More Urban Myths

Urban myths abound in Bristol, so well worn and old are many of them that they are part of the city’s folk-lore. In some instances, such as the origin’s of Whiteladies Road and Blackboy Hill, they are accepted as established historical fact even when the evidence points to origins far less sinister than the slave trade.
I’ve heard scores of urban tales about Bristol, all are purported to have happened to distant relatives or friends of friends, all have a modicum of plausibility, all are complete nonsense. That doesn’t mean they have no worth, however.
All stories, whether their origins are ancient or just arrived in the inbox of your e-mail, have something to say about the times we live in, even if it’s just to point out that we’re no less gullible in the electronic age than we were in the stone age.
Here are six of my favourite modern urban myths that continue to circulate in Bristol. If you have a favourite urban myth about the city, please send it in. Nothing validates a tall story better than it being in print.



The Completely Untrue, Probably, Story Of KFC’s Strange Disappearance From Bristol.

While they cornered the bucket full of fried fowl market throughout the rest of the country since the 1960s, Colonel Saunders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets were conspicuous by their absence in Bristol during the late 1970s and much of the 1980s. Why? Well, allegedly, the great grand-daughter of Colonel Saunders moved to Bristol from the Southern States of the USA to enjoy her dotage in Sneyd Park in 1973. In search of a taste of her youth she decided to visit the KFC franchise that was on Blackboy Hill. But so dismayed was she at the rudeness of the staff and their scant adherence to the ‘secret recipe’ and above all general hygiene of the premises, that she called an extraordinary board meeting at KFC HQ in America and demanded that all franchises in the Bristol area be cancelled in her lifetime, leaving a giant drum-stick shaped hole in the city’s fried spicy chicken market to be filled. This is why, until recently, Miss Millie’s was the name on all Bristolian’s lips when it came to fried chicken. Interestingly, during the time in question stories were widely circulated around the country about rats, their tails especially, being found crisply fried and battered in mixed spices in among the more usual wings and breast. And for one reason or another, many KFC franchised outlets did indeed close, seemingly overnight, in Bristol. But most amazing is that Colonel Saunder’s competitors in Bristol had a sense of humour, because his grumpy great grand-daughter was, apparently, called Milly.


The Feral Chickens Of Knowle.

Sightings of rogue wild chickens in South Bristol, especially Knowle and Southville, abound no evidence, photographic or otherwise, has ever been forthcoming. The chickens are thought to have escaped from the back gardens turned free-holdings of families attempting a ‘Good Life’ style back to the land existence, although there are at least two ‘explanations’ in circulation. The first is that the chickens were in crates in the back of a farmer’s van, when it stopped at traffic lights some passing youth ‘liberated’ a couple of crates to see what was inside. Discovering chickens, rather than the Playstations or whiskey most visiting farmers can be reasonably expected to be transporting through Bristol, the youngsters freed the contents into nearby wasteland - where they thrived. The last, and I think most plausible, story is that a South Bristol shopkeeper acquired a large amount of free-range eggs from a less than legal source. Leaving them in his lock up one particularly hot evening he was surprised to discover the next morning that at least one tray of knock off eggs had hatched...

The Phantom Car-Parking Attendant Of Bristol Zoo

Outside Bristol Zoo there is a car-park where hundreds of cars and dozens of coaches park on a daily basis. Until recently there was a very genial fellow with an official looking hat, yellow waistcoat and a ticket machine charging cars £1 and coaches £5 for the privilege.
This parking attendant worked there for about 25 years, through wind, rain and scorching Bristol summers, eight hours a day, six days a week (and Bank Holidays). He was an industrious worker with an exemplary sickness record.
One day he didn't turn up for work. “Oh dear” say Bristol Zoo management as chaos descends on the car park, “we’d better phone up Bristol City Council and get them to send a new parking attendant.”
“Err...no” say the Council, “that car park is your responsibility.”
“But” say the Zoo, “he was employed by you, wasn’t he?”
“Not us”, say the council.
Sitting in his villa in Spain is a very genial fellow who had been taking the car park takings for Bristol Zoo for the last 25 years...


He Looks Just Like, Y’know, What’s His Face...

Rock & Roller Eddie Cochrane - possibly the only real contender to the crown of Elvis - played his last ever concert at the Hippodrome in Bristol in 1960. After the gig he got in a car with his pal Gene Vincent, girlfriend Sharon Sheeley and driver George Martin (not THAT George Martin) and set off for London. Just outside of Chippenham the car crashed and Cochrane was fatally wounded. He was pronounced dead at St Martin’s Hospital in Bath.
Cochrane was 21. But, legend has it, singing to a packed Hippodrome wasn’t the only rocking and rolling Cochrane did in Bristol. Apparently there was a part-time Hippodrome usherette who could testify to that nine months later when into the world arrived a Cochrane Jr. He grew to be the spitting image of his late dad, albeit with a local accent. Apparently his heritage has been hushed up, but if you’re male in your mid 40s and often find yourself humming “Three Steps To Heaven”, now might be the time to ask your mum what she did for a Saturday job.


