have a link to do." I said.

Danny replied "Oh don't worry, I'll just play the next song", which he did.

"There's only three people listening anyway" piped up his mate.

"Yeah, true." said Danny pointing to the internet traffic screen mounted above the radio desk.

I thanked Danny for his time. I told him working at Shout FM was my way into the media, and he said he wanted a career in the media too. There are worse ways of going about it.

The Pilgrim pub

I tracked north into Pilgrim Street (home of the famous Pilgrim pub in which I had my 22nd birthday party) and west into Hope Place where I lived for two years, at number 10. 

10 Hope Place, second door from the right

We got lucky with that house and looking at the street today it's obvious we wouldn't be able to afford living there now.

The other side of the street in Hope Place - the Unity Theatre

I walked up the rest of Hope Place, turned right onto Hope Street and then took an immediate right down Rice street to get a shot of Ye Cracke, which is a proper lefty boozer, and apparently also home to a John Lennon graffito. It was certainly frequented by him.

Ye Cracke

Back onto Pilgrim Street I continued towards my favourite building in the world, Liverpool's Anglican cathedral. But first, a photo of some bins.

Liverpool is big on purple bins. Fact.

I paused to take a snap of my old faculty, the Dean Walters building, and trotted into the cathedral.

The Dean Walters building

It's such a vast building any photo I can take with my camera is not going to convey a fraction of its vaulting bulk.

Too big to fit in the ruddy camera hole!

Just to add to the effect there was a full choir evensong going on inside. It felt rude to take a photo of that, so here's one of a scale model of the cathedral in red Lego.

I know! Make it smaller. And redder.

It's a magical place and worth a visit to Liverpool just to see it. The cathedral. Not the Lego model.

With added sunlight. It looks like Nemesis the Warlock in this shot.

Giant neo-gothic building interior 1

Giant neo-gothic building interior 2

I started back towards Lime St station from the southern end of Hope Street, popping off a few photos along the way.

Hope Street suitcases sculpture

It used to be Casablancas nightclub. Now it's just called Casas. Note Bob Crow tribute banner.

Hope Street appears to be the smartest address in Liverpool nowadays and everything looks very spruce, including the recently refurbished Everyman theatre.

The Everyman Theatre

The Liverpool Catholic Cathedral. Known locally as Paddy's Wigwam, but not now that's racist.

I turned left at the Catholic cathedral, down Mount Pleasant and right along Clarence St to see what happened to one of my favourite pubs in Liverpool, Bonapartes.

The cream building used to be Bonapartes. That weird one next to it is new.

Bonapartes closed down in the late 90s, but if they can resurrect student radio stations they can do anything.

St George's Hall from the steps to Lime St station

With a hop skip and a jump I was back at Lime St, marvelling at the peerless St George's Hall and tripping on enough Proustian rushes to last me another eighteen years. Liverpool gave me the time of my life. All things pass.

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