Lou Reed: end of an era

One of the first records I ever bought was 'Sweet Jane' by the Velvet Underground.

The song was originally released in 1970 on Loaded – the band's fourth album – but Lou Reed had left even before the record came out.

I bought it as a single in 1973 when it was re-released to cash in on Reed's success with 'Walk On The Wild Side'.

Johnny Walker featured it as his 'Record of the Week' on Radio 1 but it didn't make the charts.

The small independent record shop in South Street, St Andrews, 400 yards from my school, didn't even stock it so I had to order a copy. It arrived a week later and I remember going to collect it.

To this day 'Sweet Jane' remains my favourite Lou Reed song, although it's hard to choose one. The original studio version still sounds incredibly fresh, even though I've heard it thousands of times.

On my iPod however I've got numerous live and cover versions, some by bands I'd never heard of, and each one is very different.

You could put together a compilation featuring 15 or more versions of 'Sweet Jane' and it would be one of the most eclectic albums in your collection.

Anyway, in 1973 no-one would have dreamt that 40 years later Reed would die aged 71 and be hailed as a "rock legend" and much more.

It was unthinkable. Your average Radio 1 listener would have dismissed him as a one hit wonder and not even readers of NME, who knew better, would have predicted a long and successful future, such was his well-documented lifestyle.

I ought to give my sister some credit because it was she who inadvertently introduced me to Reed via Transformer, the 1972 album produced by David Bowie.

I remember sneaking into her bedroom when she was out, removing the album from its sleeve, and putting it on her portable record player.

I was only going to listen to the first few tracks but there wasn't a dud song on the album. It just got better and better and I listened to the whole thing, pausing only to turn the record over.

After buying 'Sweet Jane', I worked my way back. A compilation album, 'Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground', was released on cassette and I bought that.

It introduced me to tracks from the first three VU albums including 'Venus and Furs' (I had never heard anything like that before!) and 'Sister Ray', a 17-minute epic I played as loudly as I could on my tiny Phillips cassette player.

To cut a long story short I went on to buy every Lou Reed album ever released with the exception of Metal Machine Music, an infamous double album that features four sides of 'experimental' feedback.

I bought every live album plus numerous compilations.

I collected every Velvet Underground album as well, including live recordings and a box set.

And then there were the live performances – Brixton Academy in 1982 (I think), Wembley Arena (1989), Hammersmith Odeon (1992), Hammersmith Odeon again (2007) and Nottingham Royal Concert Hall (2008).

At those last four concerts Reed played a single album from start to finish – New York, Magic and Loss, and Berlin.

Ah, Berlin. That was the album that followed Transformer but it was so different it was a commercial disaster.

It was described as one of the most depressing records ever made.

Where Transformer was a pop record, full of hooks and amusing lyrics, Berlin was the complete opposite.

It was difficult on first hearing - I was 14 - but I grew to love it and it remains my favourite album ever.

When Reed and his band performed Berlin live in 2007, supported by an orchestra and children's choir, it was a genuinely moving event.

I was also at the Playhouse in Edinburgh in 1993 when a re-united Velvet Underground featuring the original line-up played a short but lucrative European tour.

Purists didn't like it but I'm glad I was there. I've got the live album from that tour too.

So tonight really is the end of an era for me.

No more Lou Reed albums. No more Lou Reed concerts. No more 'Lou Reed is horrible to journalist' stories. (Boo hoo.)

But what a fantastic legacy.

He's not to everyone's taste (relatively few, in fact), but he's been a huge part of my life and I'm very grateful.

See also: The scary genius that was Lou Reed (James Delingpole, Telegraph Blogs)

The soundtrack to much of my life (Mark Mardell, BBC News)

Lou Reed created music that will live on for as long as songs are sung (Neil McCormick, Daily Telegraph)

PS. By coincidence, my birthday is the same day (March 2) as Reed's. Spooky.

I should also mention – and it still bugs me almost a quarter of a century later – that in 1986 I recorded a documentary about the Velvet Underground that was broadcast on The South Bank Show.

The following year the tape was in my VHS machine when it was stolen by burglars who broken into our house in Camberwell and took not only the video machine but also the TV.

To the best of my knowledge the programme has never been repeated nor is it available on DVD. Very annoying.

