Convenience Big Store: “The Humphrey Bogart of South Yorkshire”

19 August, 2023

Desert Island Discs

Parkinson (right) with Peter Sellers in 1974. Don Smith/Radio Times/Getty

"The Humphrey Bogart of South Yorkshire"

When Michael Parkinson was at grammar school, he wanted to be a cricketer, he told Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs, originally broadcast in 1972. "Very much." But the only thing he learned apart from the rules of the sport was how to smoke, and he became "a very good smoker". When this started to hamper his sporting ambition, he came up with another plan: to be "Humphrey Bogart in one of those films where he wore a snap brim". He kept up wearing the hat even when he got his first job as a district reporter. "The only problem was, I couldn't cycle and wear my trilby hat with a snap brim. So I got some knicker elastic, and I tied it into the rim and under my chin… like the Humphrey Bogart of South Yorkshire."

Parkinson, who died this week age 88, worked as an Army press officer during the Suez invasion in 1956 – "it was eventful, and quite hilarious" – before eventually winding up at The Manchester Guardian. It was there where he started working on a TV series for ABC television – something he'd always wanted to do, "because I'm very vain and wanted to be recognised". After his first show, he walked into the pub over the street, expecting people to "come flocking, autographs and all that kind of thing". After five minutes, "the landlord came up to me and said: 'My God lad, there's been a fella on television who looks just like you.' I just stood there, and then he said: 'Don't look disappointed, they were bloody terrible.'"

✈️🥂 Parkinson shared his success with his family, says Jack Blackburn in The Times, at one point buying his 67-year-old father his first aeroplane ticket, in first class. When the steward asked if Parky Sr would like a drink, he replied: "Pint of bitter, please." When it was explained that bitter wasn't available, but champagne was, he replied: "I can't afford champagne!" Finally, he was told the fizz would be gratis. "Free?" he said. "Bring it on." He got so drunk, his wife later recalled, "that after his meal he offered to wash up".

🎵 Singin' In The Rain – Gene Kelly
🎵 Messiah – George Frideric Handel
🎵 Here's That Rainy Day – The Stan Getz Quartet
🎵 I Wish I Were In Love Again – Frank Sinatra
🎵 Mad About The Boy – Blossom Dearie
🎵 How High The Moon – Stan Kenton and His Orchestra
🎵 If Ever I Would Leave You – Robert Goulet
🎵 As Time Goes By

📕 Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway
🎁 Typewriter and paper

Heroes and villains

Anthony Harvey/Getty

Hero

Lily Allen, for knowing it's never too late to learn. The 38-year-old singer recently received "less-than-rave reviews" for her second-ever theatrical role, in The Pillowman, says Shane Watson in The Daily Telegraph, so she decided to apply for drama school. Here's "rooting for Lily".

Villains

Sat navs, which are responsible for an alarming rise in people driving the wrong way on the motorway. There were 872 of these "oncoming vehicles" incidents in the year to 19 June, up from 770 in the previous 12 months. The AA says drivers following sat-nav directions without checking signs can end up mistaking an off-ramp for a slip road.

Villain

Penguin, which has used reviewers' quotes rather selectively for Jordan Peterson's latest book. The blurb for Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life quotes The Times's James Marriott saying it contains "the most lucid and touching prose Peterson has written" – a remark specifically about a chapter on interior design. A line from The Daily Telegraph's Suzanne Moore, originally "hokey wisdom combined with good advice", is trimmed to: "wisdom combined with good advice".

Heroes

A pair of boozy American tourists, who made the most of their stay in Paris by spending the night on the Eiffel Tower. The two men were found on Monday morning sleeping on an elevated section of the monument that is usually closed to the public. Paris prosecutors say they appeared to have got stuck "because of how drunk they were".

