The Sun comes over the Mound

Now that we are progressing through March, the Sun is getting higher and, looking out of my study window, I can see that it is now getting higher enough to send its restorative rays into my little courtyard garden that sits at the foot of the ancient earthworks known as Brack Mound.


Soon the whole garden will be bathed in light and by the Summer it becomes gloriously hot with uninterrupted sunlight all day long which heats up the Yorkshire flagstones and turns my little space into the perfect space for relaxing with not many clothes on.


It has been a slow Spring here in Sussex in the United Kingdom with, so far just some brave snowdrops, the winter flowering jasmine, the Helleboris or Easter Rose, two urns of primroses and the first of my golden croci.


Those rays of light that now percolate through the garden are having their effect though and everywhere I look I see Spring rushing to catch up. It is enough though just to see the sun brightening and giving dimensions to spaces that have been a dull grey all winter.



The croci have been long-expected and because they are so late they are, somehow, doubly welcome. Hello croci, don't rush away just because you arrived late. Here in this terracotta pot, they are the front-runners, heralding the future and, maybe the more dramatic arrival of my favourite bulbs, the tulips.



The sun is bright but the temperature has not got going yet so when I go out there for my tai chi practice, I sympathise with this pioneering bumblebee, who is obviously thinking about brass monkeys' testicles.



So it is time for Haydn, if you don't mind me saying so. If you don't know Joseph Haydn's great late masterpiece, The Seasons, then it is time to find yourself a copy to download. No composer quite captures this mood of seasonal excitement as the grand old man of classical music. Here is an extract, appropriately enough, from Spring.

The gloom of Winter demonstrates the elemental power of Nature that we can feel today as our plant life pushes, unstoppably to the surface. Winter here is dismissed by the solo singers who lead us to the joyful Spring chorus where Haydn uses the simplest of his folk song like melodies to usher in the season of joyful unfolding bidding us all to come and join in the celebration. I am there already. Simple the tune maybe but the great composer clothes it with all the subtlety and skill that you would expect from the man who practically invented the classical style single-handedly.

Tai Chi is a very hard soft style

As I told you yesterday, this week has been all about new beginnings and muddles getting sorted.

The big thing yesterday was rationalising my martial arts regime with the help of my long-suffering Kung Fu instructor, Neil Johnson. As I reported in yesterday's blog, we have decided that I should, at least for now, concentrate on our soft forms and maybe leave the hard tiger-crane kung fu style as it still seems to effect my brain which is, I hope, recovering gradually, from the brain haemorrhage I suffered in late 2008.

This business of soft and hard styles is often misunderstood.

I am not giving up hard, macho, in-yer-face kung fu for weedy, teddy bear hugging taichi. Soft and hard are more specific terms than that.

In the so-called hard style, one of the most important techniques is when you "draw up" your internal body into a position of inner strength whilst trying to keep the external body relaxed. This is difficult to achieve and, for someone of my ability ( or lack of ability), it is easy to over-do. Then I get a rush of blood to my head with all the consequent symptoms associated with my brain injury.

In tai chi the emphasis is on physical softness but, of course, to achieve that appearance of relaxation and ease of movement, you have to have, as do ballet dancers, extreme physical control and therefore muscular strength.

Our tai chi form, called Suang-Yang, is really, in English, White Crane Boxing. It is absolutely related to the hard style of White Crane Kung Fu. Also, it is both extremely difficult and demanding to do at an advanced level.

I have not gone for an easy option.

Put into martial practise, it is a devastatingly effective form of defence and attack with the moves practised to a level of as near perfection as is possible by repeating the moves endlessly in slow motion.

Anyone who has tried to do any slow motion approximations of normally fast actions, like say certain football techniques, will know how much more difficult the movements are to control at an extremely slow speed.

Recently, I have tried to minimise my concentration on Suang-Yang. I have only just realized that I was resenting the fact that I will probably never be safe doing full contact kung fu again after my brain damage so I have been taking it out on this wonderful and complicated form.

Yesterday I accepted my fate, well to a certain extent, and I have gone back to my love of this absorbing style with real enthusiasm.

