The Big Issue Australia #611 - David Attenborough by The Big Issue Australia

Ed.

611

17 01OCT MAY 012020 NOV 2019

p16.

ARCTIC SEED VAULT

SIR DAVID

G ATTENBOROU

E C R FO OF NATURE H

p24.

THE BLUE WIGGLE

plus p28.

KILLING EVE $4.50 of the cover price goes to your vendor

$4.50 of the cover price goes to vendors

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ENQUIRIES

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Contents

EDITION

611 16

Under the Ice, There Is Life More than 100 metres deep below the permafrost in a mountain in the Arctic Circle, a million and more seeds are kept frozen – in case the unthinkable should happen to the world’s crops.

24 LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF

Getting Wiggly With It

12.

Force of Nature by Steven MacKenzie

With a new film coming that shows how the natural world has changed during the 93 years of his life, it’s time for Sir David Attenborough to reflect – and the naturalist sees before humanity a blank page, awaiting the answers to the problems we have created.

28 SMALL SCREENS

THE REGULARS

04 Ed’s Letter & Your Say 05 Meet Your Vendor 06 Streetsheet 08 Hearsay & 20 Questions 11 My Word 20 The Big Picture

Once upon a time Anthony Field – that’s the Blue Wiggle to you – was a 16-year-old scaredy cat who loved Elvis and footy. After a stint in the army he became a guitarplaying preschool teacher, and the rest is history.

26 Ricky 27 Fiona 34 Film Reviews 35 Small Screen Reviews 36 Music Reviews 37 Book Reviews

39 Public Service Announcement 40 Tastes Like Home 43 Puzzles 45 Crossword 46 Click

BEHIND THE COVER

“If I was seriously – seriously – convinced that there was no hope of actually dealing with the problems, I don’t know what I’d do,” says Sir David Attenborough. photo by Andy Parsons Camera Press/AustralScope

Killing It Season three of Killing Eve, the acclaimed spy series with a sense of humour, has hit the screen early – and Fiona Shaw is loving the evolution of her character, Carolyn Martens.

Ed’s Letter

by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington

E FO RT NI GH T LE TT ER OF TH

For All the World

y lovely old Papa died this morning, and the sun is still shining. Downstairs, my neighbour sits in a small patch of sunlight, reading her book. A man rides past on a skateboard, his face obscured by a COVID mask. Across the road, a young girl is practising her wobbly handstands against the wall of her apartment block. My world is upside down, too, I think. It’s topsy-turvy for many of us right now – but forgive me, today my thoughts are with my grandpa. Over the years, over these pages, I’ve written about my Papa’s love of dogs, his naval tattoo and his time at sea. The way he met my grandma at a dance in Aberdeen, and how they later emigrated from Scotland to Adelaide with four children. But I haven’t written about his riotously loud belly laughs, his comforting bear hugs or his gentle kindness. My Papa was just always quietly there, fixing my grandma breakfast-in-bed

each morning, tinkering in his full-tobursting garage, and pottering away in the garden. Until he couldn’t anymore. At the aged-care home where he lived for the past two years, they held a guard of honour to bid him farewell as his favourite opera music played. Papa was 93 when he died. He was born in 1926 – the same year as the formidable Sir David Attenborough. The world has changed dramatically in their lifetime. In this edition, the famous naturalist talks to us about the changes he’s witnessed, and his renewed fight to save the planet for future generations. Attenborough is truly a force of nature. Not only does he turn 94 this month, he’s also promoting a new film and going back to school – he’s teaching online geography to British schoolkids during the lockdown. “In times of crisis the natural world is a source of both joy and solace,” he reminds us. “And we are part of the natural world. If we damage the natural world, we damage ourselves.”

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The Big Issue Story The Big Issue is an independent, not-for-profit magazine sold on the streets around Australia. It was created as a social enterprise 23 years ago to provide both a voice and a work opportunity for people experiencing homelessness and disadvantage. Your purchase of this magazine has directly benefited the person who sold it to you. Big Issue vendors buy each copy for $4.50 and sell it to you for $9, keeping the profits. But The Big Issue is more than a fortnightly magazine.

Your Say

I wanted to say how lucky we are to have Scott as our local vendor. He is a well-loved member of our community. He always has a treat for the dogs. He offers assistance to anyone who needs it, and continues to do so even now when the going is extra tough for him. He’s using the community Facebook page to take orders for pastries he’s been making, and continues to offer help to those in the neighbourhood. He is a shining example of community spirit, creativity and resilience. I’d wager that he works harder than anyone I know. I’m looking forward to the world going back to normal and seeing Scott back at his post! KATE COULMAN POTTS POINT I NSW

To all you wonderful ladies at Women’s Subscription Enterprise, please keep safe and well. The Big Issue is the highlight of my every fortnight and I always like seeing who packed and sent off my copy. I missed you on the latest copy and I really look forward to seeing your names back again when life can get back to some sort of normal. Keep strong. JACQUELINE WISE MONTMORENCY I VIC

• Our Women’s Subscription Enterprise provides employment and training for women through the sale of magazine subscriptions as well as social procurement work. • The Community Street Soccer Program promotes social inclusion and good health at weekly soccer games at 19 locations around the country. • The Big Issue Classroom educates school groups about homelessness. • And The Big Idea challenges university students to develop a new social enterprise. CHECK OUT ALL THE DETAILS AT

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As winner of Letter of the Fortnight, Kate wins a copy of The Plan Buy Cook Book by Gaby Chapman and Jen Petrovic. Check out their recipe on p40. We’d also love to hear your thoughts, feedback and suggestions: SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

YOUR SAY SUBMISSIONS MAY BE EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPACE.

Meet Your Vendor

Vesna

SELLS THE BIG ISSUE AT FLEMINGTON FARMERS’ MARKET AND ST KILDA MARKET, MELBOURNE

interview by Mel Fulton photo by James Braund

PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.

01 MAY 2020

Craig and I work at the markets and sell The Big Issue together. I like talking to people, saying excuse me, asking them if they want to buy a copy of the new edition, having them say yes please or no thanks – it’s good. When it’s quiet, it’s really good to have someone around. So if I’m lonely, if I don’t have anybody to talk to, I’ve got Craig. It’s a long story, the way we met. It all started when I went to Perth to see my sister and my nephew, and I was there for around two months. I went to watch these people riding dirt bikes with my sister, and Craig was there. We were eating marshmallows, watching the motorbikes, just hanging around. I had a crush on him. When I came back from Perth, I ran into him at the place where I was living in Essendon, and we got to talk. I was so happy I found him again. I asked him out, and it’s been quite a while now. We’re happy with each other. It’s really good. I’ve studied. I did a barista course a long time ago, and after that I ended up doing an animal course in Brunswick. I loved it. I love animals. I learned about dogs and cats and how to care for them. I did a woodwork course too – that went for five Wednesdays. When the coronavirus finishes, I’m thinking of doing a floristry course and a flower arranging course. I also want to do dog walking. I was thinking I’d really like to open my own business with Craig – Vesna and Craig’s Dog Washing. It would be pretty cool to do. He hasn’t done the animal course yet, though. My mum used to be a store manager at a petrol station, and I would help her sometimes – in the deli, with the petrol pump, with the Cabcharges, stocking up stuff in the fridge. It was a way-long time ago. I was doing the night shift and then coming home for school. I’d get so tired. I fell asleep on the bus once – the supervisor had to wake me up. I finished school in Year 8. I got really behind and I was failing one of the subjects. It was just too much homework. I wagged school, this and that. People at school would pick on me, bully me. The best thing about selling The Big Issue is when someone buys off you. It’s good because I’ve got regular customers. I use the money to buy groceries and things I need. I’m hoping me and Craig can live together. We’re on the waiting list for housing now. I want engagement, marriage, kids… I like everything about being with him. He’s funny, and we like doing the same things. We like watching the sprint cars. We watch his shows, my shows. I wanna watch The Simpsons all the time but I still like watching his shows too. The most important things to me are Craig, my family and my friends.

Streetsheet

Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

VENDOR SPOTLIGHT

JEFF

Writer’s Block Oh how I long to put pen to paper And write the day away Alas! Words they have vanished Without a trace I wish to write like before

ALL THE BEST, JEFF!

Feeling the cramp in my hands, my fingers

Time to Retire

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

’m 72 now, and I’ve decided it’s time to retire. I just got sick of getting out of bed too early in the morning. Now I get up at seven o’clock. I started at The Big Issue on 19 April 2012. I ended up selling at Parliament Station, and I got a few customers there: Brett the Collingwood supporter; and a lady called Wan who used to come and buy off me, and bought me two tickets to comedy shows when I couldn’t afford to do so – to see Denise Scott and Judith Lucy, and Cal Wilson. Going on to Footscray Station, there was Des, a St Kilda supporter; and Kate, a lady who at 40 years of age has two kids and just had the second one. And I was also on the corner of Lonsdale and Russell Streets for a while – it’s the windiest corner in Melbourne, especially in the middle of winter. I had a bloke called Dan who used to buy from me there. And another woman, whose name I can’t remember – I’ve got a Big Issue from Japan at home, and she bought it for me. Not that I can read it! I’d like to thank all those customers for looking after me all those years. I had a great experience working for The Big Issue. I’d like to first of all thank Kirstie, who hired me; and Gemma for looking after me for so long; and Tiffany when she was there. Overall, it’s been very good working for The Big Issue – there’s no pressure, and everyone is always very nice. The thing I miss most is just meeting new people. Every now and then I might still drop in for the vendor breakfast. JEFF PARLIAMENT STATION AND FOOTSCRAY STATION I MELBOURNE

The smell of dusty notebooks and piles of paper Collection of pens scattered around Basket full of rotten ideas Unreadable drafts and scrunched up notes There are no words now to be written down No thoughts, no more ideas For they start and perish within A few paragraphs, two or three I want to write a story, either long or short But alas! My words are dead HEIDI KIPPAX SHOPS | CANBERRA

Slug It Out What an interesting year so far. I entered this year’s Stadium Stomp, a charity stair-climbing challenge at the Adelaide Oval, not knowing what was going to follow. What did follow was the coronavirus going around. To add to the sadness for me, my little backyard produce garden has ended up in its own lockdown due to a fruit fly outbreak in the next suburb. Unfortunately, my place falls into the quarantine area from this outbreak. I was worried the little white things I found in the garden bed might be fruit fly, but I was able to find out that they are just an annoying little sluggy pest which feed off vegie roots around this time of year. I hadn’t seen them before as it has only been 12 months since I made and filled my first garden bed. I spent a couple of hours digging out about half a garden bed to try to find the slugs

to get rid of them. Now I will need to get some manure, compost and extra soil and refill and plant more fresh produce to enjoy. Like everything, the fruit fly and the virus will pass, so enjoy this time if you can – we don’t know what is around the corner. CINDY C CNR GRENFELL & CURRIE STS I ADELAIDE

Stick With Me I’ve been keeping busy watching old DVDs, reading sci-fi and western books, going for a walk down Jetty Road and doing my shopping. I miss seeing my regular customers; I miss the interaction and having a joke with them. I like to have a joke and make people laugh. If I can make people laugh it makes my day…it makes me happy. A lot of my regular customers have stuck behind me. I’ve been telling them to buy the magazine online, and hopefully we’ll be

back up selling soon. I miss going into the office and stirring up the staff, but Vendor Support have been sending me text messages, and I’ve been ringing up. I can’t wait to see everyone when we get back together. BRIAN GLENELG I ADELAIDE

Miss You All Hi, I’m Steve B from Geelong. I usually sell the magazine outside Market Square in Geelong, every Tuesday from 9am to 1pm. In the past month though, I have been staying at home. I am feeling quite sad and lonely. I want to say to all my customers and members of the community that I do really miss going out to sell in the community and talking to all of you. I really miss my job a lot; it is a big part of my life. I can’t wait to be back! All the best, Steve. STEVE B MARKET SQUARE I GEELONG

ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.

01 MAY 2020

SEAN HAY & WILLIAM STS I STIRLING FARMERS’ MARKET I PERTH

For 12 years my ginger cat Kitty brought me happiness – he was my soulmate and companion, every single day. Over the past few months, Kitty has been unwell. On Valentine’s Day I took him to the vet, where he passed away peacefully. He used to always sit on my Big Issues long before I left for work and would meow when I left for work to say goodbye. He would then sit on the window ledge waiting for me to return home. I know he is resting somewhere peaceful now in cat heaven. I miss him and will always love him.

