Memory Flash: celebrities

When you were watching television as a kid did you ever notice a person or persons who seemed to be everywhere? I watched a lot of TV when I was young. I drank it all up at all times of the day. I would watch kid’s programmes very early on, mundane game shows and special interest programmes during the day and films that were definitely not for my age group late at night.

Those interest programs and gameshows though, they were something else. You’d be watching something like ‘Noel’s House Party’ and a particular someone would be there, and then they’d also be on ‘Blankety Blank’, and then you’d see them later on in the week on ‘Crosswits’. This person would always be there, no matter what you were watching on what channel. They still flash into my mind every now and then and the majority of them I have no idea why they’re famous. I thought it best to therefore look into the CVs of a select group so that we can all remember why

Lionel Blair

Lionel Blair was an actor, dance, choreographer, tap-dancer (I remember this about him the most, don’t ask me why) and television presenter. When he father died when he was thirteen, he became the breadwinner for the family and took to the stage to earn money. He briefly took on a career as an actor before deciding dancing was for him. His dance troupe appeared on a number of TV programmes in the 1960’s. He also appeared in the Beatles film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and was one of the team captains on the game show ‘Give us a Clue’ from 1979 until the early 1990s. Later on in his years, he earned up to £100,000 for a six-week run doing pantomimes. This is but a brief insight into what must have been a very illustrious career.

The Krankies

This was a husband and wife duo, Ian and Jannette respectively, where the latter dressed as a schoolboy called Wee Jimmy and the former was their umm paternal figure. Unusual setup aside, they began their comedy career performing on the circuit during the 1970s and were given a big break with a spot on the Royal Variety Performance. They released a series of pop singles and an album, they had roles on several television shows including Crackerjack (?) and the Joke Machine (??). In 2003, Wee Jimmy Krankie was voted ‘the most Scottish person in the world’ by readers of the Glasgow Herald. The most interesting aspect of all of this me looking at Wikipedia is that in 2009 they were invited onto the Paul O’Grady show for the pantomime special of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in which Janette played a hooker and Ian played a rampant camel. Yes, you read that right. I’m sure that’s not the strangest part of their careers but hey ho.

Gary Wilmot (who?)

Wor Gazza needs no introduction. Already adept at singing and performing, his big break came in 1978 when he featured as part of a comedy double act with Judy McPhee (?) on ‘New Faces’. This then led to numerous appearances on ‘Copy Cats’, ‘Knees Ups, Cue Gary’ (??) and ‘The Keith Harris Show’ (???). In addition to co-presenting the kid’s quiz show ‘So You Want To Be Top’ (I’ve never heard of any of these things), he hosted something called ‘Showstoppers’ where wor Gaz would sing songs from musicals with special guests, although the main point of the show was for celebrities to learn and perform a song in ten days. Nobody cared about that mind. Gary was so popular that his original sixty dates taking the performance on tour had to be increased to one hundred and sixty due to phenomenal demand.

We all know his marvellous music career including such classic albums as Double Standards, The Album and, of course, Love Situation.

Gaz has dabbled in theatre too playing numerous roles in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, ‘The Pirates of Penzance’, ‘Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang’ and ‘The Wizard of Oz’. I personally remember him being the guy man in ‘Chicago’ when it was showing in Leeds around maybe 2010. Not because I actually went to see it but because I saw the poster in Leeds train station and took a photo of it (and I still have it somewhere).

I also saw him recently on Richard Osman’s ‘House of Games’ which was only showing last week however I can’t remember if it was a repeat or not.

There you have it. A comprehensive insight into the world of people who were around when we were growing up. It’s not too much of a understatement to say that there’s a lot going on here (especially for Lionel Blair, who knew?) and I would thoroughly encourage everyone to go do their own research.

Also, what happened to Rowland Rivron?

Spoons

I’ve developed a new hobby… carving spoons. Its really therapeutic. I got the idea as I was pondering something different we could teach the scouts on camp, and I happened across the idea of spoon carving.

I did what most people do these days and looked on amazon, where I discovered that hook knives (that you need to carve out the ‘bowl’) are too expensive to buy 15 of them for a camp. So then I looked at eBay, and discovered that you cant buy knives on ebay. So then I looked at AliExpress, the cheaper, dodgier, Chineseier version of Amazon and bought a load of them for £2.50 each! Woo.

Anyway I had to get a bit of practice in before I taught a load of kids how to do it, so after too many hours on YouTube these are the result, my spoons.

