Radio
A tour around an enormous ego
Published 26 February 2007
Malcolm McLaren went to LA - but found only himself
I've been ill (I told everyone that I'd caught bird flu which, though a lie, did at least convey the extent of my delirium), so I've been listening to even more radio than usual. Doing this with a fever is dangerous: you start to like stuff that ordinarily you'd dismiss. As for stuff that you'd normally hate, no, you don't end up liking it; it merely has an even worse effect than usual. You jabber and dribble and make a mess of your sheets. At the apex of my illness, I listened to the new series of The Brothers (Mondays, 11.30am, Radio 4), a twee "light" comedy about two men who run a very boring computer business. They have disastrous love lives and a pottering father played by James Fleet of Vicar of Dibley fame. It's terrible. I've heard it before, and the jokes aren't funny. But, from beneath the duvet, it sounded kind of comforting. Pauline McLynn's loony Irishwoman (has she ever been cast as anything else?) was hilarious. It seems I do like gags about mix tapes, after all.
The following day, still feeling as though someone might have to drill a hole in my neck to enable me to breathe, I listened to Malcolm McLaren's Life and Times in LA on Radio 2 (20 February, 8.30pm). The only possible explanation I can give for this is that my experience with The Brothers spurred me on. I can't stand McLaren, or the kinds of people who call him "the only true genius" they've ever met. They have simply been taken in by his considerable marketing skills, because no one thinks McLaren more of a genius than McLaren.
Anyway, I digress. Last year, McLaren presented a "music-driven narrative" about London, which is where he grew up. (I missed it, presumably because I was then in rude health.) This, apparently, was such a success that he decided to make a similar programme about Los Angeles, where he lived 20 years ago. What's a music-driven narrative? Well, in this case, it's basically Malcolm McLaren chanting clichés and boasting about his success to the sound of Aaron Copland and, er, Don Henley.
The programme was dire. McLaren attempted to describe LA but, alas, insight is not his forte. The city, he told us in the manner of a newscaster announcing breaking news, is "the town of make-believe". No kidding! He then revisited the story of how he got to date Lauren Hutton and work for Steven Spielberg. This was predictably vague - he has never been one for small print. Astonishingly, it also involved him doing impressions of the characters he met. Everyone sounded pretty much like everyone else, though his Martin Scorsese was a standout: my temperature rose at least three degrees thanks to it alone. I lay on my sopping sheets and groaned.
The pity of it is that radio is the perfect medium for what pretentious people might call "sound journeys". Earlier in the week, I listened to Radio 3's Sunday feature Six Unexpected Days (9.30pm), in which the poet Paul Farley followed the Pennine walk that W H Auden wrote up in 1954 for American Vogue, somewhat bizarrely. The programme was part of a BBC season marking Auden's centenary. It was magical. Auden carried an OS map of Alston Moor with him wherever he went, and this 45-minute feature brought that map vividly to life. But then, we were in the hands of a presenter who had embarked on his project in a spirit of inquiry. McLaren was in love with himself: Farley only had eyes for all that limestone.
Pick of the week
Desert Island Discs
25 February, 11.15am, Radio 4
Will he choose disco? Andrew Neil is Kirsty Young’s castaway.
Book of the Week: Theatre Writings
From 26 February, 9.45am, Radio 4
Michael Sheen reads Kenneth Tynan’s reviews – still the best after all these years.
Don't miss . . .
The avant-garde at Tate Liverpool
As Liverpool marks its 800th anniversary and prepares to become next year's European Capital of Culture, this exhibition examines the city's creative past. It centres on Liverpool's relationship with the avant-garde since the 1940s and celebrates artists, including Yoko Ono, Henri Cartier-Bresson (whose Liverpool, 1962 is pictured, right) and Martin Parr, who have lived or worked there. Also on show is a specially commissioned collaboration between Paul Ryan and the Turner Prizewinner Jeremy Deller.
"Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the avant-garde" is at Tate Liverpool until 9 September. www.tate.org.uk
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