The Light Fantastics
A City Romance (also available for animation)
Meet the Light Fantastics.
This is Lady in Red. This is Green Go-to Guy. They live in two little spaces in a traffic light in the Big City, on a busy corner of Main Street and Crosstown Avenue.
Lady in Red tells people to stop and wait before they cross Main Street.
Green Go-to Guy tells them when to cross Main Street.
They have to wake up early in the morning when they hear the first trucks rumbling down Main Street and be ready for work. Their first walker is always Dust Cart Man. Lady in Red makes him wait. Green Go-to Guy tells him when to cross and sweep the other side of Main Street.
Then come the early workers.
Then come the regular workers.
Then come the schoolchildren. Lady in Red makes them all stop. Green Go-to Guy tells them to cross.
Then it’s the late workers. Some of them want to cross in a hurry, but Lady in Red makes them wait like anyone else, before Green Go-to Guy lets them go.
Then it’s the shoppers. Then the people taking early lunch. Then the people taking regular lunch. Then the people taking late lunch. Lady in Red and Green Go-to Guy tell them all what to do.
Then it’s the schoolchildren and the workers crossing the other way.
Then it’s the people going out for dinner, or to see a play or a movie or a concert.
Then it’s the clubbers. Lady in Red stops them all, Green Go-to Guy lets them cross.
But when the last clubber crosses Main Street to go home, the Big City belongs to the Light Fantastics. They watch the last clubber let himself into his house. They look at each other and slide down the traffic light into Main Street. They stretch… and stretch… and stretch a bit more. And when they are tall enough, they dance… and dance… and dance…
They dance down Main Street. Past all the places where the people work or shop or go to school. But nobody can see them. Through the Big Square with the Victory Arch and the statue of Marshal Law. Past the Town Hall with the statue of Mayor Culpa. Into the park with the bandstand – where they can tap dance. They finish the routine with a big kiss. Then they take a drink at the fountain. And since nobody’s looking they bathe their feet.
Then they walk together, hand in hand, under the stars. They leave the park and walk back to Main Street. This time they reach the part with lots of advertising boards.
Lady in Red stops Green Go-to Guy. She looks at one of the big boards and says “We’ve never seen this one,” and he says “Do you want to try it?” It has a picture of a flashy fast car. An Alfa Pseud. And the two of them jump right into the car – because they own everything in the Big City at night, including the advertising boards and everything inside them.
The picture in the board has the Alfa Pseud all on its own on a long desert highway. Green Go-to Guy opens the door for Lady in Red and lets her drive first. All the way to the end of the highway in the picture. Then they change places and Green Go-to Guy drives it all the way back. Who do you think drives faster? Wrong. It’s Lady in Red. After stopping people all day, at night time she likes to put on a little speed.
Green Go-to Guy parks the car in the same spot in the picture. They get out and jump out of the board back onto Main Street.
“What did you think?” asks Green Go-to Guy. Lady in Red shakes her head and says “It went pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-qweep in sixth gear.”
They walk a bit longer along Main Street and stop in front of another advertising board. This one’s for a big blockbuster movie with the world’s biggest stars – Luke Upward and Stella Cast. But since they own everything in the Big City they jump right into the movie set and Green Go-to Guy says “Luke, my man, do you want to take five?” and Lady in Red says “Stella, honey, would you like to powder your nose?” And the stars leave, so that Green Go-to Guy and Lady in Red can play the big scene themselves. They look at the scripts the stars leave behind.
“You don’t love me any more.”
“I do.”
“You don’t.”
“But I do.”
“Your lips are moving but your eyes are lying.”
“Believe me.”
They give it all they can and then they look at each other and say the same thing. “This stinks.” They call back Luke and Stella and jump out of the board back into Main Street.
They walk a bit further and stop at another advertising board. This one has a tropical beach with nobody on it. They stare and stare at it. They have never seen anything so beautiful in the Big City. Finally Lady in Red says “We deserve a vacation.”
Green Go-To Guy says “We haven’t got much time. You know what happens if we’re missing…”
Lady in Red says “Just a quick swim?” And she takes his hand.
So they jump onto the beach. They kick up a little sand. They look at the clear blue water and run towards it, still hand in hand. But before they can jump in, the whole beach starts to shake. Not just the sand. Not just the sea. But the sky and the sun too. It can only mean one thing. They run back along the beach and look out of the board. It’s the first truck rumbling along Main Street. The Big City will not belong to them much longer. They will not be allowed in the advertising boards – or anywhere else. If they don’t get back to their traffic light in time they could be locked up as deserters.
