ENGLAND'S DREAMING

BABYLON'S BURNING
Babylon is burning, baby, can't cha see? Babylon is burning with anxiety.

(Image copyright: Chris Wormell)

All this punk nostalgia is a double edged thing.

On Thursday night I went to see the 1970s band the Rick Kids play the O2 in Islington. In 2016, they look like a glam punk super group: Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols) on bass and vocals, Rusty Egan (The Skids, Visage) on drums, Midge Ure (Ultravox and, um, Slick) on rhythm guitar and vocals, supplemented by none other than Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp (below, right) on lead guitar and vox in place of Steve New. The very tall Spand was endearingly humble, gushing that the Rich Kids were ‘The best group I’ve ever seen and I never thought I’d be standing on stage with them.’

At least three of the 2016 Kids must be millionaires, so to see them together performing the one album they made Ghosts of Princes in Towers, when they clearly don’t need the money, was quite touching. Proudly showing off his Mod roots, Matlock and the band also ripped through a great version of the Small Faces’ ‘Here Comes the Nice’.

Outside, the atmosphere was very 1970s too. London was humid and there was a very edgy atmosphere on EU Referendum day. At Angel Underground station it was packed because the trains were all screwed up because of rain and flooding. A white sports top wearing, young guy couldn’t get on a train and punched the doors in frustration. When they opened again because there were so many people jammed in the carriages, another guy, dressed all in black with tattoos, leaned out and yelled ‘I’ll break your f***in’ arms, you f***in’ c***!’ It didn’t kick off, but it was close. Outside the Tube station, IN campaigners were urging everyone to vote in a referendum that would decide whether we remained part of Europe or not – very 1975.

On Friday morning, I admit things hadn’t gone the way I wanted. As a nation, by democratic mandate, we’ve turned our back on Europe and, by implication, made all the immigrants working and living here feel unwelcome. Things weren’t too bad on Welling High Street that morning. The amusingly named Giggling Sausage, the café run by a Turkish family, was full; in Cruisin’ Records, the amiable Barbadian man who’s often in there and has lived in London for years joked ‘I’d better pack my bags, then.’ We laughed and the bloke behind the counter sardonically commented, ‘It’s not the end of the world – yet.’

Much as there were (maybe) legitimate and reasonable arguments for leaving, the whole referendum debate was hijacked by the kind of gutter politics I thought we’d seen the last of with the National Front. A courageous MP was murdered and right wing idiots insulted both the charity set up in her honour and her Trafalgar Square memorial service. This is the sort of 1970s nostalgia I can do without. The Ruts’ ‘Babylon’s Burning’ was written nearly forty years ago, but today the lyrics have never felt more uncomfortably relevant:

You’ll burn as you work

You’ll burn as you play

Positively smouldering

With ignorance and hate

Regular readers will remember that last year I reviewed the Doctor Who story ‘The Zygon Invasion’. At the time, I felt it was a rather hysterical allegory about immigration, extremism and racial integration. Today, I can see that my favourite TV show was once again ahead of the game: things are so serious that this isn’t the time for subtlety. For those people who haven’t seen it, I direct your attention to the Doctor’s moving speech at the end of part two, ‘The Zygon Inversion’.

As a family, this morning we talked about the idea of leaving England for sunnier climes; it’s not entirely outside the realms of possibility. The kids were all in favour, particularly if it means 24/7, all year sunshine. I can’t help thinking that the same idea will occur to all people of a liberal outlook like myself – depart for countries with a sympathetic attitude and cleaner air. Part of me thinks it would serve the OUT lobby right if, in a delicious irony, all the people who make British culture such a rewarding, cosmopolitan and respectful place emigrated.

But is that cowardice, just because we don’t need this fascist groove thang? Looking at Facebook today, I know all my friends to a man and woman are concerned about the future of dear old Blighty. I know what the Doctor would do: he’d stay and make the UK a better place. In fact, he’s already started – Peter Capaldi and John Hurt have proudly revealed their political colours this year with their support for the junior doctors.

 Whatever happens, Britain is a different place now.

