The boy from Wormit

Bit late to this but I discovered this week that I have something in common with actor and comedian Richard Gadd, who wrote and starred in the award-winning Netflix series Baby Reindeer.

Like me, Gadd is a former pupil of Madras College in St Andrews. He supports Dundee United, and he grew up in Wormit, where my family lived from 1969 to 1978 (and where his parents still live).

I'm three decades older than Gadd so our paths have never crossed, but we seem to have shared an early interest in acting. Sadly, that's where any similarity ends.

According to the Madras College Christmas newsletter (2005), Gadd 'excelled' in the title role in the school production of Macbeth a few months' earlier:

He delivered a wonderfully physical performance in which he was perfectly prepared to smash his head off the set when the role demanded it!!

The programme for that production offers the following portrait:

Richard's drama career began when he played the part of a wise man in the nativity play at Wormit Primary School. He thoroughly enjoys his drama classes at Madras, easily picking it over Latin in his second year. He took part in the LAMDA acting exams, performing pieces from "The Trestle" and "Billy Liar". Richard has taken part in several small school productions during lunchtimes and after school including one in aid of Tsunami Relief.

He auditioned for "Macbeth" expecting a small role but instead was handed the role of Macbeth. This has involved endless pages containing huge speeches (half of which had been cut after learning them). He is both nervous and excited about performing and knows he will miss all those involved after the final curtain. It will also be hard for him to stop lapsing into Shakespearean when talking to friends and family when the production is over.

That was 20 years ago. Last year the show he created won four Emmys including Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.

Not bad for a boy from Wormit.

PS. Driving home from Scotland on Thursday we were listening to Woman's Hour on Radio 4 when another former Madras pupil was interviewed.

Born in Edinburgh in 1975, KT Tunstall was only there for a short time, I believe, but as far as I'm concerned she's still one of us.

The Ivor Novello Award-winning singer-songwriter has written the music for Clueless: The Musical, hence the interview on Woman's Hour. It's at the Trafalgar Theatre in London until June 14.

See: ‘Like a gig with your favourite 90s artists’: KT Tunstall composes Clueless musical (Guardian).

Food, glorious food

Just back from our annual gastronomy tour of north east Fife (via Glasgow).

It’s half-term (my wife works in education) so we drove to Scotland, arriving in Glasgow on Sunday, and on Monday we had breakfast at Singl-end Cafe & Bakehouse, above. (Yes, that is the correct spelling.)

The cafe - in a quiet residential street in the city centre - is named after the single rooms that were found in the working-class tenements that were such a feature of cities in Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries.

According to the National Trust for Scotland:

The working-class tenements, often consisting of a single room (referred to as a 'single-end'), were testaments to the harsh realities of the time. These cramped spaces, shared by as many as eight family members, created a perfect environment for overcrowding and poor sanitation.

From Glasgow we drove to Powmill Milk Bar (which I mentioned in a post last week) where I ordered a strawberry milk shake. The bar is clearly popular because mid morning, and despite being in a fairly isolated location, it was almost full.

(Funnily enough, on the drive home yesterday, we passed another milk bar in the Borders, so perhaps they are not as outdated or on the verge of extinction as we are led to believe.)

En route to St Andrews we also popped into the Ship Inn in Elie, in Fife. Famously, it is home to the only cricket team in the world that plays all its matches on the beach adjacent to the pub.

Elie is one of a handful of picturesque fishing villages that can be found in the East Neuk of Fife. Others include Crail, Anstruther, Pittenweem, and St Monans.

Later, after checking in to our apartment in St Andrews, we returned to the East Neuk for supper - fish and chips at the Anstruther Fish Bar - which we ate in the car in the tiny car park that overlooks the harbour.

It was dark, of course, so we couldn’t see anything, but it’s a family tradition.

On Tuesday morning, back in St Andrews, we bought coffee and freshly cooked bacon rolls at the appropriately named Gorgeous Cafe, just around the corner from where we were staying.

Following an afternoon in Dundee (see below), we had dinner at Haar, a restaurant that occupies the same building as The Niblick, the (former) pub where I bought my first pint, aged 15.