So they jump back onto Main Street. No more dancing, they just run, and run, and run. Hand in hand. When one gets tired, the other pulls. Run, Lady in Red! Run, Green Go-to Guy! Back into the park… past the fountain… past the bandstand… Past Marshal Law and Mayor Culpa. Past the workplaces and the shops and the schools. They see more and more trucks. Faster, Lady in Red! Faster, Green Go-to Guy! The dawn is breaking over the Big City. At last they reach their section of Main Street.
They can hear the Dust Cart. One final sprint… They reach their traffic light just in time. They help each other up, and shrink again to fit into their little spaces. They are ready for Dust Cart Man. Lady in Red stops him in the usual way. Green Go-to Guy lets him cross in the usual way. He notices nothing different about them and heads down Main Street to sweep the other side.
Lady in Red and Green Go-to Guy watch him disappear. They look round the street. No trucks. No people. They slip out of their little spaces and have one final kiss.
Potential sequels
The plot device in which the two characters inhabit and interact with the images of poster advertising could be used in a series of sequels, with a similar premise at the end: the pair must finish their adventure at daybreak in time to resume their normal duties inside the traffic light. In other possible sequels, Green might have a rival, Bicycle Man, and the two might go into combat using traffic arrows as spears; Green and Red might raise a family of lesser lights; Red could save a child’s life in the busy street (or more exotically, a lost circus elephant); Green and Red could have a peaceful vacation in a remote country township with almost no traffic.
Richard Heller
richardkheller@hotmail.com
The Appeasement of Donald Trump
Independence Day. How ironic that on the day when Americans celebrate their rejection of the rule of the British king we may have elected with a massive majority a Labour government committed to submission to the would-be king of America.
Since February there have been many more stories in the media of Labour attempts to cajole Trump than to condemn him. To make it more galling, these stories have been planted by Labour sources proud of their statesmanship and pragmatism, especially by David Lammy, set to become Foreign Secretary, although one cannot rule out Keir Starmer seeking someone grander and more obsequious to power.
I have argued since February that these public overtures were marginally helpful to Trump in his election bid (something since acknowledged by his supporters) and that they were not only degrading but futile, since Trump was a swine before and would remain a swine afterwards, and that he hated everything the Labour party stood for, whoever its leader. I suggested that Trump would interpret them as weakness and that he would extort a terrible price from Keir Starmer’s government for maintaining the status quo on NATO and trade relations and international policy in general. I suggested that free of any of the restraints of his first term, Trump’s domestic agenda for a second would extinguish the United States not only as an ally and a protecting power but as a functioning polity and civil society and a pillar of an international order based on democracy and the rule of law.
All in all, Trump2 would be fatal for Keir Starmer’s government before it had got off the ground. Trump has no desire to see him succeed in any of his missions, based on methods and values far different from his own. The one possible exception was immigration, but even there Trump would scorn Starmer’s approach as ridiculously mild compared to his plans for mass deportations (or pogroms as they have already been named.) Since February Trump has acquired a new motive to stymie the Starmer government, to help his good buddy Nigel Farage into power.
I claim no prescience or special authority for these views but I do not think them unusual or irrational. My view of Trump as an unhinged lawless narcissist is certainly shared by a great number of his own party and especially, figures who served and then left his administration. With memories of protesting against the second Iraq war and the Bush junior administration I never expected to find a hero in John Bolton, but after Trump, that administration now seems like an oasis of moderation in American history.
I put my views as politely as possible not only to David Lammy but to the whole Shadow Cabinet. None replied although David himself denounced me, and all opponents of his overtures to Trump collectively, as student politicians and exponents of cancel culture, and with no counter to the stern pragmatic realism of his international policy.
The overtures to Trump continued unabated through the General Election, even when Farage entered the field and actually boasted of what he had taught Donald Trump. Labour made no attempt to make him “own” any of the repulsive words or actions by his pupil, nor did they venture any criticism of Trump themselves.
Then in the last week of the campaign David Lammy made an astonishing effort to sanitize and sugarcoat Donald Trump in an extended interview with Jason Cowley in the New Statesman.
Some passages were especially emetic.
“It’s important, Jason, and we sensed this when we were in the United States together: the rhetoric that comes with Donald Trump comes with Donald Trump. That is the man, that is the personality, and he navigates the global stage with huge personality and that rhetoric continues.”