I spent an hour doing it with my instructor yesterday morning and then went to a one hour class at the Kung fu club in the evening.

In case you still think it is easy, let me tell you that when I got home from the club, I lay on my sofa and fell instantly asleep. I woke up again, of course later but when I went to bed last night I slept the sleep of the unconscious and awoke this morning with a body complaining that almost all my muscles had been pushed to a level they had not felt for some time.

So I am planning to go to class again tomorrow night and, hopefully also return to the club at the end of the evening for the half hour weapons practise where I can use my Chinese straight sword and seven-and-a-half foot staff. These patterns too are really soft forms as in the above definition and they too are not to be thought of as easy. They are not but they are a lot of fun and I am very happy that I will be able to continue with them.

In time, again as I said yesterday, I should be able to resume Kung Fu Dog Style with its exciting rolling and shouting but which also does not demand that internal drawing up and, who knows, if I got good enough at the soft style, I might even, one day, get to see how the so-called hard style really needs you to understand it well enough to make it a soft style too.

I am trying to get my writing and my martial arts sorted

It was the start of a new week for all of us but for me I feel a tranche of new beginnings.

The sun has begun to rise high enough above the mound at the back of my house to send direct sunlight into my back garden and not only have the spring bulbs started to run but I am newly energised too. It was great to come out here again this morning, not only to admire the view, but to have my kung fu lesson and to work out what I should and shouldn't be doing at this stage of my recovery from brain haemorrhage.

This weekend also saw me finish the "final" (hohoho) draft of my novel and my first full-length on-line solo poetry reading which consisted of a sequence of poems that I have written over the last year and which reflect my life back to me with profound effect - an event that also gave me some extra confidence in pushing my writing forward.

This was the third performance event associated with my writing in three consecutive weeks and, I have to admit it, I have loved every one of them. If I am honest I should also say that part of the enjoyment was the performance and part was the fact that each event was seen as a success by the audience.

This push in my writing has coincided with a similar re-thinking of my martial arts practice. Ever since my last kung fu lesson, three weeks ago, I have felt that I have to be careful with it because I am still feeling symptoms in my head after my brain haemorrhage.

I wrote last week that I have decided that I don't want to die of kung fu and this is true but I do love doing it and I also enjoy its beneficial effects on my health.

So today, at my weekly kung fu lesson with my instructor, we tackled this issue head on. If my health is not up to it then I should not keep fighting reality. There may be aspects of tiger-crane kung fu, involving the internal bodily pulling up, which may just not suit my delicate and damaged brain.

Maybe this is a good time to sort out just what I can do and what is best put to one side.

So, the plan for now is to get "brilliant" at suang-yang, our form of tai-chi, to continue with my weapons and to focus on those challenging and meditative chi-gong techniques such as the Da Mo exercises until I am well enough to concentrate my kung fu energies on the Dog Style which I first began to learn when I visited China in 2008.

Dog Style Kung Fu is, as you can see, aggressive enough and

involves enough ground work,

rolling

flexibility,

kicking

striking

and grace, to keep me fit and enthused for a long time to come.

I may well return to the rest of my club's kung fu styles but, if I don't, then this is a good bottom line for me. All these techniques from tai chi through my sword and seven-and-a-half-foot staff patterns to the rolls and take downs of the dog style can all be done without the internal pressure of tiger-crane and they would also be a formidable battery of techniques if I ever had to defend myself on the street. Not, as we are always expected to say, that martial arts have anything to do with good old-fashioned fighting.

They are also, in the spirit of my recent writing experience, techniques that I can actually still be good at! I have had to admit to myself, and I guess to you now, that I like to be good at what I do. Sorry about that but there you go!

Unpublished Material - Chapter Forty-two

Forty-Two

That’s right, my friend. Dig out the dirt. I swam in it, wallowed in it, luxuriated in it and satiated myself in it. Dig it out – real dirt. Then see what it’s like. Pull it out, get your hands dirty then expose it to the sun. When all the filth cracks and blisters, remember me.

