NOW THAT I OWN THE BBC [518]

I am compelled to support the British Broadcasting Corporation in what is either its most perilous moment, or only its latest predicament, because I lay as much a claim to owning a public corporation and cultural institution as any other member of the British public, and as one inspired and shaped by what it has broadcast.

At the time of writing, the President of the United States is expected to sue the BBC for an edit made to a speech made on 6^th January 2021, that was shown in an episode of “Panorama” just before the 2024 Presidential election – two sentences were linked together without making clear the gap in time between them, the resulting montage creating a more inflammatory statement than made at the time. The BBC apologised for the edit, promising the programme would not be shown again, but also made clear the programme had not been aired in the United States, that the edit did not intend to harm the President, nor did it ultimately harm them, and it was to be considered as twelve seconds of an hour-long piece. 

 

All this for whether a fade, or flash of white, could have been used to illustrate the passage of time – I don’t know when the latter became a device used on television, but I am sure that I saw it on the BBC first. My love of its comedy programmes and documentaries led to my being intrigued as much by how they were made, how they conveyed their message, as much as what that message was – it is why I write, why I have made videos, why I took a film studies degree, and why I visited BBC Television Centre in 2009.

 

The BBC has spent a century building a reputation as a trustworthy and impartial broadcaster by not just being as even-handed and thorough as humanly possible across its entire output – a good maxim to live by too – but by demonstrating that these are ideals that are worth striving for, proven by the high quality and reputation British broadcasting has across the world.

 

Unfortunately for the BBC, the apology to the President did not work. The “Panorama” episode had been raised in an internal document from an editorial oversight board, leaked to a newspaper, which then led to accusations of political bias in news reporting, ideological capture, complacency or ignorance of issues, and political interference in the governance of a public body. Both the Director-General and CEO of BBC News have resigned, just as the process of renewing the BBC’s Royal Charter begins, giving commentators in other media the chance to declare the BBC out of touch, in need of reform, or in need of destruction as an anachronism the country no longer needs. The irony that most of these commentators have appeared on the BBC at some point is not lost on me: “Two resignations won’t do. It has to be scorched earth at the BBC” is the title of a piece by Camilla Long of “The Sunday Times”, who has appeared on the primetime satirical comedy quiz “Have I Got News For You” nine times between 2013 and 2023.

 

I am clear that there will always be the need for a BBC, a national broadcaster where democracy of access and information is at its core of its foundation. I once put the BBC alongside the NHS, Penguin Books and free art galleries as institutions that make up my idea of what the United Kingdom is, and should continue to be, alongside queuing and complaining about the weather. I should have included Channel 4 in that list: the UK’s other publicly owned public service broadcaster, it has been threatened with privatisation many times, most recently in 2022-23, each time halted over how it would damage the distinctive, innovative and experimental output it is mandated to have, and the larger independent TV production sector from there.

 

That said, I don’t know how much the BBC should be doing to cater to everyone, or how the money for that should be provided. Any reduction or selling-off of parts of the BBC will need to be weighted against any effect it may have on the creative economy of the UK, and the reflection of the UK’s cultures and values across the world – the existence of the BBC helped make either of those considerations possible in the first place. 

 

An expectation that we should all pay in some way towards public broadcasting will continue for as long as people believe in its universal benefit as an aid to democracy, a way of preventing anyone from being left behind in the information age. Anyone that doesn’t have a reason to believe that should find one.

 

This is only what I think, but everybody has something that would make them dread for the future of their country if it were to disappear, and mine has touched every part of my life.

I GOT BILLS I GOTTA PAY [517]

The personal computer was our first portal to cyberspace, but the smartphone is the yoke that made us denizens of an extended reality, and regardless of how involved we become, our connection to that reality requires upkeep, trade-ups and trade-offs.

My first mobile phone, bought in 2000, was bought for under £100, was topped up with pre-paid cards, and replaced my using public phone boxes. Phone number thirteen, also my ninth smartphone and sixth iPhone, is a portable computer plied with cameras, sensors and antennas and, fitting for its having replaced the local branch of my bank, it is financed through a two-year contract with a credit agreement and monthly payments, rolling the trade-in payment for my previous phone into paying off the next contract, all for a device that needs to be continuously on the verge of being replaced for the business model that drives their ownership to continue.

Fortunately for Apple, and my service provider, I wanted to replace my phone: both it and its contract were three years old, and I had become thoroughly sick with both through overfamiliarity and a depleted battery. I am sure most owners of the iPhone 17, me included, did not pay £/$/€799 for one upfront, or ever contemplated doing so - the objective is squaring monthly costs with noticeable improvement over the previous phone.

It’s almost like becoming tethered to your smartphone, if not becoming addicted to using it, is required to justify the expense, and more reasons for that tethering need to be created to make such a device indispensable, from managing home heating and electrical items through to unlocking doors and starting cars - generative A.I. features are one more symptom of the need to progress.

Fortunately for me, and despite increases in processing power, storage capacity and camera ability becoming more incremental with each model, but the lavender-coloured iPhone 17 I now own is more enticingly tactile than ever. The device’s edges are more rounded than the iPhone 14 Pro it replaces, making it easier to hold for longer, while the extra “Camera Control” finally gives me a proper shutter button. I have selected the “Action Button” to seek out titles of songs amongst ambient noise via Shazam, prioritising a feature I often use that was buried in an app or menu.

But this is Apple’s problem: in their eyes, I have downgraded, from a Pro-level iPhone to a regular one, but the improvements they made across all their phones in three years, from screen resolution and refresh speed to camera sensors and battery capacity, means enough of a difference is still being made to my experience of using the device - but seriously, one-touch Shazam is the game-changer for me here, with everything else working that bit more quickly and snappily.

Most importantly for me, the three-year contract I saddled myself with to use a Pro-level phone - trading in at the end of the contract makes it hard to say I truly owned it - was less preferable to only needing a two- year contract for something just as good. Perhaps this defines my monetary limits, but also those of the phone I need - I am not missing anything, even after turning off all A.I. features, and doing that may have extended the life of the battery even further.

I have no remedy for anything I have talked about - it is the framework we have collectively agreed on to provide a creeping necessity in our lives, and so long as it has something to offer us, we will keep it going.

IT’S TIME TO SEEK OUT NEW TRADITIONS [516]

A frame from a digitised VHS copy I made of Man Ray's "Le Retour à la raison" (1923)

The time has come for a manifesto because, while we continually live in interesting times, I have realised now is the time for me to codify the lessons I have learned. This is a first draft of my creative viewpoint, not just rules to follow. I shall return to this.

