1st April 2019 / Blog /

“Mr Fawlty, I no want to work here any more”

IN FAWLTY Towers, the classic 1970s comedy sitcom starring John Cleese, marvellous misunderstandings between Basil Fawlty, the owner of the Torquay hotel on which the series is based, and Manuel, the Spanish waiter who struggles with English, provide many laughs.

In one episode the penny-pinching Fawlty berates Manuel for giving guests too much butter with their afternoon tea and scones. Fawlty: “There is too much butter on those trays. ON THOSE TRAYS!” Manuel, who thinks his employer is practising his Spanish: “No, no, not ‘on those trays’ sir. Uno, dos, tres.”

Foreign workers at British hotels have long been an important source of employment, although language skills have improved somewhat over the years. Since the 2004 enlargement of the European Union hundreds of thousands of EU citizens have filled key roles as the number of people from EU states has risen from 1.26 million in 2003 to 3.68 million in 2017, according to Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, which also estimates that 500,000 EU citizens now work in low-paid jobs such as housekeeping and waiting tables.

Surveys calculating how important EU employees are to the hospitality industry regularly show they represent around 40 per cent of staff, although this could be even higher. For example, 60 per cent of the 1,000 employees at Leon, the fast food chain, are from the EU.

Trouble, however, lies ahead. Uncertainty over what will happen post Brexit is causing great anxiety among Britain’s hoteliers and restaurateurs. UKHospitality, the main body representing the hospitality industry, says it is alarmed by Theresa May’s rhetoric regarding future cutbacks to low-paid worker immigration.

The prime minister has said migrants will need to show they can meet a minimum salary threshold after Brexit. This figure has yet to be announced although non-EU migrants must currently prove they can earn more than £30,000.

UKHospitality expects a big drop in the number of 18-24 year olds from the EU available for work following Brexit, as fewer are allowed into Britain and others return home. “If hospitality is to keep up growth we need more people,” says Chris Banks of UKHospitality. “The latest unemployment figures show we are short of workers to call upon. In some regions unemployment rates are almost zero. We can’t fill rolls with people if they are not there. We need people coming in.”

Adam Raphael, editor of The Good Hotel Guide, which provides independent reviews of UK hotels, believes a crisis looms unless hotels introduce more staff training, adding to the cost of running businesses. “Many EU workers in low-paid jobs in hotels are very sophisticated graduates from the likes of Romania and Poland,” Raphael says. “They know about table manners and how to handle people politely. Hotels are going to have to start training British employees to take their place.”

Martin Randall of Martin Randall Travel, which runs cultural tours in the UK and overseas with an annual turnover of £20 million, expresses dismay at Britain’s continuing Fawlty Towers-style service. It is, he says, a “big problem” and is only likely to worsen if low-paid EU workers are blocked and others go home… just as Manuel proposes in series two of Fawlty Towers.

“Mr Fawlty, I no want to work here any more,” the waiter says after a guest dies in his sleep and Basil Fawlty, believing an out-of-date kipper is to blame and that the hotel may be held responsible, demands Manuel helps shift the corpse.

Although Oxford University’s Migration Observatory says that “some new form of labour migration routes to low-skilled jobs” will probably be introduced post Brexit, British hoteliers may soon have to do some of their own shifting to make up numbers.

Where will all the waiters, receptionists and cleaning staff come from if we do – eventually – leave the EU?

Who knows? Fawlty Towers captured a time when British hospitality had a reputation, and not a good one . It was so awful Manuel wanted out.

The way hotels and B&Bs are run has moved on light years since then, but take away foreign workers and standards are likely to nosedive – Basil-style – soon enough.

16th December 2018 / Blog /

Sniffs, coughs, pops, peels – the charming woman in seat 20C

AT FIRST she had seemed so charming. Could she remove her jacket to aide a man struggling to fit his case in the overhead locker? Was there anything I needed placed in the locker? (She was in the aisle seat, while I was in the middle and a man listening to headphones sat by the window).

She was slender, wore black and had dark straight hair that she clasped and pulled back from time to time. She also, I noted, liked to place her knees and feet so they rested against the seat in front. Odd, and slightly off-putting, but hardly a crime. She just seemed more comfortable that way.

We reached cruising altitude on our way from Lisbon to London. After working for a while on my laptop, I closed my eyes for a rest.

That’s when I noticed it: the sniffing.

Perhaps I simply had not registered the sound before, but every few seconds or so my neighbour-in-black sniffed. They were curious little sniffs and seemed almost pointless in being so small and so regular.

They got on my nerves. I tried to ignore the irritating sound and, in doing so, became all the more fixated by it. Why did she not simply blow her nose? Should I offer a tissue? Would that be rude? I decided against saying anything and began simply to count the gaps between the sniffs. The usual interval was a count to six or seven. The longest about 30. This period of sniffing, interspersed with little coughs, lasted a very long time.

Finally it came to an end, upon which my neighbour began to chew a piece of gum. I know this, even though I had my eyes closed, as every few seconds I heard a little pop of bubblegum. The little sniffs and coughs had been replaced by little pops. The timing was almost identical. Again I became fixated. I considered asking her to stop but I did not want a row. Anyway, what real crime is it to sniff, cough or pop?

After some time, the popping spell ran its course, and the sniffs and coughs resumed. I began to count the intervals once again (they were no different) wondering if my neighbour in black was about to set some kind of world record for little sniffs and coughs between Lisbon and London. I became aware too, around this time, that her hands had started to fidget.

She had begun peeling skin from the edge of her fingernails, systematically moving from one digit to the next. Once she had removed the skin, she proceeded to flick the bits on the floor ahead.

