Alternatives to remembering details
Author: Mike Scantlebury

In Britain we have a very distinguished comedy writing
partnership called Galton and Simpson. These two were
responsible for some of the funniest situation comedies on
radio and television from the 1950s to the 1980s. If you
ask anyone living in these islands - who is old enough -
they will tell you happily that they remember 'Steptoe and
Son' and 'Hancock's Half Hour'. Most people, of that age,
will even be able to quote a few lines from one of the
episodes. Ask them about Tony Hancock, the blood donor, and
they will say, Oh yes, I remember, he said: 'A pint? That's
nearly an armful, isn't it?' They will be able to describe
the episode he got stuck in a lift or the time he had a
reunion of old Army pals. Yes, they will say, chuckling
merrily, it was all good stuff, I remember it well. Then,
ask them this question: What did Hancock do for a living?

It might seem irrelevant. After all, it was a comedy show.
It wasn't meant to be realistic, or even approximate to
life. Besides, everyone in Britain knew the name Tony
Hancock. He was a comedian, right? Well, actually, no. When
the writers were interviewed some years ago, they were
asked that very question: why had Hancock never actually
been described as a comic in any of the episodes? The
stories always involved him living in some sort of run-down
suburb of London, sometimes called East Cheam; in an
unkempt house, sometimes in a road called 'Railway
Cuttings'; sometimes alone and sometimes with an assortment
of friends that included Sid James, Hattie Jacques and
Kenneth Williams, all fine comic actors. In the later
series, the pals were axed, one by one, and Hancock did all
the comedy on his own. (It was also one of the things he
was famous for: the more famous he got, the more paranoid
and solitary he became.) But what did he do? The writers
smiled and said that was one of the fun things they did:
they varied it from episode to episode. Most of the time he
was described as an actor, but in some of the stories he
was incredibly poor, unknown and struggling, while in
others, he was famous, a household name, recognised in the
street and being given awards for his art. The writers were
easily bored, they said, so they had fun with the
character, and made him different from week to week. The
strange thing, they said, was that no one seemed to notice.

Now we could be generous and say that 'Of course people
noticed'. They saw the variety, saw the joke, and laughed
along. Unfortunately, that would be extremely uncommon.
Think of a more recent comedy series, like 'Friends'. One
of the characters, Joey, was supposed to be an actor. For
much of the earlier series, he was a struggling actor, with
the occasional bout of small parts. Later, he achieved a
regular gig as 'Dr Drake Ramore' in a TV soap opera. But it
didn't change week by week! Over the course of a series,
the character Chandler lost his job, was unemployed for a
while and then took up an internship in advertising.
Remember that? The character Monica was a chef and was in
charge of a restaurant for a while. But not just for one
week! The fact is that it is very, very strange to have a
comedy series in which the main character changes his life
as often as Hancock, while still retaining the same
persona. One week he was an actor on a West Country farming
radio soap opera called 'The Bowmans'. Anyone remember
that? It was for one week, and was never mentioned again.
How odd is that? It would be as though Homer Simpson was
married to Marge one week, and a single bachelor the next.
We know that Homer takes time off to be an astronaut, a
singer in a Barbershop quartet, and a human cannonball, but
we also know that he has a regular job in the power plant.
What if the plant had a different boss every week? Would
anyone notice that?

The plain fact is that we like to comfort ourselves with
the illusion that we have memories and that they all make
sense. What we fail to include is the fact that anything we
remember is a mere fraction of the whole, and that usually
we choose the bit that gives us most pleasure. So, we
remember the odd joke - maybe we can even quote a few lines
from the odd Monty Python sketch - but we can't remember
how many lumberjacks there were. Maybe it's because it
doesn't seem important at the time, so doesn't get included
in the mix. But then it would be like those old wedding
photos we sometimes get out and ponder over. Always there's
a question, like, 'Who is that guy, third on the left, next
to Auntie Margaret?' We can't remember his name, or if he's
even a relative. There's a gap in our memory, but, in order
to preserve our sense of worth and not to go totally crazy,
we simply gloss over that bit and pretend it isn't there.
After all, it's only a detail, right?

One of the most glaring examples of this selective memory
is to do with music. Many pop pundits derive endless
pleasure from allowing people to wax lyrical about their
favourite tunes, and then prompting them with questions
like: 'When that record, your most preciously remembered
song, was in the Top Ten, what was Number One?' They then
embarrass you by quoting some dross that has come and gone,
and has not only slipped from your memory, but also from
the collective consciousness of the nation. It's true. Most
of us look back to some Golden Age of music and quote all
the great singers and songs of that era, but the only
reason we can manage that is by deleting all the rubbish
that was around at the time. It's true, there never was a
decade when pop and rock were all authentically wonderful;
in every era there's good and bad, so we treasure the good,
(in our view), and drop the mundane. Which is all fine,
except that the only way we can do that is by rewriting
history and leaving out the bits we don't like. Try it: go
on the internet and look up the Top Tens of yesteryear. I
guarantee you will be embarrassed to see, just like a
diamond among the stones, your most treasured memory
flanked by stuff you would rather forget. That's what we
do: we make ourselves feel better by failing to remember
the details. We select, we edit, we rearrange, and we
construct. Our memories are not filing cabinets that
contain all the files: they are scrapbooks of cuttings and
family snaps, chosen and arranged to please us. But you
know how you do that, don't you? You start with a pile of
photos and you end up with a selection. The rest? They're
ruthlessly thrown away. Like unwanted details.


About the Author:

Mike Scantlebury is more than a detail. He's not a number.
He writes articles and books from his base in Manchester,
England, and sends them out via his computer to people and
places all over the world. He also has his own local radio
show. Hear more and wonder at one of his many websites. Try:
http://www.mikescantlebury.com