What's Another Year?

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It’s that time of the year, and we all tend to give in to the temptation.

No, I am not speaking of indulging in bacchanalian excesses at “Christmas Parties”, of going on uncontrolled shopping sprees, or of emitting irresponsible clouds of CO2 en route to visiting family or hitting the skiing slopes.

Although I suspect we are all guilty of one or the other from that list, too.

What we just cannot resist at the end of twelve months in ours, the Gregorian calendar is the look back on yet another year gone by – it’s the time for review, reflection, and retrospection. It’s the time we take stock, personally, professionally, and if so inclined, on the state of the world at large.

The media, of course, take this to another level by crowning those who they think had the most influence, impact, or power during the period in question, for better or for worse.

The Top Three in Forbes Magazine’s “Most Powerful People 2015” are Barack Obama (third), Angela Markel (runner-up), and Vladimir Putin (winner). According to Forbes, they represent the 0.00000001% - “the global elite whose actions move the planet”. Wow. 

TIME Magazine in turn made Angela Markel their “Person of the Year 2015”, gracing the cover page as is the tradition, and while certain detractors claim that particular publication is so dated, so “last-century” that it only serves to gather dust on dentist practice waiting room tables anymore (speaking of which, Reader’s Digest, founded in 1922, is still going strong by the way), the accolade attracts a lot of attention and generates plentiful follow-up coverage reinforcing the TIME-less brand. It’s as much an exercise in PR as in recognising “The Person of the Year”, and I see nothing wrong with that.

While this is not the Peace Nobel Prize (yet), it is still a remarkable recognition of the German Chancellor’s pivotal role in today’s topsy-turvy world. By the way, she is the only woman to have appeared on that Forbes list every year since it was started in 2009 – now that’s what I call staying power [sic].

Here’s the link to the TIME tribute to Angela Merkel which makes for very interesting reading. It’s entitled “Chancellor of the Free World”:

http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2015-angela-merkel/?xid=homepage  

And then there’s another way of summing up a year which has a long-standing tradition in Dr Merkel’s home country.

Each year, ever since 1971, the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache, the country’s most important Government-sponsored language society, has conducted a linguistic review of the past twelve months, identifying the one word that characterises best events during that period of time and therefore has held a dominant place in the public discourse – “The Word of the Year”. 

For 2015, unsurprisingly, it’s Flüchtlinge (Refugees). And yes, by year-end, a million will have arrived on German territory. 

I think this tradition is a great way of cutting through the cacophony of all the disparate and often confusing messages, events, and developments of a year by reducing its essence to one linguistic nutshell. And just going through the words selected over the past decades gives you a very concise, year-by-year picture of unfolding contemporary German history. 

The power of the Word – written, spoken, or, for that matter, sung:

“It’s only words
And words are all I have
To take your heart away.” 

The Bee Gees, Words (1968)

The heart, and the mind, too.

Somewhere else, I think in the Financial Times, I read about another “Word of the Year” – “Hello”, the title of the new single by singer songwriter Adele that became the first song ever with more than a million digital sales or “downloads” in a week.

Adele of course is a phenomenon, and she may well yield as much soft power as the high and mighty on the Forbes list do in terms of conventional power. And, by the way, TIME Magazine actually did vote her among “The World’s 100 Most Influential People: 2012”.

Born in Tottenham, London, on 5 May 1988, aged still only 27 today, she brings out an album – a “playlist” in today’s terms I guess – only every few years, entitled her age at the time of recording.

So she broke onto the scene, coming from absolutely nowhere, with 19 in early 2008. This was followed up by 21 in early 2011. And now, in November 2015, she released 25 which features “Hello”.

As a person, I think Adele is my kind of girl. In a 2009 interview with the UK Daily Mail, she said:

"I like looking nice, but I always put comfort over fashion. I don’t find thin girls attractive; be happy and healthy. I’ve never had a problem with the way I look. I’d rather have lunch with my friends than go to a gym."

When posting the cover of 25 on Instagram as a sneak preview, she apologised to her fans: “I’m sorry it took so long, but, you know, life happened.” Among other things that may have intervened, she did actually have a baby in the meantime.

Consciously or not, Adele was quoting John Lennon who famously said: “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.” Worthwhile remembering at times when we take ourselves and our priorities, ambitions, and obsessions ever so importantly. It puts things in perspective, serves as a reality check, and makes for a healthy degree of humility, I find.

I do like the concept of “Hello” on a personal level. More than “Good-bye”. But of course, as the saying goes, “it takes two to tango”:

“I don’t know why you say ‘Goodbye’, I say ‘Hello’.” The Beatles, Hello, Goodbye (1967) 
Anyhow, to round off the category “Women of the Year 2015”, Michelle Obama was voted into that elite group by The Financial Times. The paper published a remarkable and eminently readable portrait of the First Lady of the United States, aka FLOTUS, in last weekend’s edition:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a43929d0-9d17-11e5-b45d-4812f209f861.html

I admit I’m a fan of both Adele and Michelle. Maybe there’s something in the fact both names are pronounced on the second syllables and rhyme? In Belgium, the female version of my name is reasonably popular, and I once met singer songwriter Axelle Red – she’s big in her home country and a very nice lady at that!

So we categorise years by words and people, but of course we also remember them by events that happened in those twelve months, especially if they go back to the more distant past. Some random examples?

For Catholics, the year 1978 will always be remembered as “The Year of Three Popes”. First, Pope Paul VI deceased in August. Pope John Paul I, elected by the Conclave of Cardinals, died after only 33 days in office. And he was in turn succeeded by Pope John Paul II who then went on to serve until his death in 2005.

Buffs of German history will immediately know what is meant when you speak of “The Year of Three Emperors” (Dreikaiserjahr).

In 1888, the deaths of two Emperors in quick succession led to having three monarchs in one year. Wilhelm I died in March. His son, Frederick William assumed the throne as Frederick III, already suffering from terminal cancer of the larynx. After only 99 days of rule, during which he was unable to speak anymore, he died and was followed by his son, Wilhelm II who went on to reign until the bitter end – his abdication and the fall of the German Empire at the end of World War I in 1918.

