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TX: 22.12. 2021 19:17- 19:59

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Producer: Julian May

THE FOLLOWING TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT.Ìý BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

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SONG (ELIZA CARTHY):

Good master and mistress, if you are within,

pray open your door and let us come in.

For we are bound for to bring you good cheer.

Your pockets full of money and your barrels full of beer.

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PRESENTER (TOM SUTCLIFFE):

Hello. Strictly speaking it's a bit early for wassailing, more of a twelfth night thing than pre-Christmas drinks, but we could all use a bit of extra cheer this year, so later on tonight's programme, the musicians Eliza Carthy and Jon Boden will be wishing us wassail and talking about the background to this venerable folk tradition. We also visit Doncaster to take a look at Britain's longest mural and report on a pantomime in which the hands do the talking. What is the British sign language for ‘Oh, yes he is!’ I wonder?

We start though tonight with Licorice Pizza. Not a Heston Blumenthal special this, but the title of Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film. It is apparently a jokey way of talking about vinyl records, and a reference from a director, who has always drawn on his own Californian upbringing, to a popular local record store in the 70s and 80s.

It's a mark of Anderson’s standing in Hollywood as the director of critically lauded films such as Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread that the studio would let him use such a quirky title. Even more so that his nostalgic romance about the intense friendship between a precocious high school boy and a slightly older woman has two complete beginners in the title roles: Cooper Hoffman,
son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and Alana Haim, one of the members of the pop group Haim, for whom Anderson has made music videos.

Cooper Hoffman plays Gary Valentine, 15 going on 30, a startlingly self-assured teenager with a fierce entrepreneurial drive and a tendency to bump into Hollywood B-listers or A-listers on their way down. Bradley Cooper stars in the film as the fabled producer John Peters, and Sean Penn plays a 50s star with more than a passing resemblance to William Holden. And while the setting of the film draws heavily on Anderson's own teenage years in the suburbs of Hollywood, Gary owes his style to someone else entirely.

INTERVIEWEE (PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON):

That’s exclusively from the life of a friend of mine named Gary Goetzman who survived in show business. He became Tom Hanks’ producing partner. Before that he made films with Jonathan Demme. In his youth he was a child actor here in the San Fernando Valley. He did a couple of films, a lot of television commercials, TV shows. He had a very precocious and wonderful way about him and seeing that the life of a child actor was potentially limited he branched out into the PR business and the waterbed business.

He always had something brewing. He's one of those guys that tells you, ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I got arrested for murder?’ and he'll go on to tell you this fantastic story which you think he must be spicing this up a little bit. And then you kind of confirm it with multiple different sources and friends of his that say, ‘No that’s pretty much how it went’. He’s one of those guys.

TOM:

And what about the relationship between Gary Valentine, who's 15, and Alana? Because that's the core of the movie.

PAUL THOMAS:

The dynamic between this precocious 15, 16, 17 over the course of times, you're a boy, and this older woman between 25 and 29 comes from me. I'd seen a dynamic like that happen. I was taking a walk around where I live at this local junior high school and it was picture day, all the kids were lined up to get their pictures taken. And I saw this one kid nagging at this beautiful young girl who worked there trying to get her phone number. And I instantly thought that that was a terrific premise for a film. There were comedic possibilities, dramatic possibilities as well.

TOM:

There's a great line towards the end where the two of them are sparring with each other over which is the coolest. And I think part of the pleasure of the film is that that changes throughout.

PAUL THOMAS:

This rolling balance of power between two people. There are no sharp edges to their power balance; they sort of gently move in waves about who’s in charge; who's cooler than the other one at any given moment. You know you have a good story when the central, most dramatic fight between them is about who's cooler. That’s the stuff of good drama.

TOM:

Gary could so easily have been an obnoxious character. The casting of him was vital. Did you did you write it with Cooper Hoffman in mind?

PAUL THOMAS:

You’re picking up on something very good because I'd written the film and I'd auditioned many young actors, professional young actors. And you’re exactly right, it tended to be too precocious, precocious in the wrong way and irritating really. When I thought of Cooper what I thought about was his spirit. And he's a very empathetic person. He’s a very social person and he's very, very lovable. And these are good qualities for that type of character. And as full of hot air as he is, what’s kind of charming I think ultimately about the character is that he really only has a scene or two, maybe three worth of bluster before he's really just a sort of regular adolescent. He might have all the schemes and plans, but genuinely he’s got a lot of heart; his heart's in the right place.

