ANEEL AHMAD - DIRECTING THE RAJ

IN A BUSTLING restaurant in Manchester’s heaving city centre, I sit across from him. Unshaven, crowned with his trademark baseball cap he shifts uncomfortably in his chair. Uneasy with the glitz and public persona that comes with being an award-winning filmmaker he fidgets with his napkin.

“I love cinema and the art of telling a story visually,” he says with downcast eyes.

“I think it’s one of the best mediums where visually, musically and cinematically you can express your feelings and emotions to a wider audience.”

This is Aneel Ahmad, Manchester-based film-maker recognised by industry stalwarts such as Sir Ridley Scott, Mike Leigh and veteran Merchant Ivory Productions.

“Cinema is easier to digest, and as a director you can use that power to do amazing things.”

The 31-year-old director has just returned from a research project in Pakistan for his current project, ‘Boot Polish’.

“It’s set in the 1920’s British Raj,” he explains between sips of coffee.

“It’s a romantic, emotional story about two people; a kid who cleans shoes and a courtesan.”

Aneel, who received funding from the UK Film Council and North West Vision, won the UNICEF UK Grand Prix Award in Sheffield this year for Waiting For Sunrise; a gritty yet touching short film about children on the streets of Lahore. His award success has attracted comment and praise from the British film industry, with Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven director, Ridley Scott calling his film an “extremely powerful” and “professionally executed documentary”.

But Aneel is not alone – award winning producers Eleanor Ford and Kelly Broad share his pains. Broad, who has her own company Memory Box and won a BAFTA with her 2005 short The Banker, met Aneel in London and immediately began to discuss his current script.

“Boot Polish really taps into the idea that a British film can be so many things,” she says.

“It’s been written here in the UK, it will be filmed entirely on-location in Pakistan and post-produced here. The story is a universal one; it shows that people everywhere are the same and we face the same struggles each day – just in different ways.”

Eleanor Ford on the other hand, who was awarded a Grand Jury Special Mention for her film The Internet Bride at the Exposures Film Festival had the opportunity to travel to Pakistan with Aneel.

“Before I went people here were concerned about possible dangers,” she says.

“Instead I found it a very peaceful, friendly and fascinating place to be and really look forward to going back. I have been telling lots of people here to visit!”

Though Aneel claims to be influenced by an army of filmmakers from the aforementioned Scott, Leigh and Merchant Ivory to Sir Alan Parker, David Lynch, Mira Nair and Satyajit Ray, he admits that Stanley Kubrick is his all-time favourite.

“I’m influenced by how they tell their stories on screen,” he adds. “They’re like explorers, trying new ways to involve the audience in the story and Kubrick’s as crazy and as passionate as I am when making films.”

Both Boot Polish and Waiting For Sunrise addressed demanding topics affecting the impoverished and downtrodden of Pakistan. However when asked about whether or not he should be addressing those closer to home, it seems Chance, played a vital role.

“Its just kind of worked out that way,” he says.

“I guess my scripts have taken me to the Asian continent, but I got feedback from UK directors advising me that this should be my next film.”

He goes on to describe Pakistan as a “hot bed of talent” that has remained “under exposed” for too long.

“Pakistan can now sustain a better film industry and I’m hoping I can be a small part of this,” he adds.

On becoming the voice of the non-resident Pakistani he throws his head back and lets out a boisterous laugh.

“I guess I kind of am! But it’s important for Pakistani's to break into the industry and be given more opportunities. But it’s not a conscious effort. I am British, born in England and I’m proud to be English.”

With features penned and plans to work with a number of writers and musicians including Sohail Salamat of Bakhsi Javed Salamat Qawaal, the future seems bright for all those in the Aneel Ahmad conga.

“Sohail has scored all the music for Boot Polish and he is going to be the next big thing in music. My producers have worked hard behind the scenes, even though they don’t know a great deal about Pakistan. It goes to show their enthusiasm to make films.”

Gesturing to the waiter for the bill, he manages a wry wink under the brim of his cap. He smiles and says: “Inshallah my only goal is to continue making films.”

