Having now seen the oncology bloke I can report that he doesn't recommend that I have the chemotherapy after all! At my age, and with my good recovery from surgery and the surgeon being confident that he 'got it all', the very small benefit of the chemo is outweighed by the possibly dire effects it would have on me - that's a weight off what I laughingly refer to as 'my mind'...

22nd May, 2007

Back in the days when I didn't know I was ill, I answered a request for people who remembered the Billy Graham "crusades" of the 1940s and/or 50s. The upshot was that a pleasant young woman came to my home, and recorded some of my waffle (interspersed with coughing fits) for a radio programme.

I have no idea how much or how little of what I said (whatever it was!) remains in the programme, but she has told me that it is to be heard on BBC Radio 4 on 25th May at 11:00. So I suppose I had better listen... the title is I Got Up Out Of My Seat. My side, that of the present day non-believer, is also represented by poet Wendy Cope, I understand -- fast company indeed!

I had indeed attended meetings at the Harringay Arena, and for a couple of years been a believer, allying myself to a local Congregational Church. Eventually common sense prevailed and I returned to my then agnostic frame of mind.

There is, as you will probably have noticed, a great deal of argy-bargy going on at the moment, between those who resent the stifling effects of superstition, and those who believe in a caring supernatural being who listens to prayer, and is willing to subvert natural laws in order to answer some of those prayers. The latter mount ferocious attacks on the books of Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion, Sam Harris Letter To A Christian Nation et al - or attempt to despite the fact that they never answer any of the arguments advanced, and merely sling poop at the writers. Most of the reviewers don't seem to have read the books in question, and make unsubstantiated claims as to what has been said.

Put simply, my attitude to any claim of a supernatural order is summed up in the phrase 'Pull the other one... it's got bells on it'. If you are going to make claims on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, you might at least refrain from the plain doolally, and come up with something plausible. Still, I have no quarrel with those who want to believe, so long as they don't attempt to impose their belief on everybody else, which is, unfortunately, the way with followers of at least two of the Abrahamic religions. And no, I do not consider 'faith' to be a virtue. It's just another way of saying 'You can't confuse me with facts'.

18th May, 2007

My next birthday will be my Seventieth! Or so I am led to believe... Not that I necessarily do believe it. However, the ladies and gentlemen at the DVLA have sent a form, for me to use when renewing my Driving Licence.

At seventy years of age, for those who don't know, we Brits have to renew our licences, initially for a period of three years, declaring any missing faculties that might render us a danger to the general public when behind the wheel. Since my current licence was issued, the format has changed,and new licences have pictures on...

What I want to know is how they ensure that the applicant looks terrible in any shot used in an application. Mine was actually taken by a human being and not one of those automatic machines, and it still looks like a police mug-shot of some old git arrested for stealing knickers from washing lines. And this was taken within weeks of the picture at the bottom of this [home] page, which looks vaguely human at least. Doesn't it?

As for my recent medical adventures - I'm doing OK, although not delighted to learn that these days one is expected to undergo some chemo-therapy, in order to mop up any odd nasty cells that may be lurking... More of that anon.

4th May, 2007

Last night I slept (up to a point) in my own bed, for the first time in over a week! My GP upped the dose of a 'water pill' that I take: the original dose had been halved when I was in hospital. That seems to be shifting the fluid, even if it does make you take a copious leak every hour... And I discovered I could lie on my side, which I hadn't been able to do before. Yes!

Said GP opines 'You've been through a lot, but you look well', which is heartening. Next hurdle - I see the surgeon next week, presumably for a review. He'll want a new X-ray to start with.

Something I wish I had been warned about - in the week following the operation, with all kinds of substances taking up residence in my blood-stream, I twice woke during the night with a touch of temporary insanity. I was convinced that I was no longer in the real hospital, but had been abducted, and was in a cunning replica! I refused to believe that the nurse (a charming girl from Co. Meath) was who she said she was, and tried to trick her into revealing her true identity..! Apparently this is quite common, but it was certainly a frightening experience. Be warned if and when it's your turn...

