Spice to be Important but Important to be Spice:The Spice Girls:How Girl Power Changed Britain.

"It took five women to have the voice of one man in the nineties" - Jayne Middlemiss 

I remember the summer of 1996, primarily, for three things. (1) It was my first summer living in London and, being 27 years old, I took full advantage of that. (2) Euro '96:- Three Lions, Gazza's dentist chair celebration, thrashing the Netherlands 4-1, and, ultimately, losing (again) to Germany on penalties. (3) I started working at the Performing Rights Society. A company I would work for for twenty more years.

When I started the job I was worried I'd be in with some serious musos and that I'd really need to know my stuff musically (there were definitely some there but also some of the most ignorant about music people I have ever met in my life, I needn't have worried). Not just hip new sounds but oldies and even the current 'hit parade'.

Number one in the charts on the day I started at the society was a new band who'd caused quite a sensation. The Spice Girls Wannabe' had entered the charts at number three the week before and had climbed to number one, displacing Gary Barlow's dreary Forever Love and holding The Fugees' Killing Me Softly off the top spot.

It would stay there for a good few weeks, holding off challenges from Los Del Rio, Suede, Dodgy, and even big hitters like Michael Jackson, George Michael, and Robbie Williams. Even The Smurfs' I've Got A Little Puppy couldn't dislodge The Spice Girls. Eventually, Peter Andre's Flava knocked them off their perch but, that year, The Spice Girls had three of the best selling UK singles of the year.

I remember the time well - and it seems ridiculous that it is now over twenty-five years ago. I remember it being quite a (new) laddish time and one of the most popular conversation pieces was which of The Spice Girls you fancied the most. I think I triangulated between Geri, Victoria, and Emma. The no doubt devastated Mels didn't get a look in.

What's interesting about Channel 4's recent The Spice Girls:How Girl Power Changed Britain is looking back and realising how unelightened the times really were. Some of the stuff that was said, and done, by me as well as those in the public eye, is really quite cringe inducing now. We all thought we were so post-modern, hiding everything beneath a disappearingly thin veneer of irony, but, looking back at the time, we were, quite often, to put it simply, dicks.

As those close to the band tell the story of The Spice Girls and the times they operated in we also hear from the likes of Miranda Sawyer, Nadia Rose, Jayne Middlemiss, and Matthew Wright who were all, for better or worse, cultural figures of the time. This is padded out, rather well, with interviews with make up artists, Sun photographers, publicists, tour managers, Guardian journalists, and hair stylists and, between them all, they tell quite a remarkable story.

There are, of course, some utterly bizarre moments. Baby Spice stealing a homeless man's baseball cap outside St Pancras station, Nelson Mandela describing meeting the band as one of the greatest moments in his life, Geri kissing Prince Charles - probably not a big deal for a man who fantasises about being a tampon, and a clown being knocked over by a giant Milky Bar.

We get Elton John being Elton John (that sequinned stagecoach is never late), Simon Fuller and Simon Cowell drinking limoncello in Sophia Loren's house in Italy, and Mel B saying she hates Walkers crisps and prefers Wotsits.

We also get clips from Molly Dineen's depressing documentary about Geri's initial post-Spice Girls life and we get to see men (and other women) treating The Spice Girls viciously and inhumanely. Howard Stern conducts an interview with Emma, more than twenty years her junior, in which he creepily keeps going on about vibrators and we see Chris Evans, on TFI Friday, actually weighing Victoria live on air to see if she's anorexic.

Hardly the most scientific of methods. Add this to Trinny and Susannah's performative cruelty towards other women and Joan Rivers being a complete and utter cunt and you're left with the alarming realisation that Noel Clarke comes out of this era as a voice of reason. 

Disturbing. There is surprisingly little inclusion of actual Spice Girls music and the Union Jack dress, you may remember that, doesn't get a single mention which leads me to suspect that the whole venture is somewhat unofficial. To be honest, it's probably all the better for that. Though The Spice Girls are presented fairly and without malice, this could never be mistaken for a puff piece.

The story starts in 1994 with auditions for the movie version of Tank Girl. In attendance are 19 year old Victoria Adams and 21 year old Geri Halliwell (she was nowhere near as old as people like Noel Gallagher and Mark Lamarr cruelly joked at the time, although the programme makers don't mention her age as they do Victoria's).

