It's A Wonderful Life when you can get to hear the real Zuzu!!!!

  

On Tuesday morning, driving into work, I got very excited when I heard someone being interviewed on the radio.

While many other people were probably tuning into other stations and getting exercised about the death of the Korean leader or the euro crisis, I was instead immersed in an interview with a woman whose name I didn’t even know but who has just happened to play a small but highly significant role in a cultural phenomenon which has always had a big impact on me.

For yes, I was listening to the voice of Zuzu.

You know –- Zuzu.

Zuzu of “Zuzu’s petals” fame?

Come on you must know!

If you are still wondering what on earth I am prattling on about (and fear not, I get that a lot) Zuzu was the name of one of the children in the ultimate Christmas film. It is mine and many other people’s favourite movie of all time – it is, of course, the truly magnificent It’s A Wonderful Life.

I got to hear the voice of the legend that is Zuzu – real name Karolyn Grimes – when she was talking to Nicky Campbell on Radio Five Live.

The ever-entertaining Mr Campbell is a man who has effortlessly interviewed world leaders, royals and stars of stage and screen and yet for once he seemed genuinely star struck and somewhat humbled. For he knew as I did that this was Zuzu – the one who said “every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings”.

And I shared his sense of awe.

It isn’t hard to see why this film means so much to so many and why it will have millions weeping into their Christmas puds as it is shown again over the festive period (it is also at the Little Theatre in Bath on Christmas Eve). It is just one of those remarkable films where once it gets you, you stay ‘got’.

I remember seeing it for the first time on a cold, wet Saturday afternoon when I was just keen to watch anything and it appeared unheralded on the BBC2 schedules. As I sat open-mouthed in admiration it became, from that day forth, (and it is about 30 years now) my number one film.

I watch it at least once a year and if I ever want to remind myself what a softie I am I will just watch the last 15 minutes again and blub like a Gazza. Frankly, if you don’t cry watching It’s A Wonderful Life it is not because there is anything wrong with the movie – it is because there is something wrong with you.

As Zuzu and Nicky Campbell pointed out this beautiful fantasy piece has a timeless quality. It features a man in financial problems (2011 – check) being screwed over by an evil banker (2011– check) who is only bought back from the brink by a loveable angel (2011 – err, not quite).

The thing that ‘saves’ him is to see what life would have been like if he had never been born and I can guarantee there isn’t a single person who will have watched this film who won’t have asked themselves that same question afterwards.

It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.

So I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas but if you do need a lift then just say hello to Zuzu and her petals again. Atta boy Clarence.

Sad day for us proud old punk rockers....

So farewell then Mr McClaren.

As many of the people reading this will know, I am very much a child of the punk revolution. I was a babe-in-arms (well 13ish) when punk really took off in 1977 and it is fair to say it truly changed my life. The music excited and inspired me (it still does incidentally) and it put me on a musical journey that has never ended to this day. I may not look as 'punky' as I used to but in my heart that is what I still am.

Therefore I was sad to hear yesterday of the death of Malcolm McClaren, the svengali manager of the pioneering punks The Sex Pistols.

He may have been a bit of a wide boy and a player (although to be fair he never pretended to be anything else) but this guy had a massive influence on all the lives of those of us who believe punk truly changed our lives forever.

My own favourite band, The Stranglers, may have pre-dated them (and American heroes The Ramones certainly did) but it was The Sex Pistols that propelled punk to the surface and as a result many of the bands we all know and love got deals, made records and the rest as they say is history. Glorious, unpredictable history.

This sad death has also prompted some great punk nostalgia. Nicky Campbell on Radio Five this morning was talking about his punk days (he called himself Nic-O-Tine in 1977) and he talked about his first 'pogo'. I can still remember mine – I was on holiday with a friend, Nigel, in Prestatyn in 1978 and I bounced up and down on the spot to Five Minutes by The Stranglers and Ca Plane Pour Moi by Belgian pop-punkster Plastic Betrand. Bouncing up and down on the spot..yep, we called that dancing. Happy days.

To be honest I would never list The Sex Pistols in my 'best ever' bands list (when I saw them again a couple of years ago on their comeback tour I realised they had made four killer singles and a couple of cracking album tracks but there was a lot of 'filler' too) but, like every pop fan who acknowledges The Beatles I know the debt I owe to those boys. And they simply wouldn't have broken through without Malcolm's guiding (manipulating?) hand.

So farwell Mr C. A genuine original. A genuine character. A genuine loss.

Did they 'lie me to the moon' all those years ago?

What is your earliest childhood memory?

Some people can answer this question instantly and often seem to recall in great detail staring up out of a pram or, in one case that I read, being in their mother’s womb.

I call these people fantasists.

For me, sadly, my earliest memories are only around the age of 5 or 6.

The first was being chosen to be one of the three kings at my school’s Nativity and wondering, in my own infantile way, why the baby Jesus wanted this thing I gave him called ‘Frankincense’ (pictured here) when I was sure he would have preferred toys.

I can also recall saying to my fellow two kings (Nigel Postings and Lawrence Green) that we would one day live in a house together – as you do at that age. I barely ever spoke to ‘King One’ Lawrence again but Nigel went on to be best man at my wedding, so our early Royal connections clearly worked.

Anyway . . . my second earliest memory is being got up out of bed by my parents to watch the first moon landing – the 40th anniversary of which we are celebrating this week.

For somebody with a vivid imagination, this was a source of great wonderment to me. I remember for years afterwards thinking how on earth could a man walk on that little ball in the sky when to me a trip into town on the bus was an epic journey.

Of course, as childhood wide-eyed innocence gives way to latter-day cynicism, I then went through my “it was all a giant hoax phase”. Now I’m not a great believer in conspiracy theories, be they about Princess Diana, JFK or even Michael Jackson (although I did say even at the time that it wasn’t MJ at that O2 press conference pictured left) but the more I tentatively investigated the moon landings the more I started to have my doubts.

Fuelled no doubt by that highly watchable 1978 movie Capricorn One about a faked trip to Mars, I started to wonder whether the whole thing was just a political stunt to get one over on the Russians during the height of the Cold War.

I quoted the evidence about the flag not moving, the mystery of the shadows and the fact that the ‘moon rock’ was apparently identical to material found in Antarctica, to query the whole mission. And it seems I’m not alone – this is a ‘biggie’ in the hoax/conspiracy movement.

Well, I’m pleased to say, that my doubting Thomas phase is now over. Although science and scientific discovery is not usually high on my agenda of interest, I’ve watched a number of TV programmes about the moon landings of late and experienced much of the wide-eyed naivety I felt as that five year old.

Yes, I could still argue with some conviction that $30 billion would have been far, far better spent on ending world poverty but the truth is, I think we as a planet should have oodles of pride in this amazing achievement. Will it ever be repeated? Will man ever walk again on the surface of the moon? Maybe not – but at least we can say “been there, done that” about it.

One final point about the whole expedition was raised by the splendid Nicky Campbell who I wake up to every morning on my beloved Radio Five Live. He said he remembered as a child watching the moon landing pictures and being disappointed by the ‘photo quality’. He thought Star Trek did interplanetary exploration films much better than the real thing!

This actually got me thinking the opposite. After I’d heard him talk I pondered on just how incredible it is that we managed to get pictures from the moon at all. After all shouldn’t we impressed (or depressed?) that we managed to get live moon pics and yet half of Bath can’t even pick up Channel Five or Freeview?