BRITAIN LAST

NOT ON MY WATCH
Despite recent events, a better world is possible. 

This has to stop. Now.

It’s 2016. With digital communication, we now have access to more information about different cultures and religions than we’ve ever had before. We have gay marriage, female church ministers and respect for multiple faiths is taught in most British schools.

That’s why the killings in Orlando and the murder of MP and human rights campaigner Jo Cox, dreadful events in themselves, are so appalling.

Really, there should be no excuse today for the ignorance and hatred that led to these tragedies. The potential for informed education, whether through a structured system or on a personal level, is almost limitless. The problems start when unhappy people look for places online to have their prejudices reinforced, and unfortunately there are far too many websites and forums where that’s the case – join the ignorant herd and bleat the same sorry tune.

I live in South London and, as much as there are many decent people here that I have the pleasure of knowing, there’s also an ugly right wing element. There’s a pub at the bottom of the hill where no black faces are welcome. Yesterday, the clientele’s day was made when England beat Wales in Euro 2016, meaning that it was apparently OK to behave drunkenly on the street outside and shout offensive remarks at passers-by. My dream is to sit down with just one of these guys – they’re all men – and through reasoned and intelligent debate, convince them that they could live in a better world. That won’t happen, because a) I know it would become a pointless shouting match and b) they’re perversely proud of being ignorant.

A few years ago I’d arranged to meet a friend for a drink in central London on Saturday. Then the 7/11 bomb attacks happened. We spoke on the phone and wondered about calling it off, but I believed – and still do – that being intimidated into fear is what terrorists and extremists want. So we met up as planned. We were the only people in the pub apart from the barman, which is perhaps why we had such a great time.

I look at the innocence, optimism and multi culturalism in my youngest step-daughter and I know that a better world is possible. Idiots like Nick Griffin are already footnotes in history and Nigel Farage won’t be far behind. I firmly believe that that better world starts at home: grow up in an atmosphere of ignorance and there’s a strong chance that one day you’ll be passing on the same bigoted infection to your own children. It’s not always the case, but I’ve seen it happen too many times on my own doorstep.

Education is the way ahead. Arm yourselves.

THE STONE ROSES, Etihad Stadium, Manchester 15 June 2016

LOVE SPREADS
My first outdoor gig of the summer is a triumph. 

Mani: "Anyone got any requests?"

Steve said, “I’ve got two tickets for The Stone Roses in Manchester because I can’t go. Do you want them?”

Why not? I have wealth now and am properly self-employed again.

The last time I was in Manchester was in 1996 to see Oasis play the football stadium at Maine Road. (I stayed overnight then – this time, I’m training it back in the small hours). On that occasion, after the gig, the ex-wife, friends and I ventured out to sample the Mancunian nightlife. People really did wear t-shirts with a packet of fags stuffed up one sleeve.

In ‘96, the biggest ever bomb attack by the IRA on British soil took place in Manchester and it’s twenty years to the day as I step off the train at Piccadilly. Two hundred people were injured in the blast but, astonishingly and miraculously, no one was killed. In the years after the explosion, the city centre has been completely rebuilt. The steel, glass and concrete tentacles of redevelopment snake out from the railway station through dilapidated Victorian streets, and the city as a whole reminds me of New York, as it seems to be built on a uniform grid system. The moment you leave the station there are helpful signposts at almost every road junction (not like London, then).

Typically for a British summer’s day, there’s rain, although the weather brightens up considerably by the evening. On these drizzly grey streets, it’s easy to believe a double decker bus nearly crashed into Steven Morrissey and Ian Curtis was abandoned too soon. The fabled, dour Northern sense of humour is in evidence in a homeless camp opposite the station with a sign that reads, ‘If the tent’s a-rockin’, don’t come knockin’’.

Here It Comes

After a chat with the politest ticket tout I’ve ever met (who’s sorry, but he can’t do anything with just one ticket, but have a good night), I install myself in my vertigo-threatening seat (left), directly opposite the main stage.

