Going walkabout: 40 years of the Walkman

I will, soon, be heading off on holiday. Yay. There was a time when this meant a laborious, torturously methodical packing process: the selection of cassettes to while away the fortnight on a beach. At first, this was constrained by the 12-tape capacity of my first vinyl cassette case, until the revolution of a 36-tape case came along and opened up my world abroad. Seriously.

Before portable CD players, Sony's MiniDisc and Philips' DCC format, then MP3 players and now the iPhone, the cassette was the mobile format of choice, and all thanks to the Sony Walkman, which made its debut 40 years ago this month. We are also, now, so used to seeing people plugged into their phones wherever they go that it almost doesn't seem possible that there was a time when music on the move either meant a portable radio (with one of those comical 'deaf aid' earpieces) or in extreme circumstances, an old-style shoebox cassette recorder with headphones attached. Which would make you look a knob. Somewhere in the annals of time, too, there were portable record players, which stretched the concept of portability somewhat.

So when, on 1 July, 1979, Sony introduced the Walkman (initially known as the 'Stowaway' in Britain and the 'Roundabout' in the United States - hats off, Sony marketing department), the Japanese tech giant launched an entirely new music consumption culture. Not to mention fuel for Ben Elton routines about hissy Dire Straits headphone leakage on the Tube. The Walkman TPS-L2, to give its proper name, was the result of Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka asking his design team to slim down existing cassette players, and adapt the existing Sony Pressman tape recorder (so named to appeal to journalists) into a more pocketable package. Some 30 years later, Sony settled a legal dispute with German inventor Andreas Pavel, who'd claimed that he'd patented the personal stereo in 1977, two years before Sony brought out the Walkman, but had been unable to find a manufacturer for it. "Mr Pavel invented the device known today as the Walkman," reported The New York Times. "But it took more than 25 years of battling the Sony Corporation and others in courts and patent offices around the world before he finally won the right to say it," after the Japanese company had reportedly settled the dispute with a multi-million-dollar some.

Still, though, in 1979, the Walkman was hardly pocket sized - constrained by the cassette and tape mechanism and generally being old-school, pre-digital. But it was a revolution. Consumer technology, especially that coming out of Japan, has progressively followed a path of miniaturisation,  with the personal music player arguably reaching the minimum design limit with devices like the Apple iPod Shuffle (I still use a seventh-generation iPod Nano, mainly because its 16GB hard drive can no longer be arbitrarily tampered with by Apple, as happens to the iTunes library on my iPhone...). In fact, with standalone music players giving way to music being almost exclusively carried on our increasingly larger smartphones, portable music is seemingly returning to the dimensions of that first Walkman.

Not that the original was an instant success: just 50,000 of the $150 players were sold in the first two months. But by 1983, cassettes were outselling vinyl records for the first time in recorded music history, fuelled largely by the Walkman and its establishment of the 'personal stereo' as a new consumer electronics category. Design and functionality evolved, with Sony adding the ability to play so-called metal tapes, along with features like Dolby noise reduction and FM/AM radios. There was even a solar-powered Walkman, a clever move for a device listened to on the beach, though before global warming became a thing, a risky proposition for those holidaying in the UK.

Picture: Sony

Incredibly, Sony only ended production of tape-based Walkman products nine years ago, the result of the market shift towards digital music. The Walkman brand remains today, attached to Sony's range of high-resolution digital audio players (including the £2500 WM1Z ' Signature Series' device). Given that Sony sold more than 200 million Walkmans during the lifetime of the tape player, it's no surprise that you can still find them on eBay, catnip to retro types who are, bafflingly, fuelling a minor comeback for the cassette. A report by the BPI this week revealed that nearly 35,000 albums on cassette were sold in the UK during the first half of 2019, an increase from 18,000 last year.

Quite who is buying them, though is unclear, though Billie Eilish is proving to be the winner in this movement, selling 4,000 copies of her debut album When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? in the tape format. Last year's tape best-seller was The 1975's A Brief Enquiry Into Online Relationships, bizarrely suggesting a teenage demographic for the old cassette format. However, what might be driving this trend for fan-heavy sales may be the fact that most of these cassettes have been sold from the artists' own official online merchandise stores, with many available only on a limited-edition basis. The chances are therefore good that they may never see the spindles of a tape player. Which may be a good thing. Before discarded plastic bottles became the scourge of lay-bys and suburban hedges, it was magnetic cassette tape, thrown away in frustration after being extracted by pencil from the tape heads of a Walkman or car stereo, thus rendering lovingly-curated compilations and £8.99 albums from Our Price utterly useless. See, there is something going for digital music.

The worst is yet to come

When I commenced my blogging career it was in a fit of pique about a football match. It was a Monday morning, I was in a foul mood, anyway, and England had just departed yet another World Cup at the feet of the Germans. So I ranted about it on an early morning train between Amsterdam and Eindhoven in the south of the Netherlands, where I was working at the time. In the nine years since I have covered all sorts, with a skew towards music and football, the subjects I profess to know best, or at least have the most enthusiasm for.

With, perhaps, the odd deviation, I have managed to stay clear of politics with my blogs. For two good reasons. Firstly, I'm an intellectual dolt and would struggle to string together a cogent commentary. Secondly, the digital dissemination of current affairs via social media has proven relentlessly unwinnable, especially within the last three years, with Brexit bringing a coarsening public discourse to the surface, much like the toxic slime beneath New York City's streets in Ghostbusters seeping through the cracks. Throw in the rise of populism and the daily diatribes from that which the US president dumps - a phrase I use with literal intent - on Twitter, and things turn ugly. Profess an opinion and the keyboard warriors pile on. Yes, it's their democratic right, but the vitriol with which some - from either side of the increasingly yawning chasm of viewpoints - apply themselves, left and right, right and left, is symptomatic of the "divided Britain" that became a common thread of the now completed contest to choose a new leader of the Conservative Party, and then by some ridiculous default, Britain's next prime minister.