FIRST VIDEO MANIFESTO 

“Video”: Latin, “I see”

 

This world is man-made. There is nothing else to blame.

 

This world is created with images, and the more of them you take in, the better.

 

This world is described by images. Add to them.

 

This world is remade using images. This habitually ties everything into politics.

 

This world is yours, not also yours.

 

This world excites you, so keep making notes. 

 

You have a duty to report that excitement, but impartiality does not mandate distance.

 

Create early, edit always, no matter the medium.

 

Crystallise your message in the opening moment. Let yourself and your audience know you are in the right place.

 

Make yourself fully understood, by all possible methods.

 

Make it concise, or keep it short.

 

Put your name on it. Your insight has value.

 

LJS, 01/11/2025

GIVE THE PAST A SLIP [515]

DEVO, part 1/3: https://www.leighspence.net/2025/09/its-not-to-late-to-whip-it-511.html

DEVO, part 2/3: https://www.leighspence.net/2025/10/what-we-do-is-what-we-do-514.html

Back in May 2018, I began an article like this: “When you can no longer tell yourself that all will be OK in the end, and how it can’t possibly get any worse, you confide in the relentless march of time: it must be over soon.”

This referred to the term in office of the 45th President of the United States, well before their replacement and re-election. I continued: “What I do know is that everything will find its centre, or equilibrium once more, even if it has to make a new one, as people take stock of where everything has reached.” I later clarified that, “I hope it is clear that this isn’t a repudiation of the way politics is currently conducted in the United States, but of the way conduct is currently conducted.”

The heavy subject matter was my recognising how the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s concept of “deconstruction” was confused with “destruction”, a continuing reassessment over wholesale replacement: “Derrida had to explain that the notion of there being a ‘centre’ was a functional one, as there had to be a centre that helped to form our understanding. Then again, when all you have is the text, the words, to hand, you have to see them in the sense of how they have been used.” This led on to the President’s choice of words in public, on social media, and so on.

The title I gave this article was “You’ll Never Live It Down Unless You Whip It”, incorrectly contracting “You will” from the lyrics of DEVO’s biggest hit in the United States – in the UK, it was their cover of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, but more about that later.

I always understood “Whip It” as being more than the cracking of a whip – the second line is “give the past a slip”, an immediate clue that something else is up here – but the song’s video, of a woman’s clothes being whipped away from them, was DEVO’s giving in to the literal and sexual interpretation made by people of the lyrics, rather than accepting them as faux motivational statements that mask the use of violence to solve problems. Infamously, the later song “Through Being Cool” is aimed at “the ninnies and the twits” that misunderstood DEVO in the wake of “Whip It”, the lyrics as playfully direct as possible: “Waste those who make it tough to get around”, and “Put the tape on erase / Rearrange a face / We always liked Picasso anyway”.

I am sure I have previously said that I use song lyrics to title these articles as a primitive mode of search engine optimisation, catching people searching for what they think they have heard. DEVO have also talked about using the tactics of Madison Avenue advertising in getting their message about de-evolution to people. But what both things appear to prove is that people don’t listen closely to lyrics, but those who do are justly rewarded.

One of the best song lyrics I have heard comes from “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: “Well I’m watching my TV, and a man comes on and tells me how white my shirts can be, but he can’t be a man ‘cause he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me.” Richards was asked about this line in 1971, in an interview with “Rolling Stone" magazine, and he starts sounding like me talking about Jacques Derrida:

“A lot of them are completely innocent. I don’t think that one is. It might have been. I don’t know if it was a sly reference to drugs or not. After a while, one realizes that whatever one writes, it goes through other people, and it’s what gets to them. Like the way people used to go through Dylan songs. It don’t matter. They’re just words. Words is words.”

An ongoing theme on this website, since the first article in May 2016, is “all they have are words”, and everything that means. Now that writing about DEVO, a band for whom “In The Beginning Was The End”, has brought me back around to where I started, I feel that, next time, I need to see how I should follow another of their statements: “mutate, don’t stagnate”.

WHAT WE DO IS WHAT WE DO [514]

There is a lot going on here...

Following a new thrill down the rabbit hole is energising, and I am not ready to climb back out of the DEVO cave since writing about the artistic group a few weeks ago, because I am not done with comprehending the extent of their creativity.

This has been understanding the DEVO did not start as a band, but more as an exploration of agit-prop art – music was also among its members’ capability, both Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh having played in bands, and proved to be such a fruitful avenue for expressing their ideas that it became the major way of disseminating it, causing most casual observers to believe they were a band first... one that had a strong visual identity and philosophical grounding.

This has been realising how easy it is, in our current connected times, to get your own work out – DEVO Inc. was founded in 1978 as the group planned to self-release everything, divisions including Booji Boy Records; DEVO Vision for releasing the “video albums” they anticipated will become the norm; and Recombo DNA Labs, presumably the artistic equivalent of Laboratoire Garnier. They would later acquire a manager and record deals, but continued to make art among those compromises to the music industry as it then stood. Their latest album, 2010’s “Something for Everybody”, turned the capitalism, focus groups and press releases into part of the performance, bringing attention to the accepted parts of the industry machine. 

This is being confronted by Mothersbaugh’s crescendo of yeah-yeah-yeahs in “Uncontrollable Urge”, a song ostensibly about masturbation, while deconstructing two Beatles songs, “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. The jerky movement of the alien choreography of live performances for this song continue to this day, including the final formation at its end, Mothersbaugh and Casale sharing the microphone on the final yeah-yeah-yeah, cementing their claim as the de-evolution of Lennon and McCartney.

This has been dealing not with earworms, but earwasps, with irritatingly catchy bass and synth lines, glued together by Bob Mothersbaugh’s lead guitar, topped with wonderfully observed lyrics. A particular favourite is “Modern Life”, which may have been a demo recorded in 1982, eventually finished in 1998 for use in a video game, but it has infectiously catchy call-and-response lyrics: “It’s a modern life, but it’s not what you’re looking for”, and “It’s a modern life, but it reads better on TV”, followed by “wah-oh, it’s a modern life” or “wah-oh, like it came from a zoo”, with the later refrain of “Time to pay up for the fuck up”, one you could not have made.