First up on an eclectic supporting bill are nearby Stockport’s Blossoms. With long shaggy hair and a drummer in a tight black t-shirt designed to show off his biceps, they look like they should be bashing out REO Speedwagon anthems. They kind of are, with the addition of Stranglers-style keyboard swirls. Blossoms are efficiently tuneful – and it all makes sense on the tough psychedelic rock of their closing number – but I’ll say this: Mumford and Sons have a lot to answer for.

Chronixx bring reggae from Jamaica. There’s no doubting their commitment to the ways of Rastafari, but me their performance sounds like a private jam session rather than a festival set. Their finest moment is a cover of Bob Marley’s ‘Everything's Gonna Be Alright’, inspiring the first crowd singalong of the day just as the sun begins to shine.

Bloody hell, that was high.

Public Enemy really kick things up a gear with their political rap, storming through ‘Fight the Power’ and ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’, together with the delightful surprise of a DJ scratch version of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. At the end of their set, Chuck D exhorts everyone to shout ‘F*** racism, f*** separatism’ and make the Black Power hand salute. It’s easy to see why the Manic Street Preachers admire Public Enemy and got them to produce a remix of ‘Repeat’.

What The World Is Waiting For

Before The Stone Roses come on, the PA plays the Sex Pistols, Led Zeppelin and Isaac Hayes’ ‘Theme from Shaft’. This is appropriate, because sonically the band exist somewhere between all three; tonight, more than ever, guitarist John Squire is channelling the spirit of Jimmy Page.

Live, the real star of The Stone Roses is drummer Reni. His drumming is effortlessly inventive and expressive, and I’d say the like hasn’t been since Keith Moon shrugged off this mortal coil. He’s complimented perfectly by bassist Mani, dressed from head to foot in white denim (top), which makes him the coolest man on the stage, if not the coolest man in Manchester. Frontman Ian Brown was never the strongest singer in the world, but in the context of the rambling drum patterns, dark funk of the bass and soaring guitar lines, his stoner vocals make sense. His lyrics about chemically enhanced romantic unions and surges of messianic self-belief are as life affirming as they ever were.

It’s obvious how this quartet inspired Oasis, but, for all their magnificence, they were really only the Gallagher brothers plus a gang of sidemen. The Stone Roses are the real deal, a four-piece unit in the classic band tradition: remove one of those pieces and the chemistry is gone (and we saw the catastrophic result of that all those years ago at the Reading Festival).

They’re all here, the perfect soundtrack to a summer’s night – ‘Elephant Stone’, ‘Sally Cinnamon’, ‘Sugar Spun Sister’, ‘I Wanna Be Adored’, even ‘Mersey Paradise’, plus two numbers I don’t recognise which might be the recent singles. ‘Waterfall’ is the immaculate centrepiece of the set, which is just as well as I have to leave for the train straight afterwards. Following the helpful signage, I leave the stadium with the opening chords of ‘Fool’s Gold’ echoing behind me. A security man who lets me out says it’s never the same if you have to leave early, but I’m pleased that I at last got to see and hear a band that, in The Stone Roses, made one of the defining rock albums of all time.

On the way back, I’m marooned in Derby for a couple of hours. A nice town, a river runs through it and, reflecting on a joyous evening, I sit and watch its thundering weir. It’s a waterfall.

Photographs: copyright Robert Fairclough

STAND UP FOR STANDARDS

PUBLIC SERVICE BREAKDOWN
It's a steep drop from the efficient, nationalised public services in days of yore to the unreliable, privatised businesses of today's rip-off Britain.

Come back, Blakey, all is forgiven. (Image copyright: ITV)

I know the UK wasn’t exactly a socialist utopia in the 1970s, but as far as the public services went, when they were nationalised they were generally efficient, and if something went wrong it was usually fixed the same day. You didn’t get a load of attitude or, worse, dishonesty.

In broken Britain it’s a different story. Here’s just a few incidents of public service breakdowns that have happened to me recently.

1.    Myself and Dawn caught the number 89 bus to Bexleyheath on Tuesday. She got on ahead, bleeped her Oyster card and was about to go upstairs when mine bleeped I was out of funds and so I had to get off. Dawn asked for credit – i.e. a ticket so she could get on a later bus – and the bus driver said no. The conversation then went something like this: 

Dawn: I’ve had one before.

