Author: James Lark

Last night I watched Mary Poppins and I believe it may be the greatest film ever made.

Just tick the boxes – cinematography, gorgeous; performances, flawless (David Tomlinson turns in a performance every bit as subtle as Welles’ Kane, and Julie Andrews is almost inhumanly wonderful); scoring, magnificent (quite aside from the foot-tapping tunes there’s a strong element of leitmotif); choreography, breathtaking (for my money, “over the rooftops” is better than Riverdance); special effects, groundbreaking (the combination of animation with live action is still being copied less successfully); and most strikingly, a script so sharp you could slice carrots with it.

We all remember how much fun it is, of course. Actually, the writing is even more witty than I remember, with moments of knowing satire:

Michael: I want it to feed the birds.
Mr Dawes Snr: Fiddlesticks, Boy. Feed the birds and what have you got? Fat birds.

…exchanges worthy of Oscar Wilde:

Mrs Banks: She seemed so solemn and cross.
Mr Banks: Never confuse efficiency with a liver complaint.

…and moments of absolutely bonkers silliness which could have come from a Goon Show – my favourite:

Horseman: View hallooooo!
Horse (who sounds a bit like Alec Guinness): Oh, yes, definitely. A view halloo.
Fox (who has the most outrageous Irish accent I’ve ever heard): View halloo? Faith and begora, it’s dem redcoats again!

But it is a multi-layered script, with a running theme of the damaging effect of capitalism (Bert the Cockney is so poor he can’t even afford a proper accent, but he is free and happy whilst Mr Banks is trapped in the world of the bank – “they makes cages in all sizes and shapes, you know. Bank-shaped some of ’em, carpets and all…”) Banks’ attitude to his children and wife is frankly disturbing, bordering on the negligent – although he doesn’t do anything so obvious as slap Mrs Banks about, it’s very telling that while she marches up and down singing about “sister suffragettes”, when her husband walks in she turns into a meek, obedient wife who mainly says “yes George”. This is what makes Mr Banks’ ultimate redemption quite so moving – in fact, the climax of the film, when Mr Banks is humiliated before the assembled bankers, is perhaps its strongest sequence – although the events of the scene are absurd, it is lit and acted every bit as seriously as a sinister boardroom scene in a tense drama. For a Disney film it is astonishingly unsentimental and all the more effective for it.

But it is not a film that has been studied at length or that is discussed by film theorists in hushed tones, and the only reason I can think of for this is that they have been put off the film by that bloody awful bit where they all have tea on the ceiling, which doesn’t have any of the qualities mentioned above.

I suppose it’s too late for a director’s cut?

In this office I’m in which I’m getting increasingly narked off with all round, people keep talking about REEsearch. We have REEsearch assistants and REEsearch laboratories and of course what they mean to say is reSEARCH, but everyone’s been so corrupted by Yankeeisms that they haven’t got a clue how to pronounce half of our words any more. Michael Crawford used to get an automatic laugh in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em by mispronouncing the word “harass” (with the emphasis on the “ass” rather than the “har”) – but when I hear REEsearch it has the opposite effect of making me want to cry. In any case, thanks to Frank Spencer nobody knows how to pronounce “harass” either, to the extent that some dictionaries now even advise the wrong pronunciation.

Okay, British comedy can take the blame for “harass,” but REEsearch is most definitely the fault of the Americans, what with all their funding and REEsearch opporTOONities and their fascist government being all antEYE stem cell REEsearch. It’s bad enough that they want to drop bombs all over the place, they might at least draw the line at corrupting our words.

I’m not one for being pointlessly patriotic – but at least I know how to pronounce patriotic.

Will Smith seems to be starring in a film called Hitch.

Alfred Hitchcock was famously fat, white and English, so Will Smith seems an odd choice to play him.

Recently on this diary I was rather critical of Neighbours for being all about lesbianism and incest and, in essence, nothing like as good as it used to be.

How delightful, then, to accidentally find myself watching it at lunchtime yesterday and to discover that the production team appear to have taken my criticisms on board; for the episode in question was absolutely bloody brilliant from start to finish, to the extent that it might have come from the glory days of the late 80s. It contained a jilting at the altar, no less than three apparent deaths, a woman discovered to have seemingly smothered her Grandfather to death with a pillow when in fact she didn’t, the return of an old character and the coffee shop burning down, taking Lou’s pub with it as it combusted.

It has been over a decade and a half since the coffee shop (in those days Daphne’s coffee shop, of course) burned down. That time, the cliffhanger was the coffee shop exploding with Des inside it; I was enraged when my parents wouldn’t let me watch the following episode because we were halfway through watching Monte Carlo or Bust! (a very mediocre film, as I remember) so I missed the spectacle of Harold daringly rescuing Des and had to make do with a picture of it in the Radio Times.

Yesterday’s episode more than made of for my fifteen years of regret. If anything, it was a better fire than the last one, coming in the midst of so many other improbably melodramatic events and being apparently deliberate (whereas the last fire only started because Sharon was foolishly trying a cigarette and didn’t put it out properly). And this time rather than rescuing anyone Harold possibly caused a man to be killed by making him go back for Madge’s recipe book! Brilliant!

And just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, who should wander on and have a grim look at the fire but Paul Robinson, ex-manager of Lassiters and general bigamist from the oft-mentioned glory days of the 1980s!

I was so excited that I nearly dropped my cup-a-soup.

I would just like to announce to the world that it is a BEAUTIFUL morning and life is a very wonderful thing.

To: Radio2 Enquiries

I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but I just had the travel news on in the background and I’m sure I heard you announce that there were “dinnerladies on the M3”. I wonder if you could put my mind at rest that this is not the case – or, if I did not mishear you, advise me as how one should approach this potential hazard to traffic?

Many thanks,

James Lark

From: Phil Hughes, Editor Mainstream Programmes BBC Radio 2

It was a report from a caller nicknamed “Dinnerlady”

The travel news on radio 2 just announced that there were “dinnerladies on the M3”.

……….surely not?

It isn’t vanity that makes me search for myself on Google images. After all if I wanted to look at pictures of myself on the internet I know plenty of places to find them. No, it’s the pictures of other people that I’m curious about, for while I am (rather embarrassingly) represented by this photograph:

…my name also brings up this James Lark, Chairman apparently, though God knows of what:

…and also this chap:

…as well as this chap:

It’s rather reassurring to see that the James Larks of this world seem to be a promising bunch, as far as you can tell from their pictures.

As I was cycling along East Road just now I stopped at a pelican crossing, the traffic lights being red. A woman with a bike was standing on the pavement, apparently waiting to cross the road. She continued to wait until the traffic lights turned green again and as the traffic started moving she crossed the road.

Was she confused because although she was crossing the road she was also pushing a bike? Or was there a defect with the pelican crossing which I would consider to be extremely perilous?

If it is the latter then Cambridgeshire County Council ought to be ashamed of itself. If the former, then the lady in question frankly deserves to be run over, and very probably soon will be.

The 100 Greatest Cartoons my arse. The greatest cartoon of all time, The Mysterious Cities of Gold, doesn’t even feature. Oh yeah, I’m sure it was just squeezed out by Gay Duck, that superbly animated classic.