For more info on Aneel Ahmad or his ventures, log onto www.aneelahmad.co.uk

RUSHDIE ON THE RUN

I'm rarely one to agree with the views and opinions expressed in the Daily Mail, however on this occasion if feel obliged to give a hearty standing ovation to Ruth Dudley Edwards for this fantastic piece of "nail-head-hitting" journalese.
As a Muslim writer based in the UK I was of course deeply offended by Rushdie's Verses, but whole-heartedly supported his right to offend.
I was more offended, nay, disappointed by his knighthood.
I am of the opinion that freedom of speech and expression comes with an integral responsibility. In other words, you have the right to offend, the right to air your views, however you must therefore have the gumption to live up to and accept the consequences that will no doubt ensue
Once more, a worthy pat on the back to Ruth Dudley Edwards for a thought-provoking and wholly balanced piece of work. Happy reading…

I WOULD die in a ditch to defend Rushdie's right to offend. I just wish this self-pitying darling of the literati would show some gratitude.
Ruth Dudley Edwards, of the Daily Mail gives her verdict on the novelist at the eye of the storm.
Self-important, pretentious, attention- seeking and ungrateful. Those have long been my prevailing thoughts about the writer Salman Rushdie.
So it was with nothing less than astonishment that I learned Rushdie has been awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours.
In his official citation, Rushdie gets his gong for "services to literature". To which the only sensible response is, "what services and what literature?".
Like many who have attempted to read his work, I have never yet managed to make it to the end of one of Rushdie's books. I've tried, I honestly have.
When he won the Booker Prize in 1981 with Midnight's Children, I conscientiously attempted to read it three or four times, but struggle as I might, I could never get past page 50: there was something about its portentous tone and an absence of simple humanity that irritated me profoundly.
So too did the way he banged on relentlessly in public about his sufferings as a post-colonial expatriate.
It seemed to me that he didn't like India, his birthplace, and he certainly didn't like the United Kingdom, his host country.
But he was, of course, a wow with the masochistic liberal intelligentsia who loved his savaging of British values as insufficiently cosmopolitan.
Yet, as a taxpayer, I never grudged a penny of the £10 million or so spent on protecting Rushdie for a decade after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his murder because he considered The Satanic Verses blasphemous towards Mohammed.
The way the state swung behind this shocking assault on freedom of speech was magnificent.
Although Mrs Thatcher had herself been caricatured as a fascist called "Mrs Torture" in the offending book, she did not hesitate in her response: the British ambassador was ordered home from Tehran, the Iranian charge d'affaires was expelled and Special Branch instructed to spend whatever was necessary to keep Rushdie alive.
A fellow author who, like Rushdie, was born abroad (in my case, Ireland) and had made Britain my adopted country, I was proud of Britain's resolve and commitment to free speech.
But if anything, I felt we had not gone far enough. I loathe political correctness and believe to the core of my being that writers should have the right to offend.
Indeed, I felt strongly at the time that the Government should have arrested those demonstrators who marched through British towns calling for Rushdie's execution and even wrote to my MP to complain about appeasement.
Yet I was also conscious that the book at the centre of the storm seemed so unworthy of the profound battle of ideas that it had unleashed.
As I recall, there were few defenders of the literary merits of The Satanic Verses, and I believe to this day that it was clearly, intentionally - if not gratuitously - provocative.
Rushdie had been brought up Muslim and claimed to have a deep understanding of Islam, so he should have known that as an apostate he was guilty of a capital offence and should not have been amazed that Islam's self-appointed spokesmen took umbrage.
Did he really think through the consequences of his words? I rather doubt it; he was just an intellectual adolescent who just enjoyed taunting authority figures.
Certainly, Rushdie should never be compared with those brave Muslims who risk their lives by telling unpalatable truths about fanatical Islam - people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalian who became a Dutch MP and because of her outspoken criticism of the treatment of Muslim women has had to seek refuge in America.
Or Ed Hussain, author of The Islamist, who is under threat because of his revelations about how he was radicalised in 1990s London. They write to warn us of danger, not merely to blow a raspberry-at the Ayatollahs.
