Archive through 03 May 2001

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Archive through 03 May 2001

Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Media: Specific Titles: Ripper Magazines & Newsletters: The Cloak & Dagger Club -- Ripperologist: Archive through 03 May 2001

Author: Paul Begg Friday, 27 April 2001 - 06:19 am
Okay, so I am a muttonhead. Just wait, I shall bide my time, Mr Fido, and pounce upon a misdescription of yours one of these days...
Author: Martin Fido Friday, 27 April 2001 - 06:59 am
I'm sure you won't have to wait long, Paul. My capacity for gaffes grows greater every day, and maybe even faster than my ever-expanding waistline and increasing collection of chins. Martin
Author: Christopher T George Friday, 27 April 2001 - 08:35 am
Hi, Martin and Paul: My grandfather and his brother, an old time Music Hall comedian from Liverpool called Billy Matchett, used to when they were well oiled with scotch, do a double act called "Mutt and Jeff." It seems to me that Begg and Fido are not far behind as a comic duo. With all due respects for the intelligence and useful information you both bring to these boards. Chris George P.S. My uncle used to say there were three great comedians born the year he was born, 1889: Charlie Chaplin, Maurice Chevalier, Adolph Hitler, and himself.
Author: Christopher T George Friday, 27 April 2001 - 08:38 am
Make that four great comedians.
Author: Martin Fido Friday, 27 April 2001 - 08:51 am
Hi Chris, Sharyn McCrumb once suggested that Paul and I bickered like an old married couple (while not falling into the misreading of our sexual preferences made by Dan Farson, who once asked us if we were lovers!) Sharyn also collected a postcard of the Mme Tussaud exhibit of Burke and Hare manhandling a tea-chest containng a body into a narrow stairway, and labelled it, 'Paul and Keith try to clean up Martin's boat.' Ah well, perhaps we may quote of ourselves, Henry IV pt 2, Act I, sc ii, line 7ff (traditional prose lineation as found in old Globe and subsequent OUP one-volume Shakespeares). Martin
Author: Caroline Anne Morris Friday, 27 April 2001 - 10:23 am
Hi Chris, All, Cockney rhyming slang for 'deaf' is Chris's very own "Mutt and Jeff", but because people down 'ere say "I'm going a bit Mutt and", meaning they are getting a bit hard of hearing, it is often thought to be "I'm going a bit mutton". Now tell me you all knew this bit of trivia, and I'll go quietly.... Love, Caz
Author: Paul Begg Friday, 27 April 2001 - 12:12 pm
But Sharyn got it wrong, Martin, because I never contradict you and we never bicker. And just because Dan Farson had no taste, he assumed no one else did either. And if I'd heard him suggest we were lovers, sweetie, I'd have hit him. And if I'd felt in a particularly cruel and vindictive mood I wouldn't have done!
Author: Tom Wescott Friday, 27 April 2001 - 02:50 pm
Hello, I swear, mention mutton and this is what I get! All this talk of food has really made me hungry, though. But before I go...No one answered my question regarding the fates of 'Ripperoo' and Stephen Wrights 'Whitechapel Urinal'...oops...'Whitechapel Journal. This info would really satisfy my curiosity. Thank ya kindly! Yours truly, Tom Wescott
Author: Christopher-Michael DiGrazia Friday, 27 April 2001 - 04:50 pm
Mutton was also the fatal meal served in a small Fall River house on a blazing autumn day in 1892. Regrettably, both the master and mistress of the house found - via a rather sharp argument - that the meal did not agree with them. Nor did anything else, for that matter. Tom - so far as I know, "Ripperoo" is still publishing, and I am surprised Leanne or Jules haven't come on these boards to tell you themselves. But try e-mailing them at ripperoo2000@yahoo.com. The editor of "Whitechapel Journal" is, to the best of my knowledge, unconnected to the web, and has only a mailing address. I don't know if WJ is still in existence. I'll try to find out. Never had mutton in my life. Some fish and chips would be nice right now, but there's a cold pizza in the fridge calling to me with its siren song. Pepperoni, onions, anchovies, sausage, mushrooms and peppers, all washed down with a few cold glasses of Pilsner Urquell. Mmm-mmm! I can feel my arteries hardening now. I'll talk to you later if I can waddle back to the computer. CMD
Author: Martin Fido Friday, 27 April 2001 - 04:55 pm
Paul - Surely you remember a drunk and obnoxious Farson sitting at the bar in our Cattolica hotel at midnight, furious that you and I wouldn't sit up with him, and asking aggressively whether we were lovers? (This, too, is fact, not a leg-pull). Martin
Author: Paul Begg Saturday, 28 April 2001 - 05:15 am
Hi Martin The drunk, agressive and thoroughly obnoxious Mr Farson in that small bar is engraved on my memory in even the tiniest of the most horrible detail. I had forgotten his remark about whether we were lovers, but I was just trying to make a joke out of hitting/not hitting him, knowing his inclinations. He was very charming afterwards, however, though I think my abiding memory will forever be of novelist Margaret Yorke putting her hand over Farson's wine glass as it was about to be filled and saying, "Now, now, Daniel, I think you've had more than enough." Farson's face was a mixture of emotions, mostly total astonishment. I laugh even as I write and remember.