SEAN AND KITTY

Farewell Kitty

Hearsay

Richard Castles Writer Andrew Weldon Cartoonist

“

I thought it was an entertaining and amazing romp through this netherworld of big cat owners and it really gripped my attention. I did think the tiger perspective was slightly lost; that was my little quibble.

Award-winning documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux on the hit Netflix series Tiger King lacking a bit of perspective from the tigers’ point of view – the animal rights angle amid the clash of crazy personalities.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Clare Algar, senior director for research for Amnesty International, on a worldwide downturn in criminal executions in 2019, except for Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq where numbers increased. Reliable figures are unavailable for China, North Korea, Syria and Vietnam, but Amnesty believes executions in China in 2019 were in the thousands. Worldwide, 142 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. BBC NEWS I UK

THE INDEPENDENT I UK

“The death penalty is an abhorrent and inhuman punishment, and there is no credible evidence that it deters crime more than prison terms. A large majority of countries recognise this and it’s encouraging to see that executions continue to fall worldwide. However, a small number of countries defied the global trend away from the death penalty by increasingly resorting to executions.”

“The lives of millions of people… have changed and is being put to the test. The most fragile people, the invisible, homeless people risk paying the heaviest bill… Street newspapers have not been sold for many weeks and their vendors cannot work. So I want to say hello to the world of street newspapers and especially their vendors who are mostly homeless, seriously marginalised, unemployed people: thousands of people all over the world live and have a job thanks to the sale of these extraordinary newspapers… The pandemic has made your job difficult but I am sure that the large network of street newspapers in the world will return stronger than before… Thanks for the work you do…and for the stories of hope you tell.” Pope Francis gives a big shout-out to our vendors.

“We are pleased to see housing and homelessness included in the economic survival and stimulus measures. We certainly welcome the clear priority focus on access to permanent supported housing. What we’re keen [to see] is people stay housed after the pandemic emergency is over.” ACT Shelter’s Travis Gilbert on the ACT government’s $3 million for housing services.

PAPAL BULLETIN I THE VATICAN

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

THE CANBERRA TIMES

“It is quite surreal for us to see this whole situation unfolding on the planet below. We can tell you that the Earth still looks just as stunning as always from up here, so it’s difficult to believe all the changes that have taken place since both of us have been up here.” Astronaut Jessica Meir on her return to Earth after six months in space.

“These collisions are exceedingly rare and so this is a big deal that we actually get to see evidence of one. We believe that we were at the right place at the right time to have witnessed such an unlikely event with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.” Andras Gaspar, an assistant astronomer at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, on a planet that seemed to simply disappear, until it was concluded that what they had been looking at was actually a cloud of icy dust from a giant cosmic collision that slowly faded away – about 25 light years away. THE INDEPENDENT I UK

“Can you believe that in 1969 the government were taxing The Beatles and I and others 96 per cent? But still, we were rich. I don’t think we ever saw any real money, because we were moving so fast and doing exactly what we wanted to do. We never had a purse.”

20 Questions by Little Red

01 The world’s top-three highest-

paid athletes all play which sport, according to Forbes? 02 In what year did the Spanish flu

pandemic begin? 03 “Julian, Dick and Anne, George

and…” who comes next? 04 How many strings does a viola

have? 05 Who wrote the 1897 novel,

Dracula? 06 What is the world’s largest crop

by production quantity? 07 Who shares the record for

winning the most Gold Logies, both gaining five each? 08 What did the discovery of the

A young boy overheard by Trish of West Lakes, SA.

on Spotify and YouTube than Stormzy and Ed Sheeran’s latest joint project ‘Own It’. You Genghis Khan’t beat them right now. NEW STATESMAN I UK

THE GUARDIAN I UK

“It has been a Mongol technique for generations. Our grandfathers, fathers, mentors always did it. We genuinely respected that it came from our ancestors and wanted to respect and honour them while attempting to master the technique. We practised this style for years since we were kids to be able to control it, apply it and now we’re infusing it into our songs because it feels natural to us. It’s who we are; it’s what we know; it’s where we come from.” Lead singer of Mongolian heavy metal band The Hu, on the technique of throat singing used by the band, which produces the upper and lower harmony in, um, harmony. The band’s first two singles, ‘Yuve Yuve Yu’ and ‘Wolf Totem’ have had more hits

“I did a sex scene with [Christian Bale] where he kills me. You learn a lot about a person as an actor after having to do that kind of scene, and he was great! We actually laughed until we realised we should stop laughing.” Actor Guinevere Turner on her violent scene with Christian Bale in American Psycho, released 20 years ago this August.

09 How many hearts does an

octopus have? 10 Who recently released an album

titled Fetch the Bolt Cutters? 11 What does the acronym EBA

stand for? 12 What is Bill de Blasio best

know as? 13 Which type of rice is most

commonly used to make risotto? 14 In which country has Australian

woman Cassie Sainsbury been imprisoned for three years? 15 What is the name of the book

that won the 2020 Stella Prize, written by Jess Hill?

VICE I US

16 What type of animal is Arnold

“So do you guys know that Gene, our baby’s name, is officially changed? It’s now Gene David Fischer. It was Gene Attell Fischer but we realised that we by accident named our son ‘genital’.” Comedian Amy Schumer on accidentally giving her son the name of what most of her comedy is about.

17 Before Tokyo 2020, how many

Schwarzenegger’s pet, Lulu? times have the modern Olympic Games been cancelled? 18 Who directed the 2010 film

Inception? 19 When was sliced bread invented:

1908, 1918 or 1928? 20 What is the name of the new

female judge on MasterChef?

SKY NEWS I UK

FREQUENTLY OVERHEAR TANTALISING TIDBITS? DON’T WASTE THEM ON YOUR FRIENDS SHARE THEM WITH THE WORLD AT SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

ANSWERS ON PAGE 43

01 MAY 2020

“You’re not my real teacher.”

Singer-songwriter Donovan (‘Mellow Yellow’) on not seeing much of the green in the 60s.

EAR2GROUND

Rosetta Stone in 1799 help decipher?

My Word

by Elizabeth Quinn @misselizabethq

very morning since corona lockdown, I’ve woken to images of my son and his young family managing their splendid self-isolation in northern NSW. There are five of them and they’re in this together: mother, father, toddler, newborn and Norman. (Norman is a greyhound but try convincing him.) The sun rises early in their part of the world, and they are usually up to greet it. The still-warm autumn mornings find them on a quiet stretch of beach near their home, making friends with crabs and discovering bear caves. I watch videos of the almost-two-year-old running, falling, picking herself up and running some more towards her father to show him the treasure she clutches in her pudgy little hand. I laugh out loud at images of the two of them doing whizzies that leave them both staggering around like a couple of sailors on shore leave. There is a photograph of her standing behind Norman and holding his lead. Their heads are on a level, but he is 37kg of couch potato that can turn into coiled spring at the sight of anything white and fluffy. I have seen footage of her waving away all attempts on the part of anyone else to “walk” Norman. No matter how often she drops the lead – diverted by a shiny stone or a clump of seafoam – he stands just like he does in the photo, waiting for her to pick it up again. Later in the morning, images of her craft activities start to flood in. She is busy at her new craft table, squishing paint out of tubes and rearranging shells in her “fish pond”. Every so often she downs tools to show her baby brother some love. It’s often a vigorous demonstration that involves the circling of at least one chubby arm around his neck. He accepts it with grace and equanimity: he even seems to like it. He is an unknown quantity, this new addition. When I first met him, he was a tiny wizened old man, frowny and unimpressed with life outside the womb. He screwed his eyes shut and didn’t seem to like what he saw behind his eyelids. Or maybe he just didn’t like his new environment with its harsh lights and loud noises.

When I last inhaled his scent, he was six weeks old: a wide-eyed cherub wearing the trace of a smile, even in his sleep. That week of his visit, we “distant” relatives jostled for position inches from his face, competing for his first full-on beam. Weeks later, on my solitary two-metre-distant obstacle walk around the park, my grandson and I FaceTimed. He smiled right at me – not a wind-induced grimace but a deliberate “I like what I see” smile – and somehow I managed to capture the moment in a screenshot. Grandmother and grandchild – crinkly eyed – pleased as can possibly be with each other. My son’s family live in a world of ocean sunrises and shorelines that go on forever. Lockdown has been good to them. Norman especially is loving the breakfast barbecues and strolls by the river, judging by the images flooding in daily. Back in cold old Melbourne, the children’s aunt, uncle and I watch on with amusement and a little envy at their sun-kissed lifestyle; their photos the highlight of our day. We are privy to so much more detail than we would be if they lived in the next suburb. From 1600km away, we bear daily witness to the small steps and major milestones of my son’s offspring, and to the transformation of my firstborn from fun-loving young man to a fun and loving father. Watching from afar the accelerated development of these two small humans creates the occasional twinge of grandmotherly FOMO: a fear that my absence from their lives at such a formative time will render me inessential. And then I remember Norman – huge, barrel-chested and utterly still – waiting for my granddaughter to remember his existence. As she inevitably does. Once the crabs have all scuttled into their holes and the bears have retreated to their caves, she will pick up his lead and together they will continue on their way. The ties that bind them are naked to the human eye, but the connection is real. In a week, my granddaughter will turn two and – thanks to the miracle of technology – I will be able to share in the celebrations. And when lockdown is lifted and we are reunited, it will be my turn to wait patiently until she picks up the lead. As I know she will. Elizabeth Quinn is a Melbourne freelance writer and aspiring author of YA and middle grade fiction.

Missing her loved ones during lockdown, grandma-from-a-distance Elizabeth Quinn takes the lead from a family member called Norman.

01 MAY 2020

Norman People

PHOTO COURTESY BBC

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

S IR D AV ID

FORCE OF NATURE For more than 65 years, David Attenborough has been beaming the natural world into our lounge rooms. Now he’s urging us all to do our bit to ensure our planet’s survival for future generations. by Steven MacKenzie The Big Issue UK

that could cause a terrible thing in five years’ time? People will say, ‘Well, that’s five years’ time, meanwhile I’ve got to deal with coronavirus, or something’.” Do the large-scale attempts to stem the spread of the virus prove that in extreme circumstances political muscle can be flexed, and mass behavioural change from the rest of us is possible? “Problems are short-term and longterm,” Attenborough replies. “The shortterm we deal with and the long-term ‘we’ll do tomorrow’. But tomorrow never comes. And then suddenly we discover it’s too late.” Even when he’s making fun of my hygiene, every word Attenborough speaks sounds like eternal wisdom. That famous, rich, whispery voice makes whatever he says sound like he’s imparting a great secret of the world – and most of the time that’s exactly what he’s doing. Over a career spanning more than 65 years and celebrating the wonders of the natural world, Attenborough has been a spokesman for the planet, becoming probably its single most precious natural resource. And now that a crisis has come, just knowing he’s around is a balm for our harried times.

he Big Issue meets Sir David Attenborough in London in early March, which seems like an age ago. Later that day Italy will announce a full lockdown of the country. For a 93-year-old, Attenborough demonstrates a cavalier attitude towards handshakes when he greets me. Apart from the clamminess, I assure him my hands are otherwise clean. “I’m going to put this in neat alcohol for five minutes,” he jokes, holding out his arm as if trying to self-isolate it. Unprecedented measures are being taken to fight the coronavirus pandemic. But, irrespective of how much toilet paper and hand sanitiser we stockpile now, we’ve ignored the impending threat of the climate emergency for years. “Because it’s not happening tomorrow,” Attenborough states in those familiar tones that have soothed generation upon generation of nature lovers around the world. “If there was a risk of you getting coronavirus tomorrow – which there is – and someone next door had got it, you would find you were in quarantine quite quickly. But somebody next door to you who was doing something

01 MAY 2020

@stevenmackenzie

Attenborough came of age in the 1950s – at the same time as commercial air travel and TV, which enabled him to pioneer natural history programs. His Life on Earth series, beginning in the 1970s, brought 650 species in 39 countries to 500 million viewers. In recent years, monumental documentaries like Blue Planet, Frozen Planet and Planet Earth have shifted the axis on how we view the world. Attenborough was one of the first to experience first-hand the rich diversity and magnificence of wildlife worldwide, but over the decades he has realised that he also may be one of the last. His next documentary, A Life on Our Planet (its launch date, like everything, is postponed) is “a witness statement”, examining the changes that have happened

PHOTO BY KEITH SCHOLEY/OUR PLANET/NETFLIX. INSET PHOTOS BY GETTY

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We are part of the natural world. If we damage the natural world, we damage ourselves.

