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Document : 1669
Title    : Presentation of an Oliver Award to Alasdair Gray
Author(s): N/A

Copyright holder(s): SCOTS Project

Audio transcription


M1183: The trouble is, I married badly. [audience laughter] No, that's the
truth. [audience laughter] My mother, God rest her, was born in Newlands,
nurtured on the banks of the blue Cart, at the uncomprehensive Shawlands
Academy, and in the Orpheus Choir under Sir Hugh Roberton. //[audience
laughter]//
M1182: //Ah.//
M1183: She knew that the children in Glasgow, who lived furth of the south
side, were aboriginal, [audience laughter] and no fit partners for her
offspring, whether they hailed from Possilpark, or even Riddrie. [audience
laughter] I was young and athletic and headstrong in those days [audience
laughter] and in the consequence of the words of the song, I Married a
Papist called Brigit McGinn. [audience laughter] Could have been worse. She
could have been called Bridget McConnell. [audience laughter] The only
redeeming feature Margery possessed was her urbane brother, Jack, who had
been taught proper Britishness, in a naval destroyer commanded by a
Viscount, and spent several years of the war dodging U-boats between Cape
Town and Sydney. On being demobbed he completed his degree at Unthank's
premier university [audience laughter] and then promptly emigrated to Oz,
where he acquired five further degrees, in addition in due course to an SI
fellowship. And for the next half century, became a hardworking, antipodean
academic. At the end of work every day, at about half past two [audience
laughter] he accompanied his cobbler, an equally industrious Adelaide
university professor of music, to the South Pacific beach, to lie in the
forty-degree-kissed sand, and read a six-hundred page thriller which had
just been published entitled Lanark. I think because he was a prototype
emigré, more in love with homesickness than his native land. When in due
course we visited him, he complained that a three-inch-thick paperback was
impossible to prop up on the sand without obscuring a lot of the text, by
keeping spilling litres of Fosters all over the pages. [audience laughter]
But his admiration for the emerging young writer was unbounding. Why, he
kept asking, do they all have to depend for proper recognition, only furth
of their own country. I hope Alasdair is going to provide us with the
answer to that. As the fellowship expands, apart from guaranteeing the SI's
existence for two or three more centuries on the road to independence
[audience laughter], we are now accumulating more fellows across the globe;
California, Normandie, Bad Godesberg, [?]Haute Savoie[/?], Buenos Aires.
You'll notice the pronunciation! [audience laughter] James Gray in
Frankfurt. Do you think he's a relative? Do you know, do you have a cousin?
No?
M1182: Probably!
M1183: Yes. Austria, Brussels, Drumnadrochit, and quite a few in Australia.
Recently one of them was keen to start a branch of the Celtic League, he
said. He hired a hall in Sydney, and the advertisement for the inaugural
soirée attracted several hundred Aussies. He was surprised, however, when
they all turned up, wearing t-shirts with green and white hoops. [audience
laughter] You can tell the ones that understand that joke. [audience
laughter] Even they, however, were following the elections in Scotland with
great glee. Which of us not? As Fiona has said, and I hadn't written this
before, I'd tell you how I recruited her; persuaded her that she looked
like Ghandi. I never I never apologised to you for that, did I ever?
[audience laughter] Did we all believe we were going to arrive at the day
when our own First Minister of Scotland, Sir Alexander Salmond, [audience
laughter] would insinuate his massive right arm round the trembling waist
of the Queen of England, [audience laughter] as if he was an Australian
Prime Minister? [audience laughter] [feet stamping] While enjoying a cosy
chat with her about the jurisprudential right of a nation to govern itself.
[audience laughter] Recently though my young wife and I had been practising
polling techniques in Châteaubriant in Brittany. We happened to be there
on the first French Presidential polling day. It was a delightfully warm
evening and the presiding officer was very welcoming. "Bonsoir, Monsieur",
he said, in French [audience laughter], "how how can I assist you?"
[audience laughter] I explained I had a European-Scottish passport, which
especially in the light of the auld alliance, might allow me to vote for
the President! "For whom would you be voting, Monsieur?" he said. I said
General de Gaulle [audience laughter] "Oh Monsieur, I regret he's dead."
[audience laughter] "But have a good evening." [audience laughter] I was
also subsequently arrested at the Govan polling station [audience laughter]
for alleged racially motivated breach of the [?]peace[/?] but that's a
