h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I can get away with the 'no smiling' rule. I just naturally look like a miserable old git.

No you don't, I've met you

Mind you, alcohol *was* involved

Recumbentchap, I've got the Love album and it's a load of cack, I've got it in a pile to take to the Oxfam shop,just proves my point, just extracting more money and maxing up Sir George's income from the Beatles. I wish the Beatles had got signed up by Decca then we wouldn't have had years of the middle-class so and so droning on about 'the Boys', patronising snob, I notice you call them 'the Boys' too, are you related to him by any chance? If you rate the Ying Tong song and piffle like that I shouldn't be surprised that you like the Love album, every Beatle fan I know hates it.

OK, heat it is.

The Ying Tong Song is sheer exuberance, brilliantly engineered. So is Bluebottle Blues, I'm Walking Backwards For Christmas, Bloodnok's Rock 'n Roll Call... all of them. Zany, inventive, and brilliantly executed. Nobody else used sound effects to such effect until Douglas Adams, when he created the original radio Hitch Hiker's Guide (still the only successful format).

I called them 'the boys' with Ringo's book in mind, "Postcards from the boys".

I am unrelated to George Martin. My son played bass in the orchestra when he did his show in Dublin, hence the inside info about his deafness and Giles being more in charge.

You don't have to love the Love Album, but if it is a pile of cack, are the originals offensive to you also? I appreciate its brilliant observation--what goes with what--and the editing skill that makes it so seamless.

Come on, some real criticism please. You pretend that you have been force-fed years of middle-class droning. I'm sorry to hear it, if you really were imprisoned.

Honestly, the Goons are the most unoriginal unfunny overrated load of nonsense that has ever been, Spike Milligan is surely the worst 'comedian' that ever existed, couldn't get a laugh in a hyena cage. Harry Secombe was just plain too silly to laugh at, and Peter Sellers just too clever by half, did George Martin produce those records Sellers made with Sophia Loren? That daft Goodness Gracious Me? and that awful Bangers and Mash? the former would be regarded as racist these days and the second was a sneering put-down of working class cuisine. Typical Sellers, Mind you I wouldn't have minded sharing a microphone or anything else with Sophia. I've already got the originals of the Love tracks, that was my point, anyway I hope it makes a couple of quid for Oxfam. Any kid with a tape recorder could have made funnier tracks than the Goons, many did, including me, brilliantly engineered my bottom, Prince Charles is the Goons greatest fan isn't he? Takes a boring so and so to know one I suppose, My case rests!

Must add I quite like Michael Bentine, the only Goon with any real Comedic talent, oh and the fellow that played the harmonica, Max Gilvray was it? Should have gone into George Martin's stable, he would have had 6 number one albums with the Master to guide him!

Now, once you start knocking Spike Milligan I know we are of different life forms.

Spike had his moments of clarity too:

“Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee.
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?”

I'm not winding you up RCM, I never got him or the Goons, I've been a fan of radio comedy all my life, the highlight of my week is Round the Horne on 4extra, I bore people sick explaining that Hancock was much better on the radio than the telly, and Take it From Here, pure joy, but thanks for crossing swords, much needed. (currently I'm quite fond of Claire in the Community, I'm a retired Social Worker myself and it rings terrifyingly true!) Count Arthur Strong, they should have kept the noble Count on the radio, like Hancock, much funnier when you couldn't see him.

Ah we have much in common. Though living in Ireland, our constant radio station was The BBC Light Programme (possibly because we had an English housekeeper). I could take or leave The Archers, Life With The Lyons, Archie Andrews (yes folks, clever ventriloquism on the radio!), The Billy Cotton Band Show, and even Round the Horne, though I did enjoy Take It From Here (Oh Ron! Oh Eth!). Hancock was fascinating in his depressing way, nicely set off by Sid James, but I never did hear of Count Arthur Strong

But the two highlights of my pre-teen week were Journey Into Space and... The Goon Show.

I was lucky enough to meet Spike Milligan in 1989 during rehearsals for a play about his life. One of the warmest, wittiest, saddest and genuine people I've ever met. In one afternoon he reduced the cast and stage management to tears of laughter, joy and despair. His humour was very much of it's time but that's not to take away from the man's innate comic genius.

RCM, this is the link to the Wicki page on Count Arthur, there are still radio editions on the BBC iplayer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Arthur_Strong%27s_Radio_Show! I see that 95% of Junior Doctors have voted to go ahead with their strike action, fascinating, can't wait to see how this little tussle turns out. Bet you the government backs down, historically they always have to doctors, never to nurses mind you, but always to doctors.

Yes SWL "His humour was very much of it's time " I too was lucky enough to meet him three decades after you, at Cats protection fundraiser. (spike being a patron of many animal welfare charities) He was still a great comedian and a down to earth person to talk to, one of those people whom don't come along that often. With fewer opportunities nowadays for his like to flourish, most of his wanabies
on utube will be here and gone in a blink of an eye.

Count Arthur Strong was "First broadcast on 23 December 2005".

That explains it. My days of listening to radio comedy were in the fifties. Even HitchHikersGuideGalaxy I heard on recordings, not when broadcast.

Museum discovers the skull of Winnie the Pooh (no, really!)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34844669

Senior Tories accused of sexually abusing their young researchers and campaign assistants? Another muck raking mud slinging exercise by the Left-wing press no doubt, the Daily Telegraph will stop at nothing!

~ ~ SOMEDAY ~ ~
More Bots or Less People
More or Less
V V
Peace or Fear
? ?
http://www.livescience.com/53028-da-vinci-robot-japan.html?cmpid=NL_TND_weekly_2015-12-09

I'd like a robot personal trainer to help me exercise. It would provide motivation and encouragement, as well as regular progress information. Alternatively, a robot dog that needs to be taken for long walks.

~ ~

I'd just be happy with a new series of 'Robot Wars' on the telly…

<BB<

Robot Wars is one of my guilty pleasures. They've been re-running it on one of the obscure Freeview channels at 6pm.