Though neither of them land a role, they do both land another audition. This time with Chris Herbert who is looking to put together, more or less, a female version of Take That. Though one that's a bit more credible, a bit more 'street' to use the parlance of the era. 

There's not oo much time wasted on the getting the group together. Geri's in - blagging her place by sheer force of character, Victoria's in, Mel C's in, Mel B turns up and nonchalantly sings The Greatest Love of All and she's in. More interesting is how the auditions were scored. All the girls are marked between one and ten for various different things. They include dancing, singing, looks, and personality.

Victoria scores highest (7) on looks but lowest (5) on singing and personality and there's even, next to her name, a little remark - "NOT V.GOOD SKIN". 5/10 for the looks isn't so bad with these harsh judges. We see that many of the girls auditioned were given a mere 1/10 for how they looked.

Lianne Morgan, who shows up on the programme to tell her story - admirably free of bitterness, gets picked for the band and then, almost instantly, dropped. She's not quite right. She looks a bit too old. She's replaced by someone who doesn't have that problem. Emma Bunton. Baby Spice.

The Spice Girls are complete and soon it's all group hugs, vest tops, and teddy bears. A very innocent looking time. Songwriters and producers are called in but the five girls, already, seem very sure of themselves, very devoted, and very much eager to take as much control of their own career as possible.

Which wasn't particularly the plan for them. Geri, particularly, is ambitious and impatient with her ambition. She wanted a castle with a swimming pool that has an island in the middle and she started to wonder if they really needed Chris Herbert, if he'd be able to make true her dreams. So once she's persuaded the rest of the band they do a bunk and sign a deal with smug faced Simon Fuller.

Fuller's far better known and far more successful than Herbert and soon Virgin win the battle of the labels to sign The Spice Girls. They release Wannabe as their debut single and it goes to number one in thirty-seven different countries. It really does appear to happen that easily.

When their first album, Spice, comes out a couple of months later it becomes the biggest selling girl group long player in history and that year they turn on the Oxford Street Xmas lights while having the first of what would become three consecutive Christmas number one singles with 2 Become 1.

This all takes places against the backdrop of a laddish decade of supposedly ironic misogyny and sexism:- Loaded, FHM, Fantasty Football League, and TFI Friday. The Spice Girls have, thus far, hardly been taken as even a remotely political proposition so it's, in retrospect, a surprise when they take a slogan from the name of a fanzine by American riot grrrl band Bikini Kill and start shouting, somewhat vaguely and at every available opportunity, 'GIRL POWER'.

This stance, to me, at the time, sat at odds with The Spice Girls proudly announcing themselves as a brand. They launched Channel 5, they did a deal with Asda, they advertisted Pepsi, they advertisted crisps, and you could buy dolls of the band, kaleidoscopes, and all manner of tat. In 1997 they earned £50,000,000 and became a commodity but, in doing so, generated six times that figure in sponsorship.

This Thatcherite love of purchase power and wealth sat, for many, uneasily with the claims to being female role models but, in retrospect, there's no reason why that should have been the case. There's nothing wrong with using sex to sell a product when it's on your own terms. When The Spice Girls arrive, perhaps unwisely in hindsight dressed as school girls for a Polaroid shoot, Geri tells lecherous observes they "should know better" than to shout lewd comments and Mel B, quite simply, advises them to "fuck off".

Admirably, they refused to be shamed, not least by those lusting after them, and were sexy when they wanted to be, not when somebody told them to be. At least that's how it seems to me. Certainly by the standards of mainstream pop and the standards of the nineties. 

By the end of 1997, now having had their first six singles and first two albums all go to number one, the stress of the workload was starting to show. Both on The Spice Girls and on Simon Fuller who they promptly dropped. Now that really was girl power.

At least if you ignore the rumour that he was having a relationship with Emma Bunton. Fuller seemed to think the end was nigh for The Spice Girls anyway and set about putting together S Club 7 with the aim of them taking over as the next big shiny pop thing.

The backlash, and the critics had been fierce anyway, certainly got stronger. Tabloids started pitting the band members against each other but the girls remained defiant that they were BFFs, Fans in Barcelona booed the band for 'prima donna antics', unlikely bedfellows like Matthew Wright and Shirley Manson from Garbage piled on, and they were even labelled the 'anti-christ'.