On the plus side, at the height of this performance, she ceased sniffing and coughing altogether. Making the most of it, I closed my eyes enjoying the peace of this finger peeling phase, trying to shut out the image from my mind.

This worked for a while. Upon re-opening my eyes, however, I could see she had moved to her right hand and begun flicking skin by my feet.

Letting this new development sink in, I again decided to “do nothing” as there was not much longer for the flight to go.

The sniffing, coughing and gum-popping continued after she finished with her nails. I was now counting down the time to landing: 20 minutes to go.

It was a long 20 minutes. She kept going all the way to the terminal, whereupon she leapt up, barged down the aisle, elbowing others reaching for bags, and after a few yards turned, looked squarely at me and smirked. Then she pushed onwards.

On the floor by her seat lay a pile of debris: little bits of finger skin.

Not a great flight. Not such a charming neighbour-in-black.

17th October 2018 / Blog /

20 best: Reasons why hard Brexit and travel don’t mix

EVERYONE loves a travel round-up.

Here’s one that’s slightly different.

Brexit may mean a lot of things but to the average person how it affects travel in Europe will probably be the main practical consideration. As we hurtle deal-less forwards…

20 best: Reasons why hard Brexit and travel don’t mix

Best for bureaucracy

1) If Theresa May – our mad disco dancing, kitten heel wearing leader – does not get a deal, as seems increasingly likely, reps working overseas will have to be registered with each country’s national security system. This will be time-consuming, bureaucratic and add to tour operator costs. At the moment an 18-month waiver on such registrations applies so operators rotate staff to avoid paperwork. Nobody wants to hang around for hours in smoky local government offices in Athens or Rome filling endless forms. This is what might lie ahead. “Nobody can give us an answer about what will happen,” says a leading travel industry figure, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of upsetting authorities here or abroad. “The scale of the ineptitude is staggering: people are playing games with other people’s lives.”

Best for bad staff

2) Should such registration be required, reps jobs will become less flexible and less appealing. Part of the attraction of the work is the opportunity to see many countries. It will become increasingly difficult to recruit well-qualified, well-motivated staff (as if that’s not tough enough as things stand). All travel companies will have to face up to this – and all travellers on package holidays will have to get used to even sulkier Sues and even moodier Marks at not-so-welcome meetings.

Best for expensive flights

3) Nobody is sure about “over-flying rights”. What, for example, will be the charges for planes from Britain flying over France? There is confusion about this and the result is that British tour operators are worried about chartering planes beyond March 29, 2019. Yes, they may now be taking bookings but what will the “over-flying” costs eventually be? Operators face a situation in which they may have to charter planes “blind”, without knowing the taxes they may face. Flight prices may go up.

Best for mayhem

4) If these problems continue closer to the busy summer holiday period next year, with operators unable to give airports guarantees that planes have been chartered, they may lose crucial airport flight slots.

Best for cancellations

5) Were this to happen holidays would have to be cancelled.

Best for businesses going bust

6) Cancelled holidays mean businesses going under. “That would be it for us,” says the managing director of a major firm, who again requested anonymity. “The travel industry is very vulnerable. It’s on an enormous scale and no one knows how it will play out. Nobody wants to talk openly about it right now as it could affect consumer confidence.”

Best for pricey insurance

7) What about reciprocal health arrangements? Currently all holders of a European Health Insurance Card have health cover in EU countries. Will insurers hike up travel insurance prices? This seems likely.

Best for even more bureaucracy

8) At the moment a system is in place by which operators pay VAT on goods and services bought overseas within the UK. When Britain leaves the EU there is a possibility that holiday companies will have to register for VAT in each country. Again, as with point number one, this will be wastefully time-consuming. “We’ll have to register with 27 countries,” says the owner of a specialist travel firm, yet again requesting anonymity. “In some countries I expect that officials will make it difficult for us. They will take the opportunity to jump on Great Britain and to squeeze something out of us. We have ratted on them and are traitors and will be treated as such.”

Best for border delays

9) Should immigration checks be introduced, border crossings could become extremely lengthy. “If we leave the EU and border checks happen, research shows that 50 per cent of people are going to think twice about going abroad,” says the leading industry figure. This research was conducted by a UK rental accommodation company, Sykes Holiday Cottages. The specialist tour operator adds: “I fear there are a sufficient number of countries that will kick Britain in the teeth: long immigration checks just for the hell of it.”

Best for new mobile phone charges

10) What about mobile phone roaming charges? Will travellers lose free roaming in the EU? Will we be able to handle enforced digital detoxes on the Continent?

Best for confusion about pets

11) Will travelling with pets become more difficult?

Best for visa fees

12) Already, there has been talk of the introduction of a £52 visa to enter the Schengen zone of the EU. Could this really happen? A draft proposal making this suggestion was presented to MEPs by the European Commission in June. Britain could be placed on a visa-required list. A visa to visit the Schengen zone for 90 days for citizens of countries currently on this list is £52.

Best for costly holidays

13) Then there is the belief that departure from the EU might cause the pound to weaken even further making trips abroad yet more expensive. This would also push up the price of package holidays as tour operators’ costs would rise. The pound’s value has already, of course, slipped significantly against the euro. The rate now is about 1.14 euros to the pound whereas in January 2000 sterling was worth 1.65 euros.

Best for staying in the UK

14) Current high fuel prices are already pushing up airline fares. With sterling losing value, holidays in the EU may simply cost too much.

