Some young people who know a thing or two about the world wide web and artificial intelligence have a basic worry. Not the Troubles because for them it’s older people’s memories and experiences rather than first hand knowledge, not the demise of the high street, not the decline of life in general, not even Boris, rather cyber terrorism. What is this?
‘Computer-based attacks aimed to disable vital computer systems so to intimidate, coerce, or harm a government or section of the population.’ Hospitals (no records, no operations), transport (planes won’t fly, cars won’t go) benefits not paid, banks useless (remember we are heading towards a cashless society), just think about all the ‘computer-based’ items we use every day. No wonder they are concerned.
Crocodile Tears
I’ve got to admit I shed a tear for Mrs. May on Friday. She must have been gutted to have to throw in the towel and admit defeat. As she said she tried to hard to achieve Brexit and put the UK to rights and she seemed to think she had done quite well. Did she?
What ever next? A long hot summer in many ways, not always to our delight.
Good Bye To A Show Biz Legend
Betty Scott was born in London of Cockney parents. Her father was manager of Mr. Teesey Weesey’s salon and hairdresser to the glitterati. She grew up in Blackpool and would have been a big singing star if she hadn’t lost her heart to a handsome impresario from Belfast. It was 1962 when, in true showbiz fashion he saw her perform in a Blackpool club. Alf Scott made his way backstage, invited her to dinner and so enthralled was she that she gave up a promising career, turned her back on a BBC TV contract travelling the world appearing with the Combined Service Entertainment.
Betty died on Friday 17th May 2019 and the tributes came in thick and fast.
Marie Jones called her a proper trouper, Candy Devine contacted me from Brisbane, musician and composer Mark Dougherty said: “a wonderful addition to life”. Playwright Martin Lynch was a close friend. “She was very supportive not only financially, she got involved in our shows. We’d have lunch together and I just looked at her in admiration. This woman who championed integrated education, the Grand Opera House Youth programmes, she was full of energy and she’d one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever known.
Betty was very fond of Martin and he recalls the time when he took her to the Edinburgh Festival, a new experience for this vibrant woman. “We did three plays in one day and I had to coax her out of the pub at one in the morning! She was the life and soul of the party.”
And her Christmas parties were legend, always musicians and she’d sing her favourite songs for us, full make up and beautiful dress, she surely was the hostess with the mostest.
Her’s was a remarkable love story, a young Jewish girl who won a talent show at 12, was a Carroll Levis discovery, who at 16 turned down an invitation from Richard Attenborough saying she wanted to sing more than she wanted to act. She shared the bill with Anne Shelton, Tommy Cooper, Arthur English and Vic Oliver but the main man was Alf Scott, her husband for 30 years and without doubt, the love of her life. In the 60s Alf brought the stars to his famous Boom Boom Room in Arthur Square. Mounted police controlled the crowds on opening night, Johnny Ray topped the bill with Bill Haley and the Comets, Gerry and the Pacemakers, hosts were David Jacobs and Pete Murray.
The Rolling Stones, Cilla Black, Roy Orbison, Dion Warwick all came to Belfast thanks to Alf and Betty. “Danny la Rue was such a lovely performer.” I remember her reeling off the names. “Jean Vincent, Adam Faith who’d just bought his brother a butcher’s shop, the John Barry Seven and Jerry Lee Lewis brought the house down with Great Balls of Fire.” Those were heady days.
Alf died on their 30th wedding anniversary January 1992. In his memory Betty held a celebrity gala and raised £200,000 for an intensive cancer therapy unit for Belvoir Park Hospital. A ten-piece orchestra and 100 artists, not one person asked for a penny piece in payment. She didn’t talk a lot about her award-winning association with RoSPA’s Tuft Clubs teaching children road safety, her work with the ratepayers association, her time as a toy lady at the Royal Victoria Hospital or chairing the Lady Taverners of Northern Ireland raising money for mentally and physically disabled children. We were talking once and I told her that she was like an onion, so many layers and layers of interest, then, just for a brief instant, she shed a tear.
“I was sitting with Alf at the end. It was our anniversary, that very day, that very afternoon. Thirty Years.” She paused. “In a lucid moment he just smiled at me and took my hand and whispered, “It’s been good Betty, hasn’t it?”
I like to think they are together now catching up on her remarkable life story.
Betty was laid to rest in the Jewish Cemetery last Monday.
Sincere sympathies and love to her daughter Karen and beloved granddaughter Elliana.
Another Star
Sad too that of our past has gone, the memorable Doris Day who was so important as we grew up. Sugar and spice and all things nice, catchy tunes and harmless enjoyable films. And now Cliff Richards has been hounded out of the country and he’s off to America – out of the frying pan?