Trust me, this isn't just about Boris. I've held a long disdain about politicians of all partisan hues. With the odd virtuous exception, politicians are largely charlatans. Many years ago, my then-local MP, Vince Cable, now the recently resigned Liberal-Democrat leader, proved to be so utterly useless in the case of a legitimate issue of a parking ticket that I raised with him (I'd picked it up after an event at Wembley Stadium), that he had the temerity to write back to me to say he'd been at the same event and it had been "highly enjoyable". So when he came knocking on my door in the run-up to the 1992 general election, I took great pleasure in not only showing him his letter, but asking him - fairly rhetorically - how he thought I'd vote. Political observers might say that such cynicism towards our elected representatives is regrettable. The problem is, they don't do themselves any favours, do they?

Take Jeremy Hunt, the defeated runner-up in the Conservative leadership contest: "I am delighted for the country that Boris has become Prime Minister," he said immediately after Johnson had been named the new Tory leader. "I think he will be a great prime minister, he’s got optimism, enthusiasm, he puts a smile on people's face and has total unshakable confidence in our amazing country." Compare that with Hunt's "bottler" accusation when his rival refused to take part in a Sky News televised debate early in the campaign, or his assertion that Johnson will not deliver on his Brexit promises, the core topic of his leadership tilt. But, hey, that's politics for you. Utterly shameless, utterly charlatan.

Here's where my depth of political knowledge shows its threadbare state. Political historians will say that politics has forever been thus, that there has never been an age of great integrity, or a period when politicians had our trust and respect. But even with my addled perspective, I can see that we live in extraordinary times, and not in a good way, either. Britain now has a hugely divisive incoming prime minister, spouting cod-Trump populist statements about "making Britain great again" and burbling away about his shit-show predecessor Theresa May's "...extraordinary service" and it being "...a privilege to serve in her Cabinet and to see the passion and determination that she brought to the many causes that are her legacy", a privilege of course until he resigned. Here is a man who has coveted the keys to 10 Downing Street since childhood, believing himself to be Winston Churchill-incarnate. And yet he has proven time and time again to be untrustworthy, getting sacked by The Times in the 1980s for fabricating a quote, running roughshod over Parliamentary rules on financial disclosure (amongst other examples of a somewhat 'casual' approach to authority), comparing women wearing burqas and niqabs to "letter boxes" in his Daily Telegraph column (and is talking about "uniting" the country now he is PM), being economic with the truth on everything from EU banana regulations and the UK's payments to Brussels, and most recently waving a packaged smoked kipper about in a rant about "pointless, expensive, environmentally damaging" EU regulations, despite those regulations being, in fact, introduced by the UK government, not by the EU. Even Max Hastings, his editor at the Telegraph when he was its Brussels correspondent, recently declared: "He is unfit for national office, because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification." 

Those who defend Johnson maintain that these are examples of a colourful character, who makes mistakes because he's human. True: compared to the Maybot, Johnson is indeed the life and soul. No danger of poor quality ABBA dancing here, or revelations about ribald adolescent behaviour running through wheatfields. But there are legitimate questions about his character that deserve scrutiny, and that's before we get anywhere close to his professional political record and issues like telling the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in 2017 that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in Iran, a "slip of the tongue" (according to International Trade minister Liam Fox) that has rendered her still in jail in Iran, with a court telling her that, as a result of the-then foreign secretary's comments, her sentence could double. But there's colourful BoJo, "Britain's Trump", the populist blond who speaks honestly and doesn't bow to convention.

There's no doubt that Johnson is a "character". Over the years of his public life he has cultivated, cleverly and cynically, the bumbling, scruffy-haired, zip-wiring clown, guest hosting Have I Got News For You as a knowing joke figure which was as much an act as Janette Tough dressing up as Wee Jimmy Krankie. Even in his mess of a victory declaration today ("...like an ill-prepared after-dinner speech at the local golf club," according to Labour's Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell), with its references to "pinging off the guy ropes of self-doubt and negativity", we had an incoming premier based more on the character 'Boris' rather than a politician of strategic vision and integrity. Now, as one of his supporters muttered this morning, the hard part begins: leading a government with no real majority, the nuclear acrimony of Brexit (and the criminal damage of a No-Deal Brexit, too), and brewing conflict with Iran (of whom he has that form...) being just three hot topics on the desk of Britain's 77th prime minister.

As you will clearly have gathered by now, I'm no fan of Boris. But, as previously stated, I'm no fan of politicians in general. Is Jeremy Corbyn a viable alternative? I sincerely think not, and certainly not when Labour is so riven by anti-Semitism, political cranks and ambiguity about Europe. And the newly-installed Lib-Dem leader, Jo Swinson, shouldn't think herself too highly, either. Offering a "credible alternative" means doing exactly that, and there is no one in the Westminster bubble currently who stands out. Which means we are in moribund times. Probably for the first time in my conscious lifetime. A country isolating itself from Europe, at risk of political influence from an inane presence in the White House and nefarious intent in Moscow, being run by a comedy prime minister. Not great, is it?

One giant leap

Picture: NASA

The timing was perfect. Tuesday night’s partial lunar eclipse on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission blasting off from the Kennedy Space Centre couldn’t have coincided better. It was as if our closest extra-terrestrial neighbour was doing its best to remind us why humans went to the Moon in the first place, given mankind’s lengthy - some might say unhealthy - obsession with it. There is, perhaps, more than a coincidence that Luna, the Roman goddess of the Moon, shares her name with the modern word “lunacy”. Theories have existed for centuries linking the full moon with everything from psychiatric episodes and suicides, to murders and even traffic accidents, along with other tropes about vampires, werewolves and full moons as the cause of eccentricity.

When, on July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module Eagle landed on the Moon’s surface, four days after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins had left the launchpad, strapped to the 363 feet, 2,800-tonne Saturn V rocket, they weren’t about to simply satisfy ancient curiosity about the Earth’s only natural satellite. The astonishing feat of engineering that the Apollo missions represented were, ultimately, about Cold War brinksmanship, a demonstration of virility in the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. It had begun with the Russians launching Sputnik, continued with the Americans sending up Telstar (enabling, amongst many other more important things, football matches to be beamed across the Atlantic), went further with the Russians launching an unmanned lunar lander, and both countries launching manned missions into Earth’s orbit as precursors to the manned missions to the Moon.