story for another occasion. [audience laughter] Okay, I will [inaudible].
The Ol- the Oliver Award. Made, the rubric says, to the journalist, author,
poet, critic, illustrator, radio or television personality who has done
most in past years to advance the cause of Scottish self-respect. Some
candidates qualify under all of these categories if you think about it.
It's not a condition that the recipient should be a member of the Scottish
National Party. Previous ones have included Ewan Bain, he was the first
Superman, Tom Weir, Professor Derick Thomson, Jimmie MacGregor, Norman
MacCaig, Dr John Purser, did you know he was?
M1182: Oh yes.
M1183: Colin Bell, Sir Alastair Dunnett, the Gaberlunzie, Dr Elspeth King,
Dr Paul Scott, two we are honoured to see here today, do you notice.
Perhaps hoping to be nominated again? [audience laughter]. Or because their
decanters are empty? [audience laughter] Iain Anderson, Jimmy [?]Reid[/?],
and last year Dr Winnie Ewing. The only instruction our control-freakish
Chairman gives me every year is, don't lionise them. Every year they all
sneak up to me and say, whatever you say, do you think at least you could
lionise me? [audience laughter] Half-way through. [audience laughter]
M1182: You're only half way?
M1183: Well, a third. [audience laughter] We're often asked, we're often
asked how they are selected by the panel of judges. We got a letter the
other day asking why we didn't choose much younger ones. Well, we have to
wait until they've had time to achieve. Of course the equal trick is not to
wait too long. So they tell me there exists a list of prospective
recipients; I was being asked this. Such people as Sir Sean Connery waiting
for a gap in between films so that we can fix a mutually-convenient date.
I've no idea whether the judges' broad-mindedness extends to such eminent
people as Lord Foulkes, [audience laughter] Lord Watson, Lady Wendy
Alexander, [audience laughter]. And I haven't said Kirsty Wark [audience
laughter]. At one stage our much missed compatriot, the marvellous David
[inaudible], it's good to see his son here today, nominated Mr al-Megrahi,
but legal complications have now arisen about fixing a date. [audience
laughter] One regret is that we never got to Robin Jenkins in time. He and
I were at school together and I thought [inaudible] he's gone. One way or
another we like to think it's a great institution as the yearly-growing
attendance testifies. Next year's may have to be held in Edinburgh Castle.
The twenty-fifth candidate has been selected simply because he attended the
same uncomprehensive school as Oliver Brown. And he wrote some good wee
books and did some good wee murals and drawings and things, you see I'm not
going to lionise him. [audience laughter] The Who's Who of two nations
carry formidable entries. Our own native one says he's an artist and
writer. The Angly one has him as a self-employed verbal and pictorial
artist. That sounds like Morag's assessment. Early teacher, theatrical
scene painter, TV playwright, seventeen perf- performances to date. What do
you do in your spare time? Four on stage, one-man exhibitions, Glasgow
University Writer-in-Residence, Consulting Professor of Creative Writing,
Oran Mor, un-Ubiquitous Chip mural decorator, Strathclyde University,
People's Palace work. A list of novels, short stories, Lean Tales, Sorry
Tales, most of which I know and a number of guests here have enjoyed,
broadcast pamphlets in Scottish self-government. The Scottish National
Library has a collection of unpublished [inaudible] and so on and so on and
so on. Personally, I'm too young to have read only some of his writing
[audience laughter], but Lanark twice. The second time brushed up in the
last month. He's been acclaimed in lavishly, justifiably lavish terms
across the globe for decades now, making comparisons with Sterne, Blake,
Dante, Joyce, Lewis Carroll, Scott, Arnold Bennett, Durrell, Orwell. For
me, it's clearly Kafka. Lanark is an unfinished, autobiographical thriller
like Kafka's America. Alasdair's is unfinished because he keeps adding
afterthoughts with each reprinting. And there's lots of years for many more
amendments and Calvinist repentances. [audience laughter] I got into
trouble when [inaudible] I got into trouble when I quoted some lines of
Norman MacCaig's when he was here, to prove that he was a closet
nationalist. He was going to quote them later himself for the same purpose
and he was pretty upset. [audience laughter] Alasdair is a self-employed
closet nationalist. Hundreds of quotations are available to prove that.
I've just found one, [inaudible] the best, which I'll now dare to use.
[quotation in German, possibly dialectal]. Wow, you all speak German? The
saltire, I- I'll translate that for people later. The Saltire Society, that
fundamentalist wing of the Liberal Democratic Party, pipped us in
acclaiming this quiet genius of our nation some time ago. Scots