21st April, 2007

Week II of my convalescence has been a bit of a let-down... I suppose my resistance must be low, and thus I acquired a runny nose, some sneezing and the worst congestion in the old tubes that I've ever experienced. Most nights I have spent dozing fitfully in my armchair, waking at intervals to cough and swear and expectorate. The bed is hopeless -- in any position the congestion settles right where it makes you feel that you'll probably give up breathing altogether quite soon - yippee, can't wait.

I see my GP this afternoon - I certainly hope he can sort it out.

13th April, 2007

An auspicious event - a milestone has been reached! Now, you know that place on your back that you can't reach to scratch? That's the one... well guess where my final sticking plaster was. Correct - it was a large, transparent membrane of a thing that had been affixed to cover the hole from which the epidural spout had been removed a week ago.

I don't know where the NHS gets some of the stuff it uses, but I reckon this had SuperGloo in its list of ingredients. I have been trying for days to remove it. While still in my bath today, I got it started, having contrived to raise a corner with the index and second fingers of my left hand... you begin to realize how difficult life would be had we not, in the course of evolution, acquired an opposable thumb. Once out of the tub, and monitoring progress in the mirror, I managed to get a metal comb between Old Sticky and my back, and eventually off it came. Success! And relief...

What a tribute to British manufacturing! Assuming that's what it was...

7th April, 2007

I seem to be setting new standards for 'resting' - having partaken of a light breakfast I sat with the intention of making a start on a crossword puzzle - and went straight off to sleep for twenty minutes!

A post-prandial ziz after lunch can be called a siesta - but after breakfast? I'd only been up a couple of hours!

5rd April, 2007

Who'ld a thunk it, eh? A mere week after having my innards delved into, and, incidentally, having part of my left lung removed, I am back at the ol' homestead, my humble, dusty, cob-webbed eyrie, and putting the day-to-day routine back in place. Slowly, of course...

Yesterday, I rather pressed my case to the surgeon that a night's sleep in my own bed would be a good start to my recovery, so why not let me go home NOW!?? Invoking one of those mystic medical mantras he intoned 'Have you been on the stairs?' (Not, as I at first thought, an accusation). It seems that one of the last things they like the physio to establish is the ability to use a staircase. When he had gone, I nipped out and had a practice go at it - no problem there! Then someone took me to get another X-ray, involving the use of a staircase. Passing through the 'Eric Morecamb Cardiology Unit' I glanced at one of the magazines thoughtfully provided for those waiting to be seen -- it was dated March 1981! Down there I met the surgeon again... 'See?', I quipped, doing a bit of a time-step. The physio still had to see this miracle for herself, of course, but I was definitely on my way out of there, clutching a sackful of medication - I've had to create a spreadsheet to manage this stack of stuff.

More of this riveting narrative when I've got me breath back...

3rd April, 2007

My excuse for the long gap since my last post here, is that I have had other things on my mind. Not to put too fine a point on it, I have been undergoing scans and tests at the caring hands of certain medics, to assess my suitability (or rather, likelihood of survival) for surgery.

I was diagnosed with lung cancer. Oh! Consternation! A bit of a bummer, since I last smoked thirty-one years ago, but there the blighter is, and I need to get rid of it. CT scans, PET scans, a couple of rides on a 64-slice scanner -- I've come home radioactive twice! Anyway, as of this weekend I shall be in the capable hands of the good folks at a hospital in North London, to have it, and a bit of the lung it rode in on, removed. I hope to be back at the ol' keyboard here about a week later. Doubtless I shall be feeling sorry for myself, but the surgeon has said they won't send me home an invalid - so long as they don't send me home in a box I'll be content!

My thanks to the many friends I have around the world for all the emails, telephone calls, cards and general support - I have been genuinely surprised at the warmth they have all shown me. I didn't know I was such a great bloke! My special thanks to Guy, who has selflessly driven me to and from various hospitals when I could not drive myself.

23rd March, 2007

Although I'm not an avid fan of 'YouTube', I did a search there for George Carl, mentioned below, and discovered this seven-minute routine, from a Johnny Carson TV show.

George Carl spends the entire time achieving precisely nothing, as he becomes entangled with the microphone stand, his own clothing, his hat... when he finally does get around to playing the harmonica it disintegrates. It's beautiful! Be prepared, if you are anything like me, to laugh aloud and weep at the same time.