Like me, our hostess at Haar was a pupil at Madras College in St Andrews. Unlike me, she is only 24, and her father was born in 1969, the year my family moved to Fife, which made me feel very old.

The school moved to a new £50 million campus on the edge of town in 2021. Before that it was split into two sites, a mile apart.

The older of the two sites (built in 1832) is now being redeveloped by St Andrews University and will eventually reopen as New College. The newer site (opened in January 1968) has been refurbished and is now student accommodation.

Even better than Haar, perhaps, was Dune, where we ate on Wednesday evening.

Like Haar, Dune is owned by chef Dean Banks. The ‘newest bar in St Andrews’ is a cocktail and wine bar that, upstairs, also offers what is described as a ‘loft dining experience’.

I ordered the octopus hotdog on a crisp brioche roll and it was delicious. (Octopus can often be rather rubbery. This wasn’t.)

Dune (‘The Seafood Shack’) is quite small but very atmospheric. According to our waitress, a history student, the premises were once a morgue, although it feels like it could have been a small chapel as well (see above).

We drove home yesterday (it ended up being an eight-hour drive) but not before we had breakfast at Balgove Larder Farm Shop, Butchery and Cafe where I had a full breakfast. Warmly recommended.

Did I mention the weather? Until yesterday it very cold with occasional light rain and even sleet so it wasn’t conducive to spending a lot of time outside.

On Tuesday afternoon therefore we watched Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy at Dundee Contemporary Arts. (For those unaware of the geography of these parts, Dundee is a 15-20 minute drive from St Andrews.)

St Andrews no longer has a cinema, the New Picture House (opened in 1933) having been sold to a company part-owned by Tiger Woods with a view to converting it into a sports bar.

Like the DCA cafe, the larger of the two DCA cinemas (202 seats) was almost full, mostly with elderly ladies, but it was the first time my wife and I have both qualified for senior citizen tickets, a combined saving of four pounds that my wife immediately spent on a glass of wine.

Oh, and the film wasn’t bad either.

Music for a rainy day

Since I bought a new CD player last year I’ve been updating my CD collection.

When I say ‘updating’ I don’t, in general, mean with new music.

Like most people my taste in music is stuck firmly in my youth - which in my case means the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties - so what I’ve actually been doing is buying remastered versions of CDs I already possessed.

Examples include Revolver and Abbey Road (The Beatles), Imperial Bedroom and Blood and Chocolate (Elvis Costello), For Your Pleasure and Country Life (Roxy Music), Skylarking (XTC), and so on.

As it happens, I now have four versions of Skylarking on CD, which was originally released in 1986.

As well as the original CD, I have a remastered version, a ‘corrected polarity’ version (don’t ask), and now the ‘new’ remastered version that includes a 2024 Dolby Atmos mix on blu-ray.

Can I tell the difference? Probably not, and I can’t even play the blu-ray disc that came with it because I don’t have a blu-ray player. But I bought it nevertheless.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the CDs I’ve enjoyed most in recent months are those featuring tracks I had never heard before.

The best of these is Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023, a beautifully presented five-CD box set by Bryan Ferry.

Released late last year, it contains some of his solo hits plus rare and previously unreleased tracks.

There’s also a CD devoted to instrumental jazz versions of his songs, performed by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra sans Mr Ferry. (I listened to it once, I’m not sure I will listen to it again.)

Of the five CDs my favourite is ‘Rare and Unreleased’ which features 16 tracks including cover versions of 'Don't Be Cruel' (Chris Blackwell/Elvis Presley), 'Whatever Gets You Thru The Night (John Lennon), and 'Oh Lonesome Me' (Don Gibson).

‘She Belongs To Me’ is a Bob Dylan song but here it’s performed in the style of the Velvet Underground, with Ferry sounding remarkably like John Cale.

The ‘Rare and Unreleased’ disc also features ‘Sonnet 18’ (lyrics by William Shakespeare) which I would quite like to be played at my funeral.

Other CDs I’ve bought recently that feature music I had not previously heard include The Greatest Living Englishman by Martin Newell.

