the foghorn - no. 34

Issue 34The magazine of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation (FECO UK)FOGHORN

THE FOGHORN 2WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG

Foghorn marches on, maintaining its unique policy of appearing in the Dead Zone between big news stories. Mind you, its the Silly Season soon, when all manner of Toffs get noticed wearing daft hats or killing foreigners during the Gumball Rally. So maybe we’re well placed after all. Herein, John Jensen, Punchite extraordinaire tells us how it was, The Rev Penwill looks at working conditions, and our indispensable PCO Guide leaves the

gate open for all you townies out there. Chris Madden, house philosopher, gives the Humour Voice a good listen-ing - to, and visu-ally stunning Pete Dredge eyeballs the box. All this and cartoons too! Many of which I get.

Bill Stott, Foghorn Editor

NEWS

The magazine of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation (FECO UK)

FOGHORNFOGHORN Issue 34

Published in Great Britain by theProfessional Cartoonists’Organisation (FECO UK)

PCO PatronsLibby Purves Andrew Marr

CONTACTS & COMMITTEE:Chairman

Andy Daveytel: +44 (0) 1223 517737

email: [email protected]

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email: [email protected]

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@alexhughescartoons.co.ukFoghorn Editor

Bill Stotttel: +44 (0) 160 646002

email: [email protected] Sub-Editor

Roger Penwilltel: +44 (0) 1584 711854

email: [email protected] Layout/Design

Tim Harriestel: + 44 (0) 1633 780293

email: [email protected] Co-ordinator

Noel Fordtel: +44 (0) 7041 310211

email: [email protected] EditorMatt Buck

tel: +44 (0) 1962 840216email: [email protected]

Festival/Exhibition CoordinatorPete Dredge

tel: 0115 981 0984email: [email protected]

FECO UK Representative Alex Noel Watson

tel: +44 (0) 20 8668 1134

Web infoPCO (FECO UK) website:

www.procartoonists.orgBLOGHORN

www.procartoonists.blogspot.comFECO Worldwide:

http://feco.info

Front Cover: Neil DishingtonBack Cover: Nathan Ariss

“We don’t get many visitors in town since the Nutwood Bypass opened”

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BLOGHORN

The PCO’s Artist of the Month for July 2008 was Clive Goddard. Clive’s work regularly appears in Britain’s satirical and current af-fairs magazines, Private Eye, The Spectator, Prospect and The Oldie. He has also drawn for The Times and the New Statesman.

He is, perhaps, best known for this work drawing and illustrating the Dead Famous series of books for the children’s publisher Scholastic.

Matt Buck,Bloghorn Ed

Got to print a pocket or two. The newspaper “pocket” cartoonist is a rare but hardy breed, says PCO Chairman Andy Davey.Spare a thought for the humble pocket cartoonist, guv? Be warned – you’ll need your field glasses to catch them. The Guardian has not replaced David Austin who died in in 2005. But even though they are a diminishing spe-cies due to this loss of habitat, there are several individuals in the field still visible. Pugh (The Times), Banx (Fi-nancial Times) and the untouchable Matt (Daily Telegraph) are all still go-ing strong. Pocket cartoons are still a pretty stout mainstay of British broadsheet front pages. And Matt is the only cartoon-ist to routinely get a name check dur-ing the newspaper round-up on Radio Four’s Today programme. An Independent Line, a collection of cartoons from The Independent from the last fifteen years, now on show at the Political Cartoon Gallery, shows the work of one of the finest of the

current dwindling crop – Tim Sand-ers. Purely in terms of wall space and press coverage, Tim is drowned by his brothers-in-ink, Dave Brown and Peter Schrank. But as an observer of current social trends, he’s up there with the best. Osbert Lancaster is often credited with establishing the format in UK newspapers, and a rich array of tal-ent in the form of Mark Boxer and Mel Calman (whose work can still be seen on greetings cards) and others emerged in his wake. Pocket gags are a slice of social his-tory; you can gauge the feel of any era by looking at the pocket cartoons. To set the scene, define the characters and make a gag about current social or po-litical trends is no mean feat in a sin-gle newspaper column, so hats off all round, please laydeezangennemen.