The afternoon light shed an elegiac glow over the town warning of autumn. It cast its nostalgic spell over Stephen as he made his way to St. Pius’ Church Hall on the sleepiest side of town, tucked away behind the shops in a tiny road that you would only go down if you wanted to visit the hall. Stephen suspected that not many people would feel that particular urge. He had walked down busy streets of afternoon shoppers and come across the odd band of young hippies – now, it seemed like they were members of his own secret society. Today though they seemed frail and vulnerable as the edge went off the Summer sun - he hoped that they would survive the first frost. In the heat of the afternoon, winter was still a remote threat but the seasonal clock had moved on and Stephen felt an involuntary shudder. It could have been the light, the temperature or a feeling of guilt. He had not told Dys about the letter and she had not asked about it.

Rows of wooden chairs had been prepared for the lecture in the dingy church hall but only the front two rows were occupied - and even then, not all the places were taken. The high-ceilinged Edwardian building was no longer the respectable meeting place for St. Pius’ pious congregation. The church, one of many surplus to requirement Church of England buildings was long demolished. The land had been sold to the council to build flats for the elderly and the hall was now used for various ill-attended community projects aimed at occupying the minds of local impoverished pensioners. Crumbling plaster and descending damp patches broke up the monotony of the dirty magnolia walls. At one end there was a stage with faded blue velvet curtains forming a backdrop to the afternoon’s main attraction. An elderly man, in a grey tweed suit, was standing stage left with a portable gramophone on a table. He was tremblingly manipulating the stylus onto a vinyl record whilst, centre stage, isolated on a shabby leather chair, sat, Stephen assumed, Ivy Cooper, once a glamorous singing star, now an elderly plump woman with thin hennaed hair and a fleshy rouged face enlivened by an inaccurately applied smudge of scarlet on her lips. Her beauty had faded in a similar way to St. Pius’ Church Hall Stephen thought, unkindly. Both had survived beyond their glory days to become crumbling symbols of their own obsolescence. Whilst the gramophone produced a faint recording of Ivy singing The Desert Song. Stephen guessed it was one of her own performances by the way she sat smiling at the ceiling whilst some of the audience sang along with it in quivering voices. Stephen, unsure of why he was there, sat at the back and watched.

The music finished, there was a clatter of applause, the old man lifted the needle, dropped it back onto the vinyl, retrieved it a second time and walked carefully back to a seat at the side of the stage. Ivy waited for him to go with an instinct born of a lifetime’s experience then rose to her feet. She wore a tight floral dress, mostly orange chrysanthemums on a red background, that had been designed for a younger and shapelier Ivy Cooper but now just emphasised the rolls of fat that were trying to escape such cruel confinement. Lighting a cigarette and inhaling it, she allowed a theatrical pause before allowing her girlish, unnaturally high-pitched voice to project around the hall. As she spoke, her bright red mouth was set in a perpetually sweet smile - a technique acquired by all young soubrettes in the Thirties.
“For our last record, I thought I would keep my favourite.” She made a simpering giggle and let the hoped for murmur of excitement settle in the audience.
“I have the fondest of memories for the show I did with Mr. Ivor Novello many years ago now. He was such an amusing man and so generous too. He could be so romantic and he was always quick to praise any little quality that his co-stars might possess. I found him quite delightful to work with and whenever I hear this song, I am reminded of dear Ivor and the smell of the theatre in those days when people truly appreciated style and romance.”
There was a ripple of agreement from the audience who, somewhat surprisingly, all appeared to have memories, accurate or not, of more glamorous days.
“Unfortunately, we never did record this lovely duet together but, if you are ready Mr. Snewin, here is an equally dear friend, Mr Al Bowly in Ivor’s role. We recorded this not long before Al was tragically killed during the London Blitz so many years ago now.”

Throwing a thespian look at the nervous Mr. Snewin, she sat down and instantly, as if the chair had magic powers, her girlishness vanished. The music’s youthful romanticism had survived but it was made poignant by the elderly recording and the ancient gramophone player. Ivy slumped in her chair puffing on her cigarette – she was an old woman again.

