"E27002" wrote in message
...
On Sep 28, 3:38 am, "michael adams" wrote:

- Why would anybody with a shred of self respect want to pay to hear the
- foul mouthed Cook?

- The BBC, and any other decent body that did so,
- should be ashamed that they ever gave Cook a platform. If lowlifes
- want to enjoy the right to free assembly and exchange their
- distasteful verbiage, so be it. But, that venue was surely far below
- endorsement by the presence Her Majesty's First Minister.

You're totally out of synch. Which I'm afraid casts a lot of doubt on
many of your other judgements.

At that stage of his career Peter Cook was in no way foul-mouthed. The
foul-mouthed stuff only first emerged with the Derek and Clive tapes.
From memory ,and without any googling these were recorded by the pair
when half ****ed and first emerged as pseudo bootlegs i.e as never intended
for wider dissemination - possibly as a marketing exercise. This was much
much later. I repeat much, much, later.

The Macmillan thing happened in the middle of a run of "Beyond The Fringe".
Beyond the Fringe was only the latest of a series of review shows to which
Cook had contributed sketches. The main difference being that instead
of poking fun at middle class manners and mores it also poked fun at dearly
held national myths and at national institutions. There was the famous "Futile
Gesture" sketch where dressed as RAF Officers one of the cast Miller or Cook
says something along the lines of "Well Smithers, we've decided we need
someone to make a futile gesture and you're lucky enough to have been chosen".
"Oh thank you sir". (So famous that this is possibly totally wrong). BTF first
ran at the Fortune Theatre which is presumably where Macmillan attended the
show. It also later ran in New York.

As has been succinctly pointed out by another poster, what was really
offensive about Cooks behaviour was that he was confusing the person
(regardless of Macmillan's merits as a soldier or publisher) with the
office he held only during working hours. Plus the fact that in
attending in a private capacity Macmillan was caught totally off guard
whereas there's no knowing how long Cook had been aware of his presence -
even a minute would do so as to come up with his insulting remark.
Had it been in the middle of Prime Ministers Questions then Macmillan
would have been fair game but as it was, it was totally unsporting.
It would require a trip to the library to refresh my memory as to what
Cook is reported to have actually said, but it was deeply personal
along the lines of "I'm so stupid and senile I've come along tonight
to see myself being made a fool of". In Cook's Macmillan voice.
It's a bit post modernist in one sense but it would have worked
equally well in a far less insulting context.


michael adams

....

E27002 wrote:

We can be grateful that the destruction ceased when it did. London
was saved from a horrible fate.

I have heard that the destruction of the Euston arch was instrumental in
turning public opinion against the destruction.

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 08:22:38PM -0700, E27002 wrote:

IMHO, Centre Point is out of place. It lacks sympathy with its
surroundings. Although the main issue, as you say, is its base. It
belongs next to a Freeway exit, not a subway station.

The surroundings would still be a mixture of ugly and boring even if
Centre Point didn't exist. The Astoria and the shops north of it up to
the junction have been tatty rubbish for as long as I can remember, just
as the first few shops south of Centre Point on the opposite side of
Charing Cross Road are. On t'other side of the junction, there's still
nothing interesting, and a supremely ugly front to the Dominion theatre,
made even worse by the hideous statue advertising We Will Rock You.

Centre Point is the one interesting building in the immediate area.

(no, I don't think that St Giles church is particularly interesting,
although from one particular angle its spire and Centre Point look very
pretty next to each other)

Sure, there are plenty of other examples. The discussion was about
the merits of rebuilding the Euston "Arch", albeit in concrete. I
think that would be a good thing. It was destroyed by people with the
same mentality that gave the UK so much, IMHO, bad architecture.

Who destroyed it has no bearing on whether it should be rebuilt. You
might as well say that "because a nasty man destroyed the slums of
[insert city here] we should rebuild the slums". The Euston arch should
be approached in the same way as any other new building and built, or
not built, on its merits as a building.

--
David Cantrell | Bourgeois reactionary pig

The voices said it's a good day to clean my weapons

On Sep 29, 3:44*am, "Basil Jet"
wrote:
E27002 wrote:

We can be grateful that the destruction ceased when it did. *London
was saved from a horrible fate.

I have heard that the destruction of the Euston arch was instrumental in
turning public opinion against the destruction.

IIRC St Pancras was on the agenda for demolition. Sir John Betjeman
mounted a campaign for its preservation and the tide turned.

On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:17:14 -0700 (PDT), E27002
wrote:

On Sep 29, 3:44*am, "Basil Jet"
wrote:
E27002 wrote:

We can be grateful that the destruction ceased when it did. *London
was saved from a horrible fate.

I have heard that the destruction of the Euston arch was instrumental in
turning public opinion against the destruction.

IIRC St Pancras was on the agenda for demolition. Sir John Betjeman
mounted a campaign for its preservation and the tide turned.

It's not well known outside New York that Jackie Kennedy mounted the
campaign to preserve Grand Central after Penn had been demolished and
replaced by Madison Square Garden with the station in the basement.

That was an act of vandalism because the station was on a par with the
best in Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYP_LOC4.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYP_LOC5.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station1.jpg

On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:26:26 -0400, Christopher A. Lee
wrote:

On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:17:14 -0700 (PDT), E27002
wrote:

On Sep 29, 3:44*am, "Basil Jet"
wrote:
E27002 wrote:

We can be grateful that the destruction ceased when it did. *London
was saved from a horrible fate.

I have heard that the destruction of the Euston arch was instrumental in
turning public opinion against the destruction.

IIRC St Pancras was on the agenda for demolition. Sir John Betjeman
mounted a campaign for its preservation and the tide turned.

It's not well known outside New York that Jackie Kennedy mounted the
campaign to preserve Grand Central after Penn had been demolished and
replaced by Madison Square Garden with the station in the basement.

That was an act of vandalism because the station was on a par with the
best in Europe.

However, it was a major tax liability with no income so far as the
Penn Central (or was it just the Pennsylvania Railroad then). It
would have taken major work to fix all of the deferred maintenance,
probably to be presented with a bigger tax bill. Grand Central was a
good case of "You must spend money for something I want" philosophy.
If historic preservation is to succeed, then it must be economically
financed. There may well have to be tax breaks, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYP_LOC4.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYP_LOC5.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station1.jpg

On 28 Sep, 11:38, "michael adams" wrote:
"Tim Fenton" wrote in message

Maybe not. Its just unfortunate that two of the Eyes biggest adversaries/betes noir
down the years Maxwell and Goldsmith both happened to be Jewish and also
"pushy outsiders". Not that the latter applies to all Jewish people by any means
of course. Quite possibly there were some Jewish boys at Shrewsbury but OTTOMH
I can't recall any notable Jewish contributors to the Eye having been identified
as such. Ever.

Barry Fantoni.