Reviews

My Old Man: A Personal Journey Into Music Hall by John Major

nwhyte's review

4.0

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2044946.html[return][return]This is a detailed and yet very readable survey of the British music hall, from early days in the 1850s to death by competition from cinema and broadcasting after the first world war. I had not fully realised just how rooted British popular culture is in music hall, even today. It was the source of many well-known catch-phrases. Harry Champion sang "Any Old Iron", "Boiled Beef and Carrots", and "I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am". Harry Clifton wrote "Paddle Your Own Canoe", "Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel", "Up With the Lark", and "Where There's a Will, There's a Way". Major credits Dan Leno, "the Funniest Man in the World", with inspiring the surreal stream-of-consciousness humour of the Goons and Monty Python. Basically all later twentieth-century and twenty-first century British comedy draws from this well.[return][return]The book is neatly structured, looking at the origins of music hall from pleasure garden, glee clubs and legislative attempts at social control; then at the development of music hall culture, with particular focus on the most celebrated performers (Marie Lloyd gets a chapter to herself, Dan Leno and Little Tich share one), and he looks thematically also at female cross-dressers, comedians, blackface and various other styles of performance. At the end he devotes a short chapter to the career of his own father, who was half of a celebrated double act in the early twentieth century, until his co-star, also his first wife, died as the result of a scenery accident. The book movingly starts and finishes with the death in 1962 of 83-year-old Tom Major, his son and second wife at his side, also surrounded by the shades of his past in spirit and occasionally in body.[return][return]Major comments ruefully that "Whatever gifts my parents passed on to their children, the talent to entertain was not among them... although I often reflected that my chosen career was akin to show business." It is more than twenty years ago that he rose without trace to become prime minister of the United Kingdom, and served seven forgettable years in the job. Yet I always felt that he was probably the only British prime minister of my lifetime who would be genuinely pleasant company in person. and on the evidence of this book he is too modest about his own ability to entertain. It's a nice little gem of cultural history.

kjcharles's review

4.0

An excellent overview of music hall. Written with great affection and warmth. The chapters about his dad's career, Marie Lloyd and bizarre music hall, in particular, were really engaging and interesting. Lots of great quotes.

I recall the hard time Major got from braying Oxbridge twats on both sides of the political spectrum when his background became known. This book, shamelessly in favour of popular taste ahgainst highbrow sneers, is a terrific belated two fingers to the sneerers and snobs.

I wish the ebook had had the illustrations integrated and I'm baffled why the publishers found it necessary to include a print index with page numbers, plus a helpful warning that this is useless on ereaders. And I resent my Amazon recommendations now being full of the malevolent gurning features of the rest of the 1990s Tories. But otherwise, this is great. (If only the skill and deep humanity shown in this book had been more of a feature of his premiership...)