Crown paints one-sided picture of IEA debate

Our friend Senator John Crown has gone on the offensive. Again.

Following online reports of last week's IEA debate in Dublin (a panel discussion entitled 'How to really stop people smoking'), the anti-tobacco campaigner has posted a video of his speech on YouTube and tweeted:

My talk at Royal College of Physicians "The big lies told by Big Tobacco"... http://t.co/KNujEgUfZt

How wonderful to hear a man revelling in the sound of his own voice.

Naturally the video doesn't include the three other panellists because that would constitute a discussion and Tobacco Control activists can't handle that.

Nor do they want the world to know that tobacco control policies aren't always successful and, in a liberal democracy, people have a right to question them.

Sadly, activists like Crown are only comfortable when they're preaching to the converted or lecturing us from their pulpit.

The 15 minute video was uploaded by Shane Conneely, Crown's parliamentary assistant, who is also active on Twitter.

Can't blame him for doing his master's bidding, but it's interesting that a man whose Twitter profile claims that he "likes ideas" doesn't like ideas other than those he has been pre-programmed to believe.

Instead of tweeting "the iea whored their name to big tobacco on Wednesday", Conneely should open his eyes and ears to what's really going on.

There's a reason why long established and well-respected think tanks like the IEA and ASI are questioning the current orthodoxy on tobacco control, and it has very little to do with the tiny sums of money they receive from Big Tobacco.

One, there is no evidence that some of the more extreme anti-tobacco measures actually reduce youth smoking rates. Indeed it can be argued they are counter-productive and cause far more misery than they resolve.

Two, there is a strong body of opinion that believes that excessive state interference in people's lives is morally wrong.

You don't have to be a committed smoker or employed by Big Tobacco to take this view. Some of us can think for ourselves.

In our opinion Professor Crown made an idiot of himself and the entire Tobacco Control movement with his antics on Wednesday night. What a pity there weren't more people there to see it.

Fortunately, having posted a video of his master's voice on YouTube, Shane Conneely has given the IEA the green light to post a video of the entire event so we can judge Crown's comments in context.

At the same time it will be nice to hear what his fellow panellists had to say while Crown was busy fiddling with his iPad in the front row having refused to join them on the platform.

Well done, Shane, thanks to you and your boss this story is going to run and run.

Update: Commenting on the debate, one of my favourite bloggers has written this post - God Mark II.

No prizes for guessing who that is.

PS. Prof Crown has blocked Forest from following him on Twitter. And so he joins the likes of Simon Chapman, Australia's leading tobacco control activist whose ego matches his status.

Quite an exclusive club!

That's entertainment!

Brilliant interview with Forest's Angela Harbutt on BBC Radio Merseyside.

Subject? Smoking in hospital grounds.

Presenter Simon Hoban summed it up nicely: "Angela, that was entertaining. Thank you for being on."

Click here. Item starts at 01:08.

Not all doctors are risk averse – check out my family!

If you're not interested in other people's families (I don't blame you) look away now.

In my last post I mentioned my grandfather (on my mother's side). I didn't mention his love of amateur boxing.

His son (my mother's brother) also became a GP and inherited his father's interest in sport.

Uncle Roy was medical officer to the British team at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. A year later he was appointed chairman of the British Olympic Association medical committee.

But I remember a rather different side to him. When he was younger Roy was a devil-may-care amateur racing driver.

We never really talked about it (he retired from racing following a serious accident) but a quick search on Google reveals he drove a Lotus Eleven Ford and competed in European saloon car meetings.

He also raced a Mk 1 Lola-Climax that was previously owned by another driver called Bernard Cox (car and driver are pictured here).

In 1971, according to this letter from a fellow sports car enthusiast, Roy sold it to him for £500.

A decade later the same car was sold on to Germany for £7500.

Talking of motor racing, last Saturday I took my daughter to see Rush, the film about the 1976 Formula One season and the rivalry between James Hunt and Nikki Lauda.

Sophie has no interest in Formula One and my interest is waning but we both thought it was brilliant.

Down Wembley way

Great excitement in north west London on Thursday.

I had a meeting with our accountants whose tenth floor office overlooks Wembley Stadium.

Over the past ten years they've had a ringside seat as the old stadium was demolished and the new one took its place.

