Want to see the mythical Octobong in action?

By Scott Feschuk - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 9:12 AM - 0 Comments

Then come join us over at Can’t Miss NFL Picks and Other Lies, where we’re experimenting with a radical new concept: competence. In what represents the world’s greatest unexplainable development since

married

Scott Reid and I both managed to go one entire weekend without being completely useless*. Will we be able to do so again? (Spoiler alert: no.)

Also: we’ve got photos from our tailgating adventure at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park, NY. Beer! Shirtless guys! Liquid cheese!!

* Football prognostication only. Does not apply to other aspects of life, especially the assembly of IKEA furniture.

Mad Man (and Woman): Liveblogging Michael Ignatieff and Martha Hall Findlay on partisan political advertising

By kadyomalley - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 42 Comments

Hey, remember that $34 million in Economic Action! Plan-related ad spending that Canadian Press wrote about earlier this week? Well, the Liberals are finally getting around to holding a press conference to denounce it — like Dirk Gently, five days late but moving fast – and ITQ will be there to liveblog the festivities, starting at 10am, so be sure to check back for full coverage.

Oh, and speaking of possibly partisan advertising, an ITQ mini-challenge to commenters, just to keep y’all busy while waiting for this morning’s antics to get underway: How many ways does the Action! plan website — a Privy Council Office production that was the object of its very own traffic-driving ad campaign, which included over $1 million for the most recent spot, which warns viewers that, although the plan is working, “we’ve got to stay on track” — violate Treasury Board standards for common look and feel?

Post your count in the comments, and ITQ will meet you back here at10am.

9:42:50 AM
Greetings, members of the Whatever Happened To Party of Accountability Club! ITQ is installed in her usual seat in the second row of the Charles Lynch Press Theatre, waiting patiently for what is now being teasered by bright-eyed Liberal research operatives as an announcement. What could it be? ITQ would put her money — her *own* money, not cabinet-approved and signed off on by Treasury Board, for the record — on a proposal to create some sort of gimlet-eyed independent commissioner to monitor all government ad spending for illicit partisan messaging — maybe even a new Officer of Parliament! It could be called — the Federal Accountability Act. (What do you mean, ‘that’s been taken’?)

9:54:26 AM
As the Wall of Cameras angling for the best shot of the Ignatieff/Hall Findlay powerwalk down the hall, the room is filling up with media:CanWest, Sun News, the Toronto Star, Canadian Press, of course – after all, it was Bruce Cheadle who broke the story – a surprisingly good turnout for a Friday morning presser, but then again, it’s not like there’s much else happening on the Hill today.
9:57:48 AM
Two minute warning! Whee!

Continue…

NFL Picks Week 3: Tailgating = post-apocalypse + fountains of nacho cheese

By Scott Feschuk - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 6 Comments

Scott Feschuk Last week: 11-5 (Season: 18-14)

Scott Reid Last week: 12-4 (Season: 21-11)

Week 3 Picks follow below — but first: tailgating! Sure, we spent six hours in traffic last Sunday thanks to uptight, power-mad border guards and the fact that every bloody highway in western New York just happened to be closed, either for construction or for kicks (That’ll learn them Canadians!). But the Bills-Bucs game itself was a blast and the tailgating was tremendously fun and caloric. Plus, the Bills won, thereby reducing the post-game potential for flying bottles, parking-lot fires and jokes about bringing back O.J.

People sometimes ask us what it’s like to tailgate down at Ralph Wilson Stadium. Perhaps the best answer can be found in the following Continue…

Michael Ignatieff’s weighty autumn

By Paul Wells - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 108 Comments

“I stand between you and your dinner,” Michael Ignatieff told a crowd gathered for lunch, which is sort of like dinner, at the Toronto Hilton. “And you’re going to be a little hungrier by the time I get through.”

Ah. This was the Liberal leader explaining the effect of his own presence. It’s the same Michael Ignatieff who likes to punctuate his remarks with asides like, “You know, I’m a pragmatic fellow.” He is an illuminated manuscript come to life, or at least partway. He began with this warning about the still-distant meal, whichever one it might be, because he planned to give us a “more substantive” speech than the audience might be used to. Continue…

Econowatch

By Steve Maich - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 1 Comment

My colleague Paul Wells is fond of saying that when everyone in Ottawa knows something about federal politics, it invariably ends up to be false. While there’s no doubt this is true, it’s an affliction that is not unique to our nation’s capital. It applies just as much to the economy.