Earth To Alice A Brillant Show
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We’ve just had mental health week and the Darkness into Light walks throughout Ireland yet people don’t want to discuss the subject however Alice McCullough is brave enough to talk about her situation quite openly and in front of hundreds of people. This remarkable young woman is a performance poet and I think she is quite exceptional. She has her demons to contend with and she admits her writing and performing have saved her life. “Words reach out and touch others and you feel less lonely.”
We met at an art exhibition. “I was on your programme when I was five. It was about twins and I was there with my identical twin sister.” That was 30 years ago but she remembered in detail, one of her talents is observing and remembering as I discovered when she invited me to her performance in the Sunflower Bar during the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival.
The show, ‘Earth to Alice’ was a real eye opener, I didn’t know what to expect – presumably poems, verses, interesting but orthodox. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Her rhythms and her rhyming are spellbinding social commentaries.
It’s Not Easy
Alice McCullough is 36 years old and is Bipolar. When she was 18 and a student at art college she spent time in a mental health ward. However, she hadn’t been back in hospital for a long time until in 2017 depression set in again and her disconnect from reality meant going back into hospital in November that year.
“I got home, made it through Christmas and was back on track, I started a stand up comedy course, did the first class and by the next week relapsed and was back in hospital again. Always reasons, not some random thing, specific stressors.” Apart from her medication, like most people experiencing depression and stress, she tries all types of therapies. “At some point I want to write a poem of the list of things,” she laughed, “it becomes quite funny – yoga, Reiki, massage, reflexology, aromatherapy, acupuncture, psychotic, psychotherapy, Freudian psychoanalyse!”
Her poetry is of every day issues. The opening lines of her ‘Belfast Poem’:
You say your heads melted, felt it sting the day they cursed the queen and burnt the pope. Up the stairs they smoke dope, can’t cope with it tipping from hope and forgiving to another racist attack. Another beautiful black family made to feel they’re less than welcome on our streets, rearrange your beliefs and give our heads peace. Wind your neck to a perspective where we are all free, keep going, keep growing Belfast, take it in, feel we could win more together than apart, because you may be no oil painting but you’re our wee work of art …….
This is her style, she doesn’t mince her words.
An expressive face, Alice doesn’t just look at her audience but into their eyes. She tells us she’s still in recovery and has needed time to get her mental and physical strength back because she has a busy schedule ahead.
“Growing up I was an introvert and very quiet but I could also be an extrovert at times. I was always creative and I told my parents when I was three years old that I was going to be an artist!” Since she has been a costume designer, a painter, a standup comic, has written children stories and a musical and acts out countless poetic monologues.
She is gradually turning her situation round thanks to her writing. She has won poetry competitions, appointed poet in residence at the Cathedral Quarter and is in demand to perform at many and various events but always wary and suppressing her fears.
Although unique in every case, basically Bipolar Affective Disorder means different situations affect the person resulting in extreme mood swings with apparently 1% of the population suffering this disorder; with depression comes self-doubt, pessimism, disturbed thinking and often suicidal thoughts.
“Many things will affect me, for instance I don’t watch the news, but when I‘m down, if I can I pick up a pen and write and it’s incredibly empowering.”
This way she regains control.
Alice has been gaining recognition for her work, ‘The Lion’s Roar’ in homage to Van Morrison appears on his Internet page, she’s been on television, in newspapers and magazines and performed in Ireland and America. Sometimes she feels overwhelmed by the attention but she knows to retreat to a quiet place to recover or talk to the Samaritans who have played an important role in her life.
She’s in Birmingham this week as she’s been nominated for the prestigious Saboteur award specifically for spoken word poetry and if she wins it will help her fulfil her ambition to tour and as long as her health remains positive hers is an exciting future but she’s realistic, a line in one poem: Love is more coal than diamonds.
Her works are commentaries on life, the depth of her words, her rhyming ability all come together, no holes barred.
A poem for Stormont
‘Cardiac Arrest at Parliament Buildings’: If Stormont had a heart, we’d need a by-pass on major arteries to open up the broken bleed of the ruts of centuries, a fatal coronary disease of worn-out, torn out history resulting in a diagnosis of an atrocious ferocious thrombosis.
She puts a sadly modern spin on the old favourite ‘I’ll Tell Me Ma When I Go Home’, the words take on a horrifying meaning as she develops the old favourite to the story of the rugby trial: ‘I’ll tell my boys when I get back, Boy last night was mighty craic, had a wee girl round the back ….And so it goes on with a new and tragic meaning.
Alice has big dreams and the creative ability to go far but as she says, at the moment it’s baby steps.
There is an opportunity to see ‘Earth to Alice’ on Friday 28th June at the Strand Arts Centre and on Youtube.
