Page 25life
him up in
black skin, add
a touch of blue
blood, and a little
bitty bit of Red Indian
boy. Curly Latin kinkies,
mixed with yellow Chinkees,
You know you lump it alto-
gether, and you’ve got a recipe for
a get-along scene. Oh what a
beautiful dream, if it could only
come true, you know, you know.’
All very idealistic, but immigra-
tion was a touchy subject in 1969
Britain. Enoch Powell’s notorious
‘rivers of blood’ speech had beenmade only 18 months before the
release of Melting Pot. Although
the initial outcry over the West
Indian Windrush arrivals hadsoftened by the late 1960s, there
were concerns at the numbers
coming from India and Pakistan.
Within two years they were to beswollen by another
50,000 Gujarati
Indians expelled from
Uganda by dictator Idi
Amin. Culturally, 1969 was a
crossroads. The summer of
love and the hippy movement
were ending in an orgy of violence.
A Rolling Stones concert in
Altamont, California, ended in a
riot with one fan stabbed to death
by Hells Angels bikers who had
been hired to provide security,
while in Los Angeles, the Manson
gang murdered a pregnant Sharon
Tate and four other adults. Back
home, The Beatles were driftingapart — Paul had married Linda
while John and Yoko had turned
their ‘bed-in’ for peace honeymoon
into an anti-Vietnam war protest.
Musically, the Stones and Beatles
dominated the charts but Motown
was also sweeping the country. So
perhaps the idea that we could
iron out racial differences through
music wasn’t so crazy after all.
At the time, Blue Mink’s sound
was described as ‘white soul’.
For her part, Madeline said of the
lyrics: ‘They have caught the mood
of the moment, I suppose. They
were meant to be tongue-in-cheek,
but a lot of people are taking them
seriously. Obviously, the idea of
mixing up all colours, races and
religions is quite ridiculous.
‘And even if we were all green
with blue hair we’d still find some-
thing to argue about.’
For the band, which had
taken its name from a breed of
Tonkinese cat, it was the start
of five years of pop fame.
Blue Mink had successful singles
including Good Morning Freedom,
The Banner Man, Stay With Me
and Randy, only to split in 1974
when the hits dried up. Elton John
announced them on stage for their
final appearance in America.B
UT it was not the end of
the story for the band
members. Madeline
continued to be hugely in
demand and sang on the
soundtracks of films A Touch Of
Class and The Last Tycoon.
In the 1980s, she was the voice
behind advertising jingles for
British Gas and Brooke Bond tea.
Now 77, in recent years she has
lived in Spain.
Two of Blue Mink are dead,
founder Roger Coulam and drum-
mer Barry Morgan, who owned the
studios in north-west London
where Melting Pot was recorded.
Alan Parker, at 75, the youngest
surviving member of the band, is
still playing the guitar.
Roger Cook, a former plasterer’s
mate from Bristol, who wrote a
string of hits for stars including
Cliff Richard, Cilla Black, Gene
Pitney and Andy Williams, is now
based in Nashville.
Herbie, who co-wrote Dad’s Army
star Clive Dunn’s No 1, Grandad, is
also still playing music.
Reflecting on the Blue Mink row,
he smiles: ‘I am glad to be a bit of
a mischief maker, but you would
have thought the world had got
bigger fish to fry than this.’WHEN ALL THIS SMUT AND GORE ISN’T BANNED
HIPPY DREAM
Daily Mail, Thursday, August 29, 2019Vulgar: Love Island love-inwithin the same Ofcom report
that criticised Gold are a handful
of more serious complaints, many
of which it doesn’t act on. The
notoriously Left-wing Channel 4
News, for instance, attracted a
remarkable 17 complaints foralleged bias in its news coverage
in just one month.
That in itself isn’t too surprising.
Just this week, its supposedly
impartial news chief publicly
claimed that our Prime Minister is
a ‘known liar’. Yet, despite
Channel 4’s partisan behaviour,
Ofcom has decided the 17
complaints ‘did not raise issues
warranting investigation’.
Other proof of Ofcom’s warped
priorities has been in plain sight
for years. It refused to take action
against ITV after Britain’s Got
Talent judge Amanda Holden
screamed ‘f***’ live on air. Her
plunging outfits have alsoattracted complaints from
viewers of the family show.
Meanwhile, the notoriously
tacky reality show Love Island has
become ever more vulgar, with
ITV’s prurient cameras eagerly
zooming in on groups of shallow
Instagrammers trying to get into
bed with each other.
This summer, Ofcom received
more than 700 complaints about
just one incident — when a female
contestant appeared to sexually
harass another contestant — but
decided that it didn’t breach
‘generally accepted standards’.
Even Ofcom’s most liberal
defender must admit somethingis skewed when it censures
flower-power warblings but
allows publicly funded BBC radio
to inflict violent ‘drill rap’ on
listeners over the airwaves.
Gang crime in London is spiral-
ling and the relationship between
violence and drill music, with its
endless paeans to guns, knives
and gang-murder, is well-known.
There have been at least 90 mur-
ders in the capital so far this year.
Then there’s Peaky Blinders.
Even the BBC’s own website boasts
that the drama is ‘drenched in
guts and gore’. In the first two
episodes of the current fifth series
alone, it boasts that viewers canenjoy ‘an assassination, an
ambush, a bloody beating and a
gruesome crucifixion’ by the
fascist Billy Boys gang.
The Beeb admits that it ‘walks a
very fine line between examining
violence and glorifying it’, but
goes on to suggest that the show
really has a high-minded concern
with ‘the price violence might
extract from a person’s soul’.
Really? That’s not how many of
the show’s fans see it. ‘Can’t wait
for Tommy Shelby to murder
every single one of the Billy Boys,’
ran the excited tweet of one
expectant viewer.
Ofcom should properly concern
itself with shockers like this,
instead of searching for offence in
harmless — and rather catchy —
50-year-old pop songs.Controversy: Blue
Mink on TV at the
height of their famePicture: TONY
RUSSELL/REDFERNS