At first the gleaming new stadium – which is much taller than the old one, even without its arch – seemed out of place in an area characterised by two-storey suburban houses built in the Thirties and grim high rise offices, disturbing relics of the Sixties and Seventies.

Today, in the area around the stadium, some of the older monstrosities have gone (or been refurbished) and shiny new apartments have appeared and the area has been rebranded Wembley City.

On Thursday the sound of live music alerted me to the opening of London Designer Outlet, which seems a strange name for "Wembley's newest shopping, eating and entertainment destination".

It's not very big and quite a few units haven't been let yet, but it's a welcome addition to the area.

I was attracted to a Cafe Nero where they were handing out free croissants. I found a table and sat there, with my laptop, for an hour or so.

On a whim I rang my mother, who was born in 1930 and grew up in Wembley. (Old photographs show that the stadium was surrounded by fields when it was first built in 1923. Hard to imagine now, especially as I was sitting exactly where those fields had been.)

I asked her what my grandparents' address was so I could have a look at the house.

It was Rosslyn Gardens, a short drive from 'Wembley City'.

My grandfather was a doctor and when he retired my grandparents moved to Colchester so I must have been three or four years old the last time I saw the house.

The tree-lined residential street was almost as I remembered it, although it seemed a lot wider in those days.

The house too seemed smaller. My grandfather's surgery was part of it. It had its own entrance so patients didn't have to go through the house.

I've written about this before, I think, but I'm told that my grandfather, like many doctors in the post war period, wasn't a huge fan of the NHS, or the way it was introduced.

His patient list (ie his business), which he had built up between the wars, was effectively commandeered by the state in 1948.

This isn't an argument against the NHS (that's a different debate), but there was a generation of GPs who were less than happy when their practices were taken over and nationalised.

It's a story rarely if ever told, perhaps because it sits uncomfortably with the modern orthodoxy that the pre-NHS healthcare system in Britain was a blot on civilisation and the NHS represented a giant step forward.

That generation of doctors are dead now so everyone accepts, without quibble it seems, that the NHS saved the nation from a fate worse than death (health inequalities, allegedly, and avaricious private quacks).

That's not how I remember my grandfather (a lifelong pipe smoker, by the way). He would be amazed, I'm sure, by the salaries doctors currently earn, the absence of home visits, and the tendency of current GPs to send you to hospital so someone else can examine you and decide what to do.

Anyway, it was interesting to see the house. The separate entrance is long gone and you would never guess that part of the house had been a surgery.

PS. My grandfather fought in the desert in the First World War. A decade or so later he had all his teeth removed.

I remember being told the two things were linked - the sand ground them down, something like that - but perhaps I imagined it.

It does seem a bit far-fetched. Did Lawrence of Arabia have his teeth removed? I think we should be told.

Then again, he was killed in a motor cycle accident before they had a chance to whip them out.

Snowdon: "One of the most infantile displays I have seen since puberty"

I've been looking forward to Chris Snowdon's account of what happened in Dublin on Wednesday night.

He hasn't let us down. I urge you to read the full post.

To put this in perspective, John Crown is currently one of the leading anti-tobacco advocates in the whole of Ireland.

I also liked Chris's description of Forest's representative in Ireland because it sums up the man and, I hope, Forest:

John Mallon — who has written a good account of the evening — lightens the mood by trying to speak to the health lobby as human beings. As a smoker, he is the hunted, but he remains polite and gracious in the face of the hunters and his affability sits in stark contrast to the purse-lipped, lemon-sucking zealots.

See: An evening in Dublin (Velvet Glove Iron Fist)

Tantrums and tobacco: the ugly face of public health

Last night's tobacco control debate in Dublin had enough fireworks to light up the Liffey.

My colleague John Mallon was in the audience and he has posted an account on the Forest Eireann blog. Here's a taste:

If Chris Snowden, Jeff Stier or Dr Axel Klein are reading this, please accept my apologies for the appalling bad manners of my fellow-countrymen during your visit to Ireland ...

It was most embarrassing as an Irish citizen to have witnessed the ugly contempt shown to the three visitors and in the cold light of day I feel a sense of shame. If any good has come out of it then it can only be that they can finally understand just how extreme the spokespersons for tobacco control have become in Ireland.

