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Explain your avatar

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Reading a couple of posts on here recently, I found myself peering curiously at a few of you folks’ avatars. You know, those little icon/picture/profile pic things that appear at the top of any comment you make.

Anyway, it set me wondering what some of them are, and if there are any obscure in-jokes I’m missing.

So here’s the chance to explain your avatar.

Mine: It’s actor Charles Martin Smith. In this case from the movie The Untouchables. No particular reason. A few years ago I made the decision that whenever I joined any kind of social media platform I would use Charles Martin Smith, as I quite like the guy. So if you ever see someone using Charles Martin Smith on any social media platform out there, there’s a good chance it’s me.

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  3. Pajp is a mis-spelling of a name (Pipe) that my wife took to calling me for no reason that I can now remember. Accordingly, my current avatar is a photograph that I took of the end of some scaffolding, i.e. a bit of pipe

    That picture replaced my earlier avatar, which was Magitte’s Treachery of Images, a painting of a pipe above the words “This Is Not a Pipe”. It amused me to be Pajp but to have an avatar that said that I was not a pipe.

    Little things please little minds, eh?

  4. I’ve used various over the years, which have one thing in common; they are all actors in films by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

    The current one is Roger Livesey as Dr. Frank Reeves, from ‘A Matter Of Life and Death’.

  5. Through my apprenticeship and early years in workshops (before I went to the Drawing Office, Planning Office, and Project Management) I was called Reg (derived from a slight mis-spelling of my surname to give Reggie Perrin).
    Avatar is Rigsby, because sartorially (and according to Mrs D, in attitude to) I am closer to Rigsby.
    I can do an impression of him to:

    “Oh, Miss Jones”

    (close your eyes, it’s like he’s in the room)

  6. Terry Collier – misanthropic hopeless Northern bastard (nuff sed)

    Preposterously deep American voice: Previously on Moose the Mooche avatars:

    An action figurine based on the Vincent Price character in Theatre of Blood when disguised as a hairdresser (I just think that the existence of such an object needs to be celebrated)

    Eddie from Frasier, as played by Moose (I know… priceless!) wearing antlers because it’s Christmas (seriously, what am I like!!!!)

    A cheeky woman from the cover of a 1991 Berlin guidebook who I was in love with for many years, but I’m definitely over it, oh yes

    Les Dawson as Cosmo Smallpiece (it’s like looking in an incredibly small mirror)

    Archie Rice (I’m laughing – you’re not necessarily)

    Ralph Filthy (“….the alleged horrifying nature of my client’s garden gates”)

    Moose the Mooche is Charlie Parker’s nickname for one of his dealers, immortalised in one of Bird’s finest tunes.

  10. 40+ years ago, I was very (very) closely associated with a chap who was awarded a flying scholarship by the R.A.F., after passing all of the aptitude tests at Biggin Hill. Sponsorship through university was assured…

    …However, on first solo at Bournemouth’s Hurn airport, the Cessna 152 (GBGVI) being flown unfortunately crashed and was eventually more-or-less written-off.

    Upon return to school that September, a new nickname was rather inevitable!

  12. Mine is the centrepiece of the fez from the centre of
    The Seal Of The Pan Dimensional Esoteric And Occult Gentleperson’s Society Of The Arcane And Ancient Heckmondwike Fez.
    I commissioned the piece from Mr Squeezer of this very parish..
    Why a fez? Why not.

    Here’s from the time I asked before.

    Profile Picture

  13. Mine is a boneshaker bicycle – yes folks, it really is that subtle. My nom de plume also occurred to me on the spur of the moment. I’m available all year for creative thinking seminars.

  14. Mine is a photo my wife took of me doing a star jump on an island off the coast of Olhao in Portugal. It was March 2014 and quite chilly. It’s a special photo to me because we reckon we conceived our first child during that short break, maybe even the day the photo was taken.

  23. Mine is a detail from Jacopo Tintoretto’s mannerist masterpiece “Esther Before Ahasuerus”. I chose it because it marks a moment in Tintoretto’s career when his central Italian sources – Michelangelo, Raphael and Jacopo Sansovino – give a controlled energy to his figures which conveys a power and drama that is unprecedented in Venetian painting.

  24. For no very good reason mine is Chesty Bond, a name that will be familiar to the Oz chapter of the Massive. He was/is a cartoon character used by Bonds, merchants of vests and undercrackers, as their symbol. Synonymous with Australian masculinity according to Wikipedia.

    • I remember watching Jimmy Rimmer many times from the Stratford End, he also played alongside my avatar Dennis ‘The King’ Law.

