I invite you all to share any snippets of info, fascinating facts or anything else that’s entered your brain this week. I have two. The first is that it seems that the Singing Postman briefly went electric! Oh yes, a small number of his later tunes not only boasted a small brass section, but also electric guitar and bass, as you can see here in the pic from a book wot I read.
The second, even more mind blowing revelation is in the comments…
The theme to 80s children’s TV show Wizbit was originally a song by Leadybelly:
*head explodes*
Okay, your go.
I have learnt that if you wanted to play in the brass section on a Singing Postman record there was a 100% chance you’d have to change your name to Derek.
😀
Didn’t Tommy Steele predict the historic event depicted in the OP with his debut hit, ‘Rock With The Postman’?
This week, I have learned that the BBC somehow think it’s valid to pay oily, disgraced, unnecessary Alan Yentob over £200,000 for sleepwalking through the presenting of two or three shows a year in his Imagine ‘strand’. There is no justification in any universe for this.
Imagine there’s no Alan. It’s easy if you try.
I’ve recently reread Clive James’s Blaze of Obscurity in which AY comes across, frankly, as a big-headed twat.
Yes, I’ve heard similar from other TV professionals who had to deal with him. Clive has a wonderful anecdote in that book, from memory, of trying to find Yentob to save one of his programmes from the chop but constantly being told he was lunching with presidents, climbing Mt Everest, or quaffing champagne with Gustav Mahler (or something like that). Only to hear from Toad of Toad Hall (when he finally sauntered back into his so-called workplace after his jet-setting), ‘But Clive, why didn’t you call me?’
Derek Wick is John Wick’s father. True fake fact dat.
I read in the New Scientist that people being treated for depression in a centre in Denmark were discharged twice as quickly when their room was facing in a way that had more sunlight. Open the curtains folks.
Yeah, especially Pencil’s neighbour.
Prior to this week, I genuinely thought he got his nom de plume from his painting vocation.
I’m right naive, me…
But ‘appy!
I learned that Liverpool is a lovely city to visit. Very pleasantly surprised by our hotel bedroom.
Beatles Bedroom https://imgur.com/gallery/0N7RU
That could confuse a sleepy person. Until we were in the area a couple of years ago, and went to take so zebra crossing snapshots, The Light thought that Abbey Road was in Liverpool.
We are 4 couples on a week’s holiday. The hotel has many very gentle Beatles references, and I don’t think any of the other 7 has spotted one of them. There’s a mural on the lobby wall with moustaches, a walrus, and a long winding road and there’s some serious head scratching going on.
Which song does the head scratching reference? I Dig A Pony?
I stayed the night there once. Next morning the housemaid came in through the bathroom window.
You should have told her to get back
I hope you never gave her your money, anyway.
I learned that if you want to commit a murder [or similar criminal act] cover your parrot’s cage with a cloth first – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40665520
better yet, move him into another room – or simply ‘take him out’ 😉
Don’t let my parrot (Mr Parrot) know about murder. I’ll be dead as a kipper in the morning – he’s a violent bastard. Just watched a re-run of Fawlty Towers
I’ve learned that even when riding a horse through a fictional medieval forest you can’t get away from Ed bloody Sheeran.
Don’t worry, the North remembers…..
On a side note, and without offering any spoilers, how good was that pre-credits opening scene!!
I’ve learned that someone generally very level headed and reasonable can get surprisingly exercised at the thought of a fictional character being played by a woman.
Well, they didn’t call the character “Jacqueline” Duckworth, did they?
*fumes impotently*
That a young Uma Thurman performed with Visage. Here she is on a Spanish pop show (go to 1:25 for the full lip sync majesty).
https://youtu.be/YuZn95UXkEY
Nothing like her!
She bears a closer resemblance to Winona Ryder, if anything.
Oh yes it is. Behind you!
*THWACK*
OK – I have just checked and she’d have had to be about 12.
So I stand corrected. I have no choice but to stand after that whacking. Ooyah!
What a preposterous song.
In other news, I noticed that TV’s Debbie Allen (the teacher in Fame) as still working and being an actor in Greys Anatomy. For a very, very long time I had assumed she had moved to Woking. Why?