And like any sixteen-year-old he has the attention span of a fly. You know, 16-year-olds tend to give you the impression for maybe a good 10- or 15-minute stretch that they’re emerging into adulthood and you can be so proud of them, and how well-spoken they are. And in the blink of an eye suddenly you're just shocked at what, like they're peeing on the floor like a puppy. You're like, oh my God, wait, I've made a horrible mistake to think that this person was an adult. They have one foot so firmly still planted in childhood and the other one sort of dangling over adulthood. So, they’re open, they’re vulnerable.

TOM:

And what about Alana played by Alana Haim, did you always have her in mind?

PAUL THOMAS:

Without question. That was not even a scenario where you start writing and you think who could play this part, oh Alana. No, it wasn't like that at all. It was, I'm going to write the story and I’m going to write it for her. You see I had different elements that really needed a home: One was this really terrific story of this young kid asking an older woman for a date. I had the stories from my friend Gary Goetzman’s life about being a child actor and episodes he got into. And then I had this friendship with Alana through my work with her and her sisters in their band Haim. So, this story has found a home in Alana really. She was the inspiration for how to tie it all together. All these disparate parts suddenly made sense to me, and writing it through her eyes, writing the film as a vehicle for her.

FILM CLIP:

Why would you do that? Why would you do that? You were maybe going to be my boyfriend.

Listen young lady, you don’t bring this idiot to Shabbat dinner here.

Listen, Dad, he’s an atheist and an actor and he’s famous!

But he’s Jewish.

He was going to take me out of here. Don't you even look at me. Don't you even look at me. You’re all looking at me. What are you doing?

I didn’t even say anything.

What are you doing? What are you thinking, huh? I’m Este, I work for Mum and Dad, I'm perfect, I’m a real estate agent, Alana doesn’t have her life together, Alana brings home stupid boyfriends all the time. I mean, I knew it. I knew that was what you were thinking. You’re always thinking things, you thinker. You thinker! You think things!

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TOM:

I saw that one American critic compared it, and very favourably, to Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And you can see what he was getting at that it's about the legends of the town and the fables of the town. There are these passages when Gary and Alana brush up against Hollywood stardom, and those characters are played by the only really above the title stars in the film, Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper. Did you think of it as a film about movie making, or is it that if you set a film in that area of California you just can't get away from that subject?

PAUL THOMAS:

I never thought of it as a movie about movie making.

TOM:

Well, I’ll tell you what me think of it. There are scenes in Magnolia, which are very much about the difference between movie realism and real life, and it recurs in this film. Alana, she's being schmoozed by this older Hollywood actor played by Sean Penn. She says, ‘Is this lines or is this real?’. And there's that sense that you never quite know whether you're kind of in a film or in real life.

PAUL THOMAS:

It's such an accurate depiction of my youth, I would say, in that you would go to dinner for your birthday party or let's say your grandma's birthday party at these restaurants with red leather booths and prime ribs and mashed potatoes, and all the adults were drinking martinis on the rocks. And you'd realise at a certain moment that there was a kind of energy at the bar, and it usually meant that there was a movie star there. Whether it was a movie star as big as William Holden or whether it was of Ronald Reagan before he was governor or something like this. But you also had the grips and technicians and animators from Hanna-Barbera that were populating these places. Where I grew up it's the working-class element of showbusiness, right. It's sort of funny to describe it that way, but it's the best I can do. It’s so unglamorous and yet there they are; there they are living real lives, raising families trying to sort of, um. Jerry Mathers who played Beaver on Leave it to Beaver was like a track coach at my high school, like oh, there's the Beaver. These kinds of…they orbit around and they’re real people having real lives. It’s funny.

TOM:

And you’ve used real people in this. Do you know what John Peters thinks about his depiction here? He’s played by Bradley Cooper; it’s not a flattering portrait.

PAUL THOMAS:

Well, I think it is flattering to him. I think he's very happy. I think the mistake is to think that he doesn't think it's a completely wonderful portrayal of himself. He's very happy with it. He sent me a note that he thinks it's wonderful. And he's very supportive of his portrayal. Whether it's accurate or not I honestly have no idea. I was just writing more of a what we all know and imagine from these psychotic- the cliché of these Hollywood movie producers of the 70s.

TOM:

The film, you’ve said, it is set in the 70s and it'll be a bit bracing for the hyper-sensitive. It’s not misty-eyed about the 70s; it's a time of casual racial stereotyping, casual sexual harassment, casual homophobia. Did you feel all of that had to be in to get the period right?

