JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

The year that I was six but turning seven years old, my family moved to a new town. I know very well that childhood memories are exaggerated, focusing as they do mainly on extreme situations most likely to leave an impression on us. Our powerful kiddie emotions, mixed with some facts, creates a cocktail that tastes of historical reality, but may be partly hallucinogenic…

With that caveat firmly in place, let me tell you how I remember the transition from my life in one community to the other. In the first, I am a debonair six year old fellow, a tiny man about town, surrounded by a multitude of friends who find me ever so witty, and capable. I am considered to be a great asset to any Primary-school birthday party and I even have a little girlfriend. My family then leaves this paradise, drives across 3 states and when I arrive at the new town I am transformed into a hopeless nong who can’t do anything right. It was as if we had packed everything in the car but had forgotten to pack my popularity, which was left behind (I wonder if someone else found it, laying abandoned, and used it, perhaps?)

I developed asthma and skin conditions and other outward manifestations of my inner turmoil. Worst of all, I was stricken by one of the worst cases of clinical Cry-Babyism ever seen by medical professionals in the New England Tablelands region of Australia. (I believe that my case is still cited in some medical texts even today).

The first breakthrough in my adjusting to this new hometown came along in the form of a jaunty little dog named JOCK. My parents rescued him from death-row at the local dog-pound and in exchange for this reprieve he agreed to do what he could to rescue me from my self-pity. Jock was a black and white mongrel, a mix of some terrier and perhaps some sheep-dog. With the wisdom of hindsight he probably wasn’t much to look at… but I was oblivious to that at the time because I loved him so. He was built low to the ground, with legs too short for his body and a body that was too short for his tail, which was curved up and held at a rakish angle; a furry little pirate brandishing his scimitar.

Even though Jock was small, he could keep up with me wherever we had to go. If I climbed over fences, he would too, or else find a way under them. Unlike many small dogs, he wasn’t afraid to jump in a swimming hole or go in the surf. He had the run of the neighbourhood and I don’t remember him ever being on a leash, he was out on his own recognizance most of the time.

When not with me, Jock ran with his own little pack of neighbourhood mutts. There were about 6 of them and they were all small to mid-sized dogs but none of them were “cute”. The overall effect that they made as they trotted about the place was that of a gang of teenage punks. There was something slightly roguish about them. They were up to no good.

Jock ostensibly slept outside in a space under the water-tank stand, but at night he would sneak into my bedroom through the window I had left open for him and actually sleep on my bed. He usually had the sense to make himself scarce in the mornings so as not to be caught there by my parents, who were of the “pets don’t sleep in the house” variety. He was a really fantastic dog for a little seven-year-old boy to have.

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The Nasty Stranger

On our way home from an errand to the corner shop, Jock and I encountered a big, nasty looking dog that we had never seen around the neighbourhood before. He was the kind of dog that makes you nervous from the get go, and I could tell that Jock didn’t like the cut of this bugger’s clothes any more than I did.

They immediately began that circling, probing dance that dogs do when they first meet each other; backs tight and noses buried in each other’s resumes. I have always wondered what it is that they are looking for back there? What constitutes the difference between those times when you jam your nose in a stranger’s backside and become his best friend, versus those times when you both partake in this mutual examination, only to decide that you are deadly enemies?

Well, this particular tension-tango ended up being one of the “Let’s be enemies!” times. These blokes each saw something in the other’s philosophy that they simply could not abide…. and boy, IT WAS ON!

Where one second earlier there were two separate dogs, there was now only a writhing, biting, snarling tangle. A boiling dust cloud out from which flailed more paws, teeth and tails than seemed possible, like a fight in an animated cartoon. Except that this particular cartoon fight wasn’t making me laugh. These two dogs were really going at it, and I am sad to say that dear Jock wasn’t getting the best of the exchange of violence. He was battling every bit as fiercely as the bigger bloke, but was no match for his size.

The sound of a full blown, mutual-hate, no holds barred dog-fight is terrifying to begin with, but more so when one of the dogs is your best mate and worse still when he is the smaller of the two and getting a punishing.

Terrified that Jock would be killed, I was screaming and bawling and beside myself within seconds of this savagery getting under way. I dropped Mum’s shopping, picked up a stick and tried to get in there and hit the big bloke a couple of whacks, but this brawl was thrashing all over the place like a savage whirligig of fangs, fur and saliva.