Some will suggest that there was a military objective, that putting boots on the Moon was a demonstration that, with the right capability, the successful nation could land anything, anywhere - humans on the Moon, a nuclear warhead on the other’s capital city. Some even surmised, wildly, that the Apollo landings were a precursor to establishing a lunar military base from which to launch pre-emptive strikes on the rival. And, of course, even with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin actually walking on the Moon a few hours after landing there, conspiracists have continued to chomp at the bit, arguing that it was all a hoax, filmed in a Hollywood studio, either to save money or simply fulfil some CIA plot to fool the Soviets that the United States had successfully beaten them to it.

While some of these theories sit somewhere between science fiction and further lunar lunacy, history shows that US-Soviet rivalry and paranoia was rampant during the decade in which President Kennedy declared “we choose to go to the Moon”.  By September 1962, when he made that famous speech at Houston’s Rice University, the two superpowers were already on a course towards nuclear conflict. Under Kennedy, South-East Asia was becoming the site of a proxy war; in April 1961 he suffered the political and military ignominy of the Bay of Pigs debacle, the attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. More global tension was to come a few months later with the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles being deployed to Cuba.

Political and social change was afoot in Kennedy’s America, too, and with a growing belief that the country was also falling behind the Russians in terms of technical superiority in outer space, the Rice speech delivered more than just rah-rah: “We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people,” he thundered. “For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theatre of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.”

Like the current White House tenant, Kennedy knew full well what what he was doing. In invoking the debate about space presenting an opportunity for mankind, he was lighting the fires of what would become the largest national ego trip in history. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard," he intoned. "Because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.” A year and two months later, Kennedy was dead. Assassinated in Dallas, so we’re still led to believe, by Lee Harvey Oswald. Or forces unknown controlling him. But the blue touch paper had been lit on what is, still, one of mankind’s most dazzling technical achievements.

It is, today, something of a cliche to compare modern technologies with those that put man on the Moon. Digital computing, in modern parlance, was still in its infancy, but the computers used to get Apollo 11 up to the Moon and back were absolutely state of the art for their day. The comparison with the power of the smartphone in your pocket isn't particularly valid. That said, the Moon landings didn’t add anything technologically or scientifically, according to James Burke, the legendary science presenter and journalist (and one of my broadcasting heroes), who was a part of the BBC’s commentary team on the night Eagle landed on the Moon’s surface.

Picture: NASA

“The rocket was made of stuff that already existed, the computer already existed,” Burke told the BBC this week, pointing out that the Saturn V rocket itself was largely the work of Wernher von Braun, the German ‘father of rocket science’ who’d created the V2 missiles that rained down on Britain towards the end of the war. What made it unique was the 400,000 people at 2,500 companies producing five and a half million components for it: “Each one [of those components] had to be absolutely flawless and perfect and wouldn’t break down.” Burke said. “That kind of management is something that NASA invented and I think has changed the world more than anything else.”

The Saturn V was - and remains to this day - the largest and most powerful rocket ever made. It had enough thrust to send 43 tonnes to the Moon - the equivalent of almost four London buses - delivering a payload comprising the command, service and lunar lander modules, along with the astronauts. Sending it all into orbit, however, was only the start of the challenge, however.

Putting anything on the Moon wasn’t a simple task of pointing a rocket at it: as anyone who has seen the wonderful film Hidden Figures will know, leaving the Earth and returning safely requires highly complex mathematics. This task, then, fell to a group of women NASA had employed as ‘human computers’, one of whom being Katherine Johnson, who was the basis of Hidden Figures. Johnson - who initially had to deal with many of the inequalities and prejudices suffered by black women in America at the time - had worked as a NASA technologist since 1958 (and would retire in 1986 having been involved in every mission up to and including the Space Shuttle). In 1961 she’d calculated the trajectory for the flight that made Alan Shepard the first American in space. When John Glenn went into orbit, aided by early mainframe computers, Johnson was again asked to verify the numbers, a condition the astronaut made before he’d step into the capsule. Her story alone is one of the most remarkable associated with the space race. As any rudimentary knowledge of space travel will inform, the easy bit is getting up there. Coming back down, safely and without burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere is the hard part. The work of Johnson and her team was essential in calculating the angle at which the module containing Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins should make re-entry. There were, however, other hazards that risked the astronauts coming back at all. The trajectory calculations also included complex formulas for fuel burn. As it was, when Armstrong the Eagle landed on the Moon’s Sea Of Tranquility there were just 19 seconds of fuel left. “Now that is what you call nerves of steel. It still makes me get goosebumps,” says James Burke.

Over this weekend of anniversary much will be made of the statement made by Neil Armstrong as he stepped down from the landing module: “That’s one small step for [a] man…one giant leap for mankind.” Few humans in all of history will have uttered a phrase so memorable. No human being before, arguably, had been watched by 650 million people live on television making such a giant step forward for humanity. The superlatives were, however, thoroughly justified. There would, by 1972, be six further Apollo missions to the moon - five of them successful (Apollo 13, the third attempt, infamously aborted). And then nothing. Buzz Aldrin has recently ranted about how, while this weekend's 50th anniversary of the first manned mission to the Moon should be celebrated, it is 47 years since the last mission and, apart from NASA Space Shuttle programmes, the International Space Station and assorted probes to Mars and beyond, what has been done to build on the Apollo programme?

Picture: NASA

NASA has launched the Artemis space exploration programme that will include a manned mission to the Moon in 2024, but not everyone has been excited about it, not least of whom being Donald Trump who, in customary fashion, publicly questioned NASA’s priorities, writing in a tweet: “For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon. We did that 50 years ago”. Seamus Tuohy, the lead of space exploration programmes at the Draper institute of MIT, one of NASA’s partners in the Artemis programme, says: “If we were just going to repeat what we did 50 years ago I would agree. But unlike the geopolitical drivers behind the Apollo missions, the new project comes with big commercial goals, including the beginnings of space tourism.” Tuohy adds that space exploration offers more to humanity than the bragging rights that drove the Apollo missions. “At some point the Earth becomes a finite resource,” he explains. “There are things to be done in space that may not be kind to the Earth – natural-resource extraction, refining, cracking – things that we require to maintain our what we do and what we would like to do in the future.”  Scientists believe that any major missions further into space, particularly any involving humans, will need to use the Moon as a base camp. Ice known to exist at both lunar poles contains hydrogen and oxygen, both of which would be used in fuelling a longer distance mission, to Mars, specifically.

