Celebration is on at the Michael Pilch studio from Tuesday 24th January to Saturday 28th January. Tickets are available online at bit.ly/pintercelebration
Blog Page 1755
Review: Gonjasufi – MU.ZZ.LE
Gonjasufi’s 2010 LP A Sufi and a Killer set itself apart from any other self-styled ‘electronic’ record from that year, mostly because of his amazing voice. Pitched somewhere between the anguished ghost of a long-dead Delta bluesman and the sound of an injured dog, when paired with masterful, smoky production from The Gaslamp Killer it led to a sprawling patchwork quilt of an album, encompassing a huge stylistic range, from Grateful Dead-style guitar noodling to freeform instrumental hip-hop of the Flying Lotus school.
On MU.ZZ.LE, a 25 minute ‘mini-LP’, Gonjasufi narrows his focus and tones down some of the more aggressive elements of A Sufi, without losing anything in intensity. The layers of scuzz and distortion are still present over his skewed instrumental samples, carpet-bombed beats and gravel-wouldn’t-melt vocals, but the tempo and atmosphere have been taken down to a slower, more seductive pace. Opener ‘White Picket Fence’ immediately throws us into an echoey sludge of decomposed guitar and languid drums reminiscent of early Portishead if they were lost in the Sahara desert, rather than in a port town just outside Bristol. Even on more beat-heavy tracks such as ‘Nickels and Dimes’ and ‘Skin’, the commitment to injecting these tracks with a queasy, claustrophobic unease beyond a standard B-boy aesthetic is admirable. ‘I’ve done some things in my time / Even I’m ashamed of me,’ he croons softly on ‘The Blame’, and rather than an empty platitude, his pained, worn near-whisper sounds like he means it.
MU.ZZ.LE isn’t perfect, however – taken by itself, closing track ‘Sniffin’ is an underwhelming end, sounding more like a doodle to test out distortion effects used sparingly and evocatively elsewhere. However, MU.ZZ.LE is best taken in as a whole. As its compacted and tightly structured length weaves seamlessly from one track to the next, you could almost be listening to an ancient mystic, rather than one of the most idiosyncratic modern musicians going.
Gonjasufi’s 2010 LP A Sufi and a Killer set itself apart from any other self-styled ‘electronic’ record from that year, mostly because of his amazing voice. Pitched somewhere between the anguished ghost of a long-dead Delta bluesman and the sound of an injured dog, when paired with masterful, smoky production from The Gaslamp Killer it led to a sprawling patchwork quilt of an album, encompassing a huge stylistic range, from Grateful Dead-style guitar noodling to freeform instrumental hip-hop of the Flying Lotus school.
On MU.ZZ.LE, a 25 minute ‘mini-LP’, Gonjasufi narrows his focus and tones down some of the more aggressive elements of A Sufi, without losing anything in intensity. The layers of scuzz and distortion are still present over his skewed instrumental samples, carpet-bombed beats and gravel-wouldn’t-melt vocals, but the tempo and atmosphere have been taken down to a slower, more seductive pace. Opener ‘White Picket Fence’ immediately throws us into an echoey sludge of decomposed guitar and languid drums reminiscent of early Portishead if they were lost in the Sahara desert, rather than in a port town just outside Bristol. Even on more beat-heavy tracks such as ‘Nickels and Dimes’ and ‘Skin’, the commitment to injecting these tracks with a queasy, claustrophobic unease beyond a standard B-boy aesthetic is admirable. ‘I’ve done some things in my time / Even I’m ashamed of me,’ he croons softly on ‘The Blame’, and rather than an empty platitude, his pained, worn near-whisper sounds like he means it.
MU.ZZ.LE isn’t perfect, however – taken by itself, closing track ‘Sniffin’’ is an underwhelming end, sounding more like a doodle to test out distortion effects used sparingly and evocatively elsewhere. However, MU.ZZ.LE is best taken in as a whole. As its compacted and tightly structured length weaves seamlessly from one track to the next, you could almost be listening to an ancient mystic, rather than one of the most idiosyncratic modern musicians going.
Review: The Maccabees – Given To The Wild
The Maccabees first album, Colour It In, saw the band put in to the ‘art rock’ box, with its hand-drawn cover, guitar-based melodies and lyrics about wave machines and enticing girls with leopard print duvets. Five years later their third album Given To The Wild has already been hailed as one of the best albums of 2012. But are the superlatives premature?