Independent, the fundamentalist wing of the Scottish National Party, has
much pleasure now in adding our own tribute, by presenting him, have I even
got it here? Oh I have, with the Oliver Award, the decanter and the
wherewithal to keep it replenished. We're not going to lionise you, but
today we salute you, young man. [audience clapping]
M1182: Eh, can I talk without that? Erm
M1183: I don't know.
M1182: ermeh, [another speaker says 'yes, he can' ] oh yes, thanks.
[inaudible] [audience clapping] You will have f- you will have found beside
your plates, eh this rolled up poster. Erm it was my wife's idea, Morag
McAlpine. Eh she has [laugh] erm eh she's fifteen years younger than me and
eh became a Scottish Nationalist eh at the age of fifteen,
M1183: Well done.
M1182: em eh she eh she grew up in Dumbarton and her parents were
impeccable Scottish Labour Party supporters. Erm and eh and God knows why
em , it must have been just an instinct that she decided to become Scottish
Nationalist. Em I became a Scottish Nationalist well, sorry, I became keen
on a Scottish independent government myself at the age of seventeen. I w- I
was in Whitehill Senior Secondary School and I had taken History. And one
of my best friends, George Swan, had taken Geography. Now, how can you know
history if you don't know geography? Or vice versa. However, "We must
specialise", they said, eh and an- an- and eh and I was very bad at numbers
and I thought that Scotland was a very powerful part of the United Kingdom
of Britain. I mean, apart from Walter Scott and aw that, I mean, we had
Keir Hardie the founder of the Labour Party and wasn't the Labour Party the
dominant party in eh in Parliament? So, and then eh my friend pointed out,
because he'd taken Geography, that the the Scots representation in
Parliament was ten percent of the English representation and it immediately
struck me, if they're as wee as that, they can't control a countr- em em em
sorry. And otherwise, eh in other words, the Eng- the English are going to
be managing us and we can't manage ourselves.
M1183: Aye.
M1182: eh this, this em struck me as a straightforward ma- mathematical
explanation. It didn't lead me immediately to want to vote SNP because at
that at that time the Welfare State that the Attlee government had set up
eh as a result of the Beveridge Report was in full working order and eh I
believed, and I think rightly, that Britain had become an example to the
rest of the world! Em that is, em unlike the USSR we had constructed a
welfare state with- without getting a single-party dictatorship, and unlike
the United States of America we hadn't given over the govern- government of
our country to millionaires. [audience member coughs] Well of course things
have changed since then.
M1183: Aye.
M1182: Em, under Margaret Thatcher and since then, the government of
Britain by millionaires, the general notion that the whole f- world should
be governed by mill- millionaires oh eh sorry. I rave, I rave, I rave. eh I
didn't mean to. Em eh eh what happend was, Morag, my wife, em being an
earlier Scottish Nationalist eh em eh she went about collecting em all the
pamphlets she could find about Scottish Nationalism and eh and also all the
books she could find that that had been printed by em Bill MacLennan who
wasn't particularly a Scottish Nationalist
M1183: No.
M1182: um heh he would have been called I suppose a, a Douglas, what was
//the word for it?//
M1183: //Young.//
M1182: Douglas? Em, sorry I forget what the Douglas economic system.
M1183: Social Credit.
M1182: Ah yes. H- he was he was a surg- a a Douglas Social Credit Party
individual but he, he'd publish anybody. eh in, in Scotland, and eh he
published MacDiarmid's em The Kind of Poetry I Want. The em em he, he did
good things. In eh nineteen fifty-six, oh yes, sorry, Oliver Brown was a
teacher of French in eh Whitehill Senior Secondary School when I was there.
I eh was not in the French class. I was in the Latin class because in those
days you couldn't get in to Glasgow Univ- you couldn't get into Scottish
Universities unless you knew Latin, and eh and eh my parents were so keen
that I get into university that I took Latin though I hated the subject and
eh never learned it because my em my teachers didn't didn't regard Latin as
something you could enjoy reading! They thought it was something you needed
to pass exams on!
M1183: Hm.
M1182: Em and eh, sorry. The idea of learning a thing just because you
could pass exams on it, is so utterly stupid, that em eh em anyway,
nevermind. But but em Oliver Brown taught my sister French, and others, and
I've occasionally bumped into folk who found him a teacher, [glass gets
knocked over] sorry, and, and eh and thought he was a good teacher
M1183: Yes.
M1182: and em and a nice and a lovely man. He was, he taught French. He was
very keen on France. He thought that eh Scotland and France had em had
connections that by-passed England. And em em, however, one of Morag's