“It was nice wasn’t it?” was the much repeated comment as the old ladies made their way out but enjoyment did not show on their faces.
“The music was lovely,” they all agreed.
They had all come back from a happier time - back to their aches and pains and the memories of their losses. Their woolly hats and tweed coats warned Stephen that not everyone had been celebrating a Summer of Love. He was aware too that they edged away from him; a chasm had opened between the generations and as they inched past him, some of them whispered their disapproval of his appearance: “disgusting…” a gentle old lady said too loudly once she was out in the street. “Long hair like that and nothing on his feet but those sandals… They don’t know how to behave, young people these days. He shouldn’t have been allowed in”.

Ivy waited for them to leave before making her own way down the hall. She was not firm on her feet and it was some time before she reached Stephen.
“Miss Cooper?
“Yes, dear” came a deep voice unrecognisable from the stage persona but with an accent matured in thespian extravagance.
“My name’s Stephen Dearsley. I wonder if you remember someone called Austin Randolph?”
“Jesus be praised!” she exclaimed with a course laugh. “Talk about grave-digging! And why should a young man like you be asking me questions like that?”
He told her and she guffawed in disbelief.
“And what the Hell has he done to warrant a book, I should like to know? Apart from marrying me that is! He disappeared with the bath water years ago, darling. If you want to know all about him, ask away, I could tell you loads.”
“Could we go somewhere to discuss it?”
He tried to sound earnest and interested but he heard Mark’s disapproving voice scoffing at his persistence with the past. He was giving way to bourgeois values, helping to perpetuate a past that should be giving way to the Age of Aquarius. He had tried to stop caring about Austin Randolph and the odd incoherent story that he was trying to construct. Ivy Cooper had been sent to tempt him back but his curiosity still mingled with guilt as he thought of his friends. In this desolate place, in the battle for Stephen’s mind, Austin Randolph reasserted his power.
“If you let me get my money for this little bit of business, you can take me home” she said. “Have you got a car?”
“No, I don’t drive.”
“Well, we’ll have to take the bus then - I have a little flat quite near to here so we can go there if you want. I’m quite full of curiosity to find out what the old bugger’s been up to!”

Back on the trail, Stephen used Austin’s money to buy two single bus fares, one with an old age pensioner’s pass, and a small bottle of whisky from Ivy’s local off licence.
“Usual brand, madam?” said the shop assistant, a middle aged man with a bored expression, passing her the cheapest bottle. When Stephen paid, the man rolled his eyes wearily.

Unpublished Material - Chapters Forty and Forty-one

Forty

Austin Randolph, brown eyes burning, his black shirt sits handsomely on his inflated chest. Hatred brings back his energy, brings back his pride. He remembers those Frampton days, riding to hounds, that same taste in his mouth, the excitement of blood, the fox and him, both predators, both the hunted, breathless, eye-to-eye, sharing a truth.

Moseley’s Fascists, British fascists, are out on the streets, they are stoning the Jews, British Jews in their East End homes. Austin Randolph, punches, straight to the face. He is one of the best - fearless, committed, easily roused even though he knows no Jews and never hated them or so he claimed later. It is that same old feeling, the excitement, the taste in his mouth; the newfound hatred for something other than himself. It is the hatred of an angry man.

Arrested and locked up in an East End cell, his knuckles bloodied, his lips split, Austin Randolph is a hero for some but an enemy in the making for other more innocent folk. He is running with the hounds, unthinking, thrilled to have found a role again.

A loving wife bails him out, she signs the cheque with a white-gloved hand. They kiss on his bleeding lips; she devours him, loving his anger, bursting his wounds; the pain is his price and his pain is her joy, his blood on her powdered face wiped off by that white-gloved hand.

One more photograph in the English papers: “Singing Star’s Husband In Fascist Attack.” Alone with her coffee, in a Berlin café, Emilia sees it. She hates his anger, his pain and his blood. Emilia Jefferies, his rejected love, still loves him in spite of this.

Forty-One

Don’t forget me, my young friend. I am waiting for you. Still here, waiting whilst you unravel the past. It was not all pure and sweet. It never is. Put your young brain to the task. Focus and penetrate. You, all of you, can learn from us. Don’t sever the thread. I am waiting for you.

