It Couldn’t Happen Here
August 29, 2010 8:16 PM   Subscribe

GBH was a seven-part British television drama written by Alan Bleasdale [previously1] [previously2] shown in the summer of 1991 on Channel 4. The protagonists were Michael Murray (played by Robert Lindsay), the Militant Labour leader of a city council in the North of England and Jim Nelson (played by Michael Palin), the headmaster of a school for disturbed children. The series was controversial partly because Murray appeared to be based on Derek Hatton, former Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council – in an interview in the G.B.H. DVD Bleasdale recounts an accidental meeting with Hatton before the series, who indicates that he has caught wind of Bleasdale’s intentions but does not mind as long as the actor playing him is “handsome”.

Sez Wikipedia: GBH is set in the early 1990s, towards the end of the Thatcher years, when numerous attempts were made by local left-wing councils to get more autonomy (not least in Bleasdale’s home city of Liverpool, see municipal socialism). The plot is the attempt by UK government secret services to discredit and bring down Murray’s leadership. Ideologically this involves a left-wing theorist, Mervyn, who is manipulated by MI5 agent Lou. Meanwhile, another MI5 agent Peter has recruited a gang of thugs, posing as left-wing activists (and later policemen) as agents provocateurs. Each episode reveals more about the convoluted nature of the plot to discredit Murray.

It seems as though all of the original episodes have been uploaded to YouTube. Here are links to the first episode:

GBH Episode One part one
GBH Episode One part two
GBH Episode One part three
GBH Episode One part four
GBH Episode One part five
GBH Episode One part six
GBH Episode One part seven
GBH Episode One part eight
GBH Episode One part nine
GBH Episode One part ten

posted by KokuRyu (18 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite

outstanding political satire.

i thought this were brilliant

Just Fuck Off

Posted by Matthew in Rambling on 8 Jul 10 • 27 Comments »

Sometimes I really wish we had more poofs and asylum seekers and darkies and bankers and… well okay, maybe not bankers, but benefit cheats and single mums and immigrants in this country.  Because I’d rather a country filled with all those people than one filled with Daily Express readers.

In fact, I think the best way to solve the pressure on the country’s infrastructure which all these gay immigrants seem set to exert would be to organise a swap system.  For every asylum seeker we take in we should be able to ship a Daily Mail or a Daily Express reader off to somewhere like Kabul or Darfur or pretty much anywhere the fuck else but here.

Because the one thing we all know is that the primary reason for abandoning your family and the country of your birth only to wash up somewhere like this with absolutely nothing to your name but the clothes you are wearing is so that you can go to Kylie concerts and drink fucking cocktails.

In some senses you almost have to applaud the Daily Express for this headline.  You really couldn’t make this shit up.  But how the hell can you possibly satirise something so brilliantly insane?  Then again, why waste your time satirising the cunts – why not just tell them to fuck off.

Tags: daily express, daily mail

The Gaslight Anthem Leave Home

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By Steve Kandell on June 21, 2010 9:49 AM (2) Comments

Photograph by Brian Finke

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New Jersey has a long, proud tradition of inspiring people to get the hell out of New Jersey. For the hardest-working band in punk, that just might be their path to glory. [Magazine excerpt]

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Four days after Times Square was evacuated on account of an undetonated Pathfinder, it’s as swarming with tourists as ever, necks craning from atop Gray Line double-decker buses for better views of the billboards above and the poor flunkies sweating through Elmo and SpongeBob costumes below.

One of these buses, however, contains visitors not from Germany or Indiana, but from New Brunswick, New Jersey (Exit 9, thanks for asking). Mostly it’s an excuse to tool around the city on a day custom-made for just that. But at the risk of shining too bright a light on the inner machinations of a contemporary music magazine, the tour bus hired to leisurely chauffeur the Gaslight Anthem around New York City on this brilliant May afternoon is also a metaphor. This band, so associated with blue-collar Jersey lore and iconography that they bring up the Born to Run allusions so you don’t have to, have left the comfort of home to seek the big time. Metaphorically speaking. But also, they don’t live where they used to.