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Property

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Books

Maori students in Auckland. Michael Bradley/Getty

Objective truth isn't a Western construct

"Colonisation is the process of establishing control over a foreign territory and its indigenous inhabitants," says Jonathan Sumption in The Spectator. But decolonisation "has come to mean much more than the reversal of that process". Chiefly, it contends that "objective truth and empirical investigation are mere Western constructs" imposed on the world by force. In Against Decolonisation, the University of Exeter professor Doug Stokes argues that this narrative was adopted to "fill the intellectual gap left by the decline of Marxism". It means you have a revised school syllabus in New Zealand which treats Maori folk beliefs "as if they were just as valid" as empirical science. Even Oxford's Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division has issued a statement committing to "challenging Western-centric ideas of 'objectivity', 'expertise' and 'merit'".

The problem with these postmodern theories is that they ignore the universality of abstract ideas. "The fact that Aristotle or Einstein first articulated an idea does not make it a 'Western' idea. If some statement about the world is true in New Zealand or Africa, it must be equally true in Britain or America, or it is not true at all." And the decolonisers are not just trying to defend their views; they are "seeking to upend the free market in ideas by imposing them", and sabotaging the careers of those who disagree. "Perhaps books like this one will encourage more academics to summon up the courage to resist the bullying and challenge the new conformity."

Against Decolonisation by Doug Stokes is available to buy here.

Life

Victor Boyko/Getty

"What fate awaits a spy whose cover has been blown?" ask Jamie Dettmer and Annabelle Dickson in Politico. The "expendables" tend to end up rotting away in jails, but the lucky ones are traded in high-profile prisoner swaps – and some get a taste for celebrity. Take Anna Vasilyevna Kushchenko (aka Anna Chapman), whose "flame-coloured hair" captivated Western tabloids in 2010 after she was exposed as a Russian sleeper agent in the US and sent home. Life after spying has been a lucrative whirl of "fashion shows, television and business opportunities": she worked in Moscow as a catwalk model, and now hosts the aptly-named TV show Secrets of the World. The Cambridge Five didn't enjoy quite the same "life of glamour" in the drab Soviet Union. Kim Philby wrote of his "boredom and homesickness", saying he particularly missed cricket, Harrods, and Fortnum & Mason".

Quirk of history

Holy Week in Málaga. Jesus Merida/SOPA Images/LightRocket/ Getty

The real reason southern Europe takes August off

This week, says Ed West on Substack, most of continental Europe will have enjoyed a bank holiday marking the feast of Assumption. Not that many workers will have noticed: most Europeans are off work for "extended vacations" taking up much of August. There's a clear "difference in attitudes" between the work ethic in southern Europe, where a more relaxed and leisure-focused stance prevails, and that in America, Britain and Germany. And it's all down to the Reformation. Countries that converted to Protestantism routinely work longer hours than Catholic ones; today, Germans put in approximately three to four hours a week more than their traditionally Catholic neighbours.

According to the historian Joseph Henrich, Protestants learned to "boil off their guilt" through their employment. Protestant countries are less inclined to impose limits on working time – mandating more vacation and shortening the work week, for example – because they see work as a "sacred value". Over the second half of the 18th century in Britain, the work week lengthened by around 40%: people worked 30 minutes more a day, abandoned the Catholic tradition of taking "Saint Mondays" off, and started working some of the 46 holy days in the annual calendar. The upshot: by the start of the 19th century, Protestant England was working an extra 1,000 hours per year, or 19 hours a week.

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Noted

A mews in London. Getty

Cities may seem random, says Tristan Gooley in The Sunday Times, but "there is a reason everything is where it is". Expensive shops tend to be on the sunny side of the street, because people like walking in the sun so the rents are higher. Cafés do well in east-facing premises, as they catch the early rays; "bars do better" in west-facing spots. Mews houses are converted stables where horse-drawn carriages once stayed, "which means you're probably near a road that leads in and out of town". If you want to buy flowers, look for a hospital – there'll be a nearby florist to cater for people visiting patients. And the west of a city tends to be more salubrious than the east, because most of our winds blow from the southwest – carrying pollution across town. "There's a reason the soap opera isn't called WestEnders."