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The Afterword Platinum Collection Of Obsolete Skills

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It occurred to me today that my Melvyn Bragg impersonation will probably never again be fully appreciated. I live in a country where he’s not widely known. Or at all. My wife looks askance at me when I add an adenoidally compressed Braggsian commentary when feeding the dogs, unaware of its satiric nuance. Similarly, the number of requests for me to perform “Anji”, or the first few bars of “Oh Well Part 1”, on guitar have fallen to their lowest ever for many years now. And who will gasp anew in amazement at my uncannily realistic Owl Hoot, produced with just my cupped hands?

It is nothing short of tragic that these finely-honed life skills have no value in today’s couldn’t-care-less world. Perhaps you have specialised abilities that will likely never be called upon? Why not join me in compiling a useful Skills Bank, right here on this lively on-line community? Plenty of reasons. But join in anyway.

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  2. Obsolete? I’ll give you obsolete! I am a gifted mimic and I coasted through my young adulthood, basking in the warm golden sunshine of astonished adulation with my best and most uncanny impressions; namely Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile. All I have left is Terry Christian but this had a limited audience even in the early 90s.

    • Impressions is it? I can still do a range of brilliant impressions of my teachers at school.

      “Come along now, JC” – that’s ‘Ibbo’ – Mr Ibbertson, our head teacher. He was from West Yorkshire and wore a green tank top. Within months of arriving in the village he’d organised a barn dance in the village hall. In Midsomer Murders he’d have been done in by the end of part 2.

      I’ve tried taking my act around the clubs, it turns out these people are not nationally famous.

  3. I can touch my nose with my tongue. Strangely enough, the only person impressed by this was my five year-old grandson.

    Virtually all my life I have interjected song lyrics into conversations
    “There must be”……… “somewhere out of here?”
    “Excuse me”……”while I kiss the sky?”
    “My mother”….”likes shortenin’, shortenin’?”
    Strangely enough, this skill 99.87% of the time only gets puzzled looks.

    I can play the William Tell Overture simply by tapping my fingers on my cheeks whilst making strange shapes with my mouth.
    Strangely enough, the only person impressed by this was Willie Mathers back in 1956

    • I used to be able to play Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by flicking my school bus pass against my teeth, but haven’t had a go at it for a while. Perhaps there’s a use for my redundant Blockbusters membership card.

    • You need to introduce me to Willie Mathers. Oddly enough, that was the first – well, only, actually – thing that I can do that came to mind when I saw this thread, only no one has ever been impressed.

      Was this a thing at some point in the seventies? Where did we get the idea to even try it from? Did someone do it on Crackerjack or something?

      • I was taught by Alan McRae who is now Head of the Scottish FA. I wonder if, when the Board is discussing the national team’s latest defeat, he says ” Let’s not be so sad, I’ll just play you a wee tune. A one, a two…”

  6. Well I never.

    I can also do a Melvyn Bragg impression. Specifically the version of him lampooned by the original Spitting Image team decades ago. They made him sound like he had a permanent head cold. I’ll do it for you now;

    ‘Gurd ebening. And on der Saath Bank sherr t’naaght…’

    Also I can do ‘The Kurgan’ out of Highlander (a fillum). One line of dialogue only though. The rumble I have to make at the back of my throat sometimes activates my Sick Trigger and I gag. This is me doing it now;

    ‘Ramirez! So. That was not your woman…?’

    I can also roll my tongue into a tube. As in to the shape of a tube. Not an actual external third party tube.

    Several decades of human existence not wasted, I think you’ll find.

  8. I am quite good at unmangling chewed-up cassette tapes. I used to be, anyway.

    I still have the aluminium editing block in a box somewhere, and plenty of razor blades, but I bet the special sticky tape has gummed up by now.

    Speaking of which, when’s the last time you saw a mangled tape in a hedge?

  9. Ooh you are awful but I like you. Blank looks all round. Dick Emery like many a wildly popular prime time light entertainment show did not entertain me or make me laugh. Bafflingly successful. Dress a man up in women’s clothes and suddenly it’s hilarious, supposedly.

    Doing that thing with your legs with your hands on your knees so they move in and out as if they swap places in a mind blowing illusion. It was a thing. Now not so much.

  10. I can mould a recognisable Superman’s leg from any suitable material given an idle minute to fill – plasticine, modelling clay, blu tack or leftover dough. For any Superman aficionados, it’s in the style of Neal Adams version with the leg in a vertical position as in take off with just the balls of the foot and toes touching the ground. (For 2000AD fans, think peak Ron Smith era Judge Dredd). I leave them around the house as I tidy up after my kids like the origami unicorn in Blade Runner. They are usually scrunched up rather than treasured as the works of art they truly are.