Urban Myths Updated

Bristol office workers (this office included) were recently panicked by the following e-mail.


“Please be aware of new car-jacking scheme.
Their Method:-
You walk across the car park, unlock your car and get inside. Then you lock all your doors, start the engine and put into gear or reverse. You look into the rear-view mirror and you notice a piece of paper stuck to the middle of the rear window.
So, you put the vehicle in neutral, unlock your doors and jump out of the vehicle to remove that paper or whatever it is that is obstructing your view. When you reach the back of your vehicle the car-jackers appear out of nowhere, jump into your vehicle and take off!! Your engine was running, you would have left your purse/wallet/documents/briefcase/equipment in the car and they practically mow you down as they speed off in your vehicle.
BE AWARE OF THIS NEW SCHEME THAT IS NOW BEING USED IN GLASGOW AND MANCHESTER AND IS MAKING ITS WAY ACROSS THE COUNTRY!”

This seemed plausible at first, but you have to ask, isn’t car-jacking an opportunist crime most likely to be carried out in desperation? Would a car jacker really loiter in a car park with a pack of Post-It notes to stick on rear windows?
Some research, then, is called for. I called the news desks of the Manchester Evening News and The Glasgow Herald. Were those fair cities being plagued by stationery packing criminal masterminds? “Er... no” said Manchester, “um..I’ve never..I don’t...is this a serious question?” asked Glasgow. Strathclyde Police (Glasgow’s force) were equally sniffy because, the reluctantly revealed, they took the information seriously and classed it as ‘intelligence’, despite the fact that no such crime had ever been reported. Manchester’s police authority did the same, but answered my enquiry with good humour, so I think I know where I’d like to be car jacked in future.


Why Bristol Wouldn’t Let Go Of Betamax.

Back in the early 80s there existed two formats of home video systems (younger readers may have to ask their parents), VHS and Betamax. The smaller Betamax was arguably better quality but for numerous reasons VHS won the format wars and became the standard system and Betamax went in the technology bin. Except, that is, in Bristol where it thrived.
The reason? Because, allegedly, light fingered dockers at Avonmouth stole the latest Betamax players and pre-recorded films on Betamax video in wholsale quantities before they had even been released. Certain pubs and drinking establishments were seeing more business than Blockbusters and a generation of local film buffs was created. Even when international business dictated the end of Beta, there were enough blank tapes and players floating about the city for no one to take notice. To this day there are many in town who will talk proudly of the superior technological advantages of Betamax over VHS. Ask them how they know and they will simply wink.



Box Out
How To Spot An Urban Myth

The general rule of thumb with urban myths is that if somebody tells you a story in a pub it should be treated with caution. The closer to chucking out time the less likely the story has any basis in truth, whatsoever.

Always be wary of stories that start “It’s the God’s honest truth”, or “Honestly...” and especially, “I swear, this is true...”

Urban myths are personalised and localised to suit the story but they are always generalised and rarely contain any fact beyond slight plausibility. They nearly always concern friends of friends, distant relatives or the person who sat at your desk at work before you were employed by the company. They happened ‘last year’, ‘last month’, ‘in 1996’ but never ‘this morning’ or ‘yesterday’. Urban myths are always anecdotal and are never accompanied by newspaper cuttings, videotaped news bulletins and independent witness testimonies. Largely because pubs don’t encourage power-point presentations and secondly because the story didn’t happen in the first place.

People who relate an urban myth aren’t necessarily trying to reel you in with malice. They might actually believe the story they are telling and think they have your best interests at heart. So, they’re misled, but their saving grace is their kindness. That’s worth bearing in mind before you publicly deconstruct their story with forensic brutality. Others relate urban myths simply because they’re a good yarn, or to make them seem more interesting then they perhaps are. Telling a party of people about the time your wife’s cousin’s husband’s head was stuck on the end of a pole by a mad man on Dartmoor is certainly an icebreaker. On the other hand urban myths can sometimes suit people’s prejudices and are used as ‘evidence’ to back up their hatred of a particular group. In this instance gently pick at the numerous loose threads in the story and watch it unravel to expose the narrator.

Unless it reads, “the building is on fire” and you can smell smoke, never trust a ‘Round Robin’ e-mail you receive at work. Ever. If you are sent a ‘true’ story by e-mail from a colleague a simple way of finding out if it’s myth or not is to highlight a phrase from the mail and paste it into Google, topped and tailed with quote marks. Seven times out of ten you’ll find the phrase, or variations of it, repeated over thousands of internet pages stretching back years.