It is offensive to Hitler’s victims to compare Trump to him. But it is instructive and right to study the history of the Thirties and look at the people who said the same sort of thing about Hitler, and thought that they had a special insight into him, and accepted assurances about Hitler from his skilful interlocutors or even soft words from the man himself. I commend especially Chris Bryant’s book on this period, The Glamour Boys. Of course there were people who allowed themselves to be gulled in the same way by Stalin.
David Lammy has become a dismal modern echo of these people.
He added “But you do have to distinguish between the rhetoric and the actuality.”
But the rhetoric is the actuality and has changed the actuality. That is why Trump uses vicious rhetoric, as Hitler did before him.
By his rhetoric Trump has, for his advantage, poisoned American politics just as his administration poisoned its rivers and seas and the very air which American breathe. With the aid of this rhetoric, Trump is turning the American republic into an empire of lies and hate.
When has Lammy ever seen Trump restraining and defying the extreme supporters he encourages?
David Lammy said: “It is still the case that a Donald Trump administration will include the broad coalition that is the Republican Party.”
It is simply weird to say that Trump will maintain and give office to “the broad Republican coalition” – his whole strategy is to replace the broad coalition and stuff it with his acolytes (as Corbyn and Momentum were accused in the Labour party and from which Keir Starmer is praised for delivering it.)
“He likes argument and he likes to see the rows within the party reflected in his conversations.
Well, I never. It must be a figment of the wicked liberal fake news media to suggest that Trump likes adulation and abject agreement. Has David actually met Trump? One would love to hear his own arguments with Donald Trump and their results? Was Trump shaken by sobs of contrition, tears coursing down his bloated cheeks like summer tempests?
When pressed a little harder by Cowley, David Lammy was more hesitant.
“Umm, Trump is part of a United States I’ve known all my life.”
“It’s a United States I’ve got tremendous respect for, and, in the end, he’s part of a democratic system, a democratic system that will produce different politicians, politicians different to me… It’s a huge mistake to disrespect a politics that significant parts of the population in America are attracted to, and indeed that we see in our own country.”
It is a gratuitous insult to all American voters to suggest that Trump is a “normal” part of America and its democratic system. It is also helpful to Trump in his election bid (insofar as American voters notice it at all.) Trump is like nothing else in American history, and the nearest counterpart to him is in
fiction, Buzz Windrip, the repugnant fascistic hero of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here.
David Lammy is a professing Christian. What does he think of Trump soliciting votes as God’s chosen, and how does this sit with the Third Commandment?
David Lammy has been regularly reminded of his earlier pungent and accurate views of Donald Trump, which included calling him a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. Jason Cowley did not quote these words directly but put to David Lammy the charge of being a “shapeshifter and opportunist who will say whatever he needs to advance.”
Punching the cliché button hard, Lammy replied “I’m really relaxed about that criticism … Serious people change their minds and they particularly change their minds when the facts change.”
It would be especially fascinating to know what facts have induced David Lammy to take a more favourable view of Donald Trump since January 5, 2021, although in fairness he claims to see a few signs of pragmatism from Trump on scattered issues.
Most of us seeing a friend or family member about to enter a car with an obvious drunk at the wheel try to stop them or even remove the driver. David Lammy says that he has talked to friends of the driver who have told him that he is not as drunk as he appears and that it is all really an act to impress his buddies. That is a possibility, but I still don’t want this country to be a passenger in his car.
I hope that I am wrong and will admit it with due contrition next year if after all I see Keir Starmer and David Lammy next year leading a principled resistance to the policies and values of the Trump2 administration and persuading the peoples of our country and Western Europe to accept the sacrifices this might entail.
But at this moment I see a government committed to truckling to Trump in the name of pragmatism. And those who joined the Labour party in the unpragmatic hope of resisting oppression, folly and evil at home and abroad will be in far a disappointment.
Richard Heller was formerly chief of staff to Denis Healey as Shadow Foreign Secretary from 1981 to 1983
I’m not voting for any party until it tells me what it thinks of Donald Trump
To the leaders of all major GB political parties (other than Reform)
Dear Leader
I write to ask you to clarify your attitude and that of your party to the re-election of Donald Trump. It is, I know, unusual to ask British politicians to react to foreign ones. However, I suggest that Donald Trump is a highly unusual foreign politician. His return to power would have profound consequences for all British voters, which cannot be ignored as they choose between the futures offered to them by your party and its competitors. Moreover, it is impossible to be neutral towards Donald Trump: he is either a saviour or a swine. Judgements about Trump say a great deal about the people who hold them, and their character and values. British voters are therefore entitled to such information from the people seeking to represent them and govern them.
