Howard Jackson

*Tamara Drewe – Spoiler alert*

Pretension, cinema and posterity rarely prevail as bedfellows.   Look at the history of movies.  The classics that we watch repeatedly are sophisticated entertainments, usually but not always, loaded with hidden meanings.  The movies of Hitchcock are a good example.  Praise has been heaped upon ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’, ‘The King’s Speech’ and the films of Steve McQueen – ‘Hunger’ and ‘Shame’.  Compared to them ‘Tamara Drewe’ is light but like the classic Howard Hawks movie ‘Bringing Up Baby’ it will have more appeal for audiences in thirty years time than puffed up efforts that are determined to be recognised as profound.

The plot of ‘Tamara Drewe’ is a modern version of the Thomas Hardy novel, ‘Far From The Madding Crowd’.  This was not his greatest book but it did have the best title because it referred to a lot more than rural retreat.  The story is simple.  A woman has three men in her life – a dashing soldier, an older but dependent man and finally a practical man that will be supportive.  The ending is ambiguous and we read it knowing that Bathsheba has found someone whom she needs to help her survive but not the man who will make her feel fulfilled.

This plot serves ‘Tamara Drewe’ perfectly because it allows the film to entertain and amuse whilst providing a chilling view of human nature.   Tamara reconciles herself with Andy, the practical man, by telling him, ‘I need a friend’ so we know that the plot has a romantic conclusion as dubious as that written by Hardy.   The movie has had mixed reviews, probably because the happy ending does not reveal moral progress or confirms a heroine who has made decisions rooted in understanding.    ‘Tamara Drewe’ is great, though, because it consistently refuses to believe in the worth of human beings.   In these days of positive thinking, empathy and emotional intelligence it really is quite refreshing to relax and enjoy nearly two hours of mean spirited misanthropy.

The film has been compared to the novel ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ by Stella Gibbons.  This also satirised Thomas Hardy but the aim of the satire by Gibbons was narrower.  She lampooned Hardy and our romantic notions about rural life.   ‘Tamara Drewe’ has the human race in its sights and it excuses no one.  It does not need to offer a landscape with a brutal aspect.   The shots of the English countryside are relentlessly beautiful.  The people, though, are the same as they are anywhere, inadequate and self-deceiving.  Ingmar Bergman has indulged similar ambitions but not with quite so many jokes.  Oddly, the humour is not cruel; it merely shows how we are ridiculous.  If the movie says anything positive, it is that we all provide amusement for others.

The characters can be criticised as stereotypes but their symbolism confirms that the movie is a satire.  The location consists of a writers’ retreat where all the creative talents are narcississtic fantasists.   The one successful author describes writers as ‘thieves and liars’.  If the creative are hopeless and invariably immoral the practical are boring.  The wife of the successful writer who owns the retreat runs an organic farm but this is not an honourable woman who is seeking pastoral integrity.  Instead, the movie takes a wide swipe at organic farmers.  They may be rural idealists but they are dismissed as isolationists unable to deal with reality, people obliged to seek consolation in industry and imagined purpose.  The organic farmer has chickens that are ‘ornamental’ but cannot lay eggs.

Like Bathsheba, Tamara eventually chooses a man who is capable and probably even self-sufficient.   He lacks pretension but is an emotional primitive whose youthful sex with Tamara once earned him the accusation of baby snatcher.   On bad days, and we all have them, he couples with the local barmaid.   She pulls pints like someone milking a sheep. This earthy creature is the alternative to ambition but if ambition is self-deluding so is its alternative and it is clear that the staunch yeoman exploits her as he does his other animals.  Anybody who believes the yeoman is the hero needs to think about the scene when he prepares to kill the troublesome dog of his rival.  This does not happen but only because twenty yards above him the other loyal member of the village does just that.  This aggressive land blessed phoney is what the yeoman will become when he becomes older and stays in the village, narrow and vindictive.

The romantic rival to the yeoman in the novel was a soldier.   Sergeant Troy was charismatic but irresponsible.   In ‘Tamara Drewe’ the equivalent character plays in a rock band.    Tamara thinks he is unusual because he is a drummer who writes songs.   Again, as with the writers, this alternative to conformity is no more than an inadequate adolescent with an exaggerated sense of entitlement.    Throughout the movie, the alternatives are as awful as what they oppose.   The drummer is just one more self-appointed spokesman, another ‘gob on sticks’ as we now say except in his case he is a gob with sticks.    Tamara abandons him and because the yeoman is the best of a bad lot there will be some in the audience who mistake the ending but when she says she had to stay in the village because he has ‘made the house so nice’ and the yeoman replies he will now get his ‘old bedroom back’ we know we are watching a clueless couple retreat into childhood.

The conclusion for the drummer is even bleaker.   It is his dog that has been killed and this has upset him.  The graveyard scene that follows evokes a similar moment in ‘Flaming Star’ when Elvis and his family bury his Native American mother.   The drummer has two sociopathic schoolgirl fans and these offer consolation to a hero trapped in an adolescence that mirrors Tamara and her yeoman.    The rock star has found his Priscilla and if anybody wants to know why a famous singer would pick a fourteen year old school girl as his soul mate watch the movie.  The connection is made even stronger because in an earlier scene the drummer destroys his career when he rages over his rejection by the girl member of the band.    He sacrifices his potential because he is unable to retain his lover.   These references to Elvis should not be a surprise.   The movie is directed by Stephen Frears whose CV includes ‘Long Distance Information’, the BBC film about an Elvis fan which was mentioned on a previous blog.

None of the characters in ‘’Tamara Drewe’ handle rejection well.  They fray, find somebody on the rebound or pretend it has not happened.  Relationships are begun by sexual predators or those recovering from failure.   This is the grim truth. We are as hopeless at love as we are incapable of handling abandonment.    ‘Tamara Drewe’ may not be Luis Bunuel or Jonathan Swift but it has a merciless perspective and the laughs never undermine that view.   The reference in the film to Hardy as the sexual predator obsessed with young women throughout his life is vital.  It suggests Hardy condemned Alex d’Uberville so easily because he was writing about himself.   The seduction of Tess is not just a tragedy for Hardy but an irresistible moment.   ‘Tamara Drewe’ is a dark film and, if what it says about human beings is true, no wonder Elvis destroyed himself so easily.

Something like five years ago I sat with my elder daughter in the Oxford Union Bar at Oxford University.  I drank decent beer and relaxed on comfortable and tasteful chairs.  The place was only half full and the atmosphere evoked purpose and calm curiosity.  I

The Oxford Skyline

was seduced.   I finished my pint and my daughter asked me if I would like another.   I looked around the comfortable elegant bar and remembered how I had wasted my own days at University.

‘No,’ I said.   ‘These places are lethal for me.’

If I ever met David Cameron I would probably find him just as seductive.   His charm, attention and easy confidence would tempt me in the same way that the bar did five years ago.   This is why it is difficult to compare Cameron to Thomas Parker.   We should never underestimate how an English public school education benefits the rich.  They may be callous and have offensive views but the seductive elegance has a winning appeal.