To this day, the mnemonic “drei Achten, drei Kaiser” ("three eights, three emperors") is used in German history classes to memorise the year.

The one I like best is “The Year the Stars Fell Down on Texas” which refers to a spectacular meteor shower in 1833. Without the phenomenon we nowadays call “light pollution” – over our modern cities especially, it can be hard to see the stars at all – this must have been quite a sight to behold, and to this day, people everywhere in the South of the United States remember it as such.

Of course, much more important things than memorable night-sky natural phenomena happened over other twelve-month periods in the past, and maybe for that reason we tend to remember the event rather than the year.

Declaration of interest: As an historian, I can’t resist.

So please bear with me: Here’s a very subjective stab at the Top Twenty (no matter how much you simplify, synthesise, and focus, you can’t possibly do this in threes or even tens) Events in Human History, which I hope will serve as the basis for much discussion. And yes, they’re in purely chronological order, but feel free to have a go at ranking them – I won’t.

BC 508/507   Athenians establish democracy, led by Cleisthenes 
BC 44           Assassination of Julius Caesar; end of Roman Republic 
BC 27           Founding of Roman Empire by Octavian who takes on the name Augustus 
Ca BC 5         Birth of Jesus of Nazareth 
AD 476         Scirian leader Odoacer deposes Emperor Romulus; fall of Roman Empire 
1066           Battle of Hastings; Norman invasion of Britain 
1455             Johannes Gutenberg invents mechanical moving type printing 
1492           Christoph Columbus discovers America 
1517             Martin Luther publishes his 95 Theses; Christian Church split 
1543           Nicolaus Copernicus declares a heliocentric universe 
1776           American Declaration of Independence 
1789           French Revolution 
1815             Battle of Waterloo; Napoleonic conquests undone 
1859           Charles Darwin publishes “On the Origin of Species” 
1900           Sigmund Freud publishes “The Interpretation of Dreams” 
1905           Albert Einstein publishes “Theory of Special Relativity” 
1913           Henry Ford develops the first moving assembly line 
1917           United States enter into World War I; Russian Revolution 
1989           Collapse of the Soviet Empire 
2001           9/11

There it is. I rest my case. I admit it’s rather Eurocentric. Over to you.

On a lighter note, in English history one other year must of needs be added to the list – 1966 when the host nation’s team aka “Three Lions” won the football World Cup, known as the “Jules Rimet Trophy” then after the former FIFA President who was instrumental in starting the competition in 1930, for the first and only time by beating Germany 4-2 after extra time in the final.

Do not get me started on The Third Goal!

According to the FIFA Statutes, Brazil got to keep the trophy after winning it a third time in 1970, and the current one was introduced.

Then in 1996, England staged the European Championships which also turned out to be a memorable tournament, if for other reasons. Germany won the final against Czech Republic 2-1 through a “Golden Goal” scored by Oliver Bierhoff in the 95th minute, marking a brief experiment of FIFA with the principle of “sudden death” (sounding too American and negative I assume, hence the euphemism) to avoid boring, tactics-dominated 30-minute extra time periods or unjust penalty shoot-outs – the game was immediately over.

I was there at Wembley Stadium on the day. Back then, it was still so comparatively easy to get tickets for such games.

In the 2000 Final between France and Italy, end score also 2-1, David Trézéguet repeated the feat for the Équipe Tricolore; and in the Women’s World Cup Final of 2003, Germany defeated Sweden, you’ve guessed it, 2-1 with a header by Nia Künzer.

FIFA discontinued the rule because they realised that, you know what, we football fans like boring, tactics-dominated 30-minute extra time periods and unjust penalty shootouts.

Anyhow, not wanting to fall short of the occasion, there was an official anthem for the 1996 England team, “Football’s Coming Home”, the title referring with justified pride to the fact The Beautiful Game had indeed been “invented here”. The opening lines of the lyrics are:

“Three lions on a shirt,
Jules Rimet still gleaming. 
Thirty years of hurt, 
Never stopped me dreaming.”

Twenty years and ten major football tournaments without an England triumph later, I cannot help but ask myself whether that third line will be updated to “Fifty years of hurt” for the upcoming European Championships to be played in France in 2016.

Just kidding!

But before looking forward to 2016, football- and otherwise, let’s finally reflect on the year drawing to a close now. Like many before, it has been marked by suffering, death, and destruction. But like many before also, it has given us cause for joy, happiness, and belief.

Enough said on the former, so let’s focus on the latter maybe.

Category One: My favourite 2015 moments in general or political terms, in ascending order:

2 June – FIFA President Sepp Blatter announces his intention to resign amidst an FBI-led corruption investigation, and calls for an extraordinary congress to elect a new president as soon as possible

20 July – Cuba and the United States re-establish full diplomatic relations, ending a 54-year stretch of hostility between the nations

September – Angela Merkel opens the borders to all refugees, regardless of the burden it will inflict on Germany. In her own quiet way, she reassures her countrymen: “We can do this.”



And now, with a great drumroll, Category Two: My favourite 2015 moments in personal terms, also in ascending order:

1 June 2015: Under the most dramatic of circumstances, my football club Hamburger SV (HSV in short – one of the biggest brands in German sports if I say so myself) avoided relegation from the Bundesliga which would have been a first in their proud history dating back all the way to 1887. The bad news is they had to do the same in the previous season 2013/14 as well. The good news is things are looking up very much now. – As somebody much wiser than I once said: “A man can fall in love with a number of women in the course of a lifetime, but only with one football club.” I have nothing to add.

17 May 2015: Graduation of my youngest daughter Greta at Davidson College in North Carolina (www.davidson.edu). The third of three, but what a landmark (not a mere milestone)!