This has been trying to find if the B-side song “Mecha-Mania Boy” has ever been released on CD. This synth-heavy piece has been a favourite for years, the story of a delinquent being: “In a crowd or all alone / No one's laughing anymore / Now he wants to know your human's name”. This may be a case of trawling the many compilations and re-releases of DEVO songs and albums over the years, an endless mixing and recontextualising of their back catalogue, before I find when it was made, and how much money someone wants for it.

This has been learning that, through many interviews that Gerald Casale has given that mention the massacre at Kent State University on 4th May 1970, that he considers himself lucky that, having concluded that protest had become a dead end in his country, he found a creative outlet for dealing with that, one influence by the subversive practices of advertisers on Madison Avenue than in organisations like the Weathermen. This makes DEVO’s eventual 2009 cover of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio”, a song about the massacre finally performed by people that were there, all the more poignant and impactful.

This has been my thinking about what this means for the current moment. I began writing here in 2016, having recognised a febrile time of elections, the Brexit vote, and what felt like the death of a generation of pop culture – David Bowie, Prince, George Michael, Leonard Cohen, Sir George Martin, Sir Terry Wogan, Victoria Wood, Carrie Fisher, Muhammad Ali. That febrility has not subsided, instead exploited by opportunism: AI, far-right politics, clampdowns on free speech and civil liberties by all sides. The utopian view of the future didn’t arrive, so this must be de-evolution... but DEVO didn’t want to be right. I don’t think the group wanted to be interviewed in 2025 as sages of a world gone wrong, but here we are, and I am not done thinking about it.

Seriously, it's DEVO part 3 next time.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE RIGHT BACK [513]

We already know nothing comes for free, and signing up to receive a free television has compromises for its viewer. 

The “Telly”, taking a generic, colloquial name for its own, and only available in the United States at present, is exactly that, a free TV, and one that receives channels over the air in addition to the internet. Furthermore, it has two screens: a 4K HDR “Theater Display”, and a second strip screen under the built-in soundbar, a “Smart Screen” that acting as an assistant for video calls, news, weather and other information, while acting as the settings menu for the device without overlaying the main picture...

It also constantly plays ads. They cannot be turned off. Turning off the “Theater Display” won’t turn off the “Smart Screen” – only turning off the entire unit will do this. Blocking that part of the screen violates the user agreement.

I first heard about the “Telly” through the technology website The Verge, and Emma Roth’s review of it that begins: “The last few months, I’ve felt like I’m living in a cyberpunk movie.” The delivery driver brought Roth’s Telly to her house queried her about it, saying he read that the device takes its user’s data: “‘I know,’ I said, ‘That’s basically part of the deal.’”

The “cyberpunk” nature of the device is in line with similar stories I have seen recently about some Chinese toilets purportedly requiring users to scan a QR code and see an advertisement before receiving toilet paper, and Samsung showing ads on screens embedded into their smart fridges.

The answer from Telly Inc. to the question, “If Telly is free, how do you make money?”, sounds reasonable at the very least: “All smart TVs come with ads. But you’re still paying for the TV. All of that changes with Telly. Telly is so smart, that it pays for itself with the help of advertisers and data partners. We think it’s well past time you got cut in on the deal.”

The ”Telly” user agreement is a long one: you must be at least eighteen years old, commit to using the “Telly” as the main TV in your house, keep it connected to the internet, and not use any software or other items that interfere with or block it, or make any modifications to it, or sell, transfer or dispose of it yourself.

Once you have the “Telly” in your house, you must also abide by a privacy policy, for the device automatically collects activity and viewing data, information collected by its built-in camera and motion sensor – although the camera does have a privacy window – along with any voice commands, purchases made through the device, along with details of the network it is connected, along with any other devices connected to that network. This is required to help Telly Inc. personalise and improve the service provided, monitor trends, detect and prevent security issues and comply with legal and financial obligations.

This is on top of any information collected about yourself through the viewing of the device, like your name, location, contact details, demographic details, professional or employment-related information, education, user preferences and choices made. This information will be required for further improving the user experience, but also for advertising and market research purposes. You will have already given some of this information when you set up your Telly profile: “During the profile creation process, we ask questions about you and your household to provide a useful and relevant ad experience. Brands, in turn, pay for the non-intrusive ad on the second Smart Screen. That’s how you get Telly for free. Plain and simple. We think it’s well past time you got cut in on the deal.”

One thing I have not done with Apple, however, is provide them with debit or credit card details to prove my identity to them, or to help with fraud protection, or confirm I am complying with their user agreement - Telly does require this, specifically for those purposes, even if you are not to be charged for anything. 

“Smart” televisions come with similar user agreements for use of its apps and programs – I instead use a separate device for those needs, an Apple TV box that effectively extends the agreements I already made by using other Apple devices. Curiously, the “Telly” comes with a separate Android TV dongle for accessing streaming platforms like Netflix or Disney+, for only Telly’s own services, and Zoom for video calls, are built into the device.

So long as you can square all the above, the “Telly” is free to use. The user agreement states that if you cannot, its service could be restricted, or your ability to use the device will be stopped. Failing to return the device to Telly Inc. following this authorises them to charge a thousand dollars for the device... at which point the TV is presumably yours, and you can do what you like with it, reconnecting and modifying it however you wish. If that price sounds reasonable for what it can do, you probably already spent that on a similar screen without so many obligations.

THAT’S NOT MY NAME [512]

Who was T.G. Jones?

Did they get their start by opening a newspaper stand next to W.H. Smith? Did they keep a beady eye on each other ever since? Did T.G. Jones also open TV channels and a DIY store chain in the 1980s, again to compete with W.H. Smith? Did T.G. Jones know John Menzies before they sold their also-similar store chain to W.H. Smith? 

Naming a business after someone implies both history and vision: Boots, Cadbury, Sainsbury’s, Selfridges, Debenhams, Cath Kidston, Charlotte Tilbury. Making a name up hopes to imply and aspire the same: the JD Wetherspoon pub chain combines a character from the TV series “The Dukes of Hazzard” with the surname of an ineffectual schoolteacher the founder once had.

But the renaming of the high street stores and retail website of WHSmith to “TG Jones”, prompted by their sale to the private equity group Modella Capital at the end of June 2025, created a name designed to sound close to the original. WHSmith is now being a separate chain focused only on appearing at railway stations, airports and hospitals.