PAUL THOMAS:

I suppose it just becomes functions of the story, you know. I don't think it has to be in there to get the story right. I think it helps give it a certain favour; removing any of it might have been fine, but having it gives you a fuller sense of the world. It's very important when you make a film that you have to shut your mind off to anything after that time. This starts with the actors: you have to commit to that period for better or for worse.

TOM:

Things happen in your movies that are not, they don't seem to be knitted in as it were to the plot, they’re elements of life.

PAUL THOMAS:

Explanation in films is generally a boring. I mean, because particularly when you have a visual medium you can see something, you see it happen or people's actions are what drive the story forward, you see, so how they behave and what they do is what you should be left with. It should be pared down to the absolute essentials. When films start describing what they doing that's usually when they get, well they’re redundant then I suppose.

TOM:

And you leave it. And your trust the audience.

PAUL THOMAS:

You have the trust in the audience. There is an old rule of thumb: it’s better to confuse an audience for 30 seconds than let them get ahead of you for a minute. The idea being that you have to let the story do the work. And sometimes that does mean trusting your audience.

TOM:

It's a very good rule. I just want to ask one last question. Why so much running? Your films have lot of great running scenes. The great running tracking shot in The Master; Adam Sandler runs all over the place in Punch-Drunk Love. There's lots of running in this.

PAUL THOMAS:

I know it. It's kind of like it must be the solution to lack of the special effects budget. Like if you only have a great actor in your film and you need to get some energy to a story, have them run. Have them go somewhere. Have them go somewhere fast. I suppose yeah, it always, hopefully it emerges naturally from story and it doesn't feel forced. But there's something so cinematic and euphoric of seeing someone or particularly two people on the run that can help a story achieve a certain kind of lift-off. Yeah, I love it. I love seeing it in films. [End of interview]

TOM:

Paul Thomas Anderson talking to us from Los Angeles there. And Licorice Pizza is in cinemas, circumstances permitting, from 1st January. Run and see it.

Now, in the latest instalment of our Postcard series, we hear from Doncaster in South Yorkshire, long famous for coal and steam locomotives and horse racing. But now also the town which can boast the UK’s longest mural; it's just been unveiled. It was also one of the first places in the country to stage a pantomime with full British Sign Language, or BSL, interpretation, a tradition they’ve continued. We asked the host of the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú’s Yorkshire-cast and local boy James Vincent to take us on a tour of the town's cultural offerings.

OUTDOOR ATMOSPHERE

LOCATION REPORTER (JAMES VINCENT):

Well, this is Sir Nigel Gresley Square. And this is really where the two centres of Doncaster's industrial history collide. Sir Nigel Gresley designed The Flying Scotsman, rail history of the town, and it used to be where Coal House was, where The National Coal Board controlled the coal industry in this country. That's gone now. Sir Nigel Gresley Square is home to the cultural industry.

When I was growing up in Doncaster, or Donny, there was no real professional theatre here, but that all changed in 2013. CAST, which I'm standing in front of now, with the big glass shiny windows, lovely bit of copper work on there as well, actually, that was built housing a 620-seat auditorium, a studio theatre as well. But it's the performances that have put Doncaster centre stage now. [Magical pantomime music] And I'm here to talk to Deborah Rees, the Artistic Director of CAST to hear what's on offer at Christmas

PANTOMIME (Katie Erich as Scheherazade):

Welcome, welcome everyone to the very last tale of The Arabian Nights. I'm here to tell you about a boy, whose tale is full of riches and joy! The most amazing tale of Aladdin and The Magic Lamp.

INTERVIEWEE (DEBORAH REES):

Well, yeah, I've not seen all the Aladdin's around the country but the Aladdin that we're doing is BSL-integrated. And we started doing that in response to the large deaf community that we’ve got in Doncaster. When we first started doing it in 2016 the BSL Interpretation was actually undertaken by a hearing actor, and we made the move to use deaf actors because that is their first language.

JAMES:

How important is that for inclusivity? Because people coming to the panto can see a performer whose deaf up on stage performing and they can go ‘Ah, I could do that as well.’

DEBORAH:

It's all about normalising deaf actors on stage and we look at how Rose has done in Strictly Come Dancing and all that really important messaging.

JAMES:

It's panto season. We got here. It's been a long old 18 months for the arts. How's it been? And there’s still a bit of uncertainty really, isn't there?