Now fully bearded, his hair growing long, his new gold-rimmed glasses slipping slightly down his nose, Stephen was dressed in a new but crumpled linen shirt and rough woven trousers of indistinct shades of straw. He was sitting in the recently perfected lotus position in the sun on the white wooden chest in Dys’s window. He looked at his brown toes, a symbol of the journey that he had travelled that summer. As his skin turned nut brown like the seedpod of a greenhouse plant brought on by the sun now he too was coming to fruition.

Dys had come back after the party at the Toadstool; she did not say where she had been or who she had been with and Stephen did not ask. He had learnt, with some difficulty, not to encroach on her private space. She had gone away again many times, always suddenly and without explanation but mostly they had been together - practising yoga, swimming in the sea, lying naked in the sun on the roof of Gresham Villas but always their preference was to return to their bed in Dys’ whitewashed room, the centre of their lives. They saw more of Mark, Rosalie, Mick and the others; there were late night debates and sitar ragas in Paul’s incense-perfumed room, extravagant gatherings at the Toadstool and bonfire parties on the beach where the sweet smell of marijuana mingled with the ozone as they watched the sea from sunset to the new dawn. They were like members of a mystic nomadic tribe moving through a landscape of their own making with Stephen now one of their number.

Dys came into the room, lightly, like a ballerina and threw her arms around him.
“You’re like a guru sitting there lost in your own meditation. What were you thinking?”
“About you, I guess. I was thinking how little I know about you and yet I seem to know all about you and to have always known you.”
“You know all there is to know,” she whispered as she pushed her fingers through his hair. “I’m here, my long-haired man. You see me, feel me, talk to me. What else is there to know?”
“Oh, I know that’s true but I have so many old habits. I can’t help wanting to know about the past, your past. It is just how I am I suppose. I’m a historian at heart. I want to know where you come from and things like that.”
“It doesn’t mean anything, honestly, it doesn’t.”

She sat down behind him on the chest, her legs enfolded round his torso as she slowly massaged his neck.
“The past doesn’t exist for me, my love. I died and was reborn - you won’t know me any better by knowing my past. That’s all labels, that’s all. You know, ‘Here’s the lovely Dys, eighteen, loves horse-riding, reading and meeting people. Her hobbies are stamp collecting and big game hunting’. You can’t sum people up like that. I don’t care what you were like when you were twelve, I want you now. It’s always sad people that are obsessed with the past - they are victims of it. It used to make you sad too I could see it. Why should we dig it all up? Who cares? So, my love, don’t try to trap me under one of your definitions.”
“But what if...”
“Oh no you don’t” she laughed kissing him to silence.

So they went to the beach and behaved like lovers do, walking along the water’s edge, they deliberately sought out romantic locations, settings eroticised by myth. His life, at that moment, was condensed into the wet sand under his feet and the warmth of Dys’ hand in his. The sea lulled them and silenced their words and once more, their world was telescoped until it was an abstract and joyful haze of blue.

When they got back to the house, Dys scooped up an envelope from the doormat.
“It’s for you,” she said. “See you later.”
She had gone before he opened it.
“Dear Mr. Dearsley,
This might be helpful for your book.”
The typewritten note had no address or signature but enclosed was cheaply printed notice advertising a lecture series to be held in a church hall in Hove. One entry had been circled in ink - it was a lecture that night. “Those Were The Days - A Talk on Musical Comedy. Guest Speaker Miss Ivy Cooper.”

One step forward to two paces back

I have swallowed a few of those unpalatable things known as Home Truths today.

A couple of weeks ago I was feeling really good in the fitness stakes - I had been going to the gym regularly on the new regime designed by my therapeutic personal trainer and I had an amazing kung fu lesson with my instructor Neil. I was planning to go back to kung fu classes full time this week too. Well that was the plan.

The day after that Kung fu lesson I felt really bad again. This was in the week when I went to the eye hospital to see a consultant about my recurring, post brain haemorrhage, double vision. The eye consultant showed me the latest images from my last brain scan which I hadn't seen before and I was, I have to admit, shocked to see that even though the haemorrhage has receded, it is still there - an aggressive little blot on my brain.