British Trumplovers have now been given the opportunity to express themselves by voting for his principal British cheerleader Nigel Farage and the party he took over (without a vote) as a Special Purpose Vehicle. But those who loathe Donald Trump and fear the consequences of his re-election are left in profound uncertainty about the position of all the other parties, including yours.
I am asking you therefore to answer the following questions and on the record.
One: before framing your offer to the British people, did you and your party make any assessment of the impact of Trump’s re-election on our country and the Western alliance on which we depend, and indeed on the domestic future of the United States, which has such a strong influence on our own? I am not asking you to share that assessment, although it would be illuminating to all British voters.
Two: have you assumed that all your promises to the British people are “Trumpproof” and immune to any fallout from his re-election?
Three: in all of Trump’s words and actions since January 5, 2021 have you detected any you admire or even agree with? If so, could you kindly identify them?
Four: do you believe that returned to office after his campaign Trump would behave as a “normal” President, co-operating with your party in government (despite differences) on the basis of shared values and common interests? If so, what has Trump done or said to give you reason for this belief? What leads you to assume that he has the character and courage in a second term to disappoint and defy the extremist and enraged supporters he has cultivated for over eight years, including the weird-conspiracy theorists, the vigilantes, the cultists, the white supremacists and the neo-Nazis?
My own bias is probably apparent by now. I regard Trump as an uncontrolled fundamentally lawless narcissist, vainglorious, vindictive, and venomous. You and your party’s candidates are welcome to this description (without fee or attribution) but I am certain that many others apart from me would appreciate your reasons for thinking otherwise.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Heller (author, journalist, historian, former chief of staff to Denis Healey and then Gerald Kaufman). American-born, American family and friends, reported and analysed six US Presidential elections)
Please put Donald Trump on the ballot paper
No one can be neutral about Donald Trump. He is either a swine or a saviour.
No British voter can ignore the consequences of his re-election in November. It makes almost every event in our election so far meaningless, especially the promises made by all the major parties. If Trump is a swine, they will be nugatory. They would not survive financial turmoil and the extinction of the United States not only as an ally and a protecting power but as a functioning democracy and civil society. But if Trump is a saviour and the instigator of a new Golden Age (perhaps even one ordained by God) all election promises so far are too modest.
Either way, for our country Trump is a very large elephant heading for a very small room.
His British admirers now have a party to vote for, the Reform Party acquired by Trump’s chief British cheerleader, Nigel Farage. They can ask for a government which flatters and imitates Donald Trump by voting for its candidates, although it would be interesting to know if all of them share the attitude to Trump of their unelected leader.
But what about those of us who loathe Trump and dread the consequences of his re-election? How do we signal our wish for a government that condemns his obnoxious words and actions (in our view, virtually unbroken since January 5, 2021) and resists him? Whom do we vote for? Asking on behalf of several million friends.
Please put Donald Trump on the ballot paper. Please ask all your local candidates what they think about him and how their party in government would deal with his re-election. Please give our election some clarity and meaning.
The Ten Commandments (King Donald Revised Unauthorized Version)
1. Thou shalt have no other gods before thyself
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth except of thyself.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain unless at election time
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it wholly for thyself
5. Honour thy father but not thy mother who as an immigrant poisoned America’s blood, as did two of thy wives, the mothers of four of thy children
6. Thou shalt not kill: get others to do it for you
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery unless thou canst pay to cover it up
8. Thou shalt not steal save for elections and campaign contributions
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor save it be an enemy and a BAD PERSON who deserves it BIGLY
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s but rather acquire things bigger than his with money thou hast not. His wife and maidservant are up for grabs by thee alone.
A London Romance
Relocating “Manhattan” Music by Richard Rodgers Lyrics by Lorenz Hart 1925
Searching on some beach for space
With roughly half the human race
And insects which bite –
Cancel the flight!
In a London maisonette
We two could find a raison d’etre,
So let’s join our names
By the banks of the Thames.
We’ll build in Mayfair
And just to play fair,
Park Lane too
A place where we can be
Chez nous.
We’ll buy up Harrods,
Aspreys and Garrads,
Just for show.
With precious bibelots
And jewels we’ll overflow –
Quite de trop!
Our other shopping
We’ll do in Wapping
In a boat
Then watch the seagulls swoop
And float.