Looking A Gift Horse In The Mouth

2007 being the bicentenary of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade means it’s inevitable that Bristol take a long sober review of it’s past. The city has done a pretty good job of sweeping the issue of its involvement in the slave trade under the carpet for the past couple of centuries and it’s only in the past two decades that projects such as Pero’s bridge have provided some sort of acknowledgement. There’s a long way to go.
Many Bristolian's, of all backgrounds, will say that the past is the past and we should let the issue lie and look to the future. But there are also many who say that the city is full of references to the despicable trade, street names, schools, public buildings that act as a reference, an almost approving subliminal reminder as to how the city made its money.
One name over all stands out. Colston, the city benefactor of the 18th century who made his fortune from slavery.
Civil rights campaigner Paul Stephenson is calling for The Colston Hall, the most famous city dedication to the man and currently under conversion, to be renamed after it is rebuilt. It’s a story that’s generating huge interest in the city, because if successful it could be the catalyst for a major reinterpretation of Bristol’s history and even what it means to be Bristolian. Or it could simply be seen as an exercise in politically correct point scoring benefiting from a highly charged and emotional issue that has riven local opinion for some time.
Bristol band Massive Attack, for example, refused to play the Colston Hall on the grounds of its namesake‘ business interests. As gestures go this was genuinely felt and noble.
But, disappointingly, it was then rendered somewhat hollow by the band’s announcement that they would be playing a rare hometown show not at, say Ashton Gate or the grounds of a local school but in Queen Square, once the administrative quarter of Bristol’s ‘respectable’ trade and named after the industry’s poster girl, Queen Anne.
This highlights the modern day confusion in Bristol about the city’s involvement in slaving - whether directly or indirectly - during the 18th century and how easily the ‘facts’ are misinterpreted, not necessarily intentionally, to suit the ends.
Why it is unacceptable for performers to play in a hall named a hundred or so years posthumously after a man who made vast profits from slavery, but it’s ok to perform in the centre of a square dedicated to Queen Anne, a 22.5% shareholder in the slave trading near monopoly that was the South Sea Company, in which still stand merchant buildings that were mortgaged by the blood of Africans.
Bristol, the city, embraced the slave industry (so did Bath, by the way) and made an awful lot of money out of it either by sugar and tobacco trading, direct slave trading or by forcing slaves to work on plantations in the West Indies owned by Bristolians. The facts are in stone all over the city.
This, I think, needs to be acknowledged on a practical, workable and city wide sense, but can it be done by focussing on just one skeleton from Bristol’s 18th century closet, i.e. Colston?
This is a big talking point in Bristol and while it might be wide of the mark, there’s passionate debate between the pro and anti Colston camps.
While I don’t agree that Colston is the be all and end all of Bristol’s slavery connection, he is the most prominent historical figure and his name still looms large in modern day Bristol. I’ve long thought that this is wrong. Many Bristolians disagree with me.
Criticise Colston and the two responses you are most likely to hear are: “But, you need to put it into context of the times, it was an accepted trade etc.” Well, no it wasn’t. It was a widespread trade but that doesn’t make it universally accepted in any context. There were many in Britain during the 18th & early 19th century who were dead set against slavery; William Wilbeforce wasn’t just whistling in the wind vaguely hoping that someone might pick up the tune.
The next most common, and perhaps most specific, argument for celebrating Colston’s commitment to Bristol will be along the lines of his great philanthropic works, his personal zeal for providing education for the poor and easing the hardship of the aged and infirm.
This is undeniable fact.
But at whose cost was it achieved?
Because you could, reasonably I think, counter the praise for his good works by pointing out that Mussolini got the trains running on time in Italy while at the same time over in Germany Hitler oversaw a revolutionary programme of mass motorway building (thanks in large to slave labour). Neither of the pair have a major concert hall dedicated to them.
What good, though, does it do to keep going over old ground, picking at scar tissue and flicking the accusatory scabs across the divide? How are we, as a city, going to find a practical and workable solution before most of us get so bored with the subject that its rendered practically meaningless?
I don’t know, but, for what it’s worth...
We can’t re-map Bristol and wipe away the references to Colston that abound in the city, it would be little more than a Stalin-esque editing of history and inconvenient truths that ultimately would prove nothing. We could, though, initiate some sort of scheme that would see plaques positioned next to street signs and buildings that explained their history and origin.
That said, I back Paul Stephenson 100% on renaming the Colston Hall.
The hall is about to undergo a £20million restoration, when it’s completed it will, ostensibly, be a different venue. So let’s seize the opportunity and give it a different name. Who we should honour should be for the city to decide by public vote. There’s still the question of the statue of Colston brow furrowed head in hand that dominates the Centre. Some say kick it over. But why not commission a statue of a newly emancipated slave, shackles waving in his hands and place it directly opposite him so that they can look each other in the eye.