DEBORAH:

There is a lot of uncertainty, we’re just taking it day by day, as most theatres are. We’ve been fortunate to get cultural recovery funding from the DCMS and we've done a lot of our own applications for other funding as well. And we've reopened and starting to build up.

JAMES:

What response are you getting from the audience to the panto, to the BSL part of it, but to the panto in general?

DEBORAH:

The audience has always been really warm and appreciative, hearing or non-hearing. And at the moment audiences are coming, they're wearing their masks, they’re joining in, they’re having fun. And that's what panto has been about, having not been able to do it last year, having not been able to come to the theatre, to come and just have a good belly laugh and a bit of silliness.

JAMES:

And in true panto style, he's behind you!

PANTOMIME SCENE (Scheherazade):

Hello Lemmy, you wanna tell the story with me? Should we let Lemmy help me to tell the story? (Audience cheer: Yes!) Should we? Are you ready? Are you ready? (Audience: Yeah!)

JAMES:

It's Connor Bryson, one of the stars of the show.

INTERVIEWEE (CONNOR BRYSON):

My name's Connor, currently performing here at CAST theatre as Lemmy the Lemur in this year’s production of Aladdin. And we are performers, we’re not interpreters, and I know there can be a bit of a misconception about that, so this is what we're trying to clear up here.

I think we’re getting that respect now to the language. It’s not being dismissed as ‘Oh how cute is that?’. We're taking it seriously. It's a language and it’s to be respected.

JAMES:

And how important is that for children who are coming to the panto, that BSL is their first language?

CONNOR:

It's really important because for me, going to panto when I was younger and not seeing that and having the actors talk to the audience members and feeling like I'm not picking up what they’re saying completely and having to be one, two steps, three steps behind every single time. What CAST is trying to do is give everyone that kind of equality and access at the same time, whether you're deaf, hearing or hard of hearing.

JAMES:

How much fun is it though? Panto’s always fun isn’t it?

CONNOR:

Oh it’s great. And you've got to really find the fun as well, and find new ways. So for example, ‘Boris Johnson, where’s the interpreter’?

JAMES:

Oh, right.

CONNOR:

And then the interpreter wasn't there. So we have a joke for that.

JAMES:

I see.

CONNOR:

And one person on the other side of the stage and one person on this side, and I run between them to make sure that everything is signed, I mean ‘Where there's the interpreter? I'm here. I'm here, everybody. It's fine. Don’t worry, Boris is nowhere to be seen.

JAMES:

Is that a reference to the fact that there wasn't signing in those press conferences early on?

CONNOR:

It was, as with the party at Number Ten, we’ve found some new references now. And it's interesting because we’re not in the rehearsal room now. Some of the actors will have to tell me what they are thinking about ad-libbing that day, or something, because obviously I'm deaf and I am not going to pick up on everything. And the actors work really closely with me.

JAMES:

A good team, a good team behind it all.

CONNOR:

And it’s really interesting to see how the actors have taken on the signing and it's refreshing to the eyes. So for example, we've got Sophie who plays the Genie, but she’s a mix of speaking and signing. We’ve decided to do this because we don't want people to feel like the Genie is too good to sign. So the Genie is talking to all members of the audiences and that's what we're hoping to achieve.

JAMES:

Brilliant.

CONNOR:

Thank you very much.

JAMES:

Have a good show!

THEATRE ANNOUNCEMENT:

This morning’s performance of Aladdin, in our main space, is about to begin. Please take your seats!

JAMES:

There is a reason of course why CAST Theatre do British Sign Language performances. It's because there is a large deaf community in Doncaster. So we've nipped across town to Doncaster School for the Deaf. It's been here since 1829 and we've come to speak to somebody who had a front row seat at one of Connor's performances.

INTERVIEWEE (KEIRA):

Hi. My name's Keira. I'm 12 and I'm a student at Doncaster School for the Deaf.

JAMES:

Kiera's words are voiced by one of the school’s, staff. Sam.

So, you went to the pantomime last week. Should I take my little nephew?

KEIRA:

Yeah, why not? I'd recommend it to you. It was fab. There were a lot of hearing people trying to sign in British Sign Language, they did really well.

JAMES:

What was your favourite character?

KEIRA:

The lady with the Doncaster football top.

JAMES:

Donny Rovers in a pantomime? Their performances are like a pantomime sometimes! Any gasp moments where you were taken by surprise?

KEIRA:

In the corners of the stage, they made me jump because there was lots of fire and fireworks that just popped out of nowhere.