Yet, whether it was his intention or not, Rushdie's work generated a firestorm that still rages to this day, with the scenes in today's Tehran echoing the violent protests that surrounded the publication of the Satanic Verses nearly 20 years ago.
Some paid the ultimate price for supporting him. Hitoshi Igarashi, who translated the book into Japanese, was knifed to death in July 1991; Ettore Caprioli, its Italian translator, was seriously injured in a stabbing that same month; and William Nygaard, its Norwegian publisher, survived an assassination attempt in October 1993. (I give their names because they seem to have been forgotten).
Of course, it would be absurd to blame Rushdie for those attacks - the guilt lies solely with the fanatics.
But I was shocked that at a time when he should have been preoccupied by the terrible fate of these peripheral players, Rushdie was instead full of self-pity for his own predicament.
Of course he was frightened and of course it was a tough life moving from safe house to safe house, able to appear in public only rarely and without notice.
Yet he was lucky: he was alive, and lionised by many of the literati who formed the London-based International Rushdie Defence Committee.
But petulant and ungenerous as ever, he showed little gratitude to those who supported him - or to the British taxpayer who paid for his £10 million security bill - being more concerned with denouncing those who had the temerity to criticise him.
Graciousness, though, is no more one of Salman Rushdie's qualities than is humility. When in 2000 he decided to abandon the United Kingdom for New York, he gave The New York Times an interview that showed him to be as mean-spirited as ever.
In London he had been very much a pet of the back-scratching mutually congratulatory literati, but he had reputedly been seriously miffed by critical reviews of his later novels.
So the man who loves moving and shaking on Planet Celebrity, condemned the "backbiting and incestuous" literary culture of London, and loftily explained that England had not been a worthy subject for his pen: in New York, he could be truly cosmopolitan.
With a trophy girlfriend, the beautiful supermodel and cook, Padma Lakshmi, 24 years his junior (now his fourth wife), Salman Rushdie was on a roll.
And so he's continued, even rising to the heights of appearing as himself in a Bridget Jones movie.
He may not have written anything in recent years that was any good.
But as a celebrity writer, he continues to strut the public stage and now, from the nation he spurned and condemned, he has the huge honour of a knighthood. accepting it, Rushdie has served only to illustrate his own breathtaking hypocrisy.
Rushdie has declared that he is "thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way".
But isn't it strange how, even in our more enlightened age, the offer of a title can befuddle one's principles.
As Professor John Sutherland, the former Booker judge, put it diplomatically: "Rushdie is a nomad. He has a supra-national, post-colonial style, so that it is very hard to say who owns him.
"And now he has pledged himself in the personal service of the monarch! For the writer of The Satanic Verses, which was extremely rude about England, it's certainly unusual."
Equally unfathomable is why the Honours Committee saw fit to enoble Rushdie in the first place.
Anyone who knows anything about the literary world will attest that there are innumerable writers better regarded and more deserving than him.
Indeed, there is only one explanation why Rushdie has been singled out. It is that Tony Blair, on his way out of Downing Street, wants to put two fingers up to Iran, as well as to extremist Islam everywhere.
An admirable sentiment, perhaps, but as with the furore over the Satanic Verses, I wonder if it has been thought through properly, and whether this is the best way to throw down the gauntlet in the battle of the ideas.
Responding to the knighthood, Iran has predictably accused Britain of Islamophobia, and the Pakistani parliament has demanded that the British government "immediately withdraw the title as it is creating religious hatred".
One can only hope there will be no prolonged violence or threats against British citizens.
Yet I hope, too, that if Rushdie does find himself in danger again, he will show a little more gratitude this time to the nation that once again - and rightly so - will rally to his defence.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=462943&in_page_id=1770

Ruth Dudley Edwards was born and brought up in Dublin and educated at University College Dublin and Girton College, Cambridge. Her father was the distinguished Irish historian Professor Robert Dudley Edwards. Her brother Owen Dudley Edwards is a historian at Edinburgh University.

MANNING THE LIFEBOAT OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

NOTE: First published on 19th June, 2007

CONTROVERSIAL “comedian” and general Manchester “funny-man” Bernard Manning has died aged 76 after being treated in hospital for a kidney condition.

