This is an open letter to the people of the United States of America.

Dear USA:

When President DONALD J. DUCK was elected in 2020, over Hillary Clinton, I finally realised that there was, in the United States between the two forms of corruption that were on offer.

It was never going to be an easy victory, but I sense – and this is only a guess – that, had Mrs Clinton got into office and then lost the subsequent election to Trump, she would not have engaged in the kind of undemocratic skullduggery which we saw from Trump and his supporters during the infamous riots of January 6, 2021.

Four years is a long time in politics, and since 2017 the United Kingdom – that’s us – has got through FOUR prime ministers, all conservative, in THERESA MAY, BORIS JOHNSON, LIZ TRUSS and RISHI SUNAK. If you follow our constitutional monarchy, you’ll know that we’ve had all kinds of trouble, not the least of which was the death of QUEEN ELIZABETH II in 2022 after a whopping seventy years on the metaphorical ‘throne.’ When she ascended to the throne in 1952, Albert Einstein was still alive.

Now, dear friends in the USA, you approach another election this November with an effective choice in (like ours) a two-party political system. And last week was the first debate between incumbent president Biden, and the former president Trump, supposedly battling it out on our screens for some kind of reelection. Trump knew that all he had to do was stand back and watch as Biden fell over himself verbally, forgot where he was in mid sentence, and essentially showed that, because of his age, he is not fit for any kind of public office, never mind President of the United States of America.

If you care to look back through the history of my rants, you will find that I was making this very point at the time of the last election in 2020. For what it’s worth, I was also making the point that, should it happen (it did) and Trump were to lose the election, he would not take defeat well. He didn’t. He almost brought the country to its knees because he is a sore loser.

I shall reiterate: Biden will be 82 in November; Trump will be 78. That’s crazy. Suddenly, RONALD REAGAN‘s 1985 crack about not making political capital out of his opponent’s youth and inexperience isn’t funny any more. You are voting, should you choose to do so, for a man who will – even if he is still living, which at the moment does not look like a guarantee – be 86 at the time that he gracefully hands the keys to the White House over to its next inhabitant. Donald Trump, should you be mental enough to vote for him, will himself be 82. You never know what can happen in life, but you are voting for one of two candidates who statistically may not live to see out their four years. And even if they do, what kind of mental state will either candidate be in, Biden’s health being of particular concern.

Seriously, America, from a country boasting a massive population of almost 340 million people – that, incidentally, is the third highest in the world after India and China – you cannot find two better candidates for each party, Democrat and Republican, than these two ancient clowns? And, quite rightly, you could fire it right back at us in the UK and say, well, what about you lot? You have 67 million souls in your country and, seriously, Sunak and SIR KIER STARMER (Labour) are the best you can do? And forget the Liberal Democrats, because they will just get into bed with whoever asks them and drop their own policies to do it. And I would be forced to agree with you.

I have nothing against wealth. It just so happens that Rishi Sunak’s personal fortune is double that of his own monarch, and Donald Trump’s current net worth is around $6.5 BILLION, according to Bloomberg. That, according to them, makes him one of the world’s richest people. But, as a well-worn cliche tells us, he didn’t get where he is today…blah, blah, blah…

The next 4-5 years are going to be very interesting indeed at the very least, and extremely worrisome at the worst. We could be at war with Russia with our cities lain to waste and millions of our people dead, or we could be under the fist of a conservative faction that cares nothing for us, for our public services, and for our future as a safe place to live and work.

Oh, it seems that you’re in the same boat.

Cheers,

Stephen x

Dear Reader(s):

At the time of writing, an historical event is about to take place in London this coming Saturday. I am writing, of course, about the coronation of our current monarch, King Charles III at Westminster Abbey on Saturday, May 6, 2023.

I read somewhere that less than a quarter of the population of the United Kingdom can remember the last coronation, which took place in June 1953, also at Westminster Abbey. Indeed, according to the BBC, Charles III will be the fortieth monarch to be crowned there since 1066.

Actually, when you think about it, less than fifty monarchs covering a period of just under a thousand years is not a lot. Of course, we have one or two lengthy reigns to thank for that – our dear late Queen Elizabeth II, Victoria, George III, Elizabeth I and Edward III, all of whom reigned for 45 years or more. Indeed, the five I’ve just mentioned racked up a total of 264 years between them, roughly.

Nerdy, historical interest is about all I have in our monarchy. I am neither religious nor a monarchist, and therefore I could care less about the coronation. I will not be watching it, and I certainly won’t be swearing any form allegiance to King Charles or his descendants.

One of the weirder aspects of having a monarchy, especially a constitutional (i.e., pointless) one, is that one day you are calling Charles “Your Royal Highness,” yet the very next day it’s “Your Majesty.”

I’m sorry to argue with one of His Majesty’s earlier namesakes, King Charles II, but there is no divine right of Kings. How is it, for example, that one family says that God has chosen them to rule over a certain part of land, then another family comes along and says, no, actually God chose us to rule over this particular piece of land, and we’re going to either banish you from these lands or we’re going to kill you. They can’t both be right, can they? And, to complicate matters further, we never seem to hear from The Big G himself on this matter.

Religion is, of course, a big deciding factor in these situations. All of that was complicated further by Henry VIII, who set up his own church so that he could divorce his first wife and marry Ann Boleyn. I don’t know what religious justification he used to chop her head off, though, or to marry a further four times.

But even Henry VIII didn’t do what Charles III is doing, and neither did Edward VIII, for that matter, the monarch who had to give up his throne rather than go ahead and marry a divorcee – and an American, at that. Charles has ascended the throne, and is being crowned, having already divorced and remarried. It wasn’t so long ago that the Church of England – Henry VIII’s church, remember – refused to marry divorcees in their churches, the hypocrites. If Charles’ grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, were alive today, she’d be spinning in her grave. All that time she spent ruining the lives of her brother-in-law, her sister-in-law, not to mention her husband, would have come to nothing. But, looking on the bright side, if she hadn’t have done all those things, Colin Firth would never have won the Oscar®.