Released in 1993, it was produced by XTC’s Andy Partridge in his garden shed/studio using the same eight-track equipment he used to record many of his XTC demos.

Even that was a considerable upgrade for Newell who was known for recording a series of lo-fi albums in the Eighties with his band The Cleaners From Venus. Released independently, they were available on cassette only, even after the arrival of CDs.

Musician, poet and writer, Newell is a fascinating figure, someone who has followed his own path in life without, it seems, compromising his integrity.

Last month I watched The Jangling Man: The Martin Newell Story (2022), which is available to rent or buy on Amazon, and it was impossible not to warm to this rather eccentric figure who, when he is not writing music, pays the bills by doing gardening work in and around Wivenhoe, Essex, where he lives.

‘New music’ has largely passed me by. On the rare occasion I buy a CD featuring music by new bands their influences are clearly rooted in the Seventies and Eighties.

Recent examples include The Last Dinner Party's Prelude To Ecstasy, and This Could Be Texas by English Teacher.

Another new album I bought recently that could be described as a throwback to the (late) Seventies is The Cleansing by Peter Perrett.

Some of you will remember ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ by The Only Ones.

Released in 1978, it was a minor hit but the band split after two albums (I think), with lead singer and songwriter Peter Perrett self destructing in a haze of heroin. Allegedly.

The Cleansing is heart-warmingly good - guitar pop with plenty of melodic hooks allied to some amusingly mordant lyrics about old age and death, including two very topical tracks: ‘I Wanna Go With Dignity’ and ‘Do Not Resuscitate’.

Not for everyone but if you liked The Only Ones you won’t be disappointed.

Love at first sight

My son has written a piece for The Spectator about his love of antique shops.

I think he may have inherited his interest from his great grandfather (on my father's side of the family).

When my grandfather retired in the mid Sixties my grandparents moved from an old Victorian house in Chertsey, Surrey, to an even older property in Dorset.

The thatched house in Fifehead Neville near Sturminster Newton had originally been three farmworkers’ cottages, parts of which were over 300-years-old.

Everything about the house, including the furniture, felt old – and I loved it because it was so different to our home on a modern housing estate in Maidenhead, Berkshire.

The four houses my parents bought between 1963 and 1980 were either new or no more than ten years old. Their taste in furniture (and furnishings) was modern too. You could say they were the Habitat generation.

Items included an Ercol dining table and chairs, an Ercol armchair, an Ercol settee, and even an Ercol rocking chair.

Named after Luciano Randolfo Ercolani (who was born in Italy in 1888 but moved to Britain as a child), mid 20th century Ercol furniture is now considered a design classic:

The new post-war sensibility saw the birth of the iconic mid-century modern style, which favoured furniture with simple, functional designs and easy, clean lines. During these post-war years, especially the 1950s, Ercol released some of its most iconic pieces that we still know and love today.

Sixty years later my mother still has several items of Ercol furniture, including the dining table and rocking chair, both in immaculate condition.

If I had the money I'd love to own a substantial Georgian, Victorian or Edwardian house, and fill it with furniture and other items that would complement the property.

The oldest piece of furniture I've ever possessed that would fit that brief was a chaise lounge. It had been upholstered by the previous owner (who gave it to me when he moved house and didn't have room for it), but despite looking nice it was hard and uncomfortable. I gave it away many years ago.

The oldest item of furniture I currently own is a large oak dining table. I bought it almost 40 years ago from a shop in Chiswick, close to the Barley Mow Workspace where I worked.

There was evidence of woodworm (that had been treated) and it's solid rather than beautiful, but it was love at first sight – rather like the rustic pine bed I bought in Bath a year or two earlier.

The latter was too big for the studio flat I was renting at the time so I had it delivered to a friend's house where it lived for two years before I had a room large enough to accommodate it.

Perhaps I've inherited a little bit of my parents' taste because the item that arguably gives me the most pleasure is a contemporary double swirl oak floor lamp from John Lewis.

I bought it two years ago, shortly after New Year, to fill the space where the Christmas tree had been. It's neither antique nor vintage, but I love it.

In fact, I never thought that an item of furniture would give me so much pleasure, but it has.