JAMES:

Keira, I wondered whether you joined in with any of the sign language during the performance?

KEIRA:

They did say to us ‘copy our signs’ when we sang the song at the end and I did feel like I was a part of the show.

JAMES:

Any tips for the pantomime next year?

KEIRA:

It's hard to watch everybody on the stage and concentrate. So, if we had just one person interpreting it would be better just to follow the story.

JAMES:

And it was Aladdin this year. What should it be next year?

KEIRA:

Maybe Snow White.

JAMES:

Someone else who's performed at CAST with a different vibe to the panto is local musician, Skinny Pelembe, also known as Doya Beardmore. Born in Johannesburg, he was raised in Doncaster and championed by DJ Giles Peterson. Doya got his first break at the local recording studio, just round the corner, Higher Rhythm.

(INTERVIEWEE) DOYA BEARDMORE:

When I was about 16, Steven Mundin, who runs the studio, he gave me free recording time until I could pay for it. He's been a mentor, a manager and someone who’d just be like, ‘Yeah, why wouldn't you be able to do that?’.

JAMES:

Yeah, I guess that's half the battle, isn’t it, having somebody in your corner just to say, ‘Just give it a go. Why not?’ Before the COVID rates went up again we were hoping to come down and see you at Higher Rhythm. It's obviously a really special place for you.

DOYA:

Yeah it is. I was there the other day; it really struck me how much I really love being there.

JAMES:

[Music] Doya recently wrote a song for South Yorkshire, which was recorded over Zoom in lock down.

DOYA:

It's been a horrible, really awful time for a lot of people. You know what am I going to say about that? There really aren’t any words to describe the past year for a lot of people. So, I thought I'd do an instrumental because I’d just recently found out about the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. Somehow I’d come across their version of Holst's The Planets, and yeah, it's unreal. I didn't realise that there was a world-class brass band from down the road.

JAMES:

Yeah, they're always winning awards, Grimethorpe. Their version of Abide With Me makes me cry every time.

DOYA:

Yeah, yeah. There's a sense of dignity with the work that Grimethorpe Colliery Band do. I’m just trying to in some way emulate that kind of sentiment really. With the Rainbow Connection Choir and the Doncaster Youth Jazz Orchestra we didn't even get to meet, what with it being COVID, but they did a wonderful job.

JAMES:

How would you say Doncaster shaped you as a musician?

DOYA:

I think Doncaster's given me a bit of a chip on my shoulder. When you come down to London and just see the excess, it kind of makes you want to try and make your music out of probably as little raw material as possible, and try and be economical with words and sounds and still try and make something as vibrant as possible, really, which is how I think a lot of people in Doncaster kind of operate.

OUTDOOR ATMOSPHERE

JAMES:

Here we are at Doncaster station on the East Coast Mainline and I'm about to see this mural, the UK's longest mural. It's opposite the station and I genuinely haven't seen this before. So, here we go out of the grand entrance hall through the double doors and wow, that is incredible. It’s the whole wall of the building opposite the station. It's kind of dwarfing the Sainsbury’s sign to the left, and it tells the story of Doncaster's history. And because the sun's going down I can actually just see the moon rising above it. It's actually pretty tremendous in the early evening sunshine.

We're going to have a closer look at this mural. So, the first thing you notice is the white rose for Yorkshire. There's a bit of aviation history, RAF Finningley is on there as well. We've got a bit of the train history; I imagine it's the Flying Scotsman. Conisbrough Castle as well. As we go round the corner there's a huge face of a female doctor, obviously a nod to the NHS and the work they have been doing over COVID. There’s a racehorse. And round another corner actually. It goes on for so long; I think it's 108m long they tell me. Round the corner there is a miner, a nod to the mining heritage in Doncaster.

What d'you think of the mural over the road. Have you seen it before?

(INTERVIEWEES) MEMBERS OF PUBLIC:

WOMAN:

It’s amazing. We love it. We think it's amazing.

JAMES:

Tell me why you like it so much.

WOMAN 1:

It's skilful. I'm an artist myself.

JAMES:

Oh really?

WOMAN 1:

Yeah. And I know to paint something as colossal as that must have been really hard, so credit due to them. And everybody's talking about it.

MAN 1:

I think it's really good. So the air force the trains, the horses.

JAMES:

Is there anything else that Donny needs to show off?

MAN 1:

Not really. We just a bog standard town. They’re trying to do a city status here, which I think's going a bit beyond it, actually.

