As the starting point on my voyage of discovery I have taken the article on the novel ‘Less Than Zero’ by Bret Easton Ellis (who also authored ‘American Psycho’). ‘Less Than Zero’ was Easton Ellis’ first novel and was penned at the tender age of 19. The novel follows Clay, an upper middle-class college student who has returned to L.A. for winter break only to re-enter “a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago,and snorts mountains of cocaine.” It takes its title from the Elvis Costello song of the same name. ‘Less Than Zero’ is the eight track from Costello’s debut album, My Aim is True, released in 1977.
Costello and his band were set to perform on Saturday Night Live. Conflicting explanations have been offered for the series of events leading up to what was to eventually occur on live television that night. Most sources suggest that NBC had put pressure on Costello’s record label to prevent him from playing ‘Radio Radio’ as they had concerns for its obviously radio industry critical sentiments. On the night of the performance the band played no more than a few bars of ‘Less than Zero’ before Costello stopped them and ordered them to play ‘Radio Radio’. As a result of this stunt he was banned from appearing on the show for 12 years.
On the 25th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, the Beastie Boys appeared on the show. They begun to play ‘Sabotage’ only to be stopped after a few bars by Costello who proceeded to re-enact his stunt from ‘77 and went on to play ‘Radio Radio’ with them. Apparently “Weird Al” Yankovic had been known to do a semi-tribute to Costello’s stunt during his live concerts. If his band buggers up a song he quickly stops the show, saying “I’m sorry, there’s no reason to do this song here” (just as Costello did) before launching into a cover of ‘Radio Radio’ (I didn’t believe it myself until I saw this).
Costello’s song ‘Less than Zero‘ was an attack of the politics of Oswald Mosley, a British politician who was the founder of the British Union of Fascists. He resigned from the Labour party in 1931 when his ‘Moseley Memorandum’, a set of policies designed to combat unemployment, were rejected by the party. He went on to form the ‘New Party‘. After an abysmal failure in the 1931 general election, Moseley went on a ’study tour’ of Europe, and returned to Britain convinced that the way forwards was fascism, prompting him to amalgamate a number of existing fascist organisations and the New Party in order to form the British Union of Fascists. The party was heavily involved in violent confrontations, particularly with Communist and Jewish groups in London and was responsible for what would come to be known as the Battle of Cable Street. This confrontation between Moseley’s ‘Black Shirts’, police and Jewish, socialist, anarchist and communist groups led to the passage of the Public Order Act 1936. This Act forbade the wearing of political uniforms in public and required police consent for any political marches. The Act has been used extensively against IRA and Sinn Féin demonstrations in the 1970s.
P.G.Wodehouse in his 1938 novel entitled ‘The Code of the Woosters‘ parodied Mersley and his Blackshirts in his character Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup who was the leader of a London fascist group named the ‘Black Shorts’. Spode’s choice of uniform was attributed to the fact that “[b]y the time [he] formed his association, there were no shirts left.”. The black shirts were taken by Mussolini, the brown shirts claimed by Hitler, the blue shirts by the Irish, the grey by the South Africans, the gold by Mexico and silver by the United States.
In the 1990 television adaptation of Wodehouse’s Jeeves novels, the main characters Bertie Wooster and his man-servant Jeeves are played by the comic duo Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry respectively. The pair met in 1980 through mutual friend Emma Thompson and have since appeared together in many shows including The Young Ones, Blackadder and A Bit of Fry and Laurie. They both make cameo appearances in the Spice Girls 1997 movie Spiceworld (as does Elvis Costello). Here is a link to Hugh Laurie’s cameo. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the other two.