Nor has space travel stagnated. Mankind may not have travelled further than the Moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972, but space travel has grown closer to mankind, with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX commercial ventures taking manned spaceflight beyond a small elite with 'the right stuff'. Travel to the Moon could, too, one day be “no more than a commute”, says Draper's Tuohy, “not the main event, but a routine, safe procedure” for mining it to further technology on Earth. That said, a visit to the Moon, in terms of space exploration, is little more than the equivalent of nipping to the corner shop for a pint of milk: bigger objectives abound, not the least of which being a manned mission to Mars, the next closest full planet and one which has, largely due to its proximity, generated an equal amount of fascination. So, unless new Moon landings become part of the preparations for taking humans further into outer space, the value of a new mission remains questionable.

Picture: NASA

James Burke believes there is little political appetite to return to the Moon. “I don’t have any feelings about going back to the Moon or not. [But] I think going back to the Moon is a waste of money,” he says. Mars, however, might be a different proposition: “Where there is [an appetite], or rather where public opinion doesn’t matter, and where there’s loads of money, is China,” he says. “My bet will be we’ll see a Chinese landing on Mars within the next 10 years.”

Whatever Apollo 11 did or, ultimately, didn't achieve, its technological and engineering achievement should not be underestimated. Indeed, you’d place it up there with the invention of the wheel, the mechanisation that launched the Industrial Revolution and, perhaps, the discovery of flight. Scientists will question what the giant leap for mankind actually achieved in terms of scientific progress. Space travel, then, was still in its infancy, and even though in the intervening decades unmanned probes have reached the very edge of our solar system, providing incredible data about the planets immediately around us, the Apollo missions must still be viewed as high watermarks of  advancement. “Many homes still didn’t have an inside toilet or a bathroom in 1969,” James Burke said this week. “Most families didn’t have a car. Yet here we were going to the Moon. The astronauts, with all their gleaming technology, were like people from a different planet. Watching them was like leaping into the future for a few hours.” To roll out an other hackneyed expression, science fiction had become science fact.

Picture: NASA

Parklife

Picture: Twitter/British Summer Time

It was one of those days when it was peculiarly fun to be British. Or English. Or something between the two. The middle Sunday in July, with events conspiring to schedule the Cricket World Cup Final between England and New Zealand at Lord's, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and the Wimbledon Men’s Final on the same afternoon as the last of six British Summer Time events in London's Hyde Park. For there, 65,000 people - with a notable skew towards women - convened for a guiltiest-of-pleasure line-up consisting of Feeder, Texas, Keane and the Black Eyed Peas on the main stage, leading up to the headline act of one Robert Peter Williams, a "singer-songwriter and entertainer" (so says Wikipedia) from Stoke-on-Trent. 

Being peak Britain, peak British summer, the crowd was largely good natured and progressively sozzled as the extended afternoon's drinking bore on. With no football to cheer on, some male sections of the crowd attempted a chorus of "Cricket's coming home" as news of England's victory just over a mile away in St. John's Wood came through. For others, it was a bonding experience. Mother-and-daughter combos - one couple wearing T-shirts identifying themselves as such - worked their way through bottles of rosé, others daringly sank pints. No surprise that, by the end of the evening husbands were doing sterling work holding some wives upright.

It was, however, enormous fun. This year's British Summer Time line-up has been low on edge and high on entertainment. Over two weekends Hyde Park has hosted headliners Celine Dion, Stevie Wonder with Lionel Ritchie, Barbra Streisand, Neil Young and Bob Dylan, and, last night, Williams, with Saturday night's Florence + The Machine arguably this year's most left field entry. But here lies a point: whether Streisand is your thing or Dylan, the chance to commune with your like-minded music fan is what this sort of thing is all about. I've long admired Glastonbury for the same thing: it's not just or even necessarily about the artistic eclecticism of grooving to pure pop, heavy rock, hip-hop or folk in the same afternoon, it's about the shared experience of having a good time. Music snobbery is left at the gate.

Which will bring me, in a moment, to Williams. Building up to his arrival, Feeder, Texas and Keane did sterling work warming up the crowd. As is often the case at these shows, it's a slowburn thing - many were still queuing for pizza when Feeder played their set, while Sharleen Spiteri (whom I discovered is four days older than me) and band created a pleasing wedding party singalong vibe with feelgood hits like the disco Let's Work It Out, I Don't Want A Lover, Black Eyed Boy and Say What You Want. Keane, often dismissed as being somewhat fey, were anything but, though the contrast between frontman Tom Chaplin's credentials and, say, a Liam Gallagher barely needs highlighting when the singer from the charming Sussex parish of Battle asks if anyone knows the cricket score. Theirs is, like Texas, a crowdpleasing set, prompting the audience half already crammed in front of the Great Oak stage to sway their arms and groove gently to proper festival sing-songs like This Is The Last Time, Everybody's Changing, Bedshaped, Is It Any Wonder? and Somewhere Only We Know. 

I'll confess, of the entire day's line-up, Black Eyed Peas interested me the least. I've seen them before - in Paris, no less - and while their on-stage energy is relentless, their music leaves me somewhat unmoved. That's not meant to be curmudgeonly, just a statement that, even at a pop-driven show like this one, there are different branches of the church that will.i.am, apl.de.ap and Taboo preach at. That, though, thankfully doesn't prevent the crowd getting into pre-Williams mode with some now well-oiled frugging to the likes of Let's Get It Started, Rock That Body, Hey Mama, Just Can't Get Enough, Don't Stop the Party and Where Is the Love?. Half the fun of these outdoor megagigs is people watching, and by 6.30 in the evening there are plenty of people to watch, especially those for whom the well organised refreshment facilities have enabled conversations to open up between random groups of people. The mother and daughter, for example, in front of us who were having a whale of time gabbing away with the lesbian couple who just happened to be parked on the grass next to them.