An Independent Line is at London’s Political Cartoon Gallery until Oc-tober 18.


BLOGHORN

I’m Banksy and so is my wife. Matt Buck comes clean

There’s a whole lot of knicker twist-ing going on in the Anglican Church – remember them? Anglicans? – they’re the ones who don’t go in for lots of fuss and posh get – ups and were ably represented by Alistair Sim for years. Well now they’re at each oth-ers’ throats [ n i c e l y ] about wom-en bishops and whether there should be any. Logic sug-gests there should, as nowadays the Angli-can Church has lady vicars, but some most-ly male heavy hitters have said No – women can be conductors but never drivers on our Holy Charabanc. What makes it worse is that there are a couple of gay male bishops in the mix too. Garlic? Bread?? One’s a very

articulate if disingenuous American who hits his critics with their own has-socks and says God is a God of Love – i.e., Love of all and everybody – no exceptions... therefore etc etc… And its not just holy blokes who are

against women bishops. The wife of the Bishop of Burnley –a town not much fea-tured in religious schism – stood up at the recent Anglican get to-gether and railed against giving her sex a fair crack of the whip. I lis-tened to her care-fully. I listened to others carefully. Their arguments seemed based on Mr Christ’s never

actually saying there should be wom-en bishops. A sort of Saudi Arabian posture I suppose, as the archbishop probably wouldn’t have said to the cross- dressing trans- sexual lesbian lorry driver…

Bishopricks.Bill Stott pulls up his hassocks

Rupert Besley was PCO Artist of the Month for June 2008. Rupert has been widely published for over 20 years. Most of his detailed waterco-lour work has been in providing illustrations for schoolbooks, educational publishers and busi-ness presentations in need of charm and direct communication. But he has also supplied gag cartoons for many books of cartoon jokes, often focusing on travel and holidays inside Britain.His postcard art is notorious, especially if you’ve had an experience of the weather in Wales, or the midges in Scotland. He has also been published in a large number of magazines including Coun-try Talk, The Oldie and Country Life. Resident on the Isle of Wight, he is, naturally, a chronicler of all life there and had a one-man exhibition - Island Fling - recently.

Matt Buck, Bloghorn Ed

The Mail on Sunday has outed the identity of the mysterious and elu-sive grafitti artist. He is, allegedly, called Robin and he went to to a nice school. It’s a shame the paper couldn’t bring itself to talk about what Robin of Banksy draws be-cause the message is meant to be more important than the medium - or the artist. We’d like to encourage everyone reading to claim to be Banksy too and then, perhaps, we can confuse the Mail on Sunday and help the artist retain his desired wealthy anonymity

“I think we both know who did it.”


FEATURE CHRIS MADDEN

The EvolutionWhat exactly is humour? It’s fun-ny that you should ask. There’s a reluctance on many sides to pursue this fascinating question. The fear is that humour will disappear in a puff of smoke when subjected to the dispassion-ate gaze of intellectual inquiry. For instance, author E. B. White said “Humor [he was American] can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”

I couldn’t disagree more. And I’m not sure that I like his casual and probably unconscious insult to those amongst us who are of a scientific inclination. Typical arts graduate. What we need to do is to apply a bit of psychology – the science of the mind – to the subject. Psychologists tell us that hu-mour is a pleasurable sensation that is experienced when one senses a quality of incon-gruity, superiority, or re-lease.Not just any quality of incongruity, supe-riority, or release of course. They have to be of a type illustrat-ed in the following, stereotypical situa-tion. You’ve parked

briefly with one wheel of your car on a double yellow line, to drop donations off at a charity shop. An officious traffic warden ap-proaches, ticket in hand, impervi-ous to the humanitarian endeav-our that has led to your parking infringement. You’re worried. Perhaps you prepare for an argu-ment. In his enthusiasm to nail his ticket to your car, and with his gaze focused squarely on your windscreen, the traffic warden fails to notice a banana skin in his path and he falls in a crumpled heap on the ground. Sprawled on the pavement, he looks annoyed and embarrassed. The parking ticket flutters away in the breeze. You drive off with a big grin on your face.That’s humour. It’s not that people slipping on banana skins is intrinsically hu-mourous in itself. Just imagine if the traffic warden had cracked his skull open on the pavement - it wouldn’t have been funny at all. To be funny the situation requires a benign conclusion. This little vignette from every-day life is funny because it con-tains all three of the factors that are cited as provoking humour.