This great big city’s a Hamley’s toy
Just made for a girl and boy
And we’ll turn London
Into abundant
Joy.
We’ll both go silly
In Piccadilly:
Undismayed,
We’ll stroll up Burlington
Arcade.
And if our luck fails
We’ll go for cocktails
At the Ritz,
Amid the glam and glitz
We’ll sip white wine and spritz
And test our wits.
We’ll look at Eros
And hope he’ll steer us
To romance
And then in Berkeley Square
We’ll dance.
The city’s magic can soon employ
The hearts of a girl and boy
And we’ll turn London
Into abundant
Joy.
We’ll overpower
The grim old Tower
In the spring.
In football stadiums
We’ll sing.
If we feel wealthy
We’ll vithit Chelthea
On a thpree:
We’ll thpend our L-S-D
On fashions wild and free
Thee and me.
Then down in Soho
We’’ll find a Boho
Arts café.
In Ronnie Scott’s we’ll hear
Jazz play.
The city’s simply a wondrous pearl
For one boy to give one girl,
So let’s give London
A mad abundant
Whirl.
We’ll check the night clubs,
Find all the right pubs,
Drink real ale:
Then sleep it off on Network Rail.
In Oxford Circus
We’ll watch the lurkers
Selling tat.
At Lord’s we’ll throw a bat.
At Lock’s we’ll buy a hat
Just like that.
We won’t look shabby
Inside the Abbey.
At St Paul’s
Upstairs we’ll whisper sweet
Love calls.
The city’s charms cannot ever cloy
For this footloose girl and boy
And we’ll make London
Into abundant
Joy.
Jailhouse Trump
Another song in honor of the chief Defendant of the United States
It’s incoming day at the county jail
Truck on the way with a loud white male
Thinks he’s a big shot and the people’s choice
But he’s just another loser who loves his voice
Let’s lock
Lock up Donald Trump
Watch his ratings and his money slump
When we finally lock up Donald Trump.
He’s been burning through what’s left of his cash
On top-dollar lawyers talking all kinds of trash
They’re spouting out stuff full of sound and fury
But can’t sell a cent to the judge and the jury.
Let’s lock
Lock up Donald Trump
His ego takes a mighty dump
When he goes down in One No Trump.
He takes himself down to the Supreme Court
Wants them to buy a really crazy thought
A President’s power has no end:
“Hey, I’m only asking for a friend.”
Let’s lock
Lock up Donald Trump
In solitary let him stump
When we finally lock up Donald Trump.
Now this is a man that no one can trust
And every deal he offers is a surefire bust
He’ll rip people off for the very last time
When a judge sends him down for committing a crime.
Let’s lock
Lock up Donald Trump
Shut down his lying pump
When we finally lock up Donald Trump.
Music by Mike Stoller Original words by Jerry Leiber
The Brightest Daffodils Of Spring
I wandered lonely as a cloud
Amongst the bookshop’s empty tills
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of golden daffodils:
Like Guardsmen with their stiffened backs,
The piles of Wisden Almanacks.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
On joyous publication day.
Ten thousand saw I, crammed with facts
On cricket’s esoteric acts.
For oft, when on my couch I lie
With Wisden, in a pensive mood,
I raise the volume to my eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.
I feast on stats and anecdotes
And then digest th’Editor’s Notes.
A storming musical tribute to Donald Trump
Don’t know why
They should find a case to try
From Stormy Daniels:
Wish I’d had a jury full of spaniels:
Couldn’t arrange to buy ‘em
(Tum-tum-yah-ta-ti-tah)
Off the panels.
Using all my friends in the right channels.
Not going down for crime (wah-wah)
Not serving any time.
I paid her off to say that she had never met me
Now she’s back and everybody’s out to get me
Now I’ve got to hope that all the courts will let me
In the White House again.
When I’m there
I’ll have a lifetime free of care from
Mattters stormy.
No more legal worries ever for me.
Pardon myself for all crime:
Not guilty and for all time.
Music by Harold Arlen Original words by Ted Koehler
Available for performance. Tenses updated from original now that the Defendant has been found BIGLY GUILTY
The mellowing of Saeed Ahmed
Published in The Nightwatchman 2018
It is not always easy to call on former Pakistan cricket captain, Saeed Ahmed. On my last attempt he spoke to me only briefly in the street, barring passage to his home in Faisal Town, Lahore, as if blocking for a draw in a Test match.