Given that the band wrote individually, each song slides into the next with a remarkable cohesion which gives the album a subtly crafted flow. Most of the songs stick to the same structure, building from restrained verses to swirling, syncopated climaxes, yet, some filler aside, many still remain distinctive. The floating shimmer of ‘Glimmer’ sharply contrasts with the insistent propulsion of ‘Unknown’. Meanwhile, the first single ‘Pelican’ combines rollicking, spiky guitar lines with lyrics about mortality and the ephemeral nature of life, its upbeat feel ironically revealing an underlying darkness.
Given To The Wild shows lyricist Orlando Weeks’ increased emotional maturity, as his fragile and world-weary vocals hark back to simpler days without the bitterness of unfulfilled dreams, dissatisfaction and the trickling away of time. On ‘Forever I’ve Known’ he repeatedly implores, ‘Can we still try? / Can you just lie?’, his voice almost quivering, reminiscent of Jeff Buckley at his most fraught.
The band spent three years making the album, and the time and effort is evident in its numerous layers, tight structures and cyclic melodies. But in this is the problem. While Given To The Wild is undoubtedly a mature, skilful and beautiful album, it just feels a little too manicured. Its ambition sometimes reaches soaring heights akin to Arcade Fire, but at other moments its feels like trite stadium rock of the Coldplay variety. In aiming for soundscapes that will gain critical accolades the band lose some of the raw energy and quirkiness of their earlier work. Ultimately, the album leaves you with more excitement about where The Maccabees will go next than about Given To The Wild itself.
The Maccabees first album, Colour It In, saw the band put in to the ‘art rock’ box, with its hand-drawn cover, guitar-based melodies and lyrics about wave machines and enticing girls with leopard print duvets. Five years later their third album Given To The Wild has already been hailed as one of the best albums of 2012. But are the superlatives premature?
Given that the band wrote individually, each song slides into the next with a remarkable cohesion which gives the album a subtly crafted flow. Most of the songs stick to the same structure, building from restrained verses to swirling, syncopated climaxes, yet, some filler aside, many still remain distinctive. The floating shimmer of ‘Glimmer’ sharply contrasts with the insistent propulsion of ‘Unknown’. Meanwhile, the first single ‘Pelican’ combines rollicking, spiky guitar lines with lyrics about mortality and the ephemeral nature of life, its upbeat feel ironically revealing an underlying darkness.
Given To The Wild shows lyricist Orlando Weeks’ increased emotional maturity, as his fragile and world-weary vocals hark back to simpler days without the bitterness of unfulfilled dreams, dissatisfaction and the trickling away of time. On ‘Forever I’ve Known’ he repeatedly implores, ‘Can we still try? / Can you just lie?’, his voice almost quivering, reminiscent of Jeff Buckley at his most fraught.
The band spent three years making the album, and the time and effort is evident in its numerous layers, tight structures and cyclic melodies. But in this is the problem. While Given To The Wild is undoubtedly a mature, skilful and beautiful album, it just feels a little too manicured. Its ambition sometimes reaches soaring heights akin to Arcade Fire, but at other moments its feels like trite stadium rock of the Coldplay variety. In aiming for soundscapes that will gain critical accolades the band lose some of the raw energy and quirkiness of their earlier work. Ultimately, the album leaves you with more excitement about where The Maccabees will go next than about Given To The Wild itself
A Bluffers’ Guide to: New Wave
Age? Allegedly ongoing – at any rate, borne from the end of the 1970s. Let’s say
1978 to 1987.
So, what wave? Not to be confused with the Third Wave (late 90’s radical feminism), Human
Wave Attack (offensive infantry tactic) or The Waves (Virginia Woolf novel), the
New Wave is a musical subgenre.
Well, that clears it up a bit. The name of the genre is borrowed from French film movement the Nouvelle Vague (not the atmospheric cover band), with early examples being similarly
experimental and fiercely anti-corporate.
Like punk, then. Think of it as punk’s subtler, huffier older sister: the genetics are the same,
and they might look a bit similar, but the distance between them is certainly no
accident.
Okay, so not like punk. What does it sound like? Oh, a bit synthy; angrier than pop, quirkier than electronic music. Sometimes it’s a bit like ska, sometimes it’s a bit more rocky – sorry, this isn’t helpful, is it?
I seem to remember one of my parents’ friends referring to one of my teenage asymmetrical autocoiffure disasters as ‘a bit New Romantic.’ Yes. Well. We all make mistakes. That does come into it a bit, but New Wave is more reactionary than the flamboyant aesthetics of Adam Ant et al – it started out as a vigorous response to the overproduced, underinspired pop of the 1970s. All the rage of punk, with a lot more glitter, in one easy-to-digest, easy-to-market package.
