Melvyn Bragg eats academics for breakfast. He’s formed a career out of
scholarly sparring with the best minds of his generation, touching knuckles with Norman Mailer, getting Gore Vidal on the ropes, flooring Francis Bacon (whilst both steaming drunk). He’s an intellectual heavyweight champion and I am worried that I’ll get the full In Our Time treatment. I spend the interview apprehensively awaiting a trademark, “Let me just pick you up on your last point…”

He proves, however, to be scrupulously charming, chatting to me about his own experiences on Cherwell during his Oxford days – “I managed to spend a long time as their film reviewer without ever once meeting the editor. I think his name was Peter. Not sure.” – and comparing Cowley living-out experiences. Listening to an inordinate amount of Radio 4 for someone thirty years younger than its target generation, his buttery northern accent is disconcertingly familiar.

He is the man Adrian Mole dreamt of becoming – not only a leading arts broadcaster, but the person who, for years, defined what ‘the arts’ encompassed. Over the course of the South Bank show’s 800 episodes, Bragg was intrinsic to re-moulding boundaries of what passed as culturally important, the pop and the pulp alongside the classical and establishment.

It was a conscious manifesto to “treat McCartney with as much importance as Mailer”, and in in 1978 the South Bank show’s agenda proved a controversial one. “We got hammered by the press. Absolutely hammered. The Telegraph was saying ‘Melvyn Bragg has started a new arts program but he doesn’t seem to know what the arts are about’.”

It’s now commonplace to find graphic novels in the Guardian Review and hear Lady Gaga on Front Row. Macca played the London Olympics opening ceremony, alongside both the London Symphony Orchestra and Mike Oldfield. We, as a nation, have learnt to take the contemporary seriously. But back in the seventies, Bragg conjectures, the change came as a relief to the British population. “People thought, I like listening to Eric Clapton as well as Michael Tippet – why should one have a free pass as ‘Art’?”.

After a brief hiatus and a move from ITV to Sky Arts, the South Bank show is still running, as is its engaging seriousness and unapologetic intellectualism.

They are, furthermore, qualities Bragg brought with him to his other most celebrated brainchild, the unashamedly academic In Our Time, which each week features Bragg in conversation with three university professors on a topic cultural, historical, philosophical or scientific.

He explains how, at first, the program was relegated to ‘The Death Slot’ – the Thursday morning show with the lowest weekday audience. But within six months it was getting twice the South Bank show’s audience.

“It worked because at the centre of all discussion programs is a game. Whether it’s Reunion or it’s Eddie Mair or it’s Today – it’s a game, and
you’ve got to know how to play. And, because they’re really clever people, these academics worked out what to do. They had to deliver very fast, to do their top job against equals whom they slightly disagree with but always respect. They couldn’t just reel out the first seven paragraphs of something they wrote in 1957.”

It is clear Bragg enjoys making these programs. He talks of “rubbing the magic lamp” when deciding who to interview for the next series of the South Bank show on Sky Arts, since very few artists, musicians or writers are churlish enough to reject the seal of cultural approval an interview with Bragg entails. In Our Time brings with it “the pleasure of talking to three clever people on a Thursday morning. I love it.”

But it is in talking about his fiction, however, that he becomes most animated. Since 1965 he has published twenty-two novels, two of which have been longlisted for the Booker and one of which won the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award in 1993, which I refrain from asking about.

His latest work, Grace and Mary, was released earlier this summer. Like many of Bragg’s books, it returns to the Cumbrian landscape of his youth, telling a semi-autobiographical story of his mother and grandmother. The writing of it was sparked by a sudden, five-o-clock in the morning apparition. He found himself inexplicably faced with the image of a woman in old-fashioned, Victorian dress wandering the lanes near his cottage in Cumbria. This woman was his grandmother, who had given birth to his mother illegitimately and whom he’d seen only twice “in little smudges of meeting”.

Bragg is careful not to present this vision as anything especially otherworldly, and looks me matter-of-factly in the eye whilst describing
it. It was, he says, a product of “the incredibly capacity of the mind to retain this stuff, this 95% we’re supposed not to use, where lines are crossed, memories invent themselves and misremembering occurs more than remembering.”

I ask where this line between reality, memory and imagination is drawn in writing autobiographical fiction, and Bragg’s response is satisfyingly Radio 4, citing an obscure fragment of scientific history as an appropriate analogy. “On one of the first islands Darwin visited in the Galapagos, he collected a type of finch. Well, the biologist Steve Jones thinks it was a parakeet, and there is an argument there, but let’s stick with finch. And on the next island, hundreds of miles away, he found another one that was a little bit diff erent. The same on the next island, and the next, until he reached the seventh or eighth island where he found a finch directly related to the first finch, but so diff erent they couldn’t even mate. It’s the same with autobiographical fiction. By the time you’ve reimagined it and written it and cut it – it’s a completely different finch.”