Author: Paul Begg Saturday, 28 April 2001 - 05:18 am
CMD Pizza...anchovies... pilsner ur... one of the finest lagers in the world. You bas..... arrggghhhhhh
Author: Martin Fido Saturday, 28 April 2001 - 06:50 am
Hi Paul, Since you'd forgotten Dan's remark, I should perhaps add that it was made before his temper evaporated as we refused to stay with him, and was more of a genuine interest to know whether we shared some of his propensities. Martin
Author: John Omlor Saturday, 28 April 2001 - 09:18 am
Martin and Paul, What rogues. What a wild and debauched life you all apparently lead. Next I expect to hear about wild opium parties in a seedy flat in Tangiers and catching a steamer across the channel to dance drunkenly in a Paris cellar to hot jazz and then down to Pamplona where Keith Skinner left to go fishing in the cool streams of the countryside while you both and Stewart and Melvin drank cheap wine from wineskins and ate fried cojones and ran ahead of the bulls laughing at death until someone finally drank too much and lost themselves and things turned ugly and Paul punched Melvin in the nose and it was decided that there would be an appointment in the squared circle when everyone returned home and had properly sobered up. --John
Author: Martin Fido Saturday, 28 April 2001 - 12:57 pm
John We are actually recalling the very innocent occasion of our first meeting, when Paul and Dan and I, with Stephane Bourgoin, were all invited to form a panel on the Ripper at the Cattolica Film Festival in 1988. Paul and I then argued interminably about Cohen and Kosminsky, much to the amusement of several others at the conference. On the night when Dan wanted us to sit up drinking with him for ever, we were just returning from an entirely innocent day in Venice, marked only by my accidentally eating both the interesting cheese sandwiches in our lunch pack, not realizing that the hotel had given us identical looking interesting and boring sandwiches. Oh, and I had resisted Paul's attempt to drag me into the bar used by the gondoliers, on the gounds that a bar is a bar is a bar anywhere in the world, and I wanted to look at unique architecture. We also politely corrected a Dutch girl who wanted to have an image of herself next to a gondolier, and asked us if we would photograph her 'with the gigolo'. But we didn't normally spend our days together. I went to Urbino on my own one day, and took a long walk over difficult terrain to Paolo and Francesca's castle on another, while Paul presumably looked for bars housing gondoliers in Cattolica. And Dan made a definite day trip to Bologna to sample the best food in Italy. It was in the hotel bar in the evening that we all tended to meet up. Now Tangiers was a different story.... Martin
Author: Paul Begg Saturday, 28 April 2001 - 06:43 pm
Hi John I'm sure Martin really does want you to believe it was all innocent. What I am interested in, however, is the identity ofthe person who told you the truth...
Author: Tom Wescott Sunday, 29 April 2001 - 10:33 am
Martin, Paul, John, Opium? Seedy flat? Bulls? Cojones? Dan Farson's gay? Paul hit Melvin in the face? Do tell!! Yours truly, Tom Wescott P.S. Is this what I've been missing at the Ripper conventions?
