This is mentioned in Stewart Lee's introduction for the recent reissue of Tonks's novel The Bloater and he says that it's online, but I can't find it.
From the Hampstead home I stalked her ghost to, Tonks and her husband hobnobbed with late fifties and sixties literary London neighbours, and in the mid-sixties Notes on Cafés and Bedrooms and Iliad of Broken Sentences established her as a poet to watch. She collaborated with the nowadays fully feted Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the post-war state-subsidised avant-noise research outfit that famously gave us that iconic Doctor Who theme, on a sound-poem, 1966's 'Sono-Montage'. It's not officially available but you can source it illicitly if you poke around online, in all its received pronunciation/analogue electronica glory, and experience an all-too-brief corduroy-whiff of the golden age of the kind of transporting cutting-edge taxpayer-funded out-there art that would make the current Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries shit hot porridge into a hat.
The below picture is from the second edition of Bedouin of the London Evening.
I just read Instead of Diamonds, after finding out that it's a different book to Someday I'll Find Me, her other autobiography. Here's more about the pilot:
The plan was that during the day I would occupy a bungalow owned by the studio on a street on the other side of Coldwater Canyon, to write the American pilot of Butterflies with a man named Joseph Miltonberg. His task was to guide me towards the American language. His task was to guide me towards the American language. I was to be picked up each morning at eight o’clock by my baby driver and returned to my hotel at six. Apart from a driver, we had at our disposal a secretary and a ‘runner’, who literally ran around after us. He parked the car, fetched lunch, made coffee, put flowers on the desk, pulled the blinds down, pointed the cooling fans in the right direction — and supplied endless gags in the hope that he would get one of them into the script, for which he would want an ‘additional material by’ credit and a large fee.
As the first day unfolded, I could feel the nightmare gathering speed. There were no quiet moments, no time to think things out. Joseph sat opposite me with my original script in front of him. I was supposed to change each line into his spoken version, and the regurgitated script came fast and furious. The runner darted about the room uttering jokes of the lowest level; these were corrected by Joseph, who spoke the terrible results out to me who had to write them down. As soon as I reached the final sentence on a page, the runner would whip the page away and hand it to the neurotic typist who sat three yards away. She would bash it out and then sit with fingers poised waiting for the next creative rendering. Each time I winced, Joseph would triumphantly remind me that he had written for Jack Benny for forty years and the typist and the runner would say, in monotonous unison, “Yeh — isn’t that really something?’
'Joseph Miltonberg' is the producer Milt Josefsberg, presumably.
American remake of the British sitcom Butterflies.
A few choice quotes from Carla Lane's autobiography, Someday I'll Find Me:
A parcel had arrived for me. It contained a few scripts for me to read. I read one and was filled with dread. The dialogue was light and frothy and jokey, none of the characters were real. ‘I can’t write this,’ I kept muttering to myself, ‘I can’t write this.’ The couple in the script were supposed to be in love but it was really all jokes. When I wrote about love it was really love and love is painful as well as funny. I was filled with that word which crops up often in this book, fear. ‘I’m not clever enough to do these kind of scripts,’ I explained to Roger. ‘OK, honey,’ he said, ‘it’s no worry. I have some good news for you. Let’s have some lunch, the others are waiting.’
The others were six or seven, I forget, but a mixture of producers, writers and God knows what. Roger had booked a room at the hotel for us to lunch in. I was introduced. ‘This is Buck, this is Ted, this is Chuck.’ And each one said, ‘Hi there, nice to meet you.’ In an effort to get my inadequacies over, I said, ‘I’m a bit scared. I’m not sure I can write for American television. It’s different.’ They all chorused together, ‘Oh my God, that Liverpool accent. It’s fantastic, it’s Beatle time.’ Roger intervened, ‘So the good news is, we’re going to do Butterflies.’ A terrible vision flashed before me. I could hear Ben saying ‘Gee, I love you honey’ to Ria and Ria to Ben saying ‘OK, OK, so I get the dress I saw in Freemans’.
My troubled face quickly took on an act of elation. ‘Oh Roger, that’s fantastic, thank you.’ ‘Didn’t I tell you, didn’t I tell you?’ ‘Oh God,’ said one of them, ‘I can see it already. A scene where they first meet. He says something like, “You flicked your ash in my trifle”. He’s doing a sitting down dance now. And she could say, “Oh, I’m so sorry”, and she can swap trifles, you know as if she doesn’t mind eating ash.’ They all roared. I died inside. The following morning a big, bright red car was waiting outside the hotel. Someone came towards me, ‘Miss Lane?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Care of the studio, ma’am, drive carefully.’ Filled with another kind of dread, I immediately called Rex to come and save me. After many cups of coffee and bagels with cream cheese, I was persuaded to do just one of the Butterflies for them. ‘Just one,’ I said. They saw the worry on my face. ‘Don’t be scared,’ said Roger, ‘you write the script, we’ll rewrite it.’
The American version of Butterflies was recorded not long after. I was flown by Concord to New York and then on to Los Angeles, to be there on the night of recording and found myself with a strangely loving feeling towards all those people who once made me want to go home, but as for the programme, it was awful. I learned later that the man who played the lead role in Butterflies in America died suddenly two days after the recording. It was hard for me to take in because on the night we had sat together exchanging our views on life.
This was not the end of America – I made five more trips in an attempt to provide them with an acceptable script, but they were fruitless journeys. My very English style of writing could not be easily adapted, not by me anyway.
Loved this. I'd never seen an episode of Sesame Street before. Something about how sensual it was and how it cut between different things without explanation felt almost avant-garde.
I remember the Recess game. There doesn't seem to be any pictures or video of it online, though.
Don't Suppose you know roughly what years it couldve been on sky? or possibly what kind of game? i presume it was a red button on the channel type deal as alot of the kids ones seem to have been
It would've been some time in the mid to late 00s that I played it. Only some of the game was free, you had to pay after a certain point. My dad refused when I asked him for the money.
The game was set inside the school, and it was a side-scroller. I don't remember much about it, but looking at the list of games here, "Tunnel Rescue" rings a bell.
Thanks. I used to love this, it would be great if more episodes of it were online. There's a DVD of it (which there's rips of on youtube) but it's not in English unfortunately.
Last Edit: Jul 8, 2020 2:28:18 GMT by jsg: grammar