Stanley Baldwin

The more obvious comparison with Cameron is, of course, Stanley Baldwin.   Both advertised themselves as one nation Tories but both have led governments that inflicted huge damage on the British working class.  Now the reputation of Baldwin is low.  He is considered to have been too tolerant of high unemployment and is condemned for beginning the tradition of appeasing Hitler.   Baldwin was undone by economics and Europe and more than one political commentator has predicted a similar fate for Cameron.

Much has happened in British politics since Baldwin but a key development of the last twenty years has been the emphasis on youth.  The leaders of the political parties have become attractive actors who are obliged to convince the electorate that they are ordinary just like them, the kind of men and women you would like to meet in your favourite bar.  Inevitably, this has weakened representative democracy.  The actor soon becomes a puppet and the establishment obtains a firmer grip of the strings it always pulls.  Representative democracy is now in crisis as it was 80 years ago.  Stanley Baldwin was not its saviour and it is unlikely the charm of David Cameron will rescue us this time either although like Baldwin he may prevail for longer than we would wish.

Philip Roth in ‘American Pastoral’ wrote that only two qualities were needed for success in the American corporate world.  These were a perpetual smile and relentless energy.  He was half right and it also applies to bureaucracies but Roth should have added an ability to operate under pressure and to survive close scrutiny.   Cameron has these abilities but, like his New Labour predecessor, they do not make him a leader, merely a highly talented lackey.   Those who find it difficult to imagine a Prime Minister as such should picture him as he was the night before the wedding of Charles and Diana.  He spent it camped on the pavement outside Buckingham Palace, loyal and faithful.   Believers in parallel universes can console themselves with the thought that somewhere Cameron will be obliged to exist as a working class female.  I picture him in a Northern working man’s club, impersonating Tammy Wynette and singing ‘Stand By Your Man’.

My views regarding Thomas Parker are also uncomplicated.  He was incompetent, misguided and to quote Dr Beecher Smith, a Presley Estate Memphis attorney, ‘There were villainous elements.’   The evidence against Parker is contained in the books of Alanna Nash and there is no need to repeat it here.  There is, though, a possibility that Parker was more of a lackey than his bravado and bullying manner indicated.  I suspect Parker had the same relationship with Hollywood that Cameron has with the establishment whose bidding he served in Brussels.

Parker and Elvis in Hollywood

Hollywood had massive economic power and was the priority for Parker.  The absence of Elvis from the stage between 1961 and 1969 and the sweetening of his music both in the movies and the recording studio reflected the wishes of powerful film studios.   They had a celluloid product that needed selling and wanted no competition from an alternative Elvis.  Parker picked sides and he was in favour of those whose ambition was only to make money.

The culture of ordinary people and their worth as human beings was not important.   For Parker and Cameron, ordinary people exist to help the rich become richer.  This was why Parker promoted junk at the expense of quality and why the government of Cameron was so intent on destroying the BBC.  Fortunately, the phone hacking scandal messed up the plans of the puppet masters for a private sector monopoly of broadcasting.   Of course, what undid Parker was a lack of a plan.  He was a promoter and a deal maker and more suited to being the number two in a management team.  Indeed, this was the original contract with Elvis.   Like Stalin, he leapt above others and, once in charge, he did his damage, signing Elvis to contracts that ensured development was virtually impossible.  Cameron also lacks a plan.   He is the corporate bureaucrat who when asked for a strategy merely dashes to others and asks them to tick boxes.   The responsibility of navigating the economy through a difficult recession he gave to his friend, George Osborne, whose main skill is as a political strategist and whose knowledge of economics is limited.  When asked to come up with something visionary David Cameron invented ‘The Big Society’.  This concept is so vacuous one wonders about the possible influence of hallucinogenic drugs.   The descriptions by Cameron of his ‘Big Society’ resemble a Tim Burton film without the horror although if his plans came to fruition the horror would be real enough – no guaranteed health care, no welfare safety net and employers able to drive down wages to below subsistence level.

Few of us anticipate a glorious future for Britain and many think Cameron is qualified to represent a nation that will become increasingly mediocre.   His survival skills are impressive and Cameron has vanquished his British opponents.  Despite the money and the glory nobody ever appeared to challenge Parker for the job of managing Elvis. 

There is also a bully in Cameron which has been revealed on more than one occasion in Parliament.  This has done him no harm and neither did the same trait in Parker.  A bully is not the same as a warrior but the two are easily confused by the British Press.

I visited Oxford University nine times in all.  Once a term I would spend the weekend with my daughter.  The charm of the University wore thin remarkably quickly.   Long before my final visit I noticed not just the elegance of remote privilege but its small minded smugness, the bubbles that insulate our myopic elite.  I said nothing to my daughter during my visits.  I was keen that she stayed motivated and obtained the glittering prize.   I revealed my misgivings to her much later, long after the prize was safely stored in her CV.   Even then, I was wary that my thoughts would be interpreted as inadequate parental pride.

‘I’m really proud of what you did,’ I said.  ‘I just went right off the place.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said.  ‘I really hated it in the end as well.’

[for those who have not seen Series 1 & 2 of The Killing, spoiler alert]

So far I have not met anyone who has watched all the episodes of the American version of ‘The Killing’.   Most people abandon it after the first episode.  The Danish actors underact brilliantly and the American actors altered their style to emulate the Danish performances but what had been a subtle approach in

Denmark became vacant in the American show.  Even more offensive was the actor who played the American alternative to the detective Meyer.    This character was pushy and unpleasant and, whilst alternative interpretations can be honourable, we are talking about Meyer who was shot just after we began to like him.  Most of us are still in grief.

The BBC has had hard times lately, its funds have been cut and for a while the Murdoch Empire was able to take pot shots at the Corporation at will.  Not that long ago James Murdoch would stand behind a podium and claim that only the financial greed of people like him could guarantee media impartiality.    Nothing lasts forever and soon afterwards the hacking scandal had Murdoch looking for somewhere to hide, podiums he now sidesteps.  Around the same time, the BBC found in their basement an unused Danish TV series called ‘Forbrydelsen’.   Bought dirt cheap, the show had originally been deemed unfit for British audiences and had gathered dust but after the success of ‘Wallander’, a Swedish detective series, something Scandinavian was needed and ‘Forbrydelsen’ sounded just that.   The show became a massive hit, so successful that it persuaded Channel 4 to buy the American remake.

The original series was not perfect because it was obliged to mix a serious study of the impact of a murder on the family of the victim with red herrings and suspense.   Neither was the idea of using just one case as a basis for twenty episodes as original as the partisan but charming Radio Times claimed.   This had been done earlier in the American series, ‘Murder One’.   The programme, though, was irresistible.  When Sarah Lund was betrayed or compromised she did not scream, shout or cry.  She merely looked at the camera or looked away and I used to wait for these glorious moments with the belief I had an entitlement and it consisted of a quota.   The actress Sofie Grabol had a thousand different ways of staring into space and I like everyone else in the audience would just sit there and watch her staring.  She is now a superstar in Britain.   The sweater she wore in the show is considered a fashion accessory and sales of this not inexpensive £250 item have increased to the extent that the factory in The Faroe Islands which makes these sweaters can no longer cope.    The show insists on a certain authenticity and I assume that Danish policewomen can afford them because the sweaters are cheaper over there.   The Danes need to be careful.   The British have form when it comes to invading sparsely populated remote islands.  Cheaper Sarah Lund sweaters could fall within British military parameters.

