Taxing times

Channel flicking on Thursday evening I was unfortunate enough to catch the end of The Big Night In and an execrable Andrew Lloyd Webber song (and appearance). The event was to raise money for the NHS and social care charities. The composer, if he can be so described, is the man who flew from New York in 2015 just to vote in the Lords in support of a bill to cut tax credits to the working poor. He was also caught up in a tax avoidance controversy, as was the man who sang the first few lines, Gary Barlow who, along with two other members of Take That and their manager, had to pay back £20 million to HMRC. A sick bag is called for.

Or, as Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister who introduced the NHS put it, “Charity is a cold, grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.”

You don’t need a weatherman …

As far as I know there is no brass plaque on the wall of the Millennium Hotel in Glasgow’s George Square to record the first visit to this country of a Nobel prizewinner and solid platinum legend called Robert Allen Zimmerman. If the ledger of that visit still remains, with his signature and room number, it would fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds at auction.

It was in the early afternoon of May 18, 1966, that he checked into what was then the North British Hotel, in the days when British Rail was not only nationalised but ran hotels as well as a huge property empire. He, like the hotel now, had adopted a different name, Bob Dylan. He spent one night there with his band, The Band, then called The Hawks.

This tour was to become historic, notorious for the barracking he received. In the second half, just as he was to do in the Odeon in Renfield Street that night, Dylan would strap on a Fender Stratocaster and, with The Hawks, blast out a set of his new electric songs.

The night before, at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, someone had screamed “Judas” at him. He replied “I don't believe you!....You're a liar,” before telling the band to turn up the volume and cascading into Like A Rolling Stone.

So he probably wasn’t looking forward to that night’s show at the Odeon (which, incidentally, is an acronym for Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation, so there!). From being the darling of the folk purists 21-year-old Dylan had become an object of pure hatred and the heckling had become part of the spectacle on the tour. Glasgow's Young Socialists even dragooned as many members as they could to go along and boo, but they were overwhelmed and largely drowned out by the positive response.

There were some walkouts and chants, perhaps organised by the YS, of “We want Dylan”, to which he replied, “Dylan got sick backstage. I'm here to take his place.”

On YouTube there’s footage of Dylan with Robbie Robertson from The Hawks in the NB Hotel bedroom jamming a 12-bar blues called What Kind Of Friend Is This. There’s even a brief cutaway to the Odeon sign.

That bedroom was the scene of a sadly typical Glasgow event. A waiter arrived at the door bringing food and suddenly screamed, “F*** him” at Dylan, accusing him of being “a f***ing traitor to folk music”.

Dylan's driver-bodyguard Tom Keylock quickly huckled the man out of the room. He recalled: “He pulls a knife on me. I've still got the scar to prove it. So I gave him a good kicking.” The band's tour bus was also tanned, with recording and hi-fi equipment stolen.

Next day, prior to travelling to Edinburgh and the ABC, Dylan was in a good mood. There’s an outtake from an unreleased documentary, Eat The Document, by the "Dylanologist" DA Pennebaker, where Dylan watches police dog handlers in George Square with pipes skirling off-camera, probably from a police band. As as he gets into the car to leave Glasgow a crowd of kids surround him waving autograph books (this well pre-dated selfies!). He asks them if they were at the gig the night before and if they had booed. They vigorously deny it. “I want the names of all the people who booed,” he jokes before driving off.

Headline of the week

Surely? ‘Scots sex offender in coronavirus prison rooftop protest lured down with pack of super noodles’. (Daily Record)

Word of the week

Ultracrepidarian – someone who repeatedly gives advice and opinions on subjects (s)he knows not one jot about, viz Donald Trump on injecting Dettol to cure coronavirus.

Virtual Vatican

I’m not sure what the real one will have to say about this but a Polish software company is bringing out a video game called Pope Simulator where, in the words of the makers, you, “Take over the reins of the world's largest religious institution – use your influence to change the fate of humanity.” It’s not out yet, I expect we’ll see puffs of smoke from computers when it’s ready to launch. And for the follow-up? Answers on a post card please.

Saltcoats redux

I didn’t realise that Colin Hay, the lead singer in the 1980s Aussie band Men At Work, was actually Scottish (although now he’s become a Yank) until I heard him speak recently in the preamble to a song. He’s also extremely funny, as you can check out online. His family emigrated to Oz when he was just 14 from Saltcoats – one of those legendary places, unless you’ve actually been there.

For many years it was the fiefdom of the late Labour MP David Lambie who ruled over it for 22 years until he retired in 1992. Davie was one of the old-school socialists (although he was university educated and a scholar) and council rents in his home town were kept down for decades. His parliamentary jousting partner was Tory hang ’em and fold ’em Teddy Taylor, about whom my old chum Brian Wilson observed that he shouldn’t be given a cuddly name like Teddy, as “it’s a bit like calling the Hound of the Baskervilles Rover”.

Anyway, Davie was absent one day when an issue regarding his constituency arose and it was inquired where the Member for Central Ayrshire was? Taylor leaped to his feet: “Mr Speaker I understand he’s on a fact-finding mission in Africa to try to discover if there is anywhere on earth which has lower council rents than Saltcoats.”