THE KIDS AREN'T ALRIGHT

News that children as young as 11 could have their fingerprints taken and stored on a government database has met with predictable uproar from woolly liberals, hippies and Parliamentary opposition parties, as a further step towards a complete surveillance state.The plan, mooted as part of preparations for biometric passports and identity cards, could, says everyone who doesn't agree, herald the end of the presumption of innocence.

The story's this. As of 2008, all adults who apply for new passports will have their fingerprints recorded in the National Identity Register. But top civil servants are worried that some youths with child passports, valid for five years, could then be travelling on passports without biometric details when they turn 16.

That's carte blanche to commit crime and blow things up. Clearly.

So, to make sure all passports held by those over 16 have biometric details, the Identity and Passport Service proposes a fingerprint database for 11 to 15-year-olds. They estimate that they will take the fingerprints of 295,000 children who apply for passports in 2010, and that eventually 495,000 youngsters a year will be getting inky fingers.

Of course, if you had a massive new database of fingerprints, what other uses could you find for it. Hmmmm...wouldn't the police, for instance, find it useful?

Yes, say the hippies and the Jesus sandal-shod geography teachers and the Conservative Party, and it's the death knell for the presumption that everyone is considered innocent before they are found guilty.

But wait a minute. If we have the resources to nip things like crime in the bud, shouldn't we all be sleeping a little sounder in our beds?

I think so. In fact, I don't think the Government is going far enough.

Rather than having an age of criminal responsibility - currently applied to 10-year-olds - let's introduce an age of criminal inevitability and arrest anyone suspected of being 10 years old.

Habeas corpus could do with a revision, too. It would be easy enough to pass. For starters, it's Latin so how can anyone in state education nowadays possibly know what it means?

Getting rid of it needn't burden the overcrowded prison system. Ten-year-olds can already be easily incarcerated at home for the price of a PlayStation, a daily dose of fizzy drinks and industrial-sized packs of Cheesy Wotsits.

Thanks to the best efforts of the anti-conker Nazis of the Health and Safety executive, drivers conducting 60mph conversations on their mobile phones and scare stories of a paedophile on every corner, a fair proportion of under-16s are already institutionalised in every way but name by their concerned parents, so to implement lock-downs at home by stealth law could hardly be easier.

So, I say, ban habeas whatsitcalled.

Who in their right mind would complain when you look at the evidence, anyway? Ten-year-olds are a shifty lot by their very nature and the streets would be a safer place without BMXs and scooters strewn across the doorways of newsagents and footballs flying around public parks. I don't trust them, personally, with their scabby knees and pockets full of dead daddy longlegs, Panini stickers and recommissioned, decommissioned Kosovan firearms.

I admit, I have some personal reasons for locking up 10-year-olds and throwing the wardens away. A brush I had with a member of the tweeny underclass still makes me wake up screaming. I was in a supermarket a few years ago when I saw a lad of about nine filling his pockets at the pick-n-mix.

Rather than making a scene, I thought the best approach would be to sidle up to him and quietly but firmly tell him to stop what he was doing.

So I did.

But was this young Fagin ashamed but appreciative of my tact, my attempt to quietly put him back on the right track? Did he say "thanks mister, it's a fair cop. I was lost, g'vner, but now I'm found out"?

Did he hell.

Seemingly deranged, mouth foaming from a gobfull of sherbet lemons, he lobbed a handful of rhubarb and custards in my face (which, by the way, are sharp and smooth in all senses, especially if you get one in the eye) and then offered me outside for a fight.

He actually wanted to have a street fight with me, a man three times his size and eight times his weight.

Now, in a situation like that, a number of questions whizz their way brainwards.

Such as, is he bluffing? Because if he isn't, he's probably pretty tough and not going to observe the Queensbury rules. So how badly will he hurt me? Are we talking nursing a bruised shin, or being fed through a straw for the rest of my life?

That aside, the law's a bit hazy on the whole adults fighting with children thing and anyway, it's not very, well, dignified, is it? Never mind if the adult in question thinks he stands a good chance of losing.

So, instead, I stood at the picking-a-fight-n-mix, pride dented by sharp-edged boiled confectionery, thinking of options.

"Right," I finally said, "I'm going to tell on you."

I sloped off pretending to be in search of a responsible, hopefully gun toting, member of staff but really looking for an exit to leave by or a crack in the Earth's crust to leap into with the sound of "ooh, shown up!" ringing in my ears.

In the sober light of five years later, I concede that it's probably a good thing that our great government would never take an ego bruised by a mini-criminal as a recommendation to rush out ill-thought new laws.

They would never do that, right?

The idea to fingerprint, rank and file our children in a society that is already under more surveillance than any other country in the world is just 'blue sky thinking', nothing sinister. If you think your civil rights are eroding faster than the cliffs of the south coast you're paranoid. If you say so, expect a knock on the door.

Take their word for it. It will never happen. Until it does.