“Only in New Jersey would the state song be about leaving it,” says lead singer/guitarist/major­domo and recent Brooklyn transplant Brian Fallon, firing up another Marlboro Light and ducking low-hanging traffic lights along 42nd Street. He clutches a bottle of Coke while drummer Benny Horowitz, guitarist Alex Rosamilia, and bassist Alex Levine flout open-container laws and swig beers procured from a gouge-happy Times Square bodega — $55.56 for three six-packs, domestic. All four members have lived within an hour of the city most of their lives, save for the nearly 600 shows they played circa their 2008 breakthrough, The ’59 Sound. (“I think that’s what makes a Jersey band,” says Rosamilia. “They don’t ever go home.”)

 WATCH: The Gaslight Anthem at Bonnaroo

 WATCH: Brian Fallon unplugged at SPIN

And like many Garden Staters, they’re accustomed to being in the shadow of Manhattan rather than in its thrall: close enough to pop in and see a band play, but far enough that enterprising young punks had to make their own fun, staging all-ages shows at the local Elks lodge, as Horowitz did as a teenager. The band suggest a visit to Five Points, the infamous 19th-century slum (see: New York, Gangs of); told that it’s now an anonymous block in the financial district, they shrug and go back to their beverages.

“Welcome to our country!” bellows a pedestrian below.

“I want to know what these neighborhoods were like 40 years ago,” Fallon, 30, told me earlier. “I’m always looking for that thing because there used to be something to chew on, and now there’s nothing.”

“There’s almost too much going on here for me,” says Horowitz, 29, who recently moved from New Brunswick to nearby Jersey City to live with his girlfriend. “My plan was to never really leave central Jersey.”

Fallon, however, has grown restless, to his band’s benefit. To say that on their third album, American Slang, the Gaslight Anthem have outgrown and outstripped their VFW hall roots is only part of the story. They are alternately homesick and sick of home. Unsurprisingly for a band that has the word anthem in its very name, the record sounds big and sounds like it wants to be big, embracing comparisons to populist world-beaters like Springsteen and Tom Petty in a way that somehow doesn’t feel incongruous with the DIY punk world they still very much inhabit.

“Too many bands are embarrassed about success,” Fallon says. “If someone tells you they don’t aspire to be the biggest band in the world, it’s like, why even bother? Who doesn’t want to be the Rolling Stones? Where you get lost is when you try to be that.”

Put another way: They’re pulling out of here to win.

Brooklyn’s Prospect Park is a sprawling, lush 585-acre expanse that would be the crown jewel of any city that didn’t happen to also have Central Park. Brian Fallon moved two blocks away from its Grand Army Plaza entrance six months ago, but this is his first time here. It’s yet another brilliant spring afternoon, a few days before the bus ride, and the park is bustling with people on wheels: walkers, wheelchairs, strollers, bikes.

With most of his exposed skin covered in tattoos, Fallon looks like a refugee from a less genteel corner of the borough as he’s parked on a bench sipping a coffee. It could certainly be reasoned that shacking up in Brooklyn is de rigueur for any East Coast band on the make — sign a lease in Williamsburg, then wait a couple weeks to be featured in glossy roundups with Dirty Projectors. But this is not that Brooklyn, and Brian Fallon is not that wily a strategist.

“I’m not gonna move to Williamsburg; those people freak me out,” he says. “But really, I don’t care where I live.” Fallon’s wife, who’s from the Bronx, was eager to move back into the city, and she found the apartment while he was in the thick of recording American Slang at the Magic Studio in downtown Manhattan. And with the next year and a half or so set aside for touring, he’s not exactly putting down roots. The move was more about where he wasn’t living. “I was looking to get lost,” he says. “No one I know is from here, no one I admire. Nothing familiar, no history I can gravitate to. I needed to find my own story, away from my parents’ and friends’ stories. Time for me to put on my own shoes.”

