If you had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, what would you do?
This is a really interesting question. The answer is not a clear one for me, because of the experiences I have had over the years. Like many other aspects of my life I can look at myself pre Janet and myself from the time I realised she was the one.
My old self would have gone absolutely mad with an unlimited budget for 24 hours! In the old days I would just have bought everything I wanted to in a record shop and then pay for a taxi to help me ferry the armfuls of records back home. I would have gone to the pub with my friends and paid for drinks all night. That isn’t as indulgent as it sounds because as friends we would buy drinks for anyone who was out of work, a student or earning very little. I was one of those in all three categories in my teens and twenties so I would have loved to return the compliment as a way of saying thank you to those who had my back. Finally we would go to our local kebab shop and I would buy takeaway for everyone.
Nowadays things would be very different. If I had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, I would get the bulk of it invested but leave some over to book top seats or boxes for women’s football, concerts, plays and holidays. You see, I now understand the power of money properly having been on such a small budget for so long in our married lives. That power is not in the tangible things it can purchase but in the experiences it can allow us to have. I would want to spend my money on Janet and the children by giving them the experiences that only a lot of money can provide. We were able to enjoy life within limits and to provide the maximum for the children and the bulk of our small disposable income went on clubs for the children and days out. It was that which meant that the children weren’t aware of how poor we were relative to many others.
The idea of unlimited money for even a day can make you live in the moment but it can do something more if you are able to think ahead and build up a whole range of experiences to enjoy once that day is over.
What’s a show that had the perfect series finale?
When perfect show endings are discussed the final scene of Blackadder Goes Forth is rightly considered to be the gold standard. For those who haven’t come across the series, it is the fourth instalment of a comedy series that followed Rowan Atkinson as four members of the Blackadder family through history. The fourth Blackadder was a soldier in the trenches of WWI placed in charge of a unit of misfits including Baldrick played by Tony Robinson who was his servant in the previous series and who was the constant target of Blackadder’s frustration.
The important thing to realise is that the finale only works if you have seen the rest of the series. You follow their journeys and grow to care about them. They are often stupid and in Blackadder’s case unpleasant and duplicitous but they are looking to survive a situation without parallel in human history. Blackadder always has a plan but they always end up going wrong but he is determined to get away from the front one way or another.
The finale itself was first shown in the late 1980s prior to the modern atomised viewing experience. I was at Staffordshire Polytechnic and pretty much everyone had seen it and we were all pretty much silent. When you were asked ‘Did you see it?’, there was no question what ‘it’ was. Watch the whole series and our reactions make sense. Watch the finale on its own and it’s good but it can’t possibly have a proper impact.
Comedy or drama, no ending has ever matched Blackadder Goes Forth.
If you could have dinner with any philosopher, who would it be?
Philosophy is one area of academic interest that I have never explored to any real extent. I can’t really explain why but it has never excited my interest or made me want to spend time getting to know the people and concepts involved.
I have what I saw referred to as ‘nickel knowledge’ in the Eve Plumb book I read. I know the names of the philosophers, the very basic ideas and I guess I could get on the wavelength quickly enough to follow a thread but I don’t really see it as interesting enough to spend time on. Ethics is of more interest to me. When I was teaching I presented a lesson on ethics based purely on my own reading and reactions together with the ideas of other teachers with more knowledge and experience than me. Perhaps you can see that as an offshoot of Philosophy given that your own personal philosophy is what is giving you the ethical framework you need.