Right now, the accepted truth on our immediate economic future goes like this: “Oh sure, the worst might be over, but this is probably just a sucker’s rally. And even if we can avoid another nasty relapse on the markets, the recovery is going to be long, gruelling, and almost as bleak as the downturn itself.” No doubt, there is a strong rationale to back up this hardening consensus. After all, job losses continue in both Canada and the U.S., and while consumer confidence is rising, it’s still fragile. We are still bracing for the worst. Continue…

Liberal Family Values

By Andrew Potter - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 8:18 AM - 20 Comments

The Gazette unloads on Ignatieff and his support of Denis Coderre’s attempt at pushing Stephane Dion out. After conceding that Dion’s leadership was far from glorious, the editorialist writes: ”Still, he deserves better than to have his back stabbed by the likes of Denis Coderre, a party apparatchik whose contributions to Canada are minimal compared with those of Dion.”

This is where even long-time Liberal supporters start hoping that the party gets slaughtered in the next election, as they did circa 2005. The meme about Iggy is he’s gone from “Lionized to Dionized” in a few short months; it might be more accurate to say that he’s decided that he’d rather curate Paul Martin’s legacy than Pierre Trudeau’s.

The Princess and the President, Cohen's collapse, and Senator McMahon?

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

The Zalm returns
Neither age nor scandal has slowed the ebullient former B.C. premier Bill Vander Zalm. The Zalm, looking a decade younger than his 75 years, has emerged from obscurity as a potent political force in the fight against B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell’s decision to implement a harmonized sales tax, or HST. Combining provincial and federal sales taxes is good for business, but it adds to the cost of everything from restaurant meals to new homes, which were exempt from provincial tax. Vander Zalm, who resigned in 1991 after mixing public and private business in the sale of his Fantasy Gardens theme park, pounced on the HST issue well before NDP Opposition Leader Carole James. He upstaged her again last Saturday as they both spoke at an anti-HST rally in Vancouver. He called it a “cruel tax” that piles extra costs on consumers, “particularly those who are packing the lunch bucket.” With his typical “Faaantasstic” grasp of facts, he estimated the crowd at 4,000 to 5,000 people. More dispassionate estimates put the number at 1,000 to 2,000, still enough to worry Campbell’s Liberals.

Bush league
It was tails and tales aplenty last week for new Dallas resident and former president George W. Bush. On Sunday, accompanied by his wife, Laura, Bush gave the coin toss (tails) for the Dallas Cowboys at the home opener in the team’s new $1.2-billion stadium. Its problematic giant video scoreboard, barely 27 m above the playing surface, has already inspired a new NFL rule: a replay of the down if punted balls hit the board. If presidents had do-overs, would Bush still have hired Matt Latimer as a speech writer? Latimer’s new book, Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor, dishes on Bush’s catty assessment of Washington power players. Of Joe Biden, now vice-president: “If bulls–t was currency, Joe Biden would be a billionaire.” On then-Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s run for the vice-presidency: “This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for.” Of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama: “This is a dangerous world, that cat isn’t remotely qualified to handle it.” Of his own abilities, lest there be any doubt: “I was qualified.” Continue…

G8 PDA

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 2:23 AM - 4 Comments

An entertaining pool report from the official welcoming of G8 leaders to Pittsburgh.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrives with his wife. They get a warm welcome from both Obamas, the warmest so far. There’s a lot of familiarity. Hugs, chats about daughters.

Granted, it would still seem, at least on the public display of affection scale of American relations, that the Harpers rank slightly behind the Browns (“hugs, kisses, more hugs, more kisses, handholding, you name it”) and Sarkozys (“Mr. Obama kisses her four times … Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Sarkozy chat warmly. A lot of touching there too”).