Suddenly, Jock broke free of the melee and shot off like a rocket down the block, with the nasty big stranger in deadly pursuit. I took off after them as fast as my little-boy legs could go, but the dogs moved so fast that they had both disappeared around a corner before I had barely gone a few feet.

That run to the corner seemed to take forever; I simply could NOT get there fast enough. I was in a panic that the big bloke with his longer legs would catch up to Jock in no time. Sure enough, the most heart-wrenching howls came from the direction I last saw them go. I had felt physically inadequate many a time before, at school sporting events, but never wished harder for the power to run faster, than on this occasion. With hot tears streaming down my face I ran toward what was now a blood-curdling noise, an absolute cacophony of canine screams, yelps and whines.

The pitch of the terrifying sound that I was following then changed, it became more urgent, and louder. I suddenly realised that it was coming back in my direction rather than receding, as it had been before.

When I was almost at the intersection that I had been aiming for, the nasty big stranger came bolting around corner heading straight at me, and then right past me, howling and yowling, because hot on his heels were JOCK AND ALL HIS CREW!

Hah, Hah! I couldn’t believe it!

Take that, you nasty bastard! Oh yes, it was pure triumph, I tell you. The best thing I ever saw in my short life up to that time… and even amongst all the amazing things I have seen in the many years since, not much has topped it.

Have you ever gone from feeling the absolute worst you ever felt, to the best feeling of your whole life in the space of a few seconds? From the depths of despair to absolute elation; that was the dramatic surge of joyous emotion that lifted me up and carried me along, as I saw that evil big bugger chased into the distance by a vengeful mob of little dogs, led by my mate Jock!

As was the case before, the chase was very quickly beyond my line of sight, so all I had to go by was the howling, yowling sound-effects in the distance, but my knowledge that THIS time it was the baddie who was copping a drubbing made those once-horrible shrieks and howls now sound like sweet music to my ears. I hurried along after the sound as best I could and tried to imagine what may have been going on up there… It was the soundtrack to a swashbuckling pirate movie, starring an all dog cast. I was a little disappointed to be missing out on the climactic battle scene of this epic, but any anxiety for the safety of my little, furry, black-and-white mate was now completely gone.

I went back and found Mum’s shopping that I had earlier abandoned and sat on the curb and waited for Jock to come back. I thought on what a wiley old campaigner Jock was, to have led that gullible big buffoon into the trap he had so carefully laid for him.

Hah, hah! Who did that dumb punk think he was messing with? Didn’t he know whose stomping grounds he had trespassed upon? Well, he was getting some hard schooling on what-was-what at the moment, by God, so he was!

After a time, the hero of the day reappeared and accepted all my heartiest congratulations on his magnificent performance.

To my great surprise, I saw that he hadn’t been seriously wounded in the initial set-to with the bigger bloke. I considered the possibility that Jock had only been play-acting at losing the earlier brawl in order to trick that nasty bugger into running into an even worse walloping from his whole crew. Could it be? Ho, ho!

As we went home together, I decided that old Jock had just wanted to share amongst his friends the opportunity of thumping this interloper… I had always suspected that when Jock wasn’t playing the role of “pet” at our house, he was secretly a tough guy in the canine community, and now I was absolutely sure of it.

I remember very well trying to convey to the rest of the family over dinner that night, that in the time it took for Jock and me to go buy some milk and bread at the corner shop, Jock was the triumphant hero in an absolutely epic battle that ran the entire gamut of emotions, both human and canine. But even at the time, I was aware that I hadn’t done Jock’s story full justice when I told it on that particular night.

I hope I did a better job of it this time.

When I was a child, my Grandma let me stay up past my normal bedtime when she baby-sat me one night. I saw an episode of THE AVENGERS, and fell in love with EMMA PEEL. I was absolutely fascinated by this pretty lady, clad in catsuits and leather, who bashed the bone-marrow out of all the bad-guys. I had never seen anybody like her before and I couldn’t take my eyes off her when she was on-screen. Emma Peel was my first ever crush, many years before I was old enough to have any idea of what a crush even was.

Supposedly, I made a huge fuss on subsequent nights when my standard bedtime was enforced and I wasn’t allowed to see Mrs Peel kicking arse any more. Grandma tried to make amends by helping me write a letter, asking Emma to put her TV show on earlier, before my bedtime. I doubt very much that the letter was ever sent… but a few years later I was old enough to stay up late and watch the re-runs, anyway.