If there had been any doubt, however, as to who everyone had come to see, the Hyde Park engine stepped up several gears with the arrival of the main event, the main act: Williams. I'd hardly call myself a fan on the same scale as many around us, but the outset of Williams' solo career and his collaborations with Guy Chambers in particular, stood him out from the crowd. Take That did nothing for me, but the infectious Williams/Chambers partnership came closest to the naturally appealing pop-rock that Elton John and Bernie Taupin used to craft. And then Williams went a little LA. He still is, but here in Hyde Park we had a front row seat (well, metaphorically speaking, seeing as my other half and I were occupying a patch of turf some way to the back) on a unique entertainer. Yes, entertainer. That might conjure up some ITV Saturday night game show host who sings a bit, but Williams is blessed with charisma, and a great voice, too. Now, I know you might think I'm now selling out my rock cred, but there is a degree of perfection about Let Me Entertain You, the obvious set opener (even if it does still whiff a bit of The Who). There is also that schoolboy cheek that, even at 45 years old, Williams shows off with every opportunity, from his trademark opening, "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Robbie 'Fucking' Williams", to the roaring amusement of everyone in the crowd. Before he'd even arrived, he'd fanfare himself with The National Anthem Of Robbie Williams, containing the self-depreciation of "Yes he went to rehab, drugs and drink took him low, but would still make Rudebox and gave rap a go".

Parts of the show reminded me of those Seaside Special summer TV extravaganzas from the 1970s, where various light entertainers - some, probably, now doing time - would introduce Showaddywaddy or The Three Degrees, along with The Dad's Army cast from a carpark in Torquay. Thus, the lovely Leslie from Scotland was scooped up out of the crowd and onto a red sofa for Williams to loon around, serenading her with Something Stupid. A man with 'Gay Best Friend' on the front of his T-shirt is singled out for a partially reworked She's The One. And in another Williams concert staple, his pub-singing crooner dad Pete is brought out for a duet of Sweet Caroline, eliciting maximum audience participation on the "bap-bap-BAH!" brass parts.

Millennium, featuring John Barry's gorgeous, sweeping string arrangement from his theme to You Only Live Twice, takes us back to that period of Williams' career when he could get away with anything, including a Bond-themed video, followed by another strong item from the I've Been Expecting You album, the glorious No Regrets, Williams' cathartic flushing of the Take That experience, co-written with Neils Tennant and Hannon. By now, Williams could be doing Three Blind Mice and the crowd would not complain. In fact, the crowd would probably encourage him to sing it, just for laughs. And he would oblige. 

Williams seemingly can get away with it. Covers of Wilson Pickett's Land Of 1000 Dances, Queen's We Will Rock You and the intro riffs of AC/DC's Back In Black on the front end of Kids simply add to the vaudeville. By the time we get to the inevitable ending, Angels (introduced by "I wouldn't go without doing 'the hit'"), Williams has the 65,000 eating out of his hands. It is also this point of the evening, I'd been warned, that he takes something of a liberty with the paying audience by letting them do some of the heavy lifting. No one complains though. Angels is that beautiful piece of anthemic communion that even the hardest-hearted would find difficult to resist a pub-style "...and throo it ALL...!!!!". 

We are now, at this point, near the end. For some, a long journey home without access to public amenities is going to be a very clear challenge. Others are stopped in their tracks heading for the exits when they realise Angels, and the group stage bow thereafter, isn't the end of it. There's just one more, Williams with Chambers on keyboards doing Sinatra's My Way. Somehow, it was the song Robbie Williams was born to sing, not just to lovingly recreate his dad's pub singing act, but to bathe in the many ironies of Paul Anka's original lyrics. Worth it, down to the very last drop. 

Rolling in the deep: Stones still going, 57 years after their live debut

I have, on many occasion, used this platform to write about my fascination with the suburban British roots of some of rock's biggest global superstars, especially Eric Clapton and others who (like me) emanate from the Surrey/south-west London borders. These suburbs also play a part in, arguably, the most enduring success story of London's musical product, The Rolling Stones, who are - as I write - in the midst of their delayed US 'No Filter' tour, heading for New Orleans (along with Hurricane Barry, which is about to batter the Louisiana coastline).

That the Stones are, in 2019, still rolling is all the more remarkable when you consider that they played their first official gig under the name 'Mick Jagger & The Rollin' Stones' on this very day, 57 years ago, at London's Marquee Club, as it once was at 165 Oxford Street.

"It is quite amazing when you think about it," Jagger told Rolling Stone magazine on the gig's 50th anniversary. "But it was so long ago. Some of us are still here, but it's a very different group than the one that played 50 years ago." The line-up that night included Jagger, Brian Jones and Keith Richards, but not Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman, who would join the Stones later.

The significance of that first gig is even more remarkable when you consider its chronological place: Jagger and Richards had only rekindled their childhood friendship the previous October, when they famously met on Platform 2 of Dartford railway station, the latter enamoured by the Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry records under crook of the future Stones frontman's arm. By the following spring they were members of the Blues Boys quintet, which later led to their involvement in Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated on the other side of London at the Ealing Jazz club, prompting Jagger and Richards to start jamming with the outfit (which also included Jones, Watts and eventual Stones keyboard player Ian Stewart). The jams led to the formation of a group playing cod covers of Berry and Waters numbers. Given the confected rivalry between the Stones and The Beatles, it should be remembered that the Liverpudlian band had, at this point, yet to sign with George Martin and Parlophone, or even release a single. The 'British invasion' was yet to commence.

By the time the new combo - which featured future Kinks drummer Mick Avory (according to Richards' autobiography Life) - managed to get booked for the Marquee, Jagger was still studying at the London School of Economics and just a couple of weeks shy of his 19th birthday. Like Richards, he was still living at home. The older Jones had migrated to London from Cheltenham and was already living the dream. The gig itself came about by a happy accident: Blues Incorporated were the Marquee's regular Thursday night band, but they'd been invited to do a live BBC radio broadcast elsewhere. Jones used his considerable charm to persuade the Marquee's owner, Harold Pendleton, to let their new group fill in. It was then, with Jones the band's de facto figurehead, that he got in touch with the local listings magazine Jazz News to plug the gig. When asked for the band's name, he caught a copy of Muddy Waters' Best Of album out of the corner of his eye, and saw the track listing for the song Rollin' Stone. A legend - one which remains to this day arguably the most enduring of the rock era - was born.

As for the gig itself, the Stones performed a sweaty 18 songs, all blues covers including Bright Lights, Big City, Kind of Lonesome and Blues Before Sunrise, ending with Elmore James' Happy Home. Jones pocketed six pounds in old money, while the rest took home five each. Even so, for those days and for their age, not a bad wage for a night's work, and the foundation of the money-making machine to which the Rolling Stones would become adept.