Because this is an Elvis blog I am obliged to note that her sweater has become an icon equivalent to his white suit.  Both garments hinted at determination.  Sarah wore the same sweater in every episode because she was too involved in her work to worry about a varied wardrobe.   Elvis stayed with his white suit because he wanted to communicate an identity beyond music.  They initially suggested remoteness although this has since been lost.   The first series became a hit DVD box set and the second series used another sweater from the same factory.   Not only did Elvis persist with his jump suit for too long he posthumously acquired 250,000 imitators.

Prior to the second series appearing on the BBC one of the producers talked about how they had wanted to do something different.  To ensure that they avoided repeating themselves, they decided to try and create more dangerous situations for Sarah Lund.   Again, I have yet to meet anyone who believes that the second series was the equal of the first.   The extra suspense and violence meant more mechanical plotting.  The visit by Sarah to Afghanistan may have been plausible but it felt like added exotica.   Sarah had a new detective as a partner but he lacked the hidden charm of Meyer and nobody criticised Sarah when she emptied her gun into his body.   He had killed six people merely to protect himself and Sarah felt quite correctly that this counted against him.

I am, though, still loyal and am awaiting the third series.   I tell myself that perhaps they will have learnt from the last series and avoid the melodrama and realise that ‘Forbrydelsen’ does not need a panoramic sweep to be interesting.   Again I have not met anyone who has watched both series and is not committed to watching the third.     I understand my own loyalty.   I do not believe that my entitlement to the stares of Sarah is exhausted and I remember those scenes in the kitchen of the Larsens when the family would both console and doubt one another.   ‘Forbrydelsen’ was made in Denmark where the Dogme films where launched.  These austere films both gripped and tested audiences.  ‘Forbrydelsen’ is not Dogme film making but it is no coincidence that it came from the same country.  The actress, Ann Eleonora Jorgensen, who played the mother of the victim, has appeared in a Dogme film and her honest performance as the mother was a key reason why we took the first series so seriously and will return to series three even though its impact will inevitably diminish.   As ‘Forbrydelsen’ continues to increase in popularity the memory of Dogme will become increasingly irrelevant.

Not everybody who was thrilled by the arrival of Elvis stayed loyal but I did and so did many others.   This was not because we did not recognise the decline.     As with the stares of Sarah there are moments that once experienced give you a sense of entitlement and you want them repeated.   This is usually accompanied by a belief that there is something or someone worthwhile at the core and that it or them are beyond others and that they or it led the way.     In ‘Forbrydelsen’ the core consists of an honest look at human nature and a capability within its performers to represent that perfectly.    Elvis may not have always been honest but he had an openness that was unusually revealing and his talent expressed an identity as complex as any that have existed in American popular music.   For me, there is a parallel with his Sun hits and the Dogme movies.  Both leave their memories.  His Sun records affect how I listen to all his music and the echoes of Dogme in the Larsen kitchen mean I watch the subsequent melodrama of ‘Forbrydelsen’ differently to how I watch other thrillers.   The great strength of Sarah is that she identifies with her victim.   She does her best because anything else would be disloyal.  Elvis has often been described as a sell out but I think he was far more loyal to his working class roots than people realise.   I will not convince everyone but I know why I stayed loyal and why his best moments like the stares of Sarah still put a smile on my face.

Long Black Limousine – Howard Jackson

The old timer drove the 1986 Buick slowly and passed the sign that said ‘DO NOT ENTER’.  Above the Buick attached to the wall of the building a larger sign said’, ‘DOC’S WORKSHOP, ALL KINDS.’

The workshop had space for 6 cars.  There were two pits and four hydraulic stands that lifted the cars into the air.  Doc was working in one of the pits under a two year old Ford Mustang.  He looked up when he heard the Buick and watched the tyres and bumper roll towards his face.

Doc climbed out of the pit and walked past the Buick to one of the corners at the back of the workshop.  He sat down behind a small table, wiped his hands with an oily rag and waited.   The table had a small radio, a cashbox and a machine to register credit and bank cards.  Next to the table were a big tall ice box and a shelf with coffee, cups and cookies.

The old timer left his Buick, removed his white canvas hat and wiped some sweat from his face.    He wore trousers the same colour as his hat, although they were cleaner, and a blue shirt and a pair of loafers.  He had a big round stomach that looked surprisingly firm.   The stubble on his face and his thinning hair made him look older than his sixty two years.

‘John Phillip,’ said Doc.

‘Howdy,’ said John Phillip.

‘Every time you drive past that notice as if it ain’t here.’

‘What notice?’

‘The one that says don’t drive past it.’

John Phillip shrugged and walked by Doc.  He lifted a kettle and tested its weight to see if it needed water.

‘I take it you won’t pay me no mind if I make myself a cup of hot coffee?’

‘What’s the difference if I do?’

John Phillip switched on the kettle, spooned some coffee into two cups and put a couple of cookies on a plate.  He put the plate on the table in front of Doc.    While the kettle boiled the two men said nothing.   John Phillip walked around the garage and looked at the other cars.

‘This is why you like to keep folks outside.  You don’t want us to know you work on more than one car at a time.’

‘I don’t.  Well, mainly I don’t.’   Doc paused and then said, ‘Make the coffee, John Phillip.’

The old man talked as he poured water into the cups.  ‘The old Buick is starting to feel old just like I do.   One day you walk down the drive and there is a piece of tin waiting for you.  It’s like overnight they lose interest.   How does that happen, Doc?’

‘I’m just a mechanic,’ said Doc.   ‘They don’t talk to me.’

‘I was wondering if you had a mind not to stay open.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘I thought you’d pay a visit to town today.’

‘I wasn’t thinking to,’ said Doc.

‘There’s a few that have done just that.    There’s some waiting to line the streets.’

‘So why aren’t you?’

‘I’ve got an old Buick that needs fussing.’

John Phillip placed the two cups of coffee on the table either side of the plate of cookies.  He ate the two cookies and helped himself to another from the half-used packet.  The two men sat and stared at the old Buick.   The green paintwork was faded and Doc thought about how a car suddenly became old, how the paint lost its gleam and the power of molded metal weakened to become nothing more than a fragile frame.

‘John Phillip, you ever think about living in Cuba?’

‘Why would I do that?’ said John Phillip.

‘Well, I don’t reckon the Cubans would take to you any more than the folks in West Memphis but your Buick would sure feel at home.’

‘I have a mind to have the car looked at from the front to the back.   Do everything so it’s perfect again.  I have some money waiting to be used.   I could afford it.   What do you think, Doc?’

‘What, you want that I do it?’

John Phillip drank his coffee and nodded.

Doc smiled.

‘So, why don’t you make her right?’ said John Phillip.

Doc smiled wearily and shook his head.  ‘Listen, if I had that car as my own I would probably waste five nights a week making it just so.   I wouldn’t say to myself that I’d given myself a second job without money.  I’d just do it and I wouldn’t stop until it was perfect.’

‘Well, then.  This way you can do all that and take my money.’

‘No,’ said Doc.

‘No?’

