this great talk at the Royal Society by Professor Mark Jackson riffed on the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, as exemplifying the speaker's hypothesis, that the mid-life crisis is more socially determined, than biological - the midlife of course refers to the period between adolescence and senescence, which are also, to some extent, movable feasts.
I asked him afterwards how valid it was to apply the same notions to institutions (is the Royal Society middle aged?, is democracy senile? etc etc)...but also, whether he could look at the 3 Rises of Leonard Rossiter, the genius actor who played Perrin so perfectly - and was previously in RIsing Damp, perhaps an adolescent drama, and the very mature Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a Brecht piece which could very well be re-run as a riff on Nigel Farage, right now.
I asked him afterwards how valid it was to apply the same notions to institutions (is the Royal Society middle aged?, is democracy senile? etc etc)...but also, whether he could look at the 3 Rises of Leonard Rossiter, the genius actor who played Perrin so perfectly - and was previously in RIsing Damp, perhaps an adolescent drama, and the very mature Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a Brecht piece which could very well be re-run as a riff on Nigel Farage, right now.
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