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ACTA: What Is Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement?

ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is something you will probably not hear much about. Maybe a small general item at the end of the news. Chances are the tabloids will not mention it at all and it’s unlikely to be promoted to front page headlines in any broadsheet newspaper. But believe me, ACTA is something that will affect every man, woman and child using the internet right now. And not in a good way. Just when we thought the US government’s freedom-limiting legislation SOPA and PIPA had been dealt potential fatal body blows, ACTA threatens to slip in through the back door.

What Is ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) Anyway?

In broad terms, ACTA is an international agreement drawn up in secret by a strange hodge-podge of countries led by the USA (who else?), the European Union, South Korea, Singapore, Morocco, New Zealand and Canada. It has been heavily lobbied for around the world by the big drug, music and movie corporations and has attracted much hostility from the majority of legitimate pro-freedom groups, who consider it a dangerous threat to the internet. It’s primary stated aim is to “create international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement”. The title of the treaty might suggest that it primarily deals with counterfeit goods but in reality it has far broader scope and that’s where it gets tricky.

What most people have against ACTA is that it takes counterfeiting and piracy and makes them the same thing, much in the same way that the Christian Right in the USA talk of Communists and sexual deviants in the same breath. Two different enemies made one. (In my limited experience, it’s the right-wingers who are more likely to be sexually deviant: you almost expect neo-Nazis to keep a stash of chains, whips and gimp-masks in the garage.) But I digress…

With ACTA, the twin stated enemies are counterfeiters and pirates. But how can it be right that the owners of an organised and well-funded factory in Mexico (for example), pumping out thousands of illicit copies of the latest Hollywood blockbuster DVD or top-selling rock CD should be treated practically the same as a teenager in Perivale illicitly sharing an Amy Winehouse track?

Furthermore, ACTA authorizes the signing governments to penalise the ISPs – Internet Service Providers such as BT, Virgin and so on – for the actions of their clients. So, if I use my broadband connection to distribute pirated movies, BT can be taken to court. That’s like the local council being fined when drug dealers use their highways to transport heroin. So, obviously the ISPs are going to start snooping to see what we are up to and almost certainly limiting our access to the internet. According to the Free Software Foundation, ACTA would require ISPs not to host free software that can access copyrighted media, and it would no longer be legal for DRM-protected media to be playable with free or open source software.

ACTA’s supporters include all the big movie, drug and record corporations, including News Corporation, Viacom, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, Monsanto, Time Warner, Universal, Sony, Verizon, Walt Disney, and the Motion Picture Association of America. These are multinational corporations who are struggling to come to terms with modern life. Throughout history Big Business has been scared of new technology and has proved unable to adapt. Remember when IBM was the biggest thing in computing? And when Phillips had the whole cassette tape market sewn up?

Think back, if you’re old enough, to when photocopiers began to be commercially available to small businesses? Publishing companies tried to get them banned and at the very least metered so that they’d get a rake-off for every copy made, a “tax” still in force in many libraries around the world. Today, even though anyone can buy a new colour photocopier/ scanner/ printer from Amazon for less than £25, no sane person buys one in order to copy books they’ve borrowed for free from the library. Epson Stylus SX130 Compact All-in-One Printer (Print, Copy and Scan) For one thing, it wouldn’t be worth anyone’s while because the cost of the materials would be approaching the retail price of the book you were making.

Remember the campaign from the music industry in the 1980s-1990s that made “home recording is killing live music” the mantra you saw every time you opened up the NME or put on a record? Well, it didn’t. What really began the death-knell for the record industry was them selling CDS that cost less than a pound to produce for upwards of £15 – and that was 10-15 years ago, the equivalent to £50-£60 in today’s currency. Greed and the inability to adapt to the modern way of life is doing for the record industry and will probably do for the major movie and pharmaceutical corporations too. It’s just a matter of time.

If the big drug companies were not pricing vital life-saving drugs out of the reach of the Third World and trying to ban generic treatments (by sledgehammer methods like ACTA), would anyone bother counterfeiting them? If Nike or Dr Martin sold their footware at prices close to what they cost to produce and not with mark-ups of 2,500 per cent and more profit, would they have a counterfeiting problem? That the top movie and rock stars are paid millions of dollars (it’s usually dollars), proves that there’s still plenty of money sloshing around. Instead of stopping teenagers from swapping their music, the music industry would be better served employing them to scrap their current business plans and working out something that will work in the Internet Age.