Incongruity: an authority figure is seen in a demeaning rather than an authoritative situation.Superiority: see Incongruity.Release: the threat of the ap-proaching parking ticket has been defused. That’s all very well, but why do we experience such a sensation as humour at all? Why do we laugh? Why don’t we simply note the feeling of incongruity, superiori-ty or release, perhaps by marking them off in some sort of mental tick-box, and then move on?It can’t be that humour is sim-ply a rather pleasant add-on to the human emotional repertoire, purely for the purpose of giving us a little pleasure in life. To find out the answer to this we need the insights of psychology’s upstart young sibling, evolution-ary psychology. Evolutionary psychology is the relatively recent branch of evolutionary theory that tries to work out why we are lumbered with the mental traits with which we are gener-ally afflicted.

Why do we experience such a sensation as humour at all? Why do we laugh? Why don’t we simply note the feeling of incongru-ity, superiority or re-lease, and then move on?


FEATURE CHRIS MADDEN

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While standard evolutionary the-ory concentrates on physical is-sues such as how we might have developed eyes in the front of our heads, evolutionary psychology tries to explain why we react in such interesting ways to what we see through them.Evolutionary psychology spends most of its time pondering upon the lives of our stone-age ances-tors, so let’s time-travel back to those days now. Imagine your prehistoric great-great- (and so on) -grandfather, sitting minding his own business outside his cave. It’s a beautiful day, and he’s perhaps thinking up variations on his new invention, the wheel, which he’s been devel-oping as a type of circular stone seat with a hole in the middle but which he’s suddenly realized can maybe be utilized as a form

of wide-brimmed hat if he can only crack the weight problem. Then round the corner comes the local dominant alpha male, bent on doing a spot of dominating. Your prehistoric relative feels his stress level rising as the brute ap-proaches. It’s fight or flight time. Fortunately, so keen is the loom-ing tough guy on domination that he fails to see a banana skin that’s lying in his path (Sounds famil-iar?). He falls in a crumpled heap on the ground. He looks annoyed and embarrassed. Your relative had built up an expectation of action, possibly a fight, with the accompanying injection of chemicals such as adrenalin into his brain, and sud-denly that action isn’t needed, because the threat has skulked off to try to reclaim his dignity. A brain full of action-generating chemicals and they’ve got nowhere to go. A release is necessary.That release is hu-

mour.

You may be slightly worried by the implication that humour’s origins are linked so intimately to something that’s as base as ag-gression. That’s perhaps because

today, in our cosseted western world, we often see humour as a branch of entertainment, rather than as what it started out as, an essential means of dissipating the constant tension that was created

by the avalanche of crises that prehis-toric life hurled our way. So it is that the or-igins of our appre-ciation of humour seem to be linked to aggression – but what part does ag-gression play in our creation of humour? The news isn’t good if you’re of a meek and mild disposition. I’ll leave that til next time. Until then, ponder upon the name that’s given to the cli-max of a joke. The p u n c h line.

of Humour by Chris Madden

It can’t be that hu-mour is simply a rath-er pleasant add-on to the human emotional repertoire, purely for the purpose of giving us a little pleasure in life.


