My mother put a pic up on Facebook of Will my thirteen-month-old-pointing at a plane:to my amazement ex-CNN man Charles Hodson ‘liked’ it. She explains: ‘he was chief finance reporter,broadcasting regularly to 200 million people: he grew sick of the business lies’- he updates on Facebook and she enjoys reading his private opinions.
It is rare someone high up the food chain would lose interest in making money: maybe he believes as some Buddhists or Spiritual protestors who camped around St Paul’s that giving is more.
In German theatre I interviewed the European theatre prize winner of the year for the Guardian, who wrote ‘Hamlet Machine’ and invited me to stay. Over whisky he explained that ‘Europe is a bank’ and with a wry smile ‘the ghost of Hamlet’ is ‘the German Bank’. The EEC would have liked him if they indulged in Berlin cabaret and satire.
As a writer in the East he experimented like Bertolt Brecht who began at the People’s Volksbühne where we at Grassmarket Project brought homeless from Edinburgh. The stage dates from 1790 and always allowed real social dramas-as proactive as Judy and Cathy Arton now with a BAFTA Premiere of ‘BeHeard’ on child abuse on February 4th, which includes a sentence from me.
The King’s Speech producer was involved.
Homelessness has become a major issue since ‘Questions about Cathy’ in Parliament set the ball rolling in the Sixties.Recently I told actors about the Jungle in Calais where migrants are still arriving. Our ignoring of those persecuted is supposedly creating the worst carbon footprint in Europe, as no electricity or running water is making them collect fire wood and burn gas cylinders. I envisage a ‘Match Girl’ like in Hans Andersen fairytale whose parents have died in a Syrian bombing.
Police organised a clearing of some of them on Friday and I was not surprised to read online:- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3411748/The-Jungle-burns-Migrants-torch-Calais-camp-violent-protests-police-evict-hundreds-slum.html
The words ‘torch’ and ‘slum’ remind me of shoddy reporting on Battersea, which was described as a ‘slum’ in the Sixties when Jeremy Sandford and Nell Dunn moved in and found it ‘beautiful’ and ‘green’-single mothers were rehoused here to keep them out of tourists’ view-they fell in love with local colour and a couple with two children who could not keep up with the landlord’s rent were evicted:this resulted in ‘Cathy Come Home’ and Irene films of Ken Loach’s beginnings like: ‘Up the Junction’
My brother Fred informs me that it was far from a slum, but actually a market garden with a pub we frequent the ‘Asparagus’ named after what they grew.
Ray Brooks has long been a friend and played the lead Reg, describing at a homeless film festival recently how he was shouted at in the street for losing wife and kids-as some people thought it documentary!
You can read more of Ray and his books and music on:
www.mrbennsfriend.co.uk-as he was the voice of the children’s cult show.
You can read my book with a kind review by Guardian contributor Angela Neustatter about working with homeless, as well as Ray’s and Timothy West’s support and intelligence:
https://m.facebook.com/beheardfilm/?soft=notifications
charliewisewordpresscom 