As for antique shops, I couldn't write an article about them but I do remember one shop – in Thistle Street, Edinburgh.

The owner was the father of a friend of mine. Aldric was a lovely man, a little eccentric, but always generous and entertaining.

He also owned several other properties in Thistle Street, including the flat my wife and I lived in for 18 months after we got married.

The shop was only a few yards away and I remember it being a very quiet and tranquil space. Most items, though, were well out of our league.

One piece of advice: never visit an antiques shop under the influence of alcohol. Forty years ago, in London, I did just that and it cost me!

The shop was very close to the Ealing pub where I had just had lunch with a friend, and something drew us in.

Inside there was an old pendulum wall clock and without thinking to haggle I parted with over £100 (almost £400 today). It wasn't even a particularly beautiful clock. But the worst thing was, it has never worked.

Anyway, you can read my son’s article here. Judging by the comments it seems to have struck a chord with a number of readers.

See: The melancholy of an antiques shop (The Spectator)

Ireland to raise age of sale of tobacco to 21 and introduce warnings on alcohol

Did I mention I was in Dublin last week?

Over in Ireland the Government has rejected a UK-style generational ban. Instead ministers have decided that the age of sale of tobacco should go up from 18 to 21 in 2028.

Although I am opposed, in principle, to increasing the age of sale beyond 18, at which point people are legally adults, I do accept that 21 is better than creeping prohibition (raising the age of sale by one year every year).

One area in which Ireland is 'leading' the world is health warnings on alcohol. From May 22, 2026, 'Labels will alert people to calories, risk of cancer and liver disease and dangers of drinking while pregnant'.

The news has been under-reported in the UK, which doesn't surprise me. The same thing happened when politicians in Ireland discussed and then passed a law banning smoking in the workplace.

As I remember, it only became a significant media story in the UK the week the law was actually enacted, but prior to that relatively little was written or spoken about it. Now history could be repeating itself.

In my view we should always monitor and, where necessary, oppose illiberal and unnecessarily restrictive measures in any country, whatever the size of the market, because that is often where momentum for radical new policies starts.

Laws are passed and that creates a precedent for policies that were previously not considered by governments in larger jurisdictions.

As far as the workplace smoking ban is concerned, Ireland was the canary in the coal mine. Likewise the tobacco display ban was introduced in Ireland several years before the UK.

It will be interesting, then, to see what impact the introduction of health warnings on alcohol in Ireland will have on UK government policy.

If I worked for the UK drinks industry I would be keeping a very close eye on things because we all know the anti-alcohol agenda won't stop with health warnings.

The tobacco playbook offers a clear template for puritans in government and public health and this is just the beginning.

Milk bars and an American diner

If you're interested in social history there's an interesting piece on the BBC website about National Milk Bars.

Contrary to its name, National Milk Bars were never national. At its peak the company had 17 branches in Wales and the north-west of England.

Nevertheless, there was a period when milk bars were far more common than they are today.

The idea came from America in the Thirties and they were popular in the Forties and Fifties when they were recommended by the temperance movement as an alternative to the pub.

It's not strictly true to say that the National Milk Bars café in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, is the very last of its kind because milk bars do exist elsewhere, although you'd have to look hard to find one.

As it happens, I will be in Scotland next week and if I have time I am hoping to visit Powmill Milk Bar near Kinross.

It's in a very rural location and I stumbled on it by complete chance a few years ago when I took a detour en route to St Andrews.

As I wrote at the time, there was a great selection of cakes, coffees and milk shakes!

It reminded me of the first time I experienced an American-style diner – which wasn't in the States, funnily enough, but in Covent Garden.

Fat Boy's Diner was described as a 'classic 1950s-style chrome-and-neon diner with counter stools, for burgers, hot dogs and milkshakes'.

Other Fat Boy's Diners were purpose built but this one was a converted train carriage that had been renovated and shipped to the UK from the US in the Nineties.

The Maiden Lane location was only temporary, though, because it sat on a small parcel of land that was due to be redeveloped.

I went there several times before the novelty wore off and when I back a year or two later it had gone.

I have never forgotten that first time, though. Truly, it was like stepping on to the set of Back To The Future!