It got very personal and very unpleasant in a way which we'd, hopefully, call out now. It was suggested that Emma and Geri were getting too fat and on They Think It's All Over, a show that remains unlamented, Frank Skinner and the awful Rory McGrath suggested Mel C and Geri were both men. Geri, of course, got the worst of it. 

To the degree that she felt the need to take a break from the band and then, after that, to leave the band completely. Fans cried and accused her of "letting the whole country down" (!) and though, in public and during performances on Parkinson's woeful chat show, she appeared confident it seems that in private she was lonely, vulnerable, and struggling.

Even hurt by the fact that not only were The Spice Girls continuing on without her but that they were thriving. With Geri gone, Victoria became the main focus. Helped by the fact that she was in a relationship with England's, possibly the world's, most famous footballer.

Posh'n'Becks became a tabloid obsession and Piers Morgan, a cunt if you've ever seen one, labelled Victoria the "new Queen"! She was held to such a high standard that when she had her first child, Brooklyn, in 1999 she was, by some, accused of encouraging teenage pregnancy.

Victoria Beckham was twenty-four years old and happily married. Around the same time Mel B, aged 23, gave birth to her first child and she, too, was accused of the same. In reality, what had happened was something perfectly normal for all friendship groups. They got into relationships, had children, and drifted apart.

That doesn't mean friendships have to end. They may lose some of their youthful intensity but they simply remould themselves to the circumstances, they adapt. In 1999 Geri kicked off her solo career and it started with four UK number one singles in a row. Though The Spice Girls were still, officially, together many of the others began releasing solo stuff too and Mel C did the best while, at the same time, feeding off impertinent questions about her sexuality from no less an authority than Richard Madeley.

Mel C played at the V festival in '99, along with Suede, Manic Street Preachers, Massive Attack, Orbital, and James Brown, which was assessed as quite a gamble as she wasn't deemed as cool as any of those acts. Most observers would agree that Mel C had the best voice of all The Spice Girls but listening back it seems to me that the most enjoyable solo effort was, surprisingly, Emma Bunton and Tin Tin Out's version of Edie Brickell's What I Am.

A record I had completely forgotten had ever existed. In the new millennium, The Spice Girls released their third album, Forever, and, astonishingly, it only reached number two. Held off the top spot by the chart monsters that were Westlife. The brickbats commenced again. Victoria, and even her infant son Brooklyn, both received death threats.

On that occasion, it seemed, it hurt them more than before. Partly because, by 2000, the feeling of being in a gang, that strength in numbers thing, seemed to have gone. The band unceremoniously called it day yet the Beckhams continued to become more and more famous. In 2003 when David moved from Man Utd to Real Madrid and took the family to Spain, Victoria became ever more the target and we witness one particularly unpleasant incident where the Evening Standard's stuck up former arts correspondent Brian Sewell calls her a "common little bitch" on television.

The 2000s seemed to be even worse for women in the public eye than the nineties. It's a decade of upskirting and the era of hounding women from Jade Goody to Amy Winehouse. The fact the last two both died almost incidental.

So when, in 2004, it was alleged that David Beckham had had an affair with Rebecca Loos guess who's fault it was? Well, obviously Victoria had not been able to 'satisfy' her errant husband. Mel B got so sick of the racist hate mail she'd received at her new home in Buckinghamshire that she upped sticks and moved to California where, and somehow I'd totally forgotten this ever happened, she started dating Eddie Murphy.

It didn't end well when the Beverly Hills Cop and Norbit star denied he was the father of their baby. A montage of the most powerful men of the era (Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Max Clifford, and Simon Cowell) may lay it on a bit thick but compare the easy ride they were receiving at the time with the way women were getting treated.

Emma was given hassle for having kids, Mel C was given hassle for not having kids, and poor Geri seemed to be falling ever deeper into her loneliness and despair. It seemed it was pretty much all over for The Spice Girls but, as we know, that's not quite how the story ends. There was a coda, an encore, or two and, most likely, there will be a couple more.

In June 2007, introduced by Richard E Grant, all five Spice Girls are back on stage together for the first time since Geri's departure and, in 2012, there's another full band reunion - at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. Although that, at least so far, appears to be the last time all five of them performed together.

Mel B's reality show, It's A Scary World, and her second place finish on Dancing With the Stars (beaten by the Brazilian racing car driver Helio Castroneves - no, me neither) are not enough for her to leave The Spice Girls but Victoria Beckham's 'brand' takes off in such a way that her time with The Spice Girls is over.