Right. So it’s not New Romanticism, or post-punk, or synthpop, but sometimes it could be. Yes! Precisely!
And then what happened?
Video killed the radio star. Though initially working to their advantage, the rise of MTV and a host of other music video channels meant that less photogenic groups (sorry, Spandau Ballet) were waltzed right out of town.
Back up your new-found factoids with five bona fide bangers, with a complete Spotify playlist for your perusal available here at A Bluffers’ Guide to: New Wave:
She Blinded Me With Science – Thomas Dolby (1982)
This is The Day – The The (1983)
Dear Prudence – Siouxsie & the Banshees (1983)
Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You) – A Flock of Seagulls (1983)
Temptation – Heaven 17 (1983)
Dancing to the beat of her own drum
Nicola Roberts has done rather a lot in the last year: got veneers, released an album (Cinderella Eyes), and (best of all) worn the coolest jumper I’ve ever seen in my life in ‘Beat of My Drum’. Apparently the aesthetic appeal is no accident, with ‘the whole of the artwork made to compliment [her] electro music.’ The video is something to phone home about: the fact that she appears to have rented out her local town hall, for example; the dancers forced to contend with a dance floor that has clearly recently been electrocuted; and, of course, that lovely piece of knitwear.
Roberts has taken a rather edgier track than what might be expected from someone whose previous credentials include paler-than-thou make-up line Dainty Doll and a long stint as a Girl Aloud. Listing dream collaborators as ‘M.I.A, Kate Bush and Missy Elliot,’ the sound, apparently, is ‘up.’ ‘I see it as being ‘up’, and so colour is a reference to that. Around the last album, something just clicked. I had had the most amazing summer holiday with all of my friends from Liverpool; I started to go to all the fashion shows, and change my mentality about beauty and comercialism, everything. My whole aspect and everything I looked at just changed. Then, as soon as I did, I just felt looser. I think it’s important to feel loose, I really do.’
Nicola has inadvertently risen as a bit of an indie fashion icon, with a keen eye for aesthetics. ‘I was really interested in all of the prints (in ‘Beat of My Drum’); the tribal prints and all of the colour patterns. To me, it was all cheerleader and Super Mario sounds, whereas for ‘Yoyo’ now everything is a bit darker. The song is about the needy side of love, where you don’t know if you’re coming or going… it’s proper, it’s a bit of a head fuck. It draws you to wear darker things, that are a little more serious; older and darker.’
A collaboration with Atlanta Weller to create the shoes worn on the album cover suggest a future in fashion design. ‘I would love the opportunity to have a collection. As long as I’m being able to be creative, be it in the studio or working on Dainty Doll, it’s where I’m most happy and the most confident. Fashion is very much a personal thing to me. I won’t leave the house unless I feel like what I’m wearing fits my mood or creates the mood that I feel like I should be in that particular day. It’s very much more a personal thing than just wearing a nice coat.’
Roberts has taken on this album with her feet firmly planted in the stirrups. It is unsurprisingly strikingly personal with songs springing largely ‘from your emotions, or the way you think about certain situations, because everything is how you see it or what you feel.’ Nicola seems to have tumbled out of school at barely seventeen, ‘walking out of the classroom and onto the stage.’ At the slightly riper age of twenty-six, she’s glad to have moved on from ‘working together as a team,’ even while it was ‘amazing.’ ‘It’s kind of nice now to have that eighteen months of solid work on the little square CD, and to see my own journey on it. It was important to me that everyone that we worked with on the record felt like they wanted to be on the team. I didn’t want to feel like just another one on the conveyer belt. It felt like everyone wanted to be a part of the project – and that’s why I think it worked.’
with Jenny Entwistle
‘More stars than there are in heaven!’