In February of 2022, Queen Elizabeth II issued a rare statement, in which she said that it was her fervent wish that Charles’ wife Camilla be known as Queen Consort. This was in recognition of the fact that she could not be queen in the traditional sense, owing to her being a) a commoner and b) a divorcee. Now, it makes no difference to me what they call her, but Charles is expressly going against that by slowly drip-feeding it into the media that she will be known as Queen Camilla. Her ex-husband, and her five children by that marriage, are all going to be at the Coronation on Saturday! Imagine if that were Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn! Bloody war would have broken out during the ceremony. I don’t suppose if anyone knows whether the Earl Spencer has been invited, by any chance?

In another ‘break from tradition,’ the service is going to include elements from other faiths. Apparently, this is Charles’ attempt at recognising Britain as a multi-cultural nation. Indeed it is, but the traditionalists are having kittens over the idea that Charles is, on the one hand, swearing to defend the Church of England as the one true faith, and then saying, well, actually it isn’t, in the same ceremony.

Many saw the death of the late Queen Elizabeth II, just weeks after having celebrated 70 years as queen, as an opportunity to say, look, you had a good run, let’s ditch this whole ridiculous monarchy business and get ourselves an elected Head of State. No, kids, the Prime Minister is not a head of state. France, for example, manages quite well thank you very much with a President and a prime minister. Now, I’m not suggesting we lop anybody’s head off, but we could give them one of their palaces, such as Sandringham for example, and let them live out their wealthy, spoiled lives in peace and out of the public gaze. All except Prince Harry, of course, who’s clearly made a new life for himself out in Beverly Hills with his American commoner divorcee wife.

All of this and more are some of the key reasons why I will not be watching the coronation on Saturday, or swearing allegiance to anyone, because it seems they want to have their cake and eat it, as usual. They want the tradition of a ceremony in which they are crowned as monarchs, thereafter they will serve no political or social purpose, and furthermore they want to change the bits that suit them and expect us all merely to accept it. God hasn’t chosen them to ‘rule’ over us, he/she/they has/have simply elected a family to enjoy and pass on to their kids incredible wealth and privilege, and chosen us all to watch them while they do it.

Personally, I’d like a place in the ceremony where Charles rolls up the Order of Service into a tight ball, covers it in ketchup, and eats it with a bread roll and some tartar sauce. x

As you can see from the title, and assuming you live under a rock with no access to any news outlet whatsoever, Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis Presley, died on January 12 this year, 2023.

In an amazing coincidence that always seems to be pinned upon such event, she passed away on the 50th anniversary of a rehearsal performance that her father gave at what was then known as the Honolulu International Center Arena, ready for a concert the following night that would be beamed around the world via satellite,. to an audience upwards of one and a half billion people, a figure that still holds the record today as the biggest audience for a live television broadcast by a solo performer (i.e., not counting Live Aid or similar events).

In a further twist of irony, she passed away in the same week that she made two very rare public appearances – one at her ancestral home in Memphis, Tennessee, hereinafter referred to as ‘Graceland,’ and the second at Hollywood’s Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles, California, two days later. A further two days after that, she was found unresponsive at her California home. Just as happened with her father, her family are being somewhat cagey about the cause of death, which usually means only one thing – drugs.

When she appeared at Graceland on January 8, it was to celebrate what would have been her father’s 88th birthday. Unbelievably, perhaps, but yet another acknowledgement of Elvis Presley’s cultural impact on the world, hundreds, if not thousands, of people turned up in the cold weather to watch Lisa Marie cut a huge cake and make a very short speech in which she stated clearly that meeting her father’s fans was almost the only thing that could get her out of the house these days.

On July 12, 2020, Lisa’s only son, Benjamin Storm Keough, died by suicide at a party given at his mother’s home in Calabasas, California. The motive for it has never been revealed, except to say that he did suffer from depression, and had been involved in some sort of an argument with his girlfriend immediately prior to the suicide. After the argument, he simply walked into his bathroom and blew his brains out, calm as you like.

Why he decided to do it at that moment has always been unclear, but the motive doesn’t matter; his mother, Lisa Marie, was devastated. It broke her heart. Now, despite the fact that they never met in life, Ben is now buried at Graceland, in the Meditation Garden, alongside Elvis, Elvis’ parents Gladys and Vernon, Elvis’ grandmother (Ben’s great-great grandmother), and a monument for Elvis’ twin brother Jesse Garon, who died at birth.

So, when Lisa Marie joked on January 8 that meeting the fans was the only reason she went out of the house, well, she wasn’t joking.

And, in yet another ironic twist, it turns out that Lisa Marie visited the graves at the Meditation Garden, and remarked to a fan that a place had been set aside for her own grave, which was the subject of Lisa’s first single in 2003, ‘Lights Out.’ “I hope that’s a long way off,” remarked the fan. “Yes, I hope so, too,” replied Lisa, “I’ve still got so much to do.” Of course, no-one could know that she was about to begin eternal rest there in less than two weeks’ time.

Still, at the event itself, while Lisa’s appearance did cause concern for some, and her movements were definitely slower and more measured than usual, she did manage to spend a lot of time signing autographs and posing for selfies with dozens of fans. One thing I noticed from the video on YouTube was that she had developed a hacking cough. More of that later.

Two days later, Lisa Marie had returned to Los Angeles, and appeared at the Golden Globe awards. Begun in 1948, these awards are often seen as a poor cousin to the Academy Awards®, which typically occur around February/March of each year. Both of you will know that Lisa and her mother, Priscilla, oversaw the making of Baz Luhrmann‘s latest epic, Elvis. The actor playing Elvis Presley in the film was Austin Butler, and he was nominated for the Best Actor award. And, guess what? He only went and won it.

Butler made a speech, and in it he thanked and expressed his undying love for both Elvis’ former wife and his only child. This brought tears to Lisa Marie’s eyes and, for the first time since the death of her son, she mingled afterward among the other actors and filmmakers, and allowed herself to be interviewed a number of times. For much of the time, however, she was leaning on the arm of an eighty-year-old man, Elvis’ former bodyguard, Jerry Schilling. During an interview before the awards, she turned to Schilling (live on camera), and said, “I’m gonna grab your arm.” She looked absolutely ghastly.