It seems likely she's just moved on and when they reform in 2018 it's without Victoria. As a story still ongoing fizzles out we hear of Mel B being hospitalised after being beaten by her new husband Stephen Belafonte (an allegation he denies) and we see Geri Halliwell marry the principal of the Red Bull F1 team Christian Horner. Emma and Mel C's stories are left hanging and the whole programme ends with a whimper rather than a bang which, all things considered, seems perfectly apt for The Spice Girls career. One that began with much more noise than it ended.

I don't know if The Spice Girls changed the world, or even Britain, but they were certainly around at the time the world was changing and not always for the better. They're definitely an interesting prism to view those changes through but I do think, in some way, they contributed to the debate and though most of their records, Wannabe perhaps an exception, were pretty forgettable, as a band, and as a sensation, they were anything but. Perhaps more than anything, with the benefit of hindsight, they were just a really nice bunch of people having a good time and, apologies for this term, living their best lives and enabling and empowering a generation of young girls to do the same. What's wrong with that, Brian Sewell?

Fleapit revisited:All The President's Men.

"Follow the money" - Deep Throat

Grainy footage from June 1972 sees President Richard Nixon addressing the House of Representatives, Congress, and the people of the United States of America. Further grainy footage, this time from August 1974, sees the same man resigning in disgrace.

Other than that, Richard Nixon does not appear once in Alan J Pakula's 1976 film All The President's Men (recently shown on BBC1 and still available on iPlayer). He's barely even mentioned yet his malignant influence casts a long dark shadow right across a film that grows increasingly tense and paranoid as investigations into a break in at the offices of the Democratic party HQ in Washington DC, in a place you may have heard mentioned - the Watergate complex, unravel to reveal the extent of wrongdoing that has taken place under his administration.

Interestingly, it's not the police so much as journalists who perform this investigation and are, ultimately, the heroes of the day. Following the break in, carried out - noticeably - by men in suits, rookie Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) is assigned to the case. 

When the thieves are revealed to have been carrying bugging equipment, when it becomes known they are being represented by a high level 'country club' lawyer, and when it emerges they all have personal links with the CIA it sets Woodward (soon joined by Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), a slightly more experienced journalist) on to a chain of discoveries that will shock America and lead the entire country into a time of sadness and paranoia.

As Woodward and Bernstein go assiduously and honestly about their work they run up against people who change their stories - often within seconds, people who deny knowing other people who they clearly know well, and are met with hostility and suspicion. Doors, quite regularly, are slammed in their face.

Why does Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook) speak in riddles and communicate using strategically positioned flags on balconies and what have CREEP (the Committe to Re-Elect the President) got to do with it all, if anything? Especially as Nixon is an overwhelming favourite to trounce the Democratic candidate George McGovern.

Which, in November of '72 he does. By winning forty-nine states in the US election - every one except Massachusetts. As Woodward and Bernstein meticulously pick apart piles upon piles of potential evidence the picture starts to become clearer and more concerning but some at The Washington Post still think it's a minor interest story.

Although, as the story grows, some of the older pressmen and managers, men like Howard Simons (Martin Balsam) and Harry M. Rosenfeld (Jack Warden), want to take the scoop off of Woodward and Bernstein and the New York Times starts competing with the Washington Post to break the story. While, at the same time, all involved fret about the dangers of being painted as anti-American or unpatriotic.

It's a world of busy newsrooms, jotters full of doodles and scribbles, messy desks, noisy typewriters, cigarettes, Ritz crackers, brown suits, and flares and when they leave the office they seem to spend as much time hanging around in underground car parks and driving around dark Washington streets with headlights shining as they do drinking coffee and interviewing people of interest.

The story doubles back on parts of recent, at the time, American political history (Eisenhower, the Chappaquiddick incident, Henry Kissinger, Edmund Muskie and the Canuck letter) and even ropes in those regular American bete-noires the Cubans and the Mexicans before racing forward with revelations about huge slush funds and 'ratfucking' campaigns.

The supporting cast are solid, shout outs to Jason Robards as the Post's executive editor Ben Bradlee, Stephen Collins as former CREEP treasurer Hugh W. Sloan Jr, and Robert Walden as Donald Segretti, a kind of proto-Cummings political operative who has worked as part of Nixon's team, but most credit should go to Redford and Hoffman who are barely off the screen for the entire two hour plus run time.