Nobody condones counterfeiting, which generally involves passing off inferior goods as the real thing. This is especially true of life-saving drugs. The very nature of counterfeiting involves the end-user being deceived as to the origin of what they are buying. Piracy is different. When a product is pirated, the consumer is usually aware that they are bypassing legal channels – and they don’t usually give two hoots. Although the law says differently, most people believe that when they buy a CD or DVD (usually for a relatively large amount of money), it becomes their property and if they want to run off a copy for a mate, they should be able to. ACTA would make them criminals liable to a major penalty.

ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) Poses A Real Problem For All Of Us

As the French campaigning website La Quadrature du Net states: “ACTA would impose new criminal sanctions forcing Internet actors to monitor and censor online communications. It is thus a major threat to freedom of expression online and creates legal uncertainty for Internet companies. In the name of trademarks and patents, it would also hamper access to generic medicines in poor countries.” Their spokesman Jérémie Zimmermann elaborates: “This element of language is known to us as part of the vocabulary of the ‘copyright Talibans’, as we call it. If you treat Chinese manufacturers who create counterfeit DVDs or medicines in the same way you treat individuals sharing not-for-profit in their homes you know that you will have problems.” Click for more about ACTA at La Quadrature du Net.

ACTA is a backdoor way for government and global corporations to restrict the internet and our freedoms. It’s up to us to resist it as forcefully as we can. Just don’t expect the media – who have a vested interest in controlling piracy – to keep you informed.

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Top Conspiracy Theories

Top conspiracy theories? How a run-of-the-mill conspiracy theory gets the “top” tag is interesting enough in itself. Just what makes one conspiracy theory better than all the rest?

Can it be because it is true (surely some of them must be, just according to the law of averages?), or maybe because it is totally outrageous, along the lines of: the Queen is a lizard; 9-11 was an inside job engineered by US government agencies; and Jimmy Savile was a peodophile? Being totally bizarre and true would seem to be a desirable double whammy and there are plenty of people who say that all those examples are 100% correct. That’s why I’ve included two of them in my list of Top Conspiracy Theories.

The Jimmy Savile allegations became an candidate for Top Conspiracy Theory (well, maybe not Top Conspiracy Theory), after it was revealed that a well-researched and ready to air BBC Newsnight piece on allegations that the British DJ and charity marathon-runner had molested schoolgirls at a school at which he had volunteered to do “charity work” in the 1970s, was shelved at the last minute on orders from a very senior executive. This was in mid-December 2011. A fawning tribute featuring Shane Ritchie was aired on BBC-1 on December 26th. The internet is saturated with reports that Savile used his charity and volunteer work as a cover for more illicit activities, including necrophilia, underage sex and procuring male children for former British Prime Minister Ted Heath to “play with” on his yacht, Morning Cloud.

I don’t know the truth of any of these specific allegations, but I once spoke to a woman who said she’d had “semi-consensual” sex with Savile when she was fifteen, and that the police have investigated similar claims on at least two publicly-documented occasions. Savile’s supporters deny any wrong-doing on the part of the tracksuit-wearing DJ (“Now then, now then…”), admitting that he was a bit of an oddball but adding that he did raise a lot of money for charity. If you want to find out more about the Anti-Sir Jimmy Savile point of view – bearing in mind that he is in no position to answer back – then you can check out David Icke’s forum (which is dedicated to “free speech”), and perhaps take a peek at this extract from an ITV documentary on the Nolan Sisters made in 2009: Top Conspiracy Theories – click here to view.

My Top Conspiracy Theories:

The Queen (And Most Other World Rulers) Is A Lizard

When it comes to Top Conspiracy Theories, this one is a “humdinger” and potentially the biggest of them all. The writer and former BBC football reporter and Green Party spokesman, David Icke, has devoted his life since 1991 to telling us about an ancient race from the Middle East – via Outer Space – that now runs the world. Icke refers to them as the “Babylonian Brotherhood.” Key Brotherhood bloodlines include the British Royal Family (The House of Windsor) and the allied Royal families of Europe, the Rockerfellers, the Rothschilds, and the establishment families of the USA, including the Kennedy clan and the Bush family. Among the organizations and bodies the Brotherhood created and now control are the Illuminati, Round Table, the Bilderberg Group, Chatham House, the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the United Nations, and the Internet. The members of the Brotherhood are descended from reptile-like creatures who arrived from Outer Space a few thousand years ago, hence “The Queen Is A Lizard” jibe.