All year 2015: Following from a distance and finding out first-hand by visiting how well my son Preben has settled in and is doing as Athletic Director of English-taught Prem Tinsulanonda International School in Mae Rim near Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand (www.ptis.ac.th). When he started there in August of 2014, it was the first time one of my kids went somewhere I hadn’t been before or hadn’t scouted jointly with them first. Call me a “helicopter parent”, but saying good-bye to him then was a bitter-sweet moment.

Again, over to you. Top Three in each category?

So – what’s another year?

I’ll tell you what “What’s Another Year” is: It’s the title of the song that won the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC to those in the know), back in those days still the Concours Eurovision de la Chanson I believe, in 1980. Performed by the legendary Irish crooner Johnny Logan, it triumphed at that year’s event held in The Hague, Netherlands. You see, the Dutch had won in 1979 and according to the hallowed statutes of the competition got to host the following year’s one.

Johnny Logan went on to succeed again in 1987 with the equally timeless ditty “Hold Me Now”, earning him the nom de guerre, Mr Eurovision. What the Irish won’t fess up to is that he was born in Frankston, Victoria, Australia, but under the admittedly very “Old Country” name Seán Patrick Michael Sherran.

Anyhow, before I come to the story itself, let it be known that Ireland has been the most successful of nations participating in this epic continental battle of musical talent first launched in Lugano, Switzerland in 1956. It has been staged annually ever since, and in the intervening 60 years has visited 40 cities in 25 countries. 52 nations have now taken part, including for the first time, and as a one-off, Australia in 2015.

In due recognition of this impressive history, the organising European Broadcasting Union was awarded a “Guinness World Record” this year for Longest Running Annual TV Music Competition. I have a suspicion this category was specifically created in order to be able to make the award. That’s PR, baby.

For all sorts of fascinating statistics, well documented gems, and entertaining trivia, check out www.eurovision.tv.

In your faces, IOC and FIFA!

So Ireland has remarkably won this competition seven times to date, with three in consecutive years (1992/93/94) and four out of five from 1992 through 1996. Runner-up is Sweden with six wins, followed by joint thirds France, Luxembourg, and, yes, the United Kingdom (not England)!

The British group Bucks Fizz (after the orange-champagne cocktail) won in 1981, the year after Johnny Logan’s first success, with “Making Your Mind Up”. Legendary was the moment when, right on cue to the words “And if you want to see some more”, the two male singers pulled off the bottom parts of the two female singers’ stage costumes to display, well, some more. The technical term for this attention-grabbing gag was, I believe, a “skirt-rip”. Timeless television and a classic on YouTube to this day.

The Brits traditionally suffer from the fact this is considered to be a competition for up-and-coming talent – and that the likes of Elton John, Paul McCartney, or Adele will never risk showing up and maybe not pulling it off. Can’t blame them really.

Germany, by the way, has managed just two meagre wins, if that makes everybody feel better. It’s not all about football, guys!

Very few winners of the ESC subsequently went on to big-time careers. One exception to this rule is Canadian Céline Dion who as a musical hired gun won the competition for Switzerland in 1988 with the song “Ne partez pas sans moi” that I confess doesn’t ring a bell.

And then, of course, there was ABBA as the huge exception to the rule: Their victory in 1974 with “Waterloo” launched one of the most successful acts in pop music history ever. 
So here finally is the story.

On 19 April 1980, as already mentioned, Johnny Logan won the ESC with “What’s Another Year” (no question mark by the way). A few weeks later, precisely in the late afternoon of Saturday 24 May, I was standing at a gas station in Leverkusen, Germany, filling up my car for a very long and sad ride back home to Heidelberg, having just witnessed HSV lose 2-1 (there it is again) to then lowly, newly promoted Bayer Leverkusen on the penultimate game day of the Bundesliga season, thereby blowing their chances to win the German championship (which instead went to Bayern Munich). On the car radio all they played that afternoon and evening was “What’s Another Year”, and while at first I felt riled by the song’s title and lyrics (it’s to do with romance of course, not football), I eventually decided to take comfort in them – we’ll do it next season then!

I also still held out great hopes for the next game to be played on Wednesday 28 May in the Bernabeu Stadium of Madrid where HSV were in the Final of the European Champions’ Cup, the precursor to today’s Champions’ League, against Nottingham Forest. Having just massacred high and mighty Real Madrid in the semi-finals, surely nothing could go wrong for my team in that match-up, right?

Well, guess what, it did. We lost 1-0, with the equaliser wrongly disallowed for offside, and that’s when I faced up to the sad fact “another year” would actually be quite long.

To keep you from googling, it sadly turned out to be more than just twelve months. HSV won the German Championship twice in a row in the 1981/82 and 1982/83 seasons.

And we did finally also win the Champions’ Cup on 25 May 1983 by beating the then seemingly invincible Juventus Turin 1-0 in Athens. The goal was scored by a certain Felix Magath in the eighth minute, and when he was interviewed in the context of the 30-year anniversary of the club’s greatest triumph, asked about what he thought at that moment, he disarmingly replied: “As I walked back for the kick-off after my goal, I looked up at the big stadium clock, and I thought, shit, that was much too early in the game. They’re going to kill us now.”

Well, they didn’t. And I like to think Italian goalkeeping legend Dino Zoff still wakes up bathed in sweat at night from dreaming about that goal!

So – what’s another year or two?

Remember: “When it all comes down / We will still come through / In the long run.” 

The Eagles, The Long Run (1979)

So in addition to making this the time of year for review, reflection, and retrospection, let’s make it the occasion for positive thoughts, planning, and confidence.

“It’s the time / Of the season / For loving.” The Zombies, Time of the Season (1968)

Signing off for this year, I wish you all a happy, peaceful, and re-energising holiday period and all the best for 2016. I, for one, am looking forward to both.

P.S. The Eurovision Song Contest 2016 will be held in Stockholm on Saturday 14 May 2016. Whatever else you may have planned for the day – Hold the Date!

Fifteen Minutes of Fame

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Friday the 13th is one of those days.

Many people dread it, expecting bad rather than good things to happen to them and thereby reliably invoking the Law of Self-fulfilling Prophesies.