They make for a cool pair. There's just enough professional rivalry to bring tension but there's enough respect for each other to get results. Redford's Woodward is debonair and does things by the book.Hoffman's Bernstein is louche, employs more of a maverick approach, and is fond of a burn.

But in the world of seventies US politics it is the public's trust that is being burnt. All The President's Men shows how the power held by political leaders can dictate the circumstances, dictate the narrative, and dictate the mood of the nation. It shows when mendacious and dishonest people reach those positions of power the damage is almost total. It was a lesson the USA had to learn hard in the seventies and it's a lesson the USA has had to learn again recently. It's one we in the UK are learning now too.

The Lord of the Dance:Poussin & the Dance @ the National Gallery.

Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) was, until the last century or so, widely regarded as the greatest French artist ever. Until, that is, Edouard Manet, the Impressionists, the Post-Impressionists, and the Cubists came along and changed the story of French, and global, art forever.

But Nicolas Poussin, to our modern eyes at least, can sometimes come across as a bit stuffy, a bit formal, a bit still, and a bit austere. His work is easy to admire, it's hugely accomplished and he makes wonderful use of colour, but it's more difficult to get excited about.

With Poussin, the shock of the old, it seems, has gone. The National Gallery, with their current exhibition - Poussin & the Dance, are trying to redress that balance. Not least on the accusation of stillness. Though the curators, and an accompanying film, make it clear that Poussin did become very much an establishment painter in his later years, the idea here is to balance that out by proving that the younger, it's all relative, Poussin was a painter of motion, a painter of movement, and a painter of dance.

 The Adoration of the Golden Calf (1633-4)

Though, in my opinion, they haven't fully succeeded - they have made a decent fist of it. As well as telling some of Poussin's story. How the Normandy painter yearned to be among, and to be compared to, the Renaissance and ancient wonders of Rome and how, at the age of twenty-nine, he made that happen.

Rome was, to Poussin, a seventh heaven and he soon set about obsessively studying the antiquities he was surrounded by. Some of those which most fascinated him were the ones that show bodies twisted, contorted even, in dance. Or even in ecstatic supplication in front of no lesser deity than the Golden Calf, a substitute God for those who believed that God had abandoned them.

Poussin's academic reputation did not stop pioneers and mavericks ranging from Paul Cezanne to Pablo Picasso to Francis Bacon admiring his work but it is, perhaps, their forays into modernism that have left Poussin's work looking a little too classicist for a 21st, 20th even, century audience.

Dancing Votary of Bacchus (about 1635)

I was hoping Poussin & the Dance would educate me as to why that is and possibly even correct me in some way. It didn't quite do that and I was left with the overall impression that Poussin was, of course, a brilliant painter who made hugely important work but, also, that he was in many ways a painter of his time.

He was unable to fully celebrate the wild excesses of the drunken bacchanal without placing them in the context of a classical lineage and while Titian is the most obvious influence he is clearly in hock to many other greats of the Italian Renaissance. The bridge that is being suggested was built, by Poussin, between them and modernism is not a sturdy one. There are many many more artists that are required for that journey to be taken safely and surely and Poussin, to me, is merely a small step in that direction.

The major artworks are padded out with some useful preliminary sketches where you can see how Poussin experimented in finding his way forward when it came to incorporating movement into his work. There are satyrs dancing on wineskins (inspired by Virgil's the Georgics) and there is a rather camp dancing votary of Bacchus but, interesting though these are, you can't help but find your attention wander to the larger, more colourful, and fuller paintings.

Satyrs Dancing on a Wineskin (about 1636)

The Realm of Flora sees the goddess of flowers and spring dancing in what's described as a 'human garden' and is later revealed to be a garden where the humans transform into flowers. You can definitely see in it Poussin capturing the feel of movement, of dance, and of transformation but, again, he is unable to leave the classical world behind. Both Narcissus and Hyacinth feature.

The Realm of Flora (1630-1)

Study for the Abduction of the Sabine Women (about 1633)

There's some stuff about Poussin's use of wax figurines that didn't detain me long and then a bit about how Poussin became obsessed with emulating The Borghese Dancers, a 2nd century relief then housed at the Villa Borghese (it was in the exhibition and there's a photo below) which contained much of what would go on to make up his paintings of this era.