The basis of Icke’s theories is that the “few ” have created a series of secret societies that rule the world and control the “many”. The Brotherhood are dedicated to their “Great Work of Ages” of world domination and the eventual goal of a population that is micro-chipped in order to control us. Icke has been almost universally ridiculed for his theories, but individual research by the likes of British journalist Jon Ronson show that certain aspects of his claims do have substance. I find it impossible to take on board most of David Icke’s ideas, but I find aspects of them get less bizarre with every passing year. Who knows, maybe the Queen is a lizard?

Top Of All Top Conspiracy Theories: 9-11 Was An Inside Job

Maybe not as implausible as I first thought. After checking out a few of the “facts” and a few of the conspiracy theory websites, the official version – that Osama Bin Laden orchestrated this from a cave in Afghanistan – sounds less likely than many of the versions peddled online. The general consensus among conspirators is that 9-11 was orchestrated by the US Government, or possibly the Babylonian Brotherhood, as an excuse to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. They say that only the CIA and other US government agencies had the facilities and expertise to pull off such a major coup.

Much is made of the New York firefighter’s reaction to the way the Twin Towers collapsed and various architects have said that the buildings would not have reacted as they appeared to as the result of a fire after being hit by a plane. Many experts and people who should know have said that the collapses had more of the look a controlled demolition rather than of a structural failure after being engulfed by fire.

Here’s a film made in 2006 by “MI5 whistle-blower” (as he seems destined to forever be called) David Shayler, that covers much of this, with an emphasis on Britain’s involvement and its own terrorist attacks on the 7/7 London Bombings:

It seems to me that the official version is even more far-fetched than the conspiracy theory. This is what we are expected to believe: 20 Arab hijackers decide to hijack a bunch of planes and crash them into prominent US buildings, but one hijacker gets arrested before he is able to start his job. The FBI seizes his laptop but decide not to do anything with it until their superiors give them permission. In the meantime, the remaining nineteen terrorists are allowed to board four planes, despite the fact that several of them were under FBI surveillance and on “no fly” lists.

After managing to get on board the aircraft, the unarmed terrorists were then able to overthrow ex-military pilots as well as an Israeli anti hijacking agent (who just happened to be on board one of the planes), and seize control of all four. They then were able to fly them off course for long periods of times, seemingly unnoticed by NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), even though one of the planes managed to get out a call saying that the plane had been hijacked and that a passenger had been shot. Then these guys, who it was “revealed” had been given barely enough flying lessons to take off and land, had flown those planes into buildings at high speeds and after performing several difficult turns, dives and other manoeuvres. This then caused robustly-built steel-framed buildings to collapse after being set on fire many floors above the ground.

Sounds to me like something only the descendent of reptiles from Outer Space could dream up. Top Conspiracy Theories? You bet your sweet ass…

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Picasso’s Light Drawings

Picasso is an artist with the Marmite factor. (Translation for readers living outside the United Kingdom: it means you either love him or you hate him. This comes from the leading brand of yeast extract called Marmite, which has this no-compromising reputation. For the record, I am both a Marmite and a Picasso lover.)

It may be an age thing, because as I mature like a plump old Cheddar cheese, I find myself more and more and more drawn to Picasso’s work. One aspect of his work I was not aware of are the Light Paintings, captured by Life photographer, Gjon Mili, in 1949. Mili was a photographer famous for his highly dramatic use of light sources to illuminate whatever he aimed his lenses at. The pictures he took are worth spending a few moments examining. (Here I had a link to the images at the Life website, but they took the images down!)

The first known attempt at Light Painting Photography was not for artistic but for commercial use, almost 100 years ago, back in 1914. Frank Gilbreth and his wife Lillian Moller Gilbreth used an open-shutter camera and small lights to track the motion of manufacturing and clerical workers in an an early attempt at time and motion study. The first known artistic use of the technique was in 1935 when Man Ray created the series he called Space Writing. It wasn’t until 2009 that photographer Ellen Carey discovered Man Ray’s signature in light.

It was Gjon Mili who got Picasso interested in Light Painting, when he showed his some of his photographs of skaters taken with small lights attached to their ice-skates. Mili reports that straight away, Picasso began to play with his flashlight in a darkened room. At this first session, Picasso gave the photographer fifteen minutes in which to take pictures, but the results were so spectacular that he allowed a total of five sessions. The most famous image is universally known as “Picasso draws a centaur in the air.”