The bus driver ignores her.

Dawn: I said I’ve had one before.

Bus Driver: I was talking to [me].

Dawn: No you weren’t. You said I couldn’t have one.

He ignores her, prints out a credit ticket and grudgingly hands it over without saying anything.

Me: Thank you very little.

OK, I didn’t say that, but I wish I had done. A few weeks ago I got on another bus and the driver didn’t know if it called at a stop that was on his route. He was entirely dependent on his satnav.

2.    We got a black cab from Lewisham to Welling last Saturday. Instead of taking the direct route, the driver turned off into an estate and went along the side roads to clock the fare up to £25. He could tell we’d had a few and thought that we wouldn’t notice and just pay up as we wanted to get home quickly. When he dropped us off, I told him I was only paying £15 as that’s what the journey should have cost. The driver gave me some verbal about it being more expensive because it was ‘that time of night’; it was 20 to 11, hardly late for a taxi. Dawn used her phone to take a picture of his cab number and we politely told him were going to report him. He roared off, tyres squealing, and gave me the finger.

3.    A couple of weeks ago on my birthday, we took a cab from Welling to the pub in Lewisham where we were meeting friends. Dawn was rather surprised at the quote of £16 when, in the past, the same journey had cost 8. Soon after me and the girls got in the mini cab, things took a bizarre turn. Again, instead of taking the main road, the driver followed the questionable, repetitive instructions to ‘turn left, turn right’ from his satnav which put us somewhere in Kidbrooke village, miles out of the way. Unable to ‘turn left’ into a road as it was blocked by an oncoming van waiting to exit, he actually turned off the engine and sat waiting. I politely pointed out that it might be better to drive on and take another turning. The driver reacted as if this common sense idea had never occurred to him.

It took 50 minutes to get to Lewisham when it should have been a 15-20 minute journey. We paid the guy off as, by now, we just wanted to get to the pub as people had been waiting for us for over half an hour. Dawn was rightly incensed, but when she phoned the cab company, at first the controller at the other end wouldn’t pick up. When he finally did because she persisted, he said, ‘I know what you’re going to say Dawn, and you’ll have to ring after 10 tomorrow morning to complain.’ He was clearly in cahoots with the driver in trying to sting us for double the money. Dawn didn’t phone after 10 the next day. She went on every mini cab review site she could find and told the truth about what had happened.

4.    I was in Welling library and wanted to print something out from my laptop. The girl behind the counter immediately looked rather flustered, rummaged through piles of paper and assured me the information I needed ‘was here somewhere.’ I told her not to worry, but if she did find the info to let me know. She didn’t.

5.    I was in there this morning and I asked if there was anything wrong with the computers as they were all turned off. Saturday’s librarian truculently informed me that she hadn’t time to turn them on yet, in a tone of voice that clearly suggested it was my fault.

And so it goes on. Were things better years ago? I was a kid in the ‘70s, but I don’t remember my parents complaining a lot about the buses, trains or the services provided by our county council. Stuff worked and there wasn’t the unpleasant attitude of insulting people’s intelligence by ripping them off for as much money as possible, or so called customer service advisors being plain rude or ineffectual.

I’d like to think they’re in a minority, but some people clearly are Thatcher’s children.

iZOMBIE review

DEAD FUNNY
Let the anti-Buffy tickle your funny bone.

Monster, monster, monster!

I’ve said this before, but I’m not a huge fab of zombie fiction. The Walking Dead (2010 - ) is very well done, but I still can’t work out why Rick and co. don’t run very fast in the opposite direction or, better still, jump in a car and drive very fast in the opposite direction. Even in AMC’s fine series, the Biters are still doing that shuffling Gumby walk that couldn’t outrun a determined tortoise.

28 Days Later (2002) is still the only truly terrifying realisation of zombies I’ve seen. In that, they move like lightning and are portrayed as the rabid animals modern zombies are clearly meant to be.

