Rebekkah Brookes Plus Ten More Clever Horses

As a result of the enquiry into the News of the World phone hacking scandal it has emerged that in 2008, the Metropolitan Police gave News of the World editor, Rebekkah Brookes, a horse on loan. Here are ten other lucky or not so lucky horses:

1.  Incitatus - Caligula's horse, treated like a Prince during his lifetime and venerated as a God after his death
2.  Comet - Supergirl's pet horse who as boyfriend Bill Starr, dated both Supergirl and Lois Lane
3.  Trigger - a horse who could walk 50 paces on his hind legs
4.  Shergar - kidnapped in 1983 by masked gunmen, but never found
5.  Lucius - an ass turned into human form then initiated into the cult of Isis
6.  Clever Hans - a horse who could count and tell the time
7.  Kerry - a horse that saved it's owner from an enraged cow
8.  Tonk - a horse praised for saving a boy from a grizzly bear
9.  A solid gold rocking horse - purchased for £400,000 by Beyonce and Jay-Z for their baby, Blue Ivy Carter.
10.  Quick Draw McGraw (aka El Kabong) - a guitar playing horse famous for hitting his opponents on the head with a Spanish guitar, while shouting Kabonga.

El Kabong enjoyed hard hitting guitar music  His guitar was a Cuatro, a 4 stringed instrument tuned like a ukelele. It was an instrument used in a versatile fashion unique to him, so it's horses for courses, I guess!  

Christopher Plummer Oscar Winner Played with Two Large Breasts on the Piano

 

82 year old Christopher Plummer, who on Sunday night won his first Oscar ever for his supporting role in ‘Beginners,’ did not start out with the intention of being an actor.

Before achieving worldwide fame as Captain Georg Von Trapp, in the Sound of Music, Plummer spent his time dreaming of being a concert pianist while at school in Montreal. During those early formative years, Plummer once found himself accompanying the actress Diana Barrymore to an up market restaurant in Montreal. He recalled what happened next in his memoires, ‘In Spite of Myself’:

‘I boldly sat down at the piano, hoping to accompany Diana in a French song or two. She winked at me and took up the cue. As was her custom, she had decked herself out in a daringly revealing low-cut dress. In the middle of a song in order to emphasize a phrase, she made a sweeping theatrical gesture, miles over the top, when suddenly, not just one but two glorious breasts popped out in full view and stayed out for the rest of the number’.

Plummer’s musical career may well have continued if he hadn’t been pushed off the music stool by, ‘a big black guy with pants that were a bit too short for him.’ The black guy later turned into the legendary Canadian jazz pianist and composer, Oscar Peterson.

One other famous personality, whose record company had a penchant for a bare breasted women tumbling over themselves in disarray, as displayed on the cover of Electric Lady Land, and who was not unfamiliar with tinkling the ivories, was Jimi Hendrix.

Hendrix allegedly developed the track, ‘Spanish Castle Magic,’ around the jazz piano chord which follows the guitar riff played over the title.  With the help of producer Eddie Kramer pounding on the piano, the song eventually took shape.

Hendrix’s link with the piano and pianists in particular, does not end there. A large part of Jimi’s trademark rhythm style is undeniably influenced by another pianist with a similar name to his producer, Floyd Cramer.

A quick listen to the 1961 hit, ‘On the Rebound,’ and you can’t help notice a strong similarity to the hammer-ons as demonstrated by Hendrix, in tracks such as Bold as Love, Little Wing and Wait ‘til Tomorrow and Have you ever Been (to Electric Lady Land).

The attachment of Hendrix to the grand piano continued well after his death. In 2006 the Baldwin Hendrix Custom Grand Piano made its appearance on the scene.  

Bedecked on the outside with swirling psychedelic regalia and a huge squashed image of Hendrix’s head on the inside of the lid, this desirable limited edition was said by Gibson to, ‘fit beautifully into almost any home".  

Lucky for us piano playing was not Hendrix’s forte, when he died in 1970 he left us with a unique catalogue of work which has ever since profoundly influenced the playing of the modern day guitarist. Guitar playing comes in many styles, from gypsy jazz to 70’s rock, with each guitarist expressing their own unique view of life through the potency of the guitar strings. As Jimi said:

‘Nobody know what I'm talking about
I've got my own life to live
I'm the one that's gonna have to die
When it's time for me to die
So let me live my life the way I want to.


CUUPP6HGVAP7

2012 Me and the MPA Publishers Briefing, London

Would Sir Paul be there and would he recognise me, a Beatle fan for over 40 years? That was my first thought, quickly followed by, when is he going to sort out the variegated lead flashing at mpl, Soho Square?

There were five of us crowded into the lift with MPA executives rehearsing their scripts and witty introductions as we arrived on the sixth floor.

As for the presentation, it seems that we fishes are all working in a big sea and had better keep abreast of changes to stay afloat – sort of, what with Turkey defaulting and Spain and David Cameron up to no good.
Fellow music publishers exchanging hurdles, aspirations and successes was the highlight of the evening.

Be prepared to morph or risk turning to stone as the internet has well and truly come and free downloads are here to stay.  As my new friend Tom said, all our children are thieves so adapt and find a way round it or prepare to be archived.

Do we care about Whitney?

Do we care about Whitney? As the world slides into recession, somewhere in a hotel in America another star fizzles out in the great pop firmament, while from the comfort of our TV rooms, we idly observe another example of the rich and famous getting their just deserts.

The TV tells us the number one death for a rock star is still a heart attack closely followed in second place by drug overdose, while holding in there for the third week running, is suicide.

Like all of us, rock stars create and cling on desperately to their own version of reality, if it’s not McCartney believing that singing into Nat King Cole’s microphone well give him more of the same, then it’s Elvis, Hendrix, Joplin and Jackson, driving their desire for love and adoration with a mouthful of booze and pills. As one star crashes and burns, we watch with amusement smugly sipping our gin and tonics, anaesthetised by our unreal reality TV, as another X-factor wannabe squeaks, ‘Please, Simon, it’s all I’ve ever wanted, let it be me, it’s what I live for ...’

The choice is still ours; well that’s what they tell us, it’s the people’s vote. Do we care? It’s showbiz, theirs is an unreal world, what’s it got to do with us?

So press the red button and we get Mark Bolan, the 20th Century Boy singing:

‘Friends say it's fine, friends say it's good
Ev'rybody says it's just like rock'n'roll’.

But press the green button and we get a blast from that 17th Century Donne of rock:

‘Any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’

A ah huh!