CONFESSIONS OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN (1974)

Cert X, Dir. Alan Smithee

Stockland Green Plaza from 16th June, 1974. Showtimes vary.

Based on the acclaimed novel by cult science-fiction satirist Jimmy Joyce, this new British sex comedy stars the ever-popular Robin Askwith as Steve Dedalus, a chirpy young aspiring novelist who yearns to break free from the suffocating straitjacket of conformity by embarking on an illustrious literary career. Steve soon finds, however, that it takes more than an abundance of talent, ruthless tenacity and sheer luck to make it big in the book business: it also requires a willingness to subject oneself to a series of back-breaking romps with various ladies of letters. This hardback harem of softback sirens include a licentious librarian (Sally Geeson), a lascivious literary agent (Rula Lenska) and a saucy censor (Irene Handl), and Steve’s so-called ‘epiphanies’ take place in a variety of ludicrously lewd literary-themed locations including a marquee at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, the back of a mobile library and the top deck of the number 11 bus.

This, it must be said, is something of a departure from the source material.

Next week’s auction of rare manuscripts by the great Irish author James Joyce looks set to ignite a bitter dispute between private collectors, leading academics and fans of a West Midlands football team. The documents – made up of original, handwritten drafts of what many believe to be his earliest published work – consist of over 1500 pages of articles, match reports and in-depth player profiles that Joyce wrote between 1919 and 1924 for Aston Villa’s weekly match day souvenir programme.

‘This has got us all worried,’ says Harry H. Earwicker, Aston Villa supporter and spokesperson for the Anglo-Irish ‘soccerlit’ pressure group, Villa Yootha Joyce. ‘There’s a very real danger that some well-heeled foreign buyer could take the manuscripts out of North Birmingham. These documents form part of this great club’s history. They are the only surviving link between the modern-day Claret and Blue Army and the lost world of Modernist literature. They should remain at Villa Park or, at the very least, somewhere in Witton.’

As well as being one of the most important writers of the last century, James Joyce will also be remembered as one of Aston Villa’s original ‘famous fans’. In this respect, he was very much the Nigel Kennedy of his day. Joyce would often boast about this in public, despite the fact that – in the 1920s at least – no serious artist wanted to be compared to Nigel Kennedy. What first attracted the Dublin-born writer to this legendary North Birmingham club remains a mystery, however. Some Joycean scholars have tentatively suggested that he supported Aston Villa as an defiant act of artistic rebellion against the dated literary conventions of Victorian novelists like Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope and the Brontë sisters who were, for the most part, Birmingham City supporters.

Whatever the case, his obsession for the club found its way into the early drafts of many of his most famous books. His autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was originally entitled A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Fan, while his masterpiece Ulysses – in which the entire narrative famously took place on a single day, 16^th June, 1904 – was originally scheduled to take place on 2^nd April, 1897, the date of Villa’s first FA Cup victory.

Joyce began writing for the club’s souvenir programme in 1919. He was living in impoverished exile in Zurich with his lover, Nora Barnacle, and was desperately struggling to make ends meet. By the time his ends eventually did meet it was too late, as the pair had already moved to Paris. To help alleviate Joyce’s poverty his well-connected patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, put in a good word with Aston Villa’s owners. In those days, the football souvenir programme industry was a melting pot of Modernist talent and many of the great artists of the day got their first break working for these publications. The likes of T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein and Marcel Proust cut their creative teeth writing articles, match reports and in-depth player profiles until people started taking them seriously. Writers weren’t the only people to benefit from this industry, of course. Pablo Picasso famously produced a series of lurid strip cartoons for Birmingham City’s souvenir programme during what later became known as his ‘Blues period’.

Over the next five years Joyce was a prolific contributor to the publication. He produced 276 articles, 573 match reports, 834 play-by-play tactical analysis charts and over 15,000 in-depth player profiles. This prodigious output was all the more remarkable as he spent most of this period living abroad and, as a result, was rarely able to attend home games. Instead, he had to rely heavily on detailed telegrams, eyewitness accounts and conjecture.

According to Earwicker, Joyce’s early articles for the souvenir programme featured ‘a winning combination of hard-hitting match analysis, erudite Irish wit and obscure literary allusions that proved to be a big hit with Villa fans.’ His classic work during this period included the groundbreaking match report Villa v QPR (1919) and its disappointing sequel, Villa v QPR (1920), and during Villa’s 1919-20 FA Cup campaign Joyce received widespread acclaim for his detailed account of the long road to Wembley, which was entitled ‘The M1.’

