They say you should never meet your heroes. Somebody I once met told me he had sat next to Bruce Willis on a plane and had found him to be the most boring man who’d ever talked to him. There was a time when Bruce was close to being on my heroes list. I even had a life-sized cardboard cut-out in our kitchen in New Zealand . We were short of furniture when we first got to our rented house and the local video shop (remember those?) was throwing it out. Mrs Summerhouse wasn’t over keen but, as I say, we had a lot of space to fill at that point.
The thing was I had been told I looked like Bruce when I’d shaved my head and he had followed suit. Sad I know, it wasn’t the tough guy image I admired, just his head. So it felt like a personal blow when this person told me he (me) was in fact a very boring person. But I’ve moved on since then. Grown up you might say. To the point where I don’t really have any heroes as such but I’ll make an effort for this retirement blog.
Writing the retirement blog about Terence Conran put me in mind of the concept of heroes. So I recently gave it some thought along the lines of, if I did have heroes, who might they be? Sorry about the retirement blog nostalgia again. Which reminded me that quite a few years ago now I met (nearly) my 3 heroes in the space of a couple of days. I’ll explain at the end. Keep reading.
Anyway my recent list looks like this. I should warn you that I tend to admire people who spread their talent across a number of disciplines. I do the same I think but the difference is I have very little talent to spread so it ends up thin whereas my first hero, Leonardo da Vinci had loads to go round. Hence his artistic skills complimented his scientific ones – inventing the helicopter, that kind of thing.
While I’m broadly in the artist category I’ll offer up David Hockney, an artist who loved to try different media – drawing, painting, printing, photography. He contributed something different in each category. I’ll throw in Edward Hopper for his marvellously atmospheric America of yesteryear paintings. And, in a similar category, O Winston Link whose black and white photographs of old American steam trains are without rival (look him up).
I really don’t have any professional / psychologist heroes but if I did it would have to be BF Skinner who you should have heard of and Steve de Shazer who you probably won’t have. Unfortunately, I haven’t the time or space to explain why these two quite different psychologists make it on to my heroes list, you’ll just have to take my word for it, they’re there.
Comedians tend to be quite miserable people and not very heroic away from their act. Tony Hancock to name just one. Quite the opposite seems to me to be Michael Palin who’s on my list for his travel docs and his fish-slapping dance from Monty Python. Alongside him I’ll go for Billy Connolly and Eddie Izzard. A bit of the heroic in both.
In the written heroes group I’ll go for two polar opposites but who both bring a definite something to the world of crime drama. First up I’ll take Jack Reacher. If only there was such a person but then if there was it would be unlikely to be me. Nor would my second choice stand comfortably in my shoes. This is Hercule Poirot. He uses his little grey cells to stay away from the kind of situation Reacher thrives on. Each to his own I say. I don’t want everybody the same on my hero list.
Then there’s music of course. Hard to narrow this section down. Theolonius Monk (the elephant at the keyboard). Apart from the fact he was probably clinically bonkers he definitely brought something new to the world of jazz. Creative people are a definite for my list and Theo was a creative guy for reasons I’m not going to try and explain.
Not many females on my list but there is one, that’s Carole King. She wrote great songs. Tapestry was a masterpiece and she was also a pianist. I learned the songs from Tapestry off by heart, well with a little help from the songbook. Just a great song writer, singer and piano player. Could have chosen many others including Bruce Springsteen but Carole it is into my hall of fame. Sorry no room for Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett or John Prine.
Inevitably I finish on sportsmen (no, no women). These 5 finish off my list. I’ve confined my choices to football and cricket. There are two Forest players (what other team would it be?) that compete for the same spot. Left wingers as you ask. If you’ve followed Forest for as many years as I have there’s always going to be a big decision to make when choosing your best ever Forest team between Ian Storey Moore and John Robertson on the left wing. I’m going to include them both along with Stuart ‘Psycho’ Pearce. Any Forest fans among you will need no further explanation.
Finally cricket and a relatively easy choice for persons of my age. It was a toss-up between Bob Taylor as a wicket keeper, my position for 30 odd years. But, in the end, it had to be an all-rounder. Today it would be Ben Stokes, a few years ago when we won The Ashes it would have been Andrew Flintoff. But if you want an all-time great it would have to be Ian Botham (just inaugurated into the House of Lords unfortunately, still never mind). Actually there is a contender not as an all-rounder in fact and in many ways not a very good cricketer at all. He’s in my conclusion to this retirement blog.
I said at the beginning of this retirement blog that I (nearly) met 3 of my heroes in the space of 3 or 4 days. They were David Hockney, Mike Brearley (the not very good cricketer but an astute captain, the fact that he wasn’t a very good cricketer makes him more of a hero, hence his photo at the top of this blog) and Bruce Springsteen. Hockney I went to a talk he gave at The Bradford Photographic Museum at a time when he was into his ‘joiner’ photographs. He signed my programme before going in with three coloured pencils held together, in parallel. That’s class.
Bruce, we went to his concert at Roundhay Park, 1985 I think. No autograph. Mike Brearley was the nearly man. I went to the Test match at Headingley. At that stage he was working as a journalist (can’t remember the paper he worked for). As I joined my friend at the ground, he said you’ve just missed Mike Brearley, he was sitting right there, indicating the seat in front. I had a word (they were both psychologists although of very different disciplines), Hmm.
So there we have it. You might say, not very surprising or even interesting. You could certainly say it is not at all balanced in terms of gender or race. No politicians (I was going to put Maggie Thatcher in to balance up the female side but then you might not have got the joke). But they were different times and while you might not agree with my choices, well the thing is, it’s my blog.