(Image copyright: BBC)

Fiction about recovering from being a zombie is rather more interesting. BBC3’s In the Flesh, which ran for two series over 2013-14, was about the rehabilitation of teenager Kieren Walker (Luke Newberry, left), who became one of the undead during an apocalyptic event called ‘The Rising’. The series followed his attempts, as a sufferer of PDS – Partially Deceased Syndrome – to reintegrate with his prejudiced small village; the metaphor of outsiders trying to adapt to an unforgiving community has obvious – and, if you’ll forgive me – biting contemporary parallels. In the Flesh was excellent but for some reason the BBC didn’t go for a third series.

****

iZombie (2015 - ) has taken the survivor scenario a step further by crossing it with the police procedural genre and Neil Simon-sharp comedy. It’s the sort of thing I could watch for days with a contented feeling and a warm smile.

Medical intern Olivia Moore - 'Liv More', geddit? - (perky Rose McIver), who handily works for the police, is bitten, becomes a zombie then unaccountably wakes up in a body bag, more or less normal again. That is, apart from the need to feast on human brains. She discovers that when she does – on the grey matter of bodies in the police body shop – she acquires some of their memories, often at the point of death. Hence her subsequent crime fighting career a la iZombie.

Olivia Moore is remarkable as the heroine in this anti-Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Funny, smart and very real, like most of the little known cast she’s seized the opportunity offered her. The only TV series she was a regular in before was Power Rangers R.P.M. (2009) as the Yellow Bear RPM Ranger. I’ve never seen it, but just by that title alone you can tell it can't have been the best career move.

Ever since Buffy, US fantasy dramas have been contractually obliged to have a cool British character, and in iZombie it’s the turn of Rahul Kohli as Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti. He’s Felix to Rose’s Sarah Manning, reigning her in when she wanders off the straight and narrow and dispensing dry one-liners. The veteran in the cast is David Anders, here not playing a Brit but cheerfully amoral as fellow zombie survivor Blaine DeBeers, a former drug dealer turned Rose’s nemesis.

Malcolm Goodwin as Detective Clive Bavineaux completes the ensemble as the straight man, in the best traditions of the police procedural often putting his job on the line to back up Rose’s spectral visions. The playing between Moore and Goodwin is a joy to watch.

Part of the series’ appeal for me is its acid, Joss Whedon-esque insight into the human condition. In one episode, Rose realises that putting her career before her partner and losing him meant that ‘parts of me were already dead before I died.’ Like Shaun of the Dead (2004) before it, iZombie suggests that, if we’re not careful, modern life will turn us all into the walking dead.

OK, iZombie isn’t Orphan Black, but it’s all the livelier because of that. Recommended.

DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE 500th ISSUE EVENT, Copthorne Hotel, Windsor

A GRAND DAY OUT
Doctor Who Magazine has just reached its 500th issue. I was there at the celebratory day on Saturday 28 May.

All together now. (Image copyright: Tenth Planet)

The family had a quiet day yesterday. For Dawn and myself, this meant a duvet day eating comfort food, Facebooking and watching ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’. Say what you like about Terry Nation, but he can do grim and gritty like nobody else. His tale of a World War 2-style Earth occupation by Skaro’s finest is ideally suited to atmospheric black and white… In the evening, we asked Poppy (8) if she’d like to join us – having really got our Dalek on by now – to watch ‘The Chase’. Whenever the Daleks appeared, she grinned from ear to ear, lost in her own private, happy world. As I watched her, I reflected that when the story was originally shown in 1965, I was only a year old. Dawn wasn’t born until 1969. Poppy wasn’t even a glint in someone’s eye.

I’ll always remember Saturday 28 May 2016. I was amazed and pleased to find myself a guest at the event celebrating 500 issues of Doctor Who Magazine. It was very much a rites of passage thing for me. This is going to sound very sentimental, but the mag’s been a constant companion for me ever since I cycled to my local newsagent in Lowestoft in 1979 to buy the first issue. Throughout the highs and lows of my life – romances, college, breakdowns, employment, unemployment, births, marriages and deaths – buying the publication I still call ‘the Monthly’ (it’s variously been Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly and now Magazine) has somehow kept me going. I now write for the publishing franchise that’s been extended to The Essential Doctor Who range and the annual Doctor Who Magazine Yearbooks, so Saturday was very much a childhood dream come true.