WOMAN 2:

When you come into Doncaster now you see that it sort of deflects the nastiness around it. So when you see that it makes you smile.

MAN 2:

Perfectly fine. Haven’t really noticed it that much.

JAMES:

Oh interesting, yeah.

MAN 2:

To be perfectly honest, but I haven’t got any problem with it, looking at it now.

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Apparently it’s the longest mural in the UK.

MAN 2:

Is it? Okay, that's good, good for the town.

WOMAN 3:

That is amazing. And I'm happy they've got the mining thing on it because my husband were a miner. And I think we should light it up.

JAMES:

And I think they're right, you know, it does need to be lit up. So let's ask the people who painted it whether they agree, but that means going over to Los Angeles, and I don't think we can get to Los Angeles on the East Coast Mainline.

(INTERVIEWEE) JAY:

I’m Jay, otherwise known as Cbloxx, one half of Nomad Clan, and I'm originally from Huddersfield, but currently I'm in sunny LA.

(INTERVIEWEE) HAYLEY:

I'm jealous and I'm Hayley, [laughter] also known as Aylo, the other half of Nomad Clan. And I'm currently in sunny Rochdale.

JAMES:

So tell me about the mural. One person we spoke to said they reckoned it should be lit up.

HAYLEY:

There was talk that they were going to light it up.

JAY:

That would be lovely.

HAYLEY:

Please do, that would be awesome.

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Because I saw it for the first time and I was absolutely amazed. Tell me the story behind it.

HAYLEY:

Wow, it was quite exciting. I didn't actually realise all of my family ties to that area until we got involved in the project. My mum was actually born there and my granddad was actually a miner in Bentley mine. I was really lucky to obtain a copy of his memoirs from my mum and it chronicles his early mining career. He had this really beautiful relationship with a pit pony called Winter and then used to ride the pit ponies round the actual pits. They used to take apples down for them and they had like an affinity with one another, you know. So that's how we started off on the left-hand side.

But as it pans round obviously, it develops and starts looking at all kinds of other areas of Doncaster.

JAMES:

And the different traditions in Doncaster, because you’ve got the RAF, you’ve got the railways, you've got horse racing. Everybody's got their unique relationship to different parts of Doncaster, haven’t they?

HAYLEY:

Absolutely. And we wanted to give a nod to the Windrush generation that are there in Doncaster. And showing a strong, powerful female being a doctor also give a shout to the NHS, because there's a hell of a lot of ambulances go past that spot.

JAMES:

It's absolutely huge. It must have been a big effort to paint.

HAYLEY:

Yeah, yeah. It was it was a bit like undertaking a marathon, but on the side of a really, really busy road that was chaos.

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What sort of techniques are you using then?

JAY:

I guess the technique that we're most comfortable with and that we've used forever is spray paint. But when you're covering an area that is as big as that is you have to be using other means. So, for instance, like rollers, brushes, emulsion paints, just to get those vast areas covered quickly. And then the spray paint comes in when you're putting the detail and over the top. To get to the high places we usually use either scissor lifts or cherry pickers, which at first takes a little bit of getting used to, but you soon get your sea legs.

JAMES:

What sort of response have you both had to it while you were painting it, but also since as well?

HAYLEY:

It was a month's worth of getting up every day going down there, having people express their connection with them, and how it was resonating with them was really that main goal of doing a wall like this, giving Doncaster something to remind them of what there is to be proud of I think. It's not too dissimilar to quite a few northern towns that may have been forgotten from their hay days.

JAY:

What we like to do as muralists is we like to leave something behind that is for the people of the place because they're the people that are going to see this every day and they are the people we want to make a connection with the artwork that we leave. So, we do try and speak to as many people within the area, get as many stories as we can. We do our research.

HAYLEY:

One of our desires for this piece of work is to inspire the younger generations of Doncaster to dream big and think of their futures with a lot of optimism.

TOM:

Cbloxx and Aylo of the street art collective Nomad Clan talking to James Vincent there, reporting from Doncaster.

The pantomime Aladdin runs at CAST theatre until 31st December. And you can follow the work of Nomad Clan and Skinny Pelembe online.

Now, the chances that you'll get a knock on the door from carolers this year is I'm afraid pretty slim. But here’s a memory from the past.

SONG ARCHIVE:

God bless our master of this house with a gold chain around his neck,

or where his body sleeps or wakes Lord, send his soul to rest,

Lord, send his soul to rest.