‘You know, you haven’t stopped talking since I came here? You must have been vaccinated with a phonograph needle’ — So quips Groucho Marx in the madcap 1933 comedy Duck Soup. And indeed the 1930s was the film decade that didn’t stop talking, dancing, or singing, instead pushing through incredible technology leaps to create better, brighter, BIGGER films. This is the era when the film industry seemed to explode in all directions. The industry aspect of this is important, as studios (MGM, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros, RKO and Universal being the main players) really expand and dominate production, ‘owning’ certain actors and directors. ‘Big studios’ paired up with their ‘big names’ makes for a grand and impressive period. Ask anyone about the 30s and names like Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Mae West, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are bound to be mentioned with a certain kind of nostalgic awe; these Gods and Goddesses of the screen, inhabiting their Golden Age of celebrity. So much so, that MGM boasted of containing ‘more stars than there are in heaven.’Â
Yet this divine grandeur and glamour is balanced out by an almost giddy, excited race to new film techniques, defying the effect of the Depression. The ‘talkies’ were here to stay, and becoming increasingly sophisticated, but what marks the 30s out is the development of Technicolor; the first feature-length live action colour film generally accepted to be Becky Sharp in 1935. This is matched two years later by a film more likely to be familiar to our readers; the first full-colour animated feature, Walt Disney’s hept-acular spectacular Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937.) This is not to say that everyone relished the new, and it was with a certain defiant melancholy that Charlie Chaplin made his two films in the 30s City Lights (1931) and the bittersweet Modern Times (1936) forming a farewell to the much loved ‘Little Tramp.’ Both retain the dialogue-through-title-cards technique of the traditional silent films, but don’t entirely resist the opportunities for sound effects and music. And although he wouldn’t speak any lines till the 40s, Chaplin’s literal voice is heard in a gibberish song of Modern Times. To Chaplin perhaps, noise exists in the modern mechanical world, but is simply as noise, as nonsense compared to the purity of his silent physical expression. Â
To me, physical expression in the 30s instead takes its exuberant form in the work of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who span onto the screen in 1933 in Flying Down to Rio, and continued to be the dancing darlings of RKO for 8 other films. Although their last film together wouldn’t be until 1949, the phenomenon of ‘Fred and Ginger’ really exists in a glorious window from 1933-39. Two sparkling spot of pure magic gliding, tapping and charming their way through these brief six years, and yet surely fixing themselves forever into film history. Even those not quite so enthused by Top Hat (1935) Swing Time (1936) or Shall We Dance (1937) can fail to avoid the cultural influence. The most subtle, or even surprising, of which exists in the iconic songs introduced by the pair. You would have to be somewhat reclusive to have never heard any of ‘Cheek to Cheek’ (Top Hat 1935) ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ (Follow the Fleet 1936) ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ (Swing Time 1936) or ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’ Â (Shall We Dance 1937.) The 30s was a decade full to bursting of song, dance, colour and innovation. This almost tips into the 40s, bubbling over with what has to be one of the greatest years for classic, innovative and stunning film production, in 1939; the advent of the Blockbuster. This year brought films truly to be remembered; Wizard of Oz, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Of Mice and Men, Wuthering Heights (certainly worth a notice for the sheer genius casting of Lawrence Olivier) and Gone With the Wind (which was only knocked off its highest grossing box office podium in 1965.) In today’s world of 3-D, 4-D and computer-generated-everything, these early triumphs may appear low-tech and simple. But I can’t help but respond with ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ Â
‘You know, you haven’t stopped talking since I came here? You must have been vaccinated with a phonograph needle’ — So quips Groucho Marx in the madcap 1933 comedy Duck Soup. And indeed the 1930s was the film decade that didn’t stop talking, dancing, or singing, instead pushing through incredible technology leaps to create better, brighter, BIGGER films. This is the era when the film industry seemed to explode in all directions. The industry aspect of this is important, as studios (MGM, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros, RKO and Universal being the main players) really expand and dominate production, ‘owning’ certain actors and directors. ‘Big studios’ paired up with their ‘big names’ makes for a grand and impressive period. Ask anyone about the 30s and names like Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Mae West, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are bound to be mentioned with a certain kind of nostalgic awe; these Gods and Goddesses of the screen, inhabiting their Golden Age of celebrity. So much so, that MGM boasted of containing ‘more stars than there are in heaven.’Â
