Sunday, May 8, 2011

Facing Birmingham



I'm indebted to Travis Elborough - author of Wish You Were Here: England On Sea* - for pointing me in the direction of this bizarre Cliff Richard vehicle.

As well as fans of Sir Cliff, Take Me High may be of interest to historians of post-war modernism in general and Birmingham in particular. Along with the Milton Keynes shot Wired for Sound video, Take Me High also marks him out as an unlikely - and unwitting - documenter of 20th century urbanism.

If you can take the clip above it's worth struggling through this opening section too, both for the pay off line at the very end and the fact that it reveals him using an electric shaver and drinking champagne inside a Mini Clubman. Presumably this was the height of middle ranking executive glamour in 1973.

Finally, there is an autobiographical reason for posting these clips. With our school project near the International airport starting on site, I too am having to "face Birmingham"....:



* Travis will be giving a talk about Wish You Were Here at Pages bookshop in Hackney on the 18th May.

3 comments:

Pär Eliaeson said...

Wonderful! The third part is a extraordinary exposee of Birmingham high modernism urbanity, with Sir Cliff as an rather sophisticated explorer!

Charles Holland said...

Indeed. I posted up the 3rd section actually because it's a remarkable but inadvertent celebration of Brum!
.

Pär Eliaeson said...

Indeed.