Rights and responsibilities

More on Andrew Gwynne whose indiscreet WhatsApp posts have derailed – for how long we don't know – his political career.

I've lost count of the number of people – many on the so-called 'libertarian' right and left – who are arguing that he should not have been sacked because he had every right to rant in private.

One writer has even made an impassioned plea for clemency on the grounds that, by its very nature, WhatsApp encourages bad jokes among friends.

Look, I get these arguments, and it's clearly preposterous that Gwynne's posts have been classified as a 'non-crime hate incident'. Likewise the absurd suggestion that he should be prosecuted. (For what? Making a tasteless joke?)

I deplore too the actions of whoever it was who grassed Gwynne to the Mail on Sunday. If you join a WhatsApp group your fellow members have a right to expect a substantial degree of privacy and, if you don't like what's being said, leave the group.

But let's not make him out to be a martyr because there is one very important factor the free speech and privacy lobby are forgetting. Andrew Gwynne was not just an MP, he was a junior minister with the ambition, perhaps, of being in the Cabinet.

If all these posts were published when he was a teenager, or a student, or before he became an MP, I would have a great deal more sympathy for him. But he wasn't. He is now 50-years-old and was first elected as an MP in 2005.

He was a shadow minister in the last parliament, and a junior minister in the current Government. That brings with it responsibilities, both in public and in private.

No-one's perfect, everyone makes mistakes, but the public deserves MPs and government ministers who, at the very least, are able to demonstrate good judgement.

I don't care therefore if these comments were made among 'friends' in the privacy of a WhatsApp group. How stupid do you have to be to make some of the comments that have been attributed to the former health minister, even if they were in jest?

Politics is notorious for the fact that not only do you make enemies, most of your enemies are in the same party.

I've no idea how many people are in the 'Trigger Me Timbers' WhatsApp group, but I cannot believe that every member was a close personal friend of Andrew Gwynne, and he should have known he was playing with fire.

I can't tell you the number of emails I have deleted before pressing the 'send' button. Likewise social media posts to my small number of followers.

I learned a long time ago that once something is in print (or, more recently, online) there's no going back. It cannot be erased.

Even private comments intended exclusively for friends go through a mental filter.

Likewise, having been sued for defamation as a young student journalist, I learned that even things written in jest can come back and bite you. Bigly.

It's jaw-dropping to me that people who should know better are defending the former health minister.

Forget free speech and the right to offend (which I support). In this instance the most important issue is that a government minister has demonstrated extremely poor judgement, and for that reason alone he deserved to be sacked.

See: Andrew Gwynne has every right to rant in private (Spiked)
Andrew Gwynne and the truth about WhatsApp (The Spectator)
Ex-Labour minister’s WhatsApp chat recorded as non-crime hate incident (Telegraph)

Update: According to a report in The Times today (February 13) there were 'roughly 16 involved' in the 'Trigger Me Timbers' WhatsApp group, which suggests a fairly tight group of people – albeit not tight enough to stop someone leaking the messages.

Meanwhile, writing in The Spectator, Rod Liddle takes a different view to me, arguing that 'Gwynne's remarks ... were simply a few slivers of black humour regarding people who had got on his nerves'.

The gist of Rod's argument is that MPs have a terrible job and should be allowed to mouth off in private. I don't disagree with that but I still think that if you're in Andrew Gwynne's position you need to be more circumspect, in public and in private.

Face to face with civil liberties

In Dublin last week I was shown a facial recognition app - still in development - that calculates someone's age.

Theoretically it could be used by retailers to enforce the generational tobacco sales ban which is due to be introduced in 2027.

But how well does it work? Well, I’m almost 66 and it calculated that I am 61.

A friend, 54, was reckoned to be 43 which was flattering for her but could be problematic for potential users, notably retailers.

Imagine, for example, if in 2030 someone was 25 but the app insisted they were 20 and below the legal age of sale for tobacco.

Awkward.

I dare say the technology will improve but it won't be foolproof and, even if it is, Big Brother Watch (Defending Civil Liberties, Protecting Privacy) may have something to say about it.