If you missed the broadcast yesterday, Martyn Tott's "chatumentary", as he has called it, about Freddie Davies is currently available to watch online on TPTV Encore - for a week, I imagine. You will need to subscribe in order to watch but provided you can tolerate the adverts it's free to watch.
A distinction drawn in Radio 4's Today programme between the genres of autobiography and memoir may be less than wholly convincing - is "a work of literature that is verging on fiction" really an adequate definition of a memoir? - but it did remind me of my feelings when reading the comprehensive 2016 biography of the playwright and screenwriter R.C. Sherriff, best remembered for Journey's End.
At last the film Sven Klang's Combo (as it was known on its UK release) is - at the time of writing, anyway - available to watch online here. This is a big deal as when I last checked a few years ago it wasn't possible to buy a DVD with the appropriate subtitles - and it's well worth seeing. Benny Green reviewed it very warmly in Punch as the most convincing portrayal of a band's interactions he had ever seen on film.
When I first heard the Flamingos' doo wop classic Golden Teardrops I was puzzled by the reference to "a cottage by the sea", which seemed an arbitrary place in which to picture the loved one. Did it perhaps signify something to the record's original audience which I had missed?
... I'll remember,
No matter where you'll be -
In a crowded room
Or a busy street
Or a cottage by the sea ...
That was around fifty years ago but I didn't think to investigate further - until now.
