LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Vivian Stanshall: Rawlinson End
built 383 days ago
The phrase is one coined by Vivian Stanshall, poet, jazzist, artist and film-maker. It's buried in the script for 'Sir Henry at Rawlinson End': the fine film featuring Trevor Howard and Stanshall himself - although the first incarnation was on Radio 1 in the U.K. on the late-lamented John Peel's BBC Radio 1 programme 'Top Gear' in the 1970s. The floating plum pudding suitably obscures the traditional Santa's face in the way of Rene Magritte's paintings. (See another homage to this here.) It is said that the young Magritte's mother drowned and was found with her nightdress over her face. This nightmarish image recurrs in many paintings including the men with the bowler hats and the couple embracing, both their faces covered in cloth.
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Stanshall was born Victor Anthony Stanshall at the Radcliffe Maternity Home in Oxford on 21st March 1943. Originally from Walthamstow - a suburb on the borders of East London and Essex - his mother Eileen had moved to Shillingford, Oxfordshire during the Second World War to escape the bombing, and lived there happily with her son while her husband Victor (a name he had adopted in preference to his christened name of Vivian) served in the RAF. With the end of war, the family moved back to Walthamstow and his father returned.
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Stanshall was found dead on 6 March 1995, after a fire at his Muswell Hill (north London) flat; coincidentally, this was one hundred years to the day after the death of (the original) Sir Henry Rawlinson. Though Stanshall often smoked and drank in bed and even set fire to his long ginger beard, to the frequent concern of his friends, the coroner found that the fire was caused by faulty wiring near his bed.
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After the Bonzo's split Vivian approached John Walters about doing some sessions for the John Peel show on BBC Radio 1. After his experiences with Viv producing 4 shows while Peel was taking an alcoholiday, he agreed if it were an expansion on the Rawlinson End thinking that he could better control session if no other artists were involved. Viv agreed, John thought he had him, he hadn't.
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Sir Henry at Rawlinson End was the creation of Vivian Stanshall, founder of the 1960’s Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. Conceived as a radio serial on the John Peel Show it evolved into a stage play, book, record album and film. The film was produced in 1980 by Tony Stratton Smith whose Charisma Records was a key player in the music industry in the 60’s and 70’s.
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While living on the Searchlight, Stanshall composed and recorded Teddy Boys Don't Knit, and wrote and recorded Sir Henry at Rawlinson End. There, he ... wrote and filmed the film of the same name for Tony Stratton-Smith's Charisma Records company. At the same time, he co-wrote with Steve Winwood the songs for Winwood's Arc of a Diver and wrote many of the songs he later used for Stinkfoot, the musical comedy he wrote with his second wife, Ki Longfellow-Stanshall.
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