in the span of one lifetime. In the 1920s, when Attenborough was born, the world’s population was less than two billion; today it’s more than seven-and-a-half billion. As humanity has unrelentingly multiplied, biodiversity has been devastated. The film maintains that the planet we live on could have been a Garden of Eden – and that it could be again if we reverse the damage we’ve done. Using that analogy, what was the serpent? “Mammon!” Attenborough exclaims. In the moment I wonder if “Mammon” might be a rare kind of snake I haven’t heard of, but Attenborough notices my puzzled expression then does what he does best – explains in a way his audience can understand. “Well, I suppose individual selfishness,” he clarifies. “Greed. Arrogance about our independence in the natural world and the extent to which we depend upon it.” He could go on listing human faults but concludes with a sigh, “That’ll do.” The solution to our survival is simple, Attenborough believes. If we re-wild the world, the stable balance of biodiversity will ensure our survival. But for people living increasingly insular lives, how can we remind them of their place in the cycle of life? “Independent of how you spend your life and what you think is important in your life, the plain fact is that every mouthful of food you eat comes from the natural world; there’s no food that nourishes you that doesn’t come from the natural world. Every lungful of air that you take is refined by the natural world; oxygen breathed out by plants. If you can’t breathe and you can’t eat, you don’t exist.” He shifts to the therapeutic potential of nature. “In times of crisis the natural world is a source of both joy and solace. I mean, that’s high-flown talk but people…know that the natural world produces the comfort that can come from nothing else. And we are part of the natural world. If we damage the natural world, we damage ourselves.” With the enthusiasm of someone a quarter his age, Attenborough has become a figurehead of the climate movement, energised in the past few months by Greta Thunberg and a fresh generation of young campaigners. While Attenborough has documented wildlife over decades, it’s humans that have evolved more than any other animal. “We haven’t changed physically, of course, but we’ve changed our mental attitudes,” he explains. “Kids these days are

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: A LIFE ON OUR PLANET HAS BEEN PRODUCED BY SILVERBACK FILMS AND WWF. THE FILM WILL BE AVAILABLE TO WATCH IN CINEMAS AND GLOBALLY VIA NETFLIX LATER THIS YEAR. FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER FOR UPDATES, SEE ATTENBOROUGH.FILM.

01 MAY 2020

that there was no hope of actually dealing with the problems, I don’t know what I’d do.” In an even softer whisper he repeats, “I don’t know what I’d do.” Lifting his eyes, he continues. “I can’t, I can’t – however realistic it is – I couldn’t accept that. I would have to do what we’re doing now, which is to persuade people as far as you possibly can that they should do something, which implies that it’s therefore possible to improve things. And I think it is.” Attenborough has come to simple conclusions about what needs to be done now. Short-term thinking has to end; raising the standard of living for all people in all countries is a must. “You put forward partisan points of view with all the energy that you can find to give them. I’ve been feeling these things for a long time, but I’ve never put it into as vigorous and clear-sighted an argument,” he says. At the end of the film he outlines what we can do, explaining the benefits of smaller families, less meat consumption and a disinvestment in fossil fuels. But he stops short of insisting that you have to have fewer children, you have to eat less meat and you should boycott certain businesses. “If you believe human beings have basic rights as a human being, one of them is free action. Those are inalienable rights – or should be. You can only hope that you persuade people so they recognise where these things come from,” he says, still harbouring optimism that we can get our act together. In the 1940s, Attenborough did national service in the navy, and compares the massive wholesale changes that have started to happen to steering a large ship. “You spin the wheel and nothing happens at all for at least five minutes, if not 10 minutes. You think, ‘But I’m going into the cliff!’ It takes a long time to turn around. “We’re in an unprecedented situation,” he emphasises. “We know quite a lot about the history of the world. We go back 500 million years and there is no species with anything like the power homo sapiens have over the natural world. There is nothing remotely like the situation we’re in at the moment. There’s no moral to be taken from what happened in the past. We’ve got a completely blank sheet of paper in front of us.”

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knowledgeable, aware of what’s happening and are concerned. They are vocal. I haven’t known a generation of children that could be placed alongside these today.” Attenborough’s programs also spread the message, but people who tune in are likely to already be aware of the climate emergency. How do you preach beyond the converted? “There was a situation when the only people who watched natural history programs were people who were converted in the sense that they understood things about natural history, but that is no longer the case. Simply statistically, the audience who see these programs are all conditions of humanity – all ages, all income groups. And it should be that everyone is concerned because it’s where we live. It affects every moment of our lives. How could you not be concerned?” Well, why aren’t some people? “To start with, they didn’t know what the problem was. When I was a boy, municipal governments on the coast of England were pouring raw sewage into the sea, on the grounds that the sea was so big that it would wash it all away. They never even considered the possibility that there’s another side of the ocean; it was washing up on somebody else’s doorstep. That’s how ignorant we were. The world has changed since then. You know, there are three times as many people in this world as when I started making programs, let alone when I was born. Three times as many people in the world,” he emphasises. For a child born today, in a world never more chaotic, what do you think their life will be like when they’re 93? “Well, I don’t know,” he pauses. “It depends how optimistic you are about the struggle we are all occupied with. If we lose, then the world will look a fairly boring place. It’ll be a poorer place and I think the political structures will be different. Life will be more totalitarian. Migrations of human beings will be a serious problem. The deserts will spread in Africa and a lot of people will be displaced. So there will be fairly serious consequences. I hope that won’t happen and nations will get together, make sure it doesn’t happen.” How optimistic are you today that we’ll manage to avoid the most serious consequences? “I couldn’t live…” he begins, then stops. “If I was seriously – seriously – convinced

Under the Ice, There Is Life Deep inside the Arctic Circle one million seeds are frozen in ice, ready to save us all. Steven MacKenzie visits the Global Seed Vault to discover the source of humanity’s salvation. by Steven MacKenzie The Big Issue UK @stevenmackenzie

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n the frozen archipelago of Svalbard, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, is the Global Seed Vault. This inhospitable but breathtaking landscape is home to the ultimate storage solution designed to safeguard the seeds of the world’s most important crops. The Vault is used by gene banks, governments, universities and research facilities from every continent. If their own collections are compromised, if there is mass crop failure due to disease, if food supply chains are disrupted by conflict – or should there be any other doomsday scenario from zombie apocalypse to asteroid impact – the Global Seed Vault could be humanity’s best hope for survival. Stored 130m deep inside a mountain are more than a million frozen seeds, kept at a chilled -18°C. They represent more than 5000 plant species with many more varieties of each (for example 40,000 types of bean, 156,000 kinds of wheat). Svalbard was chosen because it is the perfect location: its cold climate means that even if power fails, seeds should be kept frozen by the surrounding permafrost. Its remoteness also makes it especially secure. The complex is protected by the Norwegian government agency Statsbygg and any trespassers might also have to contend with Svalbard’s population of polar bears, which outnumber human residents.

: Y’ S H O PE H U M AN IT’S G LO BA L AY RW O N LT SE ED VA U

If the Global Seed Vault is an ark to preserve life on Earth, then Åsmund Asdal is its Noah. Seed Vault coordinator since 2015, Asdal is matter-of-fact in the way you’d want the potential saviour of the human race to be. “It’s like a black box,” he says of the Vault. “One of the things you should do if you have some valuable papers is have a copy. Gene banks have seed collections that are very valuable but vulnerable if they are only in one place. For security they keep copies in Svalbard.” New deposits are made up to six times annually, with around four to six new gene banks adding to the project each year. “We are in touch with gene banks all over the world,” Asdal explains. “We organise the shipment of seeds from the gene banks to Svalbard.”

experienced temperatures 7°C higher than normal that winter. Since then they have made the tunnel watertight, as well as upgrading the cooling and security systems. The need for the multi-million-dollar renovations is a sign that climate change is happening faster than previously predicted, according to Erna Solberg, Prime Minster of Norway. “Now we have planned for worst-case scenarios in a better way,” she says, greeting the delegates. “I believe that more and more countries are seeing that to safeguard their genetics, seeds and biodiversity of their country it’s important that you store in different places. “We have to make sure we are planning for changes in the climate to make sure we can feed the people of the world in the future.”

The name of each gene bank is read out like nations entering the Olympic arena. Solberg presents certificates, and storage boxes full of seeds are symbolically carried over the threshold. Every seed carries its own story too. The Cherokee Nation is becoming the first Native American people to make a deposit. Their samples centre on the “three sisters” crops – maize, squash and beans – varieties of which all predate European settlement. The majority of Cherokee communities today are in Oklahoma, where the corn can grow as high as an elephant’s eye, but the region is also prone to droughts, floods and tornadoes, putting crops – and Cherokee heritage – at risk. Many people around the world are threatened by food insecurity, whether they live in areas affected by climate change or depend on a single, potentially vulnerable, crop. The President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, an advocate of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, has also travelled to Svalbard. “We know that climate change has a significant impact on agriculture around the world,” he says. “In my own country, where we are getting recurrent droughts and floods, the threat to traditional agriculture is real.” Ghana is not an isolated case. Seventy per cent of Myanmar’s population, 80 per cent of Mali’s and 90 per cent of Burundi’s depend on agriculture to make a living, so researchers from these countries are depositing varieties of their most resilient crops. More than half the world’s population relies on rice for 80 per cent of their dietary intake, so the International Rice Research Institute based in the Philippines has created test boxes of different varieties of rice that will be stored

01 MAY 2020

Today, representatives from dozens of gene banks around the world have travelled to Svalbard to make the biggest mass deposit since the Seed Vault’s opening. Longyearbyen, three kilometres from the Vault, is the largest settlement on Svalbard, feeling like an outpost on the edge of the Earth. In the town’s cultural centre, Kulturhuset, international experts in crop diversity and food security have come together for the Svalbard Seed Summit. The theme: “Genetic diversity for more resilient food systems”, exploring what measures need to be taken to safeguard crops in the face of the climate crisis. Asdal presents the findings of long-term experiments he is conducting. “We have what we call the 100-year experiment. We put seeds of Nordic crops in there in 1986 and every fifth year we take some out and test germination. “Seeds do not last forever. You have to replace old seeds with new seeds now and then. That is what gene banks do. Some species can stay 50 years. Some species can stay 1000 years. The knowledge about longevity is insufficient. That’s why we are having this experiment.” After the summit, the delegation hops on to buses and drives along a windy road past dumpy reindeer on the slopes to the Vault, looming out of the darkness like a Bond villain’s lair. The outside temperature has slipped close to the -18°C level inside the Vault, but the effects of the climate crisis can clearly be felt in this land of extremes. Today it was an incredibly unseasonable high of 1°C. In early 2017 the Vault’s entrance tunnel was flooded by rainfall and melting permafrost after Svalbard

PHOTO BY SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT/MATTHIAS HEYDE

The delegation hops on to buses and drives along a windy road past dumpy reindeer on the slopes to the Vault, looming out of the darkness like a Bond villain’s lair.

ÅSMUND ASDAL RUNS THE GLOBAL SEED VAULT

genetically modified; it’s just using breeding methods that people have used for thousands of years to improve their crops. “Previously most of the effort was put into producing high-yielding varieties and feeding more people. But that process has actually resulted in some of the crops becoming more vulnerable to pests and diseases as their genetic make-up has become narrower and narrower. “Their wild relatives have survived, overlooked and often thought of as weeds. We’re not producing new super foods, but carrots that in 20 years’ time will look the same as carrots we have now. They might just be better adapted to a drier climate.” So, whether sudden global catastrophe or the worsening climate crisis comes to threaten all life on this planet, at least we know where to go to sow the seeds of recovery.