Best for hotel staff shortages in Britain

15) Hotels and tour operators in the UK hire a lot of EU workers. It is estimated that as many as half a million people work in low-skilled jobs such as housekeeping and waiting tables. If measures to create a minimum salary threshold are indeed introduced, as Theresa May has suggested, who is going to clean rooms in Britain’s Holiday Inns and Travelodges and so on? Who is going to man phones for holiday bookings? “There will be an immediate halt to recruitment from the EU,’ says the specialist operator.

Best for Basil Fawlty service

16) Service at British hotels is already deemed poor by some British operators. “Our head of operations is constantly having to apologise to guests about awful service,” says the director of a company selling UK breaks. “Where will hotels get staff in the future? People are afraid to speak out about this in case Brexiteers launch a torrent of abuse. This is fear mongering. We are at an extraordinary point in history.”

Best for pricier rooms

17) Hotels will have to start training British staff – not just the top hotels, which do this already, all of them. This will increase overheads and the price of rooms could shoot up, says the author of a leading hotel guide.

Best for protection rackets

18) Some are concerned that overseas local guide associations will begin to operate like “protection rackets”. Just as British ski instructors were banned in some French ski resorts by the Ecole du Ski Francais, local associations could spring up across the Continent. “It could be that we will have to pay for guides even though they are silent – just following us around,” says the specialist operator. “It will be an absurdity. But I can see it happening.”

Best for ferry port disruption

19) Chaos at the ferry ports? The European Tourism Association (ETOA) predicts big trouble ahead: extra passport checks during which travellers are requested to explain the purpose and length of their trips will take an extra 90 seconds per person, it estimates. UK ferry ports handle about 20,000 outbound passengers a day. In theory, the wait could be 500 hours by the end of the first day, says ETOA. Which sounds rather a lot.

All the best!

20) Happy holidays everyone! Wish you were here?

Picture: The Bridge of Sighs in Venice – expensive to visit now, even before Brexit. Perhaps troubles ahead will at least help with the city’s “overtourism”

16th March 2018 / Blog /

Lion on board

On yet another BA flight, this one from Heathrow to Madrid, so soon after the sing-song stewardess on the Venice flight, I found myself yet again close to the cabin crew’s pantry.

This time though the staff in attendance were male and they were talking about football, both playing the game and watching it. One had started for south London’s Kingstonian second team (‘years ago’). The other had played Sunday league football. He was a Fulham fan and had once been ejected from Stoke City’s ground when the team was relegated due to his father behaving badly in frustration at his losing team. He had a chuckle about this. Then a stewardess came by and asked about his wife’s baby to be. ‘Coming at the end of May,’ he replied. How different cabin crew chat can be from plane to plane.

The Fulham fan moved off to attend to duties and then I – rather ruefully and hungrily -watched the ex-Kingstonian eat his cooked breakfast on a tray on his knees on a fold down chair. I was in the first row of economy (no free food), facing the pantry leading to the posher seats (free food). Evidently the cabin crew got to tuck in as well. Good for them.

Not much else happened above the Bay of Biscay, or wherever we were, and we soon landed.

An uneventful flight, after the sing-song stewardess and her friend.

Then the captain made an announcement: “Just to let you know, you’ve been sharing the flight with a lion, which is below us somewhere in the front hold. We’re transporting it from zoo to zoo.’

4th March 2018 / Blog /

The BA bag ladies

HAVING been called through from the departure lounge, the passengers of BA2585 from Venice to Gatwick formed an obedient line in a passage – and waited. How had the communication between the plane and the boarding gate broken down so completely? The plane was not prepared for embarkation. The plane was a minute’s walk from the boarding gate. We shivered in the cold, considering what might have gone wrong.

On board, after a while, the chief steward pointed to the right (there were no seats to the left). He had slicked-back hair, a rose-pink complexion and a Carry On Flying style. “Good evening!” he said. It was five o’clock. “Or should I say good afternoon? It’s about G&T time anyway!”

We proceeded down the aisle, reaching row 24, where we began to place our bags and coats in the overhead locker.

That’s when we first heard them: the BA bag ladies.

Strictly speaking, they were stewardesses and they were looking disapprovingly at us: the plane’s passengers. “They put up the small bags. Why do they do that?” said one loudly – so we could hear. She was tall and slim with a sing-song estuary accent and a sharp eye. “I don’t know,” said the other stewardess – younger, with glasses and her hair tied back tightly. Her tone was one of weary agreement.

“Look at all those big bags,” said the sing-song stewardess. Both small bags and big bags were problematic. “They let them through with all those big bags. Then we have to pick up the pieces,” she continued in a booming voice. By “they” she appeared to be referring to the staff at the boarding gate. By “them” she was referring to us. The sing-song stewardess seemed at the end of her tether. “Why do they let them through with such big bags?” Her younger colleague sighed in sympathy. It was a deep sigh, one that appeared to indicate disappointment with the modern world. “I don’t know,” she replied.

Nervously we squashed our bags in the overhead lockers and sat down. Had we, by some miracle, the correctly sized bags? Or were our bags too small? Or too big? Were their comments aimed at us? Yes, partially (we were not the only “offenders”). The sing-song stewardess stepped forward. “These have got to come down,” she said. My travelling companion was handed her rucksack and coat. The rucksack was too small, said the stewardess. Meanwhile a large roll-on bag, far larger than we would have dreamed of passing off as “hand luggage”, was jammed in the freed-up space.

The sing-song stewardess retreated to the pantry where she took a call from the cockpit. “There’s a problem over bits – small backpacks,” she almost yelled into the receiver.