I recently bought some DVDs of this 1960s TV series, starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. It is a snap-shot of that time when everything coming out of Britain was automatically seen as being cool. The Avengers still plays well today, if partly undermined by other shows that have come along since, including many that THIS show inspired in the first place.

The martial arts fights that I had remembered as being so exciting, when I was a child, are hopelessly naff by today’s standards. We are now accustomed to seeing well choreographed action, and women in fight sequences aren’t a novelty any more, either; television has a different battle-babe for each night of the week. That wasn’t the case when Emma Peel hit the screen for the first time; she was a revolutionary character.

Though her “Karate Chop” style of fighting may look cheesy to some modern viewers, the character herself is every bit as charming as had I remembered. Even 40 years after Emma Peel first appeared on TV, there aren’t many characters to match her easy confidence, strength, book smarts, wry humour and sense of style.

The playfully platonic relationship between Emma Peel and John Steed holds up particularly well. It is still unusual, even today, for a man and a woman to have a long running screen partnership that doesn’t inevitably end in a romantic entanglement.

I should also mention that Emma Peel, as played by the incomparable Diana Rigg, is every bit as beautiful as I had remembered her, maybe even moreso.

I’ve been having some trouble with my mental focus these past few weeks. This a common problem when working on my own projects but it rarely comes up when working for “the man.” I am very productive when working for for someone else but when working for myself, I guess I just don’t respect the boss.

When I need some creative Viagra, I usually just look at great artwork on the internet but that backfired on me this time. There is so much fabulous work out there that it leaves me feeling strangely inadequate! Inspiration can be a double-edged sword when it makes me want to throw out everything I’ve done.

Mind you, I am quite capable of chasing my tail without any outside distractions. My personal form of mental blockage is usually a case of having a lot of ideas and not knowing which one to use. I’ve heard this called “analysis paralysis” but I prefer the term “IDEA-rhea”. Too many ideas is as bad as none, sometimes.

Convincing myself that what I am making is even worth the effort can be a strange mental game. I’ll draw something I’m very happy with and then after a break for lunch, I come back and hate it. The reverse happens as well; I stumble upon some scribbles I did a day ago and have no idea why I threw them away. With me, that ridiculous internal chit chat can go ad infinitum… I know that all of this is a tempest in a tea cup but when the tea cup is my skull, the tempest can be exhausting none the less.

The artists who I really admire have, in addition to good drawing skills and original ideas, the ability to focus themselves and produce. Self-discipline is an invaluable quality in anyone but it really is essential for people creating things, especially when doing the creation solo…

OK, that’s enough of my whining; gotta go do some drawings. They don’t throw themselves away, you know!

These days, many artists (even those still in school) have their own web-sites, with links to artists who have influenced them. Hop-scotching around the internet from site to site has been a great source of inspiration for me in recent years. You can see links to artists that I admire on my LINKS page, but some of those who have influenced me the most have been those that I have worked with personally, and in many cases they don’t have websites and are therefore unknown by people who have not worked with them too.

Part One: Early Influences
I didn’t attend art school. When I started working in animation, at the age of 17, I was trained on the job and there wasn’t time for much “proper” training in the midst of production. So, while a lot of people remember the early influence of their art teachers, I am grateful to those few artist/co-workers who took time to show me some tricks and give encouragement when I was starting out, and had even less idea of what I was doing than I do today. Here are a few of the cartoonists who influenced me early in my career.

JON McCLENAHAN is an American, but he entered the animation industry in Australia, which is where I met him, when I started out at Hanna-Barbera’s Sydney studio, as an inbetweener. Jon was already an animator and he was the first artist ever to take an interest in me and I owe him a lot for that. He gave me encouragement and help with some animation I was doing in my spare time, because I was getting frustrated with being an inbetweener. Partly due to that after hours experimentation, and Jon’s encouragement, I did eventually get a chance to animate. Jon was, and still is, a very focussed, hard worker and he got a lot of work done by staying in his chair all day and drawing, rather than yakking with co-workers, which was my habit back then. I have since acquired his ability to work hard, day after day, but sadly I have never been able to apply Jon’s straightforward approach to creativity; he doesn’t second guess himself, and forges ahead with his first idea. I admire that approach very much and tried to adopt it for myself, but sadly I am rarely happy with my first idea, and so my method is is to “noodle” and try alternatives and throw away a lot of work along the path to making something I am proud of. Years later, after Jon and his family had moved back to his home town of Chicago, I had a chance to work with him at his own studio, called STARTOONS. Fans of Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, Tazmania and other quality TV cartoons from the 1980s and early 1990s may have heard of that studio because many of the funniest (and Emmy winning-est) episodes of those popular shows were animated by Jon and his crew.