The rare brilliance of 'Bright Star'

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 12:03 AM - 0 Comments

Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish in Jane Campion's 'Bright Star'

I cannot recommend Bright Star too highly. Here’s an expanded version what I wrote about the film when it premiered in Cannes last May:

From the opening frames, as the camera luxuriates in the deep-flowered meadows of early 19th-century England, Jane Campion takes us into the bright, beating heart of Romantic movement, that fleeting place of truth and beauty, youth and reverie.  Bright Star conjures poet John Keats  through the eyes of the woman who becomes infatuated with him, only to see him die of consumption at 25. The love and the death both unfold at an exquisite pace, as a poetic courtship.

This is  Australian director Jane Campion’s first feature in six years, and her best since The Piano (1993). Her previous movie, In the Cut, was an intimate contemporary thriller about sex, death and poetry; Bright Star is an intimate  period romance about love, death and poetry. Big difference. Although I was among the minority that appreciated In the Cut, it was too clever by half.  Bright Star is  deceptively simple, and radiant. It should leave audiences  swooning, though I suspect women will like it more than men. Continue…

The Coderre-Ignatieff two-step

By Paul Wells - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 8:07 PM - 48 Comments

Martin Cauchon has been offered the Liberal nomination in Jeanne-Le Ber, which was contested in 2008 (I was at the nomination meeting. It was very entertaining), on a platter, by Michael Ignatieff at Denis Coderre’s recommendation. Renewal being, apparently, a higher priority for the Liberal party in the northern part of downtown Montreal than it is in the western part.

I suppose they could simply have contested nomination meetings. But that would be wrong.

UPDATE: More. Sheila Gervais, who here criticizes Ignatieff’s eminently criticism-worthy wave of candidate appointments, supported Bob Rae for the Liberal leadership in 2006 and was national director of the party when Jean Chrétien appointed several candidates, but I offer that context only to anticipate obvious rebuttals to the point she’s making, which remains valid.

UPDATER: The Gazette seems to  believe Liza Frulla was the Liberal in Jeanne-Le Ber in 2008. She wasn’t.

Obama's reform needs a public option

By John Parisella - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 5:24 PM - 31 Comments

As Canadians, it is easy to be astonished by the health care debate in the United States. It can seem surreal at times when viewed from a country like ours, where the principles of universality and accessibility are a given and no one is threatened with bankruptcy when faced with health issues. After a summer of mounting protests, boisterous town halls, and radical polarization, we are left with the impression that Barack Obama’s reform package may be in trouble and that, if he does end up with a bill, it will bring less change than was expected.

The context is clear: Americans acknowledge the need for reform. They are concerned about the exhorbitant profits at health insurance companies and the extent of coverage they provide. Healthcare costs are spiralling out of control and now represent nearly one-sixth of the American economy. Forty-seven million Americans have no health care insurance. Despite the fact the U.S. spends more public money on healthcare than any other country, leading health indicators show a less than stellar return in areas like longevity and infant mortality. Granted, Americans have access to quality healthcare when they can afford it, and the United States is the leader when it comes to innovation and advances in health care treatment. But the general consensus is that reform is urgently needed.

Continue…

'Any limits on content or opinion were my own'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 5:08 PM - 2 Comments

Bit tardy in getting to this, but here is the late Doug Fisher’s last column for the Sun, reprinted on the occasion of his recent passing.

I carried the opposition MP’s mentality into journalism. Over the years, my opinions have been more critical than approving of whatever government has been in power … The arrogance of government, its overwhelming control of Parliament, and the opposition’s weakness were a big theme during my four parliaments as an MP—much discussed on the Hill and in the press. I carried that theme with me to the press gallery and have often written about it.

After nearly 50 years, I can only say that government has become immense, the prime minister’s office is vastly bigger and more powerful, more attention than ever is paid to party leaders and in particular to the prime minister, and the House of Commons—whose weakness we bemoaned back in my time in it—has withered almost to insignificance…

Today’s MPs are easily as able and hard-working as during the Diefenbaker years — as well as better educated and provided with far better facilities and support services. Paradoxically, they play a far smaller, less important role than MPs of yore, undermined over the years by a hardening of caucus discipline and by the swelling cadres of aides and spin doctors in the offices of the prime minister and the other parties’ leaders.