The plane taxied to the runway and took off, during which time we learnt about the sing-song stewardess’s hair. It requires, we discovered, “loads of hairspray and stuff”. We were sitting three rows away, but could hear almost all. Only the drone of the engines drowned out parts. “Oh my god that was so funny,” said the sing-song stewardess, her voice trailing off. “Oh Jesus… oh my god!” We almost wished we had caught the punch line.

The subject changed. The younger stewardess’s boyfriend was introduced. “Oh that’s amusing!” cried the sing-song stewardess, who declared: “Once they all got in it was quite quick wasn’t it?” By “they”, she meant us. We appeared to have gained the approval of the sing-song stewardess: the passengers at the back of BA2585 (us) were not such a bad lot after all.

For a while, at least. The plane levelled out. Great clanks and rattles emanated from the pantry. Trolley service was evidently about to begin. “Do you want the sandwiches on your side this time?” asked the sing-song stewardess. Her colleague mumbled a reply.

Trolley service began. M&S sandwiches were for sale, as were G&Ts, if the rose-faced chief steward at the front of the plane had his information right. But they were not available, we soon realized, for purchase by us. The sing-song stewardess rolled straight past, whereupon a series of clatters, bangs, clanks, scrapes and slamming sounds were to be heard from the direction of the pantry.

Trolley service was evidently complete. No M&S sandwiches or G&Ts for row 24. Perhaps the speed-by was a punishment: one of our bags had, after all, been the wrong size in the wrong place.

The flight purred along above the Alps without further incident – aside, that is, from the duty free run. The sing-song stewardess sped along the aisle with her goods at such a rate it was unlikely anyone could catch her eye to place an order. Upon her return she announced: “Nobody wants duty free!” What strange creatures passengers could be. Further clanking issued from the pantry.

On the run-in to Gatwick, the sing-song stewardess addressed me, without using words. She pointed a finger and hooked it upwards twice. What on earth did she want? “The window, the window!” she said. The window shutter was a quarter of the way down between my seat and the one on front. I put it up. The sing-song stewardess strode away wordlessly.

The captain made a Tannoy request for cabin crew to take their seats. “He’s already told us to sit down!” said the sing-song stewardess. “I’m sure he told us!” (He hadn’t).

The duo settled in for another chat. “I do like a quick run to Amsterdam,” she continued, sounding wistful. The run to Venice was not as good as a run to Amsterdam. If only she had been assigned a run to Amsterdam, then she would not have had to go all the way to Venice.

What a nuisance to go to Venice on Saturday, she implied, as though we had somehow inconvenienced her. All of this was spoken so loudly it had to be for our ears. “Amsterdam is so quick,” she added.

We were very close to landing now. The captain made another announcement. “It has been our pleasure to look after you and we look forward to welcoming you back,” he said. My companion and I glanced at one another. She raised an eyebrow. A passenger across the aisle from us chuckled. The irony of his statement hung heavily in the air among the passengers of BA2585 closest to the pantry, from which cackling could now be heard. What could they be cackling about?

One final matter remained: disembarkation. A set of steps had been brought to the door by the pantry. “The door is stuck!” said the sing-song stewardess. “It’s stuck!” She counted out loud to ten and tried again. The door opened. It was pouring outside. “We’re not using these steps, it’s too wet,” she said. “What’s the point of bringing these?” she continued, talking to whoever was outside. “Go away! What’s the point of bringing these steps? Oh, it’s cold! It wasn’t this cold earlier.”

The back door was closed and as we filed out towards the front exit – with our correctly and incorrectly sized bags that had been placed in correct and incorrect places – the sing-song stewardess rattled on to her colleague, the conversation in full flow. “My magic book…”, she said, beginning yet another line of thought as we parted. If only we could have stayed in row 24 of BA2585 to find out where she was going with that one.

Picture: big bags are better than small bags (sometimes)

363F4651-686A-4CE8-805B-359995AB4C88

3rd June 2017 / Blog /

Notes on Wild Flowers by the River Thames

DURING my walk along the River Thames in the summer of 2016 (the ‘summer of Brexit’), I came across many wild flowers but did not have much of a clue as to what they were. However, I took a few, not very good, pictures and later showed these to the botanist John Fielding, author of the cult book Flowers of Crete, who lives locally to me and knows just about all you need to know about flowers of any description be they in Crete or anywhere else.

He helped identify each one – and in the appendix to my travel book From Source to Sea: Notes from a 215-mile Walk Along the River Thames I list them. My pictures of each wild flower, which I promised to post on this website, are of insufficient quality to capture their characteristics. So here I am providing links to better pictures.

Wild flowers (with a few weeds mixed in) by the River Thames

20th April 2017 / Blog /

On holiday with anarchists – a weekend break in Athens

As I walked down Athinas Street one Saturday night last month, getting some air after dinner in a lovely little restaurant in the Prisi district, I noticed a commotion. It appeared that youngsters were bustling to enter a music venue, perhaps a heavy metal gig. Curious, I continued, whereupon I soon discovered I was mistaken.

A group of 50 or so, most in their twenties, was spilling onto the street and blocking traffic. Most were dressed in black and a few wore bandannas wrapped around their faces. Many, the majority, carried baseball bat length sticks. Something was going on and I’d strolled into the middle of it. The youngsters seemed elated. A few were spray painting slogans on a shop’s security grill. They jigged up and down as they highlighted key words. When the messages were complete a cheer arose.

A handful of onlookers had stopped to watch. I was holding a map and my iPhone. Without thinking I raised my phone to capture the strange scene. As I did so a large bearded man with a barrel chest glared and shook his fist to indicate I should stop. Realising it is not the best idea to upset mobs clutching sticks while on a weekend break, I put down my phone. “Tourist,” I said. He glared again. The group continued on their way.