Though recently out of the spotlight, Manning was all the rage in and around the 1980’s. Known for his trademark risqué material and ethnic slurs, he has in recent years refuted claims that he is a racist by saying: “I tell jokes. You never take a joke seriously.”

Manning shot to fame in the 1970s when he made regular appearances on ‘The Comedians’; a show aired by regional broadcaster Granada.

Having already developed a career in music as a vocalist and a compere, the Mancheser-based comic enjoyed unparalleled success in both the UK and with our transatlantic cousins, when at the height of his career he performed at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Manning’s website has branded him "one of the most outrageous and successful comedians of our time".

However, in 2002, he was banned from performing in the Dorset seaside town of Weymouth, where councillors were worried that his act would breach laws on race.

His biographer, Jonathan Margolis, described him as "the last of the joke-tellers".

“He was a man of his age,” Margolis tells the BBC.

“And as people of his age went, he was relatively un-racist. Until his dying day, he didn't understand what all the fuss was about.”

Another comedian known for his anti-conformist material, Stan Boardman said that all Manning did "was take the mickey", which he describes as "the British sense of humour".

But is this truly the “British sense of humour”, and if it is, is it something to be proud of? Is it fair to class ignorance and the promotion of socially exclusionist propaganda as “legendary, comic genius”?

Let’s not forget, Liverpool-born Boardman is the man who, whilst on stage at a Leeds United Football Club Award’s Dinner in May 2002, confronted a heckler by saying: “F**king hell. I am being heckled by Pakis now!”

He concluded his childish tirade by say: “Why don’t you go back to your curry house or shop in Bradford? Your elephant’s waiting outside.”

Is this the British sense of humour? Is it British comedy genius at its best? I think not.

The event was in honour of Leeds’ then player of the year, Rio Ferdinand, who is black. Seven hundred VIP guests were in attendance as Boardman continued with a cavalcade of “jokes” about the Irish, Australians, Americans and Germans.

Following an avalanche of complaints the club since banned Boardman from ever performing there again.

But of course we’re not here to debate the downs and downs of Stan Boardman’s career.

Bernard Manning achieved phenomenal success in the UK and relative success abroad. Even in the late 1970’s to early 1980’s, after his appearances on British television were drastically curbed, his private shows continued to flourish.

His “World Famous Embassy Club” in Manchester was regularly packed out where he himself made regular appearances.

However in the mid-1990s his career took a sharp decline following a News of the World exposé and television documentary uncovering the extent of his ethnic “mickey-taking”.

A charity dinner to raise funds for the police in 1995 saw Manning, then 65, performing as one of the comedians on the night’s line-up.

The event was attended by some three hundred police officers, all of which were white, with the exception of one black officer.

Manning, true to his style, took advantage of the situation and initiated a string of racist jibes.

His police audience whooped with delight and continued to cheer him on. The News of the World reported the racist gags in April 1995:

“Where is he? How are you, baby? Having a night out with nice people? Isn’t this better than swinging from the trees?
You’re black, I’m white. Do you think colour makes a difference? You bet your bollocks it does!”
“They actually think they’re English because they are born here. That means if a dog’s born in a stable, it is horse.”
“They used to be happy people in the cotton fields, singing their bollocks off day and night. A fella used to go around with a whip… ‘Oh, massa, give us another crack of dat whip. I love dat whip’”
“A Liverpool docker went to South Africa for a job. The boss tells him: ‘It’s people like you we want here. Here’s a test. There’s a revolver, go out and shoot 6 niggers and a rabbit.’ The docker asks: ‘Why do I have to shoot the rabbit?’ He got the job.”

This event raised £28,000 for police charities.

Former Liverpool Council leader Derek Hutton was a guest at the dinner party. Appalled at Manning’s rant, Hutton said: “The fact that it was a police dinner makes it all the more disgusting. The black guy could do little about it. He had this embarrassed grin on his face.”

Hutton goes on to describe how the on-looking white officers clambered onto their chairs and began their own tirade of applause and cheering.

