Cy Fox
Cy Fox and Wyndham Lewis
Wednesday 31 March 2010
What fun it was to read about Cy Fox and Wyndham Lewis [● Cy Fox and Wyndham Lewis: one man’s obsession at the vortex].
I remember driving Cy in my mustard Mini Clubman circa 1975 from 85 Fleet Street to Charing Cross (now the Embankment) tube. As Cy opened the door – this was not in a jubilant moment – the plastic door handle snapped in his hand.
Cy was mortified and insisted that I bring him the bill. In those days, I was young, under the illusion that I was rich and successful and in no way litigious. I remarked only that Cy had done nothing untoward and that it was plainly time for the handle's natural demise.
A couple of days later, I found a large envelope in my pigeonhole containing Lewis' The Revenge for Love. I had read a lot on the Spanish civil war and this, which I consumed with great pleasure very soon after the door-handle trauma, was a very welcome addition. I remember leaving Cy a note in which I said I had attached the novel with string and sellotape and now the door opened perfectly. It wasn't true – I still have the book.
Julian Nundy
I remember driving Cy in my mustard Mini Clubman circa 1975 from 85 Fleet Street to Charing Cross (now the Embankment) tube. As Cy opened the door – this was not in a jubilant moment – the plastic door handle snapped in his hand.
Cy was mortified and insisted that I bring him the bill. In those days, I was young, under the illusion that I was rich and successful and in no way litigious. I remarked only that Cy had done nothing untoward and that it was plainly time for the handle's natural demise.
A couple of days later, I found a large envelope in my pigeonhole containing Lewis' The Revenge for Love. I had read a lot on the Spanish civil war and this, which I consumed with great pleasure very soon after the door-handle trauma, was a very welcome addition. I remember leaving Cy a note in which I said I had attached the novel with string and sellotape and now the door opened perfectly. It wasn't true – I still have the book.
Julian Nundy
David Nicholson
Saturday 08 August 2009
Being computer-illiterate and thus slow in joining The Baron’s roundup of tributes to the late Dave Nicholson, I can only assume that most of the many-sided Dave’s more obvious qualities have already been singled out for resounding salutes in the emails about him pouring in from Reuterians around the world. I have many vivid memories of this extraordinary character, not least in the musical sphere.
Dave’s fascination with jazz was well known and he himself played a mean piano as well as possessing a knowledge of the jazz genre worthy of a regular patrol of Ronnie Scott’s in London’s Soho. But he had a keen sense of the lowliest, non-jazz pop that hit the charts as he advanced through and beyond adolescence. Confessing his shortcomings in moments of retrospective conversation, he’d suddenly break into a tearful ballad like “I’m Sorry, So Sorry!” or, recalling the days when light-music radio helped pass lonely nights for young dreamers in wintry Halifax, Nova Scotia, he’d start up the sign-off song of his native city’s chief jukebox station vintage 1955, CJCH. Or, at the sight of myself (a radio geek even late in life) approaching him street or pub, he’d melodiously whistle the few bars of a Cold War station theme I’d once hummed to him, that of the CIA’s RIAS Berlin. A long-lost radiophonic curio!
Yet, gripped though he was by the jazz likes of Oscar Peterson (an imposing Canuck as he himself was), Nicholson was hugely versed in classical music. It was in that capacity, one night in the mid-1970s down at his family apartment in Crystal Palace, that he entertained me after a dinner lavished on us by diligent wife Marilyn (herself a church organist). Dave had a seldom-noticed passion for the clarinet and, on this occasion, he thought he had just the thing to serve as a rarefied but galvanizing nightcap to our feast. It was a piece I’d never heard of by a Danish modern master I knew vaguely from years before, Carl Nielsen. It was Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto, which turned out to be a ghostly, haunting exploration of – so it seemed – a musical region eerily reaching just beyond the grave. The evening had turned into a kind of compelling seance, compliments of the spellbinding maestro Neilsen, on whose music (compliments of Dave Nicholson) I remain hooked to this day.
But in the Nielsen concerto, the clarinet-loving Dave could find a certain conjunction with the world of high-level swing, since a prominent performer of the great Dane’s composition happened to be the versatile Benny Goodman. And Nicholson’s clarinet enthusiasm drew him to other masters also – Mozart among them. And one day, after he’d driven me to a South London station for my train ride north, we sat in his car for a goodly time while he played a scintillating tape of a clarinet-and-orchestra masterpiece by Beethoven contemporary Carl Maria von Weber. I gladly missed the train.
Still, Nicholson relished the less lofty run of musical life. There he’d sit solo in, say, a Penge pub of Irish Republican orientation, puffing on his pipe and reading his Guardian, quietly savouring not only the House brew but also the offerings of its music box – notably “The Men Behind the Men Behind the Wire” and “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing”. At leisure, as often at work, Dave was the steady centre of a roaring vortex.