FEATURE JOHN JENSEN

Punch died in 1992. Towards the end of its life the atmosphere in the art dept was bright, lively and smiling. I thought such camaraderie was inspiring amid all the rumours of imminent collapse. Un-til, that is, I realised the entire art-department was working with opened tins of Cow gum on the desks and tables. Cow gum was an essential item for past-ing down the pages in those pre-software days when these things were done by hand. Cow gum was nec-essary but Cow gum was glue. Tins of it were al-ways open in the art room. Whether the art room knew it or not they were glue-sniffing all day long. Happy daze. The atmosphere had been quieter, more sedate - less Cow gum, - except for occasional brief out-bursts of either rage or pleasure when Bill Hewison, was Art Editor. A bearded man of fiercely held be-liefs constrained within a polite, conservative man-ner contrasted nicely with his sidekick, Geoffrey Dickinson, a quietly funny guy who heralded the Swinging Sixties with a cover for Time magazine, the payment for which allowed him to buy his home.

Punch payments never matched that. A third party, sitting hatted, hunched and shirt-sleeved in the of-fice, personally saturnine and professionally ubiq-uitous: Michael Heath, looking, as always, younger than his experience. Physically, Bill and Geoffrey reminded me of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, but the imagined similarity ended there. Bill’s hu-mour, when it surfaced, was so dry it crackled like tinder. Punch had its institutions: its weekly lunches and its outings. At the lunches the editor would sit at the head of the famous Punch table overseeing guests and Punch regulars. As a general rule, although there were exceptions, cartoonists would sit below the salt leaving the writers to do most of the talking, at which they were very good and very practised. The pen-and-ink boys tended to mutter and snig-ger among themselves. The late and truly missed Alan Coren, more jovial, bouncy even, bursting with words and ideas had to get the chat rolling, along with the coffee and cigars. Billy Connelly -the Big Yin – a welcome guest, was heard to as-

Remembrance of things Punch

by John Jensen


FEATURE JOHN JENSEN

“Silly old Cnut.”

sert that sexual fantasies were fine until you turned them into reality when they were, unfortunately, found to be disappointing. A silence followed this pronouncement. No-one had the bottle to ask what those fantasies were. And how did he know? These days he would have been pounded with questions and answers would have been demanded. The outings were different: sometimes a trip up-and-down the Thames with Wally Fawkes gigging it for the evening. Or maybe a visit to France, or may-be a plush hotel in the country, the name of which I can’t remember – I don’t keep a diary and I have no memory for names or details: useless, really! Pat, my wife, on seeing a coach filling up with elderly ladies and gents, stooping and making serious use of walking sticks said jokingly, ‘I expect that’ll be the Punch outing.’ It was. However, not everbody was old, just some. (If Punch hadn’t died I’d now be one of those old geezers.) Among the now deceased is the ‘Matisse of cartooning’, Michael ffolkes. Mi-chael was fond of his booze but, what was not then realised , and which tragically was discovered too late, was that he was also allergic to alcohol. Not a good combination. Not surprisingly he was given to unsettling mood changes. He could be , and often was, charming and amusing, yet both virtues were too often overwhelmed by a scathingl acerbic wit and an aggressiveness which was not threatening but certainly irritating. Invariably forgiven for his lapses (by me, if by no-one else) Mike was, in spite of himself, a nice bloke and, on a good day, a won-derful companion. At the lunches he was expansive, cigar-smoking, brandy drinking amd serene and se-cure in his talent. Most of the cartoonists around the table were like that. You should see them now! I’ve exceeded my 600 words. The jog down mem-ory lane ends here.

Australian born John Jensen, 1930, visited Eng-land in 1949 and stayed. His first drawings for Punch appeared in 1954 followed by a seventeen year gap. Re-united in 1971 John, after this re-spite, served more than twenty years hard and enjoyed every moment. Or almost every mo-ment.