On reflection, I had been naïve to film the mob. But after the adrenaline of the moment dissipated, a wider reflection came to mind. The troubles of Greece are well documented. Youth unemployment is dreadful, affecting more than 45 per cent of those between 15 and 24, and the consequences of the 2009 economic collapse continue to play out. Austerity is sadly part of everyday life.

The flourishing anarchist movement is all part of this sad mix. Many in Athens live in the Exarcheia district, a short walk north of Prisi. Riot police buses wait on the edge of this graffiti-covered neighbourhood 24 hours a day ready to step in should trouble flare (although no police appeared close by on Athinas Street). One local told me Exarcheia is as good as lawless.

That is the background. But the reasons behind the frustration are almost irrelevant. What struck me most about the scene was its sheer normality. Locals simply walked on by as the youths clattered their sticks and chanted. Most shops bore slogans on their security grills. What I had witnessed had been nothing unusual.

Yet the black garbs and sticks were sinister: violence hung in the air. Had I continued filming, I would have been in trouble. That much was clear. It was both eerie and unnerving. There I was, in the capital of a European country (one that invented democracy, no less), and un-policed gangs were roaming the streets. All part of the city’s day to day life.

It did not matter to me that they were probably left-leaning, rather than right-wing “brown shirts”. They were thugs being thuggish, and they were threatening and in control. The excitement of the mob was tangible. It was caught up in the moment, ready for action. In the cradle of civilisation – in a neighbourhood Socrates, Plato and Aristotle would have known well – civility was in short supply.

It left a bitter taste after a very good meal.

The “lovely little restaurant” was Karamanlidika, by the fruit market in Prisi (karamanlidika.gr, 1 Sokratous Street).

PICTURES: graffiti in Exarcheia, Athens

9th November 2016 / Blog /

Where to get a Trump hair cut (Las Vegas)

NEWS has reached me that Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States of America.

A couple of months ago on a visit to Las Vegas I went to Trump International hotel as it was just round the corner from the one I was at.

Here is a picture of the Trump International hotel.

tower

Mirrored gold glass … classy.

Here is another picture:

exterior

I ventured inside the lobby:

lobby

Nice chandeliers … long brown carpet with a swirly pattern.

From here I entered the gift shop, where ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball caps were on sale ($30):

cap

Fetching military camouflage colours available.

You could buy bottles of Trump wine:

wine

These bottles cost $46:

wine-price

Like Thomas Jefferson’s wine, it says.

You could also buy gold Trump tumblers:

tumblers

Or there were ‘Trump’ golf balls or golden TRUMP chocolate bars:

gold-bars

Books, too:

A little mean looking in the last one.

I went back into the lobby:

chandelier

Another nice chandelier – and flowers.

And then I noticed a little sign:

haircut

For $50 in twenty-five minutes … Trump ‘vogue and go hairstyling’.

So this is where Mr Trump cuts his famous locks:

trump-hair

Has his manicures and pedicures, too … ready to make America great again.

Now you know where to get a Trump hair cut.

29th April 2016 / Blog /

An evening with Doctor Fink . . . memories of Prince and “me, I’m just a side-guy”

Last September I visited Minneapolis and wrote an article for the Mail on Sunday about places in the city connected with Prince. You can read it here, although a more comprehensive list of places connected to the artist has since been posted by the local tourist board.

My love of his music goes way back to when I was aged 13 and the Purple Rain album was released (in 1984). At the time I was in ninth grade at a school in Washington DC and a school friend of mine had tickets to see Prince in concert at the Capital Centre, just outside DC in Maryland. His father had access to a corporate box. In the event we swapped the tickets for fifth row seats, as we had somehow found two people who wanted the free hospitality booze.

So began my introduction to the funk-rock-pop-soul (call him what you will) legend. At one point in the show, he serenaded a female member of the audience, whom he had placed on a chair, with a rendition of The Beautiful Ones. Later, if I’m recalling this correctly, he fired water from the end of a special guitar at key moments of Darling Nikki. Purple Rain had lighters held aloft, arms swaying … the audience spellbound.

It was a spectacular performance. In the years that passed I bought just about every (but not all) of his albums, enjoying so much of his music – see my top ten hits below. I also watched him twice during his 2007 UK tour when he performed an incredible 21 sell-out times at London’s O2 Arena. Each show is etched in my memory.

So yes I’m a fan – and when I realised that I would be passing through Minneapolis on a train journey across the United States for my train-travel book Ticket to Ride I just had to jump off and take a look around for a couple of days.

This is when I met Doctor Fink.

Doctor Fink’s real name is Matt Fink and he was the keyboard player for The Revolution, Prince’s band from 1979 to 1986.

We are introduced at Zelo, a laid-back steak, pasta and burger restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. He’s wearing jeans, a Hawaiian shirt and glasses, looking like a suburban dad, which is exactly what he is these days, though he also performs in a Prince tribute band named The Purple Xperience.

Does Prince mind about the tribute band? “He seems to be ok about it,” Fink says. “He understands that I need to go out and do that. It’s another avenue for getting out and playing.”

When was the last time he saw Prince? “About a year ago. We sat down and hung out at Paisley Park. He’s an interesting guy.”

I try to ask what he means by that, but the subject shifts – I imagine Fink does not want to upset his purple friend – and he is soon telling me how he got his “doctor” name. It was all, apparently, about adding to the show and developing their “punk funk” image. “Prince thought a doctor sounded kind of different and said ‘let’s try that’. I sent an assistant to get a costume.” And that was that.