This past one in November 2015, however, may have taken the crown in a long line of all the bad thirteenth days of a month that fell on a Friday – in the saddest possible way. So much so that, although taken hostage professionally (and physically) by the events in Paris, given the magnitude of suffering even I did not have one of my self-pitying “Balotelli Moments”, as in, “Why always me?”

But under the circumstances and given my close connection to them, I also felt it inappropriate to write a blog post. No other topic seemed relevant by comparison, and on the attacks, their significance, and their consequences all was already being said by every commentator, analyst, and pundit under the sun. Who was I to add anything?

So I took advice from these timeless words of wisdom in the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes 3:1-13, and shut up for once:

“A Time for Everything

“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
   a time to be born and a time to die,
   a time to plant and a time to uproot,
   a time to kill and a time to heal,
   a time to tear down and a time to build,
   a time to weep and a time to laugh,
   a time to mourn and a time to dance,
   a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
   a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
   a time to search and a time to give up,
   a time to keep and a time to throw away,
   a time to tear and a time to mend,
   a time to be silent and a time to speak,
   a time to love and a time to hate,
   a time for war and a time for peace.”
  
(Holy Bible, New International Version / My emphasis)



If you like folk and country rock, and I admittedly do, there is a contemporary musical version of this passage, the song Turn! Turn! Turn! written by Pete Seeger but turned [sic!] into an international hit by the American ‘Sixties group, The Byrds, hitting Number One of the U.S. Hot 100 Charts on 4 December 1965, exactly half a century ago!

“To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose
Under heaven.”

Fun fact: In the U.S., the song holds distinction as the #1 hit with the oldest lyrics, the words attributed to King Solomon who is generally believed to have reigned Israel circa 970 to 931 BC.

Back to the year 2015, and there is one twist to the Paris Friday 13 November tale I do want to pick up on.

Just to recapitulate briefly, one of the targets of the attacks was the Stade de France where on the night an international friendly (!) game was being played between the host nation and Germany, attended by none less than President François Hollande. In the course of the first, otherwise eventless half, a couple of strange sounds could be heard inside the stadium, but play went on regardless – you may have seen the TV pictures.

Here comes the less well-known part of the story that I think is worth reflecting on even if the events themselves are now literally last month’s news. And the following may be still be of interest to you, I hope.

By half-time, the two team managers had been informed those sounds had actually been explosions from terrorists blowing themselves up outside the stadium because they hadn’t been able to get in due to the heightened security measures put in place to protect Monsieur le Président (who had in the meantime of course been rushed off the premises).

Joachim “Jogi” Löw and his colleague Didier Deschamps, who share the distinction of both having won the World Cup – the former as Germany’s Head Coach in 2014, the latter as the French team captain in 1998 (Deschamps as player also won the European Championship in 2000, a feat Löw is still aspiring to as a coach) – were now faced with a very difficult call to make, to inform their teams or to pretend everything was normal.

They both opted for the latter, improvising an apparently ordinary half-time locker-room talk in the knowledge of what was going on outside. They both pulled it off and sent their players out for the second half totally unaware of the situation, a remarkable performance, a strong show of character and self-control, and a testament to their leadership skills.

Throughout those second 45 minutes, the teams remained oblivious, and when the French scored their two goals that won the game (it was only a friendly match, mind, so good luck to them…), the crowd chanted, cheered, and celebrated – you see, the Stade de France is notorious for poor mobile network coverage.

If this was the script of a Hollywood movie, you would have to suspend all disbelief in order to buy into and enjoy it.

But it gets even better (or worse): The German team spent the night in their locker room and adjacent shower area before finally being allowed by security forces to leave the catacombs at seven in the morning – their team bus was deemed to be too obvious and easy a target.

Over those hours, they had a lot of time to talk about a lot of things, one of them the question whether they felt like playing the next game scheduled for the following Tuesday in Hannover against The Netherlands. In the end, they decided they would, not least in order to show strength and defiance.

Terrorism is called terrorism because it aims to frighten many more people than it will ever actually kill.

Fast forward four days, on Tuesday 17 November that game was cancelled by the German authorities on the night itself, just some two hours before kick-off. Both squads were already on their way to the stadium – cue again the famous team bus. It has transpired since there had indeed been a concrete plot for another terrorist attack.

Let’s not forget one thing in this context: While the football stars of our time are promoted beyond reason, pampered beyond belief, and paid beyond comprehension, they are only in their teens or twenties. By far the oldest player on the German team in Paris was Bastian Schweinsteiger, and he is all of 31. Most of our modern-day gladiators are mere kids.

So from Hannover they all went home to their respective clubs to play there again the following weekend. And that was when not only they showed a remarkable resilience, but also the fans.

After what had happened a few days before, it would have been quite understandable if people had felt like staying at home rather than going to the games. Mass events, after all, were the perfect opportunities for further attacks.

But turn up they did, and in impressive numbers. That weekend, the top five European leagues in England, France, German, Italy, and Spain registered a total attendance of 1,386,032 spectators – all of whom had decided not to do the terrorists the favour of caving in, of being frightened, of giving up their way of life.

In every stadium that weekend (and the same scene took also place outside the respective top leagues) a minute of silence for the 130 victims was observed before kick-off. In their own way, no less than 10,000 football fans gathered for a vigil for each person killed in Paris.

And then there was one venue that celebrated a very special, even more dignified, and thereby truly unique occasion – Hamburg.

Following those 60 seconds of undisturbed quiet respect, another minute was added in commemoration of Helmut Schmidt, the former German Chancellor, a Century Man, and possibly the city’s greatest son, who had died on 10 November, and the contrast could not have been bigger. That second minute saw 57,000 people on their feet vigorously applauding – and many of them thinking, I am sure, how good it would be to have him at a time like this:

“We need a hero.”

For me, Jogi Löw and Didier Deschamps were heroic in the way they conducted themselves during the game in Paris.

Andy Warhol, admittedly in a different context (the rise of mass media and mass consumerism) is credited with saying: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” Of course, he was right on the money, even if I doubt he could have foreseen the emergence of today’s “social media” and the narcissism of Generation Selfie.

