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

I think I'm going to retire the Dropping Like Flies thread. I've never been happy with that title, it just kind of came about when several famous names all died within a short period. This will be the place now where I keep a record of the deceasements that have some degree of significance for me (so the subject is doubly apt), starting off with...

Frank Thornton
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21828965

I watched Are You Being Served when it was originally broadcast, I won't deny it. I was of an age at the time to have my young head turned by Miss Brahms, to get a good laugh out of the jokes about Mrs Slocum's pussy and to know where the humour came from in Mr Humphries' character, and having had a Saturday job in a department store that wasn't too far removed from Grace Brothers I could understand the situation in the situation comedy pretty well, but when I came to the US and found out how big a hit it was here I was very surprised. I suppose I can see how it could appeal - it was very British, very English even, with a certain quaint charm.

Let's not forget though that he did other things besides Are You Being Served (and Last of the Summer Wine), like being in five episodes of Steptoe and Son between 1962 and 1973 playing a different character each time, appearing in one of Hancock's most well known episodes (The Blood Donor), being a regular on Michael Bentine's 'It's a Square World', working with Spike Milligan on 'The World of Beachcomber', and besides having an IMDb entry as long as your arm he worked with Spike Milligan again, playing The BBC in 'The Bed Sitting Room' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AVBEwTIfDM

Bob save Mrs Ethel Shroake.

The Manor House pub
http://londoneer.org/2013/03/manor-house-tube-station-anniversary-open-day-london.html#

Now it's a bloody Costcutter http://map.google.co.uk/?ll=51.570802,-0.095787&spn=0.002857,0.008256&t=m&z=18&layer=c&cbll=51.570758,-0.095912&panoid=AfX-xXxDcHcMATts8SwXBg&cbp=12,21.51,,0,-2.85 I've been away from London too long.

They don't build pubs like that any more It's a beautiful building, or at least it was when it had the pub facade on it. Mind you, those floors above would make some gorgeous (and very expensive) flats, especially the ones over looking Finsbury Park (which, as you all know, spelt backwards is Krapy Rubsnif ), as long as there's plenty of soundproofing on the windows because that's one hell of a busy road junction. And you've got a tube station directly outside your front door too. Very convenient

Uncle Monty
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21973505

The first thing I remember seeing him in was one of my favourite episodes of Minder where he played the brother of a rock star and got to push a piano into a swimming pool in one scene But more recently I've seen him an the first of a forgotten series called Village Hall from 1974, four years earlier than the Minder episode, and only the second production of his career according to the IMDb, after a Crown Court (it was also the second job for a very young Bernard Hill). He was actually thin then!

That episode was written Jack Rosenthal who was already well into his own career as a writer by then with The Lovers, The Dustbinmen and several episodes of Corrie already under his belt.

I must admit to having been a fan of Pie in the Sky, and it was nothing to do with Samantha Janus, oh no no no

It's got to be a night in with the Withnail and I DVD tonight, along with finest beers available to humanity, or the closest I have to them anyway.

Milo O'Shea
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22011629

Probably known mostly for being Durand Durand in Barbarella, but he was also in a forgotten sitcom called Me Mammy, with Yootha Joyce, which I have a few vague memories of. I think he played a man living at home with his mother, who was played by Anna Manahan and who I know almost nothing about other than she died only a few years ago, and naturally his girlfriend, Yootha, was always trying to get him to be amorous, while his religious Irish mother was trying to stop that sort of thing. Common fodder for the average 60s/70s sitcom.

oh I remember Me Mammy. But I can't have seen it that often as we didn't have a TV much in the 60s and early 70s.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who remembers Me Mammy How about Meet the Wife?

Oh, and don't you think the orgasm that Jane Fonda faked in the excessive machine was far more sensuous and tantalising than the one Meg Ryan pulled off in the diner?

Teenage me watched that Barbarella scene many, many times.

Same here, and not just teenager Gosho

Of course, most of my biker buddies think she's the devil incarnate in her traitorous 'Murican hatin' ways, but I bet they also watched that scene many times.

I don't remember Meet The Wife though. Me Mammy sticks because of Youtha Joyce mostly.

As for Barbarella. What a fantastic film! Although it did once give me a nightmare. I woke up, screaming, tangled up in my quilt, standing in my room stuck in a corner. I dreamt I was stuck inside a furry fridge. Or something.

Meet the Wife was, admittedly, a few years earlier than Me Mammy. Freddie Frinton and Thora Hird. It's one of those BBC programmes that suffered heavily at the hands of the BBC technicians and is now largely 'missing, believed wiped' It's a damn shame how many are like that. Most of the Patrick Troughton years on Dr Who, and about half of Till Death Us Do Part, all gone, as well as far too many episodes of Not Only, But Also.

oh Freddie Frinton. How I love him, admittedly only via Dinner For One.

Isn't it how that has such a following in Germany, and yet has never (to my knowledge) been shown in the UK?

we have a rather good edited entry explaining how that came about

So we do

Thatcher.

That is all I have to say about that.

Jonathan Winters

Whose death seems to have been ignored by a large section of the British news media. Admittedly he was never as big in the UK as in the US, but he was in enough films and television shows to be known. I think I may set aside three hours this afternoon to plough through that marathon entitled It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

One of my fondest childhood memories was watching It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on the Late Movie on a New Year's Eve at my great grandmother's house. She thought it was a "silly" movie but I loved it.

Several years later, Jonathan Winters had his own half hour show on cable. I never missed it.