There was a significant first. Dawn and I had persuaded her daughters Poppy and Rose (16, left and bottom) to come with us. Some life-changing things have happened to me this year: as well as digging myself out of the ditch of long-term unemployment, I’ve acquired a bride-to-be and a family. For people in Doctor Who fandom who know me of old – trouser-losing antics in Swansea, ending up in Folkestone after an alcoholic night out at the Fitzroy Tavern – this might come as a surprise, but not as much as the pleasant surprise it’s been for me. To have Rose and Poppy with us at the DWM 500, seeing their new old man signing (a surprisingly large number) of autographs, and to watch them listening in rapt attention to costume designer Alexandra Tynan talking about the origins of the Cybermen… the only words I have are ‘very moving.’

      

The event was also a great way to catch up with people I haven’t seen for years – in one case, decades. I last saw Bill Gallagher when he was editor of the fanzine Web Planet when I wrote for it in 1982. He walked up to my signing table and asked if I remembered him; he hasn’t changed a bit. Bill’s got two children of his own now.

Great memories like that happened all day. Thanks to Marcus Hearn, I got Tom Baker producer Philip Hinchcliffe to sign my novel of Target (left), the tough cop show he made after Doctor Who. This led to me buying him a drink and chatting about his other BBC drama Private Schulz (1981), HBO and my and Mike Kenwood’s imminent Callan guide. We met Target books artist Jeff Cummins in the bar and he revealed that he’d been a huge fan of the series about an existential hitman. So much so, that in the 1970s he’d drawn a portrait of Edward Woodward, who played Callan, and sent it to him. Ted duly signed it and sent to back. Of course, our next question was – hearts in mouth – did he still have it? Watch this space...

Towards the end of the day, all the guests crammed into the photo studio to have our photograph taken for posterity. I was sandwiched between Rob Shearman, writer of the TV episode ‘Dalek’ and all round nice guy, and David J. Howe, owner of Telos Publishing and all round nice guy. I don’t think it gets much better than that.

Dawn took Poppy and Rose home in the afternoon as they were a bit tired – after all, we’d had the poor dears up since 6am so we could get to Slough for 10. In their absence, I enjoyed myself to the point I ended up on the wrong train, and had to spend what was left of the night kipping on the pavement outside an Oxford college. Considering the amount of personal nostalgia generated by the event, a confused alcoholic detour on the way home was somehow appropriate (if not inevitable).

Which brings me back to watching ‘The Chase’ with Dawn and Poppy. The little munchkin is very proud of the man she now calls Dad, to the point where she delights in cuddling up to watch the great William Hartnell do his stuff.

God bless Doctor Who. And God bless Doctor Who Magazine.

Carpe diem.

Many thanks to Tom Spilsbury, Peter Ware and Emily Cook at DWM for such a grand day out.

BONFIRE NIGHT reappraisal

BURNING UP TIME
Originally issued to hostile reviews in 2002, Ostara Publishing's annotated edition of James Mitchell's fifth and final Callan novel sheds moving light on the Geordie writer's last days, explaining why Bonfire Night was so radically different.

Callan and Lonely: their last bow. (Image copyright; ATV)

For followers of the existential Secret Service hitman David Callan, his petty thief confidante Lonely and the shadowy government department known as ‘the Section’, Bonfire Night isn’t an easy book to like. That’s because it’s not an easy book to read. In place of the lean, mean, minimalist prose of James Mitchell’s earlier Callan novels A Magnum for Schneider, Russian Roulette, Death and Bright Water and Smear Job, not to mention the multitude of short stories and ground breaking scripts for the Callan TV series (1967-1972), Bonfire Night reads like a wish-fulfilment fantasy written by a man in a frantic hurry.