Now we shall be going into the realms of speculation here: if Lisa knew she was dying, I cannot imagine why she would have gone to the Golden Globes. I don’t think for one moment she believed her life was about to end. Two days after the Awards ceremony, she was found unresponsive in her bedroom, and by the time paramedics arrived, her former husband Danny Keough was there, administering CPR. It seems from what I understand that she was most likely already brain dead, but they did manage to restart her heart for a short period of time, but she kept having further cardiac arrests, and Priscilla signed a “Do Not Resuscitate” order.

There are three and a half possibilities as to the cause of death: first, and the half a possibility, is that she did simply die a natural death, albeit at the relatively young age of 54. This leads us to the second possibility, which is that she was genetically predisposed to die young from a heart attack or a cardiac arrest. Her grandmother, Gladys Presley, died at 46 – an angry, violent alcoholic who suffered a heart attack in hospital while she was being treated for liver damage. Then of course there is Elvis Himselvis, whose death at 42 has always been attributed to a heart attack by the family…which leads me further into the third possibility, which is that drugs or drug addiction was wholly or partly to blame.

Many, many writers have detailed the sordid nature of Elvis’ addiction to prescription medication, an addiction that (allegedly) began while he was serving in the US Army in Germany in 1959. In Lisa’s case, it turns out that she became addicted to Vicodin after the birth of her twins (another genetic predisposition in her family) Harper and Finley in 2009. The doctor that gave her Vicodin unsupervised ought to be struck off for giving a highly addictive painkiller to someone with her drug history, and the inclination towards addiction within her family. I mean, it’s just crazy.

Once you become addicted to that drug, it’s a slippery slope. Oxycodone, Fentanyl, and others. Who knows what she was on. It would go some way toward explaining her ghastly appearance at the Golden Globes, and her unsteady gait and slurring of words, while the eighty-year-old man who was holding her up was in the picture of health.

My final possibility is a deliberate ending of life, in other words, suicide. Lisa, like her father, suffered from an incredibly deep depression. Indeed, I might extend my theory and say quite plainly that Lisa, like her father, was bipolar. Just because she said she had so much to do two days earlier, it does not mean that the dark clouds had not descended once again. When she inherited her father’s estate in 1993, it was said to be worth more than $100 million. But she spent all that, and a whole lot more, in the last thirty years of her life and was about to be declared bankrupt. At the time of her death, she was spending upwards of $90,000 on rent alone. Per month!

Bipolar sufferers tend to have enormous highs in between the shattering lows. during which time they spend an awful lot of money; and this will often lead to an inability to manage finances, but all of this is speculation. Hopefully, the family will see fit to reveal the truth in an effort to end speculation such as this, but it is of course their right to hold on to it if they wish.

The death of Elvis Presley’s only child was both a shock and completely predictable. Predictable because of the generational tendency toward illness and addiction; and, finally, a shock because I couldn’t believe that these awful things had not passed Lisa by, that they were still very much a part of the Presley makeup. As I said, there are several possible causes for her death, all of which could have been handed down to her genetically. We just have to hope that, wherever you go when you die, or perhaps go nowhere at all, her spirit will find some sort of peace. x

If anybody cares, Prince Harry’s book Spare will be published worldwide next Tuesday, 10 January. Unless, of course, you speak Spanish, in which case you can pick it up now in most book stores in Madrid or Barcelona.

In the years after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, I had a lot of respect for the princes William and Harry, because – and this is despite the vast amount of privilege that they both enjoyed and continue to enjoy – they must have suffered an extraordinary amount.

The Guardian‘s procurement of an advance copy of the book has led to an absolute torrent of stories all across the many news outlets on the internet, and indeed hard-copy newspapers, for those that still buy them, all blaring out the most salacious, gossip-y bits that they know most people will be interested in.

Harry’s crumbling relationship with his brother, his father, his entire family, are laid bare for all to see. His book now makes public his boast about the number of Afghans he killed, and this has led to allegations of war crimes from the Taliban – and the book isn’t even out yet!

All of this leads to the most shocking allegation of all about Harry, and the rest of the royal family – that he, and they, are, well, quite normal, really. No-one seems to have committed any crimes, except maybe Harry, who’s also quite open about his drug use over the years.

What’s also quite ordinary is the fact that Harry has written this book for money – a lot of money. He has, to all intents and purposes, prostituted his and his family’s lives for money, and even as I type I can imagine that they will be absolutely fuming – and with some justification, I feel. Any respect I had for Prince Harry has now vanished, and while I can’t say I respect the royal family as an institution, as people they certainly would have the right to tell him to pick up his stuff and clear off.

The book has now ruined, I would say, any chance of a reconciliation with William and King Charles. I wonder if Harry would have gone ahead with its publication had Queen Elizabeth II still been alive? In my humble opinion, Harry ought to forfeit any small claims he has to the British throne, his father is already on dangerous ground given the fact that he is the first divorcee to ascent the throne and become head of the Church of England (not that I agree with the C of E’s stance on that, by the way).

I’m really not going to repeat any of the book’s allegations, just go to almost any news site on the internet if you really want to know, but I’m just going to leave it at that, really. For Harry, there is no turning back now. Probably until the death of the Queen in September, there was still a chance to pull the plug, but after that, once hundreds of thousands of copies were being rolled off the printing presses of the world, it was and is too late.

Harry’s motives (other than money) for spilling the muck on everyone in his family are being picked apart across the internet, so I’m not going to bother doing that here. But it is clear that this book is some sort of a cry for help; he can be sure, however, that that help is not going to come from his family.

x

It is now time to take stock, as we always do, of the year that is about to bid us farewell and disappear off into that void we call history. The passage of time is not something to be afraid of; yet we often fear it because it reminds us, as if we need reminding, that we ourselves are getting older.

Almost every year, it seems, something of significance occurs that we know will be of interest to historians of the future. But this year, 2022, has been a bumper year for historical events; so much so that, I feel sure, historians will mark it down as a Very Important Year in British, or U.K., history.