From left to right…

First attempt, using a bit of old pine bed slat
A walnut spoon, much better.
A (bed slat pine) Welsh love spoon, an additional (late) valentines present to Sarah.
My favourite spoon so far, I’ve no idea what the wood was but it finished up lovely.
Roughed out spoon from this weekend’s camping, made from freshly cut silver birch (tree had blown over in a storm) needs to dry out before I can finish it nicely.
The tools. (Not the cheap AliExpress ones though. Once I made the first spoon and enjoyed it I bought myself some nice MoraKniv ones)

So there you are. Spoons.

ABOFB 36: Nip to the loo

Welcome to back to a breath of fresh beans, this week we’re just going to nip to the loo, don’t worry, not literally (we did that before we started recording).

Suggestions in this pod are:

Weird
Posh
Nosy
Espionagey

Future prospects

When I was a kid, I was surrounded by computers. My dad and brother were obsessed with them, so much so that the latter’s attic bedroom had about a third of it taken up with a desk where two or three computers would permanently sit. We had the good ole BBC, the Archimedes, and sometimes on special occasions the ZX Spectrum would make an appearance.

All I wanted to do was play games. I would make my brother load up something on the BBC and I would play for five minutes until my character inevitably died, then insist on another game. I was never interested in anything to do with programming. I do remember seeing screens of random numbers and wondering what it all meant. Little baby Ian clearly was more concerned with Frogger crossing the road.

I did, however, teach myself to type. Not proper touch typing, I learned to wing it and give myself enough to get by. It is one of the things I’m glad I did practise so as not to be one of those people who must type each letter individually and it takes them 800 years to write a single email. I gave up on the instrument from primary school music class (might have been a French horn, memory is fuzzy) but not typing.

On occasion I see something that makes me want to take a step further, to better myself in the unsure landscape that is the 21st century. Could I do better? Of course I could, I could be like Kev with all his wireless abbababs, throwing them at fictional servers or whatever it is he does all day. If I could really get into something IT-based then it would need to be something important. It would need to be something that would help to make the world a better place. It would have to be what everyone needs and not enough people have.

Then I saw it. I saw it and I had to have it. A new day is dawning.

Why would you buy this?

We all know that I have a turbulent past (turbulent, I say!) with spending my disposable income. Kev has gotten so mad in the past based on my “pointless purchases” that he literally cannot even sometimes. It’s all heartbreaking stuff.

As we wandered around the slightly freezing Lake District in mid-November, me forgetting a proper coat and taking a photo where my nose looks as bright and pink as a carnation, I came across the following in a shop. It was hidden away towards the back along with some other shonky and partially damaged goods:

Now I’m one for a bargain but unless I have another set of draughts with only the black pieces, possibly acquired from a rival store with a similar problem, then surely this is going to remain unsold for some time.

Did they eat all the black pieces thinking they were licorice? Were they stolen by a deranged kleptomaniac with specific requirements? Did anyone get a video?

We will never know the full story and normally I would put good money on them still being there the next time we visit, however human beings are weird and I reckon someone will snap them up sharpish. Possibly as a joke present.

Ack, that should have been me!

Shoe on a bin

Hey, everyone look! It’s a shoe on a bin!

…

Sigh. Well, what did you expect? When you’re pulling four different posts each month, every month, you will occasionally draw a blank. I’ve been knocking these out relentlessly for years now and you’d think it would get easier, but it doesn’t. You go to your phone to find some inspiration (a photo you’ve taken, an article you’ve been reading etc.) and you come up with nothing. What’s the alternative though? Do “a Kev” and scrape a bean once every twelve months?

People want content. Websites need new content. What would our fans (?) do without new things to read and interact with? We have an obligation as content creators (?) to pull more and more things out of our respective backsides to fill empty space. Empty space is similar to dead air; nobody wants it. They also say the same things about my self-help books.

I did briefly consider other options for this photo. If it were necessary to develop it into something more constructive then I could have:

Pretended to be the owner of the shoe and sent out a request for the other to be returned
Written a ransom note as the kidnapper of the shoe
Created a fake dating profile for the shoe looking for a partner
Another thing (the best thing).

What kind of a person would I be? I need to try harder. I can do much better. For this month I will therefore only be posting shoe-based content. November is the month of shoes. It’s not as if you can think any less of me, right?

… right?

Canine category catalogue

They say that dogs look like their owners. But this is plainly not true, because our dog is ginger and does not have a dark coloured beard. Though she does have impressive eyebrows, so at least in that regard we match.

Anyway. Now that I go wandering with the dog on a regular basis I am learning the ways of the dog walkers. You see other people with dogs all the time and it’s not often the dogs and their owners look alike, but they do come in certain easily identified types.