Unfortunately, Joyce’s love affair with Aston Villa was not to last. Egged on by fellow Villa fan Ezra Pound, he began to introduce increasingly experimental literary techniques into his Villa programme contributions. His play-by-play tactical analysis reports featured an increased use of multiple-viewpoint narration and Lobachevskian geometry. This confused scores of Villa fans who were more familiar traditional third-person narrative approaches and Euclidian geometry. He also abandon many of the traditional rules of punctuation: a 1921 interview with Frank Barson upset the legendary ‘hard man’ striker after Joyce removed all the quotation marks and replaced them with inverted commas.

The situation finally came to a head in 1924 with his controversial profile of one of Villa’a most notorious fans. A precursor to the modern-day streaker, Macintosh Brown would interrupt Villa matches by charging across the field wearing nothing but a brown macintosh. Joyce’s profile of this shady exhibitionist – complete with pop-up illustrations – resulted in a highly-publicised obscenity trial and Joyce was forced to accept a three-match ban.

The club’s owners were furious with Joyce. When Villa were defeated by Newcastle United in that year’s FA Cup final, Joyce submitted a 10,000 word match report which featured passing references to Irish patriot Charles Stewart Parnell, Catholic theologian St Thomas Aquinas and Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. The club owners urged Joyce to remove these references which, they felt, were ‘somewhat irrelevant’ and ‘confusing to younger fans’. Angered by this perceived attack on his artistic integrity, Joyce submitted a 10,000 word profile of Parnell, Aquinas and Vico which made only passing reference to the FA Cup Final. In retaliation, the club owners published a clumsily edited version the original article and attributed it to one of Joyce’s uncles, who he didn’t like.

For Joyce this was the final straw. He sent the club a blunt, two-word resignation letter in Latin which read: ‘Non-serviam.’ The club responded with a blunt, two-word response in Anglo Saxon, which – unfortunately – was lost in the post. After turning his back on his religion and then his country, Joyce finally turned his back on his favorite team. In a fit of rage he attempted to set fire to his vast collection of Aston Villa scarves, track suits and other paraphernalia. Unfortunately, due to his failing eyesight, he instead set fire to a pair of curtains and an early draft of a planned sequel to Ulysses that was provisionally entitled Twolysses.

Nearly a century later, Joyce’s influence still remains strong at Villa Park. According to Earwicker, his ghost has often been witnessed sitting on the top deck of a bus that passes close to the ground and shouting abuse from the terraces. Most touchingly, perhaps, many of his early, lyrical poems have formed the basis of some of the club’s most enduring supporter chants. These include the touching ‘We Love You Villa, We Do’, the rousing ‘We are the Boys from the Holte Army’ and, of course, the ever-popular ‘Shit on the City.’

Am 11. November 2008 Clare und ich verbrachten einige Stunden circumnavigating die Stadt von Birmingham auf dem Bus der Nr. 11. Dieses wasn‘ t unsere Idee, verstehen Sie. Eher war es das Geistesprodukt der Jon Bounds der erstaunlichen Brum-gegründeten Web site Birmingham: It’ s Nicht Schit.

Birchfield Library

At about 2.30pm we leave Wellington Road and cross the Perry Barr roundabout on Birchfield Road. Although I’m no stranger to this area, this is an odd approach for me. I regularly drive along the Birchfield Road, but I usually take the underpass that runs beneath the traffic island. Here’s a picture of the underpass from when it was under construction in 1961, courtesy of Digital Handsworth:

That’s The Old Crown and Cushion pub in the background, which has changed a lot since then. Luckily the underpass has too, otherwise it’d be a bugger to drive through.

One of the advantages of seeing the world from the front seat of the top deck of a number 11 bus is that you get to witness all the juicy street level stuff you’d normally miss while driving through underpasses and along flyovers. That’s why I’m surprised to see that the library that used to sit on the corner of Birchfield Road and Aston Lane has now been demolished, and that’s why I say out loud (and a bit too loudly): “Where the fuck did that go?”

Someone sitting behind me lets out an audible tut. As we’re sitting on the front seat, “someone sitting behind me” hardly narrows it down, so I let it pass.

Maybe I’m too sensitive about these things, but there’s something about the sight of a demolished library building that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Didn’t this country once take a moral stand against a cruel and evil regime that was more than a tad partial to burning books? If so, then how can we turn a blind eye and let such wanton acts of anti-intellectualism escalate on our own doorstep? I imagine it’s because we’re all too busy driving through the underpasses and along the flyovers of life.

Let’s just hope that all the books got out in one piece.

Tufnol Factory, Aston Lane

At Aston Lane the bus stops for what seems like seventeen years. As the Wellhead Lane depot is nearby, I assume that the bus has to change drivers, the driver has to take a leak or the leak has to change buses.

I notice an elderly couple get on board. The man is wearing an Edwardian-looking suit, sporting a pair of jam jar glasses and bears an uncanny resemblance to the great Irish writer James Joyce. I can’t say whether his companion resembles Joyce’s wife and muse Nora Barnacle, but that’s only because I can’t remember what Nora Barnacle looked like.

