A Winter's Wail

Donovan Winter in happier times. Or maybe not.

As Thoughts of a Gemini, the self-published memoirs of former It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum star Don Estelle prove conclusively, the ramblings of a has-been (or even a never-was) can make for perversely entertaining reading, even if the book itself isn’t much cop. Throughout this slender example of vanity publishing at its most deluded – Estelle having long been reduced to slogging around the country doing personal appearances in shopping centres and indoor markets, selling his records out of a suitcase whilst dressed in his trademark pith helmet and shorts – the artist formerly known as Lofty doggedly repeats himself, writes himself up blind alleys populated by numbing trivia and pointless facts and figures, rants long and loud about how television has been ruined by all those horrible people who, for some baffling reason, don’t find the idea of the wanton abuse of homosexuals automatically hilarious, tells some of the least impressive celebrity anecdotes you’re ever likely to read (riding in Ursula Andress’s beach buggy, appearing in pantomime with loveable wife-beater Jim Davidson) and unambiguously sings the praises of lard-arsed paedophile MP Cyril Smith. The book’s undoubted comic highlight arrives when Estelle falls down a hole whilst ogling a woman’s breasts There’s also a photo of Estelle in the elevated company of Sir Jimmy Savile. It’s that kind of book.

Which brings me to the unpublished memoirs of the recently deceased exploitation film-maker Donovan Winter, unearthed by the folks at Nucleus Films as a bonus PDF document on their exceptionally fine DVD release of Winter’s final film, the 1978 home invasion thriller Give Us Tomorrow. As with Estelle’s book, it’s a rambling, discursive beast, apparently written in one marathon session without a break (or the benefit of an editor or proof-reader), but it’s not without interest – if only because of its author’s dogged sense that the entire world is endlessly conspiring to make his life miserable. But be warned – not only was Winter a poet maudit in the Adrian Mole (rather than the Philip Larkin) tradition, he was also – and there’s really no easier way to put this – a bit of a cunt.

The book starts amicably enough…

At 11 years old I gained a scholarship to the local Boys County Grammar School - not a girl in sight - where the word ‘drama’ was never mentioned and nobody, to my knowledge, ever contemplated putting on a school play. There were twenty six boys in the class, the register starting with Alcock, Barrett, Brooker, and my bringing up the tail with Webb, Williams and Wood. All good old Anglo-Saxon surnames, apart from the odd Jewish name like Margolis, and not an unpronounceable one amongst them.

I had seen friends dive in and take the plunge up the first available skirt but I found I could not work up a hard for any girl who did not match my ideal.

Too much information, Mr W. And don’t get him started on those bloody Yanks…

Personally I have never been enamoured of American girls. They may enjoy a glamorous image – sexy and attractive, yes, but in a hard and common way, with very little softness and warmth. Beneath all that surface glamour I find a cold personality, very demanding and aggressive, not to mention intimidating, and I can never feel at ease with them. Always suspicious of their motives one has the feeling that one is being led to the scaffold with a toothy smile. The very thought of their oversized vampiric porcelain capped mandibles ever seeking a succulent bite on a juicy penis is positively frightening. Moreover I can never relish the thought of waking up in the morning to be greeted by that harsh throaty invective which is characteristic of the American voice - probably the result of all the shouting and screaming they do as children.

That’s every American woman in the world, ever, according to Don – hard, cold, common, always shouting and ready to bite your cock off at the drop of a hat. So, that’s half an entire country’s population written off in a paragraph, what’s next?

A visit to the Royal Court theatre to see John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger…

I was incensed by the torrent of abuse that issued from Porter’s mouth. His choking monotonous diatribe of phlegm ranting against the evils of society I found tedious and I could find no compassion for him.

Bear that paragraph in mind, especially when you read some of the later excerpts.

I have never felt comfortable amongst homosexuals. I have always found them duplicitous in character. Many, of course, have a spiteful and abusive tongue. One moment they can be quite charming and effusive, then suddenly they will turn vicious, both verbally and physically, displaying a mental kink in their make-up.

Wow. Just… wow.

Rightly or wrongly I determined that there was some resentment against me by other producers.

Can’t think why…

No amount of urging, asking, or pleading brought forth any offers from the myopic and obtuse British executive dead-heads more concerned with protecting their own positions.

Ah, that’ll be it.

