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

Nonsense!
But sensational nonsense.

~jwf~

bows, blushing

I agree!

A cross between the Goon Show, Round the Horne (now if you have ever heard of that, I will be surprised) and Spike Milligan in the 'Q' series.

"Hello, my name's Julian and this is my friend, Sandy. Welcome to our shop, it's called Boner Seats...."

! I don't belieeeve it! How on earth do you know about all these things? I'm seriously impressed. How boner to vader your jolly old eek!

(Now this is rather before my time, but) how about 'Beyond our Ken'? and (possibly still going strong) 'I'm sorry I haven't a clue!'?

Next, you'll be telling me you have heard of ITMA? Again, well before my time, but nonetheless famous.

Like the

Yes, I've heard of It's That Man Again, but I'm having trouble finding any web references to it.
I found a site about Kenneth Horne and beyond and all that stuff.
I've been collecting, listening to, and reading stuff about British Comedy for decades. I accidently ran across a copy of the Goon Show Scripts in a library in Santa Cruz, Ca, which is funny because that is where Tom Lehrer teaches at the University.
I started picking up BBC audio tapes from a place called Half Price Books in Austin, Texas. They had a bunch of remaindered stuff from a place called The Mind's Eye in california. Among this stuff was 'Round The Horne', and 'Uncle Mort's North Country' and volumes of 'The Goon Show'.
I've never gotten into the 'Carry On' stuff.

I had a collection of the whole of the Goon Show records (vinyl), which I no longer have since I got divorced. I don't have any Round the Horne stuff, however I have a lot of it in my head, Rambling Sid Rumpo, Lady Constance and the wonderful narrator Douglas Moore - 'I, Douglas Moore, am playing the part of the castle. The wind is whistling round my ramparts. (Whoo, Whoo)', etc.

Gosh, that takes me back to when I was a child.

The Carry On stuff is largely more broad and bawdy than that. I have to say I have favourite episodes, for instance at the end of Carry On Cabby, when all the cabs work together to surround the villain, Carry on up the Kyhber, when the British are still eating in a civilised fashion whilst they are being shelled and the photo of the 'Devils in skirts' wearing underpants.

Uncle Mort's North Country - I've just remembered. We had a couple of books, which I not longer have.

ITMA, no I don't know any sites, but I do know the famous catchphrases, such as 'Can I do you now, sir?' and 'Don't forget the diver'. They were broadcast by the BBC, so a search through it should show results.

Very meager. i just looked. There was a 30 second audio clip with the
Mopp woman.

Beyond My Ken , that takes me back!

I remember listening to the BBC's 'My Word' every Sunday on the CBC and being constantly amazed and delighted at the wit and contorted word associations.The obvious intellectual joy of the show's participants as they outreached each other was infectious and inspirational.
The pun may be the lowest form of humour to sum, but my teenaged ambition was to not only actually understand 'My Word' when I grew up, but perhaps with gods help, to be half so funny, just once in my liff..

~j~

Onward and upward, you're at a 1/4 now.

unless you hope to do stand-up in heaven.
Ol' Elohim's a hard act to follow.

I've just come across the full text for the Rhubarb Tart song, which include the following:

I want another slice of rhubarb tart
I want another lovely slice
I’m not disparaging the blueberry pie,
But rhubarb tart is oh-so very nice.

The principles of modern philosophy
Was postulated by Descartes.
Discarding everything he wasn’t certain of
He said, I think, therefore I am a rhubarb tart.
Rene de who? Rene Descartes!
Rhubarb what? Rhubarb tart
For months he thought he was a rhubarb tart!

I think it was Tim Brooke-Taylor. Was he in Beyond our Ken before the Goons. What about Radio Prune? Can you remember?

I've just come across the full text for the Rhubarb Tart song, which include the following:

I want another slice of rhubarb tart
I want another lovely slice
I’m not disparaging the blueberry pie,
But rhubarb tart is oh-so very nice.

The principles of modern philosophy
Was postulated by Descartes.
Discarding everything he wasn’t certain of
He said, I think, therefore I am a rhubarb tart.
Rene de who? Rene Descartes!
Rhubarb what? Rhubarb tart
For months he thought he was a rhubarb tart!

I think it was Tim Brooke-Taylor. Was he in Beyond our Ken before the Goodies. What about Radio Prune? Can you remember?

Now that's a new one on me.
Now I'll be hearing it in my head for hours!
But it's better than hearing 'I like Traffic Lights' in my head for days.
Are those number artifacts what you were referring to with word and
guide? With the apostrophes?

I think the tune to the Rhubarb Tart song is a Souza one - I've been singing it ever since Sunday, when someone performed it at the Quaker Christmas party. I'd known it since university days, but never known *all* the words. I wrote them down on the back of an envelope, as one does.

The quote above shows just what I was talking about - 'wasn’t' is what 'wasn't' comes out as if you just paste without retyping the apostrophe. I've no idea why!

The $#$%^& problem is because of different word processing programs.
If you write something in Word for example and then paste to h2g2 certain parts of the Word program are not read correctly by whatever program h2g2 uses.
There are technical terms like 'parser' and stuff like that in the official explanation at the h2g2 Faq pages, but basically it'll happen every time you write in one program and it goes to another.
My experience has been that all the wonderful e-mails I type up with fancy typefaces and proper layouts and send to my friends get opened up in their Windows Outlook and they see only 10 point ariel wrapping whenever it feels like wrapping.
Typing,
Trying,
to get
free form poetry
to set up properly
is a right b***h
because
H2G2 forums will always
justify left, so you
can't centre a line.

One of the joys of a flat-rate, full-time-online cable connection is that you can spend the time writing in these dialog boxes to format and edit, and not have to cut and paste from a Word program and risk it being re-formatted.

~jwf~

I've got a flat-rate server and a dedicated phone line.
I use the ellipses to center.
And all the emails I get show up in 10 point cartoon bold.
Outlook is a little strange.
I've learned to work around it a little.
Word has this stupid thing where it keeps changing my font back to ariel every time I use the tab and then the sentence wraps around to the margin...I have to keep selecting and saving.
I try to play it safe with Word because I don't trust it not to mess up my tabs or margins.
If I want to get creative with my poetry, I go over to the paint program. It lets me do what I want and it has the same fonts as the Word. Then I just make it an attachment to the email. Then when they open it, it looks like I want it to.

tr, s.a.d.

I'm no wiser, but better informed!

What does the s.a.d. mean TR?

second assistant dogsbody
it's my title with the AGG/GAG.