‘No, damned right.   It ain’t my car, John Phillip.  It’s yours and I work on it but I run a business.   Business is different.   I do what makes a profit.  I fix cars, it’s all I do.’

‘Ain’t that what I’m asking?’

‘It isn’t and you know it.’

John Phillip grinned and the two men laughed.

‘So we just let her get old and die?’ said John Phillip.

‘That’s the way of it.   Let her die natural and proper.   Now I’m thinking we don’t want her running around West Memphis pretending she’s something she ain’t.’

‘No, it ain’t dignified.’

‘That’s how I figure it,’ said Doc.

The two men without saying anything more stood up and walked through the wide open doors and out of the garage.  They stood outside and faced the highway that linked West Memphis to Memphis.  The day was hot and still and the flat fields waited without moving and ignored the passing cars.

‘So what’s hurting now?’ said Doc.

‘I can’t put her in gear.’

‘It was in gear when you drove past my sign.’

‘It’s something that just happened this once.  I pumped the pedal and worked it with my foot.’

‘It will cost plenty of dollars if I have to take the gearbox apart.   If you need a new gasket it takes time.   It ain’t certain that it is.  I may take it to pieces and it will be just fine.  ’

‘So what are you saying, Doc?’

‘Let me change the fluid.  There may be junk in there.  It might work.’

The two men faced each other and shook hands.  They looked at the fields again.

‘Are you sure you ain’t heading into town later?’

No,’ said Doc.  ‘I ain’t.  I ain’t standing on the sidewalk with a whole lot of people just to look at a heap of limousines.’

‘I seem to recall you and Eudora were sometimes close.’

‘No.  I wouldn’t say it that way.’

‘Oh, you used to look at her like she was special.’

‘I don’t deny I did, John Phillip.  But if you saw her looking back I must have missed it.’

‘The woman had spirit.  No wonder Eudora soon forgot West Memphis.   And the way she fussed over Tom Mayfield.  She forgot him even quicker.’

‘She got big and famous.’

‘I was no fan of her singing but no woman ever looked finer standing behind a guitar.’

Doc said nothing and watched the cars pass by his garage.

John Phillip sighed.  Either he looked older or his stubble had grown again.

‘What’s eating you?’ said Doc.

‘Why you never took up with any of the females in this town?’  John Phillip hesitated.  ‘You know, settled down with a good woman.’

‘Because that’s how it worked out.’

‘You’re forty years of age, Doc.’

‘No, I’m not.  I’m forty one this last January.’

‘A good woman behind you and you could have done more with this garage.  You could have a gang working here.’

‘I have help.  Red’s boy is here three days a week.’

‘Doc, he’s still at school,’

‘Not anymore.  He just left.’

‘Well, I still wonder.’

Doc stared across the fields and asked himself if Eudora had ever visited Memphis without making the short drive across the river to call at her home town.  No reason why not, he thought.   Eudora was not one to feel obliged to people or places.

‘You want to borrow the pick up while I work on the Buick?’ said Doc.

John Phillip was not one to refuse an auto and he soon climbed into the spare scruffy pick up.  He lowered the window just as he was leaving and pointed at the name of the garage on the side of the door.  ‘Remember, I do all this advertising without you paying me.’

‘Sure do appreciate it,’ said Doc.

John Phillip still stared at the sign below his window.   ‘Always wondered what your pa meant when he had it say ‘All kinds’.  Did he mean people or cars?’

‘He meant both.’

‘Well, as long as they give you a living.’

The two men waved goodbye and John Phillip and the pick up joined the interstate highway.

Back in the garage Doc felt restless.  He sat in the old Buick for around five minutes.  There were times he wished he still smoked and this was one of them.  His mood though changed and instead of offering comfort the old wrinkled leather inside the Buick made him feel anxious and uneasy.   He looked at the old dashboard and wondered if there was a horrible warning that the car wanted to share with him.  Doc had no idea what this warning might be but he knew he felt different from normal.   He thought about Eudora and the time when they used to be friends and how it lasted for longer than it should have considering Eudora only ever used him as an alternative to what, after Tom Mayfield, was her ever changing first choice.  Even on the few good nights when he was her selection for the evening he inevitably had to endure some man showing his face and grinning.   Doc would sit and watch Eudora tease the admirer and then listen to her laugh later.

‘Honey, it’s nothing,’ she would say.  ‘I get used to it.’

Doc remembered Eudora being beautiful and while he did he ran his hands over the old leather and thought about all the cars he had repaired.  He studied the grime under his finger nails, grime that never disappeared but became neater when he bathed, became a sharp black line under his fingernails.

Doc left the Buick and walked outside to use his mobile phone.   He called the Employment Office.  The woman who answered the phone was Billie Cash.  Doc and Billie had been friendly after college but back then he would break up courtships to spend those odd evenings with Eudora when she needed her alternative.  Women soon considered Doc unreliable and said so.  Later, Doc had noticed that Billie was attractive and easier to talk to than most but he noticed too late because Billie was already married.

‘Hello, Doc,’ said Billie.

‘I’m thinking about making my help full time and I may even employ more help.’

‘That’s good,’ said Billie.

‘I’d like to talk about it.  I thought I’d call at the bank and then come and visit you.’

‘It’s simple enough, Doc.   You just pop down and see us.’

He pictured Billie as she talked to him, the fresh smile and the neat figure.

‘Billie, could you help me on this?’

‘Sure but there’s a problem today at the office because the boss has let too many folks go to the funeral.  They’re outside watching the procession.   You’d think we were burying Princess Diana.  Another day would be fine.  I’ll get out some files to make certain I’m ready.  But don’t come in here tomorrow, Doc.  It’s,’ Billie hesitated, ‘well, me and Hank separated two weeks ago and I am still chasing my baby sitters.   The day after tomorrow would be best.   What about you, Doc?’

‘Yeah, I’ll be there first thing.’

Doc said goodbye and walked back to the Buick and sat down on the old seat again.  He rubbed his grimy finger nails up and down the wrinkles in the leather.   He did this for some minutes before leaving the car and stepping outside to watch more cars pass by on the interstate.  He imagined Eudora being carried in her limousine.

He pressed the numbers on his mobile phone again.

‘It’s me again.  It’s Doc.’

Billie waited and Doc listened to her breathe.

He took a gulp of the dry air.  ‘Billie, I don’t like to take advantage but I was thinking if you are, well, you know, if you are sort of, well, with the kids and everything and being left in the office today, and it might suit you to take your mind off things but I don’t want you to think I’m the kind of guy who…’

Doc ran out of words and oxygen.

‘I’t would suit me just fine this evening.  My Mom is staying over.  But I still have to get the kids ready for school in the morning.  There’ll be no honky tonking.’

The two of them laughed.  They made arrangements and said goodbye.   Doc switched off his phone and with his eyes followed a few cars on the interstate.  He turned and passed by the sign that said ‘ALL KINDS’.  Inside the garage he walked around the Buick without looking inside.  Instead of climbing back into the pit he drove the Mustang on to one of the hydraulic stands.  He left the car and watched the hydraulic supports lift it into the air.