Along Aston Lane, on the corner of Wellhead Lane, we pass the Tufnol factory. Tufnol, in case you don’t know, is a firm based in Birmingham and Glasgow who have been producing rods, sheets and other laminated plastic products for over 70 years. The reason why I know this is because my Uncle Eddie used to work there. Uncle Eddie was one of my favourite people in the world. He had a sense of humour was as dry as a sand sandwich and he always made sure that my family were never short of rods, sheets and other laminated plastic products. I miss him.

As we pass the Tufnol factory I realise that it’s been years’ since I last travelled along Aston Lane. That’s why I’m quite surprised to see a massive, new 24 hour Tesco Superstore, and that’s why I say out loud (and a bit too loudly): “Where the fuck did that come from?”

Someone sitting behind me lets out an audible tut.

I think it might be James Joyce.

Le 11 novembre 2008 Clare et moi avons passé plusieurs heures circumnavigating la ville de Birmingham sur l’autobus du numéro 11. C’était idée de limites de Jon Bounds de ‘Birmingham: n’est pas Merde.’

We’re still on the number 11 bus, we’re still in Perry Barr and we’re now passing the Crown and Cushion pub. There’s been a Crown and Cushion standing at the corner of Wellington Road and Birchfield Road for as long as I remember, although it hasn’t always been this Crown and Cushion.

The current incumbent is a fairly modern-looking, functional affair that, by my somewhat unreliable estimation, was constructed in the late 1980s or possibly even the early-1990s. I wasn’t on the number 11 at the time so I didn’t take any notes.

It was built on the site of a more traditional looking red brick boozer called, unsurprisingly, The Old Crown and Cushion. As I recall, across the road from what used to be The Old Crown and Cushion was a smaller pub squeezed between a row of shops on Birchfield Road. It was called The New Crown and Cushion.

Now, I’m no expert on pub name etymology, but I think its safe to assume that the New Crown and Cushion was a late arrival on the scene. Being a younger pub, I imagine it was a bit of an upstart fuelled by youthful exuberance and swaggering cockiness, although it probably skipped on the the piss and vinegar for health and safety reasons.

It must have felt a bit annoyed when the Old Crown and Cushion was bulldozed and replaced with a Crown and Cushion that was newer than ‘The New Crown and Cushion’. For one thing, it had to change its name.

For some reason this makes me think of Spinal Tap.

“The road you can talk about is not the road you can walk on.”

Lao-Tse – Tao Te Ching

At about 2.10pm the bus is driving through Winson Green.

For the uninitiated, Clare and I are indulging in a spot of guerrilla ethnomethodology aboard Birmingham’s legendary number 11 bus. Some youths board the bus and sit behind us. This doesn’t concern us, however, as everyone else on the top deck is sitting behind us, too. That’s what happens when you sit on the front seat.

Before long, we notice a suspicious, burning odour coming from behind. This isn’t the typical, pungent, herb-based burning odour that’s commonly associated with philosophy students, jazz aficionados and the top deck of a double decker bus, though. This doesn’t smell like anything exotic, illegal or monged. No, it smells like someone is baking a jacket potato.

“Kids nowadays,” says Clare.

We’re driving through Winson Green, and Winson Green – of course – is best known for its prison. In fact, to most Brummies, ‘Winson Green’ means prison. In this respect it joins a long list of locations that seem forever lumbered with deep-seated incarceration associations. Notorious places like Strangeways in Manchester, Alcatraz in San Francisco and Portmeirion in Wales.

Which is a bit of shame, really. If you manage to separate the word from its links with the local lock-up, then Winson Green itself is quite a pretty name for a place. It wouldn’t seem out of place in Trumptonshire, alongside Camberwick Green and Chigley.

Of course, things like that are always easier said than done. This place and its prison seem to be neuro-linguistically fused in the popular imagination. It’ll take more than Zen detachment and baked potatoes to sever those tethers.

The fact the 11 bus drives straight past the prison probably doesn’t help.

By 2pm we’ve left Harborne. It happens to us all eventually.

After crossing Hagley Road (home to my old sixth form, St Philip’s College), the number 11 saunters wistfully along the Bearwood High Street as another song comes to mind. This time, it’s the sublime This is What She’s Like from Dexys Midnight Runners’ wilfully uncommercial and criminally underrated 1985 album, Don’t Stand Me Down:

On the album version of the song, The Little Nibble café on the Bearwood Road gets name checked during some pre-song banter (legend has it that Kevin Rowland and his bandmates used to meet there for tea-dinking sessions). Sadly, The Little Nibble ceased trading in January, Dexys haven’t recorded a studio album since Don’t Stand Me Down and I’ve been sitting on the top deck of the number 11 for long enough now to start making connections.