Twenty-seven years separate Bonfire Night and Smear Job, which ended with Callan and Lonely setting up a security business together. The Callan film, despite poor distribution, had been a hit with the critics in 1974 and Mitchell was about to begin work on his second seminal TV series, When the Boat Comes In (1976-1981). Starring former Likely Lad James Bolam as working class opportunist Jack Ford, living on Tyneside in the austere 1920s – and Bolam was an absolute revelation in the part – the TV drama and its attendant novels replaced Callan and the Section on Mitchell’s notepads (he never used a typewriter). By 2002, Mitchell was elderly, retired and living near his family back in his native North East.

The beauty of Ostara’s 2016 edition is the frank and moving Introduction by James’ son Peter. The family situation he describes sheds informative light on the bizarre story in the novel, which remodels Lonely as a computer genius and finds ex-Major Callan a millionaire businessman and the head of a surrogate family living on a vast estate in Andalusia in Spain. Every year there’s a ritual bonfire on Callan’s estate, which gives Mitchell’s last book about him its title.

By the early 2000s, Mitchell was not in good health. Peter movingly and honestly writes:

‘Like many of his television and crime writer contemporaries… [he had] alcoholic liver disease. He’d had trembling hands ever since I could remember – especially in the mornings when the porcelain coffee mug would wobble precariously between table top and lips while Dad hid his embarrassment behind the ‘Daily Mail’. Alcoholism is a chronic illness – it’s unusual for it to strike suddenly – so there were a few heavy hints dropped before a command of total cessation was forthcoming from the medical professionals…

‘Years later, after the death of his second wife Delia in 1990, he collapsed in the shower and drifted off into a coma for six weeks. That was down to the booze and he left hospital with dire warnings of serious consequences ringing in his ears. But once he got back on his feet, he reverted to type inside a fortnight. What followed were several bouts of abdominal swelling (ascites) during which he was again admitted into hospital to have litres of fluid drained from his swollen belly.

‘It was after the last of these in 2000 that he was told he had cirrhosis. “Stop drinking altogether, or die.” This plain and simple message was received loud and clear. So he stopped. James Mitchell, raconteur, bon viveur, scribbler and sot – ceased drinking alcohol on that day. There was no re-hab, no therapy, no advice, no support. He simply put the glass down and waited for something to happen. Something did happen. He began to suffer from depression.’

Peter and his father hadn’t always had a good relationship: ‘The miners’ strike in 1984 did for us in a big way. We used to have many a row, and when it came to that strike, he’s very successful, he’s living in Marloes Road in [London] W8 and I’m covering the miner’s strike and seeing a completely different world: when these worlds collided, there were sparks. I’m seeing really starving people in the 1980s, and he’s telling me that their children should be taken away from them at birth because they’re not fit to be parents. I was straight off the picket line and witnessed all these coppers from London, like the [Special Patrol Group] coming up to County Durham, waving their pay slips at the miners. It was really nasty, it was all controlled and it was really political. It was an English Civil War and typically English because it was shrouded. As a result of all that, there were four years where I didn’t speak to my father at all: nothing.’*

By 2002 Mitchell Senior relied heavily on his son and Bonfire Night was part of the healing process between them. Peter suggested to his father that losing himself in writing about some of his best loved characters might help to alleviate his depression. Peter was right: ‘He’d found a purpose in life… he was using his imagination and generally feeling less sorry for himself. Not only that, there was just a hint of the re-emergence of the James that he had been before: the old-fashioned gentleman, the engaging charmer, the incisive wit, the storyteller.’

So in Bonfire Night, the final Callan novel, the chippy, working class loner gives a final, valedictory V-sign to the establishment that exploited him. Significantly, the Section is now so impoverished that it has to plead for the help of its rich ex-assassin. For once, Callan goes back to the Section on his and Lonely’s own terms.

‘Is “Bonfire Night” a good book? As far as my Dad was concerned it was a hugely influential work. Temporarily it restored some pride and self-esteem, gave him a purpose in life and allowed him to bask in his wonderful, loving, glorious past.’

Buy the annotated edition of Bonfire Night for a poignant insight into the final act in the life of one of the UK’s great thriller writers.

* From ‘The Callan File: The Definitive Guide’, to be published later in 2016 by Miwk Publishing