This is number 13 and I am wary.  It is unforgiveable but I have an irrational trait.  I am superstitious.    I avoid walking under ladders and believe that the rituals I observe on certain days have an important impact on the fortunes of Liverpool Football Club.   I am also aware that Hitchens has died recently and has powerful friends who will not appreciate a serious man of such intellectual consequence being discussed in this context.   But a challenge is a challenge and I have my responsibilities.  Why the comparison makes me so nervous is odd because I had no such inhibitions about comparing Elvis to Isaac Newton in Treat Me Nice.  A book, though, allows for the use of plenty of caveats and Newton has been dead for nearly 400 years.   It makes a difference.

Not everybody needs a hero but plenty of us do have that requirement and I have belonged with them since I heard my first rock and roll record and watched ‘Stagecoach’ every Christmas on TV.  For a long while Christopher Hitchens was a hero of mine and he may still be although he has disappointed me and others.   Originally, I admired him because he had the ability, if I can quote Mark Cousins in his recent documentary series ‘The Story Of Film’, to ‘talk to power’.   He understood that the modulated langauge of the well-dressed powerful often concealed callous utilitarianism and that the motives they gave themselves usually denied ambition much more cynical.  Like Elvis at his best, Hitchens was not intimidated by the establishment and neither should he have been.  He understood them because he was created by the best of their institutions.  This permitted a withering tone that lacerated opponents.   He was also self-destructive or, this time to quote footballer Alan Shearer about the citizens of his native city, he enjoyed life.   So the similarities with Elvis do exist.  These are supreme talent, recklessness and a determination to prove that no one is better than him.   Oddly, when they are listed that way these traits do not appear contradictory.   So maybe neither man is the paradox that sympathetic observers have assumed.

Indeed, although some may baulk at comparing Elvis and Hitchens, if we add Orson Welles to the group we have three individuals who had similar capabilities.  All established themselves as unique contributors, they became as famous as anyone else in their field and each had that overpowering desire to put their hand too close to the fire.  They also had style and none were boring.   Many of his columns were written after heavy drinking sessions or while he was enduring hangovers so Hitchens like Elvis and Welles could be casual about the impact of compromises on his work.  These three are considered by many to have made serious mistakes and their biggest critics were often those who had been their champions at the beginning.  Orson Welles lost fans when they realised he could be wayward, Elvis alienated those who he had originally persuaded that rock and roll was so powerful it had to be supreme and Hitchens angered the left with his support for liberal military interventions.

The argument surrounding the latter has been bitter as any dispute in any rock and roll club over which aesthetic should remain supreme.  If this example is interpreted as trivial they obviously missed Rumfords in Liverpool in the early eighties.  Rumfords used to have a rock and roll night every Sunday.  The crowd was split between those who supported rockabilly, often members of the National Front, and those who believed in rhythm and blues, these usually belonged to the Militant Tendency in the Labour party.  Elvis, as always, straddled both.   The atmosphere, although rarely violent, was not pleasant.

Hitchens, like Elvis, remained unswayed by his critics and has always been consistent with his contempt.  He attacked not only those who insisted upon a world order to support their powerful nations but the tinpot dictators who bullied and tortured their people.  I am not a liberal interventionist, assuming one can be one without having an army with which you can intervene.   I understand the principles that support intervention in certain circumstances.  I have no choice because my daughter is an expert in this field so what always annoyed me about the tirades from Hitchens was how he assumed the principles were beyond those on the left who disagreed with him.  I wanted somone to say to him, ‘yes, intervention is a good idea but the main problem is finding the liberals to make the intervention.   The dictators are bad guys but the only ones able to intervene are those who maintain a world order arranged to suit the powerful; the order that often facilitates the rise to power of these appalling dicatators.   The same people you used to condemn.’

But he was a lot cleverer than the rest of us and I gave him the benefit of the doubt as I did Elvis when I first heard his live albums in the seventies.  I assumed that his weak vocals at Madison Square Garden were a consequence of him being recorded in large hall.  Later, I realised I was wrong.  Similarly, I assumed that Christopher Hitchens was nothing if not intellectually consistent.   But then he praised George Bush as a talented President and spoke of his admiration for the man.  This was the same President who at the time was happily diverting money from the poor to rich.  When the failure and horror of Iraq became all too obvious and two thirds of that group of mindless, trendy lefties known as the American people stated they were against the invasion he still argued he was right.  I became less charitable to him.  At the beginning, reading him, I felt he was on the side of the powerless and against the powerful.   Now, I am not so sure and I have my suspicion that his main concern he shares with his right wing brother, Peter.  What annoys them both is not the fate of the powerless but the standards and manners of the powerful.   This is not as awful as it sounds because it is still easy to admire the singularity of both men.  My sensibility just happens to be different to them.   And I think that is where the difference exists between Elvis, Orson Welles, Chritopher Hitchens and their fiercest detractors.   They appear to be on the same side as their critics but they do not share their sensibilities.   Perhaps it is no more than they were just poor at belonging to wider movements.    This is not intended to waive away their mistakes.  I have never forgiven Welles for the movie ‘Confidential Report’, was depressed by the visit of Elvis to Richard Nixon and believe that Hitchens was nowhere near squeamish enough about war and its consequences.  He argued for morality but my weak stomach tells me that moral war results in just as many burnt babies as the cynical ventures.

So, do these three men qualify as heroes?   In ‘Treat Me Nice’ I quoted what the film critic, David Thomson, said about Orson Welles.   ‘He inhaled legend and changed the way we breathed.’   I argued this applied to Elvis and I think Hitchens, for all my misgivings, belongs in this category.  All men had an irresponsibility that disappointed me but all embraced myth.   I envy them and, if I am honest, I probably still need them.

If you approach Liverpool City Centre from the north along Vauxhall Road you will eventually come to a cross roads.  The turn to the right leads to the River Mersey and the Dock Road.   The large green billboard on the left says, ‘Welcome to Liverpool.’   At this crossroads, though, the road signs that exist only show you how to vacate the city.   I drove past it today thinking how well this irony summed up Liverpool, the always present lack of confidence and insularity that exists despite the assured wit and extrovert bravado.  But the bravado is never vanquished and some was on display outside the Echo Arena.  Last year I saw Elvis the Concert there with a crowd of passionate Scousers who could not believe that Elvis was finally visiting their home town.  Admittedly, it was only the virtual Elvis but for the sake of history and parochial pride the audience was willing to suspend disbelief.

These things pass and today when I arrived at the Arena Car Park there was instead a huge sign advertising the return of one of the favourite sons.  Paul McCartney had come home and would be on stage that night, hence the bravado.  This probably explained why there was a queue outside the box office on what was a cold December day.  The wind that came off the Mersey had a familiar bite and opposite the Arena a big wheel turned carrying mainly empty cabins.  The sky had that colour peculiar to Britain, triumphant grey.

In 2011 Lautrec, Picasso and Magritte have all been honoured in Liverpool with events and I have attended them all so it is fitting that the year is ending with me looking at an Elvis exhibition in the British town twinned with Memphis and on the day McCartney was back in town.    Nobody has mentioned it so far in the publicity but this is not the first Elvis exhibition in Liverpool.  The last which may have been 10 years ago was initially billed as permanent.   This was not the case and interest waned quickly and it closed.