books was a MacLellan publication called a holib- a Holiday Book that came
out in eh nineteen fifty-six, and eh  it had a variety of things in it but
one was a set of letters call- eh essays called em How To Succeed.
Therefore you had How To Succeed as a Philosopher. The writer was a man
called Joad whom practically all of you will have forgotten. Or maybe not.
M1183: [audience chatter]
M1182: Em eh em eh, but em How, How To Succeed as a Crime Writer by John
Cheney and eh eh umpteen, but but there was How To Succeed as a Pamphleteer
by Oliver Brown. [audience laughter] I'm going to read it to you eh because
eh eh this has the covers of eh ten pamphlets that eh Oliver Brown wrote
between nineteen thirty and nineteen sixty-six. The covers were designed by
his wife, Margaret Macdonald and and they're tremendously good covers.
//They,//
M1183: //Yes.//
M1182: they almost explain the entire character of what's hap- what he's
talking about inside. But I shall read this How To Succeed as a Pamphleteer
or Mein Pampf!
M1183: [audience laughter]
M1182: And he s-, and he says, "All p- all all popular prap- propaganda
must contain that touch of virulence which resembles the drop of acid
whereby the wise bee seeks to preserve its honey. The pamphlet is
essentially a weapon of attack, presenting one aspect of a case with a view
to discrediting an opponent whose past must be examined and all his
weaknesses and inconsistencies noted as by a detective agency. For this
purpose the files of newspapers act as ancient rocks containing the marks
of prehistoric insects. To find some politician condemning in an opponent
some policy which he was later to adopt himself, and to convict him in his
own words gives that feeling of satisfaction felt by the entomologist who
pins a strange beetle to an exhibit card. [audience laughter] Let the
object of your attack be one capable of rou- rousing intense hostility on
the one hand and intense loyalty on the other. Between the fell insensed
points of mighty opposites." That's a quotation. "For man is as much more
emotional than [?]ratch-[/?], because man is much more emotional than
rational. Then become absorbed in your subject un- until it becomes a
temporary monomania. No-one objects to a bee in the bonnet provided it
produces some honey. [audience laughter] Having acquired a deep though not
necessarily wide knowledge of the subject, the pamphleteer must pepper his
matter so as to season it for palates already jaded through incessant
propoganda. To startle without injuring truth and to shock without
indecency should be his aim. Can he coin some original phrase on the model
of the expressive Americanism Chicagoril- em Chicagoril-, em Chicagorilla,
i.e. the telescoping of two words so to unite two ideas in one. Here are
some examples. The relationship of England and the USA, vasalliance.
[audience laughter] The "Make Germany pay" school of thought, eh
Vanzittartism. Eh sorry eh Vanzittart was er an English em aristocrat who
at the end of the Second World War thought that of course Germany should be
required to pay for all the damage that had happened to the to Europe eh
when Hitler was running it. Em, the anti-imperialist might sum up the
enemy, the seamy side of imperial expansion, in the words "Under the Union
Jacket". [audience laughter] The Scottish reaction to predominantly Cockney
character of the BBC is exactly summed up in the phrase "The
Anglo-Saxophone". [audience laughter] The muddle about Palestine eh the
British say the Arabs sold the same horse to both the Jews, th- to both the
Jews and the Arabs and then kept it to themselves should be summed up under
the title of "Palestine: the too-much promised land". [audience laughter]
Em em eh, this is nineteen fifty-six, by the by. The value of such
wisecracking to use an Americanism for the result of American influence is
two-fold. It lightens the style and serves as a mnemonic to the reader. A
crisp and forthright style is the first essential and of almost equal
importance is an invariable factual accuracy. One slip may ruin a whole
edition and lead to a libel action. Apart from this consideration a rep- a
reputation for dependability is essential if a pamphlet is to have any
serious influence. To decide what should be included in the pamphlet, or
rejected, depends on the possession of a sense of news values which may be
acquired by close study of a popular daily like The Express, eh to
counterbalance its influence the Manchester Guardian should be diligently
studied in order to develop a mature judgement and a sense of integrity.
[audience groan] If the pamphleteer, if the pamphleteer succeeds in in
supplying the dexterity of a tightrope walker, his pamphlets will be read
with interest by the man in the street, and quoted in the council chambers
by the expert. And instead of reflecting publish- public opinion it will
have the power of creating it. [audience applause]