My favourite Picasso anecdote is the one in which he finds himself talking to an American G.I., who admits that he can’t stand abstract paintings because they are so “unrealistic”. The conversation moved on to the soldier’s girlfriend and a photograph is proudly produced to show the artist.

“My word,” exclaims Picasso, examining the snapshot, “is she really that small?”

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Charlie Sheen’s Roast (or What’s Going on in New York? Part 87)

Stand by for the hard facts about Charlie Sheen’s Roast:

Everybody in the USA seems to be obsessing over Charlie Sheen’s Roast – or, to give it its real title, “The Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen”. It’s been the biggest search on Google in the USA since early September. But what on earth is it? When I first saw the term I honestly thought it was some elaborate joke centred around the Sunday “joint” with all its drug references.

What was or is Charlie Sheen’s Roast?

When I actually looked into it, I saw that Charlie Sheen’s Roast was a two hour TV programme (including ads, so probably only around 25 minutes of actual insults), broadcast on the US Comedy Central network on September , that follows a tried and tested formula on American TV. The format began in 1949 with Maurice Chevalier, was famously hosted in the 1970s by Dean Martin and the latest edition was the recently screened Charlie Sheen’s Roast. It’s been attempted on British TV by Channel 4, but didn’t catch on. More about that later…

For those (like me) who haven’t a clue what a “roast” is (other than something British cooks cremate on a Sunday lunchtime), here’s a quick run-down: a “celebrity roast” is an event in which someone in the public eye (the “roastee”) is subjected to a barrage of mostly scripted comic insults and tributes from a panel of comedians and other well known faces, presided over by a “roastmaster”. It works because the “roastee” takes the insults and jokes in good humor and does not see them as serious criticism. In a bizarre twist on the concept of “This Is Your Life”, many regard being roasted as a great honour. Watching Charlie Sheen’s Roast, it seemed more like a lynching with jokes.

Charlie Sheen’s Roast was scheduled for the very same Monday that Two And A Half Men aired for the first time with Ashton Kutcher in Charlie’s long-time role. It all started going wrong for Charlie – in public, at least– on May 20, 1998, when CS was hospitalized after overdosing on cocaine. Various problems surfaced over the years and on October 26, 2010, the police escorted him from his New York hotel suite. According to the New York Police Department, Sheen admitted to being drunk and taking cocaine. Warner Brothers took the opportunity to fire him from the sit-com.

Since then, drug-taking and drinking to excess have been linked to the actor. There’s even a website called charliesheenjokes.com, featuring barbed attacks on the actor, most of which aren’t particularly funny. Here are five typically unfunny examples:

Saint Pat gets drunk on Charlie Sheen day.
Charlie Sheen won American idol using sign language.
Remember that time Charlie Sheen lost, me neither. Winning!
If NASA wants to put a man on mars , just ask Charlie Sheen how he got here and reverse engineer it!
You do not drug test Charlie Sheen, however Charlie Sheen does test drugs.

Back to Charlie Sheen’s Roast. I’ve seen most of it online and it’s a pretty embarrassing two hours worth. The six (and a half) best Charlie Sheen’s Roast gags (at least the ones that weren’t too rude or cruel) are:

Charlie Sheen: “It’s true, I’ve hung around with a lot of shady people over the years… losers, drug addicts, dealers, desperate whores. But to have you all here on one night is really special.”
Amy Schumer: “Your marriage to Denise Richards, it was kind of like her Vietnam because she was constantly afraid of being killed by Charlie.”
Jeff Ross: “Charlie if you’re winning, this must not be a child custody hearing. Only time your kids get to see you is in re-runs. Charlie, don’t you want to live to see their first 12 steps?”
Jon Lovitz: “How much blow can Charlie Sheen do? Enough to kill two and a half men.”
William Shatner: “Prostitutes cost a lot of money, Charlie. Hasn’t anyone told you that actresses will sleep with you for free?” and “First off Charlie, I’m eighty-years-old. You’re what, forty-seven?…” [Sheen says: "Forty-six."] “…Then how come we look like we went to high school together?”
Kate Walsh: “Despite all those years of abusing your lungs, your kidney, your liver, the only thing you’ve had removed are your kids!”

Will Charlie Sheen’s Roast kickstart a new TV trend?

The British attempts at Comedy Roasts came in 2010 when Channel 4 recruited Jimmy Carr to be “roastmaster” for a short series in which Bruce Forsyth, Sharon Osbourne, Chris Tarrant, Davina McCall and finally Barbara Windsor were roasted by the likes of… Jack Dee, Sean Lock (who summed up the mood when he ad-libbed: “If the money’s right, I’ll slag off anyone”), Gok Wan, Patrick Kielty, Keith Lemon and Chris Moyles.

Channel 4′s tag-line to the series takes an optimistic upbeat view of it all: “A host of comedians and celebrities pay fond – and irreverent – tribute to some TV legends in these star-studded Comedy Roasts.” Yes, we don’t really have the same skills as our American cousins (these were not in the same class of vileness as Charlie’s Sheen’s Roast) … or the same tastes.

I’m pretty sure that Channel 4 have now dropped the idea of any more UK Celebrity Roasts and the chances of Charlie Sheen’s Roast making it on to mainstream British TV are (thankfully) remote.

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Motivational Quotes and Positive Thinking Quotes

Have you ever searched the web for motivational quotes or positive thinking quotes? If so, you are not alone. Tens of thousands of us do it every day. It’s grown into something of an online business, as people around the world look for a single phrase or saying that will kick-start their lives.

It seems to be yet another by-product of the celebrity culture that has been thrust upon us. Famous people know best because, er, well…¦ they are famous. Obviously.

Most of us who are not yet famous yearn to be famous. To be stalked by the press, have affairs with sporting stars in five star knocking shops and be able to wear sun-glasses when it’s not even sunny. Maybe even get to cry on television. Maybe.

Thirty years ago, when given the choice of being rich or famous, most school-leavers chose rich. Now the position is reversed. And if we are not yet famous – maybe we don’t have the guts to go on a killing spree or the equipment to marry a celebrity sports or movie star – then we have not yet reached our full potential. It goes without saying that the most popular motivational quotes come from those who are already household names.

The likes of Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Samuel Johnson and even Samuel L Jackson obviously know lots more about greatness than we do. And, because we live in a soundbite culture, where a single sentence or phrase has more power than a book, a single motivational phrase must have the power to make us better people. In the business, this is called the “magic bullet”.

We need that kick-start but we don’t have the time or the energy to spend more than a few minutes doing it. The days of finding and nurturing a talent and working hard for several years are gone. Who needs the hassle of becoming a world-famous writer or actor through hard work and talent? That’s so 20th Century.

No. We just enough time to plough through a list of motivational quotes (see below), maybe try another google search for positive thinking quotes, pick one that doesn’t involve any real effort, print it out and stick it on the wall.

Done.

Only a matter of time now.

Here are a few that might work for you:

Who dares wins!
Winston Churchill

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.
Thomas Edison

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.
Willie Nelson

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
Winston Churchill

Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.
Henry Ford

For myself I am an optimist; it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
Winston Churchill

Try not to be a man of success, but rather to be a man of value.
Albert Einstein

It doesn’t matter that Winston Churchill spent most of his adult life zonked out of his brains on brandy or that he was quite keen that Gandhi should die on a hunger strike, the important thing is that he – and his team of speech writers – had an eye and an ear for a good soundbite. I’ll leave the last word to the celebrity who is perhaps Winston’s modern-day equivalent. Of all the motivational quotes I have ever seen, this is the king of the positive thinking quotes for me:

War is a dangerous place.
George W Bush

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Rabbit: Chas and Dave Reunion – Gertcha! (Part 2)

For the first part of the story, read “Rabbit: Chas and Dave Reunion – Gertcha! (Part 1)” – click here

After Glastonbury 2005, all went well for a number of years. I did an average of 15-20 shows a year with Chas & Dave: most made me money but a few lost. In retrospect I suppose they were playing just too many gigs in London, but every time I tried to ease up, Barry would sell a show to someone else, so I kept up the pressure. Their fee had trebled since that first show, but the audiences had doubled, so it was still worth doing.

Then tragedy struck. Dave Peackock’s lovely wife, Sue, fell ill. She was a genuinely happy woman who had never smoked a day in her life but she succumbed to lung cancer. Just when we thought she was on the mend, Sue grew weak and finally passed away on July 4th, 2009. It was a sad time for everybody, especially Dave, who was absolutely devastated. He withdrew from live work with Chas & Dave and for three months, Chas carried on with Micky Burt and a stand-in bass-player.