Counter-Programming, The Fast Way

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 4:55 PM - 0 Comments

I don’t actually have a lot to say on this topic, but the fluctuating ratings for The Jay Leno Show — up one night, down the next, and back up the night after that — have led to speculation that he will, or at least should, try to adjust his show depending on what’s on the other networks. His best night this week was the night he was up against The Good Wife, a show that was somewhat uncomfortably placed after the NCIS spinoff. The guy viewers who tuned out after NCIS: LA may have gone over to Leno. But on other nights, those same viewers will stick with something else. (It’s fair to say that Leno will always be the last choice for viewers at 10 o’clock; NBC is hoping that he’ll get enough viewers who simply don’t like any of the other shows in that slot.) So he could do better by tailoring his material to be an alternative, at least slightly, to the other programs he’s up against. He can’t change the guests very far in advance, but the jokes, skits and bits can be tweaked so as to hold the attention of whoever is most likely to be tuning in on that particular day.

That’s probably giving Leno and his writers credit for more flexibility than they’ve got. But the advantage, in theory, of doing a variety/talk show in prime time is that they can counter-program much quicker than any other kind of show. Scripted shows take a long time to produce and edit; if the network decides to tweak the show, it takes weeks to make it happen, and if another network successfully counter-programs against it, the show’s ratings are screwed for the foreseeable future. (A famous historical example is the early, one-camera Happy Days, whose ratings started out high and then tanked when CBS moved Good Times up against it, a show that had a similarly youngish audience but offered more of the broad, raucous comedy that demographic preferred.) Even reality shows require a lot of planning, shooting and editing, so it’s usually too late to change the show to react to whatever else is being scheduled against it. But a show that airs on the same day it’s taped, and includes same-day topical material, is free to counter-program with extreme speed, and hit back instantly against some other network’s counter-programming. Leno could do that, if he were willing to make his show more unpredictable; he might even wind up doing something like that if he starts to get beaten badly enough by the competition. The one thing he has going for him is what variety shows have always had: they’re cheap and they’re fast, and that makes them more flexible than more expensive, elaborate shows.

To fix democracy, start with the voters

By John Geddes - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 4:50 PM - 24 Comments

The highly entertaining Maclean’s/CPAC “Our Democracy is Broken: How Do We Fix It” show was mostly about what’s wrong with political institutions—Question Period is a disgrace, election campaigns are devoid of ideas, MPs mindlessly follow the party line.

It’s all important stuff, but misses, in my opinion, a deeper problem: our citizens know less about politics than they used to and are less inclined to vote. In particular, young people tend to be poorly informed and politically inert, and it’s getting worse.
Continue…

He’s Europe’s human rights watchdog?

By Jen Cutts - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 4:40 PM - 0 Comments

For a country set to take over the leadership of Europe’s top human rights organization next year, Kazakhstan’s recent jailing of a prominent activist might suggest it’s not entirely qualified for the job. Human rights defender Yevgeny Zhovtis, a long-time critic of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s tight grip on power and his government’s widespread rights abuses, was sentenced to four years in prison following a car accident in July that left a pedestrian dead. Human Rights Watch said the trial “did not meet basic fair trial standards,” citing the judge’s refusal to consider key evidence from Zhovtis’s lawyers and other inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case.

Kazakhstan, an oil-rich nation bordering on Russia and China that has been led by Nazarbayev since 1991, has a history of using trumped-up charges or tough laws to silence its critics. The trial has shone a spotlight on Kazakhstan—and its relationships with Western nations—as it prepares to take over the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The position was granted after the county’s foreign minister promised in 2007 to reform strict media legislation and election laws, though to date very little has changed.

In fact, there’s little incentive for Kazakhstan to improve its human rights record. It isn’t likely to be asked to give up the role at the OSCE, and foreign officials continue to stop by—Britain’s Europe Minister Glenys Kinnock was there last week speaking of the two countries’ “strong commercial ties.” Canada and the U.S. have also invested in the country, and are eager to stay in Nazarbayev’s good graces. His ace? The Kashagan oil field in the Caspian Sea, the world’s biggest oil discovery since 1968, which will make Kazakhstan one of the world’s top 10 oil producers by 2015.