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Information about document and author:

Audio
Audio audience
Adults (18+): Informed lay people: For gender: Mixed
Audience size: 100+

Audio awareness & spontaneity
Speaker awareness: Aware
Degree of spontaneity: Spontaneous
Special circumstances surrounding speech: Speech by Alasdair Gray is unscripted; introduction is partially scripted

Audio footage information
Year of recording: 2007
Recording person id: 1177
Size (min): 28
Size (mb): 106

Audio medium
Other: Speech to a gathering of people

Audio setting
Government/politics: Recording venue: Hotel
Geographic location of speech: Stirling

Audio relationship between recorder/interviewer and speakers
Professional relationship: Speakers knew each other: No

Audio transcription information
Transcriber id: 1177
Year of transcription: 2007
Year material recorded: 2007
Word count: 3213

Audio type
Lecture/talk, sermon, public address/speech: General description: Acceptance speech, preceded by an introduction


Participant
Participant details
Participant id: 1182
Gender: Male
Decade of birth: 1930
Educational attainment: College
Age left school: 17
Upbringing/religious beliefs: Agnostic
Occupation: Writer and painter
Place of birth: Glasgow
Region of birth: Glasgow
Birthplace CSD dialect area: Gsw
Country of birth: Scotland
Place of residence: Glasgow
Region of residence: Glasgow
Residence CSD dialect area: Gsw
Country of residence: Scotland
Father's occupation: soldier, box cutting machine operator, hostel manager
Father's place of birth: Glasgow
Father's region of birth: Glasgow
Father's birthplace CSD dialect area: Gsw
Father's country of birth: Scotland
Mother's occupation: shop assistant and then housewife
Mother's place of birth: Glasgow
Mother's region of birth: Glasgow
Mother's birthplace CSD dialect area: Gsw
Mother's country of birth: Scotland

Languages:
Language: English
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: at work and at home
Language: Scots
Speak: No
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: English with a Scots accent


Participant
Participant details
Participant id: 1183
Gender: Male
Decade of birth: 1930
Educational attainment: University
Age left school: 17
Occupation: Retired journalist and teacher
Place of birth: Glasgow
Region of birth: Glasgow
Birthplace CSD dialect area: Gsw
Country of birth: Scotland
Place of residence: Glasgow
Region of residence: Glasgow
Residence CSD dialect area: Gsw
Country of residence: Scotland
Father's occupation: Co-op manager
Father's place of birth: Glasgow
Father's region of birth: Glasgow
Father's birthplace CSD dialect area: Gsw
Father's country of birth: Scotland
Mother's occupation: Mother
Mother's place of birth: Glasgow
Mother's region of birth: Glasgow
Mother's birthplace CSD dialect area: Gsw
Mother's country of birth: Scotland

Languages:
Language: English
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: 
Language: French
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: No
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: at university
Language: German
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: No
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: at university
Language: Scots
Speak: No
Read: Yes
Write: No
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: