“We received a message from the police just before the King George VI steeplechase. We ran the big race which was what everyone had come for and we felt this was the thing to do.” The caller to the BBC in Belfast at 1.30pm said he was from the Continuity IRA, a splinter group opposed to the Ulster peace agreement He said a device would go off at 5pm. He gave a codeword, but it was not one known to the security forces.Ms Ellen said: “We had to decide whether we thought this was real or whether it was a hoax but if there was a device it was not due to go off for a period of time. In 1997 the Grand National at Aintree was abandoned after a similar security hoax.At Kempton Park, four of the day’s six races had been run by the time of the evacuation. Rumours abound that new material is in the offing, but this homecoming defied cynicism.. ONE OF Britain’s most popular Christmas horse-racing meetings was abandoned yesterday after a bomb warning forced officials to clear 20,000 spectators from Kempton Park racecourse in Surrey.

The evacuation followed a telephone warning to the BBC’s Belfast newsroom when a man claiming to represent the Continuity IRA said a car bomb had been left at the course.
It was the second time in recent years that a bomb scare has ended a big race meeting. Even now, pretenders like Noel Gallagher and Steve Craddock of Ocean Colour Scene aren’t fit to tie his shoelaces. His guitar crackled with electricity, notably on the funky “Magic Bus” and a superb “Who Are You?”, scratching a 20-year-old itch. “Five Fifteen” was so powerful that the band didn’t seem to know where to take it, the random, ragged element welcome in an age when musicians no longer know how to surprise each other in front of an audience.
A conclusive “My Generation”, where Townshend demolished a guitar, proved that these prosperous stars haven’t forgotten how they used to feel. The trio may be in their fifties, but they didn’t sound like it.

Daltrey, dapper as ever, is in fine voice and Entwistle looks old and grumpy, as opposed to young and grumpy Townshend hides his baldness under a skull cap. But, by the first instrumental break of the opener, “I Can’t Explain”, he was wind-milling frantically and Daltrey was swinging the mike through the air.
Sterling support came from John Bundrick, an organist and long-time collaborator, while the rejuvenating effect of a young drummer – Zak Starkey, Ringo’s son – can’t be underestimated But the real star is Townshend. Their brilliant, art-school yobbishness – caught forever in the definitive “rockumentary” The Kids Are Alright, all smouldering glances, self-analysis and smashing equipment – still serves as a template for parent-unfriendly musicians.
The chance to see survivors Daltrey, Entwistle and Townshend is irresistible to many – tickets were being touted at £200. Pinball never did displace football as the national sport, no one knows what possessed Entwistle to sport a luminous skeleton suit at the Isle of Wight Festival, and you don’t hear too many “rock operas” these days But plenty has stood the test of time. Kids of 16 walking round with machine guns in violin cases.” So Roger Daltrey described his manor in 1967, when the nation associated the west London suburb with Steptoe and Son. The Who always managed self-mythology better than their rivals.

As well as a hard-earned reputation as the world’s best live act (and loudest – Pete Townshend and John Entwistle are said to be as deaf as retired miners) they always had more ideas than their peers Though they weren’t always good ones.

The words sounded comfortable for singing, the freshness of their music suggesting the spirit of renewal harboured in the fragment of text from the legend of St Christopher, and the sense of expectancy of our present times.. “It was a rough area that – Shepherd’s Bush. Kids of 16 walking round with machine guns in violin cases.” So Roger Daltrey described his manor in 1967, when the nation associated the west London suburb with Steptoe and Son. The Who always managed self-mythology better than their rivals

“It was a rough area that – Shepherd’s Bush. While Tavener’s work avoids the drama of key-changes, which is part of its effect, Dove feels free to rove, and makes of his journey a tale to remember.
Though characteristically simple, his tonal manoeuvres in the closing pages were perfectly timed to resolve the tension between opposing tuneful strains – a serene but buoyant tenor melody and a rocking cradle song.

In “Love bade me Welcome”, he attempted to match the complex mysticism of George Herbert. Sounding at times more like the modality of Vaughan Williams than of Byzantium, the composer’s arrangement of parallel chords also implied a musical archetype in the forms of Anglican chant.
Receiving its second performance, “I am the Day” by Spitalfield’s future artistic director Jonathan Dove used similar techniques to different ends. Interestingly, Blake was also the key in Tavener’s “The Lamb”. In Judith Weir’s “My Guardian Angel”, the audience was confined to a threefold plainsong Alleluia repeated five times.
Against it, however, the City Chamber Choir, with Jones conducting, set dancing melodic patterns that echoed the composer’s favourite medieval intonations, though the words chosen were from Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience.
The choice of Peter Warlock’s “Bethlehem Down”, magically sung like a hushed chorale, added to the desired effect, while Peter Skellern’s “So said the Angel”, and the “Gloucestershire Wassail” added a boisterous touch.
But perhaps the most interesting was in the response of different generations of living British composers to the poetry still latent in our native choral tradition. It might prove a comforting paradox for anyone dismayed by “God rest ye merry gentlemen” that what, with so many cultural alternatives now thriving in our midst, reports of that most English of institutions, the carol concert, sound like “news from a far country”. It might prove a comforting paradox for anyone dismayed by “God rest ye merry gentlemen” that what, with so many cultural alternatives now thriving in our midst, reports of that most English of institutions, the carol concert, sound like “news from a far country”.

But not at the Spitalfields Winter Festival where they’ve turned it to good account, unmarred by excessive jollity. True, there was community singing on Wednesday evening at Christ Church.