Jon and I haven’t worked together for many years but we are great friends to this day.

Simon and Chris. These guys are often mentioned in the same breath by people who know them, because they are such complementary friends. When I first started working, they were like the big brothers I never had as a kid. In addition to picking up a cynical sense of humour that I hadn’t really earned yet, I learned a great deal about animation and cartooning from watching these two blokes:

CHRIS HAUGE has animated on the influential Gorillaz videos, including that first one for “Clint Eastwood” that blew everyone away (I must have watched it about 100 times). He did those when working in London for Passion Pictures. Before being part of that buzz, years and years earlier, Chris turned on a light bulb over my noggin when he was the first animator who explained to me that animation wasn’t just individual drawings or even pretty drawings… it is the relationship between those drawings that is important; he made me think about TIMING, which is something that he excells at himself. Chris showed me how to plan out the action in thumbnails first so as not to jam too much “stuff” into a scene, and ensure that the drawings each had enough screen time to “read” for the audience. That may seem obvious, especially to those of you who have had formal training, but it was a revelation to me when I was 18. (He later tried to teach me to surf, with much less success. My thrashing and splashing around made him look “uncool” in front of his surfer peers). As well as enjoying working with Chris at Hanna Barbera in Sydney, I also learned a lot from him when we both worked on commercials at Colossal Pictures in San Francisco (my favourite company I ever worked at). Chris now has his own animation studio in Sydney called HALO PICTURES with not only a great showreel but also a great location; near the beach. (Being close to the surf was one of the major factors in choosing a studio location for Chris).

Chris is the only of my art-pals on this list who actually does have a website, so please check out his animation for GORILLAZ and various other bits and pieces of coolness.

SIMON O’LEARY has worked on projects such as Disney’s Tarzan (in the Paris unit) and now directs commercials in Sydney. His cartooning ability, dry sense of humour and unpretentious approach to working were all major inspirations to me when I started in the animation industry and he inspires me to this very day. He is one of those guys who can do FUNNY drawings… drawings that’ll make you blow your coffee out your nose; you are laughing so hard. This is especially so when he busts out a savagely accurate caricature of a co-worker (or YOU) or a funny doodle based on something that happened at lunch hour. For 25 years or so Simon has both written and drawn a comic strip called Fred Gassit which runs in the Australian Motor Cycle News magazine (and several other motorcycle magazines around the world). While the strip is ostensibly related to the world of motorcycling, the humour is really about Simon taking pot-shots at the world in general, via the persona of Fred; a sarcastic dog-like character who is a cantankerous bastard but appealing none the less (much like Simon). Both the humour and the artwork are vulgar yet sophisticated (much like Simon), which is a winning combination for me; the hardest laughs happen when neurones within the low-brow and the high-brow are firing simultaneously. I have a collection of these strips that is a treasured possession I look through when I want a laugh or need to swipe ideas on how to draw a vehicle, a goon, a bikini babe, or anything for that matter. To my mind these cartoons are insanely funny and I wish that Simon was rich and famous as a result, but the fact is that he doesn’t even sign them let alone “promote” them. Self-promotion is not what Simon is about. Which explains why he doesn’t have a website and why you probably haven’t heard of him.

I have worked with Simon in Sydney, Paris and San Francisco and I look forward to working with him again some day.