IN MEMORIAM: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022); Dame Olivia Newton-John (1948-2022); Sidney Poitier (1927-2022); James Caan (1940-2022); Meat Loaf (1947-2022); Jerry Lee Lewis (1935-2022); William Hurt (1950-2022); Christine McVie (1943-2022); Shinzō Abe (1954-2022); Ivan Reitman (1946-2022); Dennis Waterman (1948-2022); Bernard Cribbins (1928-2022); Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022); Irene Cara (1959-2022); Teresa Berganza (1933-2022); Maxi Jazz (1957-2022); Leslie Phillips (1924-2022) and Pelé (1940-2022).

These are some of the most significant, and, for me, important figures who popped off during the year in question. I met two of the above: Bernard Cribbins – I shall treasure an afternoon we spent with him before and after a one-man show he performed in Wimbledon when he was just 87 years old; and Olivia Newton-John, whom I have loved since I was eleven and my dear wife and I finally got to meet her after a show she did in an old church in London in early 2017. Also, I regret not going to see Jerry Lee Lewis perform at Wembley Arena in London when he was on tour with Chuck Berry and Little Richard sometime during the 1990s. Now, all three are dead.

In June, the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth celebrated the Queen‘s Platinum Jubilee, which translates as 70 years on the ‘throne.’ There were many celebrations across this land; however, the Queen herself was too ill to attend a number of events due to ‘mobility issues.’ Anyone with half a brain cell could work out that it was more serious than that, yet, when she did appear she seemed as bright and as radiant as ever. It’s amazing what make-up and a pair of gloves can do.

On 6 September, after Liz Truss had won an election to succeed Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, the new PM travelled to Balmoral in Scotland to meet the Queen so that the monarch could formally appoint her. Traditionally, this was done at Buckingham Palace in London, but once again the Queen was ‘too ill’ to travel. This time, when photos appeared of Ms Truss’ investiture, they were shocking. The Queen looked deathly ill, and the huge bruises on her hands were signs of ‘mottling,’ caused by the heart not being able to pump blood around the body. Why they did not put gloves on her, I do not know. By now, it was obvious; the Queen was dying.

Death formally visited the Queen just two days later, on 8 September, and this set in motion two weeks of ‘mourning,’ and the former Prince Charles became head of state, given the name King Charles III. Naturally the debate began again about the system of constitutional monarchy we have in the U.K., and traditionally, if you’re a monarch or a monarch-in-waiting, Charles is generally not a good name to have: the first King Charles became the only monarch in British history to have his head cut off by his subjects. The second King Charles, his son, became the only monarch in British history to be forced into exile for a decade before taking the ‘throne’ in what we Brits like to call the ‘Restoration.’ Our brand new monarch, Charles III, is not only the oldest heir to get the top job, but also the first Defender of the Faith (Church of England) to ascend while already divorced and remarried.

That first week of September marked the first occasion in British history that we gained a new monarch and a new prime minister within 48 hours of each other. 2022 could well be a memorable year for that alone.

Having alluded to it already with the death of Queen Elizabeth II, it’s worth mentioning that this year is also likely to be remembered as the Year of Three Prime Ministers. We started the year with Boris Johnson, but it turned out that he had been very bad during the Covid-19 pandemic; our legal system took it very seriously that he had not followed his own government’s rules about socialising during a pandemic. He ended up being the first serving prime minister to face admonishment by the police, not to mention getting a Fixed Penalty Notice and a fine. Once that happened, he had to go.

Then came Liz Truss who, we’ve already mentioned, met the Queen just two days before the monarch died. But the writing was on the wall for Ms Truss from the very start; it seems that the Parliamentary Conservative Party were not happy at her election. The Conservative members up and down the country had voted her in, defeating her opponent, one Rishi Sunak, another minister (I think he was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time) who had received a Fixed Penalty Notice and a bollocking off the police.

Worse was to come when Ms Truss and her new Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced a ‘mini-budget’ that did nothing for those on low incomes and indeed planned to get rid of the 45% income tax rate, or at least raise the income threshold at which point it kicked in. See, I know all the political terms.

But, it seems Truss and Kwarteng didn’t. Their ‘budget’ sent those pesky markets into overdrive, the pound tanked, inflation went up, and share prices sank like the proverbial sack of shit. Eventually, and quite against usual Conservative policy, the pair had to admit that they didn’t know what they were doing. Kwarteng was the first to go, becoming the shortest-serving Chancellor in British history at 38 days; he was followed six days later by his former boss, Liz Truss, who managed to become the shortest-serving prime minister in British history at just under 45 days.

“Finally!” thought Mr Sunak as he relished the thought of taking the job he thought would never be his. He and his wife entered 10 Downing Street becoming the wealthiest couple in British history to occupy the prime ministerial gaff with a combined wealth of around £750 million. Indeed, it was noted that, when Mr Sunak went to meet his new Head of State, the aforementioned King Charles III, he and his wife were actually twice as wealthy as his monarch and his wife. 2022 became the Year of Three Prime Ministers, not the first in British history by any means, but the first for almost a century, and the first in the memory of almost everyone on the planet.

Football: This was the year of the World Cup which was not held in the close season summer months as it usually is, but in November/December time, meaning that almost every major top league in the world, including the British Premier League, had to come to a halt for six weeks in order for the best players to go for glory in Qatar. What? Yes, the World Cup was held in Qatar, a tiny nation tacked onto the side of Saudi Arabia, and a country which, yes, had they played the World Cup in June/July as normal, it would have been very hot indeed.

Some of those who weren’t asking questions about British or American politics, were asking how the blinking heck Qatar, a country with an appalling human rights record, got to host the World Cup in the first place. Not only that, but the logistical nightmare of wrecking every major league in the world to accommodate the championship must have kept many a well-paid executive up at night. From the media perspective, it seemed that protests were muted in Qatar itself, but many women’s groups and LGBTQ+ groups around the world called for a boycott of the tournament, which of course did not happen – there was too much money involved. Besides, many claimed that this year’s tournament was a fix, played to make sure Lionel Messi finally won his precious World Cup before he retires. Of course, it wasn’t. But there were some surprising results in the group games: Argentina, the eventual winners, lost their first match, as did Germany, who didn’t survive past the group stages. Spain put seven past Costa Rica, while England thrashed Iran 6-2. France, the other finalists, beat Australia 4-1 in their first match, however they lost their last group game against Tunisia. Spain and Portugal also lost their final group games. Amazingly, the only unbeaten sides in the Round of 16 were England, USA, Croatia, and the Netherlands. All bar USA made it to the next round.