01 MAY 2020

GLASS TUBES HAVE BEEN REPLACED BY ALUMINIUM POUCHES TO STORE THE SEEDS

COURTESY OF INSP.NGO / THE BIG ISSUE UK BIGISSUE.COM @BIGISSUE. PHOTOS BY SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT/RICCARDO GANGALE

in Svalbard for between 10 and 40 years, to discover how well they’ll germinate in the future. Gene banks from India and Morocco are focusing on seeds that could prove crucial in the increasingly dry tropics, home to two billion people, 664 million of them impoverished and relying on the land. The Global Seed Vault might seem like excessive preparation against scenarios that might never come to pass, but its collections have already proved vital. The seed collection of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) was located in Aleppo and lost during the Syrian conflict in 2012. Thankfully, they had a back-up: 80,000 samples stored in Svalbard, including many plants extinct in their natural habitats. “The ICARDA gene bank in Aleppo held 141,052 accessions. In 2008, we started sending seed duplicates to Svalbard. Now, we have retrieved all duplicate seed samples and are regenerating about 30,000 of them each year,” says Ahmed Amri of ICARDA, now based in Morocco and Lebanon. As Dr Chris Cockel from the Royal Botanic Gardens in the UK points out: “The important thing is not to put all your seeds in one basket.” His team is in Svalbard on a special mission, here on his majesty’s secret service. “We’re basically acting as the middle person between Svalbard and the Prince of Wales’ estate,” Cockel divulges. Their package contains 27 wild plant species from meadows at the Royal Gardens at Highgrove. His royal horticulturist said in a statement: “I am delighted that seeds from the wildflower meadows at Highgrove are to be safely stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault… It’s more urgent than ever that we act now to protect this diversity before it really is too late. Therefore, the Seed Vault and seed banks around the world play a vital role in this critically important mission.” What Prince Charles said to the plants themselves we don’t know. Cockel leads a project studying how agriculture can adapt to climate change, drawing upon the wild relatives of 29 of the most critical food crops, from alfalfa to wheat. “The material we’re getting from the Prince of Wales is in line with that,” Cockel says. “While they may not appear to be important for global food security, there are some species there, for instance wild carrot, that can be used in breeding programs to make crops better at adapting to climate change and resist pests and diseases.” Instead of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault being an insurance policy against Armageddon, he says it’s more about preserving life and food as we know it. As well as storing seeds, gene banks around the world send samples to each other to further the research and ensure food security. “The idea is to restore some of those important genetics that have been lost in the process of domestication. It’s not producing anything that’s

The Big Picture series by Series by Ingo Arndt

Plight of the Butterflies

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by Amy Hetherington Editor

THERE ARE SO MANY MONARCH BUTTERFLIES IN THIS MEXICAN FOREST YOU CAN HEAR THEM

Ingo Arndt spent months documenting the extraordinary migration of monarch butterflies, who fly thousands of kilometres seeking warm weather for the winter.

FOR MORE WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY BY INGO ARNDT, SEE INGOARNDT.COM.

01 MAY 2020

ying in a puddle of mud in a Mexican forest, photographer Ingo Arndt was waiting for the monarch butterflies to arrive. He’d been shown this secret spot by a local guide, a place where the butterflies come to drink when the sun is at its peak. And then he heard it: an extraordinary commotion as a wave of tiny wings descended upon him. “You don’t expect butterflies to make a sound,” recalls the German-born wildlife photographer. “But when many thousands of butterflies are flying inside a forest it’s a very distinct sound, unlike anything else…a slapping, not too loud. It’s a magical situation.” Arndt spent three months documenting the remarkable migration of the monarch butterflies, named after King William III of England who was also the Prince of Orange, thanks to the insect’s brilliant orange-and-black wings. Each year millions of monarchs fly 4200km, from north-eastern USA and Canada to the Oyamel fir forests of Mexico, to survive the winter. “The monarch butterfly is so fantastic; what they do during the migration is unbelievable,” says Arndt. The monarch’s life cycle depends on the climatic conditions of where they breed. During the summer breeding season, they live up to six weeks. But the migrating monarchs are special: they are born in summer, migrate to Mexico for winter, and fly north the following spring. When Arndt himself flew over the forests in an ultralight plane, he noticed that the trees had turned red. “You realise this is coming only from the butterflies. It is very impressive,” he says. “What I’m trying to do is show people how beautiful nature is, to try and get them to save nature because of that…that’s my way to hopefully do something for nature protection.” After decades of declining monarch butterfly populations, the US, Canada and Mexico established a joint taskforce in 2014 to protect the species. And their citizens responded. In the US, people started planting more milkweed – integral as a food source and the plant in which monarchs lay their eggs. In Mexico, the government and local communities have almost eliminated illegal logging inside the butterflies’ protected area. And in January last year, there was some good news. The World Wildlife Fund Mexico reported a 144 per cent increase in the population count of hibernating butterflies. But scientists are urging caution, with numbers of the overwintering butterflies falling below a sustainable, secure level again this year. “The current monarch butterfly population decline is not an alarming one, but we must remain vigilant and not allow it to become a trend in the coming years. Conservation is a long-term job,” says WWF Mexico’s director general Jorge Rickards, pointing to pesticide use, drought, climate change and the continued loss of habitat as the butterflies’ greatest threats. “They are very pretty, but they also are very fragile but very strong to do all that, that long migration,” says Arndt. “We have to save what we still can find on our planet.”

THE MONARCH AS A CATERPILLAR INGESTS MILKWEED, A POISON THAT DETERS PREDATORS

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THE CATERPILLAR BECOMES A PUPA

THE PUPA CHANGES COLOUR THE MONARCH BUTTERFLY EMERGES, READY TO STRETCH ITS WINGS

XXX XXX BUTTERFLIES LOVE GOLDENROD NECTAR MONARCH

Letter to My Younger Self

Getting Wiggly With It Anthony Field talks Elvis, The Wiggles and the time Robert De Niro tried to hold a sold-out show. by Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor

had six brothers and sisters and we had a great time; there wasn’t a care in the world. I don’t know how my mum did it. She had seven kids under six. This was the 1960s. We piled into a Mini Minor with no seatbelts. I don’t know how we even fit! Dad worked as a pharmacist, so we didn’t really see him that much. He worked from 10 till 10 every night, basically. He had a big heart attack in 1969 and wasn’t expected to live, but he did, which was amazing. He was a big smoker and then he gave up cigarettes. One time I got myself into some trouble when I was in my early twenties, and Dad said, “You’re only human; don’t be hard on yourself and don’t tell your mother” – absolutely brilliant. He was happy to own it when he made a mistake, and that took a lot of pressure off him and a lot of pressure off us to be perfect. I loved Elvis Presley. I was an absolute fanatic and in 1977, when I was 13, he passed away. I cried when he died. That was a sad moment. My obsession besides music was sport. I loved sport and still do. I played rugby league because I’m a Sydneysider, and cricket. I love cricket too. Sixteen-year-old Anthony was a bit of a scaredy cat. He was at boarding school and it wasn’t the most pleasant place to be. Life was probably a little harder than it should

AN TH ON Y FIE LD TH E BL UE WIG GLAS E

TOP: A YOUNG FOOTY FAN BOTTOM: A FULL-TIME SOLDIER THE WIGGLES NEW ALBUM FUN AND GAMES IS OUT NOW.

01 MAY 2020

If you’re with someone or talking to someone, try to help them get a smile on their face.

them get all excited about things that you’re not excited about – like vacuums! I brought in a vacuum cleaner once to show them how it works. They were so into it! It just showed me that everything’s new to children and everything’s exciting, you know? The biggest surprise of my life was The Wiggles playing Madison Square Garden – we sold it out 12 times [in 2003]. It was quite incredible. And we had Robert De Niro come backstage, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick. Growing up in Lalor Park in Western Sydney and piling into the Mini, I don’t think I would have ever thought that would happen. We were on the Disney Channel, which had some ridiculous number of subscribers, and we ran four times a day, so we were just massive at that time in America. It was all surreal, just an adventure and so much fun. That was what it was. To add to the unbelievableness of it all, De Niro’s manager called us and said, “Bobby’s running late; could you hold the show?” That actually happened. We didn’t hold the show. It was still amazing. I think holding it together – family, and relationships before family – with being on the road nine or 10 months a year, that’s been the hardest thing. Leading a balanced existence – that’s very hard when you’re in a travelling circus show like The Wiggles. I learned the link between eating healthily, exercising and keeping yourself fit and healthy. It keeps the depression away – the endorphins go and all that sort of thing. That’s helped me a lot. If I were to run into my 16-year-old self today, he’d say, don’t make a TikTok video! He’d probably say take it easy on the alcohol. Keep yourself fit and healthy. That’s what my kids say to me all the time. I like to not sweat the small stuff, you know? Don’t be petty about things and try not to take things too seriously. And I think also if you’re with someone or talking to someone, try to help them get a smile on their face – try to get everybody happy around you. I think I’m still very fragile, like I was when I was 16. Hence why I love the world that I’m in, The Wiggles, which is a very positive world of music and entertaining families and children. So I’d say that to my 16-year-old self: keep the passion for music, because music opens doors and makes people smile. That’s what I’d say.

MAIN PHOTO COURTESY ABC MUSIC

have been at 16 – it wasn’t like The Brady Bunch for me there, but that shaped me for years to come anyway. Honestly, I don’t think I was mature enough to be there without my parents – you only saw them once a month, so it was a real culture shock for me. There was really just one way to think there, and if you didn’t think like that, that was it. I was very unhappy there. I wanted to play music – I actually wanted to play violin and I got scared, got stirred so much that I didn’t play. I played guitar instead, just to fit in. There was a lot of that stuff going on where you had to fit into the group or you were ostracised. If I had the knowledge I have now, I would use it to know what and who to avoid. And how to be a little bit more forceful; you know, put myself first rather than trying to fit in. If I bumped into my 16-year-old self today, I would say that there’s a lot of life ahead of you, young fella! The road’s not always going to be what you think, and where it will take you will not always be pleasant, but there are good times as well. I left school and I was in the regular army as a full-time soldier for three years. I was in the infantry, and there was no thought of being an entertainer then. I just delved into it; I don’t even know how. [My band] The Cockroaches were happening, but I went to uni for a year and then they started happening big-time so I deferred for another three years. Then I came back and finished uni and became a preschool teacher. I think I surprised myself that I completed my time in the army. I did things in the army that I didn’t think I’d be able to do – like climbing up high ropes, because I have a fear of heights. That was a big achievement. It’s a bit crazy, but the reason I signed up relates to Elvis. I was unemployed and I was watching GI Blues, one of his movies, and look, he’s The King! And he looked like he was having a great time, so I said, Oh man, I’m going to do that. Day one, I realised it wasn’t Hollywood. It really wasn’t. I’ve got three children, so they make me proud all the time, but I think when I got my defence medal in the mail it was the proudest moment of my life. I also got the Order of Australia [in 2010], but I’m more proud of the defence medal because I didn’t expect to get through, but I did. I taught preschool for two years, then The Wiggles took off. I loved teaching. I loved having a class and seeing the children develop as the year went on. I loved to see the children’s view of the world and watch

Ricky

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Officers were called to a report of a person who thought a footprint in the snow looked weird.

by Ricky French @frenchricky

And in Other News... S

ick of saturation coverage of youknow-what? If alternative news is what you crave, then look no further than the little book I picked up for a bargain $7.99 at a Colorado bookshop in February. It’s a compilation of the police blotter in Steamboat Springs (pop: 12,008) between 2005 and 2014, a solemn and truthful record of crime most heinous in an otherwise sleepy, law-abiding mountain town. The book is called Ski Town Shenanigans, complied by Matt Stensland, and it’s possibly the most revealing report on small-town life ever compiled. I dedicate this column to the hard-working police officers of Ski Town, as the locals call it. 24 July 2005 – A magpie was reportedly flying through a store in the 1400 block of Lincoln Avenue. 1 August 2005 – A porta-potty was allegedly set on fire in the 800 block of Howelsen Parkway. Moderate damage was reported. 8 September 2005 – A hairless fox was reportedly seen on Whistler Road. The animal was gone when officers arrived. 25 October 2005 – A “mean little kitty” was reportedly stuck on a roof in the 2600 block of Riverside Drive. 4 June 2007 – A man in his twenties was reportedly knocking on a door and yelling “hello” in the 200 block of Eighth Street. The man was gone when officers arrived. 8 August 2007 – A juvenile reportedly called Domino’s Pizza to order hundreds of dollars’ worth of food then called back to cancel. 6 January 2009 – Police were called to a location between the 400 blocks of Oak and Pine Streets. A woman was wearing open-toed shoes in the snow. Everything was fine. 17 April 2009 – Police were called to a suspicious incident in the 2900 block of Heavenly View. A person reported finding a toilet that had been used in an unoccupied home and was concerned. Everything was fine. 19 May 2009 – Police were called to a report of a bear in the 1500 block of Mark Twain Lane.

The bear allegedly broke into a house through a screen window while the homeowners were away. The bear reportedly ate brownies, powdered sugar and honey from a bear-shaped honey bottle. The bear was gone by the time the homeowners returned. 18 July 2010 – A theft was reported on the Yampa River near the A-Hole. 6 October 2010 – Police were called to a report of men cutting down trees in Little Toots Park in the first block of 12th Street. Officers determined it was city workers in a city truck. 6 February 2011 – Police were called to a suspicious incident at Seventh Street and Lincoln Avenue. Officers issued a warning to a man who tried to bring an orange construction cone onto a bus. The man returned the cone. 1 March 2011 – Officers were called to a report of a moose blocking a person’s front door in the 400 block of Ore House Plaza. The moose moved. 7 August 2011 – Officers were called to a complaint of “bad 80s karaoke” music in the 300 block of Crabapple Court. 21 August 2011 – Officers were called to a report of a man taking pictures of a woman in Steamboat. The man told the woman he was an artist, and he left. 9 March 2012 – Police officers were called to a report of a disturbance in the 1600 block of Graystone Drive. Two women were slapping each other, and neither one wanted to press charges. 31 May 2013 – Steamboat Springs Police Department officers were called to a report of a disturbance in the 700 block of Lincoln Avenue. A drunken man was crying at the bar. The man’s dad came to pick him up. 12 January 2014 – Officers were called to a report of a person who thought a footprint in the snow looked weird in the 1500 block of Shadow Run Frontage. Everything was fine.