Yet this divine grandeur and glamour is balanced out by an almost giddy, excited race to new film techniques, defying the effect of the Depression. The ‘talkies’ were here to stay, and becoming increasingly sophisticated, but what marks the 30s out is the development of Technicolor; the first feature-length live action colour film generally accepted to be Becky Sharp in 1935. This is matched two years later by a film more likely to be familiar to our readers; the first full-colour animated feature, Walt Disney’s hept-acular spectacular Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937.) This is not to say that everyone relished the new, and it was with a certain defiant melancholy that Charlie Chaplin made his two films in the 30s City Lights (1931) and the bittersweet Modern Times (1936) forming a farewell to the much loved ‘Little Tramp.’ Both retain the dialogue-through-title-cards technique of the traditional silent films, but don’t entirely resist the opportunities for sound effects and music. And although he wouldn’t speak any lines till the 40s, Chaplin’s literal voice is heard in a gibberish song of Modern Times. To Chaplin perhaps, noise exists in the modern mechanical world, but is simply as noise, as nonsense compared to the purity of his silent physical expression. Â
To me, physical expression in the 30s instead takes its exuberant form in the work of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who span onto the screen in 1933 in Flying Down to Rio, and continued to be the dancing darlings of RKO for 8 other films. Although their last film together wouldn’t be until 1949, the phenomenon of ‘Fred and Ginger’ really exists in a glorious window from 1933-39. Two sparkling spot of pure magic gliding, tapping and charming their way through these brief six years, and yet surely fixing themselves forever into film history. Even those not quite so enthused by Top Hat (1935) Swing Time (1936) or Shall We Dance (1937) can fail to avoid the cultural influence. The most subtle, or even surprising, of which exists in the iconic songs introduced by the pair. You would have to be somewhat reclusive to have never heard any of ‘Cheek to Cheek’ (Top Hat, 1935) ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ (Follow the Fleet,1936) ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ (Swing Time, 1936) or ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’  (Shall We Dance, 1937.) The 30s was a decade full to bursting of song, dance, colour and innovation. This almost tips into the 40s, bubbling over with what has to be one of the greatest years for classic, innovative and stunning film production, in 1939; the advent of the Blockbuster. This year brought films truly to be remembered; Wizard of Oz, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Of Mice and Men, Wuthering Heights (certainly worth a notice for the sheer genius casting of Lawrence Olivier) and Gone With the Wind (which was only knocked off its highest grossing box office podium in 1965.) In today’s world of 3-D, 4-D and computer-generated-everything, these early triumphs may appear low-tech and simple. But I can’t help but reply ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ Â
Â
Speaking in Tongues – Part 1
Speaking in Tongues was written by Rob Williams and produced by Loveday Wright and Tom Moyser.
The Cast, in order of appearance, are:
The Apologist – Dave Ralf
Micheal – Richard O’Brien
Louise – Charlotte Geater
David – Rob Williams
Jennifer – Sarah Whitehouse
Terry – Jack Hackett
Billy – Tom Moyser
Latin! Or Tobacco and Boys
Latin! Or Tobacco and Boys opens at the Burton Taylor Studio on Tuesday 24th of January at 19:30 and runs until Saturday 28th. Tickets are £5 for students and can be bought online at www.oxfordplayhouse.com
Fame, fortune and philosophy
My customary view of Lord Robert Winston, once a year on the Jewish holiday of Passover, is from one end of a long table, as he presides at the other end and conducts the service. Thus it was something of a novelty to find myself face to face with him across a polished table in his office at Imperial University, with only a jar of multicoloured liquorice between us. Declining the offer of a piece of liquorice, I ask him to tell me about his career in science, during which he has produced a prodigious number of publications, and made pioneering advances in fertility surgery and IVF.
“It’s been one of fits and starts really”, he begins. “It hasn’t really formed a pathway”. Unlike the modern student of science, whose career path he thinks is far less flexible than those of the budding scientists of his generation, Professor Winston’s early years in academia were somewhat unconventional. He earned a first from Cambridge, where he read Natural Sciences, before deciding that he “didn’t really want to look down a microscope” for the rest of his life. “Of course, the irony is that I’ve ended up looking down a microscope for most of my life anyway.” This, Winston modestly proposes, is the result of a series of lucky breaks, the earliest of which he identifies as his achievement of a First at Cambridge. “I got a First by default”, he says. “During my clinical examinations I made a couple of diagnoses that had been missed by the examiners. I think the examiners were somewhat embarrassed. In one case there was an emergency decision that needed to be made, and the patient was sent straight to the operating theatre from the moment I examined her.”