That said, I would maintain there is still a difference between lasting fame and ephemeral celebrity.

That night in Paris, as far as I am concerned, in spite of all their previous triumphs on the football field, the two coaches, doing what they did in the locker rooms, achieved their true “fifteen minutes of fame” – the exact duration of a half-time break in football of course. A mere coincidence? For you to judge.

They had a very tough call to make, they got it right, and they pulled it off.

They mastered the stress of looking their players in the eyes and pretending everything was business as usual, without ever having been trained how to handle such an unimaginable situation.

Technically, by the way, they chose to adhere to a principle that works well in media relations (and maybe not just there):

“Never lie, but don’t always say everything you know.”

Had one of the players asked them, “Hey Coach, those noises we heard – were they explosions?” I’m pretty sure they would have told them the truth. But of course that inquiry never came.

In an interview, if the journalist asks me a question point-blank, I will answer it truthfully. But if they don’t, guess what, there is no sense in going anywhere near something I maybe don’t really want to talk about. Which of course sounds easier than it is sometimes…

Anyhow – an interview is not an exam, you don’t do it to answer questions. You do it to tell your story. If you don’t have a story to tell, don’t do the interview.

And make sure your story is interesting, relevant, and, on a good day, compelling.

As already said, that Paris locker-room situation would have made for a great film scene with its strained attempt at conveying normalcy in the midst of deadly chaos.

Maybe even more impactful than those famous Hollywood half-time, pre-game, and pep talks that are meant to conjure up the exact opposite of “there is nothing special going on; the score is 0-0; and you know what, it’s only a friendly game anyway”.

My top three greatest sports coaches’ motivating speeches in film history?

In ascending order:

Gene Hackman as Coach Norman Dale in Hoosiers (1986)

Denzel Washington as Coach Herman Boone in Remember the Titans (2000)

And the winner is:

Al Pacino as Coach Tony d’Amato in Any Given Sunday (1999)

Since it’s a difficult choice to make, honourable mentions go to Paul Newman as Player / Coach Reggie Dunlop in Slap Shot (1977) and to Kurt Russell as Coach Herb Brooks in Miracle (2004).

Modern sports is sometimes called a surrogate for war, and I guess it speaks for the human species if we have finally learned to work out our issues without killing each other.

Famously, Scottish football Coach / Manager Bill Shankly (1913 – 1981), who celebrated his greatest successes with Liverpool, once said about his sport: “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”

Taunting the other local major club and its supporters, Everton, he famously also said: “This city has two great football teams – Liverpool and Liverpool Reserves.” Love it.

No wonder then, of course, that there are also great motivating speeches to be found in plays or movies set in war times.

However, different from football games, battles do not have half-time breaks during which refreshments are served. So those addresses tend to be either pre-battle rallying calls or post-battle celebrations of victory – but the latter less so as literally licking your wounds does not make you all that receptive to, and appreciative of, oratory flights of fancy. Everybody is just sweaty and tired and wants a drink.

So, you may have anticipated it, here are my top three battle speeches, again in ascending order:

Mel Gibson as William Wallace in Braveheart (1995)

Russell Crowe as Maximus in Gladiator (2000) – what a great opening scene! The rest of the film is an anti-climax.

And the winner is (hands down):

Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii, 18 – 67 (aka “St Crispin’s Day Speech”, held on 25 October 1415 before the Battle of Agincourt).

Check out how Kenneth Branagh delivers it in the movie Henry V (1989):

“… This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

Honourable mentions in this category:

Mel Gibson (again) as Colonel Hal Moore in We Were Soldiers (2002)

Russell Crowe (again) as Captain Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003): “Quick’s the word and sharp’s the action”. Any questions?

In case you were wondering, yes, the bard from Stratford-upon-Avon inspired the title of the American TV mini-series Band of Brothers (2001) that tells the story of Easy Company of the US Army 101st Airborne division and their mission in WWII Europe from Operation Overlord (the landing in Normandy in June 1944) through V-J Day (the capitulation of Japan in August 1945). And speaking of the latter, the counterpart is The Pacific (2010), less impressive I found.

So what do all these speeches have in common? Their content is interesting, relevant, and indeed compelling to their audiences. And their delivery is credible, captivating, and motivating. “Rallying the troops”, as the expression goes.

A well-known sports wisdom holds, “Big players are made in big games”. How true. And heroes are found when the hour comes.

I now have a new hero. He is not a coach nor an athlete nor a soldier. He is a member of a much, much rarer breed, sadly missing from our public lives which to a good degree explains the mess we seem to be in.

This is a Conviction Politician.

I don’t veer from my own belief that, like all politicians, he also primarily seeks to get re-elected, but on this one occasion last week he did something that I don’t think was guided by this consideration. In fact, if it was, within his own outfit, at least short-term he didn’t do himself any favour at all.

And yet, when the hour came, he stood up and delivered a speech that already a couple of days later is credited to have been one of the best in the centuries-long history of Westminster, the Mother of all Parliaments – and that’s one heck of an accolade.

Even if we don’t buy into the hyperbole – cynically speaking, maybe it is a mere reflection of the otherwise mediocre standard of the oratory in the august House of Commons and indeed other parliaments – this speech was remarkable, it was impactful, and it was brave.

In a “Big Game” debate, a big (political) player was made.

By now, you will have worked it out: I am talking about Hilary (one “l”) Benn, Labour Member of Parliament for Leeds Central since 1999, and his passionate plea in the House of Commons in support of the Conservative Government’s plans to extend the British bombing of terrorist targets from Iraq to Syria. He did this, mind, as the Shadow Foreign Secretary, a position he has held since May 2015, on the front bench of the new, somewhat different, and decidedly pacifist Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Don’t be mistaken – aged 62, Hilary Benn is no spring chicken, no rookie, and no newcomer to the game. He looks back on a long and distinguished career in British politics, having held Government offices under Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown between 2003 and 2010. Since then, as is the fate of members of the parliamentary Opposition, he has spent his life “in the shadows”, so to speak, last as Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

He also has a political pedigree second-to-none. A fourth-generation MP, his father was Tony Benn who died only last year, a Member of Parliament himself for 47 years, one of the heroes of British Labour Party and Socialist folklore, and a role model for the current party leadership.