“Just think, next morning some of them would be patrolling the Moss Side area,” he added.

At the time, Manning said the material was not in bad taste and claimed that the black officer “enjoyed every minute of it”.

Not one to learn from his mistakes, Manning made two black waitresses the butt of racist jokes before 500 men at a Round Table dinner at the Pennine Hotel in Derby later the same year.

One of the waitresses, 24-year-old Freda Burton said the ordeal began when she bent over to pick up a cup she’d dropped.

The Sun reported that Manning swooped in with a quip: “Very nice. That’s how I like my black pudding.”

In a complaint to an industrial tribunal, Burton alleged that Manning went on to make a series of jokes about sex acts using words like ‘wog, nigger and sambo’.

Manning apparently asked Burton for one of her braids as he “needed some shoe laces for his boots”.

But then why is it that this type of xenophobic toilet humour has become more acceptable in modern society. Only last month we saw a young girl ejected from the Big Brother house in the early hours for using the word “nigger”.

Nineteen-year-old drama student from Bristol, Emily Parr was dismissed from the Big Brother house at 3.30am and was forbidden from having any further contact with the 11 other contestants.

She was ejected after saying: “Are you pushing it out, you nigger?” to black housemate Charley Uchea whilst dancing in the garden.

An inundation of social commentary took place with many people feeling she was taken out of context. Web-bloggers around the world felt she had been wrongly evicted and that the term had been used as a socially advancing term of endearment.

Either way, the issue of race is an increasingly hotter potato than it was a decade ago. Wheter comments made by Emily Parr in the Big Brother house or gags by Bernard Manning in his Embassy Club, people will be debating the issue of race and political correctness for as long as there is air to breathe.

But hold on, maybe I’m in the wrong, perhaps I’m not getting it. This Great British humour can be a tricky business to decipher.

There must be something of merit in Manning for film director Michael Winner to describe him as "the funniest man in the world".

I’ve asked many people, and sadly no-one has been able to put a finger on it. Maybe it was his steadfast determination. The fact that he pulled himself up from nothing to become one of Manchester’s “greatest exports”.

Perhaps it was his iron resolve to not bow down to political correctness and his ideology that the show will always go on.

A tribute was paid to Manning last month in front of an audience of 600 friends and fans at the recording of a TV show entitled This Was Your Life.

In full on-stage swing he proudly told his audience: “I'm going to be with you for a long time yet!”

Though not in person, I’m sure his legacy will be.

NOTE: Manning died in North Manchester General Hospital at 3.10pm, on Monday June 18th 2007.

REFERENCES:
Stan Boardman - Daily Mirror, 2, 3 & 6 May 2002
Bernard Manning - Laughing at Ethnic Minorities, Digest issue #3.4 (1995)
News of the World (April 1995)
Sun, (September 1995)

RETURN TO THE LOUNGE

ON SEPTEMBER 26th in the year 46BC, Julius Caesar dedicated a temple to his mythical ancestor Venus Genetrix. On the same day in 1580, The Golden Hind

sailed into Plymouth, England, as Francis Drake completed his circumnavigation of the globe. Exactly 389 years later in 1969, The Beatles released the Abbey Road album in the UK, and now, on the exact same day in 2007, another earth shattering and globally momentous event has taken place.

As the chief muse Calliope re-garbs her bare flesh with heavenly silk and takes her place on her celestial throne, Urania raises a delicate finger to the firmament to indicate the perfect alignment of lunar entities that signals the commencement of a new era in veracity and vision.

The principal goddess raises a wry smile for she knows the time has come. For the 26th of September will no longer be remembered for the feats of Caesar, the accomplishments of Drake or the blaring whinges of four mop-headed Liverpudlians. The precise parallel alignment of the stars heralds only one event: the return of Superstani’s Shisha Lounge.

A shimmering beacon of hope and truth in the murky gloom of media spin and corporate back-scratching. A glowing torch illuminating the way to eternal creative nirvana.

As always, blowing the smoke of politics through the nostrils of forward thinkers.

Geez, don’t take it too seriously will you(!)