The Day The Music Di-ed

One of the many benefits of living in the PRC is the ubiquitous cheap DVDs and the almost complete disregard that even major stores demonstrate towards even a passing towards international copyright protocols.

This gives us benighted exiles, trapped with only one English language TV station, CCTV 9 (typical nightly viewing - "101 reasons why all the Japanese are evil and smell of fish" and "ok look, it's snowing in the UK and all their public transport is in the shit, still that's what you get for not living in a one-party communist country..."), something to watch.

Today's little foray into central Beijing (about 35 minutes on the subway), netted "The Last King of Scotland", "V for Vendetta", "The Prestige", "Night in the Museum","The Queen"and an 8 disk set of the whole four seasons of the BBC's Messiah (think gory evisceration and not Handel).
Now admittedly "Night in the Museum" is entirely in Russian (so has been swiftly filed with the 7 copies of "Batman Begins" that I bought before getting an English copy) but the whole lot only cost a grand total of 130 RMB (about eight pounds 70!).

"The Queen" was purchased at the request of Sandy, my Chinese girlfriend and provided tonight's viewing. And pretty enjoyable it was too, although I did marvel a little at the incredibly supportive portrayal of Mr Blair and some heavy-handed bollocks about a stag roaming the Highlands, pursued by a gun-toting but still grieving Harry and Wills which seem to become a symbol of Diana for the Queen.

Watching it took me back to 1997 and gave me a vague pre-shudder of the renewed Di-mania that, much to the glee of florists in the capital, will sweep across the UK this August.

I clearly remember coming downstairs, dreadfully hungover on that day in August and sitting with a mug of coffee (or perhaps a hair of the dog) and watching Sky News - which consisted mainly of sombre music and flowers outside some royal palace or other.

I took me a while to suss just which royal personage we were collectively mourning for. Obviously the Queen Mum ("The nation's favourite granny" (c) News International) was in pole position, with the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Margaret and the Queen herself bringing up the rear.

The realisation that it was "Di what Died" sent me scurrying upstairs to tell my soon to be ex-wife the awesome news. And it was truly awesome, even to an ardent Di cynic like me - witness:
"Goodbye, enormous jeans,
that you would have had to wear,
If you hadn't had bulimia
And thrown up everywhere"
(copyright Me and Reg Dwight 1997).

Back in those days I was the editor of Birmingham-based advertising and media magazine (Adline) and purely by chance had to make a rare visit to London the next day.

I was going for two reasons:
a) To spend the day at the headquarters of Capital Radio
b) Because I fancied the arse of the admittedly off-puttingly hirsute boss of Capital Radio's Manchester sales house.

Admittedly, it was largely (b) to be honest but it was interesting to spend the day at the heart of a major London media owner at a time of such a national outpouring.

The interesting thing that I quickly noticed was that none of the music being played was produced later than 1982. Apparently this was because, like many of other radio groups, Capital had an approved list of chart hits that had been vetted as appropriate for times of national crisis. Obviously "Another one bites the dust" (particularly as it was by Queen) would not have been deemed appropriate listening for the tail-end of the Summer of 1997.

Unfortunately, no-one had got round to updating this list since the early eighties, leaving the grieving denizens of the capital to mourn along to to the likes of Hall and Oates and the Human League...

The station also had to vet all of its ads - especially as (allegedly) another station the group had followed its early morning news broadcast ("And now seven hours later, Princess Diana is still dead" etc) directly with an ad that said "And now that's enough bad news, here's the good news -its 15 per cent of sofas only today at all our stores...")

My own favourite was perpetrated by Sky One which, like most other TV broadcasters had pulled all its ads and merely showed some flowers outside the palace superimposed on a picture of Di and then accompanied by some sombre music during its ad breaks.

Unfortunately, after one one suitably dour commercial break, the announcer rather spoiled it with: "And now...back to the Simpsons..."