23rd February, 2007

OK, so they pulled that one - Johnny Carson's estate have the copyright, I suppose. Here's another clip, from a Jerry Lewis Telethon. Not as well lit, but you'll get the idea... Part One

An interesting development in the case of 'Pastor' Ted Haggard, whom you may remember fell from his pulpit last year over his use of crystal meth, and his liaison with a homosexual prostitute.

It has been announced that he has now undergone three whole weeks of 'therapy', and as a result is now completely straight!

Yeah... right... as though it were a virus or something...

12th February, 2007

Just a heads-up to remind all and (who else?) sundry, that 12th February is Darwin Day.

On 12th February, 1809 Charles Robert Darwin was born, and on 12th February in 1857 - 150 years ago - his famous book, On The Origin Of Species was published. On that momentous work rests our knowledge of who we are and how we came about, so I think it important to at least remember him. Don't you?

11th February, 2007

Lying in me truckle bed last night, idly practising the trombone, and wondering what the hell had happened to January, I thought of some of the entertainment happenings I had come upon by chance. Indeed, when I thought of George Carl's appearance in the Royal Variety Performance, I found I was lying there in bed giggling, which is not dignified in one so well stricken in years.

(Back) in the early Sixties which was really an extension of the Fifties, I was in Dublin on a tour with Jet Harris and Tony Meehan. A free afternoon looming, I took myself off to the pictures - there was a Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour 'Road' film on, so I dived into the Theatre Royal, arriving about halfway through the fillum (local touch, there - nice). As the end titles came up, I settled down for the Newsreel and second feature - and then the footlights (they still had them in those days) blazed, the act-drop rose and there was a fully produced Review show, starring Maureen Potter. (The show was entitled Potterin' Around as I recall.) No, I hadn't heard of her either - then. But I learned that she was one of the biggest names in Irish show business, and what's more I could see why. Despite the fact that at least 70% of the material was so locally focussed that it sailed over my Anglo Saxon head, I found her irresistibly comical. Marvellous value, that was. I found out later that the Theatre Royal was famous for ciné-variety, something which had vanished from the UK decades earlier. I had just struck lucky - serendipity they call it.

Another memory is of, this time, Northern Ireland - Belfast to be precise, And why not? I went to a matinée, and saw a young chap named Ken Dodd, and can confidently say that is the only time that I have ever rolled in the aisle - down there on the vile gum-encrusted carpet, among the dog-ends and tram-tickets, that I can still see in the mind's eye today. It was The Road To Mandalay that did it... Doddy clad in the sort of shorts that are now deemed fashionable, but then were considered hilarious, hung about with impedimenta, including a prop kitchen sink, and a spare leg!

Finally (for now) there was the Fol-de-Rols, at Babbacombe... I practically required mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after Denny Willis had performed his Quorn Quartet routine - there was a version of it on YouTube recently if you want to run it - in which he is a last-minute replacement for an absent member of a vocal quartet, clad in huntin' pink jackets to regale us with a jolly huntin' song, The Fox Has Left Its Lair... with actions. Unfortunately, Denny never gets the actions synchronized with the others; as he gets up from the stage he will inevitably walk into yet another outflung arm, and be hurled to the deck once more. The other members of the group never let on that anything is wrong at all... it has to be my all-time favourite set-piece, and, as with the above mentioned George Carl, I giggle every time I think of it.

9th February, 2007

From eWEEK labs' list of the nine top software products in 2006 comes this quote, on Opera 9:

...when it comes to strength of features, quality of interface and pace of innovation, Opera is the giant of the Web browser world. When we tested Opera 9 this year, we called it one of the best Web browsing tools that we had used in a long time and the subsequent releases of Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7 did nothing to change that opinion. - Jim Rapoza

30th December, 2006

Reading of the death of Mick Mulligan, erstwhile trumpet-playing leader of the New Magnolia Jazzband, I was reminded of sitting in with him at the old Wood Green Jazz Club. The last time I did that was just before I joined the RAF, who sent me for Basic Training to Padgate ("Dartmoor with blanco"). A week after that night at Wood Green, the Mulligan Band turned up at Padgate, and I presented myself, clad in ill-fitting battledress, to say 'hello' and generally socialize. As it happened, Ian Christie, the band's clarinet player at that time, was having a struggle with a duff reed, so he was quite happy to slope off to the bar and leave me to play most of the evening.