  11. My best impression is that of a Spitfire Mk.V doing a victory roll at 500 feet over Kent in the summer of 1940. Even Rolls Royce engineers find it hard to distinguish from the real thing. For the encore I can do the sound of six Browning .303 machine guns at full chat at an altitude of 2,000ft, as heard from a village green at about 3pm on a sunny afternoon, closely followed by the distinctive sound of a Messerschmitt BF109E ploughing into a field about half a mile away at a speed approaching 450mph with an impact angle of around 85 degrees to the horizontal. I usually sign off with a cheery shout of, “Take that, Fritz!”.

  12. If you ever need somebody to program your video recorder (Betamax preferred) so that it records two weeks’ worth of programmes over Christmas, my rates are very reasonable. I only require one pristine copy of the double-issue Radio Times – never, ever the TV Times – fresh from the shop, and several hours to consider exactly what will be worth taping (I may listen to your opinions about different shows, but I think we’ll both agree that I’m right in the end).

    I’ve been poised by the phone, ready to solve a video-programming emergency, but demand has definitely slackened off. (I blame Brexit or something.)

  13. I used to make the most perfect roll-ups you’ve ever seen, and could use every scrap of tobacco in a straight to create an immaculate 3-skin spliff. It’s been years since I smoked anything though, and those artisanal skills will be lost to time.

  15. I can raise one eyebrow, which seems to be a lost art. Sadly my ability to emit an ear splitting whistle with pairs of fingers in the corners of my mouth has now left me.

  16. Driving in the left hand lane of a motorway, and only using the outer lanes for overtaking.
    A lost art? Very much so – I have followed many people driving at 65mph in the middle lane.

    • Annoying, certainly but aren’t the lanes supposed to be slow, fast and overtaking? As a regular van driver, moving in and out of the inside lane usually means getting stuck behind an HGV. I do try and stick to 70 if I’m in the middle lane though.

        • It’s a safety measure. It’s far too easy to veer sideways a few feet when updating one’s FarceBerk page while travelling at speed, so a top tip is to stay in the middle lane, thereby giving yourself a few yards of leeway in both directions! It’s all about thinking of others, innit?

          The same thing goes for applying your makeup too.

  18. My ICL George 3 DME skills have not been in demand for some decades.
    Not interesting or funny but I thought I would try and give fentonsteve a run for his money in the dullness stakes in this thread.

    • Ah, happy memories. My mum was impressed when my mate and I borrowed the washing-up bowl to carry out, ahem, a science experiment for school in my room. She wasn’t too impressed a bit later, however, when the smell of burning plastic filled the house. The zilch was good while it lasted though, especially after taking it in turns to lean out of the bedroom window to disperse the smoke from our, erm, roll-ups.

      I also had a home-made strobe light. It would never compete with, say, early Pink Floyd or Hawkwind (oh the memory of Stacia dancing with not a lot of clothes on), not least as it was merely a light bulb in a box with a small square cut out at the front. The ‘psychedelic effect’ was made by a rotating cardboard wheel with slits in it running at the front of the box via a hastily wired-up (i.e. dodgy) electric motor.

      To be fair, my technical skills never progressed much beyond these two items. I can, however, still lodge a blade of grass between my thumbs and make a noise by blowing through cupped hands using the grass as a sort-of reed. Who needs a Korg or VCS3 or whatever to make music?

  20. Oh deep joy. My true skill. Joining pieces of paper together. In the days of large paper maps, copied in A3 chunks.

    The trick is to allow an overlap, put the two pieces on a light table, overlap, cut through both with a scalpel against a straight edge, and secure on the reverse side with Scotch drafting tape.

    I dreamed of opening a little shop a la Emily in ‘Bagpuss’ to offer this service.

  21. Is “blowing a raspberry ” still funny. My Harry Secombe raspberry is still a showstopper but my “Phantom Raspberry Blower Of Old London Town” is reserved for only three most special of occasions…

  22. As I age I find my prodigious capacity for a resounding fart to be less popular. I perhaps need to wait another 30 years. Mind you, the applause then may be muted by the realisation of the laundry consequence. Which may then be no longer any concern of mine.

    • I keep wondering if there are any reformed (or indeed unreformed) criminules amongst us who can TWOC a Ford Popular or get a sash window open from the outside.

      In other news, I used to be brilliant on Kazaa Gold.

      • I’ve heard that using an X-ray fillum (like what you get from the hozzer) is brilliant for sliding between a locked door and the jamb, just above the Yale, and forcing it down to spring the lock. You have to fold the X-ray a couple of times for strength, and give the door a good jiggle as you work it down. Apparently.