Ricky is a writer, musician and newshound.

by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

he best white is Antique White, according to my plasterer Hugh, an old theatre mate who reinvented himself as a tradie when The Biz We Call Show became precarious in the late 1990s. Prescient move, Hugh. “Warm, goes with everything, you can’t go wrong.” I name drop the shade to a couple I’m standing socially distant from at Bunnings. I’m staring dismayed at Dulux’s panoply of whites, which disappear into the distance like the virtual weapons wall in The Matrix. The wife and husband are studying Taubmans’ range, seeking colour inspo for their hallway. We share the dissociative thousandmile stare you get when overwhelmed by choice. “Oh yes,” they brighten, relieved to be distracted from their interrogation of 87 neutral blues. “Everyone uses Antique White. It’s today’s Mission Brown.” A friend, on Facebook, recommends quarter-strength Rice Cake. Another lobbies for Whisper White, with its reflective qualities, or Spatial White for its warmness and neutrality. What? “Spatial” sounds architectural, intellectual and cold. Why not call it Cuddle White, or Freshly Baked Bread White or Curled Up in a Corner with a Good Book White? And look, if it’s “warm” it’s not neutral, is it? Am I over-thinking this? Oh good gravy yes, welcome to my hell. Duck Egg is good for walls, apparently, but Dulux’s most popular pick is Natural White. Whatever that means. There are a couple of votes for Berkshire White, a sprinkle for Vivid White, one for Origami White, two for Chalk White, and even a yes for Hog Bristle White which sounds 70 types of disgusting and not something I’d countenance in my lounge room. There are, gentle reader, too many whites, and I’m not even referencing the patriarchy or commercial television. How are we expected to distinguish between them, let alone choose the “best” one for our walls, our trims, our ceilings? I once read about a man working in Antarctica who was so attuned to whites that he could

spot a peanut of polystyrene foam in a snow drift, but I have no desire to emulate his achievement by picking half-strength Male White (actual Dulux colour) out of a line-up of Infinity, Gentle Wind and Charming White. I mean, sure, I can see they’re different from each other, by a tone, a semi-tone, a micron; what I can’t see is value in investing the required time and energy to make the choice meaningful. Beyond “warm” or “cool”, it doesn’t matter which frigging white you get. Oh my god, it’s white. Who cares? I don’t know what it’s a metaphor for, the legions of Australian renovators pouring countless hours into squinting at near identical swatches, attempting to distinguish exactly their perfect white while around them the world burns, but existentially, practically and emotionally it is a colossal waste of time. You simply can’t have intuiting the right white as a flag bearer for your individuality. Choosing Taubmans’ Akimbo over Snowy White, Snowbank, Cotton Touch, Cotton Ball or Whiteout does not make you more interesting, or your interiors more intriguing. No-one walks into a house and thinks, “Huh, fascinating, they’ve gone with Arctic Ice.” We walk in, notice that the walls are white, and then our brain shuts down from boredom. The imperative to choose a white, any white, is so internalised I forgot I don’t have to. It’s not obligatory, even though every house I saw househunting was ceiling to floor white. I forgot there were colours. In my twenties we painted our share house pale grey and fuchsia with glossy black architraves. It looked amazing. I’m reaching back for that bold spirit, and throwing colour at our walls and the future. We’ve chosen Party Mint. It goes off. You’re invited to the house-warming.

Fiona is a writer and comedian who paints the town fuchsia.

01 MAY 2020

The White Stuff

There are, gentle reader, too many whites, and I’m not even referencing the patriarchy or commercial television.

Fiona

Killing Eve

Small Screens : SA N D RA AW AL L KI LL),ER FI O N A SH O H (E VE N M AR T EN S) (C AR O LY IE C O M ER AN D JO DEL LE ) (V IL LA N

Irish actor Fiona Shaw just loves the control-freak English spy she plays in Killing Eve – almost as much as the rest of the world loves the show, which is back early for season three.

@ksmyrk

Katherine Smyrk is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, and a former Deputy Editor of The Big Issue.

t’s very strange here in London,” says Fiona Shaw down a line that warps and cracks with distance. “It’s beautiful, there’s birdsong, the sun is shining and then there’s the sound of ambulances. It’s like playing hopscotch outside a prison; it just seems so tragic, really. Terrible.” The actor, like so many around the world, is working from home. She’s promoting the new season of Killing Eve, in which she plays Carolyn Martens, the head of MI6’s Russia desk, a part that earned the acclaimed actor a 2019 BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress.

PHOTO BY GETTY

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Killing It

by Katherine Smyrk

FIONA SHAW ON HER CHARACTER, CAROLYN MARTENS.

It seems a strange idea that people might find comfort in a drama about a Russian international assassin called Villanelle (the mesmerising Jodie Comer), and the impulsive, somewhat naive MI5 agent Eve (a starring turn by Sandra Oh) who is trying to catch her. But its runaway popularity has shown that Killing Eve is so much more than your mum’s favourite ABC crime show. The relationship between Eve and Villanelle is layered with mutual obsession, sexual tension and urgent questions of morality, duty and love. The end of season two culminated with squint-through-yourfingers violence and the cliff-hanging belief that Eve was dead. The showrunners have made no attempt to conceal that she is definitely alive in season three, but viewers were still clamouring to find out what would happen next. Even Shaw seems surprised at how much this dark, strange drama has captivated people. “I knew it was wonderful when we started, because it was brilliantly written, but I didn’t know it would take off,” she confesses. “I thought it might be quite a niche, unusual thing that some people would like.” She strongly believes the humour in the show has been pivotal. “It’s witty and sort of slightly anarchic,” she says. “A lot of the structure of television is about good guys and bad guys, with the emphasis on good, on bad, and on guys. Here, you can’t really tell who’s good and who’s bad, and the moral universe is very upside down.” The show does have a remarkable way of messing with the viewer’s sensibilities, perhaps a credit to its creator and original head writer, notorious kook Phoebe WallerBridge (Fleabag). And throughout Killing Eve, there is a sparkling vein of pitch-black humour. A fraught argument about an international assassin ring slides seamlessly

KILLING EVE IS ON THE ABC ON SUNDAYS AT 9.30PM AND IVIEW ON MONDAYS AT NOON.

01 MAY 2020

I love her! I am her!

into a conversation about getting fish’n’chips for dinner. “Battered sausage?” “Yes please.” The viewer is never sure if the throb of tension will end in a murder or a joke. “It’s full of inversions, that’s why it’s funny,” Shaw says. “It’s got a very beautiful, pure girl who’s the psychopath, and it’s got a middle-aged woman who should be looking after children who’s out catching spies, and it’s got a very wise woman running the whole shebang who can run off and get drunk with Russians whenever she feels like it. Nobody is easy to pin down, and I think that’s why people like it.” She says the interesting thing is that it seems to have cross-generational appeal. “I meet mums who watch it with their sons, I meet fathers who watch it with their daughters, and it’s very popular with young women. It’s quite amazing.” There has been criticism from fans that the script has lost some of its punch since Waller-Bridge stepped down as head writer – season two was led by Emerald Fennell, the latest by Suzanne Heathcote – but the meticulous production values have never wavered. The combination of crumbling European sets, sumptuous music and stunning fashion (the bubblegum-pink chiffon frock Villanelle wears to her psychological assessment in season one has launched a thousand copies), manages to awe you, terrify you and arouse you all at the same time. The relationship between Villanelle and Eve is the obvious polestar of this show, but in season three Fiona Shaw’s cryptic Carolyn is pulled further into the tangled web of the main storyline. I admit to Shaw that I find the inscrutable Carolyn the creepiest of all the characters. I ask her if she likes her character. “I love her! I am her!” she protests. “She’s not like I am in my life, at all. She’s very, very ordered and very in control. She has lots going on. You’re only seeing a slice of her life.” Carolyn is still frosty and horrifyingly practical in season three, but certain events – including the appearance of her daughter – reveal a crack in the carapace, a vulnerability as yet unseen. “You slightly lift the curtain and start looking at Carolyn’s life,” says Shaw. “A lot of the mystery of people has been played out, so it’s good if the characters deepen. It’s not just the same; on the contrary. It’s taken a swerve to the left.” With Killing Eve’s third season brought forward by two weeks due to the pandemic, the episodes are now dripping through weekly, one-by-one. It’s riveting to anticipate where the characters will land, who will die, who will survive and what incredible outfit Villanelle will wear next. “I think that what Killing Eve does overall is that, no matter how outlandish it is, it’s barely keeping up with the outrageousness of the world,” says Shaw. “No matter what you invent, the world seems to be even madder.”

The global pandemic means the much-anticipated release of the third season of Killing Eve has gone a little differently than it would have otherwise. “Well, we were all looking forward to going to New York to open it and going to wonderful parties!” But Shaw, who speaks with a surprisingly jovial Irish lilt that is undetectable in her portrayal of the rigidly British Carolyn, is resigned to how things have unfolded. “I mean, getting up in the morning couldn’t be stranger in our lives. Real life is just so strange, so opening Killing Eve like this is nothing. “If there is any good thing in this unbelievably dark time,” Shaw adds, “it’s that people are available to watch it; it may give some pleasure to people who are locked in.”

No Mod Cons Ahead of the release of their new record All That Glue, Brit agitators Sleaford Mods spoke to us about welfare, rage…and toilets. by Brodie Lancaster

Music

Sleaford Mods

@brodielancaster

Brodie Lancaster is a writer and critic from Melbourne. She’s the author of No Way! Okay, Fine.

hen their debut tour of Australia was announced in late 2019, Sleaford Mods songwriter and vocalist Jason Williamson tweeted about how his fear of our country’s venomous spiders prevented him visiting sooner. By the time we sat down to talk in early March – following raucous shows in Sydney and Melbourne, and before they made the trip to the Victorian town of Meredith to play the hallowed Golden Plains festival – a new fear was seeping in. In a boutique coffee shop in Carlton, Williamson and his producer Andrew Fearn were sharing a travel-sized bottle of hand sanitiser with their tour manager and sound engineer. We were still in the foggy early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, with no idea that these would be some of the last live shows and festivals for quite a while. As the global effects of the virus seem to be slowly radicalising some people who’d previously existed in a state of middle-class

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N J A S OM S O N IA W IL L

ALL THAT GLUE IS OUT 15 MAY.