DEANE TAYLOR may best be known as the Art Director on the Nightmare before Christmas (and a spin-off game). He also did design work on the animated shows Cow and Chicken and I.M. Weasel by Dave Feiss (yet another animation hero of mine, from later in my career). But years before that, Deane ran the layout department at Hanna Barbera in Sydney. After I had been animating for a few years, Deane offered me a chance at learning layouts under his supervision. Consequently, most of what I know today about composition I learned from Deane, or picked up by working with him and watching him go. He was the most prolific artist in the department. He has a very dynamic drawing style, featuring a clever use of shape and silhoette, that many of his trainees tried to copy, but nobody ever matched Deane for graphic dynamism and energy of line. He taught me some simple compositional guidelines that I learned to apply over and over again, but apart from art tricks, he also showed me quite a bit about work ethics and attitude. Even though the shows we worked on were pretty crappy in those days, and many people just went through the motions when making them, Deane was one of the few who tried his hardest on every show, no matter what. He took pride in his work. He respected people who did a good job on whatever they were given to do, rather than those people who will work on only 2 cylinders, saving themselves for the big deal job on the distant horizon.

Deane taught me to always think of how to “plus” the material that came across my desk. That is certainly what he always does.

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I am very lucky in that I have worked all over the globe, at some really great studios, on some quality productions, with loads of amazing artists over the years… but these guys listed here had a huge influence on me, disproportionate to the quality of the projects we worked on together. In many cases the stuff we collaborated on was a lot of crap, yet these artists are still some of those that I respect the most.

Drive-In theatres are fondly remembered for providing teenagers with both a cover story (a trip to the movies) and a relatively private place (a car) for their furtive, mutual anatomical research. But they were also frequented by families with small children. Before the ages of video and DVD, a drive-in theatre was where parents could see movies without having to feel self-conscious about their bawling kids. No need for a baby sitter for the tiny ones, just bring them along. Sealed off in your (more or less) soundproof bubble you weren’t likely to bother the other patrons, who were probably families themselves, or teenagers who had more pressing things (ie; the pressing of “things”) on their minds. But you could easily bother each other, cooped up in there during a double bill of “Blue-Beard’s Ghost” and “Herbie the Love Bug”. With all the bickering and crying and spilled drinks and whatnot there was often as much tragedy and comedy and drama in the car, as on the screen.

I remember going to the drive-in to see family films when there were little babies in our family (and I was small myself). In particular I was very affected by seeing “BAMBI” when I was 5 years old. My brother Jo was still a small baby and provided his own vocal accompaniment from the front seat where he was attended to by my Mother, already pregnant with next brother, Rob (who would be along to help out with the yodelling chores in a few months). Despite the occasional noise, and being treated to moments of SENSE-AROUND when baby-bro had to have his underthings changed right there in front of me, I was very much engrossed in what was going on up on the screen.

Like a lot of children, the death of BAMBI’s Mother affected me very deeply and I’m absolutely sure that I added my own blubbering to the general commotion within our car at that point. Parents sometimes like to shield their kids from such raw emotions, but this moment of tragedy is a big part of one of my most powerful early-childhood memories. And it wasn’t over yet, BAMBI was about to affect me in perhaps an even more powerful way; it was while at the drive-in watching “Bambi” that I realised that this film was somehow different to other movies… IT WAS DRAWINGS… Moving and talking and seeming to be alive… and then seeming to be killed… drawings making me feel both happy, and then sad. The tears of anguish were barely even dry on my face before I started to wonder how this could be so…. What kind of magic was this? I could not grasp how it was possible for these drawings to be alive. It was a singular moment; I was both pulled into and popped out of, the movie at the same time.

I had always liked cartoons, but never thought about how they were made, in fact I don’t think that I had ever thought about how ANY movies were made until this moment watching Bambi at the Drive-In theatre in Hobart. If I had thought about it at all, I probably thought that films were documentaries and the events on-screen were really happening (Reality TV in today’s parlance). But the realisation that this film was made of drawings made that idea an impossibility. Mum and Dad now had their hands full. Baby on the one hand and on the other, a 5 year old who needed some answers. They both did their best to explain the rudiments of the animation process, but it seemed completely unbelievable. Tiny drawings? What? How? I wasn’t apt to take their explanations at face value either; I hadn’t forgotten the great lengths they had taken to try and dupe me with that Santa Claus nonsense (which I never believed in for a moment, much to the great disappointment of my Mother). You never knew what kind of hokum grown ups were going to put over on you next….

Behind our car at the back of the drive-in, in the same building as the snack bar, there was a tiny window allowing patrons to peek into the projection booth. In an attempt to convey the truth of the animation process to me, my Dad lifted me up high enough that I could see in. I watched a big machine spool out a long shiny ribbon that passed through a ray of light, sending a flickering beam out through the main window and onto the huge screen, in front of which our family car was parked, under the night sky. I was told that there were thousands of hand drawn little pictures on that strip of film and through some process as yet beyond my ability to comprehend, they looked alive when put through the projector and light went through them.