After spending a few years in clinical medicine, Winston temporarily renounced academia to pursue a career in theatre, a longstanding passion of his. He took a production of Pirandello’s Each in his own way to the Edinburgh festival, where “it won a prize” – the National Director’s Award, it turns out – and had several offers to continue professionally. He returned to the medical world, however after a year – a move that was “more difficult than I expected, with long hair” – and began his attempt to re-immerse himself in academia by applying to three of the top institutions in his field of interest, obstetrics and gynaecology. He confesses that the application process was perhaps more intimidating than it would be these days. “I remember my first interview, which was in Chelsea. I sat at this table in a room where I was facing the light so I couldn’t actually see the twenty-five people around the table who were interviewing me, three of whom were wearing wing collars.” This is in keeping with the tone of medicine in the late 60s and early 70s, he assures me. “The junior house officers were required to wait at table for the consultants. It was utterly bizarre.” Rejected from all three of the institutions to which he applied, Winston wrote “in a fit of desperation” to the head of Hammersmith Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, which he had neglected to apply to, in the belief that it was too prestigious. In what he regards as an “incredibly lucky” turn of events, he was given a two month position there. “First of all I didn’t have the credentials for the research I wanted to do. The institution that I actually wanted to do it from wasn’t involved with that area of research, I hadn’t published anything at the time and I wasn’t a good student – although I’d got this first. I didn’t have ace credentials.” He adds, “oh and the other thing was, the research that I wanted to do was hair-brained.” With that stroke of luck, however, Robert Winston’s career was put on a trajectory towards success. The three year research grant that he obtained at Hammersmith supplied, he tells me, enough material to ensure that he was “pouring out publications” by the time it had finished. His radically new way of looking at fertility earned him international attention, in a whole variety of “weird places”. And then he “was very fortunate again” when he met Stephen Hillier, in collaboration with whom he worked for five years to alter the face of IVF.
Although he and Hillier improved IVF significantly, when they developed a way to induce ovulation and hugely increase IVF’s success rates, he had to fight to witness the fruits of his labour. “In 1985 there was a private members’ bill which would have prevented embryo research in Britain, and which nearly got through Parliament”, he recalls. “I think my work there with Anne McLaren – a very distinguished scientist from Cambridge – was…” He begins on a new tack. “She and I together, we literally sat up all night in Parliament, writing briefs for MPs to filibuster that bill. I think my media experience was colossally important. Because I understood that it was a question of being truthful, and not trying to exaggerate, and a whole range of things that we should do, but as scientists we don’t do very well.”
Professor Winston’s work in Parliament obstructing the passage of that bill is only one instance of his wider role as unofficial spokesman for the scientific community. When John Mansfield – then Executive Producer of the BBC’s flagship science programme, Horizon – approached him in 1974 to suggest that they collaborate on a programme, to be broadcast in 1975, speculating what science would be like in the year 2000 (they got most of it wrong), Winston began a career in television that would see him present and participate in a plethora of scientific programmes, including Bafta-award winning The human body. This was the next in a fortunate coincidence of circumstances for Winston – his exposure to the theatre, he says, made the initiation into TV easier (“the thespian stuff came back, I’d never quite lost that”), while it was this television experience, particularly his next collaboration with Mansfield as presenter for Your life in their hands (a programme about live surgery), that he believes gave him the tools to communicate his views so effectively in his bid to save embryo research in Britain, and share science with the public more generally: “John would get me to present something and would then say, “Robert I don’t understand what you’re saying,” “Robert, you’re being obscure”, or “Robert you’re being pompous”. And he was wonderful, because he taught me to think with much greater clarity how you get ideas across in a succinct way on screen.”
Although the skills Winston has honed as a presenter allow him to overcome others’ ethical qualms about some of his work, do his own personal ethics, and particularly Judaism’s ethical prescriptions, ever clash with the work that he is doing? He thinks about this, before embarking on an explanation as to why Judaism is a bit different to the other monotheistic religions, in its forward thinking views on science and the natural world. “In the Guide to the perplexed, Maimonides says that there are two views on how the world comes into being. One is that view that is held by Aristotle, that the universe has always been there, and is a constant. And the other is that it was created. And he says that, having looked at both arguments, he favours the argument which says that it was created. But then he says something extraordinary. If some new evidence comes along which suggests that this view is flawed, I will have to go back to the text and reinterpret it.” Although I express my scepticism of the suggestion that any religion has revised its views to the extent that they are in line with the latest scientific evidence, Winston is keen to distinguish Judaism from other religions. When one of van Leeuwenhoek’s pupils discovered sperm when inspecting semen under a microscope, he tells me, he claimed to see a fully formed homunculus within the sperm – a claim that still, in part, informs some religious views on Onanism and sex today. However, a Jewish text that was written in reaction to van Leeuwenhoek’s ‘discovery’, remarking on the support it gave to the notion that to destroy the seed was like murder, is now remote and recondite, since the view that it propounded has been updated in the light of new evidence. “Your ethical principles”, Winston concludes “are only as good as your observation of the natural world”.