01 MAY 2020

AN D RE W FE AR N

“I work my dreams off for two bits of ravioli/And a warm bottle of Smirnoff/Under a manager that doesn’t have a fuckin’ clue/Do you want me to tell you what I think about you, c***?” Williamson barks on ‘Fizzy’, his rabid energy echoing a national, working-class sentiment. “[There] wasn’t much about at the time that captured the energy of the country,” he remarks now, about why the record led to such significant attention for Sleaford Mods. “There was a sign of a really low end,” Fearn agrees, shaking off the image of the silent observer that might come across in the Mods’ stage dynamic, which sees Williamson point and spit like a rowdy soccer fan and Fearn stationed behind his laptop – which is often propped up on a couple of milk crates – holding a lager and nodding in time in between his cues to hit play on his beats. “That album, Austerity Dogs, was very direct and real. There’s no smoke or mirrors or anything, and that’s what 2013 was like; it had hit a bottom rung. People were just being dead frank about stuff.” ‘Fizzy’ sits alongside a raft of their early material, B-sides and unreleased material – as well as certified hits ‘Jobseeker’ and ‘Tied Up in Nottz’ – on All That Glue, a new compilation archiving the band’s last seven years. The record, Fearn says, is “part refresher…”, before Williamson finishes his sentence, “…and part introductory package”. The cover bears a rendering of Marcel Duchamp’s famous artwork Fountain – a urinal he scrawled his signature on and placed in a gallery. It raised questions, in the early 1900s, about what we consider art. Considering their DIY style, I wonder if they’re making a comment on their work being perceived as art. Turns out, I’m reaching. “I’ll go with that, if someone suggested it,” Williamson laughs. But he talks himself around to the idea in realtime: “It’s a good point because, in the early days, people were like, ‘What is this? It’s crap, it’s nothing. Who are you? What are you two doing?’ When me and Andrew would put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it, and were convinced this was where our creativity was the strongest after 25 years of trying to learn the craft. We were totally, totally, really proud of it.” The actual intention behind their piss-take on Duchamp’s urinal – scrawled with the tag “S. Mods 2013–2019” – was much more direct. “A lot of the earliest stuff was inspired by the toilet existence and the idea of excrement and urine and spending a lot of time in toilets,” Williamson says. He has been public about his heavy cocaine use in the early days of the band, but now doesn’t use drugs and rarely drinks. “That first album was really from the point of view of a cubicle, of going for a shit. ‘Tied Up in Nottz’ was penned in a toilet in Hamburg; ‘Jobseeker’, all of these things are connected to the idea of a lavatory. So we thought it was the ideal image to go with the early stuff. Just crap.”

contentment, Sleaford Mods’ music seems an appropriate soundtrack. To the rhythm of Fearn’s sparse beats that hover somewhere between punk, hip-hop and industrial garage (in their Nottingham accents, it’s pronounced “garr-edge”), Williamson agitates for change. While Williamson started the project in 2006, it wasn’t until a few years later that he heard Fearn mixing some of his own tracks in a club and, over a smoko, they formed what became a vital partnership. Their first record together, 2013’s Austerity Dogs, was made under a cloud of conservative control, austerity-era spending cuts and rising unemployment. Williamson was working at the local council at the time, while Fearn was receiving welfare support. “We could just feel the cut of it,” Williamson remembers now. “They were makin’ it harder for him to claim benefits. It was alright where I was, but it would have been a couple of years and they would have been laying me off as well. The rot [had] just started to creep in. It was a good time for us, but it was not a very good time for a lot of other people.”

Chris Flynn

Books

illustration by Joseph Carrington

A Mammoth Tale Chris Flynnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s latest novel is a laugh-outloud historic fable, told from the perspective of a woolly mammothâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bony remains. by Doug Wallen @wallendoug

Doug Wallen is a freelance writer and editor based in Victoria, and a former music editor of The Big Issue.

hen you think of historical fiction, your mind probably doesn’t leap to a well-spoken woolly mammoth narrating an intercontinental adventure from beyond the grave. Luckily Chris Flynn’s mind did, because his third novel is perfect comic escapism for our troubled times. Mammoth follows an American mastodon from Philadelphia and Kentucky to Ireland and France as he recounts leading a motley herd of creatures to evade human hunters – only to be excavated for the sake of money and fame some 13,000 years later. From there the fossil traces a zigzagging journey that ends with it holding court at a 2007 auction in New York, accompanied by a mouthy Tyrannosaurus and other quarrelling animal remains up for sale. “I never thought I’d write historical fiction,” confesses Flynn, a former books editor of The Big Issue. “[But] once I dug the mammoth up, there was a whole world there ready to be explored.” With a thirst for research into the “obscure history they don’t teach you in school,” Flynn found a unique way to tell a laugh-out-loud fable about mankind’s hubris and possible redemption, all from the perspective of a deceased prehistoric elephant (with occasional input from its peers). That quirky premise arose when Flynn read a cache of Thomas Jefferson’s letters. In one missive, the early American president asks explorer Meriwether Lewis to bring back some mammoth bones from his expedition to the north-west in hopes of trumpeting the newfound country’s innate superiority. “They were desperate to prove to Europeans that [democracy] was a pretty great idea,” he explains. “It rang a bell, because Trump was saying similar things.” Then Flynn heard about an annual auction of natural history treasures that one year saw actors Nicolas Cage

For all its extended comic riffing, Mammoth covers a surprising number of real-life events, complete with a bibliography of research sources. And as a morality tale, the mammoth witnesses not just how humans hunt whole species into extinction, but also how they mistreat each other, touching on slavery and the slaughter of Native Americans. An Irishman now based on Victoria’s Phillip Island, Flynn inventively skewers American myth-making while portraying the broader human propensity for self-destruction. That said, the book is first and foremost a comedy, with slang-heavy bouts of irreverent banter between the fossils. Recalling the bickering ghosts in George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, such distinctive voices are a constant in Flynn’s work. In his previous novel, The Glass Kingdom (2014), a desperate pair of carnival workers grapple for control of meth and money while one of them speaks very much like the aspiring rapper he is. “Everything I’ve done has been written in voice,” admits Flynn. “Any time I try to write in third person, it doesn’t have the life or energy I want.” With a room full of inert bones as your primary storytellers, voice proves especially crucial. “How do you have a propulsive narrative when everyone is literally standing still?” he asks, identifying the central challenge he faced. From its gleeful comedic punchiness to its revolving door of time and place, Mammoth certainly takes the reader out of our current pandemic-stricken reality. And beyond – offsetting doom and gloom with some muchneeded absurdity, the book even ends on an optimistic note, entertaining the possibility of humans getting our act together in time to slow climate change. In fact, the book wound up receiving a glowing blurb from Dr George Church, the head of Harvard University’s real-life Woolly Mammoth Revival team. “He’s working

on cloning the mammoth back to life and releasing them in re-wilded parts of Siberia to stomp around and restore the permafrost,” says Flynn. “They’re not going to reverse climate change, but if there’s a herd of ancient creatures cooling things down, it might buy us some time to wean people off fossil fuels.” As for Flynn’s next book, he’s already got a finished collection of short stories waiting in the wings. But closer in spirit to Mammoth is another lighthearted historical-fiction novel, this one set in ancient Greece. Researching dialogue for it has already led him down a riotous rabbit hole of period swear words. “It’s so much worse than us,” he marvels with a laugh. “Wow.” MAMMOTH IS OUT NOW.

and Leonardo DiCaprio bidding over a Tyrannosaurus Bataar skull. (Cage won out, only to return the artefact after learning it had been illegally smuggled out of Mongolia.) Fascinated by how centuries of American men have gravitated towards bygone animals as an oversized symbol of masculinity, Flynn began mapping out his novel with human narrators before adopting the liberating perspective of animals – thanks in part to his then day-job at an RSPCA cattery. He also added a self-imposed rule that if even one piece of an animal was in a certain location, it could bear equal witness. So the mammoth gains additional insight gleaned from an errant tooth, echoing whole conversations verbatim. “That was my little jab at the memoir genre,” says Flynn. “It always bothers me when you read a memoir and there’s an awful lot of precise dialogue.”

01 MAY 2020

They’re not going to reverse climate change, but if there’s a herd of ancient creatures cooling things down, it might buy us some time…

Film Reviews

Annabel Brady-Brown Film Editor @annnabelbb

ne of the nice things about having a little extra time has been the chance to watch movies in a casual and totally undirected way – not for work or research, but for pure viewing pleasure. I’ve been digging into back catalogues, and rooting around the streaming platforms beyond the usual suspects. An especially happy discovery was Tubi’s rich (and free) collection (go to tubitv.com). From the flying fists of Bruce Lee to classics like Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954) or William Castle’s spooky B-movie The Tingler (1959) – what a scream! – there’s a bounty of titles to hold us over until cinemas reopen. But my greatest thrill to date came from watching T.A.M.I. Show (1964), which an angelic soul behind the moniker PastBlastMusic has uploaded to YouTube. The film is often referred to as one of the great concert movies, and the 12 acts read like a hall of fame rollcall – Marvin Gaye, The Beach Boys, The Supremes and The Rolling Stones – brought together for two hours on the one stage. With each brief set, the whirlwind energy bounces from one performer to the next, accompanied by the screams of 3000 high-school kids and a gaggle of demonically grinning back-up dancers in cartoonish 60s fashions. An 18-year-old Lesley Gore captivates with a rendition of her proto-feminist anthem ‘You Don’t Own Me’, before James Brown writes history and unleashes a set of tight, transcendent dance moves, the likes of which will be seared on my agog brain forevermore. ABB

JAMES BROWN’S HAIR DOES FEEL GOOD, AND MICK JAGGER FEELS GOOD TOO

THE WILLOUGHBYS  | NETFLIX

When a cynical street-cat (voiced by Ricky Gervais, doubling as narrator) tells you this story is weird, believe him. An animated tale of child abuse and neglect, it follows four oddball kids on a quest to emancipate themselves from uncaring parents. For a kids’ film, it’s pretty raw, based as it is on the divisive book by children’s author Lois Lowry. The Willoughbys riffs on the parental politics of yesteryear – as seen in Mary Poppins (1964) and Matilda (1996) – while revelling in meta humour and bleak wit. Voice performances from Maya Rudolph (Big Mouth) and Jane Krakowski (30 Rock) bring much-needed levity with jaunty one-liners.The film’s most intriguing aspect, though, is its playful visual style. With character designs by Craig Kellman (2019’s The Addams Family), it avoids looking like Hotel Transylvania’s plastic doppelgänger by experimenting with organic textures such as wool and paper. This gives The Willoughbys a certain softness, but overall, the frenetic pace and plot are hard to embrace. AIMEE KNIGHT NON-FICTION

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 | DIGITAL RELEASE + DVD 6 MAY

The lives of the characters in Non-Fiction revolve around words. Olivier Assayas’ graceful Parisian melodrama sees an intimately intertwined set of intellectuals go headto-head in dizzyingly erudite discussions on the state of literature, politics, art and commerce. Underlying their discussions, however, is a web of infidelity that connects them. Navel-gazing novelist Léonard (Vincent Macaigne) is having trouble understanding why his longtime publisher Alain (Guillaume Canet) has rejected his latest work. Is it because he’s all washed up, or because he is secretly having an affair with Alain’s actress wife, Selena (Juliette Binoche)? Meanwhile, Alain is grappling with declining book sales, and his newly hired millennial head of “digital transition” is forecasting the death of print. Is the path to publishing glory really paved in e-books, blogs and tweets? A charming look at the intricacies and challenges of long-term love, which doubles as a dissertation on the state of publishing in the digital era, Non-Fiction is a rare delight. JESSICA ELLICOTT

HEARTS AND BONES  | DIGITAL RELEASE 6 MAY

For decades, war photographer Dan Fisher (Hugo Weaving) has documented death. After a stint in Iraq, he returns home to his multi-storey apartment in Western Sydney, where he lives with his partner Josie (Hayley McElhinney). Weaving’s performance exquisitely conveys a man afflicted with PTSD, his hulking physicality juxtaposed against his mental and emotional frailty. Not long after his return, Dan befriends Sebastian Ahmed (Andrew Luri), a South Sudanese taxi driver and choir singer, whose station in life surprisingly mirrors his own. But their friendship is tested when Dan learns about Sebastian’s violent past. Hearts and Bones draws striking comparisons between white middle-class Australians and working-class refugees. And what is the real purpose of war photography – art or exploitation? How do we bridge the gap between self and other? A morally complex drama, Hearts and Bones is an impressive fiction debut from Ben Lawrence (Sydney Film Festival 2018 Documentary Award-winner Ghosthunter). FIONA VILLELLA

Small Screen Reviews

Aimee Knight Small Screens Editor @siraimeeknight

LADY O’LOUGHLIN  | SBS VICELAND + SBS ON DEMAND

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 | AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

 | PODCAST

In the year 2033, heaven’s pearly gates have been replaced with a login screen in Upload, the new series from sitcom guru Greg Daniels (The Simpsons, The Office, Parks and Recreation). Technology allows dying people to upload themselves into a virtual hereafter, which is where we meet the newly deceased and digitised Nathan (Robbie Amell, The Flash). To help Nathan adjust he has his “angel” Nora (singer-songwriter Andy Allo), who works in a call centre supporting “uploads”. It’s a lot to process, but Upload is less about a digital afterlife and more about a society that would allow one to exist; it’s Black Mirror with less rocking back and forth on the couch afterwards. But another afterlife show? Well, what separates Upload from other comedies such as The Good Place and Forever is its excellent satirical take on a capitalist future in which every aspect of life is monetised or reliant on star ratings – even sex requires a consensual gizmo. In Upload, heaven is a place on Earth, but real life is a living hell. CAMERON

