Alternatives to Remembering Details

In Britain we have a very distinguished comedy writing partnership called Galton and Simpson. These two were responsible for some of the funniest situation comedies on radio and television from the 1950s to the 1980s. If you ask anyone living in these islands – who is old enough – they will tell you happily that they remember ‘Steptoe and Son’ and ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’. Most people, of that age, will even be able to quote a few lines from one of the episodes. Ask them about Tony Hancock, the blood donor, and they will say, Oh yes, I remember, he said: ‘A pint? That’s nearly an armful, isn’t it?’ They will be able to describe the episode he got stuck in a lift or the time he had a reunion of old Army pals. Yes, they will say, chuckling merrily, it was all good stuff, I remember it well. Then, ask them this question: What did Hancock do for a living?

It might seem irrelevant. After all, it was a comedy show. It wasn’t meant to be realistic, or even approximate to life. Besides, everyone in Britain knew the name Tony Hancock. He was a comedian, right? Well, actually, no. When the writers were interviewed some years ago, they were asked that very question: why had Hancock never actually been described as a comic in any of the episodes? The stories always involved him living in some sort of run-down suburb of London, sometimes called East Cheam; in an unkempt house, sometimes in a road called ‘Railway Cuttings’; sometimes alone and sometimes with an assortment of friends that included Sid James, Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams, all fine comic actors. In the later series, the pals were axed, one by one, and Hancock did all the comedy on his own. (It was also one of the things he was famous for: the more famous he got, the more paranoid and solitary he became.) But what did he do? The writers smiled and said that was one of the fun things they did: they varied it from episode to episode. Most of the time he was described as an actor, but in some of the stories he was incredibly poor, unknown and struggling, while in others, he was famous, a household name, recognised in the street and being given awards for his art. The writers were easily bored, they said, so they had fun with the character, and made him different from week to week. The strange thing, they said, was that no one seemed to notice.

Now we could be generous and say that ‘Of course people noticed’. They saw the variety, saw the joke, and laughed along. Unfortunately, that would be extremely uncommon. Think of a more recent comedy series, like ‘Friends’. One of the characters, Joey, was supposed to be an actor. For much of the earlier series, he was a struggling actor, with the occasional bout of small parts. Later, he achieved a regular gig as ‘Dr Drake Ramore’ in a TV soap opera. But it didn’t change week by week! Over the course of a series, the character Chandler lost his job, was unemployed for a while and then took up an internship in advertising. Remember that? The character Monica was a chef and was in charge of a restaurant for a while. But not just for one week! The fact is that it is very, very strange to have a comedy series in which the main character changes his life as often as Hancock, while still retaining the same persona. One week he was an actor on a West Country farming radio soap opera called ‘The Bowmans’. Anyone remember that? It was for one week, and was never mentioned again. How odd is that? It would be as though Homer Simpson was married to Marge one week, and a single bachelor the next. We know that Homer takes time off to be an astronaut, a singer in a Barbershop quartet, and a human cannonball, but we also know that he has a regular job in the power plant. What if the plant had a different boss every week? Would anyone notice that?

The plain fact is that we like to comfort ourselves with the illusion that we have memories and that they all make sense. What we fail to include is the fact that anything we remember is a mere fraction of the whole, and that usually we choose the bit that gives us most pleasure. So, we remember the odd joke – maybe we can even quote a few lines from the odd Monty Python sketch – but we can’t remember how many lumberjacks there were. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t seem important at the time, so doesn’t get included in the mix. But then it would be like those old wedding photos we sometimes get out and ponder over. Always there’s a question, like, ‘Who is that guy, third on the left, next to Auntie Margaret?’ We can’t remember his name, or if he’s even a relative. There’s a gap in our memory, but, in order to preserve our sense of worth and not to go totally crazy, we simply gloss over that bit and pretend it isn’t there. After all, it’s only a detail, right?

One of the most glaring examples of this selective memory is to do with music. Many pop pundits derive endless pleasure from allowing people to wax lyrical about their favourite tunes, and then prompting them with questions like: ‘When that record, your most preciously remembered song, was in the Top Ten, what was Number One?’ They then embarrass you by quoting some dross that has come and gone, and has not only slipped from your memory, but also from the collective consciousness of the nation. It’s true. Most of us look back to some Golden Age of music and quote all the great singers and songs of that era, but the only reason we can manage that is by deleting all the rubbish that was around at the time. It’s true, there never was a decade when pop and rock were all authentically wonderful; in every era there’s good and bad, so we treasure the good, (in our view), and drop the mundane. Which is all fine, except that the only way we can do that is by rewriting history and leaving out the bits we don’t like. Try it: go on the internet and look up the Top Tens of yesteryear. I guarantee you will be embarrassed to see, just like a diamond among the stones, your most treasured memory flanked by stuff you would rather forget. That’s what we do: we make ourselves feel better by failing to remember the details. We select, we edit, we rearrange, and we construct. Our memories are not filing cabinets that contain all the files: they are scrapbooks of cuttings and family snaps, chosen and arranged to please us. But you know how you do that, don’t you? You start with a pile of photos and you end up with a selection. The rest? They’re ruthlessly thrown away. Like unwanted details.

About the Author

Mike Scantlebury is more than a detail. He’s not a number. He writes articles and books from his base in Manchester, England, and sends them out via his computer to people and places all over the world. He also has his own local radio show. Hear more and wonder at one of his many websites. Try:
http://www.mikescantlebury.com

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