But “TG Jones”? A similarly common name to “Smith”, it also recalls the jeans brand Smith & Jones, the food brand Smith & Jones, the TV series “Alias Smith & Jones”, and the comedy double act Mel Smith & Griff Rhys Jones. As for the initials, “G” is next to “H”, and “T” is close to “W” – my guess is the rhyming “tee gee” was a helpful discovery. But so obviously basing the new name on WHSmith is detrimental to it so long as WHSmith continues to exist elsewhere, a confidence trick that didn’t have to exist.

Name changes made by businesses, or people, usually imply new starts, new approaches. But from the name down, TG Jones is all about continuity: with no material changes to stores announced by the new owners, it remains a bookseller, stationer and newsagent that continues to stock WHSmith-branded products, with newspapers and magazines stocked by the distributor Smiths News, and their floorspace will continue to be shared with Post Office branches and Toys “R” Us concessions. Even the sign above the door is still white text on a royal blue background, the only break with WHSmith being its use of a sans serif typeface.

I had been recommended a documentary on YouTube made by NHK World TV of Japan, which explained that a boom in stationery sales to the general public happened after the 2008 financial crisis when businesses stopped providing employees with pens, paper and notebooks. Either this boom didn’t happen in the UK, or WHSmith couldn’t compete on range or price. 

I mostly use Uni Ball Eye rollerball pens, but these are mostly bought from discount retailer TK Maxx or the supermarket Tesco, and the notebooks I use usually come from Amazon because I want is usually in a particular range, size or page count so specific that a high street store cannot afford the space to stock it. WHSmith, or TG Jones, is there when I want a newsmagazine, which it is likely to have, even if it doesn’t seem to stock “The New Yorker” near me anymore, or if I need a Post Office, or indeed anything I cannot wait for, which is something for which I cannot think of an example.

This is the predicament that now needs to be answered by Modella Capital. They are already owners of the “big box” chain store Hobbycraft, which will have some overlap in their ranges of stationery and art supplies, but their website states, above a picture of their chairman, “successful transactions include... Paperchase”, a specialist stationer once owned by WHSmith, its brand bought by Tesco when it went into administration in 2023. Here’s hoping TG Jones can make something of its name this time around. 

IT’S NOT TO LATE TO WHIP IT [511]

"New Traditionalists" alternative album cover

Having only discovered the genius of David Bowie after he died, and becoming enamoured with Kate Bush out of embarrassment for not having any of her albums [https://www.leighspence.net/2024/01/do-you-wanna-know-how-it-feels-432.html], I have, at the very least, understood DEVO, the “de-evolutionary” New Wave band and multimedia project, while it is still possible to see them live. As their catalogue of videos are restored and re-released to their YouTube channel, their work remains as vital and relevant as ever.

I first encountered DEVO many years ago, having had the name “Mark Mothersbaugh” drummed into my head as a child through his opening theme for the cartoon series “Rugrats”, also writing the incidental music alongside his brother Bob. I was pleasantly surprised by the big hits, formed of spiky synthesisers and guitars, driving rhythms and direct lyrics: “Whip It”, “Jocko Homo”, their idiosyncratic cover of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, and “Through Bring Cool”, a song so soaked with smart-ass attitude over being misunderstood – “eliminate the ninnies and the twits” and “time to show those evil spuds what’s what” – that I will never let go of it.

If I only had DEVO’s songs, that would be enough. “Concept albums” are such a ubiquity that I hadn’t considered how much further DEVO took the notion of a “concept”. Indeed, co-founder and co-lead singer Gerard Casale described “de-evolution” as a “technique”, a philosophy informing the group’s outlook and work. 

Casale and friend Bob Lewis had already formed the initial idea that mankind was regressing, instead of continuing to evolve, through increasing dysfunction in society and herd mentality, when Mark Mothersbaugh brought to them a Christian anti-evolutionary tract titled “Jocko Homo: The Heaven-Bound King of the Zoo”, written by a Dr B.H. Shadduck in 1924. Having attempted to read it, I saw it was trying to say that the meeting of liberalism, rationalism and Darwinism had attempted to pass off skeletons as evidence of progress:

“Old bones only prove that brute races and families have passed and will pass. Rudimentary organs prove that equipment not used, be it a wing or a soul, becomes atrophied. THAT IS NOT EVOLUTION, it is the opposite. It is going the wrong way. Show us a species that is coming or an organ that is in the making. Show us how to grow wings where there are none.” [Capitals and italics are as per the original edition.]

The tract later states that “The scholar who believes the ‘fact’ of evolution, doubts the infallibility of the Bible. I know of no exception.” The DEVO song “Jocko Homo” provides its own answer: “All together now, God made man, but he used the monkey to do it / Apes in the plan and we're here to prove it / I can walk like an ape, talk like an ape, I can do what monkey do / God made man, but a monkey supplied the glue.”

The “Devolutionaries” that make up DEVO – its classic 1976-84 line-up is Gerald Casale (vocals/bass/keyboards) and Mark Mothersbaugh (vocals/keyboards), their brothers Bob Mothersbaugh (“Bob 1”, lead guitar) and Bob Casale (“Bob 2”, rhythm guitar and keyboards), and Alan Myers (drums) – present as identically-dressed agents of change, shedding light how humanity is devolving, while technology and cybernetic systems rapidly advance, encouraging people to recognise their plight, and recalibrate and reorganise as a result. 

I may have made this sound heavy-going for a very fun, surrealist and Dada-influenced band, but “Whip It” is a string of motivational statements about dealing with problems, its video only making the “whip” more literal. A further element is potatoes, referencing people and fans of the band as “spuds”, equating with a lowly vegetable often underestimated, as in the line from the song “I’m A Potato”: “I'm a spudman, I got eyes all around”.

While DEVO did not form in answer to it, the shootings by the Ohio National Guard of thirteen unarmed anti-war protestors at Kent State University in Ohio on 4th May 1970, killing four, loom large over the pre-history of the group – Gerald Casale was at the protest, one of his friends being killed there, while Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh were attending another campus at the university that day. Despite their proximity, there is no DEVO song specifically about the incident – this was left to distant observers like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, John Denver, Bruce Springsteen, the Steve Miller Band, The Isley Brothers, Genesis and so on – but it underlined the serious intent of highlighting “de-evolution”.

As early adopters of music videos, conceiving and producing them themselves, DEVO completed a short film in 1976 titled “In the Beginning Was the End: The Truth About De-Evolution”, building a narrative around performances that include characters General Boy and son Booji Boy. The film includes a “De-Evolutionary Oath”, adopting and repurposing a number of “Trick Rules” the “Jocko Homo” tract had “identified” as excuses for evolution theory, reappropriated as calls to action. For the sake of completion, these are: wear gaudy colours or avoid display; lay a million eggs or give birth to one; the fittest shall survive yet the unfit may live; be like your ancestors or be different we must repeat!