For a wonderful take on the father-son relationship, if so inclined, read this column by Robert Shrimsley in the Financial Times of 3 December 2015: “The words Benn senior would have exchanged with his son”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9ede92a-9913-11e5-95c7d47aa298f769.html#axzz3tZrI0Olr 

And yet, until last week, Benn junior was generally viewed a “quiet and worthy figure”, but a “hitherto underwhelming politician”, or such.

Given all of the above, it is even more remarkable how Hilary Benn in the evening of 2 December 2015, making the closing speech for the Opposition in the House of Commons in the debate on British airstrikes against ISIS (or ISIL or Daesh – I never know what to call them now) in Syria, defied Corbyn and his second-in-command and political enforcer, Tom Watson, who were both menacingly sitting immediately behind him as he spoke, literally framing him on-camera, and looking anything but understanding, amused, or happy.

“The mouse,” another Labour MP remarked, “has roared.”

The following day, in its 3 December issue, the left-leaning Guardian newspaper, not supportive of the current Government, neither in general policy terms nor on this issue, felt obliged to comment: “For 15 minutes, Benn was verbal shock and awe [my emphasis – I like that phrase!]… As he sat down, many MPs on both sides of the House started clapping and cheering. Some gave him a standing ovation.”

For those of us, I included, who are not so familiar with the age-old dos and dont's of the House of Commons – this is normally an absolute no-no.

What delights me personally about this of course is to see re-established the importance of a good speech in an age obsessed with sound bites, info graphics, and tweets.

So, not unlike football coaches Löw and Deschamps, in his own much more public way Hilary Benn had his “fifteen minutes of fame”: After a lifetime in politics, he rose to the occasion, defying the pressure from his peers and his party leaders, and did what he felt was right. He followed his conviction. And he pulled it off brilliantly.

You should watch the speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_dRCzd19Uc

And don’t miss the symbolic scene at the end as he tries to sit down again on the Labour front bench between Corbyn and Watson who do not move an inch to the side to accommodate him. Speak of “body language” in the truest sense of the term. 
Great drama!

The general consensus in the Labour Party afterwards was that indeed Benn had blown in those fifteen minutes any chances he might have had of ever taking over. Standing for many other similar reactions, when asked on Sky News TV whether he thought Benn would make a good Labour leader, Ken Livingstone, the former London mayor and a close ally of Corbyn’s said: “I wouldn’t vote for him, no, not after the speech he gave.”

By contrast, I probably would, yes, after the speech he gave. Because he gave it. Others may feel the same way. We shall see.

For now, he has instilled the hope in me that I may have occasion to write about other Conviction Politicians in future, thin on the ground and few-and-far-between though they are.

Football is sometimes called “The Beautiful Game”, politics never. There must be a reason.

In both fields, however, the past weeks since that Friday 13th, difficult as they were, have given me cause for joy (the packed stadia), encouragement (the Benn speech), and renewed confidence in our collective ability to join up, get our act together, and set things right.

My life motto for hard times?

“When it all comes down
We will still come through
In the long run.”

The Eagles, The Long Run (1979)                                                                                

Farewell to a Century Man

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Lately, I’ve had the opportunity to travel quite extensively.

Not through time, like Marty McFly, our hero from Back to the Future, but at least through time zones, and plenty of those.

And what never fails to amaze me is how so many people can constantly be on the move. 
Don’t get me wrong – of course anybody is entitled to as much mobility as they need, enjoy, and can afford. But I sit at an airport and am bewildered by the amount of flying going on around me.

Back in the days before the automobile and planes, travel of the voluntary kind was mostly a perk for the well-to-do and maybe not-so-busy. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Italian Journey (1786 – 1788) and Lord Byron’s Grand Tour of the Mediterranean (1809 – 1811) are cases in point.

But nowadays, it seems nobody stays at home anymore. While the world is not a safe place, if it ever was.

From the shopping mall in Nairobi, to the beaches of Sousse and the Sinai, and to the center of Bangkok, innocent people are falling victims to deadly attacks, and the economies of Kenya, Tunisia, Egypt, Thailand, and any other country affected, heavily dependent on tourism as they are, suffer.

That’s the idea of course: Terrorism is not about the number of people killed – it’s about the number of people frightened.

But the attraction of visiting faraway places clearly outweighs the risks involved:

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” St. Augustine

I recently spoke to someone who explained to me he was a collector of countries – with every year of his life, he visits a new one he has never been to. He is now forty, and he admits to “banking” countries in anticipation of growing old when travelling may become less easy. Just as long as he keeps up his golden formula – one for every age.

A very admirable concept, and I will spend some time over the weekend counting the countries I have gone to. The rule will be at least one night spent there – merely changing flights at an airport doesn’t count.

Cue the Lonely Planet rankings for “Best in Travel – Top Ten Countries” for 2016:

1.   Botswana 
2.   Japan
3.   USA 
4.   Palau
5.   Latvia
6.   Australia
7.   Poland
8.   Uruguay 
9.   Greece
10. Fiji

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/best-in-travel/countries 

My own version of marking travel is to buy a Starbucks mug in every town I visit – provided there is an outlet of this typically American retail and restaurant success story of course. We have quite a collection, as you can imagine.

The Lonely Planet rankings for “Best in Travel – Top Ten Cities” for 2016 are:

1.   Kotor, Montenegro
2.   Quito, Ecuador
3.   Dublin, Ireland          
4.   George Town, Malaysia
5.   Rotterdam, The Netherlands
6.   Mumbai, India
7.   Fremantle, Australia
8.   Manchester, UK
9.   Nashville, Tennessee, USA  
10. Rome, Italy

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/best-in-travel/cities

And while we are on fun facts and travel-related rankings, here’s an interesting one from the Canadian Financial Services firm, Arton Capital that they call “The Passport Power Rank”. It lists passports by the number of countries worldwide their holders can enter without need to apply for a visa. 