Cartoonists who don’t know his work will find him at www.johnjensen.co.uk

Random acts of humour


FEATURE GUIDE TO COUNTRYFOLK

Who ARE Countryfolk? Basically, there are only two types of country-folk. Toffs, and others who are not toffs. Real toffs are easy to define. They’re usually male, a few female and one or two undecideds, whose ancestors were on the winning side in Big Fights long ago between, for example, King Richard the Fourth’s army and Plebbist forces led by Ned of Scargill, who was soundly thrashed at the Battle of Glossop [1357] This resulted in Richard Knobhead [so called because of an early corruption of the name of his birthplace, Vuilly-sur- Bonce, in Norman France] dish-ing out large tracts of countryside to his chums thereafter. To which they are entitled forever. Nowadays toffs aren’t allowed to ride about their estates interfering with serfs, but have other pursuits they find almost as satisfying. One is shooting things. Lots of toffs get knowledgeable yokels [non toffs] to rear hundreds of birds in special pens. Then, just when the birds have learned to fly [amazingly, they do this on their own], toffs spend lots of money inviting their pals to come and

shoot the birds. They do this hiding in trenches whilst yokels beat the bush-es with big sticks, scaring the birds shitless and making them fly in front of the toff’s big guns. This is called “country sport”. Scots toffs do much

the same with deer, which can’t fly, so its easier Yokels don’t do it. They shoot rab-bits instead, which also can’t fly, and don’t have horns so its not as macho.

There are too many yokel [non toff] subdivisions in the countryside to make a complete listing, however, the main types

are as follows…….

FARMERSMany of these are also toffs and are known as “gentleman” farmers. Yokel [non toff] farmers grow stuff, milk cows, and moan

a lot about things like Foot and Mouth, milk prices, badgers and Brussels. Periodically, they rush about the place on big trac-

tors spraying crap everywhere. An interesting sub group here are “Young Farmers” who ARE in fact young, have reddish faces, vote Tory, go to balls, and

get totally hammered shortly after being photographed with Tamsin Inkwell–Ptarmigan by Cheshire Life.

LOCALS Real locals, as opposed to INCOMERS [see below] have always been there and are descended from the rustic creatures which

emerged from countryside ponds millions of years ago. Traditionally employed by toffs as scarecrows or targets, most now

work in the nearby Business Park.

INCOMERS These form an interesting group which really cares about the countryside, and rescues newts and bearded lesser marsh tit wil-

low warblers from horrid magpies. Many keep hens in their traditional kitchen gardens, constantly seeking wise words of tra-

ditional advice from LOCALS who [a] don’t know and [b] couldn’t give a toss anyway as they do their shopping at Tesco.

FOOTBALLERSQuite often set up home in the countryside, to get away from it all, but as they play away anyway, are rarely seen.

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“I hear it’s another farm bought by a suit from the city.”

“Get off my land!”

Letters to theEditor

Snail Mail: The Editor, Foghorn Magazine, 7 Birch Grove, Lostock Green, Northwich. CW9 7SS E-mail: [email protected]

Track Record

Dear Editor, I compliment your magazine on not having a go at certain executive – level employees at Network Rail, unlike other rags which have re-ally put the boot well in. What on earth do they expect? If my contract lawyer is more weasly than your contract lawyer and sneaks in some lucrative small print and your dopey lawyer misses it and I get sacks of dosh for doing a mediocre job – whose fault’s that? Besides, I have some costly overheads. You ever tried to get a hot tub serviced in Goa? And all this stuff about our railways not being up to scratch is baloney. Its all very well going on about the snotty Germans and their spiffy train services. Don’t forget they got the chance to start over after we’d redesigned their sys-tem in the 40s. Let me remind your 37 readers that railway services in the UK rank just above Bolivia in the Well They’re Rubbish But What Can You Do league table. Anyway, we’ll silence our critics in 2030 when the first new railway line to be built since Isam-bard Somebodyorother did one somewhere in the south, ages ago opens for business. This all new, leaf-proof line will connect Glossop to Alton Towers.[You read it here first. Ed]

Yours truly, Alexander “Grabber” Godolphin, Head, Trough Management, Network Rail.