How did he become involved in the band? The answer seems to be that Fink got lucky, although he had heard about Prince as early as 1977. Fink knew the younger brother of David Rivkin, who produced Prince’s first demo tape, which went on to become his first album For You. When he met David one day, he was offered the chance to listen to the demo; he did so on the cassette player in his car. “I’m listening going ‘Wow, this is amazing, who’s the band?’ He said: ‘It’s one guy in a studio playing everything. His name is Prince.’ I said: ‘You’re kidding? How old is he?’ He said: ’19’.”

Prince of course got his record deal, and the single Soft and Wet had “modest success”, says Fink, who was signed up to the band after another keyboard player dropped out as “he had another job”. The opportunity led to Fink being a key part of Prince’s rise to real fame. Fink wrote the music for Dirty Mind (“Prince did the lyrics, he never let anyone else write the lyrics”), as well as some of the music for Computer Blue, America and 17 Days.

Rolling Stones magazine went on to describe Prince’s 1981 Dirty Mind album as “a prescient call to arms against the elitist puritanism of the Reagan era”.

Over a glass of wine, Fink remembers early days of tours with Prince when he met Bruce Springsteen (“he’d come up and say: ‘hey doc, where’s the loo”), Quincy Jones (“he loved coming to play in Minneapolis”), Elizabeth Taylor, Miles Davis (“that was great, jammin’ with him”), Jerry Hall and the Rolling Stones. They met “just about everybody”.

“One time Prince called and said to me ‘Barbara Streisand wanted me to say hello to you for her’. I said: ‘No way.’ He said: ‘I swear, she did.’ I said: ‘Tell Barbara I said ‘hello’ back.”

He has another story regarding his “doctor” name. “Prince once said that Dr Dre took ‘doctor’ because of me.”

Our steaks arrive and we begin to eat. Apparently Prince’s favourite food in the days Fink was in The Revolution was spaghetti.

Not a lot of people, I’m guessing, know that.

Fink has another, slightly random and amusing-if-true, tale: “Michael Jackson tried to convince Prince to be in the Bad video,” Bad was a Jackson single in 1987. “But Prince did not want Michael Jackson singing ‘your butt is mine’ to him. He said: ‘But thank you for asking.”

Fink has a good chuckle about this.

We go for a walk to catch a gig at First Avenue, where much of the film Purple Rain was filmed and where the song for the album was recorded (as well as I Would Die 4 U).

Fink tells me how developers had “tried to tear down” the club five years ago. This would clearly have been a travesty; the likes of Paul Simon, John Lee Hooker, Joe Cocker and Ice Cube have played at the marvellous venue, a former Greyhound bus station dating from 1937. It was the epicentre of tributes to Prince in the city after his sad death.

We reach the wide entrance with its walls of stars who have performed over the years on each side. Our names are meant to be on the door, but there is initially a complication. Fink looks a bit frustrated and nonplussed; he had once been told he had a lifetime membership to First Avenue.

“They don’t know who I am. I get very little recognition. Even if I was in the doctor’s suit, they wouldn’t know who I was. Me, I’m just a side-guy. Incognito. Once in a while I get noticed in town.” But not that often, it would seem.

After this brief moment of pathos, we step into a cavernous space and drink beer while watching a few songs performed by The Desaparecidos. It’s hard to make out any of the lyrics and the lead singer mutters a comment about Prince half way through the act (difficult to discern, but it doesn’t sound complimentary).

We leave and go to Bunker’s Music Bar & Grill on North Washington Avenue, a brilliant funk and soul club on a corner not so far away; a group called Dr Mambo’s Combo is playing. The drummer (Michael Bland) and the lead singer (Margie Cox) have both worked with Prince in the past; Bland was his drummer for seven years that covered his Diamonds and Pearls album.

Guys in snappy red suits and matching red fedoras are tapping their feet to old Barry White and Staple Singers hits. Prince has been known to drop by.

I ask Fink what his favourite Prince songs are. He tells me that his pick is The Beautiful Ones (“one of the most beautiful ballads Prince ever wrote”), followed by Electric Chair (from the Batman album, “that’s pretty cool”) and Lady Cab Driver (“great groove”).

Red neon light colours the room, music reverberating off the low ceiling. I’m introduced to a funk musician named Jellybean who appears more interested in an America football match on a television in a corner than in the music. Margie Cox launches into a soul-lifting rendition of the Staple Singers’ 1970s hit I’ll Take You There. Fink taps his fingers on a table.

No sign of Prince – and now, of course, no chance.

Outside a billboard advertises his latest album, Hit n Run Phase Two.

Little did we know then that it would be his last.

MY PRINCE TOP TEN (IMPOSSIBLE TO CHOOSE REALLY):

Purple Rain – perhaps an obvious choice, but it blew me away when heard live in 1984 and 2007
Kiss – so strange, so catchy
If I Was Your Girlfriend – enigmatic and funky
Pop Life – “Did he put your million dollar cheque in someone else’s box?”
Erotic City – dripping funk from the first note: “All of my purple life…”
Sign O’ The Times – love the guitar
Controversy – funk and attitude
Lady Cab Driver – light touch, mysterious lyrics
Soft and Wet – his first hit
AnotherLove – amazing guitar, plus says something about his later years

Do you agree?

