CHERCHEZ LA FEMME

Mesdames et Messieurs, I give you .... France's new first lady, Mrs Sarkozy, doing what she does best. I listened to some of her own songs and frankly, I wouldn't impose that on my worst enemy. It appears she has an album due out this year produced by pop svengali Dave Stewart. Now call me cynical, but the lengths some people will go to to get publicity. Even Michael Jackson wouldn't do that.

Of course if she's been planted by the Socialist party, she is a national treasure, and may have saved France. The pistol firing gesture may be to demonstrate what she has just done to Sarkozy's popularity ratings.

RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE

Those of you who were around during the last World Cup will remember that I am an aficionada of world-class football (not entirely incompatible with supporting Charlton Athletic), and have the offside rule engraved on my heart. As a gel, my poster boys were Johann Cruyff, Mick Channon, Pele and the immortal George Best as well as Lord Byron, Che Guevara and David Cassidy. However club football in Europe has become corrupted by money, TV rights and supermodels, and when a comely ignoramus is invited to no.10 Downing Street to advise the Prime Minister I think we've given the ball away.


A world-class football tournament has just started in Accra, Ghana. The 26th African Cup of Nations showcases the best 16 national teams from all over the continent, who between them can field a dozen or more Premiership players, not to mention as many again from the top clubs of continental Europe. Anyone who follows the beautiful game could name a handful of top class African players off the top of their head: Michael Essien, Didier Drogba, El Hadj Diouf to name but three. In contrast to some of our home-grown overpaid publicity-mad thugs and chavs, many of the African stars, such as Nigeria's Nwankwo Kanu, have used their wealth to give something back to their home countries, and George Weah, the Liberian who held the African Footballer of the Year, European Footballer of the Year and FIFA World Player of the Year awards simultaneously in 1995, even ran for President in last year's elections. Thankfully he lost against the former Vice President of the World Bank, which is possibly good news for the Liberian economy. I do hope Beckham isn't getting any ideas.


Africa is the new South America as far as football is concerned. African players are fast, skilled, courageous, stylish, daring and motivated. They don't dive or play for time. They go for goals, goals, and more goals. Not a minute on the pitch is wasted. They attack and defend with equal dedication. From their animal-crackers team nicknames (Super Eagles of Nigeria, the Elephants of Cote d'Ivoire, the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, the Squirrels of Benin) to their inventive and comical goal celebrations, African players put the fun back into football. The Beninois tried psyching out the opposition with intimations of supernatural practices (Benin is the home of voodoo) but the result of their first match against Cote d'Ivoire showed that if elephants are afraid of mice, as is believed, they're not spooked by squirrels. Benin were thrashed 4-1 and have sacked their juju man.


When we lived in Accra, Harold joined the supporters club of Hearts of Oak, known to fans as "Phobia", and thereby gained a speedy entry to Ghanaian male society (and bars). Watching the joyful scenes on Thursday night when Ghana beat Namibia in their second match in the group, after victory over Guinea last Sunday, in my mind I was dancing down Osu High Street in a conga line clutching a bottle of "Stah Beah" (Star Beer).


I am supporting the Black Stars of Ghana in ACN2008, with the Super Eagles of Nigeria as a fallback if Ghana get knocked out. The BBC has a full guide of all the teams competing and match schedules. The final will be on February 10th.

Woyaya? Woyaya?

MAKE LOVE NOT WAR

Janis Joplin would have been 65 today. Just her name conjures up a whole vision of the era -- psychedelia, flower power, free love, tie-dyed T-shirts, Woodstock, Monterey, Ravi Shankar, patchouli oil, Dany the Red, incense sticks, Roger Dean album covers, cheesecloth, Vietnam, Herman Hesse, Doors of Perception, "Hair!", Scott McKenzie warbling about San Francisco, Angela Davis... of course (ahem!) I was far too young to be a hippie, but I do appreciate that it was a youth movement of great creativity and kindly intentions. They thought they were going to change the world and save the planet. Whereas today's yoof movements have no such lofty ambitions and simply want to wear lots of "bling", talk like Ali G and meet Bart Simpson. It breaks your heart, really it does.



As was the fashion in those days, Janis died aged 27 of drug-related causes. Knowing what we know now about the longer-term effects of prolonged drug use, we should praise her for her far-sightedness. Did you see dear old Ringo on the Jonathan Ross show last night? I fear Janis might have gone the same way had she lived. Still doing the V-sign for peace, bless him. You could tell he wasn't really with the programme any more couldn't you. He used to be my favourite too. I always fancied the drummers. Wossie looked a bit like a kindly nephew visiting a cantankerous old uncle in an old people's home. His new album was pretty rubbish too. I have a sort of theory that as you get older your musical tastes get more conservative. Old people who were 25 when Elvis was around are sitting in rest homes listening to Mantovani and military brass bands. My theory is that it all inevitably leads to Max Bygraves. When you find yourself grinning stupidly and tapping your arthritic old fingers to "Tulips from Amsterdam", the Grim Reaper is keeping time with his scythe.