  25. I was, and daresay still am should the opportunity arise, a dab hand at getting free telephone calls from the phone box with those A and B buttons.
    The face of the box is loosened, ok, jemmied and a slit of cardboard is slid along the edge flicking the lever to simulate a coin dropping.

    • Excellent! You could finesse the football table in the uni bar with a shilling on a mandolin string. Insert coin, pull knob out (@moose-the-mooche), carefully retrieve coin as you let the knob back in. In the old days you could use cotton, but the boffins upgraded the technology to include a cutting blade. It was a battle of wits between the money-grabbing mafia-linked pub games cabal and a bunch of stoned hippies. Kids today? Eh?

      • How is the mandolin string affixed? Glue or wound through a hole?
        Would a guitar string work just as well? Some picture hanging wire, or even some thin ordinary wire?
        You’ve really opened up a can of worms here HP.

                • – Fix coin in vise
                  – Smallest bit you can fit in yer B&D
                  – Drill through as close to the milled edge as you can. Nice n’ easy does it! HM currency is tough. File a notch through the raised edge next to the hole each side of the coin so the thickness isn’t increased (PRO TIP).
                  – Mando string (about 10″) because superfine, light, and yet very resistant to crimps and cuts – too thick and the coin wouldn’t drop properly. Through hole, twist a quarter inch or so back up the string with pliers and nip tight into the notches – harder than it sounds – this is craftsmanship.
                  – Attach duffel coat toggle or similar to the other end of the string – this makes it much easier to pull the coin back out.
                  – Hey presto! Infinite number of free fussball games!

      • I dried my entire weekly wash in the local launderette for over 2 years using a 5p folded into a 6″ strip of Sellotape. Pop it in the slot, click the knob three or four times, retrieve 5p then read a book for half an hour. One day the Sellotape broke and I ended up losing it into the machine which was annoying.

    • Anyone else here do the old trick of tapping the number of digits (ten times for zero, nine times for 9, etc) on the cradle in public phone boxes to get free calls in the 70s?

          • Don’t underplay your blows for freedom, Jaygee. Those free calls – and my free fussball games – were genuine victories for the revolution, as effective as any Parisian cobblestone.

            • More blows against the Empire.
              When you could buy those old cardboard train return tickets that were valid for 3 months, we would buy one, travel on it. Then buy a single back. For the next 3 months we would travel in, single back. Thereby a return trip would only cost the price of a single, at the end of the 3 months use the ticket as normal. Then buy a new one.
              I recall several of us had our tickets inspected on the train, there was nothing the inspector could do, but they stopped the 3 month validity some time after.
              Good while it lasted. Sorry @thecheshirecat

      • We used to do that at work where the extensions to ring were just 4 digits. It was also possible to ‘add’ a couple of extra clicks when you had two phones for the same extension and you wanted to annoy the person using the other one who was convinced he was dialling to right number but repeatedly rang different wrong ones!!

  30. We’ve grown up in the golden age of farts. It’s like winning the lottery of life. Pity the young who never get to experience cutting the cheese in different time signatures after copious pints of Whitbread and Watneys. They just don’t make them like that anymore. And the silent but deadlys that lingered for decades. That special combination of dodgy bitter and methane producing snacks.

  31. Oh, so many. I’m generally a good mimic, but obviously all my mimicry passed its sell-by in about 1998. An apparently genuinely uncanny impression of Danny the drug dealer from Withnail & I used to make a former colleague laugh til he doubled up, because I’d do likes of Shakespeare in his voice and English teacher just be like that. These days? Not a sausage. (I also do a very good pigeon noise.)

    I also used to be able to take apart and reassemble the heating system of a Mk 1 Renault 5, if necessary in a dark layby at 3 in the morning. No call for them Skillz these days: I opened up the bonnet of my car the other day and it looked like Robocop’s ballbag in there.

  32. I once attended a family do at a friend’s house; New Year’s Eve, if I recall correctly. I was absolutely horrified/grotesquely compelled when they played a family game – passed down through the generations – called ARSE: Anal Retention Sterling Exchange. The aim of the game is to grip as many coins as you can between your (mercifully clothed) buttocks and transport/deposit them in a specific place.

    The worrying thing was how normal it all seemed. We could have been playing charades, such was the semi-drunken insouciance with which the game was played. Apparently, my mate’s kids aren’t keen, and she doesn’t see it making the shift to a new generation. I’m not sure how I feel about this.

  34. I’m not sure if this is the appropriate thread, but I’ve just cleaned some “100% pure cotton, professional dry-clean only” curtains on a 20 degree C cotton cycle in the washing machine.

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