Prince’s “star” at First Avenue club, Minneapolis

Electric Fetus record shop in Minneapolis, where Prince used to buy records

First Avenue club in Minneapolis, where scenes from the film Purple Rain were shot

Paisley Park on the edge of Minneapolis, where Prince lived and died

Prince’s fictional boyhood home from the film Purple Rain

Picture of Dr Fink to come….
All pictures by Tom Chesshyre

12th March 2016 / Blog /

Life on the “Death Railway” – an interview with Sir Harold Atcherley

SIR Harold Atcherley was born in Epsom, Surrey two and a half months before the end of the First World War when the final push was on and more than 30,000 Germans had already surrendered. The day of his arrival was a busy one elsewhere in the world too. On August 30, 1918, Fanya Kaplan attempted to assassinate Lenin outside a factory in Moscow. The Russian leader was badly injured by the shots and Kaplan was subsequently hanged; her action was later regarded as a prelude to the nation’s civil war between the Red and White armies.

I am meeting Sir Harold at his flat on Sussex Square near Lancaster Gate Tube station in London. He is now 97 years of age and lives with his third wife Sally. It is an overcast October day and the well-to-do street is lined with Mercedes and Alfa Romeos. A Waitrose van is parked outside the manned entrance to his apartment block. I am buzzed up and find that the groceries are for the Atcherleys; bags are being put in the kitchen as I arrive.

A great deal has happened during Sir Harold’s lifetime – and after being born into a swirl of 20th-century events, he was soon in the thick of them himself. At the age of 23, when Singapore fell in February 1942, he became a Japanese prisoner of war. He had only been in the British colony for a few days, serving in the 18th Infantry Division, when the white flag was raised. His ship had arrived in a convoy via stops in South Africa and India, having been diverted to Singapore mid-journey to help out; his division’s original destination was the Middle East. Little did he know at the time how poorly the “impregnable fortress” of Singapore was defended.

Sir Harold has a trains connection, and it is this, during the research for my new book on trains entitled Ticket to Ride, that has brought me to Lancaster Gate. After being made prisoner, Sir Harold was sent to work on the Burma-Siam Railway, also known as the “Death Railway”. Of his group of 1,600 prisoners assigned to the Sonkurai camp on the present-day Myanmar-Thailand border, just 182 survived the war. More than 13,000 POWs died during the train line’s construction, as well as 100,000 native workers. This works out as about one man for every sleeper laid.

Many railways have bloody stories – great numbers on low wages perished laying tracks through America’s wild west, across the vast expanse of Siberia, in India, even on the construction of some British lines such as the Settle-Carlisle Railway, and elsewhere – but none more so than on the “Death Railway”.

Sir Harold kept a diary during his time in south-east Asia and this was published as Prisoner of Japan in 2012. In the book, he describes camp conditions in which 20 men a day died of cholera; he was one of the few inoculated from the disease by the Japanese in Singapore, possibly, he believes, because his surname began with an “A”, so he was top of the list, though the Japanese did not have time for everyone before their departure north. Others suffered dysentery, beriberi and tropical ulcers. The latter were particularly dreadful: “[There were cases] of legs bared to the bone from ankle to knee. One man’s thighs and scrotum completely rotted away. Indescribable stench, ulcers were scraped with spoons every day, or cleaned with leaches, accompanied by cries of men in their agony.” Sir Harold overcame bone-exposing ulcers on both legs, while bouts of beriberi meant he had had to tie his big toes to his calves with jungle vines to hold up his feet (beriberi caused his feet to flop, making walking impossible).

Some committed suicide from the double-level bridge they were helping to construct. The deceased, from whatever cause, were piled onto cremation fires: “The bodies used to sit up in the fire. Others groaned audibly, when the air rushed out of their lungs, the bodies slowly going black, skulls bursting open.” Their diet, which Sir Harold touches on often in his diary, was awful, consisting of 200 grams of rice a day, maggot-filled onion stew and sometimes, if they could catch one, snake meat (though he did not stoop to eating rats, as some Dutch prisoners were prepared to). His weight dropped from well over 11 stone to beneath nine stone; he looked like a “stick insect”. He was twice beaten up – “knocked out” – by guards. Their work on the tracks and the bridge lasted ten months, although his time as a prisoner spanned more than three years.

It is hard to imagine all this now. Sir Harold looks sprightly in a red v-neck jumper and blue shirt, and has a sparkle in his eyes. After the Waitrose delivery man leaves – a happy world away from his prisoner of war tribulations – Sir Harold and I sit down at sofas by a balcony overlooking Hyde Park, and we “talk trains” for a while, sipping fresh coffees prepared by Sally.

In his diary, Sir Harold describes the dreadful conditions on his train from Singapore to Siam, a journey of five days and nights during which prisoners had to relieve themselves by leaning over the edge of carriages: “Most had dysentery and were very weak so that many who could not get up simply defecated where they lay.” There was not enough room for all to lie down at the same time in the hot “all-metal box wagons”.

His descriptions of his time as a prisoner are so excruciatingly vivid, I wonder whether he can’t help thinking of what happened whenever he boards a train now? “No I don’t because in a way I’ve been very fortunate in that immediately after the war I was released and came home and I got stuck immediately into a very busy life. I naturally skipped a lot of the trouble that many had,” Sir Harold replies; his pre-war job with Royal Dutch Shell was still available when he returned in 1945.

Not everyone came to terms with their experiences as well as he did. “A few of my friends who were young officers with me at the time, within a year they’d committed suicide. One had been with the British Council in Rome, and when he went back there he had a wonderful life. Nobody will ever know exactly what was going on in his mind. Whether it was that [the war, being a prisoner] or something else.”

