Sunday 10 November 2013

Johnny Depp was here - if you want


H.I.'s latest study of an old master. She has probably spent as long on this as Rembrandt spent on the original. It is - as she tells her students - a great way to get into a painting, staring at it for so long.

It's a shame that Leo McKern (another erstwhile Bath resident) didn't live long enough to play Rembrandt in later life.

Mr McKern was a regular visitor to the aforementioned Bell Inn here, and every evening at around 5.30, he would prop up the bar and down three large white wines with soda before getting back into his open-topped Mercedes and driving home.

A Japanese camera crew turned up one night and asked if it was true that Johnny Depp had come into the pub, and the landlord pointed to a chair (the closest one to hand) and said that this was the very place he sat to drink his beer. The crew dutifully filmed the chair and left happy. Johnny Depp is always being spotted (or hallucinated about) in Bath, in the same way that the Virgin Mary is seen by hysterical crowds, perching on the sides of churches or other high buildings in Italy.

Another Bath celebrity will turn on our Christmas lights this year - Mary (not The Virgin) Berry - after a brief period of respectful darkness following Remembrance Day. A very brief period. The day after, in fact.

They probably tried to get John Cleese to nip down from his flat in the Royal Crescent to do it, but I can't see that happening somehow. John Cage did it a few years ago, before he had to sell both his house in The Circus and Midford Castle to keep the IRS happy.

Camilla Parker-Bowles did it the year after that, and a councillor friend of mine whose job it was to introduce her on the night, got herself into trouble by foolishly telling a national newspaper reporter that she didn't give a stuff about the Royal Family.

Last year, they ran out of celebrities and so had to just broadcast the event on a local, live TV program instead. For some reason I always think of that Norman Wisdom film where he ends up destroying an entire Northern town by rolling around on a console wired to tons of high-explosive, when I think of the switching-on ceremony.

I have never turned up to watch what happens, but I think that the celebrity ends up by pushing a plunger down after a count-down from 10 screamed out by hundreds of Christmas shoppers and the M.C. on the podium.

When the Duchess of Cornwall did it, I bet the security forces spent quite a bit of time checking the wiring, just in case there was a short length attached to a few sticks of dynamite just under the stage. Actually, I know they did - I saw them all running around about a week before the night, looking inside rubbish bins.

Anyway, how did we get from Rembrandt to here?

23 comments:

  1. "Anyway, how did we get from Rembrandt to here?"

    No idea, but it was an interesting journey.

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  2. I saw the new muppet film being shot in Queens square at the bottom of Gay street. do puppets count

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    1. I didn't know about that one - is the Muppet version of a Jane Austen book?

      A friend of mine's son was stabbed at the bottom of Gay Street the other week. Not very Jane Austen.

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  3. Back in England I always used to say "I name this town Brighton" before throwing open the curtains each morning. It used to drive Lady Magnon mad (which is probably why I said it)! So, in case they need someone; I know roughly how it's done.

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    1. You know what George the Third's last words were? "Bugger Brighton". How true they turned out to be.

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    3. Woops; I was thinking you meant Bugger Bognor, but that was George V.

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    4. Oh really? No wonder Brighton isn't 'Brighton Regis'... or is it? OOPS!

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  4. As soon as I saw the illustration I thought RUMPOLE

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  5. We got from Rembrandt to here Tom (marvellous sketch by the way) because you have a creative mind. Thank your lucky stars for that = never mind the Christmas lights.

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    1. I don't mind the lights really.

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    2. P.S. The ones in Regent Street are bloody awful this year - I mind those.

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  6. Your Christmas lights coming on already? They probably are cheerful on dark nights. Hopefully the Christmas tree does not appear so soon.

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    1. Our Christmas tree never appears - we never have one.

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  7. Christmas ALREADY!? But it's only the beginning of November she splutters! I suppose Joanne's right - you need the lights to see in those dark long nights.
    Now, where's my sunglasses?... it's so bright in my kitchen this morning ....

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    1. They get earlier every year, but I think this is the earliest they can decently be switched on, so it may have peaked at Nov. 12.

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  8. are the lights being turned on before the 18th? Isnt that when the Christmas market starts?

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    1. I'm not sure when the market starts - quite a lot later I think, as it only goes on for two weeks - or it did last year.

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  9. I hallucinate about Johnny Depp, too. ;)

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