      Football Factoid: Jimmy holds the record for the most spread out trophy winner of the European Cup. He was an unused substitute in Manchester United’s 4-1 win over Benfica in 1968. Then he waited 14 years for his next winner’s medal after playing 9 minutes before being injured and replaced by Nigel Spink in Aston Villa’s 1-0 win over Bayern Munich in 1982.

  26. It’s an elephant from the military parade in Disney’s Jungle Book. He’s the bugler, who’s just had his trunk squeezed by the Major to shut him up.

    He looks a bit like me at the end of most days. Overweight, surprised and thwarted.

    It bears no relation to my username which is my nickname in the real civilian world.

  27. I got Sir John Tenniel, the Victorian illustrator, to come and draw me some time in the mid-nineteenth century. What is oft misunderstood is that I existed, along with my grinning capabilities, long before Charles Lutwidge Dodgson came along and immortalised me. I mind not, what with Charlie being a local lad, born in Daresbury, 15 miles down the road, though I wouldn’t have minded a cut of the image rights.
    As with all my tattoos, there is a cultural, a geographical and a musical reference, the latter being my appearance on the Famous Charisma Label, which graced so many of my earliest vinyl purchases.

  31. Paul McCartney, he was in a successful group in the 60s and has also had some solo success. It is a poster from a recent tour that I attended with my daughter in Montreal

  32. Test (to see what my avatar looks like!)

    Edit: I presume it’s a computer generated one for people like me who’ve never even thought of adding one. I feel obliged to make the effort now

  34. Maggie and Ray at Leo’s by Jaime Hernandez.
    From Love and Rockets.
    I have a signed print on the wall.
    Reminds me of my wife (and me) though it’s more the feel than the resemblance.

  37. Mine is from a website years and years ago that you could create a (heavily deformed) cartoon image of yourself. I’ve used it ever since (including as my official corporate avatar when I was working).

    Ike not saying how close the resemblance is (or not).

  38. Goldfinger and Odd-Job in front of a Rolls Royce on a golf course. It just sums me up!

    I chose it years ago for reasons I can’t remember. I don’t even like James Bond films. The most recent one I remember watching starred Roger Moore (Moonraker)

    However the sequence that picture comes from is a classic for anyone that plays golf.

    Bond talking to his caddy as they watch Goldfinger cheat by hitting a ball that wasn’t his…

    “That’s not his ball”
    “How do you know?”
    “I’m standing on his ball”

    May the better cheat win.

  41. I just really like the album.
    I had the riff of Down Payment Blues as my ring tone for a while, but it kept scaring the bejesus out of me when someone rang me when all was quiet.
    I now have Taste in Men by Placebo. Much less scary.

    The nickname itself is nothing to do with Mr Dylan, it comes from a long time chum of mine who one night at the ice hockey referred to me humourously as “ your royal Bobness” (Bob being what he’s called me forever). It just kind of stuck.

  43. Well, it’s a cat, innit? In black’n’white. A very catlike cat, by the look of it, tempted and tried, smart but not mean. I like how it rudely cuts into the whole, but revealing just enough. Imperfect is the new perfect.

  47. Gosh! I thought you’d never ask:
    I am GOLB a malevolent entity who is the embodiment of chaos and disorder. I inhabit an unknown dimension and serve as the final antagonist of Adventure Time.

  48. Well, the current one is a computer model of a cyclodextrin molecule – I did some formulation research on them about forty years ago, when I was young and still keen…
    Previously have used:
    The green man from Bedside Manners are Extra; cover of Still Life; cover of Soft Machine 7; cover of Gazeuse; big Van de Graaf machine – sparking; the wiring diagram from an Eggle New York guitar; plastic carrier bags from both Listen and Bloggs record shops circa 1975, Glasgow; NASA photo of Neptune…and probably others.

    Some were too small and didn’t work, some were just boring and I quickly got fed up with them.

    • The greatest guitar there is! I have 2 Thinlines & just think they are perfectly perfect.
      The first ever guitar that was truly mine was a red squier tele & I really regret ever getting rid of it. It had sentimental value & the nicest neck of any guitar i’ve ever played.

      The one in the middle is very nice, hat duly doffed

      • I’d love a proper decent Fender Tele (who wouldn’t?) but I’ve got a £116 Harley. Benton blackguard Tele which is hands down the finest electric I’ve ever played. I love it and see no reason to try another

      • Just spent a joyous Saturday morning playing Teles – 2 new thinlines Vs my Baja and early 90s Jerry Donahue signature and my mate with his new Jason Isbel Tele. The thinlines look beautiful and sound great. But…but….if you have one you still need a Tele. The thinlines don’t sound like a Tele for all that they sound great. In the shootout my JD had the most mojo which was a tremendous relief as I think it’s perfect.