Here are the categories I would put basically all dog owners into.

Retired lady with pampered pooch	These are the politest people and they will always stop and chat, sometimes even if you don’t want to, and will need to know what your dog is called and what breed she is. Their dog will be a beautifully manicured poodle crossbreed called Lucy who has a bow on her pink collar.
Young couple with overexcited livewire	They are very much in love but they aren’t ready for kids yet, so they got a Labrador cross which is bounding around the place like it’s made of springs. They tell you he’s only young and he’ll calm down when he grows up but he never will. One such couple I met a while back had a boisterous dachshund rather than a Labrador, and it was called Simon.
Middle aged lady with any number of greyhounds	The lady is wearing a gilet and a floral headscarf. She won’t stop to chat but she will say something formal and upper crust like “good morning to you!” as she strides past. She has at least two greyhounds or whippets and they too are wearing gilets.
Stressed dog walker with pack on the brink of rioting	She is about 30 and she does this part time. She is wearing a sleeveless puffer jacket and has several full poo bags hanging off her belt. She has five dogs of wildly different sizes and temperaments straining at five leads, and another three or four random hounds running around in the trees nearby. She cannot remember their names and if one of them runs away she has no hope of getting it back.
Skinhead bloke with terrifying attack dog	He is wearing very big steel toecap boots and at least one garment made of leather. His dog is a German Shepherd, or anything else that has the pointy ears of a purebred predator, and is called Zeus. He will not say hello back and he will watch silently and from a distance as his dog stalks other people’s dogs and also any small children nearby.
Large middle aged man with tiny ball of aggression	This man is perhaps 50 and is walking the improbably tiny lapdog that can only have been chosen by his wife. His wife does not walk the dog because it has not been trained and is uncontrollable. He will make a half-hearted apology as his nasty little pet snarls, growls and barks at your dog and pulls at its lead in an attempt to start a fight.
Tweedy country types with indeterminate number of border collies	A greying middle aged couple who are wearing tweed, flat caps and Barbour jackets. They might not be landed gentry but they definitely support fox hunting. They will say hello to you because they were bred to have manners but they would have nothing to say to someone of your social standing if you ever tried to make conversation. Their dogs are beautiful but have no interest in you and will walk past like you don’t exist.
Lonely old man with waddling mongrel	Do not engage the man in conversation. He is perfectly nice but you will be there for three quarters of an hour hearing his life story while his peculiar little dog with a stubby tail and a greying muzzle tries to have a wee on your leg.
Distracted mum with toddler, pushchair and feral spaniel	It is not clear why this family decided to get a dog at the same time as having several small children, and it is plainly making their life more difficult and chaotic than it needs to be, but it’s too late now because that’s what they’ve got. Dad is at work so mum is taking all of them for a walk. The dog is nice but not very well trained and is basically walking itself.
Handsome middle class professional with excellent ginger dog	I realised at the end of the list that I didn’t fit into any of the above categories, so it stands to reason that there must be one more that is suitable for someone like me.

Log burner controversy

The modern world is one of tolerance and equality, of partnerships and collaboration, and of diversity and open-mindedness. It is a world that many have come to loathe given how different it seems from the pre-twentieth century landscape we all grew up in. I personally am still in two minds about whether it’s gotten better or worse because if I was to side with the latter then I would be throwing myself into the great rubbish tip of cancellation. If I pine for the days of cheap petrol, lad culture and “cool Britannia” (bleugh!) from the 1990s then surely I’m a racist?

Well, no, I wouldn’t be because that’s bonkers but you have to be careful as to what you say and do, especially here on the internet. One false word and my reputation (?) would be in tatters. Consider me? Consider me not, thank you. All this cancellation culture comes from a lack of tolerance, but what I will not tolerate is blatant sexism of the highest order masquerading as a cosy forum for people to interact in.

Recently Vikki was, presumably, looking up things to do with log burners what with us getting one with the house and winter practically dossing around our respective doorsteps. She happened upon this and sent it to me:

A female only group? Chatting about log burners? One which I am unable to participate in because of my gender? Outrageous! Surely this is a hate crime. If you can’t advertise for gender-specific jobs then you shouldn’t be able to advertise FILTH such as this. I’m sure there are hundreds, nay, thousands of male-only groups where they’re all out there discussing the highs and lows of using a log burner, but I don’t want in on them. I want to see the other side of the coin; I want the female perspective and I can’t because I’m a man.

Am I wrong to want to be part of something that has nothing whatsoever to do with me?

Not at all. Let me in!

Pouring
Beans

Category: Charming Pastimes