17. ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...ITALIAN JOB

The absolute very first time I saw the Italian Job was not at the cinema in the 60s but a few years later when it made its way to the small screen which, in our case, was housed in one of those massive display cabinets in the corner of the room that was meant to blend in with the furniture but took up several more square feet than the TV set it was trying to disguise.

I watched it again recently (on a bank holiday afternoon, just like the old days) and was genuinely expecting to cringe at an out-dated slice of British cinema but it was so much better than I remembered. My teenage daughter watched it and cringed on my behalf but then she’s not seen the Carry On films so doesn’t realise that all things are relative when it comes to political correctness in 1960/70s movie-making. She thought it was ‘slapstick’ and ‘obvious’ which seems a bit rich for a generation who finds anything on Tik Tok compulsive viewing.

Ok, the women were objectified, the Italians were portrayed as lazy racial stereotypes and the patriotism bordered on jingoism...but frankly (as hockey commentator Barry Davies once said - about the Germans rather than the Italians admittedly) who cares? The dialogue was hilarious, the cinematography breathtaking and the minis (hardly inconspicuous and so an odd choice of getaway vehicles) gave us one of the iconic movie car chases, right up there with the Blues Brothers (but good though "you're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off" is, it surely doesn't beat "we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses"?).

The casting couldn’t have been more straightforward. Michael Caine played Michael Caine. Noel Coward played Noel Coward and Benny Hill played Professor…..oh no, wait, he played himself too. Benny was a comedy legend in our household and the Yakety Sax theme tune would always bring the whole family together in front of the TV. It’s easy to say nowadays that he was of his era – as though he was Jimmy Saville – but the joke was almost always on him and a pretty harmless one at that. The British public loved him, so much so that he made it to the Xmas No.1 spot in the singles chart (although, on that measure, they were equally fond of St Winifred's School Choir and Bob the Builder). Ernie (who, as we all know, drove the Fastest Milkcart in the West) held off T-Rex to top the charts in 1971 – click here for an early version and then google Xmas No.1s in the 70s & 80s. It's the most brilliantly eclectic list, covering the ridiculous through to the sublime with virtually nothing in between. Don't be surprised if it pops up as a blog post of its own in the next few weeks.

But back to the Italian Job. The fact that the 'cockney geezer' movie doesn't feel too dated is largely thanks to Guy Ritchie who re-booted it, many years later, with every single film he ever directed. By the way, don't you love it when our British blokes marry into US celeb royalty and bring them over here to adopt our customs (clearly with one notable recent exception)? I thought it was great that Madonna (Queen Madge) would turn up at Guy's boozer with her flat cap on. Coldplay's Chris Martin, on the other hand, had mixed success with Gwyneth Paltrow. On this side of the Atlantic, we only want to know what she pops up her vagina if it belongs to Chris and we certainly don't want to buy one of them off her website.

The treatment of women in the Italian Job is pretty shocking though. From a girlfriend who secures hookers to greet Charlie’s release from prison to the Professor’s obsession with the larger lady, the female characters are not exactly three-dimensional and empowered. We had a mixed bag of female role models on TV in those days though, no doubt defined by male producers who enthusiastically took to heart the Jerry Hall mantra about a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom and gave us Hattie Jacques, Fanny Craddock and Raquel Welch. You wouldn't want to get those 3 mixed up now would you?

Talking of stereotypes, the song at the end of the film was bizarre. Called "Get a Bloomin’ Move On" but known to the rest of us as the Self-Preservation Society song, it’s just a long list of cockney rhyming slang. Almond rocks, daisy roots, Hampstead Heath, whistle & flute, Gregory Peck and plates of meat all get a mention without pretending to make any sense. A no-prize (any of you read Marvel comics in the old days?) for getting them all correct.

Michael Caine is not the only one who’s had a brush with the Italian carabinieri (that’s police for all you non-linguists). I got arrested in Venice during the holidays when I was at college. I’ve written about it in my debut/final novel The Lost Muse which was briefly an Amazon best-seller….in my home town because my mum ordered a box-full. It’s a fictional story about young love, early death and the race to discover one of the lost masterpieces of classical literature. Sadly, it was a race which not a huge amount of people were particularly interested in so there are a few copies left if you’re interested? (Click here. Oh go on, make an old man happy).

There were a bunch of us - Sally, Con, Julie, Phil - staying with our mate, Chris, whose dad owned an apartment in a posh block filled with politicians and diplomats alongside the Grand Canal. It would be fair to say we’d been a little noisy and a couple of us might have thrown up out of the window onto the balconies below. Despite heavy drinking, this was almost certainly the result of Tyrolean flu which was rife in those days - don't forget this was in the 1980s, well before face masks were made mandatory, so we were sitting ducks for air-borne infections at the time. One morning, we were woken by armed police who rounded us up and frog-marched us to the station because one of the diplomats had become convinced that a bunch of terrorists upstairs were planning an assassination attempt on his life. Note to self: avoid loud music and vomiting in future terror plots - it's clearly a classic give-away.

We managed to avoid incarceration because I channelled my inner Michael Caine and got me trouble and strife (well, girlfriend) to let the ducks & geese get a butchers of her thruppennies and, would you Adam & Eve it, they let all of us dustbins go. We were such jammy merchants. Guess them or google them. Get them right and, I'm ashamed to admit, that's pretty much how it actually happened.

Michael and his mates were less fortunate in their own cliff-hanger ending. The Brits at one end of the coach and the gold at the other. No mobile dog and bone in those days to call for help but I'm reliably informed that running the engine to drain the fuel tank in the back of the bus should've done the trick. That would've allowed us to enjoy the ending the film deserved: the Mafia turning up to chase our heroes around the mountain on foot - in classic Benny Hill speeded-up style - as the credits rolled and Yakety Sax played in the background.

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Next: THE ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...DANGEROUS TOYS