I called their agent, Barry Collings, in early September, and he told me that Chas was expecting Dave to return in time for the Christmas Beano. So I booked a date at the Electric Ballroom and started to advertise and promote the show.

On September 22, 2009, an important news announcement came out of the blue â€“ at least to me. Aside from the Christmas Beano, I had several shows booked , including two at the 100 Club. I got an email from a friend saying they’d heard on the radio that Chas & Dave had split up, was it true? I didn’t know. I went to the band’s website, which carried an official announcement:

“Following the death of his wife. Dave has decided to call time on touring. All dates already booked and those going forward will be fulfilled by Chas & his band (details here). Dave has been overwhelmed by the huge number of messages of support for him at this difficult time and we say a big thank you to all who got in touch and posted their regards on the web.

“To quote Chas: ‘It’s sad but Rockney will roll on with Chas & his band’.
“CHAS & HIS BAND are CHAS Piano/Lead Vocals, MICKY BURT on Drums and DARREN JUNIPER Bass Guitar. Darren is the son of an old school friend of Chas, the man who introduced Chas to Dave years ago, a story Chas relates on stage.”

The British public are a funny lot. The Chas & Dave show without Dave wasn’t all that different. It featured the same songs in roughly the same order and they sounded like they did on the records, but for some reason people stopped coming. My first show at the 100 Club billed as “Chas & His Band” drew less than a hundred people.

It was obvious that the Christmas Beano at the 1100-capacity Electric Ballroom could not go ahead. Especially when it became clear that Chas had also taken the opportunity to drop original drummer Micky Burt and replace him with Chas’s son, Nick. Barry Collings and Chas thought I should go ahead with Chas and His Band. But I knew it was better to lose the money I’d already spent on the show than gamble several thousand more pounds that I was wrong. Promoting is always a gamble, but when you’re betting against your own instincts, experience and knowledge, it’s a hiding to nothing.

I carried on with Chas and His Band – playing the 100 Club shows booked for Chas & Dave, but every one cost me money, including one – on New Year’s Eve at the 100 Club – that lost £4,000. Chas reduced his fees for the shows, but the high overheads and the fact that audiences weren’t showing up, meant that I still lost money. All in all, with the cancelled show and the ones I went ahead with and lost on, I was down the best part of £12,000, which was more than I’d made out of all the Chas and Dave shows in the previous year.

I owed Chas and Dave £6,000. I suggested I deduct a couple of thousand towards the cost of the cancelled Beano and my other losses but this was rejected and I ended up paying them the whole amount, on top of my losses. Barry Collings rang me and said that he thought there was a good chance that Dave would come back – at least for a farewell tour – and when that happened, I could recoup my losses that way.

Nothing happened for a year. Barry kept asking me whether I wanted to put on more shows with Chas & His Band and I kept telling him I couldn’t afford to, which was true. I’d given it a good try but it just didn’t seem to work at the 100 Club. Then, on June 12th, 2010 one of the 100 Club doormen rang me and asked me if I was involved with Chas & Dave’s Reunion Tour. I knew nothing about it. I fired off an email to Barry Collings, asking him what was happening.

He replied within eight minutes to say:

Hi, Chas & Dave are getting together again for one six week final theatre tour March /AprilI have sold the London date to the Indigo 02
Regards, Barry

I emailed back, pointing out that he told me I’d be getting the first call. He replied:

Hi they paid me big money. Otherwise I would have spoken to you regards. Barry

I pointed out that on the deal we’d agreed for the Christmas Beano, if transferred to the 02, Chas & Dave would walk out with very nearly £50,000, if the show sold out– which I believed it would. Were they getting more than that, I asked? No reply.

I emailed Chas. On June 14th he came back and said:

Jim, It was all left to Barry. He is our agent. If you want to get involved, give him a call.

So there it was. I asked if they wanted to do a warm-up at the 100 Club and I was told no. Chas and Dave eventually played 50 shows (31 of them sold out) including 3 at London’s Indigo 02.

It was a bad year for me. The 100 Club was threatened with closure because the owner was finding it hard to pay the rent. It was eventually saved, but by then I was told that the Fridays I had successfully promoted for nearly eight years had been given to someone else who was prepared to taken them on for 52 weeks of the year (I take July and August off to concentrate on the Rhythm Festival). Jeff wanted me to do Sunday nights at the 100 Club, but I had already been approached by he Borderline, a nearby club in central London, and I moved my Friday promotions there.