Full post: Thanks to Senator John Crown I was embarrassed to be an Irish citizen.

In a separate email to me this afternoon, John wrote:

I'm just back from Dublin and I must say that I am deeply embarrassed by what I saw there.

[Prof] Crown had apparently insisted he should go first and he launched into a tirade against the IEA and the College of Physicians for hosting the event.

He shouted several times, mouthing the usual statistics, quoting from his experiences as an oncologist, and generally hamming it up.

It was a frightening spectacle. He finished by saying he intends now to turn his attention to the tobacco lobby in Ireland.

But that's not the half of it, reported John:

When [Crown] finished speaking he didn't return to the table [where the other panellists were sitting]. He came down to the front of the hall and sat sideways, never once looking up at any of the other speakers.

He produced a smartphone or iPad and proceeded to use it for the remainder of the evening, never acknowledging comments by either Chris, Axel or Jeff that were directed at him from the podium. It was the most arrogant, bad-mannered display I have seen in years.

When the speakers had all finished, Kathleen O'Meara of the Irish Cancer Society arrived. The debate was just being thrown open to the floor and the chairman, Ivan Yates, immediately deferred to her. She spoke for several minutes, then picked up her handbag and left.

John added:

In the context of the evening and having heard what was said, I took the microphone, introduced myself, and said I was a smoker. My main point was that activists like John Crown are not talking to me or any smokers out there.

They are talking 'at' us and as a result they were not being heard by the very people they claim to be trying to reach.

Sounds like quite an evening. Sadly I'm told there were no journalists present to witness Crown's behaviour.

Not that it would make any difference. They would probably shrug their shoulders and say, "John Crown? He's a character!"

Tobacco control Crown slips as debate ends in uproar

The panel discussion organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs in Dublin last night appears to have been a riot.

Chris Snowdon, one of the speakers, tweeted:

First IEA debate in Ireland was lively. Walk outs, incredible petulance, defamation, threats to sue and continuous ad hominems. Good times.

Before the discussion even started Prof John Crown, one of Ireland's leading tobacco control activists and a member of the Senate who was also on the panel, tweeted:

Troubled to learn that tonight's event in RCPI is organised by a pro Big Tobacco apologist group.

After the event he took to Twitter again to complain:

The event in RCPI was billed as as a smoking control event. It was anything but.

Organised by Institute for Economic Affairs who are supported by tobacco. They are now targeting Ireland because we are tightening regs.

Hilariously he also tweeted:

Not usually a big umbrage person but I'm really incensed about tonight's event at RCPI. Scammed into having essentially pro-tobacco event.

Not a big umbrage person?! The man is deluded. See The Senator Crown affair (Taking Liberties, November 2012).

What happened last night was entirely predictable. Tobacco control fanatics like John Crown believe it's their way or no way.

Crown is one of the worst examples of the breed. Anyone who stands in his way gets the hair dryer treatment.

As Chris Snowdon wrote in yesterday's Irish Independent, Ireland's tobacco control policies are failing. It's time to consider options other than bans and further restrictions.

I don't know anyone who doesn't believe there should be some degree of tobacco control, whether it involves marketing, age restrictions or places where you can smoke.

To that extent we're all supporters of tobacco control.

The problem is, Prof Crown and his cronies think they've cornered that particular market and they'll fight anyone who steps on their patch.

Last night's event was called 'How to really stop people smoking'. It was meant to be a genuine debate about tobacco control.

Crown and his ilk don't do debate. They are the enemies of freedom and a liberal consensus.

More fool them.

As for complaining before, during and after the event that the IEA receive money from the tobacco industry, Crown has made himself look even more ridiculous.

It's hardly news, after all. When Crown got the invitation to take part in last night's event a simple search on Google (IEA, tobacco) would have led instantly to an Observer article (Health groups dismayed by news 'big tobacco' funded rightwing thinktanks) and this entry on the Tobacco Tactics website.

Suggesting, after the event, that he has been "scammed" is laughable.

The truth is, tobacco control activists like John Crown have been preaching to the converted for so long it probably never occurred to him that, for once, he might have to debate the policies he supports with people who know as much if not more about tobacco use than he does.

Welcome to the real world, John. Sorry you found the experience so uncomfortable.

PS. Watch this space for further reports of last night's event when they appear.