Ìý

TOM:

Frank Bond from North Waltham in Hampshire singing a traditional Wassail song, a recording made sometime in the 1950s for the series, As They Roved Out. Last night, the longest of the year, should have seen the celebration of the wassail tradition at the Union Chapel in London with two notable folk performers: the singer Eliza Carthy, and the musician Jon Boden, formerly of Bellowhead, on stage together for the first time as a duo to celebrate these very old songs.

The venue was sold out, the decorations were up, the ale if not yet mulled had mulling in its future. But then COVID stopped the party. So, instead Eliza and Jon join us now from Jon’s studio in Sheffield.

Eliza, what were you actually planning to do last night? Commiserations over that cancellation first of all.

(INTERVIEWEE) ELIZA CARTHY:

Oh thank you so much. Well, we had all kinds of lovely things set up: We had a brass band that was going to play people in. And then we were going to do some dressing up and being silly, but we were also going to do some serious seasonal music as well. Yeah, it's obviously a great time of year for traditional songs and singing. And we had some special guests and all kinds of stuff was going to go down, but sadly not, so we came to Sheffield and drank lots of rum instead. [Laughter]

TOM:

Drink is central to this tradition, isn't it, Jon? It's always in there somewhere.

(INTERVIEWEE) JON BODEN:

Yeah. Well, the term wassail comes from meaning good health. So it was a toast, originally, and very much associated with drinking in England, although not elsewhere apparently. So, originally it’s an Anglo Saxon and Anglo Norse phrase, and it has survived as a toast and then that sort of evolved into various sort of drink- based customs along the way.

ELIZA:

I didn't know that it had a riposte. If you say wassail to somebody you are essentially saying good health to them. And the riposte is – can you remember the riposte?

JON:

Drink hale, isn’t it, or something. Drink hales.

TOM:

Drink hales, and suddenly we're back to drink again!

JON:

Yeah.

TOM:

So, what went on when people went wassailing? What actually happened?

JON:

Well, there's two distinct versions of it. There's the house visiting wassail custom which is very similar to carol singing door-to-door. You go knock on the door and the aim ideally was to get some money out of the posh people. But they would take some mulled cider or some toast or something, basically food and drink, and they would offer it to the rich people who would go, ‘Ooh, yes, that looks lovely, just have our money and go away.

ELIZA:

Go away!

TOM:

So, there's the notion of quid pro quo was there?

JON:

Yeah.

TOM:

And you sang a song as this kind of deal went on?

JON:

That's right. And so there are there are various songs attached to that custom. And then there's also the apple orchards wassailing tradition which is a slightly different thing which is where you go to the orchard on Twelfth Night I think – well, they were all sort of based on Twelfth Night – and sing to the trees and make a lot of noise.

ELIZA:

And sometimes yeah, you had to drive the spirits away.

TOM:

And that’s for fertility. Can you give us an example of what this would have sounded like? Can you give us a brief example?

SONG:

Our bowl is made of the good ashen tree.

And so my good folk, we’ll drink unto thee.

We are in the old times. The new times come fast.

The new times come fast and the old time is past.

So, we wish you all a Happy New Year.

Your pockets full of money and your barrels full of beer.

Ìý

TOM:

Lovely. And beer again, and we're back to that. What is the difference between a wassail and a carol, Jon? I mean, is it just that one pre-dates the other?

JON:

Well, a carol just means a song originally. So, the carolling tradition is quite a varied and complex tradition itself. And I don't think it's necessarily the case that the wassail songs are any older than the carols. It's all difficult to tell because there is very little evidence about it. But, yeah I thjnk they co-existed. I mean, generally I suppose we think of carols as being a bit more religious in this country I think.

TOM:

And are wassail songs mostly secular then? They're not Christian in form?

JON:

Yeah, you get the odd Christian reference, don't you, in some of them, but they're essentially secular. Yeah.

TOM:

Eliza, when you were researching all of this were there any surprises? You didn't know about the riposte, but were there other surprises that came up?

ELIZA:

Well, yeah. I didn’t know there was a song about a hippopotamus for Christmas for instance. That was Jon's idea. And it took me a while to love it.

JON:

It took persuading.

TOM:

Well you have to tell me about that. It’s a historical song about a hippopotamus?

JON:

No, it’s I want a hippopotamus for Christmas.

ELIZA:

Yeah, it's just not right.

JON:

It’s just that one.

