Scouse Mouse by George Melly
This episode was recorded in the great city of Liverpool and celebrates the life and work of a great Liverpudlian: George Melly, sometime writer, jazz and blues singer, artist, critic, lecturer and aficionado of surrealism. We are joined by two resident experts: the writer\xa0Jeff Young and the playwright and screenwriter, Lizzie Nunnery. The book under discussion is Melly\u2019s\xa0Scouse Mouse, which is chronologically the first part of Melly\u2019s memoirs. It was\xa0first published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1984 and was the third to be released despite covering the first fourteen years of Melly\u2019s life, painting a vivid portrait of growing up in a middle-class Liverpool family, tinged with eccentricity and theatricality, and his painful experiences at boarding school. Subtitled \u2018I Never Got Over It\u2019, it was preceded by\xa0Rum, Bum & Concertina, an account of his time in the navy, published in 1977, and\xa0Owning It, which covers his years as an aspiring musician in the jazz world of the 1950s, first published in 1965. The final volume,\xa0Slowing Down\xa0was published in 2005, two years before Melly died.\xa0\n\xa0\nScouse Mouse\xa0was his Melly\u2019s personal favourite of the four: \u2018I don\u2019t know why the events of over sixty years ago should be so much clearer than those of yesterday afternoon, but they are.\u2019 He also adopted that ever-useful motto for the memoirist: \u2018Life is lived forwards but understood backwards.\u2019 How much this classic childhood memoir helps us understand the outrageous, complex and multi-faceted life of the grown-up George Melly is just one of the things the panel explore. They also revisit his brilliant book on the pop culture of the1960s,\xa0Revolt into Style, a book Andy first discussed back on episode 22 on Randall Jarrell\u2019s\xa0The Animal Family.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices