Paxman’s fond tribute to a departed troubadour
Jeremy Paxman’s favourite songwriter, as he revealed on Radio 2 last night, is Leonard Cohen. His hour-long feature, How the Light Gets In, was prefaced by an announcer’s warning of “adult language and themes”, which, given the lyrics of many a song these days, seemed a bit superfluous. The real surprise was hearing Paxman positively feasting on Cohen’s lyrics. “Who says he was a depressing old sod?” said he, after Closing Time, that vivid ballad of Saturday night drinking, dancing and what comes after, which Paxman found “an invitation to sing along.” Now there’s a thought. Paxman doing Closing Time, or Suzanne, or Hallelujah could crack open the charts this Christmas.
Cohen died a year ago today, aged 82. What does Paxman still love about him? That he was a poet, a troubadour, a musician, an artist, a lover. That in all his work there’s lots of sex. That he was “mature, weary, resigned, comforting, with a general attitude of “stuff happens”, his themes remaining love, sex and death. Politics, too, of course. Playwright and comedian Arthur Smith, a fellow fan, pointed out the occasional contradiction: “For a Buddhist monk he was a prolific shagger.”
They agreed on his ability to use poetry and eloquence “to get you anywhere”. Somewhere around this point I began to wonder whether the Suzanne of the song should get a right of reply. Such thoughts were dispelled by vivid imaginings of Paxman and Arthur Smith, alone and looking in their mirrors, and not just seeing Leonard Cohen but imagining his words coming out of their mouths.
I do the same transference with Rita Hayworth and Put the Blame on Mame, which is probably why I liked this programme (beautifully produced by Mark Simpson) so much. I still don’t care greatly for Leonard Cohen.
Garry Richardson, sports reporter on Radio 4’s Today and Radio 5 Live’s Sportsweek, devoted 100 minutes on Radio 4 Extra on Sunday night to adoring Ken Dodd. Totally, devotedly, unstintingly. If you heard any of the many trailers and promotions for Sir Ken Dodd: What a Beautiful Day! on BBC radio this past week, you’ll have caught the general flavour. I, too, love Ken Dodd. Every time this show actually featured him in action I roared with laughter. He is irresistible as a spring tide, a full moon.
The trouble was, here were also Roy Hudd on comedy history, Jimmy Tarbuck on working with Dodd, John Martin who writes jokes for him and Judith Chalmers who was on his first radio show (where he used to call her Judith Pyjamas, as I remember) not to mention moonstruck Richardson himself, each explaining what a character he is, a total comedian, why jokes on the page are not the same as jokes delivered. We know most of that already or we wouldn‘t be listening.
Dodd’s own memories were more valuable, of his parents and brother Billy, of going to the old Shakespeare variety theatre in Liverpool with his father, the smell of cigar smoke and orange peel, of getting into grammar school in 1939, leaving when he was 14 to work on his father’s coal round. There were great stories of how he started as an entertainer, first in juvenile troupes entertaining wounded troops, then in clubs and the variety circuit, how he was taught to take a curtain call, what it was like to see the Queen tapping the rhythm on the arm of her chair as he sang Happiness at the Royal Household Christmas Party, of why he will go on performing as long as the audience is laughing. There are other, darker sides to this story (his battle with the tax man, his fragile health) but, as Sir Ken is 90 tomorrow, this probably wasn’t the place to air them. He remains the unchallenged king of British laughter, apparently spontaneous, skilled to his nerve ends in the electric art of connecting nonsense to life. Worship on the scale of this show was, however, a bit much.
It’s been fun this past week to hear John Humphrys introducing Thought For the Day on Now we know that he thinks it’s usually “deeply, deeply boring”, I can only assume he’s been using every bit of his professional skill to keep his handover tone so mellow and even. I wonder if he’s been able to catch any of Neil Macgregor’s current daily Radio 4 blockbuster series Living With the Gods? I hope so. Here are centuries of evidence that faith, belief and religion are intrinsic to human existence. All he has to do is listen.