Casting his mind back to this period, Sir Harold recalls the exact circumstances of their return, which ended on the Mersey opposite the Liver Building in Liverpool. “We had this wonderful welcome from the mayor of Bootle. That was hilarious, even at the time,” he says – he and his fellow soldiers wondered whether they were not at least worth the mayor of Liverpool. “There was this pompous little man, extremely fat, with his chain of office practically dangling on the ground, and a brass band playing, when all we wanted to do was get home.”

Trains do not bring back the horrors of the war – and rather than shun railways, he has long been a fan of train travel. “I was married for many years to a German wife who died ten years ago – the same time as Sally’s husband died, and we happened to get together; and that was wonderful. So I spent a lot of time on the Continent on trains.” Sir Harold believes trains rather than planes to the south of France are a positive development, especially useful for those with second homes.

His son encouraged him to publish his 2012 diary of the POW camps, and the story of its survival is remarkable on three counts. The first is that he rediscovered the pre-railway beginning of his diary by chance in a shed after being sent back from Thailand to Singapore; he had thought he had lost his old bag. The second is that the writing was possible to decipher more than 60 years on. “I had handed my diary into the Imperial War Museum as it was in exercise books and odd bits of paper and in pencil. It was practically illegible. Fortunately it was typed and from typescript we got it into computer-script, which was a hell of a job as ever letter was different, a ‘w’ came out as an ‘n’ or something.”

Further pause for thought centres on what might have happened if the diary had been discovered by a Japanese guard; at the very least it is likely that it would have been destroyed. “Well anything [was possible], depending on where you were, I don’t know that anyone was executed for keeping a diary, but they certainly would have been very badly dealt with. I knew that if caught I would be in dire trouble.”

In June 2015, Sir Harold met Mikio Kinoshita, one of the Japanese railway engineers who had worked on the Burma-Siam Railway. An event was held at the Army & Navy Club on London’s Pall Mall, where the two shook hands in the Ladies Drawing Room near a portrait of Queen Victoria on a horse and a model of HMS Victory. Pleasantries were exchanged and Sir Harold referred to Kinoshita in friendly terms as “Mickey”; it was a moving occasion for all those in attendance.

How prisoners on the “Death Railway” were treated by figures such as Mickey was determined by a number of factors, Sir Harold says. “It depended what camp you were in. Also it depended in general whether you were in Burma or Thailand. I talked to Mickey at length about this, because we never met though he was very close to my camp in Burma, just before the railroad was finished. He had a couple of hundred Australians working his section. And it is quite evident it was a friendly relationship.”

At Sonkurai, Sir Harold’s camp, things were different. “A lot of the bashing and so on was done, at one period, by Sikh guards. You can appreciate, there were two brigades of Indian army. They included a Sikh regiment. Nobody will ever know how many of them deserted [from the British Army], but thousands. Of course the last thing they wanted to do was to keep the British Empire going. There’s a drawing in my book by Ronald, which is typical of what happened.”

Here Sir Harold is referring to a drawing by the artist Ronald Searle – the illustrator of the St Trinian’s School books – who was also at Sonkurai. The drawing he mentions depicts a guard with a stick watching as a prisoner carries away a fellow inmate, who appears badly beaten or dead.

Were there any difficult moments when meeting Mickey? “None at all. There was an initial emotion of: he’d come to London and there he was. I decided to have nothing to do with all the Japanese formality.” This was why he decided to call him Mickey.

Did Mickey say sorry? “Yes, oh yes.” Was it one of the first things he said? “It was pretty well. Because we first met in the hotel [near] here, the Lancaster. Sally and I met him there. His daughter, who spoke some English, was absolutely charming. We got the most incredible presents from them.”

Sir Harold opens the door to his balcony overlooking Hyde Park. The day has brightened and shafts of sunlight fall on an ethnic rug by the glass coffee table by which we sit. He returns and I ask if he has ever been back to Sonkurai. He hasn’t, but he has been to Singapore. “I visited last in 1970. I almost didn’t recognise the place. I went out to Changi and to the jail and it was still identifiable, though now the whole area is built over.”

Did he visit Raffles Hotel – a Singaporean landmark that has survived the years? He did not when he returned in the Seventies, he replies: “The last time I saw it was on a working party in Singapore [during the war]. The Raffles Hotel had four Chinese heads on sticks in front of it because, you know, when we surrendered a hell of a lot of Chinese were murdered, plus a lot of other nationalities, for whatever reason.”

Sir Harold leans forward and says that to this day he cannot quite understand the Japanese switch of allegiance away from the Allies after the First World War: “To me it’s incredible that [it happened] in such a short time.”

When I ask about wars today and Isis, he takes a deep breath. “I honestly feel that there’s not a lot that anyone can do about it. It will be going on in some shape or form for another 50 years.”

In his diary, Sir Harold often mentions missing good coffee during his years as a POW. At the time, all he got was “burnt rice smears”. We finish our cafetiere-prepared cups with a biscuits brought by Sally. We have drifted at times a long way from railways. Sir Harold worked for many years as a civil servant after being at Shell and met prime ministers at Number 10 including Thatcher (“rather like a headmistress”), Wilson (“that Labour man”), and Callaghan, who once said to him: “You know, I wonder whether this country is governable.”

In 97 years, you pick up a lot of stories.

As we part, Sir Harold tells me that he and Mickey are keeping in touch and that Mickey is now going to give talks at Japanese schools about the Burma-Siam Railway. This reminds me of his diary, once again. At the beginning of Prisoner of Japan, Primo Levi, the Auschwitz survivor, is quoted: “I have never harboured any hatred for the German people… I do not understand, I cannot tolerate the fact that a man should be judged not for what he is but because of the group to which he happens to belong.”

History rolls on, but some truths survive the test of time.