It sounded like some kind of magic to me and even If it wasn’t “real” magic then it was clearly the next best thing. The sense of wonder from that night stayed with me for quite some time; certainly long enough to get me into the animation industry. I can still conjure up a ghost of it even now after 25 years in the biz.

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These days of course, people don’t need to go to Drive-In movies. You can watch whatever you like, and whenever you like at home on your groovy big-screen home entertainment centre, or for that matter just go ahead and take the tiny kids to the multiplex, no problem. Nobody is going to hear them over the all cellphone chit-chat anyway.

I find it hard to be truly original, even when really trying to be. Countless times, I have hit upon what I think is a new and fantastic idea, only to discover that it has either been done before, or that someone else is working on a similar idea at exactly the same time.

In days gone by, if I heard that another project touched on similar territory as an idea of my own, my instinct was NOT to find out any more about the other project. I had an inflated sense of my own innate originality, and simply assumed that I would naturally come up with something different. These days my feeling is the opposite. I have learned that people of similar backgrounds, and sensibilities are likely to have similar ideas at around the same time (probably because we are all drinking in the same influences which inspire similar ideas) and therefore my new strategy is to find out as much as possible about the competition, so as to steer my own project as far away from it as I can.

The bad reviews that I have gotten for my self-published comics mostly focus on two things; my silly sense of humour and use of puns (I am told that puns are the lowest form of comedy) and the fact that my books remind readers of other books that they have already read.

The first critique I make no apologies for; I like silliness and whimsy. The second critique stings but I have no idea how to address it, because I don’t know how to come up with a truly unique idea. Is there such a thing? Even if I do some day hit upon something absolutely original (I live in hope) what do I do in the meantime? If I waited till that singular idea came to me before I started, I may be waiting forever. I do have some ambitious stories that I would like to tell someday, but I don’t yet have the storytelling chops to do them justice.

Although I work these days as a “Story-Artist,” I don’t really have much input in the story itself. That is always generated by someone else, and I know I have a lot to learn about true story-telling. What I DO bring to the game is a childish knack for thinking up and staging physical bits of business; the pratfalling, flatulent stuff that cartoon characters do on screen as they follow the story arcs plotted out for them by bigger brains than mine. The better term for what I do is the older one: “Gag-Artist.” I am not sure why that has fallen out of favour…

On my own projects, my approach has been to go with whatever idea I have NOW for want of something better. Plus, I have consciously decided to start with some silly stories because I think that there is a bit more latitude for learning within comedy. Hopefully, when I am struck by true inspiration someday, I will have already amassed some storytelling skills along the road.

In a recent panic that my memory is failing as I grow older, I have been writing my memories down before they all fade away. Surprisingly, this has been an enjoyable exercise, as more and more of my childhood shenanigans have come back to me while writing others down. I certainly don’t have any plans to write a full memoir, but after dredging up my own memories, attempting to put them in some kind of order and render them with as much honest detail as I can muster, I’ve come to wonder how people DO write memoirs that include quoted conversations, like scenes from a movie. None of my memories (including those from last week) are so crisp as that, and there are startling gaps in the continuity. Sometimes I can piece together a timeline, when memories can be crosschecked with documentary evidence. Mostly however, I don’t have anything to moor my memories to, and they are floating around inside my head like slowly deflating balloons…

While pondering this mystery, I was inspired to track down the autobiographies of CLIVE JAMES, which I’d not read in 15 years or more but remembered as being the most entertaining autobiographies that I had ever read. He is perhaps not so well known in the USA, because his books were hard to find, so I ordered them from the UK where almost anyone could attest to the wit of Clive James. He first made a name for himself there as a television critic, but later he became a TV presenter himself, on a show called CLIVE JAMES ON TELEVISION, where he presented television clips from from around the world, famously including ENDURANCE, the hilariously punishing Japanese TV game show. (Our own “reality TV” shows now feature the worm-eating capers the Japanese were amusing westerners with 25 years ago. So who’s laughing now?) But the entertainment in his show wasn’t only from clips of Turkish soap operas or whacky game shows, it mainly came from Clive James’ eclectic tastes in popular culture and his particular style of witty critical commentary.

