Afloat without a blush

Press, 4 March 1978, Page 17

Afloat without a blush

Rum Bum and Concertina. By George Melly. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 183

(Reviewed by A. K. Grant) The title of this book, we are told, comes from an old naval saying: “Ashore it’s wine women and song. Aboard it’s rum bumb and concertina.” For Mr Melly. the middle monosyllable predominated, both ashore and afloat. This account of Mr Melly’s experiences as a naval conscript towards and after the end of the Second World Wai is notable chiefly for the author’s determination to be unblushingly frank about his homosexual adventures. But his attempt to write about homsexuality as though it were a perfectly ordinary human phenomenon does not come off. I am not necessarily saying that homosexuality is not a perfectly ordinary human phenomenon, but it is difficult to write abut it as though it was. Thus we get sentences like this: On the night in question I had fallen asleep up a very pleasant boy in the

R.A.F.” Now there, if I can so put it, Mr Melly is trying to have it both ways in more ways than one. That sentence is written for effect, although at the same time Mr Melly is defying the reader to be startled by it. The attempt does not work. This is partly because Mr Melly is caught in a contradiction .He attempts to be matter of fact about experiences which he nevertheless regards as highly significant. And to paraphrase Orwell, all records of human experience are valuable, but some records of some experiences are less valuable than others. That having been said, what must also be said is that the book is well written and often very funny. And much must be forgiven Mr Melly for being such an excellent singer. Not, of course, that the book provides any chance to assess this, but those who saw ‘Mr Melly in a recent “Kaleidoscope” programme with Spike Milligan would find it difficult not to forgive him this attempt to modify Wordsworth’s doctrine and write of perversion recollected in tranquillity.