Claptrap 10: Academic acclaim?


This is the tenth and final post in a series marking the 25th anniversary of the publication of Our Masters' Voices and the televising of Claptrap by Granada Television.

Part 2: Eureka!
Part 3: News leaks out of the lecture theatre
Part 4: How to get a book published
Part 7: On location

Before trying to get Our Masters' Voices published (Claptrap 4), I'd been warned by Desmond Morris, who was a fellow of the same Oxford college as me, that I would have to be prepared for a sniffy reaction from other academics if I went ahead with my plan to write a book with no footnotes and lots of pictures.

If anyone should know about such things, it was him. Distinguished ethologist though he certainly was, he'd committed the cardinal sin of 'popularisation' by writing The Naked Ape - world sales of which had, by then, reached a mere 15 million copies.

So I should have been ready for the deathly silence that greeted me at lunch on the day after the Claptrap film was shown on television - and should not, I suppose, have been surprised that several days went by before anyone said anything at all.

After all, I knew that the programme had been seen by 12 million people and, however much Oxford dons might pretend that they never watched television, it was statistically improbable that none of them had seen it.

Then, about three days after my phone had hardly stopped ringing - from people asking if I could do the same for them and help them to speak as well as Ann Brennan had done - the silence finally broke.

Standing next to a famous psychologist in the queue for our free lunch (yes, there really was, and probably still is, such a thing as a free lunch in Oxford colleges), I discovered that at least one other member of the college had seen the programme

"Ahh" he said "now about that programme you made a few days ago."

For a split second, this sounded promising, until he went on:

"I think I would need to see the results of more than one experiment to be convinced by your findings."

I was tempted to reply by asking him which funding agency he thought would be willing to finance such a project, and how anyone other than a television company would have the contacts and resources to make all the complicated arrangements that would be needed to replicate it.

It also crossed my mind to launch into a full frontal attack on what I considered to be the rather dubious methodology and facile nature of some of the 'findings' from his own research.

But, by then, I'd been in Oxford for ten years, and had become far too polite to do either.

And however 'unconvinced' my lunchtime colleague may have been by the Claptrap project, within a year or two, I'd been invited to apply for jobs by two well-known American universities, head-hunted by a British business school and seen several follow-up studies published by other researchers.

Within the first ten years, Our Masters' Voices was reprinted five times and, 25 years on, still appears to be in print.

All of which would I think, even if I'd stayed in the ivory tower, have been quite pleasing.

As it was, all the phone calls that came in after the Claptrap experiment led me in much more interesting directions and, somewhat ironically, gave me the chance to replicate the results thousands of times over.
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Carnival time in Somerset


Forget Rio, forget Notting Hill and come to Somerset in November to see the largest illuminated processions in the world.

No, I didn't believe it either when I first went to the Wells carnival (one of a dozen locations in mid-Somerset) - expecting to see a few tractors and trailers with straw bales transporting locals in fancy dress

But I was dazzled, literally, when I first saw these breath-taking parades of around 80 floats (or 'carts' in the local jargon) that are bigger than the average articulated lorry and equipped with elaborate mechanical displays lit up by more light bulbs than you'd see at Blackpool and Morecambe illuminations put together.

Local clubs spend the whole year designing and building these annual challenges to the local health and safety inspectors.

You can find this year's schedule of when and where you can see them and a little more background information HERE.
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Basil's book launch


We've just been to a book launch - not one of mine, you understand, but it's about our cat, who attends the primary school next door, especially at lunch times when he can scrounge tuna sandwiches from his fellow pupils

The author, Clare Blackmore, works there and persuaded Bristol Water to sponsor the book to raise funds for the school and Water Aid.

It's full of delightful stories and pictures of Basil's life at school, as well as reports on his CATS tests, progress on work placement schemes, etc.

If you or any of your friends and relations are cat lovers, Basil's School Antics would make a purrrfect Christmas present - with the added advantage of supporting an important charity and a cash-strapped village school. It's not available on Amazon (yet), but details of how to order a copy are HERE.

STOP PRESS (13th November):
Basil got the dates for the book launch wrong, and has only just arrived at school, two days late, to inspect the book.

He was soon distracted by the contents of a bin and was last seen catnapping on one of the school's computers.





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Attacking a politician's spelling and handwriting: fair play or dirty trick?

Regular readers of this blog will know that there have been plenty of posts raising questions about Gordon Brown's communication skills. But when it comes to expressing condolences, he's actually rather good at it (e.g. HERE & HERE).

This is perhaps why I find the media attacks on him for upsetting the mother of a soldier lost in Afghanistan for his bad handwriting, use of a felt tipped pen and poor spelling in a personal letter of condolences rather distasteful and politically suspect.

It can hardly be a coincidence that the story seems to have originated from the Murdoch-owned Sun newspaper and has had much coverage on the Murdoch-owned Sky News just a few weeks after the Murdochs had instructed the Sun to announce, in the middle of the Labour Party conference, that it wouldn't be supporting them at the next general election.

Much more likely is that it's a rather nasty and politically motivated attempt to discredit a prime minister who happens to suffer from poor eyesight.

The most encouraging thing about it is that the story seems to be backfiring on its perpetrators, both in the mainstream (non-Murdoch owned) media and in the blogosphere - and even amongst anti-Labour voters and Conservative bloggers.
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'Here today, gone tomorrow' politician walks out of interview with Robin Day

John Nott was the Secretary of State for Defence in Margaret Thatcher's government during the Falkland's war in 1982.

The following year, he announced that he would not be standing for re-election at the next general election - after which he moved on to become chairman and chief executive of a merchant bank.

His immanent departure prompted Robin Day to refer to him during an interview as a "transient here today, if I may say so, gone tomorrow politician".

This prompted Nott to get to his feet, announcing that that that he was "fed up" with the interview - whereupon he took off his microphone and threw it down on the table in front of him.

If that wasn't enough of a high spot, Day's calm response - "Thank you Mr Nott" - was arguably the crowning glory of this remarkable sequence.

Two other points are also worth noting:

1. Nott didn't forget what Day had said
One is that Here Today, Gone Tomorrow resurfaced nearly ten years later as the title of Nott's autobiography.

2. 'Iconic gestures' revisited
The other is that it's another nice example of a gesture coming just before the word(s) to which it relates, as illustrated in an earlier post about the timing of Churchill's iconic gesture in his 'Iron Curtain' speech.

Nott looks away with an irritated expression on his face and starts to stand up before he gets to saying "I'm fed up with this interview" - illustrating again that iconic gestures start before the speaker says the actual words to which they relate.



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