Mick Mulligan's exploits as a legendary raver have been well recorded in George Melly's autobiographical books about the time, and they are worth seeking out. Mick probably lived longer than most people would have expected him to... he was a true avatar of the British Traditional Jazz spirit. RIP.

23rd December, 2006

Torchwood is intriguing, or at least I find it so. Spun off from the wonderfully re-vitalized Doctor Who series (yes -- it is an Anagram), it has grabbed me from the start. Like its predecessor, each episode is completely individual. We have had Welsh cannibals, we have seen a dead staff member re-animated and taking over the life of another member, a half-adapted cyberwoman being hidden away by yet another staff member (do you get the feeling the staff are at times a bit dodgy?) who is in love with the woman she once was... never a dull moment. This week's episode was written by a woman, and she was able to explore emotions in a way that there really hadn't been time for previously.

We see an aeroplane landing, and the Torchwood team are waiting for it. It's a period piece, a De Havilland Dragon Rapide -- a really pretty machine. For some reason it is referred to in all the programme notes as a '1950s passenger aircraft', despite the fact that is actually a 1930s design, and was active in WWII as the Dominie. Three people get out, believing themselves to be in 1953. Only this is 2006... All the conflicts in this episode are created by their attempt to understand this new world. For one, it ends in suicide; another heads for London to take up a sales job. And the pilot, a very tasty lady indeed, after some rumpy-pumpy with Burn Gorman flies off to see where and when she will land up next, leaving him forlorn on the tarmac. Great stuff. But why, or perhaps WHY, did she don goggles to fly an aircraft with a totally enclosed cockpit? There's always something...

In a Doctor Who episode set in 1942, a Vortexion tape recorder was prominent, despite the fact that modern tape didn't reach the UK until after the war, and the Vortexion certainly hadn't been designed at that time. Oh, and a view of Alexandra Palace, supposedly from Muswell Hill, was actually of the wrong side of the building -- the one that faces Wood Green... Oh well, it's nit-picking, I know. See a nit and pick it is my motto. I'm just grateful for something worth watching once in a while!

Finally, whatever you celebrate around the time of the Winter Solstice, have a good one, won't you?

21st December, 2006

Software upgrades - doncha love'em? I got around to downloading Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, and installed it, knowing that it is going to be pushed out to users of Windows XP SP2. I thought I'd get ahead of the game...

OK, installation not too much of a pain: the download is a whopping 14 Megabytes as against Opera's 3.9 - whatever do they put in all that space? In other words it is bloat-ware. It takes a while to carry out its updates and upgrades, and then you have to re-boot.

It is an improvement on MSIE 6, that we have battled with for so long, but they haven't bitten the bullet and written a new product, as the makers of Opera and Firefox both did. If you look in the Help>About page you'll find there is still a credit for the original Mosaic browser from the early 90s. So how did it work for me? Hmmm...

In order to bring this and other web-pages to your delighted gaze, I upload my edited files to Demon's server using Ipswitch WS_FTP Pro. That was the first casualty... I launched it, and saw two alert boxes displaying the word 'Never', and then the Product Banner. And it stuck there. Right in the middle of the screen on top of anything else being displayed. Nothing would shift it, short of yet another re-boot. Fortunately, Ipswitch have a user forum on their web site, and I discovered that someone had posted a work- around - I had to locate a library file in the Ipswitch program folder, psapi.dll, and rename it as psapi.dll.old - and then guess what? Yup, re-boot.

With that solved, I had a look at a site I created and maintain for a Literary Agent, Futerman, Rose and Associates. Oh dear. Where MSIE6, Opera and Firefox all showed a display of book covers, MSIE7 showed blank space. After a couple of hours fiddling I got the first two rows to show (without changing the display in the other browsers), but the bottom row showed me the top five pixels of each cover, and then blank space. Yesterday I stumbled on a fix (A div around the bottom row, with clear: set to both, and a height specified) and it was back to the original look.

The only reason I run MSIE is to test web pages, and it's just as well I upgraded, as I see more and more MSIE7 being used. But it would seem that in fixing some of the many rendering bugs in MSIE6 they have concocted a few new ones in MSIE7 - thank you, Mr Gates. For my own use I'll stick to Opera, thanks very much. Faster, and more standards compliant than anything else. I know my place...