Author: Martin Fido Sunday, 29 April 2001 - 11:37 am
Dan Farson was indeed gay. And why not? I think none the worse of him for that, and have many gay friends. (I do resent their nicking the delightful adjectival form of gaiety, however!) Cojones (bulls') were eaten by Feldy in America under the name 'Rocky Mountain oysters', and used by him as an example of how Maybrick might have eaten something as unappetising and hard to prepare as human uterus. Paul and I were once in Paris together, following a conference in Grenoble. Unfortunately I was suffering from food poisoning, and he had to keep supplying me with paracetemol. We had no surprising adventures. Otherwise, everything in John's posting comes from his lurid imagination. (May he beat himself over the head with his own niblick!)Everything in mine about Italy is true (except the speculation that Paul went looking for gondoliers in Cattolica). The only Ripper convention I attended was enormous fun, but completely respectable. (Unlike some of the MLA conventions I've been to!) All the best, Martin
Author: John Omlor Sunday, 29 April 2001 - 02:32 pm
Dear Martin, I acknowledge your insistent denials. But my information about that glorious and dangerous summer came directly from your very own pseudonymous novel, The Begg Also Rises. You know, the one that begins "Melvin Harris was once middleweight boxing champion of Ripper Studies." Or was that "David Cohen was once..." Or Robert Cohn, maybe? Whatever. In admiration, --John
Author: Martin Fido Sunday, 29 April 2001 - 03:22 pm
John No, it was the Coen Brothers. Did you miss my brilliant drag performance as the sheriff in that film they decided to rename for a rather similar-sounding north western town instead of my own inimitable surname? Martin F
Author: John Omlor Sunday, 29 April 2001 - 04:16 pm
Martin, (Read with appropriate Minnesotan acent) Ohhh, so that was ya, eh? Incidentally, I taught Barton Fink this term, but I love Miller's Crossing myself. The opening speech is priceless. Here is why ethics are important: "I'm talkin' abut friendship. I'm talkin' about character. I'm talkin' about -- hell, Leo, I ain't embarrased to use the word -- I'm talkin about ethics. You know I'm a sportin' man. I like to make the occasional bet. But I ain't that sporting. When I fix a fight -- say, if I pay a three-to-one favorite to throw a goddam fight -- I figure I got a right to expect that fight to go off at three to one. But every time I lay a bet with this sunofabitch Bernie Bernbaum, before I know it the odds is even up -- or worse, I'm bettin' the short money. The sheeny knows I like sure things. He's selling the information I fixed the fight. Out of town money comes pourin' in. The odds go straight to hell. [...] So back we go to these questions -- friendship, character, ethics. It's a wrong situation. It's gettin' so a businessman can't expect no return from a fixed fight. Now, if you can't trust a fix, what can you trust? For a good return to gotta' go bettin' on chance, and then you're back with anarchy. Right back inna jungle. That's why ethics is important. It's the grease makes us get along, what separates us from the animals, beasts a burden, beasts a prey. Ethics. Whereas Bernie Bernbaum is a horse of a different color, ethics-wise. As in, he ain't got any." Well, as Quint once sang as he headed out to sea, "Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies..." --John PS: Martin -- from Diary thread: Have you ever seen Terence Rattigan's The Browning Version? Either the original film with Michael Redgrave or the modern remake with Albert Finney? (I believe there are separate John Geilgud and Ian Holm TV versions as well.) Interesting but somewhat sappy little teacher retirement story. PPS: "You know, for kids." --Norville Barnes, President, Hudsucker Industries
Author: Tom Wescott Sunday, 29 April 2001 - 09:07 pm
John, Tsk, tsk...You said a bad word...Didn't you read THE RULES?!! Martin, It's funny how you talked about eating bull's nuts and in the next paragraph referred to you having had food poisoning. Ha ha. So, how come you have only attended one Ripper convention. Waiting to be guest of honor? Yours truly, Tom Wescott P.S. John...Your comments on 'The Begg Also Rises' cracked me up!