It is a perfect demonstration of Bragg’s unparalleled ability to make intellectual connections – between art, science and history on In
Our Time; between high and low culture on the South Bank show; between the fallible humans he interviews and the genius they show in their work; between finch sex and autobiography. He cites D H Lawrence and Thomas Hardy as favourite authors, and their influence on his writing is clear. The novels of each repeatedly revisit working-class roots and imbue their stories with a sense of what Bragg refers to as “carpentry”.

His link with them derives in “coming from a background which didn’t have opportunities, and then realising that [with writing] we’re all on equal territory. That when you’re writing it doesn’t matter where you’re born, if
you have that cast of mind – you can take them all on.”

In 1998, Bragg was appointed to the House of Lords as a Labour peer, and is about to release two BBC4 documentaries on the political radicals Thomas Paine and John Ball. “It’s the process you see. How difficult it is to get legislation through, and how to respect those difficulties. It’s cumbersome, but probably as good a way of doing it as any.”

I try to probe him on the matter of the Unions – is Miliband right to reform the donation system? He answers cagily. “I feel the Unions are to be respected. They’re good people and we must be careful. I think we’ve
got to remember that that’s where we came from.”

He tells me about the twin pulls of London and Cumbria – his life at his home in London, and in his cottage in Cumbria. “There’s a tension
there, but I’d rather have it than not have it… When you look at the biographies of writers’ they encompass so many contradictions, since there is no ‘one way’ to write. I know several writers who left to write full time and their writing’s got worse. Or they’ve got drunk. Or they’ve become conference groupies, which is worse.”

Maybe the two are linked, I suggest. You can only survive as a conference groupie by embracing alcohol. Bragg laughs and agrees with me. It’s evident he has no plans towards either.

Two months into my year abroad in Paris and time is flying by. I’m spending five months here interning at an international property company before studying at the world-renowned University of Athens. So world-renowned in fact that my Erasmus coordinator wouldn’t give me official term dates when I met her at the end of Trinity “because we decide when to start the term depending on the strikes.” Awesome.

I have moved in with a twenty four year old French girl, which has not only allowed me to avoid the notoriously difficult Parisian landlords, but has also meant that I have some readymade friends in the city – or rather, I spend my days plying her friends with “British” things like Victoria sponge cake and scones, and last week I got the big invitation: an evening watching the rugby at the Stade de France next weekend. Progress, albeit slow.

As a Londoner, the transition to Paris has not been too difficult. Yes, the French are totally obsessed with all things administrative, but once the first few weeks of endless form-filling were over, I settled into Parisian life with relative ease. Highlights have included being interviewed for French television, winning big bucks at the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe races and using “I’m only in Paris for five months!” as an excuse to buy my local patisserie out of macaroons.

A slight hindrance did occur one week into my time here when the news reached me that the University of Athens had shut after a planned two-day strike just kept going. Panicking that half my year abroad might be in jeopardy, I decided to throw myself even more into Parisian life. I bought a stripy top and went for drinks with a few Parisians whom I’d met in a bar the night before. We talked about what the French think of the English and vice versa. While I was throwing around words such as “chic” and “sophisticated,” I was faced with a barrage of “binge drinking”, “sluts” and “pizza with pineapple on top”. I asked what the French word for “binge drinking” is. They don’t have one. Forced to admit that I come from a failed nation, I apologized on behalf of the other 63 million alcoholics, scuttled home and pondered on the truth behind these negative stereotypes (gin and tonic in hand).

Starting work wasn’t too troublesome; my colleagues are used to dealing with confused English people as they always have a British intern, however my lack of experience in the French workplace was pretty clear from the outset. The main problem was the big question, to vous or not to vous? The vouvoyer/tutoyer (formal/informal register) debate is complex, and to be honest it seems like even the French don’t know the rules, but here’s what I’ve gathered so far – vouvoyer a child and it’s about as ridiculous as communicating through interpretive dance, tutoyer your new boss and expect a glare so harsh that you might have to break into interpretive dance just to lighten the mood. I tend to avoid this one altogether by occupying an awkward middle-ground alternating between the two – I imagine the English equivalent must be something like “It’s terribly nice to meet you” followed by a fist bump.

Working at a property company when my knowledge of real estate was about as extensive as “pretty building”, “ugly building” was I’m now shameless when it comes to asking for help and spend most of my time with one hand in the air, hollering at my nearest colleague. Luckily the perks of working for a French company are numerous; every day I receive an €8 lunch voucher, the working day ends at 6.30pm for everyone from me, the lowly intern, right up to the MD, and the commute to work each morning is a joy. Boris Johnson take note – the metro is to the tube what the limo is to the skateboard: infinitely superior. Trains every two minutes, a stop every ten metres, no one eating the inevitable egg sandwich (or even worse, the Cornish pasty), but rather a group of well-dressed Parisians reading books!