Inspired by scary stories posted on the social media forum Reddit, this sci-fi audio drama follows a young journalist, Alice Sharman (voiced by Tessa Thompson, Westworld, Thor: Ragnarok), who documents her own disappearance. Following a team of paranormal explorers investigating an urban legend, ambitious Alice becomes embroiled in a supernatural alternate universe. Rather than adopting a first-person perspective, this story is told through found recordings, and the first three episodes skilfully set up the scenario. With a large cast and plenty of plot twists, however, it can be difficult to follow. As the show’s heroine, Thompson’s voice work is admirable – warm, even-handed, sceptical – but the real star of the show is the otherworldly sound design. After all, this is a world steeped in conspiracy theories, violence and people questioning reality (not to mention sponsorship from smart-speaker manufacturer Sonos). For fans of Welcome to Night Vale and Elizabeth Greenwood’s Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud. NATHANIA GILSON

WILLIAMS

t’s six months since video-ondemand service Apple TV+ vaulted into the streaming wars. But, so far, the platform hasn’t taken a substantial bite out of Netflix’s subscriber base. With more folks than ever turning to screen media to fill their newfound hours at home, I figure it’s worth checking up on the tech giant’s little platform that could (and should) be much more visible. After all, they recently unlocked a swag of Apple Originals, making them free to view by anyone with an iOS device. Among the complimentary offerings are the children’s series Snoopy in Space, along with Sesame Workshop’s Ghostwriter reboot, and puppet-driven vehicle Helpsters. For the grown-ups, there’s M Night Shyamalan’s thriller Servant, award-winning documentary The Elephant Queen and the coming-of-age series Dickinson, which, for me, is the pick of the bunch. If self-isolation is giving you cabin fever, now’s the perfect time to devour this ambitious, subversive dramedy about reclusive poet Emily Dickinson, and the social, familial and artistic constraints she rejected. It’s a beautiful hoot. Behind the Apple TV+ paywall, I also enjoyed Home Before Dark, which landed last month to little fanfare. Inspired by the true story of pre-teen journalist Hilde Lysiak, this small town murder show takes the well-worn “sins of the father” conceit and weaves a (surprisingly nonviolent) crime story. Led by endearing nine-year-old Brooklynn Prince (The Florida Project), this family drama is worth a peek if you dig cosy mysteries. AK

01 MAY 2020

UPLOAD

COSY MYSTERY: HOME BEFORE DARK

It takes a certain kind of nerve to get on stage and try to make strangers laugh. It takes courage, vulnerability and humility to let cameras into your hospital room when you’re back again for long-standing alcoholism. Intimate and genial, Lady O’Loughlin follows stand-up comic Fiona O’Loughlin from 2016 to 2018 as she scales the hill of sobriety. Directed by her friend Sam Peterson, it documents a woman who is, by turns, cynical, scared, amiable and robust. Their closeness means Peterson – primarily a writer and actor – can access areas of O’Loughlin’s life where an unacquainted director may not be welcome. But their familiarity also means some basic questions are glazed over: when did O’Loughlin first discover she was funny? When did she get divorced? Did her position as a woman in the male-dominated Australian comedy scene influence her substance use? The most eloquent and insightful reflections on mental health, addiction and the entertainment industry actually come from Wil Anderson, but overall, Lady O’Loughlin’s heart is in the right place. Premieres 4 May. AIMEE KNIGHT

Music Reviews

Sarah Smith Music Editor

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

he cultural impact of the early 00s new rock revival was so significant that in the midst of a bleak New York winter a friend and I spent all our savings just to live in the East Village (unemployed) for one month, in the hope that we might get to drink with Karen O or Julian Casablancas at the Mars Bar or Pianos. Two decades on, how does a band who defined an era remain potent? It’s something The Strokes have struggled with – both Angles (2011) and Comedown Machine (2013) lacked cohesion and the bratty rich-kid, rock’n’roll recklessness of their earlier work. But on The New Abnormal something seems to have sparked, just enough. ‘The Adults Are Talking’ is up there with the band’s great album openers: in sinewy falsetto Casablancas sleazes those muchmissed Julian-isms (“You think of me/When you think of her”) over bristling Valensi/ Hammond Jr guitar duels. It’s both like and unlike The Strokes – both old- and new-sounding enough to hit the mark. ‘At the Door’ is equally vital, leaning into a stroppy synth that worms its way right through the record. The missteps, however, are frustrating – they often sound so close to something brilliant. Take the Billy Idol rewrite ‘Bad Decisions’, which stutters to life just as the song winds up. Or ‘Eternal Summer’, which sounds like a really cool demo. With all songs now attributed to “The Strokes” you can’t help but wonder whether too many cooks have watered down the broth. SS

WHAT IS ABNORMAL?

@sarah_smithie

SAWAYAMA RINA SAWAYAMA 

“I’m losing myself in the darkness of the world,” sings Rina Sawayama as the very first line on her eponymous debut LP. The opener, ‘Dynasty’, sets the tenor for an album that matches bright, shiny sounds with dark despair. The Japanese-English artist is part pop-singer, part dystopian conceptualist, having spun a political-science degree from Cambridge into making music whose ultra-gloss facade conceals its intended critique. On ‘Fuck This World’, Sawayama sings of being “sick of watching people taking from the bottom to feed the top”, articulating economic inequality and climate grief over a sticky song styled on wobbly R’n’B and contemporary K-Pop. For all its early-00s Justin and Britney musical vibes, ‘XS’ mocks late-capitalist excess; while ‘Comme des Garçons (Like the Boys)’ ridicules personal branding. In each, she uses luxury brand names with loaded irony, a tonic for pop’s mindless product placement. Sometimes, the hyperactive musical palette rankles – ‘STFU!’ joins Grimes in painfully attempting an outré-pop/nu metal revival – but, even then, that only adds to the essential takeaway: Sawayama is an unlikely, of-the-moment pop pin-up. ANTHONY CAREW

FUTURE NOSTALGIA DUA LIPA

LOOK ALIVE! THE STROPPIES

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How do you avoid the second-album slump? Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia spells it out: study the greats (Madonna, Minogue, Moroder) and aim for timeless, rather than timely. While Dua Lipa’s 2017 debut was divinely on-trend but far from revolutionary, Future Nostalgia sets new rules – offering a blueprint for a disco synth-pop revival. Lead singles ‘Don’t Start Now’ and ‘Physical’ set the pace, balancing disco synths, 90s house and our undying love of a hand-clap chorus. Designed for the dance floor, this record leaves behind the ballads that weighed down Dua’s debut. Instead, it’s all about her bravado – her low, sultry voice and ex-model demeanour work best under a disco ball. ‘Levitating’ and ‘Hallucinate’ are highlights, both irresistible sugar-rushes. It’s a shame the final two songs are such a misstep. ‘Good in Bed’ is an unconvincing Lily Allen rip-off, and ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is an overdone attempt at a #MeToo anthem. The rest of Future Nostalgia is an instant classic.

Melbourne’s The Stroppies rise above the already warm and nostalgic embrace of their 2019 debut Whoosh with Look Alive!, a ramshackle collection of guitar-pop, rich with wirey guitar leads and razor-sharp melodies. While perhaps less cohesive than their previous release, there’s a lot to like here, such as the title track ‘Look Alive’, the 70s prog-esque lullaby ‘Roller Cloud’ and the infectious stomp of ‘Enter Or Exit’. The real draw here is the expanded instrumentation, production experiments and extended jams that make you want to stick around. The Stroppies still expertly toe the line of their “not too sunny, not too cloudy” disposition, with the latter half of the LP settling into a woozy haze. Look Alive! plays as an album written on the run during the band’s 2019 European tour, and it’s a welcome wanderfuelled release for those of us sick of being stuck at home indoors in the one place (read: pretty much everyone everywhere).

JARED RICHARDS

NICHOLAS KENNEDY

Book Reviews

Thuy On Books Editor @thuy_on

e’re all well and truly hunkered down indoors in self-isolation mode, so here’s a small selection of reading material to help you escape your cabin fever. As Pulitzer-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri puts it, “That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” The Lost Love Song by Minnie Darke is a romantic story that explores the power of music – how a love song travels across the world, connecting individuals. You can float away to other places, carried by the notes of this book. Bernard Gallate’s The Origin of Me is a droll coming-of-age tale about how 15-year-old Lincoln navigates home and school life. So far so normal right? But Lincoln has an additional problem to contend with – there’s a strange nub growing at the base of his back. This teen’s extraordinary affliction will transport you back to the painful world of adolescence. Finally, for those who need a bit of help to look beyond the present and who are after a bit of light in these troubled times, a good source of solace is the radiant Phosphorescence, by journalist Julia Baird. Though she uses her own life experiences, it’s not a self-help book nor a memoir, but rather a searching look at how to make sense of life. The clue is in the subtitle: On Awe, Wonder & Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark. Friendships and family, climate change and world affairs – Baird tackles them all with warmth and grace. TO

To say Ellena Savage’s first collection contains a series of memoir-essays is not strictly accurate; it’s more an experimental medley of form and content, taking in prose poetry, literary and cultural analysis and stream-of-consciousness, as well as more conventionally structured essays. Blueberries is not a book that you can breeze through quickly; Savage’s range and intellect demand a slow reading as she canvasses an eclectic array of topics including sexual assault, holidays with men, friendships with women, the precarity and privileges of the creative and academic life, and the various places and countries she has lived. There’s a restlessness about Savage – a curiosity and an intent to interrogate, particularly with matters regarding sex and class – as she reflects on the power dynamics of what it means to be a (white) woman and a writer. She’s playful and not afraid to question the veracity of her own memory; several contributions have her present-day interjections up against historic incidents. THUY ON STONE SKY GOLD MOUNTAIN MIRANDI RIWOE 

Stone Sky Gold Mountain follows Chinese siblings Ying and Lai Yue as they settle in Australia during the Gold Rush. Young and without parents, the two must navigate an overwhelming foreign social landscape and survive the harsh Australian climate. They are starving and mistreated, copping a barrage of racism and prejudice from the white settlers of Maytown. When Ying befriends Meriem, housemaid to local sex worker Sophie, it sets into motion a series of events that ends in tragedy and heartbreak. Mirandi Riwoe has written a phenomenal story highlighting an oft-forgotten part of Australia’s immigration history. The richly descriptive nature writing, with its combination of beautiful prose and intensely poignant characterisation, makes it a compelling story. Riwoe’s strength lies in her ability to create a connection between the reader and character, and you cannot help but feel invested in Ying and Lai Yue’s plight for a better life. This one is highly recommended. SHELLEY CARTER

REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD ANNE TYLER 

If you’re a fan of American author Anne Tyler, you’ll be pleased to know her latest novel is a synthesis of all that is good about her work, notably her close and empathetic attention to her characters. Redhead By the Side of the Road is once again set in her beloved Baltimore and is about tech-head Micah Mortimer, harmless enough but also a social maladroit and clueless when it comes to picking up subtle nuances in others’ behaviour. He is fastidious to the point of obsession about routine and tidiness, much to the bemusement, but growing chagrin, of his girlfriend. He’s the youngest in his family, childless and the odd one out of their “noisiness and pell-mellness”. But one day the son of an ex-girlfriend lands on his doorstep, and Micah’s neat little world becomes frayed at the edges. This book is small in size but big in emotion. THUY ON

01 MAY 2020

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BLUEBERRIES ELLENA SAVAGE

Public Service Announcement

by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

Sometimes, especially at this time of year, just the way light happens is a work of art. I walked into the kitchen the other day and I had to go and fetch someone, just so two humans on planet Earth had witnessed the exact way the light from the window was coming through the honey jar someone had left on the bench. The kitchen was a pigsty, by the way – the honey jar should have been put away in the cupboard – but that part of the mess was breathtaking. People who live with me are used to this kind of thing, but even so, I don’t mind telling you, I was thanked. If I were given a day back on Earth, I reckon I’d be loving the lighting design. The moon does some good work, too. Huge ball of a thing one night, like a thumb print out the window taking you by surprise. Next time you look for it, leeeetle tiny fingernail hiding up a tree. People’s walks. The people I have loved and lost: oh to glance up and see them walking about again, to recognise someone at such a distance that nothing

could identify them except for the way they hold themselves, such an expression of who they are, and of how they have lived. The fact that doing so sometimes makes you chuckle. Being able to sit in your favourite spot, sip your favourite hot drink from your favourite cup, and talk on the phone to someone who really makes you laugh. One of those people who makes you lighter in the world. More confident. Hearing their voice on the phone, doodling or cleaning dust out of random corners of things with your finger. It wouldn’t matter, would it, if you returned to Earth for only a day whether you saw the people you felt like you should see? No. You’d go to the people who make you feel like that. So hey: go to the people who make you feel like that. You’d love the things you always loved, wouldn’t you? The warm socks on a cold night. The first mouthful of lemon pudding. Your favourite curry. Gently saying the words “Sorry mate, my leg’s gone to sleep” to an animal perched on your lap whose feelings you don’t want to hurt. Telling someone how great they are. Watching a ripper TV show. Gasping at the end of a book. You’d also, probably, be surprised at what you loved, were you given an extra day. I recently realised how much I love the pair of shorts abandoned on the floor in such a way as to bring to mind the gleeful removal of the same by a small child in a big hurry. The Matchbox cars lined up in a neat row underneath the table. The note scribbled in a hurry reminding me of something I’d forget. There’s something about the absence of people where people once were that is, especially recently, touching. How lost items are picked up by people and relocated, like flags, to the point most likely to attract attention: a baby’s hat on a post at the end of a beach track, the empty streets painted in noisy chalk. Public Service Announcement: you’ve got today. It’s all yours. Lucky duck.

