In The Window - 80 - Vivian Stanshall

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01. The Early Years aka Crank (BBC2 The Late Show) (16:40)

Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead

02. afoju ti ole riran (7:50)

03. truck track (3:55)

04. yelp bellow rasp et cetera (4:49)

05. prong (1:03)

06. redeye (5:16)

07. how the zebra got his spots (4:53)

08. dwarf succulents (2:11)

09. bout of sobriety (2:45)

10. prong and toots go steady (1:53)

11. strange tongues (6:24)

Vivian Stanshall (born Victor Anthony Stanshall) 21 March 1943 - 5 March 1995

Neil Innes said of their first meeting: "We first met in a big Irish pub in South London, the New Cross Arms. He was quite plump in those days, and he was wearing Billy Bunter check trousers, a Victorian frock coat, black coat tails, horrible little oval, violet-tinted pince-nez glasses, he had a euphonium under his arm, and large rubber false ears. And I thought, well, this is an interesting character."

From an interview by Tom Hibbert :-

"A cup of char, old bean?" enquires a voice that’s plummy and fruity, rich in Olde Englishe (circa 1930s) charm. The libation-profferer is a gentleman in his middle forties; he has ginger whiskers and a gleaming pate, and is clothed in the trappings of English eccentricity: red shoes, garish dressing gown and a cravat - creation festooned with polka dots and orangery. He puffs upon a cigarillo as he tempts you with the many fine and exotic blends of tea at his disposal. He is the kind of cove, one thinks, who should be tugging languidly upon a fraying bell-cord to summon an ancient and devoted manservant to toast muffins at the hearth of some vast and dilapidated country pile. He seems, at first sight and sound, like some anomalous Wodehousian relic, untouched by time as he proposes "a cup of char, old bean?" with no hint of irony in the endearment.

Vivian Stanshall does not remember an awful lot else about the 1970s.”I was taking so many tranquillisers I wasn't really there. I was absolutely anaesthetised with tranquillisers, augmented with drink. I was taking as many as 300 tranquillisers a day - and that would fell an office building. So when I started making a recovery from it all, which wasn't until 1986, it was as though 10 years and more had been edited out of my life. It still comes as a shock looking in the mirror and seeing this bald old coot looking back at me. I don't feel like that bald old coot at all, old bean. So it's always quite a surprise when I peruse the looking glass. It's as though it's someone else I'm inhabiting.