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| Ol’ Blue Eyes was a red,
says Martin |
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Martin Smith
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I WAS surprised to believe that that arch Mafia groupie, Ol’
Blue Eyes – Frank Sinatra himself – was a good old leftie?
The Mafia, of course, were red baiters and Sinatra has always
been linked with the Mob,
But, it seems, writer Martin Smith, h as unearthed the real Sinatra
in When Ol’ Blue Eyes was a Red (Redwords, price £5.99).
When I met Smith at the launch of his book at a packed Bar 101
in New Oxford Street on Tuesday, he told me that Sinatra grew
up in an atmosphere of racial intimidation and bigotry. “It
was this and his mother’s influence – she was a local
Democrat activist – that gave him a burning hatred of racism
that stayed with him,” he said. He became more right-wing
from the 1960s but Smith likes to remember his good side. “I’d
like to think of My Way as the New International or the new Red
Flag.”
Labour ‘faces meltdown’ at the Town Hall
A SECRET report – published this week – has warned
that Labour could lose power at the Town Hall.
Drawn up by Adam Gray on behalf of the London Labour party, the
report, Electoral Strategy and Analysis, takes an overview of the
party in London and concludes that it could face ‘meltdown’
in next May’s local elections.
Although the report admits that Labour has a majority of 18 on Camden
council it predicts problems as Labour “is under attack on
at least three fronts”. from the Greens, the Tories and the
Lib-Dems. If any of these parties convince voters that the only
way to hit Labour is to vote for them, there could be “severe
problems.”
This report, I believe, is not going over the top. In Somers Town,
a personable Respect candidate, Nueuzzaman Hira – known as
Mukul – whose family runs the local Halal shop, puts Labour
at risk while Highgate was a three-way marginal last time.
Other shaky wards for Labour are Camden Town and Fortune Green.
All far-fetched? A Labour group member said: “Although the
majority looks a lot, it only takes a few seats to start falling
and things could become precarious, quicker than people might realise.”
A harrowing tale from Alan
THAT quiet man, Alan Bennett, who I often see around in Camden
Town, has unburdened himself with a harrowing description of how
his mother was, effectively, starved to death in an old people’s
home.
Bennett, who avoids self-publicity like the plague, didn’t
blame anyone for the way his mother’s life ended. His simple
description of his mother’s last weeks in his new memoir Untold
Stories (Faber, price £20), stay unwholesomely in the mind.
I thought of the way we treat old people when I dashed out for a
sandwich yesterday (Wednesday) and suddenly saw a frail, old grey-haired
woman, so small and fragile that you felt she could be blown away
like an autumnal leaf.
She had stopped in front of me, perhaps out of breath, and a young
woman, no doubt her daughter, was holding her, tenderly. A little
child held the old woman’s hand.
All three caring for each other. The point is that they were an
Asian family – perhaps Muslims – and I thought how people
from such an ancient culture care for each other while we in modern
societies are so indifferent to the elderly, so many of them thrown
out of families at the end of their lives and put away, forgotten,
in homes, where, as Alan Bennett wrote, they are likely to die from
lack of care and compassion.
Silence! Quiet when our glorious leader
speaks
THE biggest smile I saw at the Labour party conference on Tuesday
was wrapped around the face of former Camden mayor Ramen Bhattacharya
as he was repeatedly told off for heckling during Tony Blair’s
speech. He looked rather pleased with himself – and even gave
me a cheeky wink.
Ramen, who lives in Belsize Park, was told to shush five times during
the PM’s address, at one point falling of his chair as he rocked
around in disgust. The trigger words seemed to be “terrorism”,
“democracy” and “values”. Mr Blair’s dutiful
disciples who rush to clap their hands sore in the conference hall
and others who crowd around monitors in the corridors weren’t
impressed. They called security. But they didn’t bring one
of the gunmen who guard the hotel entrances. Nor one of the bouncers
who patrol the conference complex with blaring walkie talkies. Instead,
the fawning Blairites who wanted Ramen quietened were sent an elderly
lady. “You must be quiet,” she croaked. “You must.”
Needless to say, it didn’t work and Ramen kept shouting. Afterwards,
he offered to say sorry to the pensioner steward with a kiss.
The offer was declined and Ramen trundled off smiling to himself.
I’m Tessa! Not Estelle
MOST ministers are resigned to the fact that they are going to
bump into journalists in the conference corridors and asked tricky
questions. But you had to pity culture minister Tessa Jowell, (pictured)
a Kentish Town resident, on Tuesday afternoon when she was door-stepped
by a Scandinavian reporter who seemed convinced that she was actually
interviewing Estelle Morris. Tessa did her best to put the confused
journalist right but, as I waited for my own audience with the culture
minister, it didn’t seem the message had got through.
“Estelle is somebody else,” she said desperately. “I’m
Tessa Jowell. I’m Tessa.”
No small Fry
Actor, author, comic, film director, producer, presenter are
among the many talents of West Hampstead resident Stephen Fry. Now
he is about to reveal his passion for poetry – and his own
poems – at next month’s major Cheltenham Festival of Literature.
And already he has almost filled to capacity The Centaur, a new
conference site on the Cheltenham Racecourse site, which accommodates
2,200 people.
“We have so far sold 2,000 seats for Stephen Fry, so he will
be sold out before the festival opens on October 7,” says director
Sarah Smyth. Indeed Fry (pictured) is way ahead of the field for
the festival, which has currently sold more than 40,000 seats compared
with 26,500 at the same time last year, thanks partly to new sponsorship
by The Times newspaper. Rory Bremner has sold 900 seats while the
American writer Alice Walker, author of The Colour Purple.
Some 20 authors, journalists and commentators from Camden and Islington
are taking part in the 10-day festival. Among them are Booker prize
winner Alan Hollinghurst, Alan Bennett, David Starkey, Julia Neuberger,
Hilary Spurling, Matthew Sturgis, Jon Snow, Brian MacArthur and
Sue MacGregor.
• For details go to www.cheltenhamfestivals.org.uk.
Tickets are available on 01242 227979.
No debate, unlike the good old days
OUR literary editor, Illtyd Harrington, couldn’t stop
himself from borrowing a woolly hat and a blue scarf and joining
a march of 5,000 rowdy, down-to-earth protesters outside the Labour
Party conference in Brighton this week – they were clamouring
for deputy prime minister, John Prescott’s approval of a
new football stadium in the town.
They reminded him of the old days when the conference was alive
with protests and debate. Not sanitised and sealed off from the
world by armed police as it was this week. He sighed for the past
as he watched the dark suited delegates, trooping into the hall,
all part of an anonymous machine.
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Look for vintage not barcode
WE are in the middle of a revolution in food. Farmers’
markets and small shops specialising in naturally produced and seasonal
produce are challenging the supermarkets.
When it comes to wine, however, we are going in the opposite direction.
FULL STORY...
... and another thing....
Typical isn’t it? You leave the country for a few days
and when you get back everything you thought you knew is wrong.
FULL STORY...
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