Anyway, personally speaking, I'm tremendously reassured by such a forward looking, nothing to hide government. I look forward to further 'blue sky' debate, such as bringing back hanging, and abolishing the vote.

Punk's (not) Dead.

A colleague recently bemoaned the lack of flair demonstrated by today’s youth.
We were looking out of the office window watching a group of lads sauntering past four floors below.
“Look at them, they think they’re it but they’re all in uniform” he said, preparing a mental inventory, “baseball caps, white trainers, track suit trousers, jackets printed with graffiti tags, pasty faces, nothing to do, nowhere to go, scrawling crap on the walls that nobody wants to read, it’s like dogs marking their territory, where’s the individuality? They all look the same.”
I didn’t want to ruin the moment by pointing out that here we were both wearing identikit suits, both working in an office that could be like any other office anywhere, both paid to scribe stuff that no one wants to read, obsessed about getting our bylines on pages like dogs marking their territories.
Where, indeed, is the individuality?
“When I was a kid I was a punk” he announced, in the same slightly unconvincing way people who ache to be hip claim to have once been a member of the Dug Out, the influential Bristol nite-spot with room for 300 and an apparent membership of 64 million.
“Really?” I’m impressed, “a punk? How old are you?”
“41”
“So, you were an 11 year old punk?”
“Yeah” sheepish grin “alright. Truth be told I always rather preferred Leo Sayer. But I had the spirit of punk later on, I wanted to be different, not like them” he points out of the window, to a crisp packet blowing along an otherwise empty street and turns to find I’ve gone back to my desk to assert my individuality by quietly panicking about .
It’s thirty years since punk first exploded, like a big sneeze, snottily into the living rooms and onto the suburban street corners of middle England.
Many will assert that it started in London, or even New York, they’ll cite Malcolm Mclaren, his shop Let It Rock. How he was Fagin to a legion of surly, disaffected youths whom he taught to pick the pockets of rock and roll and joyously fleece the music industry and the record buyers alike.
This is true. But not, I think, the full story. Because everywhere else Punk was something that just happened. It was an umbrella term for a scene that was as different in Manchester as it was in Glasgow, Bristol as it was in Wootten-under-Edge.
I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but my eldest sister was an early convert.
One minute it was that blisteringly hot summer of 1976, I was seven with an unruly mop of ginger hair (like McLaren) and with my granny, who we lived with, looking forward to the next year’s silver jubilee celebrations (like McLaren, just not in the same way).
She was tall and pretty in garish Bri-nylon, who when she wasn’t reading was dreaming of the drummer of Flintlock.
The next minute it seemed to have been raining for a month and a lot of boys, one of them, Adam, with pink hair, were pogo-ing around her bedroom declaring that there was “no future” and looked at me as if they’d just stepped in me.
Bri-nylon was dispatched for mo-hair and spray on tartan trews. Flintlock - over whose bubblegum pop stylings a big sister and gawky little brother had just weeks earlier bonded - were fired and upgraded to the more devastating sonic firepower of the Sex Pistols. Everything was different.
When my sister was out, probably hanging on a corner terrorising first world war veterans with her ripped stockings, I’d be in her room hogging the record player.
While I quickly gained a working knowledge, even a liking, for Wire, X-Ray Spex, The Clash and, of course, The ‘Pistols, as their 45s piled up on top of Flintlock, Leo Sayer and Middle Of The Road (Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep - still a classic) I didn’t really ‘get’ them. I hit a wall of Edwardian silence when I asked my Granny what an Orgasm Addict was. I found out the answer for myself when I hit puberty. That’s another post.
I still have the record. It’s got my sisters name on it, written with big looped joined up letters that only adolescent girls can do. The full stop is replaced with a love heart. Hardly the signature of a threat to society as we knew it.
In general, I found punk then to be utterly confusing. Which was, I realise now, sort of the point of a movement that set so much store in pointlessness. To be a punk was to not be like you. That was enough.
But all that self-righteous, humourless indignation at the world was also highly amusing for a seven year old. And, it turned out, his step dad.
Once a punk ‘face’ came to our house. He sported a full Mohican, with spikes of hair rumoured to have been dipped in Super-Glue, a studded leather jacket, bondage trousers and a chain that linked his left nostril to his right ear lobe.
When he walked down the path there was a race between my sister and my step dad to answer the door. To her horror, she was last and could only bear agonising witness to the following exchange. My old man gave the punk icon the once over. He pointed to his facial decoration. “If I pull that, will you flush?”.
Reactionary git, they would have thought. But two decades earlier he was sharpening his button down collars in readiness for weekends at the legendary Eel Pie Island and The Crawdaddy club, a sweaty South West London hole and both the Capital’s equivalents/challenges to the Cavern, that outraged with their habit of booking the hairiest, loudest and lewdest r&b acts of the early 60’s, the Yardbirds, The Who, The Pretty Things, The Birds (not to be confused with those dyslexic hippies from the States), and The ‘Stones.
What goes around, etc.
Those lads at the top of the post don’t represent a failure on punk‘s part to make us all individuals. Teenagers today are not any less relevant or rebellious or even revolutionary. They might look the same but in their heads they’re just not us. And that’s enough.