The Top Three are:

1.   USA and UK: 147 countries
2.   Germany, France, and (South) Korea: 145 countries
3.   Italy and Sweden: 144 countries

http://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php



One place I definitely want to go to, sooner rather than later, is Myanmar, aka Burma. With great interest, bordering on fascination, I have been following developments in that country over the past years as the military junta after five decades of ruling their 52 million compatriots with an iron fist since 1962 had an epiphany and embarked on a risky adventure – free elections, modernisation and democracy (of sorts).

Relinquishing power voluntarily, without being ousted by force, is a very unusual thing to do for any military dictatorship, and so we are truly witnessing History in the Making.

And then, of course, the nation and its politics harbour a global super star, for better or for worse.

Her name is Aung Sam Suu Kyi, and she is the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, no less. She has also received just about every national award for Freedom and Democracy other countries have to bestow on worthy individuals.

Back in the 1990 general election, her opposition party National League for Democracy (NLD) already won the vast majority of seats in parliament, which the military junta had not anticipated and didn’t appreciate, and as a consequence she remained under house arrest for almost 15 of the 21 following years until her final release in November 2010, in the process becoming one of the world’s most prominent political prisoners.

I’m sure you all remember the TV pictures of her in solitary confinement, including the reports about a crazy American who twice, in 2008 and 2009, literally swam across a lake to visit her in her compound.

Although she is barred by the constitution from becoming president of Myanmar, because she has two sons of foreign – UK – nationality (her deceased husband was British), Suu Kyi recently has said she will become the country's de facto leader, acting "above the president," if her party forms the next government.

The latest general election results from last weekend, while still being counted as I am writing this, indicate a landslide victory by her party. It will be interesting to follow how that all pans out.

So, basically, she’s a super star, and in the interest of democracy in Burma / Myanmar,   I wish her and her political movement good luck.

Apart from the unfortunate, yet helpful, factors that led to her becoming the international public figure that she is – what else is it that makes a political rock star in our saturated media world?

Like it or not, good looks help. Mark Carney, the (Canadian) Governor of the Bank of England, goes by “the George Clooney of the financial industry”, but as he charmingly says himself – “the bar is low in the banking world”. In a national contest, he would also be competing with the newly elected Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau who has the advantage over Carney of being significantly younger, born on Christmas Day 1971.

Trudeau additionally benefits from a dynastical background – his father Pierre Trudeau (1919 – 2000) was also Prime Minister of Canada, twice even (from 1968 to 1979 and from 1980 to 1984).

There’s a wonderful anecdote illustrating young Justin’s political lineage: On 14 April 1972, Trudeau's father and mother hosted a gala at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa where visiting U.S. President Richard M. Nixon said, "I’d like to toast the future Prime Minister of Canada, to Justin Pierre Trudeau"; to which Pierre Trudeau responded that should his four months old son ever assume the role, he hoped he would have "the grace and skill of the President". This was pre-Watergate, mind.

Earlier that same day, U.S. First Lady Pat Nixon had come to see little Justin in his nursery to deliver a gift, a stuffed Snoopy toy. What a spoilt brat!

While speaking of looks: Nixon – who had to resign in ignominy over the Watergate scandal in order to avoid impeachment but is unfairly reduced to this unfortunate episode (a negative case study in crisis management by the way) as he earned himself an impressive track record in foreign policy while at the helm – narrowly lost the 1960 Presidential election to the young and handsome John F Kennedy not least because of a new element first introduced in that campaign, televised presidential debates.

Especially in the first of four such on-camera clashes of the candidates, Nixon (who had injured himself when getting out of the car on arriving at the studio) appeared pale and sinister, with a “five o'clock shadow”, in contrast to the photogenic, always impeccably coiffed and turned-out Kennedy who insisted on having make-up applied to his face before the show. In polls after the program, Nixon’s performance in the debate was perceived to be poor by the TV audience, while interestingly many people listening on the radio thought that he had won.

Bottom line: appearance does matter. And Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Grégoire, a TV host and media personality born in 1975 remind me a lot of Jack and Jackie Kennedy who brought a whole new (life) style, including small children, to the White House in 1961. To this day, at 43, Kennedy remains the youngest person to have been elected President of the U.S. In case you were wondering, by contrast, the youngest to assume office is actually Theodore Roosevelt, but he was Vice President under William McKinley and took up the Presidency after the latter’s assassination in 1901.

So back to our initial question – what (else) does it take to achieve true super star status?
Well, of course it helps to have done or at least said something memorable and under remarkable circumstances. JFK again: “Ich bin ein Berliner!” (26 June 1963 – see the previous blog post)

Winston Churchill, who may have been a lot of things but in all fairness was not a looker, ticks that box amply, as does his wartime counterpart, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, U.S. President from 1933 through 1945, who had to see his country through the Great Depression and World War II.

In his first inaugural address on 4 March 1933, to instil confidence in themselves, he famously told the American people:

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

What a line. Make it your own.

Barack Obama certainly had super star status when he first ran for President and got elected (“Yes We Can!”), but after seven years in office I would argue it’s worn off a little – and boy, has he aged.

Sometimes, Serendipity or Fate will have it that the right person happens to be in the right place at the right time. One such politician sadly died two days ago, aged 96: Germany’s fifth post-war Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (23 December 1918 – 10 November 2015).

Like Churchill and FDR, while in office Schmidt had to steer his nation through turbulent times, and he succeeded because, “We trusted him.” (Chancellor Angela Merkel on the news of his death).

Helmut Schmidt’s political career within the Social Democratic Party began in his native town, the self-governed Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, to this day a city-state and one of the 16 Bundesländer making up the Federal Republic of Germany, where he established his reputation as a sterling crisis manager and somebody who gets things done under the most adverse of conditions.