The Gallery

LETTERS TO THE ED


CURMUDGEON

Teenage Kicks

Did you know that some schools here in glorious Albion have re – jigged their Year 9,10,11 and 12th year [that’s 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th formers, for those of you who haven’t been pay-ing attention] timetables to be more in synch with “the teenage body clock”? The scheme allows Kyle and Ashlee an extra hour in bed [separately, one hopes] before turning up at the Col-lidge of Nollidge.Fans [non-teenagers] of this plan [ini-tiative] say that the country’s future would then be more able to give its full attention to school stuff. Whatev-er. It might also help take the edge off hangovers acquired whilst drinking Carlsberg Export with vodka chasers down the park the previous evening. Mind you, the Think Tankers have a grip on that one too. Soon, the Plods will be able to arrest Josh and Tanya

if they get caught hammered behind [or underneath] the swings a second time. That solves that one then. To be fair, parental visits would also ensue. Useful, unless mummy and daddy, or ‘I call him Dad but he’s not really’ aren’t down the Rat and Spanner at the time.Thing is, nobody WANTS to be a teenager. One minute you’re totter-ing about aged two, having your hair spiked by responsible adults who christened you Ruben Minogue Ge-rard Bradshaw, and give you lots of chicken nuggets and the next you’re chillin’ in your white leisure clothing and £200 footwear on a rainy night, savouring that certain something of-fered by ten quid’s worth of Vladivar/Tennant’s/Bulmer’s and wondering if what’s happening is cool. Cool.These days, teenagers KNOW they’re teenagers. Adults keep telling them they are. They didn’t tell me. I just stopped wearing short trou-sers, got bunged into long ones, started to pong from time to time, went periodi-cally blind thinking about Marjory Win-stanley’s terrifying breasts and began a life-long love of skiffle. All on two old pee a month. Sad, not cool, but cheap. Adults today are not

just AWARE of youth but are con-stantly looking for new ways to re-move its dosh whilst simultaneously applauding Jonathan Ross [a well – known adult] for taking home 15 million quid because he has a lisp and odd hair. And, at the time of writing, it looks like Max Mosely might just lose his spiffy job for wriggling about probably not dressed as Himmler [no relation] with a consensual group of strapping gels, to, if insider reports are to be be-lieved, the recorded warblings of Val Doonican. But that’s all. He’ll just get sacked. Not banged up. Not criminal-ized. Then he’ll make a bundle selling his story to tabloids read by Ruben’s significant adults – or even Ruben, if they actually do readin’ any more at Hip – Hop Latestart Community Col-lege. Innit.

Random acts of humour

“The one on the rail, black hat,... I think he fancies me...”

THE FOGHORN12WWW.PROCARTOONISTS.ORG

FEATURE BUILDINGS IN THE FOG

Churches.Part One: Stone Rocks!

Ever since man decided that it might be a good idea to keep the gods hap-py by knocking up a decent place in which to worship them, religious ar-chitecture has represented the pinnacle of structural and artistic endeavour of any particular period. Normally more than a little impressive, the places were built to outlast all the domestic accommodation around them. Wattle and daub just didn’t cut it for perma-nence. Stone was the material of choice. Man’s forefathers had lived in caves of it for years and had the curtains to match. It was mighty hard to cart about, shape and put into place, but once there, provided that the design was sound, the buildings tended to stay up and continue to stay up. If the design was duff then they fell down and a mental note was made not to do it that way again. So, although intend-ed to last forever, some have lasted forever better than others. As a building material stone has one big problem. (Actually sandstone and limestone have other problems too but, hey, I’m trying to make this a short article) Stone is great in com-pression - it can take heavy loads - but it is useless at is coping with tension (some cartoonists are like that too). Compression pushes things together and tension tries to pull them apart. Beams have to work in tension - the weight the beam carries pushes down on the beam trying to stretch it. You’ve probably noticed that stone doesn’t stretch - it prefers to crack and break. It’s one of the reasons that stone isn’t used much for tug-o’-war matches (ri-diculous impracticality is another). A stone beam isn’t much use either, un-