This is just plain wrong! I have an elderly friend, Imelda, who is refreshingly groovy for an old fogey. She wears tie-dyed caftans and flowers in her hair on a Sunday, and still plays her old Buffalo Springfield and Jefferson Airplane LPs on an old stereo turntable. She is now 83 and still going strong despite smoking like a chimney, and even has a good-looking young man (not her son) who comes round and walks her to the post office to collect her pension. She gives him a little something for his trouble, as she is generous to a fault and like all old hippies, has no sense of the value of money. And where's the harm in that, I ask you? If I can afford a good-looking young man on my pension, I will do so.


Imelda is truly an ageing flower child. She claims not only to have gone to school with John Lennon but to have shared digs with Janis Joplin in San Francisco in the good old days (among a number of other outrageous stories). If you can believe her claims, she was at Woodstock, Haight-Ashbury, on the Magic Bus, on a kibbutz, had an affair with a Black Panther or three, danced down Oxford Street chanting Hare Krishna, and rode pillion with the Maidstone chapter of the Hell’s Angels. She even claims to have been engaged to Che Guevara but I’m not sure I believe that. The eroding effect on her brain of far too many substances over the years, not all of them legal, have left her a little, well, vague. But nobody really minds her being a little creative with the truth, as her stories are so entertaining. The one about Jimi Hendrix, the cleaning fluid and the hamster ... oh you'd crease up. Her anaesthetic of choice comes in amber liquid form these days. And I don’t mean Lucozade. But she refuses to roll over and join the cardigan-and-slippers brigade, and keeps a herbal cigarette ready in a wooden box for her final journey. Gawd bless her.


When I was a gel we had convictions (Imelda had one for possession if I remember correctly). The mood of the day was defined by the Vietnam War, which exercised us in Britain EVEN THOUGH OUR GOVERNMENT HAD THE GUTS TO TELL THE AMERICANS TO GET LOST WHEN THEY ASKED US TO HELP OUT. Now we don't have national service, or the "draft" as the Yanks called it, and one wonders if the US had had a professional army in those days, would the great unwashed have cared as much. You certainly won't see protests against Iraq in America or Britain like you did in the early 1970's. Vietnam was the wake-up call which dragged the hippies out of their technicolour dream, and stopped the sitar music suddenly with a discordant twang. Milos Forman's 1979 film of the musical "Hair!" missed the boat as far as the zeitgeist went but is a perfect depiction of the mood of the time. The final seven minutes still make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. George W. Bush just wouldn't get it.


Peace and love, brothers and sisters. (V-sign).

BRIEF ENCOUNTER

The Morecambe and Wise sketch in my last post reminded me of a true story that occurred back in Paris in the 1980s. I had arranged to meet some friends at that bastion of existentialism Les Deux Magots. When I arrived, my friend Don who was visiting from England was already sitting at a table on the terrace. He cocked his head to the right with a "don't make it too obvious" roll of the eyes.

"D'you recognize that old bloke at the next table?" he hissed.

I looked and saw a handsome silver-haired man in his early 60s with piercing blue eyes, deep in conversation with his companions, speaking fluent French.

"Mmm, face rings a bell," I replied. "Think he's an academic. Sure I've seen him on one of those late-night book shows."

My friend leaned forward conspiratorially.

"He was just being interviewed by French TV," he told me. "I'm sure he's a film director."

We both studied the neighbour out of the corners of our eyes, none too surreptitiously probably, and tried to eavesdrop on his conversation, without any success. Two other friends of different nationalities turned up in due course, and after they also failed to recognize the old bloke at the next table, we lost interest in him and started talking in a mixture of French, English and Spanish about other matters.

To our surprise, a while later the neighbour interrupted us in perfect slightly American-accented English.

"Excuse me," he began, with a bewitching smile. Our whole table stopped in mid-sentence and turned to him with a "Yes?" in quadrophonic sound.

"I hope you don't mind, but I just wanted to say how wonderful it is, on such a lovely summer day, to see four young people of different nationalities who are obviously such good friends."