Author: Christopher-Michael DiGrazia Sunday, 29 April 2001 - 10:28 pm
Here's a little tidbit from "BizArre" magazine, issue 27, January 2000, in a story titled "One More For the Gutter:" "Farson, whose 'Soho in the Fifties' is the brilliant bible of those times, was a terrible drunk with a Jekyll-and-Hyde tendencies [sic]. A chickenhawk of impressive proportions, Farson took full advantage of the pederastic opportunities Soho afforded - while remaining relatively intact, considering his nature and that of Soho's pimps, to an extent that quite amazed his acquaintances. Once, a rent boy came into the Coach and Horses intent on shaming Farson into paying him for his afternoon's services. Farson was shameless: 'But you didn't bloody do anything,' he shouted back. 'And I bought all the drinks!'" So there you are. And now I'm off to read a new novel that's come across the transom - how a mild-mannered English instructor, tour-guide and part-time thespian joined the United States Marine Corps in order to forget his tragic summer of debauchery in the fleshpots of Europe. "Semper Fido," it's called. Look for the movie version this fall, starring Johnny Depp as an opium-addled Phil Bugg, the hero's amanuensis and unwitting doppleganger. Sorry about that pizza, Paul - I'll split one with you next year in Baltimore! CMD
Author: Paul Begg Monday, 30 April 2001 - 02:59 am
How about at Bournemouth?
Author: Martin Fido Monday, 30 April 2001 - 05:22 am
John - No, I've seen neither version. (Now leave me in peace. I'm busy working on my new novella 'The Omlor and the Sea', all about an innocent Cornish lad who is attacked by sharks after his boat drifts into the Thames near London Docks where he catches Moby Cohen, the great white piranha that everybody's been hunting, but the furious sharks who have only caught jellyfish tear it to pieces before he can land it). Martin
Author: Martin Fido Monday, 30 April 2001 - 05:33 am
Tom - Poverty, simple poverty is all that kept me from attending the first and third conventions. Family commitments will probably keep me from the fourth and fifth. All the best, Martin F
Author: Caroline Anne Morris Monday, 30 April 2001 - 08:34 am
Hi All, The thought of Paul Begg, bars, gondoliers and Cattolica brought back memories of my first ever trip abroad, in 1966, for an August beach holiday in Cattolica. It taught me the meaning of "It's a small world." (I had to wait a couple more years before I went to Spain to learn all about cojones.) Anyway, there was yours truly, trying to catch a few rays (sun, not fish - that had to wait until I finally got to the Bahamas in 1981), on a piece of beach the size of a postage stamp, due to half the world suddenly cottoning on to the delights of the package holiday, when I happened to look behind me to see whose shadow was blocking all hope of my getting all-over freckles - and saw a fellow pupil from my school! Of all the spaces, on all the beaches, in all the resorts in Europe, this schoolgirl had to come into mine! In the words of Harry Hill, wot are the chances of that happening? Love, Caz
Author: Martin Fido Monday, 30 April 2001 - 09:05 am
Bulls' or otherwise, when in Spain, Caz? Martin F
Author: Caroline Anne Morris Monday, 30 April 2001 - 12:28 pm
Well, Martin, I was in Mallorca in '69, '73, '83 and '97, Lloret in '70, Benidorm in '71, Calella in '72, Ibiza in '75 and '89, somewhere near Valencia in '78, Minorca in '80, Benalmadena in '84, '85, '86 and '88.... and I picked up some Spanish at school too (not rude words though). So at one time, if I'd drunk enough wine, I could tell a few dirty jokes in Spanish quite fluently. Luckily, for you lot, I've forgotten most of it, and I don't drink like I used to. Love, Caz
Author: Caroline Anne Morris Monday, 30 April 2001 - 12:33 pm
Obviously, when I was in Cattolica, being only 12, I didn't know how to converse with the local lads in Italian, but I did pick up how to order those yummy custard doughnut things, and how to bash the mosquitos with a newspaper, using a suitably Latin gesture. Love, Caz
Author: Tom Wescott Monday, 30 April 2001 - 09:57 pm
Martin, You are a university professor and a working author, correct? Those don't usually go hand in hand with poverty. Is the cost of living in England THAT high? Yours truly, Tom Wescott P.S. Semper Fido! Ha ha! I love plays on names, although some people on here are a bit sensitive about it.