Modern Ghost Woe

My friends Burley, Palmer and Gunn and I recently invented a family- friendly game that combines our two greatest interests, pizza and the paranormal.

Taking the gist of the original spirit-medium's tool, the Ouija board, we've added a taste of Italian cuisine and called it The Lou-iji Board.

We've already scripted the advert which we intend to be five times more annoying than the classic MB Games ad for Operation - you remember, the one with the architecturally coiffured mum whose dubbed- over voice asks: "Can I have a go?"

Our ad is even better. It goes like this: A 1980s open-plan front room. Four children dressed in bad clothes are crouched around a pizza-shaped Ouija board. They have their fingers on an upturned glass which seems to float magically around the board, over an alphabet of shaped cardboard pizza toppings such as anchovies and peppers.

A mother, in mourning dress, but grinning inanely nonetheless, overlooks the game.

As does the spirit of Lou-iji, a spectral Italian chef, who rises, with the aid of terrible 1980s video effects, through the centre of the board. To the tune of Joe Dolce's Shud Up A Ya Face, he sings:

"What's-a matter you?

"HEY!

"Lost your dear Papa?

"HEY!

"Need to change da will?

"HEY!

"Contacta da dead!

A cod Italian voiceover announces: "Lou-iji board! It's-a da great new occult game from NB Games for all-a da family."

Then a group of smiling ghosts, one of them headless, enter the room through the walls and join the grinning kids. Kid One asks: "What's it like on the other side - are there really fields full of lollypops?" All the ghosts nod eagerly in the affirmative.

Kid Two wants to know if puppies "grow on trees in the afterlife". Again the ghosts cheerily nod.

Now mum wants in on the action. Waving her husband's last will and testament, which has some questionable entries clearly circled in red pen, she asks, with a giggle: "Can I have a go?"

Everybody makes a mock tut and laughs. The cod Italian voiceover announces, "Lou-IJI board. It'll keepa da spirits up!"

A blink-or-you'll-miss-it subtitle flashes on the screen, reading: "Not suitable for the under-threes or the recently bereaved."

The fact that we've already written the advert before launching the product might suggest to you that we don't have faith in the Lou-iji board. Far from it. There's just one technical hitch to smooth out before we unleash the other world on the living public. We don't know how to turn it off.

Product testing started well. We had originally intended that the board be made of dough that the players shaped and baked themselves. This turned out to be unimaginably boring to undertake so instead we took a photograph of a large Domino's pizza, cut it out and stuck it to some cardboard.

Using a marker pen we drew the numbers 0-9 and the letters A-Z around the pizza.

After pouring ourselves a mood-setting pint of Chianti each we sat down around the board and proceeded to knock up any passing members of the spirit world. Imagine our surprise when, after an hour's play, the room was packed with ghosts.

Among the spooks vying for space on the sofa were Florence Nightingale, Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakir, Van Gogh, Matisse and Andy Warhol, Sasha Distel, the entire Light Brigade (of charging fame) two men claiming to be Dick Turpin, Lady Jane Grey, Brunel, Satan the great dark lord of the underworld, Rod Hull (but not Emu) and, somewhat surprisingly, TV presenter Phillip Schofield.

With so many dead historical figures - with the possible exception of Schofield - in one place, you'd imagine a fabulous party to simply burst into life - if you'll excuse the pun. But being dead isn't all it's cracked up to be. Whoever said you shouldn't meet your heroes, especially if they're dead, was right and the whole affair was somewhat miserable.

We couldn't think of any interesting questions to ask. Sasha Distel refused to comment on whether he was bullied at school for having a girl's name, Van Gough tiresomely pretended to be deaf and when we asked Rod Hull if in retrospect he'd would have considered cable TV he stormed out in a huff. Well, we thought it was funny.

A week or so later we still can't get rid of the ghosts. It's like Truly Madly Deeply at my house, only without some blubbering thesp playing the cello.

Biggie and Tupac insist on catching the bus to work with me and make obscene rhymes about local transport providers First.

When I got home last night Satan had eaten the batteries of the TV remote control and Van Gogh had stencilled a sunflower border all around my living room, which is so mid-90s I could've cried.

I've been in touch with the local priest and he says as soon as he sorts out the mess caused by some local kid who's been doling out fish sandwiches and walking on Henleaze Lake, he'll pop round.

In the meantime, he advised, why not pass the time with my unwelcome guests by inviting them to play a nice board game.

Novel White Lies

A third of British adults have lied about reading a book to appear more intelligent and one in 10 men will pretend to have read certain books in order to impress members of the opposite sex, according to a new survey of 4,000 readers by the Museums, Libraries and Archive Council (MLA).