Special Name This Dog Challenge

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 4:35 PM - 171 Comments

We have a dog. What we do not have is a name for the dog, owing to an inability to achieve unanimity or even a majority among family members. Traditional names have been proposed. Offbeat names have been proposed. Verbs, adverbs, dance steps and Star Wars characters have been proposed. Most frustrating of all, each and every one of my football-inspired monikers has been shot down (“Come on,” I persist, “what exactly don’t you people like about ‘D’Brickashaw?’”) Continue…

Spain: the civil war lives on

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 4:20 PM - 3 Comments

When Spanish dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975, ending almost 40 years in power stretching back to the civil war of 1936 to 1939, Spaniards from both the right and the left adopted an unofficial pacto del olvido, meaning an agreement to forget. The conflict and Franco’s rule had left deep wounds that many felt would be too dangerous to open.

Three decades on, those wounds remain. The war and Franco’s subsequent dictatorship are subjects few Spaniards can or want to forget. Last year, Baltasar Garzón, Spain’s most famous judge, launched an inquiry to investigate what he called “crimes against humanity” committed during the Franco era. He ordered mass graves opened in an effort to determine the fates of tens of thousands of Franco opponents who disappeared during and after the war. Continue…

Incontinent on the Continent

By Julia McKinnell - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 4 Comments

Jane Christmas remembers in high school carrying the painful secret that she and her mother didn’t get along. Other girls’ mothers “were their best friends. I could never talk about it,” Christmas said in a phone interview last week from her home in Hamilton. “When everyone was saying all these glowing things about their mothers, I thought, ‘Why don’t I have that kind of relationship with my mother?’ ” Thirty-odd years later, Christmas is talking openly about her lifelong effort to win her mother’s approval. “She was always critical. She had a harsh way of dealing with me,” Christmas said.

Two years ago, an opportunity arose to take her widowed mother to Italy for six weeks. “One of the things Mom and I discussed when we first planned this trip was to use our time together to air past grievances and come to an understanding and acceptance of our stormy past. I had asked her to come up with three things about me that had gnawed at her over the years. I said I would do likewise about her,” she writes in her new memoir, Incontinent on the Continent: My Mother, Her Walker, and Our Grand Tour of Italy. Continue…

It was crazy, even without the goats

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 3:40 PM - 0 Comments

The party for the Men Who Stare at Goats premiere was in a modernist glass mansion on Toronto’s exclusive Bridle Path. And the guests, trying not to stare at the movie’s star, George Clooney, were acting strange. When I ran into a friend who refused to shake my hand, I thought she was paranoid about spreading the swine flu virus. No, she said, it was because her hands were “goaty.” She had been petting some goats that were huddled in a pen on the red carpet; they were clad in promo T-shirts that read “Stop staring at me”—the same T-shirts worn by hostesses serving Vitaminwater and vodka cocktails inside.

The Toronto International Film Festival is a kind of marathon staring contest. You gaze at the screen, and the stars, until it makes you crazy. And at the 34th annual edition of TIFF (Sept. 10-19), there was a lot to look at—335 films from 64 countries, and enough celebrities to choke downtown traffic with limo gridlock. Continue…

Week in Pictures: September 18th – September 24th, 2009

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 3:31 PM - 0 Comments

The trouble with a No Impact Planet

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 8 Comments

Outdoorsy types have for ages practised no-impact camping, with its charming motto, “Take only pictures; leave only footprints.” The rationale is not complicated: the central conceit of going camping is you are entering the “wilderness,” a realm free of civilization with minimal evidence of human activity. If you vacate your campsite and leave a bunch of used flashlight batteries and empty Chef Boyardee tins lying around, it kinda spoils the effect for the next group. In short, no-impact camping is the only way to make the experience sustainable for everyone.

But this idea, that what matters to sustainability is the effect our activities have on our future welfare and our descendants’, is one we often forget when it comes to thinking about the economy and the environment as a whole. Which is a bit weird, since the Brundtland commission, convened by the UN in 1983, explicitly defines a sustainable economy as one “that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Continue…

Begging to differ

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 2:20 PM - 4 Comments

For retailers who set up shop on Spring Garden Road in downtown Halifax, staying in business is literally an uphill battle. Thirty thousand fewer people live in the regional centre now compared to 50 years ago. And tourists who visit the city’s waterfront must tackle a steep climb to access the 500-m shopping strip. Which explains why, when Spring Garden Area Business Association (SGABA) manager Bernard Smith began hearing complaints from shoppers about panhandlers several years ago, he listened. And though his attempts to propel the city and province to action have been largely unsuccessful, he says, “We’ve made our own infrastructure to deal with the situation.” On top of hiring private security guards to keep beggars from blocking sidewalks, Smith began paying panhandlers to water the flowers or shovel the snow. Before long, he found them jobs in recycling depots. “We’ll give him steel-toed boots, gloves, a hard hat—whatever it takes to get that guy employed,” he says. In several cases, the SGABA has even paid the security deposit on an apartment.