But there was a very different response when I went there a few days ago with the cricket historian Najum Latif. We had to wait in the street for his return from the mosque. We watched him walking slowly home, breaking off to buy a roasted corn on the cob. Then he saw Najum, one of his oldest friends – and broke into a genuine sprint as if taking a short single, although wearing sharply pointed shoes, in the style the English call winklepickers.
He ushered us inside the house and served us a luscious pile of kinnows, all peeled by himself. When the pile disappeared he offered another instantly.
At 80 years old, Saeed Ahmed seems happier and healthier than on earlier meetings over the last five years, although he has become very thin. His eyes sparkle, his gestures are animated: it is possible to recognize the dashing, charismatic batsman who burst into the Pakistan Test team sixty years ago.
Saeed Ahmed scored at least 50 in his first six Test matches for Pakistan, all against a powerful West Indies side. He made over 500 runs at an average over 50 on his first tour of the Caribbean against an attack including Gary Sobers, Wes Hall, Collie Smith, Sonny Ramadhin, Alf Valentine and the terrifying Roy Gilchrist. Then there were more big performances at home against Australia and on tour against India. To this day Saeed Ahmed is the Pakistani who reached 1000 Test runs more quickly than any other.
All these performances were on hard wickets, and he proved fallible on seaming English ones (despite changing his upright stance to a crouch to get a better sight of the ball) and later against extreme pace. But he ended with 2991 runs in 41 Test matches at an average just over 40. His probing off-spin was under-used in Tests but produced 332 first-class wickets. As a Lancashire League professional for Nelson he was actually more useful as a bowler than batsman, taking nearly 200 wickets in two seasons at an average cost below 10. He is especially proud of his first season in 1965 when he helped them to win the League championship and the knock-out Worsley Cup. “Me and Learie Constantine,” he told me: the great West Indian was the only other professional to achieve this for Nelson.
He also cites a performance that year of 85 and 100 (out of 157) representing the Lancashire League against the county side. At this distance, he remembers that Brian Statham (“what a swing bowler he was”) bowled for Lancashire: alas, the scoreboard shows otherwise, but the Lancashire attack was still quite handy.
On my first visit five years ago, it was hard to get him to talk about his cricket career: the interview was dominated by his religious vision in 1978 and its aftermath. I saw no cricket memorabilia in his drawing room.
But this time the walls were lined with cricketing photographs, especially of his legendary cover drive, which regularly thumped the boundary boards before the bowler had finished his follow-through. He was eager to point out his presentation by Hanif Mohammad to the Queen at Lord’s on Pakistan’s England tour of 1967. (Saeed Ahmed is one of that very select band of cricketers, all Pakistani, to have been presented to the Queen of England and the President of the United States. On his fleeting visit in 1959 to Pakistan’s Third Test against Australia, President Eisenhower watched him being caught by Neil Harvey at slip off Alan Davidson for 8. Many of the American reporters blamed the “Ike effect” for his fall: he had scored a fluent 91 in the first innings.)
He took the chance to re-tell – and re-embellish – the story of his private conversation with the Queen at Lord’s in 1967, when the two of them watched Hanif compile some of his epic 187. Most people are overawed in the presence of the Queen, but Saeed was quite unabashed and took the chance to draw her out about her tours of the Commonwealth. He provided an unusual glimpse of her as a quick-witted lady full of snappy one-liners. When he asked her what she remembered about Pakistan she replied instantly: “cricket and horses.” He claims that the Queen gave him an open invitation to drop into Buckingham Palace, which he has not been able to take up during the succeeding fifty years.
A movie buff, Saeed Ahmed was almost as thrilled by his meeting with the great Dilip Kumar in Pakistan’s tour of India in 1960-61. (The social life of that tour was infinitely more interesting than the cricket, in which every single match was drawn.)
Saeed’s conversation bounced around times and places. He paid moving tribute to the early support he received from the founding father of Pakistan cricket, Chief Justice Cornelius. He was almost as generous to his ex-wife Salma, although their parting was bitter and she left a scathing portrait of him in her memoirs. He acknowledges today the support to him and all his family which she provided through her diplomatic connexions.