Cy Fox
Dave’s fascination with jazz was well known and he himself played a mean piano as well as possessing a knowledge of the jazz genre worthy of a regular patrol of Ronnie Scott’s in London’s Soho. But he had a keen sense of the lowliest, non-jazz pop that hit the charts as he advanced through and beyond adolescence. Confessing his shortcomings in moments of retrospective conversation, he’d suddenly break into a tearful ballad like “I’m Sorry, So Sorry!” or, recalling the days when light-music radio helped pass lonely nights for young dreamers in wintry Halifax, Nova Scotia, he’d start up the sign-off song of his native city’s chief jukebox station vintage 1955, CJCH. Or, at the sight of myself (a radio geek even late in life) approaching him street or pub, he’d melodiously whistle the few bars of a Cold War station theme I’d once hummed to him, that of the CIA’s RIAS Berlin. A long-lost radiophonic curio!
Yet, gripped though he was by the jazz likes of Oscar Peterson (an imposing Canuck as he himself was), Nicholson was hugely versed in classical music. It was in that capacity, one night in the mid-1970s down at his family apartment in Crystal Palace, that he entertained me after a dinner lavished on us by diligent wife Marilyn (herself a church organist). Dave had a seldom-noticed passion for the clarinet and, on this occasion, he thought he had just the thing to serve as a rarefied but galvanizing nightcap to our feast. It was a piece I’d never heard of by a Danish modern master I knew vaguely from years before, Carl Nielsen. It was Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto, which turned out to be a ghostly, haunting exploration of – so it seemed – a musical region eerily reaching just beyond the grave. The evening had turned into a kind of compelling seance, compliments of the spellbinding maestro Neilsen, on whose music (compliments of Dave Nicholson) I remain hooked to this day.
But in the Nielsen concerto, the clarinet-loving Dave could find a certain conjunction with the world of high-level swing, since a prominent performer of the great Dane’s composition happened to be the versatile Benny Goodman. And Nicholson’s clarinet enthusiasm drew him to other masters also – Mozart among them. And one day, after he’d driven me to a South London station for my train ride north, we sat in his car for a goodly time while he played a scintillating tape of a clarinet-and-orchestra masterpiece by Beethoven contemporary Carl Maria von Weber. I gladly missed the train.
Still, Nicholson relished the less lofty run of musical life. There he’d sit solo in, say, a Penge pub of Irish Republican orientation, puffing on his pipe and reading his Guardian, quietly savouring not only the House brew but also the offerings of its music box – notably “The Men Behind the Men Behind the Wire” and “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing”. At leisure, as often at work, Dave was the steady centre of a roaring vortex.
Cy Fox
David Nicholson
Monday 03 August 2009
Dave Nicholson was the gentle giant of the World Desk. He was a delight to work with and a great source of knowledge about so many things – all invaluable attributes of the ideal Chief Sub.
I was scanning the Baronial website the other day and came across an old article about Mrs Moon's and George Short (or maybe that's in reverse order). Dave immediately came to mind.
Came 8pm on the World Desk night shift and the desk "heavies" took their "meal" break in Mrs Moon's (which was hardly known for its food).
There, ranged down from the top end of the bar next to the stairs – steps many outsiders failed to complete on receipt of Mrs Moon's traditional cry of "You're barred!" – regularly stood Jack Hartzman, Ron Thomson, Cy Fox, Dave Betts, Ron Sly, "Big Dave" Mathew and other kings of the night including, of course, Dave Nicholson.
Where Jack always had his Scotch, Dave had his pints – quite often two at a time. His imposing frame had an imposing capacity for the ale. The pints flowed smoothly down, with nary a swallow, to no apparent effect other than to add fuel to the warmth of Dave's signature laugh. So much enjoyment was obtained, and so much knowledge and experiences shared, on those night desk breaks that – just occasionally – they may have extended beyond their allotted hour...
Cheers, Dave!
Rodney Pinder
I was scanning the Baronial website the other day and came across an old article about Mrs Moon's and George Short (or maybe that's in reverse order). Dave immediately came to mind.
Came 8pm on the World Desk night shift and the desk "heavies" took their "meal" break in Mrs Moon's (which was hardly known for its food).
There, ranged down from the top end of the bar next to the stairs – steps many outsiders failed to complete on receipt of Mrs Moon's traditional cry of "You're barred!" – regularly stood Jack Hartzman, Ron Thomson, Cy Fox, Dave Betts, Ron Sly, "Big Dave" Mathew and other kings of the night including, of course, Dave Nicholson.
Where Jack always had his Scotch, Dave had his pints – quite often two at a time. His imposing frame had an imposing capacity for the ale. The pints flowed smoothly down, with nary a swallow, to no apparent effect other than to add fuel to the warmth of Dave's signature laugh. So much enjoyment was obtained, and so much knowledge and experiences shared, on those night desk breaks that – just occasionally – they may have extended beyond their allotted hour...
Cheers, Dave!
Rodney Pinder