I know someone who has contacts with the Liverpool media and she told me that the exhibiton is intended to attract American visitors.  The long standing Beatles Museum does attract Americans but only a small proportion of the Americans who visit the city.  My suspicion is that the Americans who come to Liverpool because they like The Beatles will go to the Museum.  Presumably, this exhibition is meant to entice the more impartial American businessman or woman.

It has a chance of succeeding.   The exhibition is not perfect and I spent less time in wandering amongst its stands than I did at the exhibitons for Lautrec, Picasso and Magritte but it has its moments.   The admission fee is £6 and this includes a free audio commentary which is essential but there is no programme.   Every museum needs a sense of history and this exhibition has it but that sense is intermittent.   The two most interesting sections are those that allow original members of The Quarrymen to talk about how the band was formed and what they thought of Elvis and how he and other rock and rollers defined the world of aspiring British musicians.  Of those who remember, Pete Best was the closest to the Beatles and he talks the most.  This was a personal revelation for me.  Back in the 70s I was a Civil Servant and, one day when we were on strike over pay, a friend of a friend brought Pete Best to the pub.  The world was different in those days and we did what men did back then.  We got drunk and talked politics.  Pete Best was a good listener and probably said no more than half a dozen words.  Although mainly silent he was extremely polite and indulged verbose young men whose lives were nothing compared to what he had experienced.  In the Elvis and US exhibition, Best appears on several TV screens and he talks at length about Elvis and The Beatles and how rock and roll changed Britain.   As well as anyone he captures what for all of us was a significant moment in history.   It is no coincidence that Best and the other Quarrymen members all at some point refer to the Second World War.

The exhibition begins correctly by setting this historical context but if Exhibit 1 is intended to convince us that in 1951 the world lacked excitement and purpose it fails badly.  The photographs of an exceptionally handsome Cary Grant and a beautiful Marilyn Monroe remind us that glamour has preoccupied the human race long before Elvis.   There are also references to Sergeant Bilko and the fabulous Hitchock movie, ‘Rear Window’.  This is smart knowing popular culture and it existed before Elvis.   But despite that the sections that deal with the arrival of Elvis are fabulous and Exhibit 4 which features clips of Elvis on stage revitalised my memories.  He really was a phenomenon.  The exhibition attempts to maximise appeal by combining the stories of Elvis and The Beatles but the exhibition without really trying proves that Elvis was the explosion.   We may have changed more after The Beatles but that crack in the fifties is still breathtaking when seen again.   Anybody who is curious about the willingness of Elvis to create himself as an American monarch only needs to watch these clips.   The female adoration is still difficult to comprehend as is the humour of Elvis as he accepts this adoration as if it is inconsequential.   His remarks imply the opposite but the revelation here is that he is completely unphased by the attention of his fans.  In the book, Treat Me Nice, I argue that we have to accept that although Elvis was a victim he was a flawed being.  There are, though, moments that remind us he could be very likeable.  In one scene, he is surrounded by girl fans.  One girl who is plain becomes preoccupied with an artifact, it may be a photograph.  Elvis watches this girl with modest potential and ambitions.  She fails to realise the miraculous has happened.  For a few seconds she has the undivided attention of Elvis.  He says nothing because he has to dash but he realises he can do something for the girl that is beyond her guile and confidence.  He leans forward and quickly gives her a farewell kiss on the cheek that he knows will not be acknowledged.  There is such affection and respect in that gesture that it is difficult not to warm to the man.  The unpleasant aspects of the Memphis Mafia have been well documented.  Less has been said about how Elvis welcomed severely disabled Gary Pepper into the group and nourished the dreams of someone else with modest expectations.

The weaker moments of the exhibition lose that sense of history and its glimpses into random events of significance.  Before the end it settles into routine hagiography.    The least consequential exhibit is the largest and, inevitably, recalls the meeting between Elvis and The Beatles.  Priscilla is on video and says nothing significant but it is not easy when you have a mouth surrounded by unyielding plastic.  There are also long interviews with Tony Barrow and Chris Hutchins, ex-press officers they have little regard for the truth and their memories are inaccurate and a stain on the exhibition.  I had hoped that someone would remember what happened before the famous meeting.  This was a telephone call between McCartney and Elvis and at the time it was reported by the New Musical Express in detail.  Elvis was much more communicative on that occasion and its omission from an exhibition that links the Beatles and Elvis is a serious oversight.

The artifacts are the mix of the familiar and the rewarding.  I was pleased to see some original vinyl pressings.  Imagining Elvis handling and listening to those recordings  gave me a thrill similar to when I stood in American Sound Studios and the Vice President pointed to the spot where Elvis sang ‘Suspicious Minds’ and all his other Memphis sixties hits.   The best of the artifacts are the Gibson he played when he recorded ‘Elvis Is Back’ and a blue chair that was used in the sit down sessions in the ’68 Comeback Special.   I am prepared to accept that the chair could have been sat on by anyone and knowing my luck it was probably used by almost non-participant Alan Fortas.   That guitar, though, is different.  Elvis may have played more than one accoustic Gibson in those sessions but I have done a deal with my conscience.   I will ignore the blue chair providing I can tell myself I saw the guitar that Elvis strummed on his classic blues recording, ‘Reconsider Baby.’   That is worth £6 of the money of anyone and, although I spent longer with Picasso and the others, it gives this exhibition the edge.

A while ago Simon Cowell appeared on the Radio 4 programme, ‘Desert Island Discs.’   The format of the programme is simple.  The guest has to imagine being stranded on a desert island with only basic provisions.  These are eight discs, a bible, a favourite book and one luxury item.   Cowell must have struggled associating a desert island with a meagre existence.   He has enough money to own a couple of islands already and have them support habitations furnished to the highest standards.  But Cowell ignored the rewards of the materialism without limits that drives him and played along with the show.  Cowell picked the one object that he believed would provide comfort against the hardship of privation and loneliness.   He chose a mirror.

The presenter was shocked and asked, ‘Are you serious?’

Cowell insisted upon his choice.

He can claim fame and personal wealth probably worth billions and for all I know he may have taken a personal hand in refurbishing the occasional abandoned island.  This, though, was his finest moment.   An instant when a man, who has made a fortune calculating accurately the taste of millions, revealed how he not only understood the potency of trivia in the lives of others but why it defined him as well.   We either have purpose or narcissism and Cowell trenchantly chose the latter.

The three great British TV phenomena in the last twenty years have been The X Factor, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Big Brother.   All three have been quite resistible.  Big Brother thrives on a need for gossip, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire reduces glory to the acquisition of money and the X Factor has ventilated a sense of exceptional and individual entitlement that damns the rest.   Of course, their defenders argue that they are ‘only a bit of fun’ but it is fun that eludes me.   Big Brother is about as exciting as a cricket Test Match after rain has stopped play, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire salivates over the unedifying spectacle of greed made hysterical and the X Factor traps its audience inside a ritual designed to repeat failure.   There must be talented people who decide the X Factor is an alternative route to success but spotting them is usually more difficult than locating the recently discovered Higgs bosun.  The rock singer and guitarist, K T Tunstall, recently made an appearance at a club or party.