Antique statues, jugs of wine, and dancers (of course) all set out among ancient and idyllic looking glades. You can see a prime example of a few nubile youngsters busting moves and on the edge of getting it on in front a slightly demonic looking statue in A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term. A Term not, in this instance, being a fixed period of time but a pillar in the shape of a human head and bust.

A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term (about 1632-3)

Roman Sculptor - Relief with Five Dancers before a Portico ('The Borghese Dancers') (2c)

Attic Workshop - Krater with a Procession of Dionysus ('The Borghese Vase') (1c BC)

Bacchanal (about 1635)

The Triumph of Silenus (about 1636)

The Triumph of Bacchus (1635-6)

In his series of Triumphs, Bacchus, Silenus, and Pan all feature, Poussin has incorporated motifs from ancient vases (Silenus) and shows orgiastic happenings in which these gods appear only too human. The pot bellied Silenus, the tutor and companion of Bacchus, drunkenly stretches a leg over a tiger in an image that also includes people crashed out from overdoing it and the punishment of an amorous donkey.

Later, Bacchus himself can be found overseeing the riotous and rowdy goings on from his chariot. Approvingly one assumes. There are trumpets, there are tambourines, there are panpipes, and there are, of course, satyrs. That chariot's never late. 

Where Bacchus' triumph reads almost frieze like from one side of the painting to the other, that of Pan is more like a static image. Commissioned by Cardinal de Richelieu, Chief Minister of Louis XIII, in 1635 (so they've bunged in a portrait of him from time), it shows a group of drunken and scantily clad 'merrymakers' in the very act of making that merry in some woods. Seductions are carried out beneath golden horned statues but, as ever, Poussin always makes sure that there is erudition amongst the erotica. The spent wine jars in the foreground are designed to look like respected Roman antiquities.

The Triumph of Pan (1636)

Philippe de Champaigne and studio - Triple Portrait of Cardinal de Richelieu (probably 1642)

You'd call it sacrilege if it wasn't oh so tastefully done. All of which leads us up to the pinnacle of the exhibition. Which comes with A Dance to the Music of Time which has been borrowed from the Wallace Collection. As the Wallace Collection is only about a mile's walk away and is perfectly easy to visit I found it hard to understand why this was such a big deal!

We learn how Poussin, once in Rome, only ever returned once to France and we then learn how to 'read' A Dance to the Music of Time. The four dancers represent both the seasons and the constantly changing states of human fortune. In green, with his back to us, is Poverty. In a simple orange gown we find Labour, with golden sandals and pearls in her hair Wealth is a show off, and in blue with a floral crown Pleasure is having a hell of a time presumably unaware that Poverty is just round the corner. They all spin round to the music of Time's lyre and overseeing the whole scene is the sun god Apollo, Dawn (scattering flowers), and the Hours (dancing too). It was a neat way to end the exhibition and it was, the Golden Calf aside - who doesn't love a Golden Calf, my favourite painting there. Not least because it was explained to me what it all meant. It had been a good, rather than a great, experience for me.

By the end of the 1630s, Poussin left behind these dancers and parties forever, grew up, and became boring. Like we all must do. After I'd seen A Dance to the Music of Time I went home, started coughing, and went to bed. The next morning I woke up and went for a PCR test which revealed, as suspected, I'd contracted Covid somewhere along the way. It's fair to say Poussin and I took different paths. But luckily I'm recovering at the moment and I my dance to the music of time is not over yet.

A Dance to the Music of Time (about 1634)

Fleapit revisited:The Manchurian Candidate.

When Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) returns to America from active service in the Korean War in 1952 he is flown directly to Washington and personally decorated with the Medal of Honor by the President (presumably Harry S. Truman, though this is not stated) as crowds of cheering onlookers wave flags and celebrate.

His commanding officer, Major Bennett 'Ben' Marco (Frank Sinatra), describes Shaw as "the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being" he's ever known and all of Shaw's men seem to concur, a little too closely, with this appraisal. But not all is well in Shaw's life and that becomes apparent very quickly in 1962's The Manchurian Candidate (the John Frankenheimer cold war thriller, based on a book by Richard Condon, was shown recently on BBC2 and I caught up on the iPlayer).