When celebrating the gig's 50th anniversary in 2012, Jagger was somewhat uneasy about the landmark: "Part of me goes, 'We’re slightly cheating,' because it’s not the same band, you know," he told Rolling Stone. "Still the same name. It's only Keith and myself that are the same people, I think. I've tried to find out when Charlie's first gig was, and none of us can really remember and no one really knows. But it's an amazing achievement, and I think it's fantastic and you know I'm very proud of it." Richards, ever the contrarian, was less fussed about the anniversary: "...[we] always really consider '63 to be 50 years, because Charlie didn’t actually join until January. So we look upon 1962 as sort of the 'year of conception'. But the birth is next year."

Even so, the now-near 60-year-old band, continuing to bowl over audiences over with their exuberant brand of blues, their showmanship, their sheer corporate might (The Rolling Stones BV is actually incorporated in Amsterdam for reasons, I'm told, of tax efficiency rather than Keith's proximity to the city's delights...). Even so, as they finally kicked off their No Filter tour earlier this week in Chicago - delayed due to Mick Jagger's heart surgery - the band, with a combined age of its core membership of 300, were every bit as dazzling as they've ever been, playing songs like Street Fighting Man, Tumbling Dice, Sympathy For The Devil, Paint It Black and a ten-minute version of Satisfaction with as much vibrancy as a band a quarter their age.

Picture: Facebook/The Rolling Stones

After all these years of mega tours like this one, not to mention the some 24 studio albums they've recorded (with another on the way), plus all the Glimmer Twins aggro and regular splits and spats, it would be easy to look upon the Rolling Stones as some vaudeville act still pounding the boards, six decades on from their first outing. Having seen them four times in my life (with the last one, in Amsterdam 13 years ago one of the best ever), I'd still like to see them one more time. For all their success, their wealth and all that comes with it, the Stones today are still, largely, the blues purists they were on this day in 1962. The Beatles and other contemporaries may have given way to psychedelia and progressiveness - and that's absolutely fine - but the Stones have never wavered from their core interest in 57 years (with the exception of the faux disco of Miss You), With that, they have retained and even reinvigorated their zest for what they do and have always done best. And, even if they have lost original members, inevitably like most of their contemporaries from the 1960s, the Stones today are still a force. A nature-defying one at that.

Modz rool: Paul Weller at Greenwich Music Time

Picture: Simon Poulter © 2019

When your career has produced a current total of 26 original albums (14 as a solo artist, six each with The Jam and The Style Council), and you are Paul Weller, you’ve got a certain licence to do whatever the hell you want to. You could, for example, turn your gigs into a two-hour jukebox of hits and send your exclusively middle-aged punters home satisfied, blissfully karaoked-out with sore throats from reliving their youth club days singing along to The Eton Rifles, Going Underground or Beat Surrender. Or you could play to the political climate and revive the prescient Walls Come Tumbling Down, a song as relevant and needed today as it was during the era in which it was conceived.

But, if you are Paul Weller, you’re 61, you’ve been in bands since you were 14, recording since you were 19, and you have produced 26 studio albums, there’s nothing stopping you opening your set at an outdoor summer's evening show with I’m Where I Should Be, a low-key, somewhat obscure track off 2015’s Saturn’s Pattern. Because you can. And he did.

It's hard to truly tell whether the choice of opening song was Weller's little joke, simply as it's hard to tell if Weller ever does joke. I think he does, and the stony face cracked a number of times during Sunday night's closing show of the six-night Greenwich Music Time festival, delightfully staged in the stunning grounds of the Old Naval College next to the Thames (one of London's busiest filming locations, with episodes of The Queen shot there amid the pristine period surroundings). If the opening number caught the audience off guard, My Ever Changing Moods up next restored the crowd to the familiar.

Now, about the crowd. Unsurprisingly, for an act in the public eye for over 40 years, the crowd is default middle-aged. Dadwear is in copious evidence, along with a high propensity of close-cropped balding pates which, when queuing behind, makes you wonder whether you're standing behind a London cab driver you've ridden in and had to put up with his views on, well, everything. Then there are the Weller uberfans, replete in Ben Sherman and Fred Perry shirts, some sporting feather cuts (one even going the full distance with a magnificent mane of grey hair and a camelhair jacket that the Modfather himself would surely approve of. Or laugh at. Again, I'm not really sure).

Over the course of 27 songs, Weller and his band - which included trusted lieutenants Steve Craddock on guitar and Andy Crofts on bass, augmented on occasion by the brass section of Weller protégés The Stone Foundation (who'd opened for their mentor) - covered a wider gamut of the canon that perhaps many in the audience, especially those who'd come in costume, were expecting. There were the brusque, R'n'B rockers like Woo Sé Mama from 2017's A Kind Revolution and Peacock Suit from Heavy Soul, the fourth in Weller's extraordinary - and continuing - purple patch of solo outings, as well as the reminders of his soulfulness: the sublime Broken Stones appearing in the encore, along with an old live favourite, Curtis Mayfield's Move On Up. Earlier in the set, Weller brought out Leah, his daughter with Dee C Lee, to duet on You Do Something To Me, another perennial of the tender side to his songwriting (which also includes A Kind Revolution's standout, The Cranes Are Back - which I would have loved to have heard reproduced live). There was another surprise appearance with former Style Council compadre Mick Talbot coming out to tickle the ivories on Shout To The Top! A pity Merton's finest couldn't have stayed for more.

When The Style Council split, somewhat ignominiously, in 1989 when their record company blocked the release of their fifth and final album, Weller found himself at a crossroads. It was to be the making of him as a national music treasure. Despite having fronted two of the most successful and intrinsically British bands of the 1980s, his first solo album, Paul Weller set him on a path that would result in the 13 albums of rich variety that have followed, and which were heavily drawn from in Greenwich. Above The Clouds drifted dreamily under the partially leaden sky next to the Thames, while Into Tomorrow reminded of the Britpop template that Weller laid the foundation of. Wild Wood provided an early would-be cigarette-lighters-aloft moment, casting grey-haired memories back to the second solo album that really underlined the creativity that had pent up during Weller's brief sabbatical. Later in the set, that album's Can You Heal Us (Holy Man) provided an energetic example  of an album that contained such stompers as Sunflower, Foot Of The Mountain and Shadow Of The Sun, all of which would have been welcome in Greenwich.