I had to rest up after my over-exertion and hated it.

I then got a cold and got sent home by Ricardo saying that I should make sure that I am feeling good again before carrying on.

I am well on my way back again now but yesterday I spoke to Kung Fu Neil on the phone, he has just got back from an amazing kung fu trip to China, and he agrees with Ricardo. He is suggesting that I stick to tai chi for a bit and try to cool my ardour for rushing back into Kung Fu.

Actually I have been neglecting my tai chi - or Suang-Yang, as it is in our form - I have been in a rush to get back to full contact sparring and all its accompanying adrenalin rush but there is so much to learn in the soft style and I know it will guide me back to full health if I persevere.

So I shall return to the gym for the controlled exercise regime with Ricardo and I will focus on Suang Yang and my Chi Gong exercises.....oh yes and, maybe, my sword pattern.

I will get there in the end but I don't want to die of kung fu or going to the gym - I want to get back to 100% fitness.

I will achieve that by being sensible. Did I really just say that? Surely not!

So I will prepare myself for next week's visit to the neurologist who will decide when I should go for my next brain scan and, I hope, give me some good news about my future.

My deal with Michael Foot

So Michael Foot, the former leader of the Labour Party, has died at the age of 96.

The British press is giving him the kind of respectful obituaries that he deserved and his memory should be honoured by all of us, whatever political opinions, I was going to say prejudices, we may hold. I was lucky enough to meet him at an important moment in his career so, in all humility, I feel I should remember that today.

He was undoubtedly a very nice man and also a very clever one who lead his party, disastrously some would say whilst others would disagree, after its defeat by Margaret Thatcher and through the early years of her long period in power.

I was a young television researcher at the time, working on a live weekly half-hour regional political programme for Granada Television in the North-West of England. In the days when ITV made a strong tranche of, so-called, public service broadcasting programmes and took its responsibilities to its region seriously whilst also making World-class programmes for the national network which have become famous and which have been shown round the World many times.

My job was to work out each week who we should have on the show to be interviewed about the major political story of the moment. Often I had to book busy and reluctant politicians to come up from Westminster to the Manchester studios late on a Friday night to be grilled and criticised when I am sure they would mostly have preferred to have gone home for a stiff drink and a bit of relaxation.

Amazingly, many key politicians agreed to make the journey almost always as a result of a telephone call when I had to convince them, one to one, that what we were trying to do was worth their journey.

So I found myself having conversations with cabinet ministers, former ministers and senior opposition figures on a regular weekly basis.

With the arrogance of youth and, can I admit to it, a gift of the gab, I established a bit of a reputation with my bosses for delivering the goods.

So this brings me to Michael Foot.

After James Callaghan's Labour government was defeated by Margaret Thatcher, the Labour Party fell into the kind of decline and internal fighting that occurred in the Conservative Party after Margaret Thatcher was ousted from power a decade later. Callaghan stood down as leader and an aggressive and passionate leadership election campaign began with two main candidates: the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right-of-centre heavy-weight, Dennis Healey and the out-sider, maverick, left-wing and, by this stage, politically elderly Michael Foot.

I was instructed by my bosses to see if I could get the winning leader onto our show which had the annoyingly confusing title, A Week On Friday. On many occasions I thought I had made myself clear to some senior politicians that I wanted them to come up to Manchester this Friday then to have to explain several times that I didn't mean a week on Friday.

With Michael Foot, the reverse was true. I began talking to his secretary about booking him for the programme a few weeks before the final ballot. She said that he was free to come up on the date I suggested, the Friday after the final ballot. I then had a long telephone conversation with the man himself. He was interested in appearing and said that I was the first person from television to ask him on.

He said, I suspect you would only want me though if I won the election.

I suppose there is a gambler somewhere in my persona, some may call it bull-shitter in me, but I had decide what to do there and then.

Of course we would still want you, Mr. Foot, I said without consulting the programme's producer or editor and feeling that nasty sinking sensation in my stomach that was predicting my imminent sacking.