There is clear tension between Shaw and his mother Eleanor (Angela Lansbury) and outright contempt towards her partner, his stepfather, Senator John Iserlin (James Gregory plays the morally bankrupt senator with a self-serving sneer worthy of Richard Nixon and that surely can't be an accident). 

Iserlin is eager to use Shaw's popularity to boost his chances in an upcoming election but Shaw considers Iserlin to be a "vile, slandering, son of a numbskull" and soon departs for New York where he takes a job as a journalist under the wing of eccentric newspaper baron (he wears a bed jerkin for night time chess games) Holborn Gaines (Lloyd Corrigan).

Gaines, also, is no fan of Iserlin and the hatred is mutual. Eleanor considers Gaines to be a Communist and in her world, and in much of America of the 1950s, there is no worse thing to be. Senator Iserlin is dead set on exposing the Commies who have infiltrated American institutions even if he's not got any idea of who they are. Perhaps that explains Ben Marco's recurring nightmare. 

Marco is plagued nightly by dreams that he has been brainwashed by Chinese and Soviet Communists into believing he's attending a meeting of lady gardeners in New Jersey when in fact he is being paraded in front of rows of high ranking reds in front of large posters of Mao and Stalin. In the dream, Shaw is made to strangle one colleague to death and shoot another in the forehead.

One of Shaw's men, Corporal Allen Melvin (James Edwards), keeps having the same dream too. Which suggests something more is going on, and when Shaw is knocked down by a hit and run driver and wakes up in what appears to be some kind of Soviet controlled institution and starts speaking, and acting, even more robotically than before it seems that Shaw has, indeed, been brainwashed.

When Dr Yen Lo (Khigh Dheigh) arrives at the scene of Shaw's convalescence he explains to his Soviet counterpart Zilkov (Albert Paulsen), who is looking after the patient, that Shaw has had all of his guilt and fear removed by brainwashing and is now, himself, a useful and lethal Communist agent. But is this the truth? And if it is what will those in charge of Shaw make him do? What do they want from him and what other Americans are working against, rather than with, the US alongside Shaw?

It falls to Marco to find out but will he find out more than he bargained for? Sinatra is brilliant as Marco. He smokes, he drinks, he sweats, he falls in love (ridiculously easily) with the beautiful Rosie (Janet Leigh) on a train and he has a huge passion for both culture and knowledge. I think I like Frank Sinatra as an actor more than I do a singer.

Lansbury's excellent too. At ninety-six years old she's still with us and here she plays the role of Shaw's manipulative and domineering mother to perfection in a film that goes in heavier on intellect than it does raw emotion but still packs quite a punch as it explores issues of paranoia, homeland security, impeachment, patriotism, exploitation of patriotism, mind control, and solitaire.

The Manchurian Candidate also, very pertinently, shows how extremist beliefs on both sides of the political debate so often come together to crush those in the centre and to defeat the vast, and kind, majority of mankind that choose to live out their lives not demarcated by red lines and absolute moral truths.

Where the film falls down, perhaps understandably considering the era in which it was made, is in its handling of racial subtleties. Most of the actors playing the Koreans and the Chinese are clearly anything but (Khigh Deigh is an Anglo-Egyptian-Sudanese actor born in New Jersey and Henry Silva who plays Chunjin, Shaw's valet, is a Brooklyn born actor of Spanish and Sicilian descent).

That aside, the film holds up pretty well and, in some ways, has possibly improved over time. The constant reference to Iserlin as an 'idiot' doesn't look so strange in an era where Trump was able to become President and when Eleanor suggests the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) is part of a Communist conspiracy to take over the USA she's not too far from espousing an early version of QAnon's hate fuelled bullshit.

There are some beautiful shots of New York's Central Park in winter time, an unobtrusive but impressive score by Philadelphia jazz man David Amram, and great cameos from John MacGiver as Senator Thomas Jordan (Iserlin's nemesis) and Leslie Parrish as his daughter Jocelyn whom Shaw falls in love with when she nurses him after he's bitten by a snake.

The necessary, and very much of its time, voice over exposition is never too clunky nor is it intrusive and as the story speeds towards its final set piece you have a good idea, but are never quite certain, where it is going. That's the nature of these paranoia inducing cold war thrillers. After seeing The Manchurian Candidate there's a chance you'll never look at the Queen of Diamonds in the same way ever again.