My favourite DEVO album is “New Traditionalists”, released in 1981 – it had to be, with “Through Being Cool”, a riposte to the band becoming “cool” after the release of “Whip It”, and employing a darker, more synthesised sound, albeit one caused by the master tape shedding oxide. “Beautiful World” may qualify as one of the best DEVO songs of all, a simple hymn to how great the world is... “for you, for you, for you”. The accompanying video creates a utopian montage of American cultural life, becoming darker and more menacing before the punchline of “It’s not for me” is reached.

I also love how they masqueraded as a corporation, press releases and all, for their most recent album, 2010’s “Something for Everybody”. I now know the famous red ziggurat “energy dome” hats were influenced by the work of scientist Wilhelm Reich, and that I would need to insert a hard hat liner not just for comfort, but to allow the hat to collect energy properly. I find it hilarious that they created the fake Christian pop band Dove, in order so they could appear as their own opening act, one that couldn’t be better than they were. I’m still not sure about the deliberately anaemic cover versions of their own songs in the “EZ Listening Muzak” tapes, originally created to stop live venues playing other bands’ songs before their concerts, but I think they are growing on me – the “EZ” version of “Come Back Jonee” sounds like I may have heard it in an episode of “Rugrats”.

This hasn’t been a case of me recounting lore or building a story. I have been genuinely fascinated by discovering DEVO’s vast body of work, and wanted to share my findings. At the same time, I hope it is as clear as possible that art and politics are not separate, and all art is political as a result – even if the group were just reflecting their current time, that engagement also confirms their intentions in creating that work, and in their continuing to perform it. This notion forms the basis of the art critic John Berger’s book “Permanent Red”, published in 1960:

“But why should an artist’s way of looking at the world have any meaning for us? Why does it give us pleasure? Because, I believe, it increases our awareness of our own potentiality. Not of course our awareness of our potentiality of artists ourselves. But a way of looking at the world implies a certain relationship with the world, and every relationship implies action.”

And so, I love DEVO, and I love how their work energises me. 

WHO ARE YOU? WHO, WHO, WHO, WHO [510]

Copyright: Spartina Productions / Busboy Productions / CBS Broadcasting Inc.

Following on from my discussion about “The One Show”, and with “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” ending in May 2026, I am not likely to become famous enough in time to answer the “Colbert Questionert”, a litmus test made of questions that makes a guest truly known, with a title punning on the pronunciation of the host’s name.

While I have already said I don’t usually watch the American chat shows for their interviews, I make an exception for this feature to see how various people answer the same questions, and whether they see each question as a need to make a snap judgement, or whether it gives pause to ruminate, or another chance to perform. Either way, I can see the “Colbert Questionert” continuing to the podcast that Colbert will inevitably do next - maybe I will be properly answer it someday.

I imagine some questions (or answers) are cut for time, so not all the following questions are heard being asked to everyone, and so I have no guarantee of this being a complete list of all the questions. I treated them as snap judgments, so these answers are as true as I can make them.

Best sandwich?

In alphabetical order: chicken, lettuce, salad cream, tomato.

 

What is the scariest animal?

If not man, then spiders.

 

Apples or oranges?

Oranges: messier to deal with, but a softer, less acidic taste. You don’t really get apple-flavoured chocolate.

 

What was your first concert?

The Cross, at Gosport Festival in July 1993. It was the solo / “other band” project of Roger Taylor, the drummer from Queen, with lots of guests. With it still not being long since Freddie Mercury died, it was undeniably thrilling to clap and hold your arms out to the chorus of “Radio Gaga”, as the man who wrote it sang it to you.

 

Cats or dogs?

Not a pet person, but cats.

 

What's one thing you own that you really should throw out?

A small circular pillow with a painting of a hedgehog printed on it, a runner-up prize from a family Christmas Day quiz some years ago.

 

Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?

Yes, from Paul Gannon & Eli Silverman of the "CheapShow" podcast for their vinyl album, but in a non-committal “if you want to” kind of way - of course they did.

 

What do you think happens when we die?

My energy is redistributed, and things carry on from there.

 

Favourite action movie?

“The Matrix”, a choice apparently shared with both Sandra Bullock and Matt Damon.

 

Window or aisle?

On a bus or coach: window. On a plane: aisle.

 

Favourite smell?

Real vanilla.

 

Least favourite smell?

Excrement of any kind.

 

Exercise: worth it?

Disguise it as a good walk, then I’m sold.

 

Flat or sparkling?

Flat - if a “still” Diet Coke ever comes to market, I will be first in line.

 

Most used app on your phone? 

Its web browser, for nearly two thirds of the time, constantly reading and searching for things.

 

You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life: what is it? (You can listen to music whenever you like, but when you do, it is only this song.)

“Station to Station” by David Bowie, specifically from his “Stage” live album – the exhilarating rush of “woo-hoo-hoo-hoo, it’s too late” by its end makes it a better version for me than the original studio version.

 

What number am I thinking of?

Fourteen. (I know it’s wrong, it’s always wrong.)

 

Describe the rest of your life in 5 words?

Wouldn’t I like to know.

 

Congratulations, I am known.

WE WERE RUNNING AGAINST THE WIND [509]

The Mercedes-Benz A-Class saloon

For someone that cannot drive, I talk about cars a lot, mostly about how they were designed, like the Citroën CX, or because they provoked a silly culture war, like Ford replacing the Cortina with the Sierra.

Both as an observer and passenger, little is left to do wrongly in building a car, decades of lessons having been learnt. This was what I thought upon seeing a Mercedes-Benz A-Class saloon, which purported to be a “sub-compact” version of their larger cars, while competing on size and price with the Volkswagen Golf, Audi A3 and Vauxhall Astra. All these cars have similar sweeping lines, rounded edges and recessed door handles, numerous attempts at achieving the most aerodynamic shape of vehicle producing an “average” shape.

And yet, the choices Mercedes-Benz made – the low, aggressive front nose, the rounded boot, and shutters that control air flow through the grille – meant they claimed, when it was introduced in 2018, that it had the lowest-drag co-efficiency of any production car. The hatchback version achieved a figure of 0.25, while the saloon achieved 0.22, which is better than a Tesla Model 3 or BMW 3-Series, while matching that of the Porsche Taycan.

