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

I loved Please Sir and the Fenn Street Gang. I never got into anything else of his, I think apart from The Good Life which was just so totally hilarious.

Plus, in one ep, he had Tom offer his house to the bank. They would give him the money right now, at its current value, and then when he died the bank would get it. They turned him down but I think banks were offering that sort of deal 10 years ago.

Reverse mortgages are pretty popular here, or so it would seem from all the advertisements. From what I've heard on an NPR finance discussion, they're a very bad idea and should be considered only out of desperation.

Sue Townsend
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/11/sue-townsend-dies-aged-68-adrian-mole

One of my abiding memories of the 1980s is coming home from work on a Monday evening and watching Adrian Mole on television with the girlfriend while eating a dinner of baked potatoes and Heinz beans That series had so much going for it apart from the fantastic writing - a them tune by Ian Dury, plus Beryl Reid, Julie Walters, Steven Moore (well known in this parish) and Bill Fraser.

Sue Townsend, like JK Rowling, is a writer who was in desperate straits and suddenly had a huge hit on her hands. More power to their elbows

I think this is the first time I've included a fellow h2g2 Researcher in this or the previous thread...

Ormondroyd U95721
F27467?thread=8308626



I'm proud to be a portion of P.U.D.D.I.N.G.

Derek Cooper
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-27086526

Apart from The Food Programme and Tomorrow's World I think he also narrated several episodes of Horizon with that wonderful voice of his, a voice that was made for the job and was always a pleasure to listen to When I have a bit more time to spare I think I'm going to have to trawl (not troll, I wish people would get that right) through the Food Programme archive on the BBC website and see if there's anything there that he presented.

Bob Hoskins
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-27224995
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/30/bob-hoskins-dies

Oh that is a shame. Now I'm faced with a dilemma - Mona Lisa or Long Good Friday tonight?

One item from Bob Hoskins' CV that seems to have been overlooked in every report I've read - Big Jim and the Figaro Club. Although, to be fair, he did no more than a 30-second or so intro for each episode. This would have been around the time he was filming Long Good Friday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPUtbV0P6lU

Al Feldstein
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/business/media/soul-of-mad-magazine-al-feldstein-dies-at-88.html?_r=0

There have been a few publications close to Mad Magazine, a few television shows that you could say are in the same vein ("Humor in a jugular vein" it says on the front of The Mad Reader), but Mad is out there on its own in its creativity and originality. I think I saw my first copy when I was maybe ten or eleven years old, and although I didn't buy too many of the actual magazines, I loaded up on the paperbacks. I don't have too many of them any more.

My (1961) copy of Mad Reader (first published in 1954, two years before Feldstein joined) is falling to bits. I used to have maybe a dozen of them; now I only have three or four. The Mad Reader isn't like all the others - it's more like a series of short graphic novels, humorous ones of course - SuperDuperMan, Starchie, Flesh Garden, Dragged Net, Lone Stranger, you get the idea. The different sections didn't get the heading ' Dept'.

But in between the stories there are hints of what was to come after Al Feldstein stamped his mark on Mad, two years later. The seeds were there.

I used to love MAD - spy vs. spy was one of the influences (along with the Man from UNCLE and Jammes Bond) on me in joining the Int Corps.

My uncle was a subscriber and on my thrice yearly visits to the grandparents (he's only 5 years older than me and lived with them) I binge read them.

Nice

I have always been a big fan of Mad Magazine. I bought issues each month for probably 4 years as a kid. As an adult I bought a few issues. I'm not sure if I had matured, or if the new writers were just not as funny as the ones I grew up with in the 70's. I do know that the writers in the 50's and early 60's were quite special. I always looked forward to the quarterly Special Issues that included copies of early Mads glued in such a way as to insure destroying either the new one or the old one if you attempted to remove it, which they advertised you could easily do.

In 1998, I believe, they released the entire catalogue from issue 1 to the current issue on a 7 CD collection. I bought it right away. It also came with a Mad mouse pad and a Spy vs. Spy roll of toilet paper. I still have this. Luckily I never removed the plastic covering and it survived the recent leak under my sink.

I also have a hardbound collection of every issue (just two years) of Panic! Panic! was a similar, but inferior, magazine that EC released to compete with the many other Mad imitators. It seemed an odd strategy to further dilute the market with another poor knock-off.

HR Giger
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-27390345

Even after all these years, Alien still scares me. The original, that is; not so much the sequels. I still have to steel myself to watch that film.

Jack Brabham
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27465380

Goodness, there's a name that brings back plenty of boyhood memories. And when I hear the word 'Brabham' I can only hear it said in Murray Walker's voice.

Kevin Turvey, Richard Dangerous, Lord Flashheart, People's Poet and Richard Rich
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jun/09/rik-mayall-dies-comedian-actor

Some of us were talking about Bottom and The Young Ones in a conversation not far from here a few days ago. I'd already decided, as a result of that conversation, to watch Bottom again, and I certainly will now. Young Ones, good though it was, is one of those comedies I no longer feel a need to see again, like Fawlty Towers.

I much prefer Bottom to the Young Ones because it was essentially Rik and Ade doing their double act, and they worked so well together. I'm sure some people find the cartoon violence of Bottom and The Dangerous Brothers childish, and in some respects perhaps it is, but when anything is done as well as they did it, it's always worth watching.

And I've never seen New Statesman.

It makes this still from the opening credits of Bottom all the more poignant http://i.imgur.com/yK3qqzL.jpg

Oh... "that hit me right in the feels" as the kids on teh interwebs say these days.

Dang, just saw the post here about Ormy.

I can only say "Oh bollocks"
Which is what I'm sure he would say about the situation of he were able to

Sam Kelly
http://www.comedy.co.uk/news/story/000001518/sam_kelly_actor_allo_allo_porridge_barbara_dead_70/

While he'll probably be remembered most for 'Allo 'Allo, I'll always remember him as Bunny Warren in Porridge (he's on the left for those unfamiliar with British sitcoms).
http://imgur.com/5VqEwAZ

He also played Carter Brandon in Uncle Mort's South Country and Uncle Mort's Celtic Fringe, written by Peter Tinniswood, on Radio 4.

And by the way, IMDb, it's 'Porridge (aka Doing Time)', not 'Doing Time (original title Porridge)'