Picture: Simon Poulter © 2019

Weller is nothing if not a prolific songwriter, and the number of albums recorded masks the shere scale of songs he's committed to tape: Mermaids and Brushed from Heavy Soul are performed as a brace, and even Strange Museum - co-written with Talbot - is resurrected from the debut solo album. There was even the rare moment of Weller fluffery, with Have You Ever Had It Blue throwing back to the Bass Weejun-wearing, carefree side of The Style Council and that period of mod revivalism that coincided with all things Soho and The Face magazine that occurred when Julien Temple decided to make a film out of Colin MacInnes' nod to 1950s teenage life in London, Absolute Beginners. Looking back, it was all rather naff, but I loved it at the time.

Weller is, and always has been intrinsically cool, and that's why the association with an era of supposed jazz-cool, revived in the mid-80s with the The Style Council's Cafe Bleu album (with sleevenotes from the legendary 'Cappuccino Kid', itself a nod to Bar Italia and that Soho scene), along with Sade and even Everything But The Girl's Eden album, was something of an affectation. After all, that's what mod culture has always been about, as opposed to rock's somewhat obsessive adherence to its earnest blues roots. Whatever culture Weller was hoping to channel in his younger self, manifests itself now, in his early 60s, as simply extraordinarily good songs. Earnestly performed, perhaps, but an encore that includes the soul classic Broken Stones, The Jam's Start!, the Mayfield cover and Town Called Malice, there is an unlikely communion with the 5,000-strong congregation, sitting in this quintessentially British environment. Apart from the more nailed-on devotees, who'd been able to recall the words to Jam songs like Precious and Man In The Corner Shop, the crowd on this Sunday evening in South-East London had been somewhat subdued, perhaps by a somewhat chillier climate than expected, forcing Weller at one point to enquire of his crowd if it was enjoying itself. Of course it was. This was a master at work. Why wouldn't they?

Frankie's back in town...

Picture: Chelsea FC

Finally. Frank Lampard is back. Chelsea Football Club’s all-time record goal scorer and now its 12th manager in 16 years. "One of the greatest players in our history during his long and illustrious career returns to Stamford Bridge having signed a three-year contract," trilled the club website. Whether he sees out those three years remains to be seen. But certainly at the signing of the managerial nuptials, ex-player and club renewed their vows: "Frank possesses fantastic knowledge and understanding of the club and last season, he demonstrated he is one of the most talented young coaches in the game," gushed Chelsea director Marina Granovskaia in a statement. "After 13 years with us as a player, where he became a club legend and our record goalscorer, we believe this is the perfect time for him to return and are delighted he has done so. We will do everything we can to ensure he has all the support required to be a huge success." No pressure, then.

Never has Chelsea appointed a manager (sorry, "head coach") with so much expectation on his shoulders. Or as much doubt. Twitter, that great touchstone of our time, was predictably binary on the news this morning. Comments from both Chelsea fans and the indifferent were split between the "It's too soon, I hope it doesn't end in tears" view and the "Welcome back Frank - you’re going to be a blinder" (though this being Twitter "your" was often the frequent spelling). Lampard is, at the end of the day, a big boy, and an intelligent one at that. Having seen ten managers come and go during his playing career at Chelsea, he will have seen for himself just how fast the revolving door ejects the dismissed and the failed. He will know what managing Roman Abramovich’s football team is all about, risks and all. But don’t forget, though, it’s a huge gamble for both parties.

Lampard’s appointment, delayed by yesterday's Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp outages (oh, how modern) comes after a month of speculation, rumour and conjecture. Will he? Would he? Would they? Why would they? The former midfielder is stepping into a lion's den only the bravest would enter, taking on only his second job in club management in only his second season in management itself. That first season, at Derby County, left the neutral (or, perhaps, the unromantic) unsure of whether Lampard has the chops...yet. But did Ruud Gullit and Gianluca Vialli have the chops when cuddly Ken Bates promoted them from the playing staff to become managers, winning the FA and League cups respectively? Now, granted, they didn’t last long, either, but longevity in post hasn’t  been a tradition at Chelsea for generations. In fact, in the Abramovich era, longevity probably hasn’t even entered the lexicon, just as long as the manager of the moment delivers Champions League football and maintains a strong challenge on the Premier League title. Even then, that’s not necessarily a guarantee of survival. Just ask Carlo Ancellotti, hired as the model of European managerial excellence, who won the league and cup double in his first season at Chelsea, but only achieved a second place domestically in his second and was fired in a corridor at Goodison Park after the final game of the season.

It is believed that Lampard has received assurances from Abramovich that he will be given time. That might sound empty, but with the club having to accept the two-window FIFA transfer ban, as well as the inevitable loss of Eden Hazard, such assurance represents tacit acceptance that it's time to live within means and make do. Not that with a squad largely unchanged from that which won the Premier League title under Antonio Conte just two seasons ago, plus the wealth of youth talent at its disposal, 'making do' will be a particular hardship. But it won't be plain sailing, either. For a start, Lampard will need to win over the core of the senior players. Coming in as a club legend might help, but Chelsea does have some dead wood in its midst. And the ban means that players like David Luiz and Willian, who'd otherwise offered a choice between a one-year contract (being over 30) and the door, need to be harnessed for what they can still bring. If they can.

Clearly, though, the big opportunity for Lampard is to score a few PR points with the home fans by playing Chelsea's youth prospects. Few, beyond Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Callum Hudson-Odoi, before they were injured towards the end of last season, have had a chance at the club. Chelsea's loan system has looked more like an exercise in husbandry, as the likes of Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori and Tammy Abraham have been farmed out. Clearly, though, in the case of Mount and Tomori, their time under Lampard at Derby will serve them well. As will the arrival of Jody Morris, Lampard's assistant at Derby, who was drawn from the Chelsea academy with an impressive record. That record, by the way, should also be shared by Joe Edwards,  the 32-year-old youth coach at Chelsea who has played an unsung role in the incredible haul of trophies the club's academy teams have netted in recent years. Lampard's apparent appointment of Edwards to his coaching team is the clearest indication yet that the youth will get their turn. We shouldn't forget, either, that Lampard will also have at his disposal Christian Pulisic, the 20-year-old American "soccer sensation" bought from Borussia Dortmund in January for £58 million, who might well go some way to plug the considerable gap vacated by Hazard.