All that’s left to say is the stereotypes are, for the most part, true; the food is good, the waiters rude, the culture rich, the women slim and the men bearded. Happy as I am, I haven’t quite cracked the Erasmus code yet, and there is one thing that still baffles me: How does one ever actually spend single centimes? Answers on a post card s’il vous plaît.

Love,

Theo xxxx

An air of authenticity surrounds this 19 year old Nottinghamian which seems to be constantly undrmined by a series of mediocre offerings intentionally designed to recall the past and shun the dominance of the X Factor top 40 teenybopper genre. Ironically, however, his recollection of 1963 becomes just as generic, just as mediated and just as boring.

Legendary producer Rick Rubin’s fingerprints litter the album, but not in a good way. Unlike another recent credit of the 50 year-old, the Avett Brothers’ Magpie and the Dandelion, which remains particularly earnest and pure in terms of production, Shangri La becomes cliched with the forced crackling effect and ‘vintage’ timbre of Jake Bugg’s vocals which is evidently forced.

Having ‘gone electric’ earlier this summer, Bugg recalled the Bob Dylan controversy at Newport in 1965 but without quite the same level of interest, hype or importance- a publicity stunt, perhaps? Definitely. The influence of Dylan continues on tracks like ‘Messed Up Kids’ which is half ‘Don’t think twice, it’s alright’ half Merseybeat but without the lyrical elegance of Dylan nor the energy, excitment and newly afforded freedoms of Beatlemania and Liverpool in 1964.

In an effort to retain his authentic ‘I’m just a boy with a guitar and some songs’ image, Bugg has pulled out all the stops, just look at the cover! Unfortunately this is without any substance, having not written any of his own material for either his debut or this follow-up which he defends, citing his age, even though Dylan was only 21 when he wrote ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, without any bigwig artistic help or guidance.

Furthemore, the grit and reality of the Nottingham council estate that characterised Bugg’s debut is now gone, replaced by the sun and sea of the Malibu coastline where much of the recording process took place. The influence of Nashville is also felt on tracks such as ‘Storm Passes Away’, featuring the lyric “they keep telling me I’m older than I’m supposed to be”. This would be completely legitimate- if the album were to be an earnest and effective reflection of Bugg’s personality rather than merely his record company’s perception of what could feasibly sell. In a word, dull.

Rap music is minority music. It is the anger of marginalised youth. Yet it shits all over the LGBTQ community. This is largely the product of fear and suspicion in the ghettoised urban communities that were the crucible of hip-hop. Most homophobia is borne out of survival instincts in an atmosphere of violence where homosexuality is equated to weakness.

This is not an attempt to excuse the myriad snarls of “faggot” or the endless slurs and belittlement. In 2013, though, there is more reason than ever to hope that hip-hop’s attitude to the LGBTQ community will catch up with its approach to social justice in general.

Mainstream hip-hop is making moves in the right direction. Azealia Banks and Frank Ocean came out as bisexual and mercifully few people seemed to care. (Hip-hop behemoth Russell Simmons described Ocean as a “catalyst with courage”.) But like everything good that happens in rap music, LGBT hip-hop is primarily exploding on an underground level.

Y-Love, a rapper who hit a triple whammy of potential prejudice by being born black, homosexual and Orthodox Jewish, came out last year. “Stories like mine are happening in every club in every hood — that gay MC who walks in reluctantly, if he can hold it down on the mic, can get respect as much as his hetero counterpart,” he wrote on his blog. All positive change in hip-hop is enacted through grassroots battles and peformance, as when female rappers broke onto the scene. Hip-hop is a meritocratic culture of respect, and it is from this platform that LGBT rappers will change the culture.

Gay rappers are not a modern phenomenon. In Cali, Deep Dickollective held it down for homo hip-hop 20 years ago in the Bay Area, amongst a host of others. The PeaceOUT WorldHomo Hop Festival ran for years. But in 2013, gay rappers are not simply interacting with one another in insular communities. Social networking is facilitating far wider collusion. From the Floridian booty rap of Yo Majesty to the Canadian rap-Klezmer fusion of Socalled to Michigan’s pan-sexual prodigy Angel Haze, the scene is exploding.

Cultural interchange with the ‘ball community’, a platform for drag queens and other queer artists, is also providing a new platform for the experimental gay hip-hop scene. “Today’s queer mania for ghetto fabulousness and bling masks its elemental but silent relationship to even more queer impulses toward fabulousness in the 1960s and 1970s”, according to the excellent documentary Pick up the Mic.

A queer identity is being transformed from something to be hidden and mocked into a stimulus for creativity. Hip-hop is music for the margins, and it is from the margins that its most daring creativity bursts. LGBT rappers are not finding success as homosexual novelties, but because they are producing exceptionally experimental (and exceptionally queer) music.

Cuntry Living presents an evening of Ladies & LGBTQ hip-hop and rap this Monday at Babylove.