43-year-old Helmut Schmidt was a member of the Senate, the Government of Hamburg, as Interior Senator when a natural disaster hit the port city in February 1962. Swollen to unprecedented levels by heavy rainfall, the Elbe River poured over its dikes, causing a calamitous flood which killed 315 people. In the absence of the Mayor, who was travelling, Schmidt took charge of the emergency response that saved thousands of citizens from drowning. Without legal authority to do so, he called in the army and NATO forces to join in the rescue efforts, and famously said later: “I did not look at the Constitution during those days.”

After stints as Minister for Defence, for Economics, and for Finance, Helmut Schmidt became German Chancellor in 1974, succeeding to Willy Brandt, and held the office until 1982. During his tenure, he faced a worldwide economic crisis caused by an unprecedented sharp increase in the price of oil in 1973. In 1977, during the so-called “German Autumn” he dealt with a home-grown terrorist threat emanating from the RAF organisation (Rote Armee Fraktion - Red Army Faction). He remained uncompromising towards their demands in hostage-taking scenarios and thereby assumed the ultimate responsibility both for the successful storming of the hijacked Boeing 737-200 Lufthansa plane, “Landshut” at the airport of Mogadishu by German special forces, liberating all 82 passengers and five crew members unharmed, and for the murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer, the President of the German Employers’ Association. The victim’s family never forgave him.

Finally, in the field of foreign and defence policy, Schmidt remained tough during the days of Soviet domination of East Germany. In the single major European security issue of the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was the driving force behind the NATO decision to answer the deployment of Soviet SS-20 missiles with the installation of American Pershing missiles in Western Europe, provided the Soviets refused to withdraw their new weapons. This stance was deeply controversial at the time, provoking demonstration marches by hundreds of thousands Germans and creating The Greens as a political party. It eventually led to Schmidt’s losing office in 1982 because leftist Social Democrats would no longer follow him.

While deeply sceptical of U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s capabilities, the German Government under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt also showed itself fully supportive of the American reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 which included a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. In the end, only four countries in Europe held the line – Norway, Monaco, Turkey, and West Germany. I still vividly remember the public discussion around this divisive decision, as a whole generation of athletes accused Schmidt of having deprived them of their biggest career highlight.

As a person, Schmidt was intellectually brilliant; a gifted debater, witty and eloquent; widely read; a philosopher as much as a politician; of Lutheran faith while self-avowed “not religious, but neither an atheist”; the epitome of the proud Hamburg Hanseatic; married to his childhood sweetheart Hannelore “Loki”, a biologist and amateur botanist for 68 years (she died in 2010 at age 91; they had one daughter); after retiring from politics the co-publisher of one of Germany’s leading weeklies, Die Zeit; a prolific author; a serious chess player; and an accomplished pianist with several records to his name. He was awarded 24 honorary doctoral degrees in his lifetime, including from Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, the Sorbonne in France, Harvard and Johns Hopkins in the U.S., Keio in Japan, and the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium. For many decades, he and his wife lived in the same unassuming semi-detached house in Hamburg-Langenhorn where they would privately host famous guests from all over the world. One of his closest friends was Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. Secretary of State under, you’ve guessed it, President Richard Nixon.

Helmut Schmidt’s self-confidence bordered on arrogance at times, and he could be quite sarcastic. When invited by The New York Times to assess his successor, Chancellor Helmut Kohl he said: “I think there are still two or three fields in which he still needs a lot of education.” Asked which ones, he answered, “International affairs, arms control and military strategy, and economics and finance.”

Early on in his career, Schmidt earned himself the nickname “Schmidt Schnauze” (Schmidt the Lip), and it stuck. My top three favourite quotes?

“Politicians and journalists share the sad fate that they often speak about things already today which they will completely understand only tomorrow.”

“I divide humanity into three categories: We normal people who at some point in their youth stole apples; the second has a small criminal inclination; and the third consists of investment bankers.”

“If someone has visions, they should go to see a doctor.” About his predecessor Willy Brandt…

I had the pleasure many years ago of working with the chief aide to a former Irish Prime Minister, and he told me that at EU summit meetings the whole room would go silent once Helmut Schmidt walked in because everybody expected him to come up with something no-one else had thought of: “The man just exuded superior intelligence.”

In a 2013 poll by Stern magazine, he was ranked as Germany’s most significant Chancellor. As Angela Markel said: “We trusted him.”

And then, there’s one more thing about Helmut Schmidt that simply cannot go unmentioned – he was a lifelong heavy smoker of menthol cigarettes and until the very end the only person in Germany allowed blatantly to disregard smoking bans wherever he appeared in public, including TV studios. In response to the European Union’s proposed ban of menthol cigarettes, he procured 200 cartons of his favourite brand Reyno, enough to see him through two or three years. As it now turns out, he will not have the opportunity to use up his stockpile anymore.

And in wondrous ways, this anecdote brings me back to John F Kennedy. It is well documented that he sent out his Press Secretary, Pierre Salinger to shop for 1,200 Cuban cigars before signing the trade embargo law on 7 February 1962.

Winston Churchill once said: “Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.”

An old saying of unknown origin optimistically postulates, “Cometh the hour, cometh the man”. When a time of need arises, the right person to do the job will appear. Of Jefferson Davis, President-elect of the Confederacy at the outset of the American Civil War in 1861 it was stated, “The man and the hour have met”.

There’s a song from 1984, Holding Out for a Hero, with lyrics that express the same sentiment (although I suspect Bonny Tyler’s “needs” are of a specific nature, this being Rock’n’Roll). The song is part of the soundtrack to the movie Footloose with Kevin Bacon, by the way.

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the Gods?
Where's the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?

Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and I turn
And I dream of what I need

I need a hero, I'm holding out for a hero
'Til the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight

I need a hero, I'm holding out for a hero
'Til the morning light
He's gotta be sure
And it's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life
(Larger than life)

The leading local daily newspaper, Hamburger Abendblatt has entitled its obituary for Helmut Schmidt, “Farewell to a Century Man”. It ends: “Since yesterday, the voice from Hamburg-Langenhorn has gone silent. It will be missed.”

We all trusted him.