Interior Music - Jean Michel Jarre

Interior Music is a special edition album by Jean-Michel Jarre released in 2001 for Bang & Olufsen. It exists only in an edition of 1000 copies, which makes it slightly less exclusive than the Jaguar edition of Aerology which was only obtainable for a brief period by taking a Jaguar car for a test drive. The album contains two tracks, identical apart from vocals, both of which are almost 26 minutes long. The first, Bonjour, Hello, is a musique concrete collage of running water, rustlings and occasional, very-muted piano sounds. There is gentle birdsong later on, and sparse orchestral-sounding chords. Over the top is a constant stream of voices speaking short phrases: 'Hello', 'Bonjour', 'Vous est unique', 'You are beautiful', 'Hey, I'm looking at you!'. The second track, as mentioned earlier, is an instrumental version of the first and, since the voices seem childish and irritating to me, I feel it's the better of the two tracks.

The sentiment behind the track is plausible, if along similar lines to those awful British Telecom adverts of the nineties with Bob Hoskins, or the Nescafé ones which encouraged you to take a packet of biscuits round to the neighbours. The idea of encouraging us all to talk more or just try out being nice to each other is well-meant, but twenty-six minutes of someone saying 'You look great!' and 'I'm watching you!' feels just a little sinister. At best it comes across as some sort of manic self-improvement tape, and at worst you feel as though Bang & Olufsen are actively stalking you.

I have to report, then, that Whispers Of Life, the second track without all the self-hypnosis-esque stuff, is a delightful exercise in ambient music, and preferable by far to the first track. Bloom, a recent iPhone application from Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers produces very similar sounds, actually, or it may remind you of parts of Harold Budd's album The Room. The back of the CD, incidentally, darkly hints at the tracks being excerpts from a new album. It's currently late 2009, and a range of albums have been and gone. Whatever was planned, it appears to exist only in the form of 'Interior Music' now.

Interior Music

1. Bonjour, Hello (25:58)

2. Whispers Of Life (25.56)

Cheese Straws

Cheese straws are long pastry fingers with, as you might have guessed, added cheese. A sort of long, cheesy biscuit, if you will. They sit nicely alongside sausage rolls, chunks of cheddar and pineapple on cocktail sticks and cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off as quintessential British party food. A glass of crisp white wine, a plate of cheese straws and a doily, and you're away...
Ingredients
100g (3.5 oz) butter
100g (3.5 oz) plain flour
150g (5.25 oz) deliciously tasty cheese (go for a mature, strong flavour)
Salt and pepper to season
1 egg yolk
Method
Sieve the flour and grate the cheese. Cut or rub the fat into the flour, just as if you were making pastry, and add the grated cheese. Mix in a sprinkle of salt and a grind or two of pepper. It's important to use a good, tasty cheese here - after all, if you're going to use butter to make something pastry-based, you might as well splash out on the cheese as well. If you're stuck with supermarket brands then a good pinch of cayenne pepper can help add to the bite.
Use the egg yolk and a couple of tablespoons of water to bind the mixture together into a ball. Be careful here - it really is just like very cheesy pastry, so if you go wild and add too much water you'll end up with tough cheese straws. You want it to just hold together; if you can get it to do this with just the egg yolk then so much the better.
Flour a work surface and roll the dough out to about 5mm (1/8th of an inch) thick, gently pressing it into a square, if you can. Then simply cut it into strips about 1cm wide. You could also do them a little wider, if you want chunky cheese straws. Pop them on a baking tray, possibly lined with some non-stick baking paper, leaving a small gap between each straw.
Nearly there now... pop them in a 220°C oven (that's about 425°F) for about seven minutes. You could put them in a lower oven for longer, of course, but whatever you're doing, it's wise to check these after about six minutes. They're supposed to be a beautiful pale golden brown, you see, not black...
This basics of this recipe come from a wonderful book I found under the stairs called 'Bestway Cookery Gift Book', a treasure trove of pre-war cookery. My favourite recipe is for boiled calf's head with parsley and brain sauce, although I've never dared try to make it. Mmm!

Hattie Jacques

Hattie Jacques lived from the 7th of February 1922 until the 6th of October 1980, when she sadly died from a heart attack. At that time, without wishing to be melodramatic, the world was robbed of a British comedy legend. Oh, it's okay - it wasn't one of those clever, intellectual comedienne types or anything like that - it was, putting it plainly, a rather overweight woman with an amazing ability to squeal at Kenneth Williams, huff at Tony Hancock and slap Sid James. Many envy her for the opportunity to do that alone, forgetting the exciting opportunities she had to play matron, or Eric Sykes' sister.

I'm a big Hattie Jacques fan, if you can't tell, and I'm prepared to defend her slapstick style of British Carry On comedy to the death. Hattie Jacques worked with all the big, nostalgic names of British comedy, and I want to try and make it clear that this wasn't some sort of privilege for Hattie - quite the opposite. Hancock, Sykes, James and all the rest were working with someone special when they worked with Hattie. John Le Mesurier married her, although they did divorce later, so he doesn't get quite so many brownie points. That said, if you've read Hancock's biographies you'll know that the comedians of the sixties and seventies made a great show of laughter on set, seeming to run out when it came to everyday life.

Look; I'm going to tell you one of the classic British comedy moments. Hattie Jacques is playing a rather matronly matron of a set of British school girls. They need looking after, particularly in the chastity department. And Kenneth Williams, being Kenneth Williams, is behaving just like Kenneth Williams always does in these films, despite clearly being a screaming queen. Regardless, Hattie is explaining how she wants a little womanly attention: "I want to be wooed!" she declares. Bear in mind that Kenneth is adopting a dreadful speech impediment when he replies... nay, declares! "You can be as rude as you like with me!". And yes, that's basically the whole thing in a nutshell. Good old British slapstick, vaudeville, whatever you want to call it. And Hattie was a master at it.

So, enough unadulterated praise. The details. Hattie was born in Kent in 1922. She did the usual education stuff, worked as a nurse (good experience for those Carry On Doctor films, I suppose) and also as a welder. She began acting at the age of 20 and her rather chunky but undeniable charm led to her becoming popular for the more delicate roles. It's a pantomime thing.

She worked on It's That Man Again for a while, playing the aptly-named Sophie Tuckshop. In 1950 she made it onto Educating Archie and then began on Hancock's Half Hour in 1956. And, let's just pause to say that she's absolutely brilliant here. We might also consider how important the radio is in British comedy. I know we all enjoy Miranda, The League Of Gentlemen and The Day Today. Where did they all begin? That's right... radio. And that's nowadays, when the television is ubiquitous. Think back to when no-one had a television, when you paid money to go to the pictures if you wanted to see as well as hear. Radio ruled.

Speaking of the cinema... Carry On Films! After a couple of Norman Wisdoms she hurtled into the Carry On films and managed to appear in fourteen different ones, starring alongside a whole plethora of household names.

Sykes followed - a comedy vehicle for Eric Sykes, in which Hattie continued to play the type of roles she played so well. Sykes ran from 1960 to 1965, went off on a little holiday for a while, and then returned from 1972 to 1979. And, if you were paying attention at the start, that's when it all ends tragically. October the 6th, 1980. She was 58.