On the classic cycle of British ‘kitchen sink’ dramas of the early sixties…

Social realism was all very fine but truth to tell I was not at all comfortable with these coarse characters. I am sure I was not meant to be. But these brash un-mannered North Country yobboes whining their miserable lot surely deserved no better than they got. Maybe I am a traitor to my class but I could not empathise with them. If that was the way they behaved “oop thar” then they had best stay there, I felt.

On screen violence…

Personally I deplore and abhor the mindless violence and wanton destruction depicted in some films. Even as a youngster I had never found those ‘cartoons’ of Tom and Jerry, and Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, battering each other flat, funny. It puzzles me why children laugh at them.

Perhaps because children have a sense of humour?

It actually comes as a blessed release when Winter interrupts his harangues with this slice of life…

(At this point my typewriter literally went up in smoke. For almost 20 years my small portable Imperial had served me well, typing all my scripts and hundreds, nay thousands, of letters, angry and otherwise.)

But pretty soon, it’s business as usual. On the women’s lib movement…

These snarling ugly dragons, many of them lesbians I feel sure…

On trying to sell Give Us Tomorrow to the television companies…

I knew it was hardly to the taste of the BBC with their superior and snooty approach. While they showed an obsequious devotion to the self-indulgent erotic frolics of Dennis Potter and his tiresome labyrinthine twisted emotions…

On Leslie Halliwell, of Halliwell’s Film Guide fame, who committed the grave sin of not wanting to buy Give Us Tomorrow for a screening on the ITV network…

He was a devoted fan of old black and white movies and his world ceased to exist in 1960 when the industry switched exclusively to making films in colour. According to the gospel of Halliwell colour was the ruination of film art. Nothing pleased him more than to discover a long forgotten pre-war movie. So he unearthed libraries of these awful old melo’s [melodramas] most of which would have better remained buried and left them as a legacy (he died in 1989) to the television audience. Well, I suppose they’re good for a laugh now…

The industry switched ‘exclusively’ to making films in colour in 1960? Well, that’ll come as a bit of a shock to anyone who’s watched Raging Bull (1980), Ed Wood (1994), Eraserhead (1977), the Elephant Man (1981)…

Things were seldom better on Channel Four…

They burdened their tiny audience with such pseudo-intellectual nonsense as a Zed and Two Noughts, one of Peter Greenaway’s tendentious diatribes, the sorry Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, and the sordid Rita, Sue and Bob, Too.

What? Rita, Sue and Bob, Too ‘sordid’? Well, fair comment, I suppose. But it’s still one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen.

Surely Winter retains a soft spot for the city where he was born?

London is now a city of slobs, sluts, and scum. Shysters prevail. Junk food shops proliferate and discarded pop cans litter the squalid streets which stink of hamburgers, onions, and hot dogs. Rats grow fat on the piles of decaying garbage and will soon outnumber the human population. As the infrastructure of London collapses the air grows ever more polluted and it is only a question of time before it finally reaches meltdown. It is a bleak outlook for the 21st. century. What to do? Well, most native Londoners have already left the city anyway, driven out and replaced by an ever growing amorphous polyglot of foreigners.

I can’t help thinking Winter missed his true vocation. Never mind writing and dirtecting films, he should have been one of those half-senile reactionary high court judges, spouting antediluvian nonsense whilst stoked to the gills on sherry. He’d have been good at that.

Did I mention he was a horrible old racist too?

Manners maketh the Man, aye… and they display the wretchedness of man. It is surely no coincidence that the major decline in manners can be dated back to 1973 with the large influx of Arabs, Asians, Iranians, Greeks, Yugoslavs, and other refugees into the country. It has been argued that this influx of foreign nationals is beneficial and healthy because it gives us a cosmopolitan society to enrich our cultural horizons. But apart from new and exotic foods introduced to these shores it is difficult to identify what other benefits we have enjoyed. More significantly these immigrants brought their own manners and habits with them and it has not proved a happy mix. Rather than accept British traditional standards they would attempt to impose their own customs upon the indigenous population by injecting an alien culture into the community. Intent upon perpetuating their own ethnic customs and religions they show little sign of any willingness to integrate. And it is surely the height of impertinence to expect the incumbents to change their habits to accommodate new cults and creeds. Ethnic rivalries and traditions breed dissension and unrest and instability ultimately threatening the very security of the country. Why, for instance, should we be obliged to tolerate incomprehensible graffiti of political plaints foreign to the English character gratuitously daubed on our buildings? Such a multifarious society does not blend and integrate harmoniously, only causing friction, animosity, and inter-racial hatred inviting simmering resentment often leading to violence and social disintegration. So as Britain becomes more heterogeneous it becomes more secular and divisive and that cannot prove of benefit to society and the nation. A polyglot society simply does not work. Thus do good and tried old British values and traditions crumble and collapse.