If this had been the 1980s, the number “0.22” would have been written somewhere on the car, just as the 1982 Audi 100 had “Cd 0.30” emblazoned on its sides, such was the monumental achievement. That the A-Class has now been axed, without any further fanfare, by Mercedes-Benz, now preferring to focus on larger cars, without any further fanfare, speaks to how easy producing an aerodynamic shape is expected to be.

Drag co-efficiency, measuring the resistance on an object as it is moved through air, water or other “fluid” environment, was once a major selling point for a car. Put extremely simply, a drag co-efficiency score comes from measuring drag – the force opposing an object as it moves through an environment – versus the mass, speed and surface area of the object.

Car companies want to reduce the drag on their cars because it makes their cars faster and more efficient without needing to produce more power, while speaking to build quality through removing any areas where air can be trapped, by both smoothing out body panels and reducing or eliminating the gaps between them. The TV ad for the Audi 100 dramatised this as letting go of parachutes that were holding the car back. 

However, regardless of how the drag-co-efficiency score is produced, the fact that that the lower to zero the score is, the more aerodynamic the object must be, is enough to make use for marketing purposes. For example, the “jelly-mould” styling of the Ford Sierra was a major departure from the boxy styling of the Ford Cortina it replaced, taking some time to grow on British car buyers, but in reducing drag co-efficiency from 0.45 to 0.34, reducing fuel consumption from the engines that were carried over from the Cortina.

Computer-aided design advanced both the drafting and refining of a car’s aerodynamics over the testing of clay models and one-off prototypes. Citroën famously achieved low drag on a number of cars, including the SM coupé, and CX and GS saloons all achieving a figure of under 0.35 during the 1970s, but the British Leyland Princess range, later becoming the maligned Austin Ambassador, only managed around 0.40, typical for a 1970s car designed on paper, but also of poor fit and finish. The Austin Allegro has also been panned as a car more aerodynamic when driven backwards, but I could find no figures to claim either way.

Now that an “average” car shape has been reached – a child drawing a car would now draw an egg with wheels than a three-boxed shape – drag co-efficiency means little. The Ford Puma SUV, the biggest-selling car in the UK, achieves a figure of 0.31-0.32, like its competitor, the Vauxhall Mokka – I guess it is something about being that bit taller off the ground than a regular car. The Audi A3 couldn’t beat the A-Class with 0.28-0.29, but it is at least still in production. Even the latest Cadillac Escalade, essentially a large building moving at speed, has a figure of 0.36. Tesla, BMW and Mercedes-Benz can reach towards 0.2, but only with their saloon cars.

I had to look – the card game “Top Trumps” did not use drag co-efficiency in their car-themed sets, as doing so may require renaming the game.

ONE, ONE, ONE, ONE, ONE [508]

Aside from when, in 2011, host Matt Baker asked then Prime Minister David Cameron “how on Earth do you sleep at night?”, because he sincerely wanted to know, the defining moment of “The One Show” was in its Wednesday 27^th September 2017 episode where Mel Brooks, of all people, started saying, “what a crazy show this is”, confounded by a show that, after all the attempts made on British television to replicate American chat shows, has proven to be the one show that worked.

“The One Show” began on BBC One in 2006 as a continuation of the old current affairs series “Nationwide”, but is more like an adult version of “Blue Peter”, covering various consumer items and colourful, interesting stories from around the UK, bridging the gap on weeknights between the regional news and the rest of the evening’s viewing. After a pilot run of shows in Birmingham, it moved to west London in 2007, then in 2014 to BBC Broadcasting House, just off Oxford Street, increasing its ability to attract big-name guests talking about their current projects, but not at the expense of the show’s existing mix of items, gaining it a reputation for varying degrees of randomness in its subjects, and the occasional handbrake turn in tone.

This makes sense for me. I watch “The One Show” every day, and I never usually watch other chat shows as a result. The usual go-round of promotions means you will see people talking about their projects in multiple places, and to that end, both “The One Show” and the weekly “The Graham Norton Show” usually bring out all their guests at once to increase engagement. Perhaps, with most high-profile people having their own podcast, they don’t need the likes of a Michael Parkinson, Terry Wogan or Johnny Carson to open them up for the public. If anything, being interviewed on “The One Show” means having to compete with the stories brought by the show itself.

Back to 2017, “The One Show” had gone from talking to Mel Brooks about his stage adaptation of “Young Frankenstein”, to picking up a story about someone named Patricia, who was trying to find a lost relative. Alongside Brooks was, of course, Russell Crowe, there to perform with his band as well as talk about his career; and Lesley Joseph and Ross Noble, who were starring in “Young Frankenstein”. Said Matt Baker, “we just turn the page and move on,” while co-host Alex Jones joking said, “right, now let’s focus Patricia now, alright?” Replied Brooks, “this is nuts, I want you to understand that.” The same episode included items about picking up rubbish from motorways, an award ceremony for vending machines, and finding manta rays off the Hebrides. 

Admittedly, this episode of “The One Show” was an hour in length, as it normally shoves this much material into half that time – the most recent broadcast, on Thursday 21^st August 2025, had actors Brian Cox and James Norton in the studio, but also filmed and live pieces ahead of the Women’s Rugby World Cup, and the unveiling of the latest “Strictly Come Dancing” contestant.

However, “The One Show” has answered the question that eluded British television for years: how to have a nightly chat show, particularly in the form presented in the United States by the likes of Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, David Letterman and Stephen Colbert. There have been recent efforts, like ITV’s “The Nightly Show”, that only lasted for two months in 2017, and “V Graham Norton”, lasting for eighteen months on Channel 4 in 2002-03, before Norton moved to the BBC for a weekly show that is currently only broadcast for half the year. “The Jack Docherty Show”, which launched with Channel 5 in 1997, was the closest these shows came to matching the American formula, with house band, host monologue, sketches and other items before the chat, while coming from a theatre in London’s West End – however, it was cut from five to three episodes after a year. Even when Terry Wogan had his evening chat show on BBC One from 1985-92, it wasn't every night, Tuesdays and Thursdays being taken by "EastEnders" instead.

The only US chat show I see with any regularity, via YouTube, is “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”, although I have also seen, when they have come up on TV, similar shows hosted by David Letterman, Jay Leno, Craig Ferguson and Conan O’Brien. In all cases, I will tune in for the monologue, then the sketch or further item afterwards – my favourite of these has been Letterman’s “Is This Anything?”, a collection of various circus and vaudeville acts all appearing at once, followed by the phrase, “wow, that was really something!” After that, I usually turn off – the only variation on the standard celebrity interview on any of these shows is the “Colbert Questionert” (pronounced “questionnaire”, to rhyme with “Colbert”), where everyone is asked the same questions to gain insight: window or aisle seat, first concert, apples or oranges, describing themselves in five words.

I guess what I want more are review shows – instead of celebrities talking about what new films, shows or albums are coming soon, I want someone to tell me what they are like. In the meantime, “The One Show” will provide enough time for an interview, before talking about gardening, or the price of electricity bills.

DON’T BE AFRAID, 'CAUSE THERE’S STILL TIME [507]

In the 2024 film “I Saw the TV Glow”, a trailer for “The Pink Opaque”, the Young Adult Network drama enrapturing the isolated teenagers Maddy and Owen, includes the line, “It can’t hurt you if you don’t think about them”. This hits home toward the end of the film as Owen, eight years older, having resisted the call to escape his passive small-town life, tells himself, “It’s not real if I don’t think about it.”

I heard the second line when I first watched the film, but I only caught the first line on my second viewing. Owen tells himself to dismiss Maddy’s plan to take Owen back to the world of “The Pink Opaque”, to reassume his real identity as a character inside the show itself, having been banished to the “Midnight Realm” of our world by the “Big Bad” Mr Melancholy in the show’s final episode. Hearing the first line clarified to me the peril of staying blinkered to what needs to be confronted.

Films are not made to be watched like TV programmes, screen vastly reduced in size, sound compressed and funnelled down to small speakers, viewing spaces not acoustically optimised. I expected to get the most out of “I Saw the TV Glow” with a second viewing, but I had not expected to need it. So, harking back to my film studies degree, I was in a quiet room by myself, with pen, paper and (this time) a PDF copy of the script on standby, fully prepared to rock footage back and forth to ensure I hear each line correctly. It wasn’t that anyone mumbled their lines, even if the lead characters are teenagers, but I clearly didn’t have the volume up high enough on that first viewing.

I wanted to see “I Saw the TV Glow” for some time – no physical Blu-ray release has happened in the UK, so after a year I resorted to streaming the film, and I was not disappointed. The film’s allegory for the discovery of transgender identity, which I now know is also called the “egg crack” moment, preceded it, its writer/director Jane Schoenbrun reportedly having begun writing the script at the outset of their own transition process. 

The “white draft” of the script, dated 31^st May 2022, had a lot more jumping between different periods of time, which I took as evidence of the cracks appearing in the characters’ reality appeared, but the finished film proceeds more linearly to concentrate on Maddy and Owen’s relationship with the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”-like show “The Pink Opaque”, a title I am guessing is deliberately, well, opaque, only because I don’t know why Cocteau Twins used it as the title of their 1986 compilation album.

Aside from self-inflicted sound issues, I had some frustration “I Saw the TV Glow” on its first viewing. For instance, there is a point where shots of “our world”, presented by the film’s regular widescreen aspect ratio and pin-sharp picture, overlaps with the squarer VHS-quality picture of “The Pink Opaque”, realities passing between resolutions. The second viewing confirmed this already elsewhere as the shots of the show’s character of Isabel are shown are repeated in both forms, and in parallel with Owen in “our world”, which I should really be calling the “Midnight Realm”. Later, as Maddy – or Tara, as she is called in “The Pink Opaque” – has an almighty long speech about what happened to her, how she crossed dimensions, and how she came back to get Owen. The script had Owen watching her monologue as intently as he watched the show, physically breaking up the long passages, but none of these reverse shots made their way into the finished film, making it look easier for Owen to dismiss the story later as a long ramble.

However, what I appreciated on the second viewing were when the parallels were drawn between Maddy and Owen, and Isabel and Tara. The pilot of “The Pink Opaque” had Isabel not knowing what was happening to her as her telepathic powers became apparent, later serving her in defeating foes with Tara, who lived in a different county – in the “Midnight Realm”, Owen can’t say more than a few words to Maddy, but they communicate via cassettes of the show, left in a neutral location to pick up. 

Elements from “The Pink Opaque” also appear in the “Midnight Realm” – an ice cream van, the ghost tattoo from Isabel and Tara’s necks – to reinforce the magic link between the worlds. I never had a show I loved enough to substitute for real life – I loved “The Simpsons” at their age, but not that intently – but with Tara being Maddy’s favourite character, and with her saying the show feels more real than real life, you are primed as an audience for when reality eventually flips...

...which is why Owen, as a character, is confounding. As a trans woman, I initially didn’t have the words for what I was beginning to realise about me, but I got them in the end, and acted upon them. Owen, however, doesn’t appear to make the connection when it is presented to him. As a teenager, he doesn’t know if he likes girls or boys, but he does like TV shows, going so far as saying, “When I think about that stuff, it feels like someone took a shovel and dug out all my insides. And I know there’s nothing in there, but I’m too nervous to open up and check” – even when he does, he closes himself back up. 

This passivity makes Owen a character without agency, consistently immobilised from saving the day, or himself – when Maddy tells him of his initial plan to leave town, he tells another friend’s mother that he “needs to be grounded”: “You can’t let me leave here with her. I don’t want to leave home.” Through the film, we see an adult Owen in front of a fire, alone in a forest at night – in the end, he puts out the fire.

This makes one scene particularly jarring upon watching it a second time, and after reading the script. Upon seeing the final episode of “The Pink Opaque”, Owen puts his head through his TV screen. His father pulls him out, Owen yelling, “this is not my home! You’re not my father!” He vomits something, obscured by the scratchy neon effect added to it – it is not just the “glow” of the TV, it is meant to be soil, from having been buried alive. You are left to assume this horrific moment was repressed by Owen, or repressed for him.

What starts as psychological horror film becomes a tragedy. The chalk drawings are topped with the message, “There is still time”. I have heard this sentiment, in the same context as “I Saw the TV Glow”, in two songs, Supertramp’s “Take the Long Way Home” and Lisa Lougheed’s “Run With Us” – hell, throw in Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” as well. The film does not explicitly say its story acts as a transgender metaphor, although its pink and blue colour palettes acts as a guide, but when a piece of art connects with you, you will see what you need to see, eventually.