It was at the Quarter-Final stage that things unravelled for England, at least. Up against France, the English had the misfortune of finding Kylian Mbappe on great form, putting two in the back of the net, against Harry Kane’s one. England were going home, they’re going home, English football’s going home…

Spare a thought for the Dutch squad; they went out at the Quarter-Final stage, having played five games and not lost any of them!

International News: On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin‘s Russian army launched what seemed to the international community a surprise attack on Ukraine, which lies on Russia’s southern border, close to the Black Sea. Of course, it wasn’t a surprise attack at all, but what was deemed as an escalation of a war that had been ongoing since 2014. Putin had set his sights on reclaiming Ukraine as a Soviet state, but Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his forces were having none of it. At the time of writing, almost a year after Putin invaded, Russia’s forces have barely made any headway into the country at all; Ukranian forces have held firm in every direction, and defended their country with great bravery and intelligence. Every day sees Putin more and more frustrated with the lack of progress and, frankly, motivation that his forces are giving him. Putin is in danger of losing this war, with the whole world watching and willing Ukraine to defeat the mighty Russian army.

Putin has spoken on Russian television many times, sending out warnings to the USA, the UK and other heads of state, telling them to back off or face nuclear annihilation. In other words, he is doing more fighting than his army, but it’s not getting him any closer to his aim. Britain and the US have been supplying weapons and other hardware to Kyiv without intervening directly. There’s nothing Putin can do about that, it seems, but there is a trade-off: he can block supplies of Ukrainian oil and gas to the rest of the world, sparking off energy crises in all parts of the so-called “West.” Lack of energy supply can have a knock-on effect in every part of human existence…Amazon deliver your Travis CD a day late? Sorry, mate, it’s the war in the Ukraine, we can’t get enough fuel to get out to you until next Wednesday, or possibly July.

More International News: Oh, dear God, former president Donald J. Trump announced his intention to run for the presidency of the United States at the next election in November 2024. That’s right, folks, we’ve just got over the midterms, in which Trump’s candidates were trounced, by the way, and he announces his intention to run for office again in two years’ time. This is a scary prospect on so many different levels. I promise I’ll try to keep it brief.

First of all, at the end of 2024, Trump will be facing the same problem Joe Biden faced in 2020: he will be 78 years old; too old, in my view, to run for the office which has the unofficial title of Leader of the Free World. Yes, so far Biden has survived it, he’s not dead, but a series of very public befuddlements and brainfarts in the middle of speeches have left observers scratching their heads and going, how did this man get into office? The Democratic party just don’t seem to be able to find a candidate that could do the job and do it well. After the whole Hillary Clinton fiasco, the Democrats then go and select someone who is old enough to be, er, well, old enough to be Hillary’s older brother. Worse still, Biden is threatening thinking of running again in 2024 against Trump, by which time Biden will be 82! That makes Ronald Reagan look like Greta Thunberg.

Dear Mr Biden & Mr Trump:

Please don’t run for the presidency in 2024. Please! If you want me to beg, I’ll beg. Let someone younger, more competent and less dangerous run the free world for us. Please!

Thank you so much,

Stephen Butler

x

Ah well…another year comes quietly to its end, and we look forward to the next, in this case 2023. After all, not much has happened, has it…?

So much has in fact happened this year that it is difficult to know exactly where to begin. We continue to feel the rumblings of two major events to affect the United Kingdom: the global COVID-19 pandemic, which still seems very far from being declared “over,” and the 2016 “Brexit” referendum, in which the people of the UK voted by a massive majority of 1.8% to leave the European Union.

The Commonwealth, headed by the United Kingdom and including Canada, Australia and New Zealand and many others, suffered a seismic event when it lost its head of state, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022). She had, just three months earlier, celebrated her Platinum jubilee, her seventy years on the throne constituting an all-time record for a British monarch. Furthermore, just two days before her death, she had welcomed a new prime minister, Liz Truss, of whom more later.

But the death of the Queen on 8 September set in motion a sequence of events that, we are told, only one in four of us were old enough to remember previously, in 1952. In other words, three quarters of us here in the UK cannot remember anyone other than Queen Elizabeth II as our head of state. Indeed, when her husband, Prince Philip, died in April 2021 just two months before his 100th birthday, it seemed very unlikely that, after a loving marriage of 73 years, she would outlive him by very long, and so it proved.

When King Charles III ascended the throne, he almost immediately appeared on television to make his first address to the nation. In it, he said that he would continue his late mother’s role as head of the Church of England, while at the same time being a divorcee married to a divorcee, and a non-royal divorcee at that. The last time that happened, in 1936, King Edward VIII was forced to choose between his wife and his country (though Edward himself was not a divorcé. He chose his wife, and abdicated on December 11 that year. That was the year of the Three Kings, and it is ironic that King Charles should take on the monarchy in the Year of the Three Prime Ministers, of whom more later.

King Charles III is the first divorced British (or English) monarch since Henry VIII. Further irony for Charles is that Henry set up the Church of England, a protestant religion, in order for him to obtain that divorce, from Catherine of Aragon in 1533. Yet, as a rule, except in very special circumstances, the Church did not marry divorcées. That is, until 2002. Have a look at the form, which details the entire sorry rigmarole that you need to go through in order to remarry in church, here: https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/MarriageAFTERdivorceFORM.pdf

When Prince Charles, as he was then, married the former Camilla Parker-Bowles on 9 April 2005, it’s worth noting that his beloved grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and who would likely have been opposed to such a marriage, had died in 2002, and also that his mother the Queen gave her permission for his marriage to the Privy Council. As Head of The C of E, she could (and should, in the eyes of some) have blocked the wedding, which would have made things very difficult constitutionally.

Further irony is heaped on the situation because Charles and Camilla elected not to be wed in church at all, but in a civil ceremony at the Civic Hall in Windsor. This meant that the groom’s parents, Queen Elizabeth II and her consort Prince Philip, did not attend their own son’s wedding (although they did attend the blessing service held later and the reception at Windsor Castle).

What’s all this for? Oh yes, to make the point that, despite our own (as a human race, that is) decision that our Royal Family are somehow born better than the rest of us, they are, to all intents and purposes, just like us. They get divorced just like us. They want to stop working and move to California just like us. They want to get involved with child sex traffickers just like us.

King Charles’ brother Andrew’s involvement and friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is at the same time puzzling and dangerous. Also pretty stupid was his decision to try to justify this friendship in a car-crash television interview with Emily Maitlis in 2019. So stupid was this interview that it, and the circumstances around it, are being made into a movie! What??? No!!! I sit corrected – it’s being made into two movies!

Maitlis herself is producing a movie based on her interview with Andrew, as is her former boss at the BBC, Sam McAllister. Whether either of these two movies turns out to be any good remains to be seen, but it proves one thing: that Andrew’s decision to try and justify his friendship with Epstein in order to try and save himself was simply crazy; just plain stupid.

Many body language experts have ripped this interview apart and proved that Andrew was, for the most part, either lying or offering excuses (allegedly) for certain events and timelines that were utterly unbelievable (allegedly). He could not have had sex with Virginia Giuffre, then Virginia Roberts aged 17, on the night she claimed because he remembered he was at Pizza Express in Woking celebrating his daughter Beatrice’s birthday (allegedly).

After from a break of about a month or so during which Andrew, and his brother Charles, were allowed to grieve the death of their mother the Queen, the new King Charles has let his brother know in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t believe a word of it and he is going to have to face the music for what he has done (allegedly). This could mean that Andrew will be stripped of his royal titles, his royal privileges, and most importantly of all, his royal salary, paid for by the taxpayer, and the one he is reluctant to relinquish most of all. We have yet to see.

But King Charles does not only have to contend with that royal headache. His youngest son Harry’s marriage to an American actress, herself a divorcée, and subsequent withdrawal from royal duties has led to accusations of maltreatment of him and his wife by other members of the royal family, including and perhaps especially his father King Charles, and his brother, the new Prince of Wales and future monarch, Prince William. More dangerously than that, however, Harry’s marriage has also led to accusations of racism within the ranks of the Royal Family.

Though hitherto unnamed, a particular member of the Family expressed concern that Harry’s two children with the former Meghan Markle were black. Mrs Mountbatten-Windsor does not seem to have hit it off either with Harry’s family or the British public. Being a former actress, it was natural that she should base herself in or near the city of Los Angeles, the place where dreams are made. And Harry, desperate to prove to his brother that his marriage was as strong as William and Kate’s, has followed Markle wherever she goes. He has withdrawn from royal life so that he can make his own money by writing books and making documentaries in which he can sling muck at his family and royal colleagues. It has been suggested that Harry is jealous of William’s automatic future accession to the throne by the simple virtue of his being the older sibling, despite the fact that that has been the procedure in this and every other royal household since the beginning of recorded history. He, too, recorded a car-crash interview, this time with Oprah Winfrey, and with his wife alongside him, and they also made a six-hour documentary series for Netflix in which they promised to reveal everything (allegedly) and revealed nothing (allegedly).

In among all of this, the Queen decided that she had had enough and lost her battle with breathing on 8 September 2022. She had already become the first monarch in English (or British) history to reach her Platinum jubilee. That’s 70 years, folks, which makes it highly unlikely to be repeated within the next century at least! Nobody currently living on this Earth now is likely to experience another such jubilee. Unless something disastrous happens, of course.

Just 48 hours before she died, Queen Elizabeth, known affectionately among her subjects as Liz, welcomed another Liz – this time Liz Truss, newly-installed by Conservative Party members as their leader, and by default Prime Minister. Truss got the job because her predecessor, Boris Johnson, had been forced to resign after he and members of his party had broken laws that they themselves put in place to stop the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic – which, as I mentioned earlier, is still ongoing at the time of writing. I mean, bloody hell. Johnson, and other ministers, received a Fixed Penalty Notice (basically, a fine and a telling-off) (allegedly), but that wasn’t enough. Johnson had to go.

The final two candidates were Liz Truss and former Chancellor Rishi Sunak. For some bizarre reason best known to themselves, party members chose Truss over Sunak, something that displeased Tory MPs greatly; they resolved to do something about it. Thankfully, at least from the Tory perspective, they didn’t have to do anything at all. Truss, and her new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, did it for themselves.

Almost immediately upon taking office, Truss and Kwarteng decided to stamp their authority on proceedings by introducing what was referred to by the media as a “mini-budget.” Firstly, in order to generate a small amount of income, the basic rate of income tax was reduced from 20 to 19%. This extra money, however, and a lot more besides, was pissed away when Kwarteng decided to abolish the higher rate of income tax in England, then set at 45%. “Wow!” said the rich, “thank you very much!” “Uh-oh,” said Everybody Else, “you’re fired.”

The Stock Market reacted violently to this decision and began to fall sharply, as did the value of the pound, cheesing off the population of Great Britain and Northern Ireland something rotten. Members of Parliament, who would have benefitted from this tax cut, also reacted sharply and called for Truss and Kwarteng to reverse this policy, but the two leaders of the financial market stood their ground and refused to budge.

This was an ill-advised decision. To try and save her own skin, Truss sacked Kwarteng on 14 October, making him the shortest-serving Chancellor in history. Worse was to come. Truss’ reputation, never on solid ground in the first place, finally crumbled and she resigned on 20 October. This essentially paved the way for Rishi Sunak to take the job, albeit through another leadership election.

What’s surprising – nay, amazing – is that all of this took place without a General Election and a change of government, which Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer and his party were calling for, because they knew that they were so far ahead in the opinion polls that they would have trounced the Tories if such an election had taken place.

So, the Tories were third in the popular opinion polls, they (and we) have had three prime ministers in 2022. One journalist pointed out that it took twenty-eight years to get through three prime ministers after Margaret Thatcher’s first election win in 1979.

Royalty, politicians…they’re just like us, you know. Despite our voluntary decision to hold these people aloft and consider them from a higher plane than the rest of us, they’re just like us, except – purely through virtue of birth – they get to enjoy privileges that none of us will ever see. But, thanks to the media and its influence on popular opinion, they are also held accountable when they think they can get away with stuff that would finish our careers in the Real World. But now politicians, and even royalty, are staring down the barrel of the gun that popular opinion is directing right at them. Not that I approve of gun violence of any sort; and besides, the gun probably isn’t loaded anyway. The status quo has been maintained.