Remember the old Not the Nine O’Clock News sketch with Rowan Atkinson as a bigoted Tory MP saying ‘I like curry, I do… but now we’ve got the recipe, is there any reason for them to stay’?

Amazingly, he then goes on to write –

Violence has no respect for talent or nationality.

Begging your pardon, but you don’t seem to have an awful lot of respect for other nationalities yourself.

On modern television –

We hear strangled vowels and glottic stops sprayed generously throughout the media.

I think you mean glottal stops?

In the name of entertainment for the mass audience (ratings) the English language is reduced to gutter level and we regularly hear the clone of Jimmy Tarbuck, Danny Baker, and Sue Pollard, Janet Street-Porter and Cilla Black, murdering the English language, setting a poor example for the young.

The clone (singular) of five separate people? Who is this person? Does he or she even exist? I’d love to meet him, or her.

Why has Mr Winter never married?

Passion and infatuation give way to indifference and hate and few first marriages survive the early lustful overtures, doomed to disaster from inception. Marriage is an aging process and no state of grace. Growing old together is a slow path to death.

Plus, he’s afraid of women biting his cock off. Why has Mr Winter never fathered any children?

Babies are for women to nurse. They merely make me uncomfortable.

Holy shit, Don. Not even Jerry Lewis would say something as cold as that, and he’s basically the biggest arsehole who ever lived.

Of his past conquests…

There was the optimum virgin (not easy to find!) sent to me by a music critic who thought I was best equipped to break her in.

Who said romance was dead!

It has always amazed me how some of the most attractive girls become enamoured of the most awful scoundrels and no-goods.

He doesn’t much like old people either…

I find the old to be inflexible and intractable and I am uncomfortable in the company of age.

The pot and the kettle are doubled up on the floor together, united in helpless laughter. So that’s something.

Then there was the girl who didn’t like having her bottom slapped. Well, ‘slapped’ is probably an exaggeration and too harsh a term. I had a habit of lightly stroking her derriere when I found it in an inviting position. In today’s brittle climate that would probably be deemed sexual harassment but thirty years ago nobody would have thought to give it that interpretation. It was merely an innocent gesture of affection offered in a light-hearted way, certainly not aggressive. In a Latin country a woman expects a pinch on the bum as a sign of affection and indeed would be offended if she did not receive it. But this girl saw it differently.

What, a woman who objected to being sexually molested? Ungrateful bitch!

Time and time again, Winter singles out 1973 as his annus horribilis, even singling out that year as the cut-off point when women stopped being attractive!

Rarely did a passing dolly in the Street rate a second glance anymore.

I’m sure they were all gutted, Don.

A 'dolly', 1973.

The British are an inherently mean race without any abundance of generosity.

Says the man who, just a few pages earlier, complained long and impotently about Britain being taken over by bloody foreigners.

Let nobody cross me badly because something terminal will happen in their life shortly afterwards.

Seriously? Have you any proof of that?

Halliwell died comparatively young…

Yeah, that karma’s a bitch, isn’t it!

With civilisation steadily decomposing Armageddon approaches and the inevitable Apocalypse beckons. You reflect upon the past. When young you look forward optimistically. You want to be liked. Experience proves that that is not so important. You are going to be fucked around whatever you do, always at the mercy of the fuckers. So fuck you too, mate!

I’m beginning to think Don, not Vivian Mackerall, was the real inspiration behind Bruce Robinson’s Withnail character.

The working classes can also suck Don’s balls…

The working man is not interested in Art and never gives it a thought. His only interest is in his paypacket which buys him his next beer and hamburger and chips, and wondering whether he will fuck his worn-out dreary wife tonight…

‘I have never been truly happy’, whines Winter in the final chapter, which has the charming subtitle DAMN YOU, DAMN YOU, DAMN YOU! Maybe it was ghost-written by Stewie from Family Guy, another young fogey-stroke-closet case-stroke-misogynist.

So, there it is. Donovan Winter – actor, writer, director, producer, cunt. In case you were wondering, Give Us Tomorrow is probably his best film – and it didn’t even get a proper cinema release. I think that says a lot.