My first exposure to him was in the early 1980s when I read the first of his autobiographies, which had been recommended by my Dad. (He was born the same year as Clive James, so their experiences of growing up in Australia in the 1940s and 1950s, then going to university in the UK in the 1960s, were generally similar). The first book, called UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS, chronicles the period from Clive James’ birth up until he was 22 years old, about the age I was when I read it the first time. It is without a doubt one of the funniest books that I have ever read. The paperback version has a review printed on the cover, which warns not to read the book in public in case you embarrass yourself with laughter. This I took as mere “you’ll laugh out loud!” hyperbole, rather than realising it was actually the operating instructions for an extremely volatile device… I disgraced myself a few days later when Clive James’ account of a school gymnastics class caused me to honk like an egg-bound goose while riding a crowded train to work… precisely as warned.

The title “UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS” implies, and his introduction plainly states, that he has embellished the facts in their retelling (so THAT’s the secret!) but whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, or a hybrid of the two, it is ALL a delight to read. Besides, It is hard to know if he really has changed the facts to make them more entertaining, or if he has merely suggested this to put us off the scent of what is actually real, to avoid libel charges… Several other later-to-be-famous people appear in the books, with their names changed but their true identities not disguised, if you know who to look for. Robert Hughes, Bruce Beresford, Germaine Greer, Brett Whitely, Barry Humphries and other over-achievers feature as “supporting characters” in each of his autobiographies. Famous people not only hang-out together after they are famous but also even before they were famous… (This first struck me when reading books by or about Hemingway’s “lost generation” crowd of US expatriates in Paris in the 1920s).

The copy I am reading now is an omnibus version, called ALWAYS UNRELIABLE, and contains the first three volumes; UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS, FALLING TOWARDS ENGLAND and MAY WEEK WAS IN JUNE. One of the pleasures of re-reading these books 15-20 years later is finding resonance in some of what I didn’t “get” before. Initially, I didn’t fully appreciate the 2nd and 3rd books, finding them not so funny as the 1st. This time however, it is those later books that have made me hoot out loud. I just discovered that a fourth memoir, called THE NORTH FACE OF SOHO, was published last year and I look forward to reading it, having refreshed my memory by re-reading the first three.

Clive James is an ungainly-looking man in person, but as a communicator he is like a verbal Gene Kelly or Jackie Chan; graceful, quick, talented, a master at what he does and yet accessible to the rest of us poor slobs. After Jackie Chan busts out some amazing stunt that takes your breath away, he’ll set himself up for a prat-fall that invites you to laugh at him, even though that pratfall was every bit as hard to pull off as the earlier stunt that made you gasp. Likewise, Clive James dazzles with his wit, his handle on language and his education (I confess that I cannot keep up with his vast knowledge of fine art and popular culture) but then he’ll serve up some gags at his own expense, and even those dealing with compromising, vulgar situations, are delivered in sublimely hilarious prose. Some people say that this smart-guy playing-the-goof routine smacks of false-modesty (as if there is any other kind) but I think it is the mark of a great showman and communicator. Like watching Gene Kelly joyfully dancing in the rain, you wish you could do what he does, and part of his genius is that he somehow makes that level of ability inviting, rather than alienating.

For those of you unfamiliar with the man, I suggest you visit the CLIVE JAMES WEBSITE which contains a remarkable amount of his work. Not only essays and poetry but also a series of video conversations he has held with some famous guests. Just eavesdropping on a conversation can be very entertaining if they are the right participants (one of the most entertaining hours of TV that I ever saw was a conversation between CLIVE JAMES and JONATHAN MILLER).

It is wished for, written about, serenaded and talked of. It inspires some of the best in tree-graffiti, diary-entries, soap-operas and pop-songs, but while commonplace in the popular culture, in real-life LOVE can be very hard to find, and once found it is often accompanied by discussions about “where it is all going” that somehow… make it go.

Hate makes its own way in the world like the bird-flu virus, but LOVE needs our support, people! We must tend to it, and nurture it like a little baby hatchling if we want it to grow into a fine, big, majestically-soaring eagle in the awesome, technicolour sunset!

Wont you do your little part to keep the LOVE alive? Today is International Love Day, so stand up outa your chair, get out there, spread the good vibes, and do some serious LOVING!