I am far more interested in real life and the thoughts that derived from that. My interest in social history and popular culture is based on what I see as authentic people living authentic lives. The massed ranks of ordinary people do nothing amazing and simply live as best they can reacting to life as it happens. There is no time for deeper consideration of life, the universe and everything, as real life is the be all and end all as you simply look to navigate your way through everyday existence. This may be a philosophy of sorts, but it isn’t an abstract one. I could easily take the time to learn about philosophy and upgrade my nickel knowledge but I have no inclination to do so. The philosophers of history will have to look elsewhere for their dinner I’m afraid 😂
For those British children who grew up in the early to mid 70s, a select number of US shows came over to us. They included cartoons, police shows (which you might be allowed to watch on a Saturday night) and one or two family shows firmly aimed at children. For me, one programme more than any other captured my childhood imagination. It was the story of a widow with three daughters and a widower with three sons called The Brady Bunch. I haven’t seen it in perhaps 50 years, because unlike in America where it is always being shown somewhere, none of the British TV channels or DVD companies have ever seen fit to repeat it or make it available to buy, but I can still recall the theme tune and the middle daughter Jan Brady. I was about eight years old when I first saw it, too old to identify with Cindy, too young to identify with Marcia but just the right age to see the programme through Jan’s eyes. It helped that Jan was the misfit of the family as that is how I felt most of the time. So, The Brady Bunch became weekly comfort viewing with its mix of comedy and sentimentality. When I found out that Eve Plumb had written an autobiography I wanted to get it when it arrived in the UK. I did, and here’s my review.
The introduction sets out the central approach of the book with one sentence; I have no child actress horror stories to sell in this book. If you’re looking for gossip, you have definitely come to the wrong place, but if you’re looking for a fascinating account of a TV and film world that has disappeared, this book is for you. Eve is candid about her own failings and those of others where necessary, but her career as a child actress in the pre-social media days now looks like an innocent halcyon time. What makes her clear eyed view so captivating is that in those clear eyes there is an ever present twinkle. She brings you into her world as a confidante, telling you stories and making you laugh. She is everything I thought Jan would be and more.
Eve had a varied and busy career as a child actor before The Brady Bunch, using her talent, looks and most importantly her instinct for other people to keep up a good strike rate for auditions. At one stage, if you needed someone to play a young girl who was in danger or dying, she was your go to! She was professional, talented and interested in what was going on around her. For The Brady Bunch audition, it turned out that her talent was taken as read. The choice of Eve as Jan Brady was made on the basis that she was the actress in the middle child category who most resembled Florence Henderson, the actress chosen to play Carol Brady. While that was clearly good fortune, she had earnt it by her previous performances that made her popular with programme makers and known throughout the industry as a safe pair of hands.
The Brady Bunch section is the main reason why I bought the book and it is a delight. She clearly has great affection for the programme and for the people she acted alongside. Her relationships with both of her onscreen parents, Florence Henderson and Robert Reed was very similar offscreen with both of them making sure that all six children were looked after and, in the case of Reed, treated to a cruise to London on the QE2 at his expense! There was frustration at storylines, particularly for Eve Plumb herself as Jan became a kind of one girl string of issues from imaginary boyfriends and sibling jealousy to not wanting to wear glasses. However, she always gave the best performance she could even when she didn’t enjoy the scenario. She does reference the clear jealousy of other students and even some of her teachers at ‘ordinary school’ but her real irritation is reserved for the subsequent use of one line from one show taken out of context by Melanie Hutsell of Saturday Night Live and repeated ad nauseum. ‘Marcia, Marcia, Marcia’ was the catchphrase of Hutsell’s ‘Jan Brady’ and it became a bone of contention for Eve as she saw it as the resurfacing of bullying of the ten year old girl she was. Sadly, it is now on Tik Tok so this may continue to be seen far more often than the original programme.
The rest of the book deals with her professional and personal life after the show was cancelled and is just as fascinating. The ups and downs of her life continue to be dealt with using humour, occasional sadness and the benefit of hindsight. As with a number of child actresses she didn’t manage to keep up the success of her early years, but a look at IMDB shows no fewer than 74 acting credits, the majority post The Brady Bunch. Acting, however, became more of an enjoyable hobby as her ability as an artist became more of a focus. She creates home decor, along with her excellent paintings, which can be found on her website https://www.eveplumb.tv/ It is clear that she is a happy fulfilled person and that is a lovely note to end on, one that the misunderstood middle child Jan would have been very pleased with. Thank you Eve for some of the most memorable television of my childhood and for being just as lovely in real life as I always imagined Jan to be.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 