As a personality, Saeed Ahmed produced strong reactions from those who knew him. Apart from Salma, Mushtaq Mohammad and Imran Khan left poor impressions of him in their autobiographies. But I have heard other accounts of a genuinely fun-loving man who often surprised friends with a generous gesture. Certainly, his later career was full of storms, both cricketing and personal. He coveted the Pakistan captaincy, but his three matches in charge, in the crisis-strewn home series against England in 1968-69, were stressful and unhappy. Fans and the media attacked him for being over-cautious. In the final Test in Karachi, the anger at him for supplanting the local favourite, Hanif Mohammad, contributed to the riots that caused the Test to be abandoned. He was several times dropped and reinstated as a player (once he had to apologize for an apparent assault on the then Board of Control chairman). Finally, he was banned outright by A H Kardar, who accused him of feigning a back injury to avoid facing Dennis Lillie on a green Melbourne wicket. (Few people have ever wanted to face Dennis Lillie on a green Melbourne wicket, and Saeed Ahmed is still adamant that the injury was genuine.)
Outside cricket, he fell on bad times in the early 1970s. He was divorced from Salma. His business interests (derived from her) foundered, as did an attempt at a political career. At one stage he lived in a trailer and had a brief spell in prison for sedition. The fall of Z A Bhutto (and Kardar) allowed him to attempt a cricket comeback at the age of 40, in Peshawar against the touring English team of 1977-78. It failed: Bob Willis was too much for him and the crowd wanted to see local favourites in the team rather than forgotten stars.
At this low ebb of his life, he experienced the religious vision which transformed his life. When I first met him, he took over two hours to describe it, in a torrent of words. This time he was much briefer, but he had the same intensity. After forty years, he told me, the vision has the power to leave him feeling weak and virtually incapacitated.
At the risk of great over-simplification, the vision convinced him that the end of the world is at hand, but will be preceded by a great Islamic renaissance in which all the world’s faiths will be unified. It showed a dramatically new path for him as an Islamic evangelist. His lifestyle, his values, even his clothing were transformed. He gave up parties and nightlife in favour of prayer and very public religious observance. He grew a beard. He abandoned Western fashions in favour of traditional clothing. There is a memorable image of him in 1999, astonishing his regular party companion, Tony Greig, with his new appearance as a preacher. He joined the evangelistic Tabligi-Jemaat and is regularly identified as its first cricketing recruiter. Many sources have suggested that he was a major influence on Saeed Anwar, and on all the other overtly religious Pakistan international cricketers of the previous decade.
Whatever else may be said of Saeed’s brand of religion, he is very tolerant of other faiths and those of no faith at all. He went out of his way in our conversation to praise good and honest Christians and Jews. “Paradise is not just for Muslims”, he added, and attacked the word “kaffir” as a pejorative term for non-Muslims. “I won’t say it and I won’t hear it.”
Saeed Ahmed’s life remains stormy, and he is estranged from his family, especially his younger brother and fellow Pakistan international, Younis Ahmed. He related several harrowing disputes.
Nonetheless, he seemed a far more mellow man than when I have met him before. He said that he wants to write two books, one on cricket and on his vision of the Apocalypse. He offers me the chance to prepare the cricket title: “you will make millions,” he added exuberantly. However, the Apocalypse one is likely to come first, in which he will prophesy that the United States will soon experience nuclear war.
He also believes that he should warn the Queen and may well take up the longstanding invitation to come to Buckingham Palace.
The Queen by reputation has a prodigious memory for people. If Saeed Ahmed does present himself at the Palace, I think that behind the bearded preacher she could identify the handsome, extrovert cricketer who sat beside her at Lord’s fifty years ago.
Degrading, Futile, Unnecessary: Labour’s Overtures To Donald Trump
unpublished unBowdlerised version
David Lammy, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, is clearly proud of his efforts to build a relationship with Donald Trump. He will have been gratified by their coverage in The Spectator, which contrasted them favourably with David Cameron’s attacks on Trump. In The Sunday Times a few weeks ago he sneered at opponents of his approach as representatives of student union politics and cancel culture.
I accept the sneers. I believe that his overtures to Trump are degrading, futile – and unnecessary. David Lammy is living in a dream world if he believes that he, even in a Labour government, can influence a Trump second term or even mitigate its consequences for our country, the United States and the world. It would abort every one of Keir Starmer’s missions in government before he can even turn the key to their engines on the runway.
Insofar as they have been noticed in the United States, Lammy’s efforts are actually helpful to Donald Trump, and betray all those fighting to stop him, some at high personal risk. They assume that Trump in a second term will after all be a “normal” President who will listen to reason from America’s allies. However marginally, they weaken the incentives for voters to shun him on the very sensible fear that he will be anything but a normal, reasonable President. Again assuming that they have been noticed, they also feed Trump’s devouring ego and the expectation that he will win the November election.