Author: Martin Fido Tuesday, 01 May 2001 - 07:25 am
Tom, When I was a university teacher I enjoyed a high income: indeed, when I lived in Barbados I enjoyed so high an income by local standards (though it was lower in real terms than it would have been in UK or USA) that I should certainly havedescribed myself as 'rich', using it as a comparative rather than an absolute term. On returning to UK in 1983 and taking up full time writing, my income was cut to a fifth of its previous level, and since then I have certainly been what I feel as poor. Unless I think of people helplessly watching their children starve to death in other parts of the world, as I do daily, at which point I acknowledge at once that merely by being born in western Europe I have been greatly privileged in all material things. All the best, Martin
Author: Paul Begg Tuesday, 01 May 2001 - 09:11 am
Caz The only words you needed in Catolica were picolo bierre or grande bierre; otherwise Italians spoke English and understood perfectly when I said spaghetti, pizza,and so forth... And I'm afraid that Martin's admissions just go to show what a Philistine he is. We go to this flooded slum made famous by some artist or other with a name like a pasta dish, and all Martin wants to do is gaze at some crumbling masonry instead of enjoying the wonders of what was, I gather, one of the finest bars in Venice! Extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary. And I have never forgiven him for eating the good sandwiches either.
Author: Martin Fido Tuesday, 01 May 2001 - 09:18 am
The only Italian words I made a point of mastering before going to Cattolica were 'grazie', 'prego' and (without worrying much about whether I was getting the gender right) 'dove e il toiletto?' Martin
Author: Caroline Anne Morris Tuesday, 01 May 2001 - 01:29 pm
Hi Paul, Martin, All, I do like to learn a few polite words in the language of wherever I visit these days, although most people around the world put us Brits to shame in that department. My dad used to say, "Give 'em a dig in the ribs and they'll soon start speaking English." (Groan) I was once asked by a fellow holiday-maker how to ask for a cup of coffee in Spanish, and when he proudly put it to the test, the waiter said "D'ya want sugar in it?" Another time, my hubby asked a waiter in Portugal where he was from, and he replied "Pinner". Love, Caz
Author: Tom Wescott Tuesday, 01 May 2001 - 05:25 pm
Caz, Paul, Martin, etc., Must be nice. The closest I've been in terms of going to a foriegn country is when I went to Texas with some friends to see a KISS concert. Ha ha. One of these days, though. I intend to travel up to England some time. I wonder which of your floors I'll be crashing on? Yours truly, Tom Wescott
Author: Caroline Anne Morris Wednesday, 02 May 2001 - 04:17 am
Hi Tom, You're more than welcome to crash on mine if you ever get here. Will you be learning a few polite words in London English just before you come? Love, Caz
Author: Tom Wescott Wednesday, 02 May 2001 - 08:39 pm
Caz, Get the futon ready...I'll just walk around, smile, and say 'Goodonya'. How's that? Yours truly, Tom Wescott
Author: Eduardo Zinna Thursday, 03 May 2001 - 06:36 am
Paul, Martin, Caz, all, I got into this particular exchange following the Cloak and Dagger Club / Ripperologist handle, but although the debate seems to have wandered off the subject a bit. I'd still like to add something to it. During my long, ill-spent and mostly overseas life I have had occasion of asking the way to the loo in many different countries. In case one of you finds himself or herself in China, and does not know the language, the thing to do is to extend your right hand towards your interlocutor palm first. You should leave your middle, ring and small finger slightly separated and pointing up and your index and thumb curved and pointing towards each other but not touching. To your interlocutor, your hand should look a bit like this: WC. Fact. Cheers, Eduardo
Author: Paul Begg Thursday, 03 May 2001 - 07:04 am
And there was I thinking you'd just go in the door with a little man pictured on it! I think if I had to go through all that palava I'd just hold it until I got back to the hotel And welcome to all the fun of the Casebook me old mate! Nice to see you here!