Sunday 16 April 2017

Something is in danger, but it isn't chess as such

If Ray's around, it's normally somebody else's wallet. Or somebody else's copyright.


Now I confess I don't read the British Chess Magazine. If they sent it to me post free it still wouldn't be worth the postage. At least that's the impression I got the last few times I saw it, one of which, a few years ago now, was a seventeen-page interview with this month's cover model, carried out by professional arse-kisser Steve Giddins. [CORRECTION: not so, says Steve in comments.]

I've not really had the stomach for it since, which is a shame in several ways.(I'd have liked to see March's Time To Grow Up Guys! by Mike Basman, just for the sheer effrontery.)

So for all I know, April's Ray Keene interview is in reality a searching examination of its subject, in the finest traditions of the journalistic art, and includes questions like the following:

  • When are you going to pay back the money you defrauded from members of the British Chess Federation?

  • Who is the bigger charlatan, you or your friend Tony Buzan?

  • Did Viktor Korchnoi ever recover from you cheating him in 1978?

  • How did you get away with the BrainGames scam?

  • Do you actually write any of your own columns, or does Byron do them for you?

  • Who at the Times protected you from being sacked for rampant plagiarism?

I could go on. I mean Ray has. For about forty years too long, protected by his friends, who couldn't give a stuff what he does as long as it's not their pockets that get picked.

4 comments:

Steve Giddins said...

I'd be grateful if you would quote the exact issue of BCM in which I published a 17-page interview with Ray Keene. You'll find it tricky, because I have never interviewed Ray, not for BCM nor any other publication. The BCM did have an interview with him, conducted by John Saunders, some years before I became editor. Is Saunders also a professional arse-kisser?

Steve Giddins

ejh said...

Happy to make the correction Steve. As for the question you raise, I guess it's quite a good one.

AngusF said...

Here's Steve Giddins on hospitality enjoyed at Ray's:

I am not sure exactly how the players chose to spend their day off, but in the case of the organisational team of myself, Ray Keene and Eric Schiller, the day started with a leisurely cooked breakfast (to those who have not tried them, I can especially recommend mushrooms sauteed in pink champagne!), followed by a day of glorious reading (in my case, Marcus Aurelius). The highlight of the day was dinner chez Keene, where a liberal quantity of Chinese food was washed down with an equally liberal quantity of the Keene family wine lake. The evening was topped off by an exquisite bottle of 1975 port (served in solid silver, monogrammed goblets – what else?), with musical accompaniment in the form of "The Entrance of the Gods into Vallhalla", from Wagner's "Ring Cycle". Life does not get a great deal better; indeed, it is almost enough to make one feel sorry for the termites!

Anonymous said...

One wonders if this paragraph was nothing more than some troll-bait.
Who does actually read the BCM? We need somebody to read it in order to keep up the standards of research on this blog.

--the BlueWeasel, still blue