Read the entire Gaslight Anthem feature in the July 2010 issue of SPIN, on newsstands now!

One of the finest live bands in the world today. Simply incredible.

“It’ll all be over soon,” the policeman said, offering his arm. “Just take a deep breath, have a look and let us know that it’s him. I know it’s difficult, but we need to be sure, and we can’t be without a formal identification.”

She’d been taken to the police station in the back of a BMW. It was the first time she’d been in a police car; under normal circumstances it would have been a novelty.  Not as a grieving widow. Manchester’s finest knew her extended family very well, but she had never had any dealings with them herself prior to meeting Charlie. The police were despised by the people she tended to know these days. She needed a new social circle, she decided.

She held onto his arm as they entered the room, immediately wincing at the sickly smell of disinfectant. It reminded her of the toilets at school. Funny how a smell could trigger memories like that, she thought. She couldn’t remember the last time she had thought about primary school. Now she stood outside a mortuary preparing to identify her late husband and she could picture it as clearly as if she was back there.

The mortuary itself looked almost exactly like she would have imagined. Smaller maybe, but other than that she guessed they were probably fairly standard. Five cadaver-length stainless steel tables dominated, the first being directly in front of the door they entered by.

The tables brought to mind violent death and bone-saws, grieving relatives and hardened cops with unsolvable cases, she thought. Too many American cop dramas were to blame for that, she knew. The floors and walls were tiled, presumably so they could be mopped and wiped clean when things got messy. The roof reminded her of the office she’d worked in a lifetime ago, tired tiles and headache inducing strip lights.

The long steel tables themselves were mercifully empty, save for the one at the end where she knew her husband lay waiting to be identified. Funny how she could tell it was him, even with the large white sheet covering his body head to toe.

“Are you ready, Mrs Jenkins?” The detective asked. He was excellent, she thought, at this. He’d been nothing but professional, but she could hear compassion in his voice. He knew what her husband had been, probably much better than she did. He had treated her with a courtesy which she appreciated, though.

“Yes,” she whispered, finding the words stick in her throat. She felt faint all of a sudden, the room spinning a little and gripped hard on his arm steadying herself.

He nodded, and the attendant in the green robe pulled back the sheet. Charlie Jenkins. Mad Charlie. She had not known what to expect, but save for a yellowish bruising around his closed right eye he could have been sleeping. She knew that they would have cleaned him up before showing her, but had not expected this – this face appeared completely uninjured. They’d said it was a heart attack that had killed him, brought on by shock.

“Is this your husband ma’am?” she heard the policeman ask, “Can you confirm that this is Mr Charles Jenkins?”

“Yes, yes it is.” She reached out to touch his hair, and kissed her finger before placing it on his forehead, just briefly. She had thought about it at length, and decided this was how she would handle it. Nothing ostentatious, but caring nonetheless. She was led out then, and was surprised to find she was crying. The detective took a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her, looking respectfully to the floor as she dabbed her eyes.

“We’d like to talk to you some more, Mrs Hooper,” he said softly, “But I can have someone take you home first. We can do it tomorrow, if that’s easier.”

“I would appreciate that,” she replied. “I’ll help you in any way that I can, but it’s been a terrible day. I need to pick up my son, too. He’s with family.”

The drive home was – if not the same car – very similar. Even the smell was the same, a mixture of light sweat, heavy cologne and leather. The uniformed policeman who was driving kept his eyes on the road, and made no attempt to talk.

They had arrived at the door earlier that morning. The older one, in plain clothes and introducing himself as Spencer. Flanked by two young WPCs in full uniform. It was like The Bill. Hats off and tucked under their arms. She had known immediately why they were on the doorstep as soon as she saw them. It wasn’t the first time she’d answered the door to the authorities, but their demeanour was so different this time.

She’d always felt embarrassed when they’d come to the house before. They had probably assumed she was like him and his family, that she was scum. She knew what he did, how could she live with herself, they would think. She did not hold that against them though, as she had spent the past year and a half asking herself the same questions. Over and over and over again.