Despite these efforts, panhandling persists; it often takes more than a job offer to get those with addiction or mental health issues off the street. So recently, another group of Halifax merchants began touting an approach that’s less carrot and more stick: a bylaw against aggressive panhandling. According to Paul MacKinnon, executive director of the Downtown Halifax Business Commission, such legislation would impose a fine on those who heckle or touch passersby, and for repeat offenders, jail time. “We want to make [panhandling] a bit more uncomfortable.” Continue…

Strong, principled action

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 2:11 PM - 32 Comments

Lawrence Cannon, today. The reasons behind our decision to boycott may be obvious, but are nonetheless worth repeating. Firstly, Iran has violated the human rights of its own citizens and foreign nationals, including Canadians Maziar Bahari (by unjustifiably detaining him) and Zahra Kazemi (whose death remains unexplained). This recently also has been demonstrated in its violent response against protestors following the fraudulent presidential election.

Michael Petrou, Nov. 20, 2008. Vafaseresht, a man who surely would have been a valuable witness and source of information for any legal case Canada might compile against Saeed Mortazavi, hasn’t been in touch with any Canadian diplomats or government officials since. It’s a stunning oversight, if one assumes that Stephen Harper was sincere when he said that Canada had not “dropped” the matter of Kazemi’s murder. But the available evidence suggests that Canada still isn’t serious about building a case against Mortazavi. Maclean’s interviewed Shahram Azam, a former staff physician in Iran’s Defence Ministry, who examined Kazemi four days after her arrest and found evidence of torture. Azam, who now lives in Canada and is willing to testify against Mortazavi, says no one from the Canadian government has contacted him about Kazemi since he arrived more than three years ago. Rodney Moore, a spokesman at Foreign Affairs, said that Canada did not consider the Kazemi case resolved but could not confirm if there is an ongoing investigation or extradition request, nor could a spokesperson for the Department of Justice.

Ernie Duff 1936-2009

By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 7 Comments

Ernie Duff was born on April 17, 1936, in a gritty London district nearby the Surrey docks; he was the youngest of seven. Chronic illness had left his father William an invalid. His mother, the pretty, one-eyed daughter of an East End barrow-boy, was so tiny that all called her Doll; she worked as a domestic. With the London Blitz, his siblings left to live with strangers; Ernie, too young for such treatment, fled with his parents to an estate north of Brighton. There he slept in the stables and learned to snare rabbit, scrounge for apples and otherwise hunt for meals. The drone of lumbering doodlebugs—Nazi missiles launched from France—was constant; Ernie knew to run when the engines stopped. When an addled German fighter one day dove into the manor, villagers scrambled to collect scraps valuable as gold dust.

Peace brought the Duffs to Brighton and, after five years, the return of Ernie’s siblings. Ernie was suddenly sharing his parents with children he did not know, circumstances that likely contributed to his development as a ham. A small, slightly bucktoothed but good-looking youth, he started factory work at 15 and dressed snappily. Devoted to Frank Sinatra, Vic Damone and Matt Monro, he had a golden voice, and began performing with big bands in dance halls along the coast. In Worthing, where he performed as Alan Venner, he met Diana Jupp, a pretty, retiring blond. He did not tell her his real name until the night before they married. Diana, delighted with the prospect of a glamorous surname, was disappointed; she always called him Alan. Their daughter, Lorraine Chaloner, recalls Ernie waking early and commuting to London, where he’d become a successful tailor’s cutter on Bond Street—for years he worked for the designer Jean Muir—then returning home to don his stage clothes, along with a sparkly heart-shaped ring and a red rose in his lapel, for nightly engagements. Continue…