We take a right onto Sandon Road and into Edgbaston, passing the former home of my good friend, the macaroon-chomping friend of Garfield Jez Higgins. I remember going to a barbeque there years’ ago. Jez and his goodwyf Nat are vegetarians, so this – understandably enough – was a vegetarian barbecue. Our mutual friend – the talented comic artist and occasional thug, Tony McGee - arrived at this vegetarian event clutching a greasy megaburger in his mitts. I vividly remember him wantonly flaunting his tasty bovine-based snack with scant regard for the feelings of others. At least, I’m pretty certain it was Tony.

I hope it wasn’t me.

Well we know where we’re goin’
But we dont know where we’ve been
And we know what were knowin’
But we can’t say what weve seen

Talking Heads – Road to Nowhere

It’s about 1.50pm, Clare and I are still in Harborne and we’re still sitting on the front seat of the top deck of Birmingham’s legendary number 11 bus. We’re sitting to the right of the bus, and – on Lordswood Road – a girl sitting to our left gets up and click-clacks her way down the steps in a pair of presumably-fashionable high heel plimsoles. This may seem fairly inconsequential to you, but for me it was the catalyst for a minor revalation: sitting on the front seat of the top deck might give you a great view of the road ahead, but when it comes to interbus people-watching it’s far from ideal. Visibility is seriously impaired due to the fact that almost everybody else is sitting behind you.

It was, of course, Clare who noticed her shoes: footwear observations aren’t exactly my forte. I wouldn’t have clocked what was on her feet if she staggered past me in a pair of of Elton John’s 4 foot tall Doc Martens.

I assume she’s a regular passenger, not some eejit with a blog and a day off work whose partial to a bit of public transport-based sociological high jinks. This is someone with a destination in mind, who knows exactly where she’s going. She’s the kind of person who uses the bus to get from A to B, not someone who misuses the bus to get from A to A.

It’s probably best if I don’t dwell on the metaphorical implications of any of this.

At 1.43pm we cross the Bristol Road and head down Harborne Lane. From the front seat on the top deck of the number 11 bus you get a great view of the still-under-construction new Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The futuristic, super sleek tri tower structure already looks so impressive you could be forgiven for thinking that the builders cut corners and used CGI.

Light dazzles my eyes, and I automatically reach up to pull down my sun visor. I remember that I’m in a bus and not a car, and realise that I now look like an idiot or, more worryingly, a Nazi sympathiser. Not that there’s any difference, of course. I wonder if the new hospital will find a cure for stupidity?

By 1.50pm we’re in Harborne. I look out for my brother whose doing some carpentry wrork in the area. I scan the suburban streets for him and his big-ass silver van, but to no avail. If you want quality carpentry work done at a competitive price, you can find his website here.

Tell him the idiot on the number 11 sent you.

Two days later and so far I’ve only covered the first two miles. Typical.

We pass a fancy dress store in Cotteridge, where a plastic mannequin catches Clare’s eye. A potential Christmas present? ‘No,’ says Clare, emphatically.

We hook a right onto Watford Road and pass a shop called Vis a Vis. “So that’s what David Brent did next,” muses Clare. I respond with a good natured ‘Heh.’ In truth, I only actually get the comment once we reach Bearwood. Boost bars really slow down the speed of my basic cognitive functions.

We’re heading down Linden Road, now, and passing leafy Bournville. A line from an old Elvis Costello song springs to mind:

In Chocolate Town all the trains are painted brown
On the silver paper of the wrapper

At least it wasn’t Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight.

1.25pm: Kick off.

1.26pm: Boost bars are unwrapped.

We make our way down Vicarage Road onto Fordhouse Lane – from Kings Heath to Stirchley – as Clare writes: “I don’t like Stirchley, or the innermost layer of a Boost.”

By contrast, I’m inordinately fond of Stirchley. Having lived there during the mid-90s, I’ve always loved the fact that the nearest train station from my old stomping ground was Bournville. When you left the station you would look out upon this idyllic, picturesque vision of England. You’d see nice, polite chaps playing cricket while shoots of ivy climbed up the sides of their ornate red brick houses. It always seemed like a cross between The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society album and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Once you walked under the railway bridge, however, you were confronted with Stirchley, and the contrast couldn’t be greater. You’d see disused factories, discarded pizza boxes and cars mounted on bricks. Compared to Bournville, this was urban and butal. It’s hard to believe that two such different areas could be divided by a single railway line. I imagine an aerial photograph of the area would look a bit like like the face of Harvey Dent from Batman.

Whoever coined the phrase “The other side of the tracks” probably lived there, too.