  52. It’s a detail from Thomas Gainsborough’s painting Blue Boy, which as it happens has just gone on display at the National Gallery for five months, on loan from the US. I am looking forward to the royalties.

    Before that it was a detail from Pablo Picasso’s painting Blue Boy. I am nothing if not consistent.

  53. Mine is the Amazing Zal Cleminson, whose free centre pages poster from Sounds leered down at me with his Gibson SG from my bedroom wall when I was an impressionable teenager. All other poseurs may as well give up now.

  57. I have explained the story behind my avatar in (drunken, broken) French, when the Primevals toured there a few years ago and the support band wanted to know why I had a black and white cartoon on my t-shirt. It took ages, as I had to work the puns, too, to explain the backstory.

    This is Rank Badjin, the baddy from the great Bud Neill cartoons which have Lobey Dosser as the hero. Rank Badjin’s horse was called El Fideldo, and it all kind of ran together in my head. There are many great puns and joyful wordplay in there, and one of the tribes had a chief called Big Chief Toffee Teeth, which makes me smile to this day.

  59. A miniature recreation (currently placed in one of my bookshelves) of the “His Master’s Voice” logo, using a plastic pig whose stance reminded me of the dog of the original, and a pencil sharpener in the form of a funnel gramophone that I happened to have. Affectionately known by the name “His Farmer’s Voice”. Chosen because it was music related, and I didn’t have an image of a locust at hand.

  60. Mine is chief Waterboy Mike Scott wearing that sinister, unsettling multi-faced Venetian mask for a thundering live performance of ‘Mad As The Mist And Snow/The Second Coming’ in 2014. Nothing particularly pertinent to me, although if anyone accuses me of being two-faced, I can simultaneously abuse and disabuse them.

  61. Mine is proof of membership of the Bimbo Club, obvs.
    One of my dearest long-standing pals & I very nearly had a falling out decades ago when he spotted me wearing said badge & as he’d lost his, he briefly thought I’d swiped his.
    My bona fixes were established & he eventually sourced another online years later – the pic is the replacement he bought. And they all lived happily ever after.

  62. Some years ago @H.P._Saucecraft or was it Burt then, conducted a beauty parade of avatars. I explained how mine has form and function.
    It’s an African mask from the Congo region. I have a collection. I explained how it served as a face for the avatar with a connection to my enthusiasm for African music.
    HP , hard marker that he is, described it as good , not great.
    He then went on to award “ best avatar” to @Chiz and his drawing of a pair of underpants.
    A magnificent African mask the stuff of which inspired Picasso and the cubist movement gets rolled by a pair of undies!
    BTW HP, that’s a bastard of a name to get right for the@ thing with all those capitals and dots. I give up.

  63. After fiddling with, and getting very frustrated with, the ‘crop image’ function on the iPad (probably says more about my clumsy fingers), I’ve managed to change mine, which is going to be my favourite record of the year so far. So it’s likely to change at least 20 times in the coming months.

  64. Mine is Alf Tupper, from The Tough Of The Track, weekly comic strip in the Victor.
    Boys of a certain age would love to read about all his adventures on the running track, fuelled by a cod & chips diet, which was normally interrupted by an urgent welding job to help a mate, and then it was a quick dash back to the stadium to beat the toffs.

    • It amused me to learn the meaning of the verb tup in animal husbandry.

      Speaking of comics of a similar vintage, u realised I was the oldest player in my regular five a side football (by ten years!) when responding to having my hands stung by “a blemmer” with “Och no, it’s the Hotshot!” in a thick Scottish accent. I was met with puzzled faces all round.

  65. It’s the label on one of the four sides of vinyl that is Steven Wilson’s album Hand.Cannot.Erase which I photographed my self. I and eye. I am sure many knew where it comes from. It makes me think of a photograph by Man Ray. It has a strong impact despite the image size.

  66. Mine is the malevolent Steerpike from Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. I often wish I had gone with Lord Groan, who probably sums up my personality much more accurately.

  71. Mine is John Otway’s double (12-string?) guitar.

    I think I’ve probably seen Otway perform live more often than any other artist. I sang on his B-side at Abbey Road and I was a producer of his movie (my only credit on IMDb).

    • I talked to him a few years ago when the film came out and asked him about the guitar as I noticed he was left-handed. He said it didn’t matter which way he played it as he was crap both ways.He said he sometimes plays darts with the other hand and he’s still crap.

    • Marvelous! Top chap, he is. I rate him alongside Patrik Fitzgerald as one of the great English eccentrics to come out of the punk era without much success but some fun choons. Geneve is actually one of my DIDs and one of my faves to strum at home. Dunno why he called it Geneve and not Geneva though, when he clearly sings “Geneva”.

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