Happy Christmas. Let us hope that 2023 brings us some joy instead of the predicted turmoil of sickness, strikes, royal and political shenanigans, not to mention a deeper cost of living crisis of which there seems to be no end. Let us hope for a miracle and all of these causes for hopelessness will be turned around. x

Please note there are plot spoilers to some films in this article. If you intend to binge-watch some Errol Flynn-Olivia de Havilland movies, I suggest not reading this article until afterwards.

“In late 1937,” wrote Errol Flynn in his 1959 autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways, “I completed the making of a super-costly The Adventures of Robin Hood. The first film, I think, in color. Another Jack Warner gamble…

…I developed a disgust for the mediocre vehicles to which I was assigned.”

– Errol Flynn, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, pub. 1959 p.208.

Thus Errol Flynn, right at the very end of his life, summed up the most successful years of his screen career, the years he spent at Warner Bros. between 1935 and around 1945.

What glorious years those must have been, those which are now referred to by historians as the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Yet Flynn detested those years. He looked back on them with anything but fondness and sentimentality. For one thing, he detested his most frequent collaborator: director Michael Curtiz. They made something like ten films together, including Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Four’s a Crowd (1938), Dodge City (1939), The Sea Hawk (1940)…oh, and that Technicolor costume picture, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).

At the bottom of this article, I will post a complete Flynn filmography, but there were other reasons why Flynn was not fond of those years. And most of those reasons had to do with women.

First of all there was the woman who was to become his first wife: French actress Lili Damita. In his book, Flynn claims that she bullied, blackmailed – nay, threatened him into marrying her. Flynn was an extremely intelligent individual; widely read, exposed to science, and interested in the arts and nature. Damita was interested in none of those things. The one thing that bound them together was that she was good in bed. But, Flynn admitted, even that couldn’t keep them together for long.

Flynn and Damita married on 29 June 1935 after she threatened to jump out of a window if they did not marry. This was her response to his admission of an affair. Hmmm – nice lady.

Flynn was many things, but one thing he was not was faithful.

He also describes his relationship with another woman whose behaviour towards him was distant, cold even, but yet he felt towards her something which he doesn’t describe outright, because I don’t think he knew what it was; his frequent co-star Olivia de Havilland.

He says in his book that he was “sure [he] was in love with her”, and I believe he was. He admits that he probably scuppered any chance of a meaningful relationship when he placed a dead snake in her underwear during the making of The Charge of the Light Brigade in 1936. This, it seems to me, was his one chance at real love, and he responded to it like a small child. That says a lot.

The real affection they held for each other, however, is played out on screen during all of the eight films they appeared in together. Indeed, the greatest scene the two of them played was the very last one, in which Flynn, as General Custer in They Died with Their Boots On (1941), parts from her, knowing that they probably won’t see each other again. As he turns to leave, Olivia de Havilland collapses to the floor in a heap, and in floods of tears. It’s as if they knew.

They never did see each other again, except once, briefly, around 1958, when de Havilland was so struck by his awful appearance that it remained with her for the rest of her long life (She died at 104 in 2020.) Many years of hard living, especially hard drinking, had taken their toll on Flynn. He had aged prematurely – indeed, he was to die in October 1959, aged 50, before his autobiography even had a chance at publication – and his face was covered in lines and liver spots. de Havilland could not understand how he had let himself go so completely.

There were two other women – Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee, both aged around 17 in 1942, when they accused Flynn of the crime of Statutory Rape. This is defined as sex with someone who is under the age at which they are legally able to give consent to the act. This case went to court, and Flynn was acquitted. It had been a conspiracy between the two girls, who claimed not to know each other.

There were other reasons why Flynn grew to hate his Hollywood years. There was the case of one of his films, Objective, Burma! (1945), in which British troops were not given sufficient credit for their role in the Burma Campaign. Flynn wrote that he believed he seemed to get the blame for the faults of that production, despite the fact that he had nothing to do with the script or the direction of that picture.

Flynn had a volatile relationship with his then-boss, studio head Jack L. Warner. Right at the start of his career, Flynn arrived on the set drunk, and of course word got back to Warner who called the actor to his office. Warner shouted and screamed at him for several moments, and then put his arm around him and asked him if he had any problems. All this while producer Hal B. Wallis sat watching meekly.

Errol Flynn hated Hollywood during its greatest years, and yet there must have been hundreds of thousands of men who would have given an arm just to be in Flynn’s shoes for ten minutes. Although probably not the same ten minutes during which he was being shouted at by Jack Warner.

Flynn Filmography

All films in black & white unless specifically mentioned.