Lorin Clarke is a Melbourne-based writer. The second season of her radio series, The Fitzroy Diaries, is on ABC Radio National and the ABC Listen app now.

t’s a cliché these days that Pixar films make people cry. Don’t know what a Pixar film is? That just means you are not intimately attuned to the viewing habits of small children. For that, you should be relieved. Like, don’t boast about it, but well done. There are these films for kids, though, and they are cartoons for heaven’s sake, but they make grown adults cry. Recently, I watched one of these films, called Coco, and I may one day stop crying, but that is by no means a certainty. The film is about the Mexican celebration the Day of the Dead, and in it, the souls of the deceased get to visit their loved ones for the day, unseen but celebrated and remembered. A lot of the film was about the grief of the living. For me, though, I kept imagining it from the point of view of the dead. Imagine! Just one day! Reunited with the familiar and the normal and the downright complicated business of life again. Even now, with all the things happening in the world, even with the mundane and the awful and the infuriating and the depressing – even with all that – imagine getting a whole day. Public Service Announcement: look at today. It’s amazing.

01 MAY 2020

You’ve Got Today

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas

PHOTOS BY BEC HUDSON

Tastes Like Home Gaby Chapman

Serves 4 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 onion, finely diced 2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger 2 garlic cloves, crushed or grated ¼ teaspoon ground turmeric 2 teaspoons ground cumin 2 teaspoons ground coriander ¼ teaspoon ground chilli 400g tin diced tomatoes 3 × 400g tins chickpeas, drained and rinsed, or 330g dried chickpeas, soaked and cooked 1 teaspoon garam masala 100g baby spinach Steamed rice or bread to serve

Method Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the onion, ginger and garlic, and cook for 5 minutes. Add all the spices except the garam masala and fry for 2 minutes. If it starts to stick, add a tablespoon of water. Add the tomatoes and 300ml water and bring to the boil. Add the chickpeas and simmer for 40 minutes. When ready to serve, add the garam masala and stir through the spinach. If doubling up the recipe, split the mixture in two and allow the extra meal to cool to room temperature. Refrigerate overnight before freezing for later use. Serve with steamed rice or bread.

here is something very comforting about a recipe you know off by heart. When I lived in a share house, we had a vegetarian housemate and we were looking for recipes we could all enjoy. Chickpea Curry became a regular meal, as it was simple and tasty, and could be cooked with food exclusively from the pantry (we weren’t big on shopping back then). No-one knows where the original recipe came from, but it became a staple. In fact, our house became known for this curry. Years later, I married one of those housemates and we had three children. I struggled to come up with meals to keep my family interested. Luckily, I met my co-author Jen Petrovic at our kids’ primary school. She is a chef and master meal-planner. Together we built the Plan Buy Cook app to help people make home cooking and meal planning easy. When we were writing The Plan Buy Cook Book, I brought out my trusty Chickpea Curry recipe, and Jen had some fine additions that make it even better. We like to encourage families to double-up two meals a week, to build up a “foodbank” of meals and make life easier in the future. And this is a great vegan-friendly freezable option. It has become a hit here at my house – even our fussy-eater loves it. I didn’t grow up in a family that knew how to cook well. Now my parents are learning how to cook new things from our cookbook, and having great success. And I am teaching my kids to cook, plan and budget for meals, which are super-important skills that many teens and home-leavers don’t have. At the moment, when ingredients are limited and eating-out options non-existent, home cooking is even more important. Now is not the time for fussy recipes that require difficult ingredients and techniques. We need recipes that can be made simply from everyday supermarket ingredients to produce a tasty, nourishing meal everyone enjoys. Just like this great Chickpea Curry – a shared, simple meal that you know and love will always feel like home, no matter where that is. THE PLAN BUY COOK BOOK BY GABY CHAPMAN AND JEN PETROVIC IS OUT NOW.

01 MAY 2020

Ingredients

Gaby says…

Chickpea Curry

Puzzles

ANSWERS PAGE 45

By Lingo! by Lauren Gawne lingthusiasm.com MUM

CLUES 5 letters Burdened Carrying‑chair Financial review Of ebb and flow Without fault 6 letters Brought together Ice‑cream dish Not talked about Rejection, refusal Sea‑bound area 7 letters

N U

A D

Sudoku

by websudoku.com

Each column, row and 3 x 3 box must contain all numbers 1 to 9.

9 1 7

8 9 5 6 3 4 7 4 1 2 5

9 5 3

4 5 9

4 2 3 1 7 8

Puzzle by websudoku.com

Solutions CROSSWORD PAGE 45 ACROSS 1 Blemish 5 Formals 9 Gag reflex 10

DOWN 1 Bigot 2 English language 3 Icebox 4 Halcyon 5 Fixture 6 Response 7 American history 8 Serenaded 13 Deferrals 15 Customer 17 Elapsed 18 Corsair 20 Sprawl 23 Staid

Early timepiece Last part, rear (2 words)

Spear 11 Trilogy 12 Utopian 13 Doha 14 Understand 16 Flatulence 19 Shed 21 Regatta 22 Repasts 24 Alarm 25 Sharapova 26 Sees red 27 Relayed

8 letters

20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9

Ex‑directory

1 Soccer (Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar) 2 1918 3 Timmy the Dog (in TV’s The Famous Five ) 4 Four 5 Bram Stoker 6 Sugar cane 7 Graham Kennedy and Ray Martin 8 Hieroglyphics 9 Three 10 Fiona Apple 11 Enterprise Bargaining Agreement 12 The Mayor of New York City 13 Arborio rice 14 Colombia 15 See What You Made Me Do 16 A donkey 17 Three: 1916; 1940; 1944 18 Christopher Nolan 19 1928 20 Melissa Leong

01 MAY 2020

Using all nine letters provided, can you answer these clues? Every answer must include the central letter. Plus, which word uses all nine letters?

by puzzler.com

Word Builder

The word mother is recorded in some of the earliest English writing. In contrast, the less formal mum first appears in writing around the end of the 1500s. The informal variants, such as mom, ma, mummy or mammy, do not appear in “serious” earlier writing in English, so it’s unclear when these different forms started becoming common. Your mum has nothing in common with Egyptian mummies – they are from Arabic mumiyah “embalmed body” (via Latin mumia), from the earlier Persian mumiya “bitumen”, a sticky substance used medicinally, and which people thought was used to preserve bodies. Your mum is also unrelated to “keeping mum”, which is the only trace left of a now-unused English verb mum “to make silent”.

Crossword

by Steve Knight

THE ANSWERS FOR THE CRYPTIC AND QUICK CLUES ARE THE SAME. ANSWERS PAGE 43.

Quick Clues ACROSS

1 Defect (7) 5 Black tie events (7) 9 Reaction causing difficulty swallowing (3,6) 10 Pointed weapon (5) 11 Three-part story (7) 12 Idealistic (7) 13 Middle Eastern city (4) 14 Comprehend (10) 16 Gas (10) 19 Cast off (4) 21 Boating event (7) 22 Meals (7) 24 Anxiety (5) 25 Female tennis star (9) 26 Gets angry (4,3) 27 Passed on (7)

14 15

DOWN

20 23

Cryptic Clues

Solutions

ACROSS

DOWN

1. Much of the problem is his fault (7) 5 Balls from pro slam circuit (7) 9 Spontaneous joke first up a bit hard to swallow

1 Admitting Chinese board game is a tad racist (5) 2 Common tongue exercises heal ageing lungs (7,8) 3 Spooner to purchase hosiery when it’s freezing

10 Lance Armstrong’s first admission to cycling

4 Happy to cheat Lucky John regularly (7) 5 Tux ruined in fire from match (7) 6 Counter espionage ultimately tails foreign

(3,6)

reps (5)

11 Attempt to screen iBook in three parts? (7) 12 I put on a spread that’s perfect (7) 13 Ronaldo happy to host World Cup here (4) 14 Get subordinate to stall… (10) 16 …wind turbine’s initial investment in production

of clean fuel (10) 19 Lean to take off (4) 21 Boat races with rum? Great, thanks (7) 22 Hangs around Grandad for meals (7) 24 Lara Bingle, media’s No.1 siren (5) 25 She played sets with A-ha, Vapors, New Order (9) 26 Loses temper when told to grab a cab? (4,3) 27 Passed on Yale, retired in debt (7)

(6)

persons (8)

7 Minority race has troubled past here! (8,7) 8 Williams deserved to lose serve, but took set to

love? (9)

13 Stays to model red flares (9) 15 Patron saint arrested by copper with more hash

(8)

17 Passed by Des White’s building (7) 18 Pirate sings rude song (7) 20 Stretch out war, breaking records for revolution

(6) 23 Conventional road service (5)

SUDOKU PAGE 43

4 8 6 3 9 1 7 5 2

3 1 5 4 2 7 8 9 6

2 9 7 6 8 5 3 4 1

8 5 4 1 7 3 6 2 9

9 6 1 8 5 2 4 3 7

7 3 2 9 6 4 5 1 8

5 4 8 2 1 6 9 7 3

6 2 3 7 4 9 1 8 5

1 7 9 5 3 8 2 6 4

Puzzle by websudoku.com

WORD BUILDER PAGE 43 5 Laden Sedan Audit Tidal Ideal 6 United Sundae Unsaid Denial Island 7 Sundial Tail end 8 Unlisted 9 Insulated

01 MAY 2020

1 Racist (5) 2 Common tongue (7,8) 3 Freezer (6) 4 Peaceful, pleasant (7) 5 Installation (7) 6 Answer (8) 7 Chronicle of events in the US (8,7) 8 Performed music, typically to a loved one (9) 13 Postponements (9) 15 Client (8) 17 Passed (7) 18 Pirate (7) 20 Stretch out (6) 23 Conservative (5)

Click 2 JULY 1957

Louis Armstrong, Richard Nixon

words by Michael Epis photo by Getty

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

ichard Nixon was Louis Armstrong’s drug mule. The then Vice President (later President) of the United States once carried the great jazzman’s marijuana stash across international borders. During the Cold War, when the US and Russia were trying to win the allegiance of non-aligned nations, the US State Department came up with the idea of “goodwill ambassadors”. Armstrong was one of them, sent around the world, showcasing American jazz, winning the hearts and minds of millions. The story goes that being ambassadors, they were treated as ambassadors – which meant they skipped customs on returning home. Except once, when Armstrong had to stand in line. But into the room burst Richard Nixon. Nixon saw Armstrong – and an opportunity. So did Armstrong. “Satchmo, what are you doing here?” Nixon asked, according to his acolyte Roger Stone in his 2014 book Nixon’s Secrets. (Yes, the same Roger Stone recently sentenced to 40 months’ jail for his role in Trump’s Russia affair.) Let Stone continue his story: “Well, Pops, (Armstrong called everyone Pops) I just came back from my goodwill ambassador’s tour of Asia

and they told me I had to stand in this line for customs.” Without hesitation, Nixon grabbed both of Satchmo’s suitcases. “Ambassadors don’t have to go through customs and the Vice President of the United States will gladly carry your bags for you,” Nixon said. Whereupon the Vice President “muled” three pounds of pot through United States Customs without ever knowing it. Armstrong himself enjoyed telling the story. He had a long history with marijuana. He wrote songs about it in the 1920s. He was probably the first celebrity arrested for possessing it, in 1930 at California’s Cotton Club. His fourth wife, Lucille, was arrested in her hotel room in Hawaii on New Year’s Day 1954 for possession, which lead her husband to write an impassioned letter to his manager: “Mr Glaser, you must see to it that I have special permission to smoke all the reefers that I want to when I want or I will just have to put this horn down, that’s all.” Armstrong kept smoking pot until near the end of his life, in 1971, when the risk of jail was just too great. Nixon, according to Stone, was later told what had happened. His response: “Louis smokes marijuana?” Stone’s extensive collection of Nixon paraphernalia includes a bong with Nixon’s face on it.

ISSN 1326-639X

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