20th November, 2006

A kind visitor to this page reminds me that it's time I "h'updated" it - and he's right...

Two unrelated events this weekend have upset the old equilibrium a bit. Firstly, if you watched the excellent Prof. Richard Dawkins's TV programmes collectively titled 'The Root Of All Evil?' earlier this year, you will have probably been repelled, as I was, by the Führer of the Nuremburg rally-style New Life Evangelical church, Ted Haggard. Aggressive and swivel-eyed, I found him not so much charismatic as frightening, arrogant and ignorant. After the interview was over, he suddenly went bananas, threatening to call the police to remove Dawkins and the crew from church property, and demanding the film they had shot.

Well, friends 'n' neighbors, that was the same 'Pastor' Ted Haggard who was outed by a male prostitute on US TV this week, and first resigned from his own church, and was then summarily dismissed from it. What bugs me is that I know I shouldn't feel happy about this, but I just can't help it. I keep smiling...

The other event is the sentencing of Saddam Hussein. I am, and have always been, opposed to what is cosily referred to as 'capital punishment', or as I prefer to think of it 'judicial murder'. But if ever someone, by their actions and attitudes sat up and begged to be topped, it's the ex-dictator of Iraq. So a small voice repeats in my mind 'he'll get what he deserves', and that makes me very uncomfortable.

6th November, 2006

What a start to the day! Yesterday my ADSL connection was upgraded (all part of the service!) from 2.2Mb/s to a nominal 8Mb/s -- and my line is giving me 7.6Mb/s, so I'm a happy chappy. This morning, there is a message from Demon, confirming the update, and saying that if I have a SpeedTouch modem and have an indicated speed over 4Mb/s, I should update my driver software. So I do.

Well, I finally got the software updated. Did it work? Did it buffalo... After my third call to tech support, and after much un-installing and re-booting (which is a lengthy process) we finally managed to get the original drivers re-installed, and now all is well. But that was a whole morning of frustration and general un-happiness. From now on, if it ain't broke, I ain't gonna fix it!

6th October, 2006

Now that was nice - while listening, as I always do, to Russell Davies's Sunday radio programme on Radio 2, I heard him announce that I was the winner of a competition! Oh, nothing very intellectually challenging - I happened to know the answer to 'What was Cole Porter's middle name?'

I've been e-mailing my answers to Russell's competition questions for years now - this time my reply got pulled out of the hat, or whatever they use in that office. Great! I wonder what the prize is? I'll let you know when it arrives....

Albert, by the way. Cole Albert Porter was his name. Bit of a let-down, really...

1st October, 2006

I recently watched part of a BBC2 programme that purported to be a history of Light Entertainment. It dealt with the evolution of comedy on UK radio and TV, though not with any great emphasis on accuracy.

To begin with, there was Bandwagon -- which was not a comedy programme per se, but featured the Jack Hylton Orchestra and singers, interspersed with magazine items and comedy. The comedy was in the capable hands of Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch, or 'Big' and 'Stinker'... let's not go into that. The revolutionary thing about the show as that it was scheduled at the same time, on the same day of the week, and that had not been done in the UK before. Askey and Murdoch were allowed to take over the scripting of what was being seen as a failed show, and from then on it became wildly popular. Sequences of old gags in Chestnut Corner, and of course, the flat on the roof of Broadcasting House, shared with Lewis the goat, the lady who did, Mrs Bagwash and Big's girlfriend, her daughter Nausea... Bandwagon launched catch-phrases galore: Murdoch's 'You silly little man', and the unison 'Proper 'oomdroom', Askey's 'Don't be filthy!'

The success of Bandwagon led to the BBC's desire for more of the same, and as a model, they looked to The Burns and Allen Show, popular on NBC in the USA. There, a straight man, George Burns, tried to cope with the ditziest of the ditzy, Gracie Allen (who said 'When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half'.) For the BBC programme the idea was switched so that the comic was a man, for which Tommy Handley was cast, and his feed was a Canadian actress, Celia Eddy. Handley was known to the producer, Francis Worsley, and suggested that as a writer they should involve Ted Kavanagh. The triumvirate of Worsley, Handley and Kavanagh worked together for the next ten years, to produce It's That Man Again, more popularly known as ITMA.