AND ALL FOR UNDER A POUND YOU KNOW [506]

"CheapShow" album cover (art by Vorratony - vorratony.bsky.social)

You can never accuse the “CheapShow” podcast of having a surfeit of chodneys in the last ten years, and you can make of that what you will, especially I can’t be objective about how much this show means to me.

When I first wrote about Paul Gannon & Eli Silverman’s podcast in 2020, it had already evolved from its initial premise as an “economy comedy podcast” that brings you “intriguing, nostalgic and detestable items that fell through the cracks of popular culture” into a comedic assault on the English language supported by a panoply of grotty characters, like “Derek & Clive” with “The Goon Show” mixed in. I wish I could remember in which episode Paul said, “it’s all mouth talk, isn’t it”, as the phrase perfectly explains my love of “CheapShow” fringing on a Dadaist rejection of podcast norms like structure, context and sanity.

This culminated in 2023’s episode “The Wedding of Squishy Jim and Madam Ladyplops”, a kind of “Crisis of Infinite Earths” storyline – arguably begun in a 2021 episode that introduced the problematic crooner Bill Donut – that reset the podcast’s universe, leaving initially leaving jobbing actor Grumpy Sessions behind as the Psycho-Pirate that remembers what the world was like. Slowly, some of these characters have come back, as “everything old is new again”, but not as often as they once did – telling yourself not to create characters in a podcast where every utterance could become a name is not going to work, and neither should it.

Something the COVID-19 pandemic innovated in “CheapShow” were episodes that took place outside, taking in narrative-led quests, learning about the history of an area, and spur of the moment walks because the weather is too warm. It is one thing to have a podcast that can be a magazine one week, and an audio drama the next, but when you can no longer predict if the next episode will take place indoors, you realise that podcast formats have nothing against force of will. This is before you even get to the audio quality, setting a high standard that other podcasts rarely attempt, having never come across another that offered selected episodes in mono or stereo.

The level of professionalism that I find in “CheapShow” makes me also appreciate how delightfully ramshackle an episode can become, intentionally or not. The recent episode “Walk Hard with a Vengeance” was a sequel to 2021’s “Die Hard... on a Podcast”, the edifice of the podcast substituting for Nakatomi Plaza, and ending in an existential podcast void, but instead of being a tight, contained 38-minute action drama, the sequel was a two-hour-plus sprawling epic recorded on location at Crystal Palace Park, the tension coming from both whether Paul & Eli could save London from the bombs planted around the park, and whether they could hold themselves and the narrative together until they reached the final showdown, the villain having graciously given them extra time. If they were attempting a simultaneous display of anti-comedy with a critique of Hollywood action movie structure, then it worked.

“CheapShow” marked its tenth anniversary in June 2025 with a series of celebratory episodes, and with an album, released on vinyl record and MP3, available at the link through www.thecheapshow.co.uk. I cannot be objective in telling you how good this album is, and why you should buy it, collecting new and previous songs from the show like “Top Notch Western Romance”, “Teen Yeti’s Delight” and “The Lament of Captain Blueballs”, alongside new routines and interjections from Paul & Eli between the songs.

The reason I cannot be objective is tracks seven and eight on side B: “Nostalgia’s Gonna Get You” and “The Mayor Requests”, both by myself. I made a video in 2021 about the former, my entry for that year's Urinevision Song Contest, titled “How to Win a Song Contest, apparently”, while the latter, my entry for the following contest in 2023, was about signs dotted around a town reading “The Mayor Requests the Participance of the Inhabitants in the Protection of the Trees” – based on a real sign I once saw on the old city walls in Chichester – and why this was “because of what happened last time”.

I am happy that these songs have been received well over the last few years, and that listeners remember them fondly, but I hope to remain bemused about being on the end of such goodwill and kindness, especially with their being considered worthy of being committed to the physical format of a vinyl record (and, in very limited amounts, MiniDisc). I remember writing and entering “Nostalgia’s Gonna Get You” to see if I could write a good song, completing “The Mayor Requests” to see if lightning would strike twice – I should write songs more often.

NOW WASH YOUR HANDS [505]

From S.C. Johnson's website - free public tours are available

There was me thinking that the word combination “cellar door” was cited as the most beautiful in the English language by T.S. Eliot, a poet, when it turned out to have been J.R.R. Tolkien, in his position as a philologist, in his lecture “English and Welsh” in October 1955.

As far as I can find, it is not recorded what either of them thought of “Swarfega”. A portmanteau of a local term for oil or grease, and a corruption of the word “eager”, Swarfega originated from Derbyshire as a hand cleaner that could remove heavy-duty dirt without risking your skin. 

 

There is a story that Swarfega was originally intended, as a cleaner for silk stockings, much like Listerine was originally used as a floor cleaner before bad breath was recontextualised as ”halitosis” - it is true that the company that made Swarfega was named Deb, short for “debutante”, but nylon stockings made it to market before Swarfega, and personal experience of the body scrub-like consistency of Swarfega means you wouldn’t use it on anything delicate.

 

The reason any of this came to mind is, well, beyond me - I must have been daydreaming, and the mellifluous tone of “Swarfega” came to mind for no reason at all, inevitably leading to my wondering what the etymology of such a word could be.

 

I feel my thoughts move faster when I am daydreaming, perhaps from exerting little to no control over them, for as soon as I found out that the Deb group had been sold in 2015 to S.C. Johnson, a family company - all their TV ads end the same way - that led me to find out they are otherwise known as Johnson Wax, meaning the ultimate headquarters of Swarfega are now found in the famous Johnson Wax Headquarters building, famously designed by Frank Lloyd Wright - now I am interested.

 

What I knew about the headquarters, a US National Historic Landmark where S.C. Johnson continues to be based, that uses brick as red as the Royal Albert Hall, was that Wright did not include windows due to late payments, using skylights instead – this one turns out to be untrue, more the result of preventing it from looking like a traditional building – and that one of the mushroom-shaped supports, columns that continue tapering to the ground, had to be built in order to be destroyed, in order to prove how much weight they could truly support.

 

Looking into the building’s design further, I am surprised by the open-plan arrangement of the “Great Workroom”, ahead of its time for its 1939 opening date, the effectiveness of the Pyrex tube-based skylights, and the display of artistry at every stage, right down to the bespoke clerks’ desks and chairs - I would like one of each. Every single part of the building could have been made more conventionally, but the consideration of whether everything could be designed a different way, with the intent of energising staff, was refreshing.

I felt energised myself by seeing these pictures, and it was down to having “Swarfega” come to mind. It pays to let your mind wander sometimes.