If we hadn't suspected he was famous we would have told him to take a hike. However, we spotted our chance to find out who he was, and launched into cheery banter with him, trying every which way to slip in a question which would reveal his identity. He of course knew (a) that we hadn't got a clue who he was, and (b) that we were too embarrassed to admit it, and had great fun evading our questions, with a twinkle in those blue eyes.

At some point in the conversation it became obvious that he was Jewish. He seemed to be directing his speech more and more towards one of my friends who was from Algeria, and told us an interesting tale about a Jewish princess who had led a pre-Islamic North African tribe to victory, a sort of Jewish Joan of Arc.

Eventually he got up to leave with his companions, and shook our hands, saying how much he had enjoyed meeting us. We reciprocated with a growing sense of panic, feeling the opportunity to identify him slipping away. He then walked around the table to our Algerian friend, took his hand in both of his, looked into his eyes and said: "Salaam". Hassan responded immediately with a gracious: "Shalom".

And then he was gone. Leaving us all kicking ourselves, me muttering "professor", and Don still insisting "film director". Hassan was just sitting looking thoughtful.

"So why did you say Shalom?" I asked him.

"I don't know." he replied. "It just seemed ... right."

"Well, I'm sure I'll see him on a late-night book show one of these days and I'll be able to tell you who he is."

A week or so later, I was watching TV at home, when suddenly there was our friend from Les Deux Magots on the telly! He was, inexplicably, standing up in the back of a flat-bed truck playing the violin for the Tour de France cyclists. As soon as I saw the violin I kicked myself. How could we not have recognized Sir Yehudi Menuhin??!!!

I phoned Don in England immediately and told him. "Nah it wasn't," he replied confidently. "He was definitely a film director."

I read somewhere later that Sir Yehudi was famous for always trying to solve the Arab-Israeli problem single handedly with gestures such as the one we witnessed.

Have you got any good stories about meeting famous people?

FOR ANOTHER FOUR QUID WE COULD HAVE GOT EDWARD HEATH!

On New Year's Eve, two important facts were revealed to me:

1. Jools Holland's Hootenanny is not broadcast live.

2. Smoked salmon with mascarpone cheese is a marriage made in heaven.


The truth about Jools Holland had been revealed to me only that day by a comment on Flying Rodent's blog. I dismissed it as an irrelevance. By midnight (11 p.m. in UK), I calculated, I would be so happily sloshed that I wouldn't care. I was wrong. I wasn't that sloshed. Now I knew the truth, everything Jools said to his self-conscious audience gave the game away. His time-checks were deliberately vague. I should have realized that Kylie, Sir Paul McCartney and Dr Who would have had better things to do on Hogmanay than to spend it in a draughty BBC studio sipping blackcurrant juice and pretending to be delirious with joy at the passing of another year. Seasick Steve probably hadn't got anything better to do, either in October or December, and looked genuinely pleased to be there, if a little nonplussed that Kylie didn't want to dance with him on the stroke of midnight. (Especially as it was probably only 3.00 in the afternoon). Predictions for the coming year were carefully worded so as not to let the cat out of the bag, but one clanger slipped through, when Beverly Knight expressed a wish that Led Zeppelin would reform in 2008, their comeback concert having taken place only a week before. I expect they thought by this time everyone would be so happily sloshed that they wouldn't care. By the time the dreaded pipers came on (no-one is safe from the tartan terrors on Hogmanay) the oatcakes were tasting decidedly stale.


The rest of the BBC's New Year's Eve viewing was a series of repeats. Not even repeats that are worth watching, like the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special with Andre Previn. Oh no, a repeat of "Extras" from two nights ago. And a repeat of Buzzcocks or something from the previous night. And something about the Spice Girls which was mildly entertaining only by virtue of not being a repeat. It hasn't ended with New Year either. For the last two nights - AT THE SAME HOUR - we have had to endure Three Men in Another Boat - and it's on again tonight!! Do they think we have the memory of goldfish, or what? If it's not those other two blokes on motor bikes shouting to each other through headphones it's three comics shouting at each other on a boat. If I was a licence payer I'd be firing off a letter to Points of View every day.


The BBC is worrying me. BBC World is turning into BBC America. Prices of everything are now given in dollars. And the other day they had to append a short explanation to the term "Boxing Day". The format already mimics that of Sky News. Next thing you know, they'll be serving Budweiser in the Queen Vic the nurses in Holby City will be running around in pyjamas, and Robin Hood will have an American accent. Ye gods, is nothing sacred?



For anyone who was also disappointed by the televisual dross offered up on New Year's Eve and since then, I invite you to sit back with a plate of Norwegian smoked salmon and mascarpone on toast and enjoy 10 minutes of the best, IMHO, Christmas viewing ever broadcast. This is how it's done.