The answer was simple. Fear. Fear for Jack. Three years old and gorgeous. Jack, with his blond curls and cheeky grin, always running about laughing, or flying between the rooms of the large flat on his plastic tractor. The love of her life. Going to grow up to be a heartbreaker, everybody said. She was grateful there was no bad blood in Jack, he’d been born before she’d met Charlie. There was none of that family’s DNA poisoning Jack.

When Charlie had first started noticed her she had been flattered. Never knew anything about him, but after a chance encounter in a bar on Canal Street he’d called her a few times and eventually she’d let him take her on a date. She’d been out for a couple of hurried drinks after work with friends, he’d been there on business. He wasn’t worried about her being on her own with Jack; in fact he had genuinely seemed great with the boy.

She had been so happy to meet someone who she thought could provide for her son. She had been naïve, but everything had seemed great. Charlie Hooper, businessman, or entrepreneur – that’s what he would tell you. Always out doing this and that, never sharing exactly what he was doing. She had been stupid, she knew now. Blinded by the hope of a better future, by the opulence she had never experienced before and by the weekends in that beautiful hotel in Paris.

Things didn’t stay that way, though. Shortly after she had moved in things took a considerable turn for the worse.

When he first stayed out all night, two months after she had moved in, she asked where he had been. He hit her, hard, and told her not to ask him stupid fucking questions. That was the first time he had raised a hand to her.

As most men who hit women do, he’d apologised profusely. Things got better briefly. Maybe he’s changed, she thought. Hoped. Her stepfather had used her mother as a punch bag for long enough that she should have known it wouldn’t stop. Desperate to believe him, she had stayed.

Then the police turned up at the door for the first time. She had asked him what it was all about. He’d kicked her in the stomach so hard she thought that she might die.

Apologised afterwards, as would become the norm. Stress, darling. Working too hard. I’ll see someone about it, I promise. I would never hurt you or Jack; I love you more than anything.

A couple of months later she had decided to leave. He had a feeling he said that she was hiding something, he said. If you leave, I will find you and I will fucking kill you. Then the boy. Do you hear me? I will kill the fucking kid.

She could tell he meant it, the tone of his voice told her so.

The policeman’s opening line had been “Hello, Mrs Hooper? I’m Spencer, from the Serious Crimes Unit. Can we come in? Would you like to sit down?”

There had been an accident, they told her. His car had failed to slow down when it should have; gone through the motorway embankment. Dead, killed instantly. Too early to say conclusively, he said, but may have been foul play. Forensics were examining the car. No easy way to say it. They’d have to ask her some questions later, he said, but first they would like her to identify the body.

She was ready for the questions. She knew there was no point in them asking was there anyone who may have wanted to see him dead. Pick a name in the criminal phone book. She found out more than she would ever have wished to know about what he did for a living. She would help them where she could and then disappear. You didn’t give up names like that then carry on as normal.

Organised crime. Protection money, loan sharking, drugs, prostitution. You name it, and Mad Charlie was involved with it. You didn’t follow that particular career path without making some enemies. She might have been blind to it to start with, but when things started to get nasty she had paid closer attention, made it her business to know things.

Later, when wee Jack was tucked up in bed and the detritus of the Hooper family had finished crying their crocodile tears and drinking the house dry, she would take the wig and the clothes she had worn to the internet café out of the cupboard and cut them into small pieces. A few days after, she would burn them. It was almost unthinkable that anyone would ever connect her to the slutty looking blonde woman in the flowery dress, but better to be safe than sorry.

After all, that woman had spent quite some time in an internet cafe in the city centre a month or two ago, reading extensively about brake cables and car failure and the like. Not the sort of thing she could afford to be connected to.

Especially considering what had happened to her husband.

The End.

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Listen to the new Deer Tick single, 20 Miles, here:

http://soundcloud.com/kartel/deer-tick-twenty-miles# It’s the dog’s balls.