Then on April 25th, 2011, I was forwarded an email from the 100 Club:

To celebrate the end of their record breaking farewell UK tour and forthcoming live CD release with EMI Records, Chas n Dave perform to their friends, families and diehard fans in a special 100 Club show where all lucky ticket holders will receive a free limited edition live double CD of this final tour show together. The first half will be made up of their 1970′s pub set followed by all their hits from the 80′s, in what is going to be a highly emotional farewell to them on their final tour show together.

TIME: 6.30pm – 11pm

ADMISSION: £27.50 adv + bf (get your tickets now as there is only a limited number left)

Again, it would have been nice to have asked. Or even invited. Apparently I am not counted as part of their “friends, families and diehard fans”.

Gertcha!

Update (18 May, 2011)

A friend who was at the “last ever gig” at the 100 Club and who spoke to Dave, said he was up with working with me again and that another reunion show was not out of the question. Not being one to miss a chance, I sent an email to Chas and Dave’s agent, Barry Collings that read:

Hi, Barry. Any chance of a one-off c&d christmas beano?
Good money for a one-off.
Cheers, Jim (Driver)

He replied:

Hi. Sorry. Already booked at 02 indigo. Regards. Barry

There you go!

Update (30 January, 2012)

Word came back that Chas and Dave were going to do some more shows in 2012. On 23rd January 2012, I emailed Barry Collings and I said:

Hi, Barry. I’d like to do a short little tour with Chas & Dave to “round things off” as I feel I was given a slightly raw deal after I had to swallow the costs of the cancellations (with the promise of first option on a reunion) after Dave left but then wasn’t given a chance to recover any of this when he returned and the O2 offered such a great deal.

We could then all make some money, shake hands and travel our separate ways. Or maybe do it again…

Could I please put an offer in for a Chas & Dave “Back To Their Roots” short tour in May 2012. This would not interfere with the O2 shows and would be fun for everyone to do. It could go one of two ways:

I then went on to list two offers that involved either playing three shows or five shows and offering many thousands of pounds.

Barry replied and said:

Will put these offers to them but i would say very doubtful
Dave has retired aside from one or two major festival dates in the summer and a couple of xmas shows at 02 indigo

On January 30th he came back to me with the answer:

Put your enquiry to the guys but regret that Dave has not changed his mind about semi-retiring
Best Regards
Barry

… apart from the odd music festival and shows at the O2, of course.

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Rabbit: Chas and Dave Reunion – Gertcha! (Part 1)

When Chas and Dave got back together Â again in 2011 for what was billed as a “Final Farewell Tour”, thousands of people were thrilled and excited by this news. But not me. Now they’ve announced that their final ever show is to be at the 100 Club on Sunday May 15th, 2011. For six years [...]

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Royal Wedding Invite List: Prince William and Kate Middleton’s Glaring Omissions

So, Prince William and Catherine (“Kate”) Middleton have been married at Westminster Abbey and their Royal Wedding Invitation List has become an historical document. Though not quite up there yet with Magna Carta or the Abdication Speech, it is revealing more for who is excluded from it than who made it to the “Wedding of [...]

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BBC = Brainwashing British Citizens

I would stress that I do not share the sentiments of the headline. It comes from an online forum dedicated to exposing the BBC’s “left-wing bias”. Because of my own left-wing bias, I won’t be naming it or providing a link. Their other suggestions for what BBC stands for include “Big Brother Coverage” and “Blatantly [...]

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Rhythm Festival: “the best small outdoor music festival in Britain” part 1

Starting a music festival from scratch was one of my wilder projects. Up there with starting The Do-Not Press though knowing next to nothing about book publishing, promoting two tours for Jerry Lee Lewis and writing a textbook on how to write novels â€“ without first having written a novel myself. My advice to anyone [...]

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Seasick Steve and Key Lime Pie

I’ve just been watching Seasick Steve on a Sunday morning cookery programme on BBC Two television called Something For The Weekend. In it he sang a song, drank a cocktail and grated cheese into a bowl in order to make it look like he was making a key lime pie. The presenters oo-ed and aw-ed [...]

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Censorship: The Compelling Case

I hate censors. Especially the self-appointed rag-bag of philistine dim-wits who constantly picket the broadcasting authorities, complaining about stuff they’d be better off not watching. My message to them is “Switch off!” In a civilised society that would be the end of it, but these people are working on an agenda and they are backed [...]