Well, Michael Foot made it to that final ballot, still the under-dog as far as the press was concerned.

My bosses quizzed me and quizzed me again. He will never win, they said. We can't have him on if he loses and even if he wins he will never come up to Manchester because he will get booked everywhere.

I pretended to be confident. I think he will win, I said. I know he will come up because he promised that he would. I think I hid my anxiety even in the face of my bosses' cynicism and veiled threats.

The final ballot was on the Monday of the week that Michael Foot had agreed to come up for our Friday night live show.

So if he loses, I was asked, how will we fill the programme?

I fudged and enthused and tried to work out how we could make an exclusive interview with a loser interesting and news-worthy. I was a young relative new-comer to television in those days but I was given a lot of responsibility, something television researchers would not have today. In those days I met Margaret Thatcher, she even invited me to a drinks party, and I talked to all the members of the Government as well as all the leading opposition politicians. It was a fascinating time.

I was in London on the day of the Labour election - oddly enough I was in the press office at the Conservative Party's Smith Square Headquarters in fact pursuing other political stories. I was talking to the press people there when they turned the radio on for the Labour Election results.

Margaret Thatcher was doing badly in the polls, she had yet to win, single-handedly in seemed, the Falklands War which boosted her poll-rating through the ceiling but on this day, there was gloom in Conservative Central Office. If the obvious candidate won, the politically formidable Dennis Healey then, they thought, they would be in trouble.

It didn't happen of course. Michael Foot, loved by his party more than he was by the country, was elected by an amazingly large margin and a brief political sensation was born. The Conservative Press Office cheered and opened a bottle of wine....I was, in equal measure thrilled and relieved. I had had my job and my bacon saved in one wonderful moment. Cheers I said to those Conservatives even though we were celebrating two very different causes.

So, after an all-important phone-call, I rushed back to Manchester.

There was panic in the office. So he won but he will never honour his agreement, will he? Can we rely on Wolfie to have got it right? I had put in a call to Michael Foot's secretary as soon as I got away from the Conservatives. Yes, she said, we have you down for Friday but, as you can imagine, it would be difficult to speak to him today with all the news breaking. No problem I said - just as long as I can rely on him coming up on Friday.

Then he did what no one had predicted. He took a fall and broke his leg. I remember the tears forming in my eyes. I don't believe it...I can't bear it....so near and yet so far.

I rang his secretary. Yes, he has broken his leg and he is not doing interviews with the press. My heart sank. I said that it would be a disaster if he didn't come up to Manchester on Friday. That it was already being advertised, that I had promised my bosses....that I would drink my own vomit if he came...well you know what I mean. She said she would ask him.

Moments later, I was put through to him. I made an agreement Wolfgang. He said. You promised to have me on whether I won or lost and I will keep my word.

He then went on to discuss the arrangements. His broken leg was a problem. He could not come up on the train. No problem Mr Foot, we will send a car for you. Good. The press were a problem. He was being portrayed as an old dithering man and, he said, all the papers will want a picture of me on my crutches - a lame duck leader, he laughed, I can see the headlines now. It is important then, he said, that I can come up to the Granada Studios without being photographed on my crutches. I told him that I would make sure that his car would take him right into the secure zone at our studios and I would make sure the press got nowhere near to him.

So we had a deal.

It was an amazing thing that the new Leader of the Opposition, in theory the next Prime Minister could discuss all of this with a relatively junior television researcher but that is just what happened.

Michael Foot didn't do any interviews in the newspapers or on television until he came to do our programme. I arranged for his car to be driven straight into our loading bay and then I wheeled him in a wheelchair to our studio.

The interview, a World exclusive, as they say these days, then made it to the national evening news and when I had returned Mr. Foot to his car, it was driven out into Granada Television's back car park which was not crowded by reporters and photographers from the national press.

The next morning his picture was in all the papers and, in at least one national newspaper, there is also one young wolfiewolfgang saying goodbye to a very nice and deeply honourable man as he was about to be driven off to the political jungle that is Westminster politics.

So, I for one, will always honour your memory Michael Foot. If only I could believe that your successors had half of your integrity.