The findings (you can read them all in the news section here ) are PR guff working some reverse psychology riff to tempt people into libraries, but there are some tasty nuggets to chew on and spit out; 15 per cent of readers lie about the books they have read to new colleagues, one in 10 of 19 to 21-year-olds will trip up when quizzed about a book they have claimed to, but haven't, read. That kind of thing.

Almost half of respondents said that reading classic titles like War and Peace, Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice makes you appear more intelligent. What I was most surprised about was that five per cent said they lied about their reading habits to their employers. Just five per cent, surely some mistake?

Leading someone up the garden path is all very well if you want a roll in a flower bed, but if it's for your career's sake, getting your foot in the door at the top of the path calls for some really creative fibbing. And not just about the unbroken spines of the "classics" on your bookcase.

Employers know that a fair percentage of CVs arrive with a modicum of embellishment. It's not condoned but it's almost expected of applicants.

And depending on how much you want the job, can you really be blamed for a semi-innocent typo that transforms your grade three French CSE result to a masters degree in French literature? Is it really so objectionable to lie barefaced that you count opera, theatre, fell-walking and bringing to justice Nazi war criminals among your favourite hobbies, if you think that you could really benefit the company you're applying for?

I'm no captain of industry but I think that, yes, actually, it's probably not safe for anyone to lie about their qualifications. Or at the very least, it depends.

If, for instance, you want to work on the milk floats for United Dairies I say knock yourself out. Don't forget to mention you've read War & Peace so many times you've actually been approached to write the sequel, Peace & Then A Lot Of Little Wars. They won't care; as long as you can whistle tunelessly, the milk round's yours.

If, on the other hand, you have, say, political ambitions you really should try and be honest because the moment you garnish your credentials - you put Oxford University instead of the local Higher Education college, say, or you boast of a glittering early start in political analysis when in actual fact you did work experience on an obscure weekly rag and made the tea between copying press releases about the nation's reading habits - is the moment somebody cries, "Actually...."

But in politics that shout often comes too late, or is buried. Or both. You can trace the path of career-before-principals politicians by following the trail of exaggerations they leave in their wake. Often they are incredulous when exposed as phoney, usually because their wide-eyed duplicity is so convincing they believe it themselves. They'll also have a whole team of equally careerist sycophants feeding them plate after plate of deceit, boiled and fried in the juices of their own self interest. So the wheel turns.

Because it can be hard to stop a lie from spiralling out of control. Announcing that you admire Dostoyovski when your bookshelves say J K Rowling is one thing. But sex up your CV to get a foot on the bottom rung of the political ladder and see how quickly and casually you'll find yourself in front of your peers swearing blind that you have "concrete", "irrefutable" and "God-given" evidence that Iraq is harbouring enough weapons of mass destruction to blow this world into the next.

I can't claim to be living it up on the moral highground here, a lie's a lie whatever its scale and I've employed a few to gain employment.

The CV that got me my first staff writing job stated boldly that I was a "lifelong Bristol Rovers fan" after I received a tip-off that the then editor held a season ticket for the Pirates.

To measure my knowledge of football, more specifically Bristol Rovers (and this is despite the fact that I have lived in North Bristol all my life and, not only that, but in the shadow of not one but two of Rovers' three home grounds) you would need the kind of equipment reserved for scientists investigating really tiny, miniscule, little things that nobody else should really concern themselves with. Put it this way, I'm no expert.

"Gary Penrice" who was then a mustachioed player with the Gas, "is practically a god, don't you think?"

I knowingly without knowing announced to the interview panel, praying they wouldn't ask me why I thought that was even thinkable.

Naturally I got the job. Nothing to do with whether I could write stories, all to do with spinning a yarn.

I was found out. Eventually. I'd got pretty good at avoiding any serious debate about Rovers and would study the back page of the Evening Post on a Monday, which I could rely on for about four sentences worth of bluff if I was in a particularly tight conversational spot.

Sadly, one small oversight, (how was I to know Bristol Rovers had moved to Bath - I mean, does that make sense to anyone?) saw my web of deceit come crashing down. Luckily, by this time, I was indispensable to the magazine, namely because in three years I hadn't asked for a pay rise and, secondly, because I told them I was indispensable and nobody suspected me of being stupid enough to fundamentally lie to them twice. But I didn't see the love in my editor's eyes for a long time after that. And even then he wouldn't let me use his pristinely-kept Rovers' mug when all the other cups were dirty.

Four Murders

For no particular reason other than it's bloody cold, here are four Bristol murder stories.....