ELIZA:ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý

Yes, but I did find some interesting stuff, actually, particularly in the work of Heywood Sumner, who I'd always thought of as a painter, but I hadn't realised he actually did a lot of collecting in his area in Hampshire, where he lived on Cuckoo Hill. And yeah he was a fascinating chap. And he produced a book of 11 Hampshire folk songs called the Besom-Maker, and apparently used to sing them to his art guild workers. And for that they nicknamed him The Shepherd, which I thought was quite fun. Yeah. So I hadn't really…

JON:

That's where that one's from, isn’t it, the one we just sung.

ELIZA:ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý

That’s where that wassail song comes from, yes, this chap from Hampshire.

TOM:

Now you've actually composed as it were a new wassail song. You've set a poem by John Clare to a tune of your own. Before we hear it, why did you pick that particular poem?

JON:

Well, I guess, you're always looking for…I mean, it’s quite well-trodden territory, Christmas albums and Christmas songs. Particularly on the folk scene, there's a lot of folk Christmas albums. So I guess you're always looking for something a bit different that hasn't been done before. So, yeah, we were just on the lookout for some poems that we could set, and basically John Clare is the first person you go to it really isn't he?

ELIZA:

Yeah, John Clare was a big, big influence on the Watersons, on my family as well, so it was nice. In fact, there's a line in this song, ‘oft for pence and spicy ale’, and For Pence and Spicy Ale was a very famous Watersons’ Christmas album.

JON:

It was lovely actually, we were working out the lyrics in Eliza's kitchen and her dad was there, and we were reading through this, there’s about 800 verses to this poem, and we got to that one and we were like, ‘pence and spicy ale’. ‘Oh pence and spicy ale!’. Martin was like that’s where we got it from.

TOM:

Okay, we’re not going to have all 800 verses, but you are going to give us some of the verses. Can you let us hear it?

SONG:

Hmm. Glad Christmas is come and every hearth,

makes room to give him welcome now.

E'en want will dry its tears in mirth

And crown him wi' a holly bough.

Tho tramping 'neath a winter’s sky

O'er snowy paths and rhymey stiles

The housewife sets her spinning bye

To bid him welcome with her smiles.

The singing waits a merry throng

At early morn with simple skill.

Yet imitate the angel’s song

And chant their Christmas ditty still.

And mid the storm that dies and swells

By fits-in hummings softly steals

The music of the village bells

Ringing around their merry peals.

Ìý

When this is past a merry crew

Bedecked in masks and ribbons gay

The Morris dance their sports renew

And act their winter evening play.

The clown-turned-king for penny praise

Storms with the actors strut and swell

And harlequin a laugh to raise

Wears his hunchback and tinkling bell.

Ìý

Each house is swept the day before

And windows stuck with evergreens

The snow is besom'd from the door

And comforts crown each cottage scene.

And oft for pence and spicy ale

Wi winter nosegays pinned before

The wassail singer tells her tale

And drawls her Christmas carols o’er.

Ìý

TOM:

Thank you. I feel the need for some mulled ale or some mulled cider after that. John Clare, as you said, collected folk songs, so he's clearly, he's partly writing about that tradition there in that poem, isn't he?

JON:

Oh, yeah. A lot of his poems are that reminiscing of his life in the village of Helston and he references a lot of folk customs and the songs. And he was a fiddle player as well. So there's all sorts of it, well in all his poetry it’s very well-informed and particularly I guess with the folk customs stuff. So, yeah, it’s just a lovely selection of little vignettes of folk customs.

TOM:

Very quickly, you've done a lot of work for last night's concert. Will there be another chance for people to see it?

ELIZA:ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý

Oh, yes, there is.

TOM:

Just tell me quickly when.

ELIZA:ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý

We're having Christmas in July, 16th July at Union Chapel. Come, bring everything Santa-ry. We’re going to do it.

TOM:

Christmas in July, that sounds perfect. Thank you, Eliza Carthy and Jon Boden. And that's it for tonight. Tomorrow I'll be talking to Heidi Thomas, creator and writer of Call the Midwife. When you're writing your tenth Christmas special in succession how do you keep things fresh? And we will be reviewing Joel Cohen's new film, a classic noir storyline in which greed and ambition lead to murder and a cascade of evil consequences. It's not exactly the first time he’s filmed that kind of story, but it's the first time he's had William Shakespeare as his writer. We hear what our critics think of the latest screen Macbeth tomorrow evening. Till then, goodnight.

Thanks for listening to Front Row. I’m Tom Sutcliffe, and the producer was Julian May. The studio manager was Bob Nettles, and the production coordinator Caroline Day.

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