BillF

Phineas Fogg Roger Fagg L Sprague de Camp

No, it was never "mainstream popular" in the way that, say, Acker Bilk was, but it did get a following from a sizeable - and discriminating, as we would have said - chunk of the youth audience. Sgcim's comment that the Beatles ended the jazz audience is true - from that point on jazz lost the youngsters. Sadly, in my experience jazz gigs today are still largely reliant for an audience on those same people - now with hearing aids and mobility scooters.

Lucky you...looks like a good evening. I've got my tickets for the Gateshead Jazz Festival.......Joshua Redman is nearly sold out but plenty of tickets left for The Cookers. I'll be in touch a bit nearer the date to arrange a meet....

Auntie Gladys Eddie Gladden George Smiley

Dmitry Baevsky Quintet with Joe Magnarelli, Alain Jean-Marie, Giorgos Antoniou and Steve Brown at Southport this evening.

Lord Kitchener The Cookers Pangloss

David Dimbleby Mr Bumble B B King

Don't we have the same sort of thing with regard to American jazz? "Considerable international interest and regard" for Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane .... What American figures from recent decades can match these? Could it be that on both sides of the Atlantic those bygone decades were the jazz age?

Specs Wright Philip Glass Janet Frame

Now completed my reading of Fitzgerald's novels with this one, her last. Here she has mastered her "new" style: a series of fragmentary impressions in stripped-down prose from an age and place that she never knew personally, but as I've said before, it's her earlier, more conventional fiction that I prefer.

Antoine Doinel Eronel Eros

The Caddy T Rex Trekkies

Boy Racers Michael Winner Jim Backus

Horace Bachelor The Master Doctor Doolittle

André Preview Morecambe and Wise Little and Large

Hanoi Jane Han Solo Sol Yaged

Tipping is a complex matter raising lots of questions; e.g. Where - what's the practice in the country/region you're in? When - you might have tipped in the past, but do people still do it today? In what situation - what categories of worker? Size of tip - does percentage come into it? i thought about this when I saw Eric Alexander deciding what tip to leave in unfamiliar British coinage at a bar in Southport, UK. I'm British and I don't tip bar staff. Is this the norm, fellow Brits?

I have always tipped hairdressers, waiters and taxi drivers, though I wonder if younger people still do this. Payment by card makes tipping more difficult. We used to have a regular all-year-round postman who got a "tip" at Christmas, but fragmentation of the postal services here has put an end to that.

Lover Man My Old Flame Tito Burns

Steve Waterman Harry Padley Dick Diver

Don't forget that Charlie Parker said that when he heard The Firebird, in the language of the streets he flipped :-) http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2013/05/26/186486269/why-jazz-musicians-love-the-rite-of-spring

Putin Mr Pooter Tommy Potter

Rod the Mod Charles the Mad Mads Junker

He was another jazz fan, allegedly he cried during the blitz when he arrived back at his digs to find all his 78 records destroyed. There's a great clip of him in the BBC studio's in the audience of a MJQ concert. Big fan of Bill Evans, I've heard. As mentioned, he's also in the audience on 'Jazz 625' footage. He was in the specially invited studio audience too for the Rendell/Carr 'Live' at Lansdowne, apparently. Yes, his Wikipedia entry includes the following: "Le Mesurier's favoured pastime was visiting the jazz clubs around Soho, such as The Establishment or Ronnie Scott's, and he observed that 'listening to artists like Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson or Alan Clare always made life seem that little bit brighter.'"

Hugo Boss Hugo First The Dear Leader