John Horwood was convicted of the murder of Eliza Balsum in 1821, although the case was on shaky ground from the start. Horwood, from Bristol, had been romantically pursuing Balsum, from Kingswood, for some months. When she finally put a stop to his advances he threw a stone at her in frustration.
She was bruised by the incident but otherwise, it seemed, unharmed. But two days later, and after walking from Kingswood, she reported to the Bristol Infirmary feeling unsteady on her feet. She was treated for a head wound but died within days. The surgeon Richard Smith inspected her body and found an abscess. The fact that this was more likely to have been caused by a dirty bandage applied in the hospital was not considered and Horwood was arrested and charged with her murder.
Horwood enjoyed the distinction of being the first prisoner to be hanged at the new Cumberland Road gaol (the original was burnt down during the Bristol Riots). The moment he was pronounced dead, Horwood’s body was commandeered by Richard Smith, the surgeon who accused him of the crime. Smith dissected the body during a public medical lecture.
Smith had Horwood’s body skinned and tanned. After it was given a further chemical treatment in Bedminster, what was left of Horwood was dispatched to a bookbinders in Essex who used it to bind a book, written by Smith, about the Horwood case. The book remains in the city archive and the gruesome tome is made available to the public by appointment.


As if inspired by the pages of a crime novel, the murderer of cinema manager RN Parrington “Jacko” Jackson, in 1950 waited in the packed cinema for the exact moment a shot was fired in the Ronald Coleman thriller The Light That Failed, before he empty a barrel into the ill fated impressario.
Despite a huge police investigation Jacko’s murder remained a mystery until fairly recently. His killer was never brought to justice.
There appeared to be no motive for the killing.
Just moments previously Jackson had been laughing and joking with the restaurant staff and had just returned from the box office with the takings from the day.
But none of that £800 had been stolen.
The police had just one tip off. An anonymous caller said the man they should be looking for was clean shaven, aged 30-35, about five feet seven inches tall, of medium-build with dark hair and a ruddy complexion. He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie and had been sitting in the balcony lounge reading a newspaper.
Inquiries ranged across the whole country - even to America, where a GI was questioned - but no arrests were made. The murder weapon - a Colt 45 revolver - had been found in a water tank in the city. Then the trail went cold.
In the mid 70s the case was reopened when a homeless man called Fred Jesser contacted the Evening Post with his theory that ‘Jacko’ was whacked by a jealous boyfriend.
It was a theory not without substance. ‘Jacko’, apparently, was a suave smoothie who had a reputation as a ‘ladies man’.
But in the 1990s a death bed confession appeared to close the case for good.
The killer was named as Billy "The Fish" Fisher, a petty crook who had travelled with his accomplice, Duckey Leonard, from South Wales with the sole intention of robbing the cinema. They panicked when Parrington Jackson walked in and "The Fish" shot him twice.
Fisher's son, Jeff Fisher, told police that his father had confessed to the killing and that he believed that he may have murdered more than once.

William Hay, who killed his 17 year old boyfriend and buried his dismembered body in the docks, was gaoled for life at Bristol Crown Court in July 1978.
Hay had denied murdering Keith Whalen saying that the act was manslaughter after he had been provoked. The jury did not accept his plea.
Hay took Whelans body in a tin trunk to a lonely spot near Severn Beach after stabbing his lover to death in his flat on Luccombe Hill in Redland.
Hay initially tried to dispose of the body by burning it, but it wouldn’t catch and he left it. The next day Hay returned with a saw and set about removing Keith’s head and left leg. Hay then loaded the body into his car and returned to Bristol. At Cumberland Basin he dug a shallow grave and placed the body in it.

The last person to be executed in a Bristol prison was Russell Pascoe at Horfield in 1963. Pascoe was the coconspirator of a botched burglary of a remote farm in Cornwall. Russell, and his accomplice Dennis Whitty, had heard rumours that the reclusive farmer William Rowe hid a fortune amongst the chaotic piles of waste at his farm. Discovered by Rowe as they searched for valuables, Pascoe and Whitty set about the old man with iron bars, they then stabbed him a number of times and slashed his throat. Pascoe was arrested at a roadblock a couple of days after the murder when his answers to a routine set of questions failed to convince the police officer. Whitty was taken by the police soon after and both defendants blamed the other for the murder. Whitty was taken to be hanged at Winchester while Pascoe would see out his last days looking at Gloucester Road through the bars of his cell.
By 1963 support for the abolition of hanging was growing stronger in Britain and protesters gathered outside Horfield as Pascoe prepared for his final trek from cell to gallows.
Tony Benn, then MP for Bristol South-East, told the vigil on the night before the execution: "I think this will be Bristol's last execution. I am sure the death penalty will be abolished." Benn was prescient. Hanging would be abolished for most crimes - it technically applies to treason and regicide - later that year and Pascoe and Whitty would be the two of the last four to hang for their offences. The last two hangings, again involving coconspirators, took place in Liverpool and Manchester in August 1964.
Between 1875 and 1963, Bristol's Horfield Prison hanged 17 people, the eldest of whom was 49, the youngest just 21.