1. In the Wake of the Bounty (1933) Dir Charles Chauvel 66 minutes. Made in Australia.
2. I Adore You (1933) Dir George King 74 minutes. Made at Warner Bros. in Great Britain.
3. Murder at Monte Carlo (1935) Dir Ralph Ince 70 minutes. Made at Warner Bros. in Great Britain.
4. The Case of the Curious Bride (1935) Dir Michael Curtiz 80 minutes. Flynn’s Hollywood debut.
5. Don’t Bet on Blondes (1935) Dir Robert Florey 59 minutes. Flynn’s first Hollywood speaking role.
6. All-American Drawback (1935) Dir Lloyd French 11 minutes. Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy short.
7. Pirate Party on Catalina Isle (1935 Technicolor) Dir Gene Burdette 19 minutes. MGM short.
8. Captain Blood (1935) Dir Michael Curtiz 119 minutes. Flynn’s breakthrough role.
9. Screen Snapshots, Series 16 No.1 (1936) Dir Ralph Staub 10 minutes. Flynn & Damita seen together.
10. The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) Dir Michael Curtiz 115 minutes.
11. Screen Snapshots, Series 16 No. 3 (1936) Dir Ralph Staub 10 minutes.
12. Breakdowns of 1937 (1937) Dir unknown 7 minutes. Unreleased publically; a compilation of outtakes.
13. Green Light (1937) Dir Frank Borzage 85 minutes.
14. The Prince and the Pauper (1937) Dir William Keighley 118 minutes. Despite top billing, it is 52 minutes before Flynn appears.
15. Another Dawn (1937) Dir William Dieterle 73 minutes. Flynn cast alongside Kay Francis.
16. The Perfect Specimen (1937) Dir Michael Curtiz 97 minutes. Flynn cast alongside Joan Blondell.
17. Breakdowns of 1938 (1938) Dir unknown 13 minutes. See film #12.
18. For Auld Lang Syne (1938) Dir unknown 7 minutes. Hosted by James Cagney.
19. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938 Technicolor) Dir Michael Curtiz, William Keighley 102 minutes.
20. Four’s a Crowd (1938) Dir Michael Curtiz 93 minutes.
21. Screen Snapshots, Series 18 No.1 (1938) Dir Ralph Staub 10 minutes.
22. The Sisters (1938) Dir Anatole Litvak 99 minutes. First appearance alongside Bette Davis.
23. The Dawn Patrol (1938) Dir Edmund Goulding 103 minutes. All-male cast.
24. Dodge City (1939 Technicolor) Dir Michael Curtiz 104 minutes. Flynn’s first western.
25. The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex (1939 Technicolor) Dir Michael Curtiz 106 minutes.
26. Virginia City (1940) Dir Michael Curtiz 121 minutes.
27. The Sea Hawk (1940) Dir Michael Curtiz 127 minutes.
28. Santa Fe Trail (1940) Dir Michael Curtiz 110 minutes. Flynn’s fifth consecutive Curtiz picture.
29. Footsteps in the Dark (1941) Dir Lloyd Bacon 96 minutes. Second film alongside Brenda Marshall.
30. Dive Bomber (1941 Technicolor) Dir Michael Curtiz 132 minutes. Twelfth and final Curtiz film.
31. They Died with Their Boots On (1941) Dir Raoul Walsh 140 minutes. Last with Olivia de Havilland.
32. Breakdowns of 1942 (1942) Dir unknown 14 minutes. See Films #12 & #17.
33. Desperate Journey (1942) Dir Raoul Walsh 107 minutes.
34. Gentleman Jim (1942) Dir Raoul Walsh 104 minutes.
35. Edge of Darkness (1943) Dir Lewis Milestone 119 minutes.
36. Show-Business at War (1943) Dir Louis de Rochemont 17 minutes.
37. Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) Dir David Butler 127 minutes. All-star musical in which Flynn sings.
38. Northern Pursuit (1943) Dir Raoul Walsh 93 minutes.
39. Uncertain Glory (1944) Dir Raoul Walsh 102 minutes.
40. Objective, Burma! (1945) Dir Raoul Walsh 142 minutes. Sixth Raoul Walsh film in under four years.
41. Breakdowns of 1944 (1945) Dir unknown 6 minutes. See Films #12, #17 & #32.
42. San Antonio (1945 Technicolor) Dir David Butler 109 minutes. Flynn’s third western.
43. Peeks at Hollywood (1946) Dir Irving Applebaum 9 minutes. Cameo appearance.
44. Never Say Goodbye (1946) Dir James V. Kern 97 minutes.
45. Cry Wolf (1947) Dir Peter Godfrey 83 minutes. Flynn stars alongside Barbara Stanwyck.
46. Escape Me Never (1947) Dir Peter Godfrey 104 minutes.
47. The Lady from Shanghai (1947) Dir Orson Welles 87 minutes. Flynn does not appear but acts as technical advisor for the yachting sequences.
48. Blow Ups of 1947 (1947) Dir unknown 18 minutes. More unintentional cock-ups.
49. Silver River (1948) Dir Raoul Walsh 110 minutes. Seventh Raoul Walsh picture.
50. Adventures of Don Juan (1948 Technicolor) Dir Vincent Sherman 110 minutes.
51. It’s a Great Feeling (1949 Technicolor) Dir David Butler 85 minutes. Cameo from Errol Flynn.
52. That Forsyte Woman (1949 Technicolor) Dir Compton Bennett. On loan to MGM.
53. Montana (1950 Technicolor) Dir Ray Enright 76 minutes.
54. Rocky Mountain (1950) Dir William Keighley 83 minutes.
55. Kim (1950 Technicolor) Dir Victor Saville 113 minutes. On loan to MGM (again).
56. Adventures of Captain Fabian (1951) Dir William Marshall 100 minutes. Flynn wrote the screenplay.
57. Hello God (1951) Dir William Marshall 64 minutes. Unreleased?
58. Mara Maru (1952) Dir Gordon Douglas 98 minutes.
59. Cruise of the Zaca (1952 Technicolor) Dir Errol Flynn 17 minutes. Documentary about Flynn’s boat.
60. Against All Flags (1952 Technicolor) Dir George Sherman 84 minutes.
61. Deep Sea Fishing (1952 Technicolor) Dir Errol Flynn 10 minutes. Guess what it’s about?
62. The Master of Ballantrae (1953 Technicolor) Dir William Keighley 90 minutes. Made in Great Britain.
63. The Story of William Tell (1953 Color) Dir Jack Cardiff ?? minutes. Short intended as a feature film.
64. Il maestro di Don Giovanni aka Crossed Swords (1954 Pathécolor) Dir Milton Krims, Vittorio Vassarotti 86 minutes.
65. Lilacs in the Spring (1954 Color) Dir Herbert Wilcox 94 minutes.
66. The Dark Avenger (1955 Eastmancolor) Dir Henry Levin 85 minutes.
67. King’s Rhapsody (1955 Eastmancolor) Dir Herbert Wilcox 93 minutes.
68. Istanbul (1957 Technicolor) Dir Joseph Pevney 84 minutes.
69. The Big Boodle (1957) Dir Richard Wilson 84 minutes.
70. The Sun Also Rises (1957 DeLuxe Color) Dir Henry King 130 minutes.
71. Too Much, Too Soon (1958) Dir Art Napoleon 121 minutes. Flynn plays his friend John Barrymore.
72. The Truth About Fidel Castro (1959) Dir Errol Flynn 59 minutes.
73. Cuban Rebel Girls (1959) Dir Barry Mahon 68 minutes. Flynn’s final, chaotic film.