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Totally Useless

Is it me, or has there been a sudden outbreak of incompetence in the world? An epidemic of uselessness, a plague of purposelessness. Has the world ceased to function correctly? Everywhere I look, people seem incapable of, or unwilling to do their jobs. From the tele-clerk who won’t believe you are who you say you [...]

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Settling The Bill

London cop drama,Â The Bill, has been on my TV longer than the fruit bowl. First appearing in 1983, in the guise of a one-off drama called Woodentop, it became a weekly series a year later and has passed through various formats up to and including its current one hour slot every Wednesday and Thursday, football [...]

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Amazing Book Bargains

I used to be a publisher. Not someone who worked for a big international corporation, mixing with bestselling authors, famous film, TV and sports personalities and their less glamorous ghostwriters, but an important part â€“ or at least I liked to think so â€“ of a one-man operation. Aside from an army of authors, artists, [...]

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Cooking Perfect Rice – Easily

Rice provides one-fifth of the calories consumed in the world today. Or slightly more if you eat at the Wong Kei restaurant in London’s Soho, where servings are particularly generous. A long time ago, before even the Sex Pistols were a glint in someone’s eye, I was taught to cook “Indian” vegetarian food by a [...]

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Mobile Telephony

One way to discern a person’s real age is to discover how they feel about mobile phones. If they regard them as an extension of themselves, as an add-on that continuesÂ everyday conversation, then they are probably under forty. If, on the other hand, they see them as an intrusion, something that keeps bothering them at [...]

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John Wayne: Big John or Big Jessie?

Unlikely as it may sound, psychiatrists recognise a condition called “John Wayne Syndrome”. Although the Duke’s ailment has since become synonymous with battle fatigue, it was originally coined to describe someone who could not come to terms with their own perceived lack of heroism. When he wasn’t campaigning in favour of guns or against Socialism, [...]

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East Europeans Cleaning Up

We have a Polish cleaner. There: I’ve admitted it. For a liberal, woolly-minded Old Labour person like me, that’s a big admission. Or, at least, it used to be. Now it’s perfectly normal to have ‘help around the house’, and to justify my actions I’d just say that if I didn’t employ her, she’d be [...]

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My Blog Shame

It’s all Richard Herring’s fault. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’ll start at the beginningâ€¦ One major benefit of owning an iPhone is, instead of listening to other people speaking rubbish to each other via their own handsets, you can inflict podcasts on yourself. Â I subscribe to 63 at last count, ranging from [...]

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Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests

Profile have just published a book called Complaint by Julian Baggini. It is claimed that this 224-page paperback is the first to be devoted to the subject and all I can say is: It’s about bloody time! Call yourself a publishing industry, making us wait 568 years for a book we obviously need? Idiots. Complaining [...]

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Total Cost of the Credit Crunch

You’ve got to feel sorry for the banks and credit card companies. They sustained us through the good times, barely taking enough profit to carpet their meagre offices and keep their executives and shareholders above the corporate poverty-line. Always willing to help those less fortunate than themselves, they tried to provide mortgages for poor Americans [...]

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Life As An Out-Of-The Loop Music Promoter (Part 1)

I’ve been a music promoter for most of my working life. It’s basically the same as being a theatrical impressario except, instead of plays, I organise rock ‘n’ roll shows. The wife likes to think of it as being something like a professional gambler, but that’s just her. A music promoter hires a venue, finds [...]

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Boris Johnson is Mayor of London. Yippee!/The End is Nigh* (*delete as applicable)

In hindsight, it seemed inevitable that Conservative Boris Johnson would defeat Labour’s Ken Livingstone and be elected Mayor of London. Although the Member of Parliament for Henley-on-Thames was initially perceived by some as a joke candidate, in reality Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson had everything going for him. For a start, the media was rabidly [...]

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Lead Story

What Is ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) Anyway?

ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) Poses A Real Problem For All Of Us

My Top Conspiracy Theories:

The Queen (And Most Other World Rulers) Is A Lizard

Top Of All Top Conspiracy Theories: 9-11 Was An Inside Job

Stand by for the hard facts about Charlie Sheen’s Roast:

What was or is Charlie Sheen’s Roast?

Will Charlie Sheen’s Roast kickstart a new TV trend?

No. We just enough time to plough through a list of motivational quotes (see below), maybe try another google search for positive thinking quotes, pick one that doesn’t involve any real effort, print it out and stick it on the wall.

Update (18 May, 2011)

Update (30 January, 2012)

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