Afterwards one of the spectators approached Tunstall and said, ‘You’re very good.  Why don’t you go on the X Factor.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Tunstall.  ‘I’m a musician.’

Well, as H L Menken once famously said, ‘Nobody ever lost a buck underestimating public taste.’

But the successes of these three shows have significance beyond the acerbic wit of Menken.   All three involve, like the lottery, people admitting honestly and unashamedly that they need an alternative to normal existence.  You do not have to be a classical pessimist to conclude that many people today find their own lives and privations unbearable.   All shows offer a promised land but one that is remote from others and consequently empty.  We are supposed to be social but our modern fantasies are rooted in isolation.   These contestants, especially those in the X Factor, want to be in a place denied to virtually everyone else.  Admittedly, these ambitions are fuelled by emotion so they may actually have a purpose that many contestants would be reluctant to articulate – existential consequence or a bulwark against immortality.  But even if these reasons do exist there appears to be little regard for the consequences.

The mirror has significance for Cowell because he realises better than anyone, and realised before anyone else, what he was offering.   A lonely existence denied everyone else but compensated by the narcissistic realisation that the glory is exclusive.  Without anybody else to look at the mirror is not just the luxury the radio programme permitted.  The mirror is an essential.  It begins and ends the process.   It inspires our dreams for selfish exclusivity and compensates us if those dreams come true. 

When people mention the X Factor in the context of Elvis it usually consists of familiar questions such as would he have participated and would he have won.   I am not sure on either count.  All that competition may have dissuaded him.   I do not think he would have won, either.  Elvis always had to endure ridicule and hostility that X Factor winners can and do avoid.  When Elvis was asked one evening after a concert in Las Vegas if he ever thought he would be that ‘big’ Elvis replied, ‘I only ever wanted to be as big as Big Boy Crudup.’   The gentleman he referred to was an obscure blues singer.   In the beginning the worldwide acclaim was beyond his imagination and so it should have been.  As his music proved throughout his life Elvis was too human for that.    What is disturbing about Cowell and the X Factor contestants is that despite the oohs and aahs the ambition is anti-human.  It never imagines a Big Boy Crudup alternative and instead accepts continual audition for the ultimate prize, remote exclusivity.    The notion of audition is interesting because the role it now plays in our lives has changed dramatically.   The instant society and slavvering over change has required all of us to audition continually.  This was not the case for our parents.  They left school and college and acquired skills and these usually equipped them for life.  Not any more.  Repeated appraisal and evaluation is demanded in jobs that are not even well remunerated.  Elvis whose ambitions initially were modest was exposed to this constant process of audition before most.   Perhaps it is no surprise he resisted.   Most fans are aware of his weaknesses and he was no stranger to the mirror but when I compare him to the ambitions that are insisted upon today I am convinced of his innocence.  I believe the story about Crudup and I understand why he was obliged to be a victim.

The mirror is like all drugs. It is useful in the beginning but it destroys in the end.   Not everyone, of course.   This is why the least sensitive like Cowell can be glib about its presence and why X Factor contestants can be so determined.  Cowell, though, is astute and not just financially.  He knows the price and is willing to pay it, as long as the scars do not disfigure his reflection.   Today, The Guardian printed a photograph of the winners, Little Mix.   Photographs can deceive so we should not make easy conclusions about vacant expressions caught in the heat of excitement. But those expressions and the dodgy wigs were disturbing.

Cowell is tough enough to survive isolation and the consequences of his self-centred ambitions.  The X Factor winners, though, should worry us.

The symmetry is irresistible and consequential.   Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson were two major rock and roll figures and both were allowed to exceed their drug usage by indulgent doctors.  To others, the medical men appeared to be motivated only by greed, two undistinguished men who thought that emotionally confused millionaires represented the gravy train.   Dr Conrad Murray appeared a bankrupt figure in court.  This was a man who rather than heal had only a gift for compounding wreckage.  Murray has now been sentenced to prison for four years although the informed believe this term will never be served.  His white doppleganger, and in these two tales there is more than one doppleganger, was someone called Dr George Nichopoulos.  This doctor avoided prison but was reduced to going on tour showing the bag he used when he over-prescribed drugs for Elvis.  Both men are now famous and deserve to be because they proved the incompatibility of greed and competence in medicine.

For me, the significance of these sordid tales begins and ends in Liverpool.   After Elvis died but before the end of that decade, Liverpool playwright, Neville Smith, wrote for BBC television a play called ‘Long Distance Information.’   Smith was gifted and he is famous for his screenplay for the more than decent movie, ‘Gumshoe’.    He had enough status and talent to persuade the BBC to screen a sympathetic account of an alienated Elvis fan.  The fan is called Christian and the symbolism in the play is obvious.   The play begins with the fan searching Liverpool for a jacket that Elvis wore in one of his early movies.

The play resonated particularly in the final scene.  Elvis has just died and Christian, unable to sleep, wanders the city.   He meets a man who has been a soldier.  The music of Elvis does not have the same appeal for the soldier as it does for Christian but he has been affected by the death.  He regrets the passing of Elvis in the same way his father, a communist, regretted the death of Winston Churchill.   The soldier knows this is an important day.   We will now become something different to what we could have been, he thinks.

The scene has also stayed in my mind because of a detail in the dialogue.   Less affected by grief than Christian, the soldier understands the tragedy of death more clearly.   I do not remember the dialogue exactly but the soldier says something like.   ‘I know one thing.   I know that if he had lived here we would have taken better care of him.  We wouldn’t have let Elvis die like they did over there.’

The hard times in Britain today have been compared more than once recently to the years 1973-1983 and this play was written well before that supposedly grim decade had expired.    Remember also, that this was from a playwright who was in awe of American culture and what was best about the country.  This admiration is part of our diet in Liverpool.   And thirty years ago Britain was a wounded imperial beast whose people were beginning to suspect the wounds were fatal.  With so little economic power on hand and so much envy it is odd that the play was able to summon a patriotic pride, to still believe in what the country had achieved and could still offer.   But whatever our faults there was always The National Health Service.   Even in those dire economic circumstances nobody argued that the damn thing was not affordable.   This slight of hand only occurred later when economic thinking had been deliberately clouded by neo-conservatism, the arguments of the rich and powerful and their lackeys.

This Monday, two days ago, Laurie Penny, in The Guardian wrote about her experience in America after she had picked up a serious infection.   She came to the conclusion that the absence of public healthcare means more than a lack of free health treatment.  It enables the poor and the ordinary to be subjugated more easily.   And, maybe, that was what the final dialogue with the soldier in the play also implied.  Not only would Elvis have had a properly regulated health service he would have been surrounded by people too proud to let his premature death happen.  I did say the play was patriotic.

But all that was back then.  Last Friday, two days before the article by Laurie Penny appeared in The Guardian, I was drinking in a pub in Liverpool.   The White Star is a traditional haunt with good beer and if Neville Smith ever returns to his home town there will be more than one customer in there who will treat him to a pint.  The pub was packed with the early Christmas crowd.  There were groups from work having a drink before their premature celebrations.   I was squeezed against four workers from the NHS.  Two were actually employed by a care trust and involved in commissioning health treatment.   We talked about the one day public sector national strike that had happened two days earlier.