less it’s a very deep piece of stone and only spanning a pretty narrow space or opening. So the architects of the great reli-gious edifices of the past were faced with a bit of a dilemma. To impress, the buildings needed to be larger and bigger than anything built before. The walls were no problem, just pile up the stones, but what to do about the roof? (Have you noticed how these articles keep mentioning the roof? - there’s a bit of a recurring theme here) Tim-ber is great for beams, but it rots and beetles like to eat it from the inside, so it was a mite deficient for big-time permanence. So there was nothing for it but to fig-ure out how to use stone to span open-ings and spaces, in a way that it was only having to work in compression. The first method was corbelling. Progressively longer stones were laid on top of each other, reaching out into the opening. This worked up to point. The point being when the pile of stones toppled over into the open-ing. Then they realised that if you did this both sides of the opening then the sides propped each other up. The arch had been born. From this simple beginning, col-umns, arches and their 3D equivalent, vaults, became staggeringly complex and sophisticated as they spanned ever greater widths, still using stone just in compression. The structural challenges were immense, with huge

forces having to be managed and contained, and their resolution often elegant. Walls had to be buttressed to withstand the hefty forces trying to push them over. These buttresses in turn were refined and the end result was the beauty of the flying buttress. Cast your eye back to the first sen-tence of this piece and add “until the 20th Century” at the end of it. Re-inforced concrete had arrived and stone became redundant. Suddenly buildings could be any shape the ar-chitect wanted. The steel reinforce-ment meant beams could work in tension and span undreamt-of widths. But the idea that a new church, cathe-dral or mosque could last forever had gone too. The steel reinforcement is concrete’s Achilles heel. The concrete protects the steel from corroding, but corrode it will, eventually. Church-es are now mostly built of the same short-life stuff as the rest of society’s buildings and generally fail to make the same impact as past structures did. Alas bricks just don’t look right for a church. Often the whole confec-tion just looks gimmicky and cheap. (Paddy’s Wigwam, the Mersey Fun-nel, comes immediately to mind) The awe, respect and gravitas that reli-gion surely expects has largely disap-peared. Next issue, I’ll be looking at two churches of the 20th century that stand out from the mundane.

Roger Penwill


THE LAST WORD

Despairing Housewives.Foghorn’s resident critic Pete Dredge watches telly so you don’t have to.

The Critic

For those of you who make your hard-earned in salaried employment, daytime television must seem a far-off foreign vista never likely to be experienced. Lucky blighters! Those of us whose gainful employment is carried out from home have been cruelly lumped together by tv programmers and schedulers with the strange demographic mix of the housebound, unemployed, unemploy-able, feckless, sick, retired and benefit- claiming masses. So no need then to splash out on ex-pensive drama, ground-breaking docu-mentary or intelligent, challenging pro-ductions during the pre-news lunchtime slot. Put all those ingredients into the programmers melting pot and out pops, not more repeats of Colombo but… “Loose Women”. Full marks to the tv listings copywriter chappy who has to come up with five unique and pithy, succinct descriptions to describe this daily sixty minute telly feast. Monday, “girl talk with the all-female

panel”, Tuesday, “celebrity interviews and debate from a female perspective”, Wednesday, “the ladies and their studio guests put the world to rights” Thursday, “the panellists and their guests tackle the day’s burning issues” and Friday (he’s obviously struggling now!), “feisty female chat”.

If there was a Saturday edition then “four old slappers in bitch-fest bonan-za” would not be far off the mark. This is all recorded in front of a live studio audience, presumably a sizeable proportion of which have been sedated and airlifted in from their ‘Haven’s Rest’ nursing home franchises and shoe-horned in to the studio. After the warm-up man (school of Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown) has fin-ished with them they are ready to scream and applaud on demand any utterances that emit forth from the mouths of these well-known ‘it’s her off the telly’ mature housewife ‘personalities’. Having never been able to endure more than ten minutes of this lunchtime smor-gasbord before turning over to BBC 2’s more informative Working Lunch I always miss the, credit-rolling mud-wrestling finale bit. Not exactly suitable for the lunchtime viewer but I note that there is a 2am repeat for those who have ‘something of the night’ about them! Only joking about the mud -wrestling, but given time…

the foghorn - no. 34

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