In his first comments as the new Chelsea manager, Lampard has at least given his younger charges the hope that, finally, they will get their chance at the club. "The path from the academy to the first team is important," the Evening Standard reports him as saying. "I will always have an eye on the academy. I was that young player a very long time ago and the one thing you want is the feeling that the road which divides the academy to the main building is a road you can cross. It has to be there for you. And I think that does come from the top. If young players are performing and they deserve it on merit, then they will be coming to train with us." Here is an oblique reference to rumours that Lampard is planning to integrate the first team with the club's Under-23 set-up, or at least remove some of the clear barriers that separated them (Maurizio Sarri is alleged to have not seen a single youth match during his sole season as club head coach).

"There is a lot of hard work for [the youth players] to do," Lampard added. "I don’t want it to look like an easy road. It is very tough, but I want to try and help them. I'm excited because playing here for so many years, seeing the work put into the academy and on all fronts, from the top, the investment into it and the desire to see it succeed, on the ground, the coaching staff, the people working in the academy trying to bring players through to the first team.

Speaking about Mount and Tomori in particular, Lampard cites their attitude. "You could see they had come through the academy here in how they held themselves, how they trained, their manners off the pitch. That’s what I want to see. I want to dangle the carrot. Can you work hard? Can you compete? Can you get in the team?".

There was a time, several years ago, when a young Frank Lampard had doubts cast over his prospects as a player. Famously, his father, Frank Sr., would drill him at West Ham's training ground, keeping him out after everyone else had gone back to the changing rooms. As a player, he had to put up with a lot, including the ludicrous "Fat Frank" jibes from opposition fans. One thing, though that made him stand out as a player and contributed to his record 221 goals for the club, was his attitude. Lampard has always come across as being somewhat driven, and it's what made him become such an integral part of that title-winning spine of players - along with Petr Čech (also now back at the club), John Terry and Didier Drogba - that made Chelsea an exciting delight to watch. That excitement disappeared in the denouements of Mourinho and Conte's tenures, and failed to even register under Sarri, even if the Italian managed to win both the Europa League and third place in the Premier League.

I know plenty of rival fans still regard Chelsea as arriviste. That's their prerogative. The unwritten rule is that you cheer on your side and boo everyone else. I'm always amused by the "where were you when you were shit?" taunts that come from the away end at most games at Stamford Bridge. Because I always reply, "right here!" (though technically I was right where they are, given that I stood in the Shed End when I first started going to games at the Bridge). Chelsea has come a long way since then, but Lampard today is benefitting from a revolution that began when Glenn Hoddle was poached from the newly promoted Swindon Town. In turn, he attracted bigger international names like Gullit, who in turn attracted Vialli (fresh from lifting the European Cup as Juventus skipper) and Gianfranco Zola. Admittedly, these players were reaching the end of their playing careers, but fans glossed over their ages and bought into the new glamour, finally abandoning the era of Mickey Droy and Ron Harris, and a perpetual lurching between divisions in front of pitiful crowds at home.

While the peak of Hoddle's achievement may have been a Cup Winner's Cup run in 1995 (earned on the back of that 4-0 tonking by Manchester United in the '94 FA Cup Final...), Gullit, his successor, took Chelsea back to Wembley in 1997 and the club's first major honours since a single league title in 1951. 22 years on, and with the not insignificant acquisition of the club by Abramovich, Chelsea can claim one Champions League, two Europa League, five Premier League, seven FA Cup and four League Cup titles in the modern era. Given that haul, Chelsea could, in a way, afford a fallow season or two if it gives a young, inexperienced but locally adored manager like Lampard the space to build a squad based on youthful talent. Yes, we crave success, and even under Mourinho were prepared to sacrifice style for moribund substance, but we also want entertainment. It’s what, ultimately, gets us out in all weathers on a Saturday afternoon rather than traipsing around shopping centres.

Both Gullit and Roberto Di Matteo - scorer of that 47th-second goal at Wembley in '97 - both believe that Lampard can thrive as Chelsea manager, with the Dutchman saying that his lack of experience should not be the disadvantage it might at first appear: "Look, he has done nothing yet as a coach," Gullit told Sky Sports. "[But] they gave me this opportunity as well and we won, so that [inexperience] has nothing to do with it." Di Matteo, Lampard's manager at Chelsea when they won the Champions League and FA Cup in 2012, says no one can predict outright whether the new head coach will succeed, but he'll never know unless he tries. "It's a great fit, but whether it's right now or not, only time can tell," the Italian told Sky. "You can't say it's too early, you have to give people a chance. He's got all the tools and it will make a lot of people happy if he is the next manager." And there's the key: "It will make a lot of people happy". Modern football, and certainly Chelsea, doesn’t do a great deal in this department. Chelsea has elicited plenty of WTF moments in recent years, with ill-advised appointments such as André Villas-Boas, Luis Filipe Scolari and Rafa Benitez (even if he landed the Europa League, his stock at Stamford Bridge was ocean-deep to begin with).

Not every ex-Chelsea name, however, is comfortable with Lampard becoming the boss so soon in his career. Former captain Dennis Wise told Sky Sports that the risks are significant: "From a playing point of view, from a personal point of view, everyone loves [Frank] at Chelsea. But he hasn’t been long in coaching and neither has Jody [Morris] so it slightly worries me a little bit, but if they get it I wish them all the luck, both of them. It’s going to be tough for him but fingers crossed they do the right thing for Chelsea and do well." This from Wise might be the glowing endorsement it looks. But he has a point: "At the end of the day, Chelsea are a Champions League team, they want to finish in the top four," he told Sky. "I think as Chelsea fans you want to be competing at the highest level and winning trophies."

Time will, of course, tell. Lampard certainly has his work cut out, whether it is repositioning N'Golo Kanté back into the seat of midfield, where he should have been last season, getting the best out of the ageing likes of Giroud, Pedro and Willian, integrating Pusilic and the academy stars while, hopefully, aiding the recoveries of Hudson-Odoi and Loftus-Cheek, while at the same time addressing the deficiencies that gave Sarri so much doubt about their viability. Taking the helicopter view, and with a pinch of optimism, these are, actually, quite exciting times at Chelsea. A little different, I grant you, but exciting none the less.