The woman next to me said, ‘They think it’s about pensions but it’s more than that.   We can see what they are doing.  They are carving up the NHS for the big companies.    The fight is that important I can’t explain why.  Do you understand?’

‘It’s about what we were and what we will become.’

She nodded.   ‘That’s right.   What’s going to happen to us?’

I shrugged my shoulders.  The NHS workers only stayed for one drink.   Elsewhere, food beckoned them away.

As they organised themselves to leave the woman who had spoken to me stood opposite and waited.   She looked at me without the usual farewell smile.   Her face was anxious as if she realised that, without wishing to be, she was now involved in a struggle that carried the profound burden of likely defeat.   I wanted to offer consolation, to tell her to be philosophical and understand that in most of the struggles between the powerless and the powerful it is the latter that usually prevail.  I could have said that even in defeat there is exaltation in endurance although such triumph invariably has a bitter taste.  These days, though, the alcohol affects me more quickly than it once did.  Instead, I was inarticulate.

‘The NHS may be flawed,’ I said, ‘But it’s still worth fighting for.’

The woman nodded grimly.   Her friends took her away.

Thanks to the determination of Aneurin Bevan, Britain has avoided Doctors Conrad Murray and George Nichopoulos.   Greed exists in Britain like

"The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it" Nye Bevan

everywhere else but since I was a child the Conrads and Georges have been regulated.  Bevan was aware of the appetites and choked their greed with consultancy fees.  But that was well before disenchanted left wing playwrights were able to conclude Britain had at least something to recommend to others.    Since the conversation in the pub I have brooded about health care and our responsibility to the damaged and vulnerable.   I have thought about ‘Long Distance Information’ and Elvis and Michael Jackson.   I am not the only one these days but I have remembered what we were and I have worried about what we might become.

The natives are restless in Britain and its Tory masters are anxious.  Not because the World Cup beckons and the humiliation of its national football team is being predicted.  That is normal.  What really worrries the patriotic Brit is the Eurozone and Europe.   To secure the Eurozone, more integration will be needed between member states.  If successful it would create a Europe so powerful it could insist on Britain joining the Euro.  Imagine the humiliation for David Cameron and George Osborne if they had to become subservient to the Germans and abandon the pound.  There would be no TV repeat of ‘The Great Escape’ that week.  But the alternative is almost as bad because if the Eurozone fails there will be an economic crisis as bad as the one that wrecked the first half of the twentieth century.

A Europe dominated by Germany with common welfare and fiscal policies would for many Brits be unbearable.   A few years back the England football team beat Germany 5-1 on German soil.  The result was so good and unexpected many football fans assumed immediately there would be a price to pay.  They imagined the team being played off the park in a future competition which, of course, happened but the idea of a super European state where Germany becomes the common language already has the Daily Mail foaming at the mouth.  This is serious enough for life long lefties to feel sorry for the Tories.   Most, though, are like me and enjoy the spectacle.

All of which, to quote the Guardian, ‘just about makes Angela Merkel the most important woman on the planet.’    Inevitably, the critics, as they did with Elvis, have insisted she is a pretender.  She has been compared to Thatcher and found lacking.   She supposedly lacks the charisma and the bold strategies of Thatcher.  There has been debate about how a politician who demonstrated supreme opportunism in her rise to power has subsequently been cautious and uninspired.  Some of the criticism has been sexist.  Even the article in the Guardian described her as irredeemably frumpy.    Their criterion for redemption was not explained.

I am not a fan of Merkel.   The survival skills of politicians do not impress people like me, probably because we do not have any.  Her right wing politics which she has insisted upon with a narrow conviction worthy of George Osborne have always appeared uninterested in the fate of those who have not been blessed with her opportunities.   Whatever the political system, whatever the country, East or West Germany, this is a woman who has spent most of her life pursuing solitary ambition whilst demonstrating a willingness to tell others how they should live.   But the comparison with Thatcher is unfair especially when it is made unflatteringly.  Thatcher was destructive while Merkel attempts to be concilliatory and constructive.   The two leaders are compared for one reason only.  They are both women and it speaks volumes about the attitudes of political commentators that they are tempted by such easy comparisons.   Merkel should be compared to Obama.  Their social conscience is perhaps shaped in different ways, Obama responds to what is happening to people while Merkel is keen to acknowledge theory, and their politics are different.  They are, though, similar figures with an almost identical cautious political approach.  Always, they both act like people who want to save their gunpowder.

Both these politicians, like Elvis, were obliged to disappoint.    To understand why, we have to distinguish between the characteristics that make people become successful and those that help them later be successful.  Merkel was at her best carving her political career.  She knew when to support and when to challenge.  She trod a careful line in East Germany but was active with propaganda for the local party when needed.  Her dramatic and career forming moment in West Germany was when she challenged Helmut Kohl with a letter that insisted on a complete break with the past.  This counter cultural moment was worthy of Mao but Merkel has been reluctant to acknowledge any influences.  Subsequently, as a leader she has been cautious and, so far, appears unwilling to shape history.   The same charge has been made against Obama.  Both characters, though, work in political systems that restrict them and so we will never know whether they have an appetite for defining the future.    They will fade from power and become elusive mysteries.

These factors shaped the career of Elvis Presley.   Like Merkel and Obama he was better at becoming successful.   At the critical moments, and the seventies decade can be described that way, the task of being successful and managing history appeared to be beyond him.   Fortunately, for Elvis he had four opportunities when he could use his skills for becoming successful.  These were his debut at Sun, his arrival at RCA, his return from the Army and his comeback in 1968.   In these periods, like Merkel and Obama in politics, his rivals were no match for him.

The same sense of elusive mystery that will be the legacy of Obama and Merkel is the same as that endured by Elvis fans.  Why could he not have been more successful when he became eminent and powerful?   What happened to the previous opportunism and flair?  I accept his nature had consequence but one clue exists in the word ‘powerful’.  This is why the legacy is a mystery.  Obama, Merkel and Elvis all operated in systems that had factions and each of the three was accountable to those factions.  Obama has Congress, the Senate, the media, the Executive and the Democratic Party.  Elvis had Parker, Bienstock and BMG, Hollywood and the demands of his fans for glamour.    Ian Hunter from Mott The Hoople once remarked that the problem with being a famous musician is that it soon becomes like work.  When you are only half successful you can turn up at the next club and simply play what makes you happy.   This is probably true but when you are in the very big league, the league of Merkel, Obama and Elvis it is much more complicated than that.   There is compensation of course and it consists of fame and comfort.  If you are positive you will appreciate the satisfaction of knowing that your legacy will exist to baffle the rest of us but if you are self-critical, like Elvis, you will destroy yourself.    Elvis had a responsibility to continually realise his talent for achieving the transcendental in his music.  This required stamina beyond him but his efforts in four key perfiods and in other instances are enough for me to stay loyal.

Merkel is not musical and has a very different responsibility.  She is obliged to save the world economy.  If she gets it wrong we will have something far more serious to fret about than ‘There’s No Room To Rhumba In A Sports Car.’

I’ve signed this petition to prevent the American Billboard from deleting Elvis Presley’s 11 Number 1 records from the site.

You can read more about the progress of the petition on the site’s blog.

Please sign the petition. The man needs respect.