ITMA was an enormously successful morale-booster during the Hitler war. Of course, much of it was intensely topical - Kavanagh said he could look back on some scripts six weeks after having written them and not understand the topical references himself! There is a popular notion that ITMA isn't funny today, but I don't agree. The characters that revolved around Handley, Mrs Mopp, Colonel Chinstrap and Miss Hotchkiss (charwoman, inebriate ex-army officer and stern secretary) still resonate. Indeed, the good Colonel later appeared in The Goon Show, where he fitted in very well with Major Bloodnok!

Handley, a Liverpudlian, had the ability to read tongue-twisting material at breakneck speed without tripping up. ITMA is still to this day the fastest-paced British comedy show. He remained at the centre of the action, while other characters came and went around him, their arrivals signalled by the sound of the ITMA sound effects door. Mrs Mopp's raucous 'Can I do yer now, Sir?' for some reason caught the public imagination. Not that she was ITMA's first charwoman -- oh no, that was Maurice Denham's 'Lola Tickle' (sometimes referred to by Tom as 'Tess' during the ITMA stage tour). While the spy, 'Funf', stood for Hitler's Germany, Signor So-So was intended to take the flak for Mussolini. His accent was referred to as cod Italian during that recent BBC show, but in fact he was played by Dino Galvani, a genuine Italian actor - and played with such charm that the 'enemy' side of him never really emerged. He was given malapropisms and spoonerisms galore; 'Ah, Meester 'Andlebar, I am delightful to see you'.

I should never have started on this... I could go on! And I may do, but in a dedicated page. There are after all, ten years of history to cover, and I think it is important to remember the impact this show had on European history, in particular during the dark days of Nazi occupation. So more anon. TTFN...

6th September, 2006

LAST WEEK WAS NO DAFTER than the one before... I don't intend to make a habit of this, but here are a few of the odd news items you may have missed in the past week:

In China, a 25-year-old Government auditor, sent on an inspection tour, attended a succession of banquets laid on by a power company instead of doing any work. After the last banquet he died, reportedly having eaten and drunk himself to death.

In the German town of Götlingen, Police had reports of a van disrupting the morning rush hour traffic. They discovered a five-year old boy at the wheel... no harm was done, either to the van or the boy, I am happy to relate.

A Vietnamese robber escaped from jail twenty years ago, and adopted a very successful means of concealing himself... he joined the police force. On Tuesday they re-arrested him, although they haven't said how he was found out.

Finally, the faithful in India are ecstatic, because idols to Hindu gods are 'drinking milk' again... The fact that an old absorbent stone idol will absorb any liquid placed in contact is of no consequence, of course... it's got to be a miracle! Sure...

27th August, 2006

JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED the important stories that cropped up in the headlines in the past few days, I thought I'd list a few of them here:

NASA (remember them?) have apparently lost or mislaid the tape containing the historic Moon landing footage. One of the 20th Century's defining moments of glory... and they've lost it. Boy, have they lost it big time...

If you can discover where the Pillsbury Dough Boy of Rock and Roll, Elvis Aaron Presley, has been hiding all this time, there is a $3,000,000 reward available. I think the money is probably safe, don't you? There is a movie involved...

In Sri Lanka, a 'peace protest rally' dissolved into brawls between rival factions... of Buddhist monks. Ommmmm.....

Judge Forentino Floro lost his job in the Phillipines, over his insistance on consultation with his three invisible 'psychic dwarves' during court cases. I... no, no comment needed...

After the taco, bathroom wall, pedestrian underpass and cheese sandwich appearances of various religious icons (and of course the name of Allah in the scales of a fish) we have this week a Hollywood chocolate maker discovering a piece of waste chocolate that she insists looks like the 'Virgin Mary'. To me it looks more like the Maltese Falcon, but she is quite sure it's the VM (whose real name was probably 'Miriam', by the way.) Since there are no known likenesses of any of the miracle-workers, it's hard to know how she can tell who it is... but when did that ever inhibit the propensity for human beings to see what they want to see, rather than what there is? It's called pareidolia, n. 'The erroneous or fanciful perception of a pattern or meaning in something that is actually ambiguous or random.' Very flakey...