I invite David to observe Trump’s words and behaviour in his campaign for re-election, indeed since his defeat on election day 2020 and find evidence of normality, reason and a basic respect for opponents. On what grounds would he contradict my view that Trump is a swine who accepts no need to pretend otherwise?
None of the restraints on Trump1 would inhibit Trump2. The full power of the Presidency would fall into the hands of a deranged narcissist, vainglorious, venomous, vicious and vindictive. This threatens the extinction of the United States not only as an ally and protector but also as a functioning civil society. Trump is clearly determined to use his second term to take revenge on every institution, every community, every single person who resisted and frustrated him in his first, especially in the legal system, Congress, his own party, the armed forces and public service generally. All of these institutions he would seek to turn into agents of his personal ego. Does David believe otherwise, and if so, why? Does he imagine that Trump re-elected would look back at his campaign, give a giant wink, and say “Just kidding folks, I was only giving all those rubes what they wanted to hear” and go back to government as usual? Who would have more influence on him – the wise insiders he has been castigating for years or the millions who accepted his own valuation of himself as a Messiah?
On the world stage, I believe that Trump actually prefers Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian leaders to democratic ones, and that the only European politicians he even tolerates are his imitators and flatterers and clients. I believe that Putin has already acquired a personal hold over him and a financial grip on his tottering empire. I am certain that Putin wants him to win, to facilitate his subjugation of Ukraine and his ambitions for territory and dominance elsewhere in Europe. If David believes otherwise, could he say why?
I believe that Trump actually hates NATO, and personally. He hates it not only because of the (fictitious) idea that most members are parasites on American defence spending and not only as a traditional American isolationist who resents any automatic commitment to any overseas country. He hates it personally as a creation of the liberal establishment and because it is full of countries which have made fun of him. Over to you, David, why do you think Trump really loves NATO or that you could persuade him to?
I believe that Trump hates the British Labour party, whoever leads it, and everything it stands for. I would certainly not enjoy being Prime Minister Keir Starmer when he finally gets his telephone call from the President-elect (behind Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and some other European riff-raff) and begs him not to crash NATO immediately but to allow him enough time and money to fulfil his programme. Trump does not care about Starmer’s programme and despises key elements of it. He certainly does not want the British economy to succeed with an imitation of Bidenomics – only as an imitator and client of his own. Green energy, progress towards Net Zero? Certainly not in the Trump playbook. Saving the NHS? Trump hates the NHS and wants to see its extinction, pausing only to sell off its profitable activities to his campaign donors. Over to you, David. Will you be in on that phone call, and how do you think it will go?
A Trump victory would of course re-animate every vested interest opposed to the Labour party and its policies and militant Right-wing groups all over Europe with public phobias and private armies.
Does David still imagine that Trump values the “special relationship” with our country? He might study how Trump and his supporters regularly depict us – as a failed state, collapsing into third-world status, overrun with criminals, illegal immigrants and Muslim terrorists, with a bloated welfare system. Trump’s victory would encourage his British admirers to “cleanse” our country and make it the image of his.
I am certain that David’s overtures are seen as a sign of weakness by Trump, and that he would exploit them in negotiation, of which he claims to be a master on the evidence of his ghost-written book. By committing Labour in advance to pursue and maintain a relationship he risks feeding Trump’s demands for subservience and adulation. We might have to become his cheerleaders in what’s left of NATO (so goodbye to a new post-Brexit settlement with the EU) and sign up for any escalation of conflict or outright war he launches against Iran.
There is simply no need to suggest that Labour could work with Trump. It is helping Trump and doing the party no good with voters here, except a minority who already hate it. It would have been prudent and easy to decline any comment on the US election as not in our national interest. If pressed, Labour might say “We want a good productive relationship with any elected US President but will always put British interests and values first. If Donald Trump were to win the election [note careful subjunctive] that will remain our policy and our relationship will depend on him”. That would actually strengthen our country’s bargaining position, just a little, if the worst happens.
The Spectator did warn that “if Starmer and Lammy go too far in their Trump charm offensive it will be the Labour base who sees red.” I hope so. For me it has gone too far already. Everyone has some political breaking point. Perhaps because I am American-born, with American family and friends, this is mine. I cannot support a party committed to truckle to Trump.
Richard Heller was formerly chief of staff to Denis Healey and then Gerald Kaufman. He has written extensively on American history and politics and reported and analysed six Presidential campaigns.