Apart from the above it's just been the usual murder and mayhem, with Christians, Muslims and Jews all delightedly claiming to be the victims of 'phobias', and everybody else climbing onto whatever bandwagons present themselves. Oh hell, here comes another week...

19th August, 2006

THE HOME-PAGE MENU was getting to be a little too crowded, so I have moved the greater part of it to its own page, headed 'Scripts and Transcripts'. I've been able to group some of the items in a more useful fashion (I hope) although a lot of one-offs appear under the heading 'Wines and Spirits...'. That expression comes from the idea of the performer whose name was so far down the bill that it was after the... you get the picture. Allow me to assert that this is not any kind of comment on the standing or talent of the performers represented - in the words of the old Music Hall song. They're all nobbly, nobbly, nobbly, And full weight!

They don't write 'em like that any more...

9th August, 2006

TOBY PHILPOTT IS A FRIEND I have yet to meet... my connections with his family go back a very long way, but mostly revolve around my friendship, initially in the 1960s, with his sister Julia, and with his late mother Sheila Moriarty, singer, actress and highly respected voice coach.

Toby's father, I learned only recently, was the puppet man who came to my primary school, in the 1940s! Toby carried on the tradition of puppeteering, among many, many other activities, and has worked on movies - as Jabba the Hutt for example - and with Jim Henson on The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. I discovered that he had included a link to this page, and I hasten to repay the compliment... this is the link to his blog, and to his informative site. I've added it to the menu, left, as well.

So many things Toby has written about are important to me too, from lack of belief in the weird and silly to the genius of WC Fields - and that's why I know that if we meet some time, we'll get along.

21st July, 2006

AT MY ADVANCED AGE it is, of course, inevitable that the obituary pages receive more than a cursory glance. I shall be sixty-bloody-nine shortly, by the way. How strange, to reach a number so imbued in the popular imagination with erotic possibilities, and realise that it no longer holds any such possibilities for you. Anyway...

Among the recently departed are two people whom I had met in years gone by. One was Don Lusher, master trombonist and gentleman, OBE for Services to Music, who led the Ted Heath Orchestra for many years, and died this week, aged 82.

Earlier, Kenneth Griffith's obituary had caught my eye. I had been introduced to him at a charity function, by a lady who had been his partner for a while, many years before. He shook my hand, and said, rather shyly I thought, "This young lady and I used to walk out together". What a lovely, old-fashioned and unexpectedly gentle expression to have used! In addition to his characterisations, usually sly, untrustworthy or just plain barmy, in a slew of British movies between 1941 and 1995, he made daring and fascinating documentaries. One of them was banned for decades, which is a fair barometer of its accuracy and importance... They pointed up, with a good deal of passion, the injustices of Britain's imperial past, and were never less than riveting.

His pal Peter O'Toole said that "there isn't a windmill he won't tilt at". In the usual run of things, an actor's view on political matters is of little or no interest (don't you wish they would learn that lesson?) but somehow it was different with Kenneth Griffith.

9th July, 2006

BACK IN MARCH 2004 I drew your attention to what I thought was a very funny publication: Astrology For Dummies. Funny, because I thought only dummies would give it any kind of credence. I admit that I have wondered since if it was a real, purchasable book - and I have since checked, and it is. So there.

Well, what do you know - the excellent James Randi parades another such work on his excellent site at the James Randi Educational Foundation, a "Complete Idiot's Guide" to Elves and Fairies!

We are promised:

• An illuminating introduction to the magical power of nature
• A fascinating look at the habits and habitats of elves and fairies
• Down to earth advice on connecting with the elf and fairy energy within you

Anybody trying that last with me is in for a disappointment... The author, one Sirona Knight (crazy name, crazy gal!), is described, on her web site (Google for it, if you must) beneath the statutory shadowy and dramatic picture :

She is a Third Degree Craftmaster of the Celtic Gwyddonic Druid Tradition, has a master's degree in Stress Management from California State University, and is a certified hypnotherapist.

Comment seems to me to be superfluous... cue Theramin player: Wooo-ooo-ooo-ooooo...

3rd June, 2006

BY POPULAR REQUEST (from three people who have since gone home) ... I have added Robb Wilton's Police Station sketch to the scripts and transcripts area.

25th June, 2006