Because there was the Debbie Allen Dance Studio in Woking in the mid-80s and my childlike brain assumed – well into adulthood – that that she moved there and this was how she made a living.
I have learned that shutting all the windows on a hot and stuffy night, and wearing earplugs, is no guarantee against being kept awake by neighbours indulging in excessively noisy and enthusiastic sexual congress.
Sorry…
I’ll try to keep it, er… down.
You’re not good at that.
You two – get a room. But one a long way from mine.
Enthusiastic Sexual Congress. TMFTL.
At my age? You’ll be lucky.
I think you’ll find that it was THE Enthusiastic Sexual Congress. One of the most important members pulled out just before they hit the big time.
They did attempt to re-enter the fray in ’69, but failed to come cl…(sniiiip!)
There’s quite enough Fray on this website!
More exciting than Trade Union Congress.
Probably.
I have learned that The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was the first novel to be written on a typewriter. How this can be proved, I have no idea, but it was on the internet so it must be true.
I always thought it was a dead giveaway when Cervantes called his main character Don Q-Werty..
Now that’s funny!
Up!
That my wife should be a contiuity person on telly.
I thought I was doing quite well as, watching ITV’s The Loch, I spotted that the location flitted between Fort Augustus, Fort William (about 30 miles away), Dores (25 miles in the other direction), and Glencoe (50 miles and nowhere near any lochs).
She spotted a mug change colour as it was carried through a doorway, a scarf repeatedly disappear and reappear on the lead character, and all kinds of other mistakes.
I’m beginning to worry about what she notices about me.
That every time she asks you how much your headphones were, you yell “Fire! everyone out of the house!”
You can only do that three or four times. Unless you actually start a fire.
I’m beginning to think the “What, that? I’ve had it for ages…” routine might not be foolproof after all.
I’ve learned or rather it’s been confirmed once again that some people seem to get a kick out of wasting my time and that my tap water tastes like it’s being pumped to me from a puddle situated on the outskirts of Chernobyl.
Apart from that I discovered that a neighbour on the t’other side of the street likes to walk around her house in the buff at 5:00 am.
Past four days on the trot. You could set your watch…
… or your alarm clock.
Or get her to boot on your door and wake you up at 4.30am.
Address please (and do you sell visual recording equipment?).
I love summer.
I was idly flicking through the Guinness Book of Hit Singles 1996 last night and had several 80s-related surprises.
Did you know that Dignity by Deacon Blue only got to No.31 in the charts?
Or that INXS only had one Top 10 hit?
Or that despite the fact that you couldn’t turn on Radio 1 in the summer of 1990 without hearing the all-conquering Sacrifice/Healing Hands, both songs had been released separately in 1989 and barely troubled the Top 50
All fascinating snippets which Mrs H wasn’t the slightest bit interested in.
“I was idly flicking through the Guinness Book of Hit Singles 1996 last night…”
Brilliant. Only on the Afterword.
I dunno. I suspect it could be considered dangerously modern.
Dignity had to be remixed and re-released (nearly a year later) before it staggered to number 31. First attempt didn’t even make the top 200.
They should have tried muffling it.
@captain-haddock
That INXS fact is a beaut, ta. I want to double check but that would be bad form!
That there is a craft ale made from the urine of revellers at Roskilde! @kaisfatdad : what do you have to say on that? I learnt about it in a new member to my magazine habit, “Ferment”, all about beer. Here is the greater detail about Pisener (ho, ho!)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/92386818/danish-brewery-creates-pisner–a-beer-made-with-the-help-of-50000-litres-of-urine
@retropath2 that might be what Charles Baudelaire called (talking about Faro) “de la bière deux fois bue” a beer drunk two times. He was refering to the use of water from a river where everyone peed after they had drunk the same beer.
Yuk! Lingerie made from recycled tents I can handle. But that is Danish high tech taken a step to far.
I have learned that death is life-affirming. Loss unites those left.
A few learnings this week
1. Pilates looks easy but is well hard!
2. The terrible twos is a real thing.
3. Lack of sleep (see point 2) is really not good. There is a reason it is used as a form of torture
Risotto made with squid ink is much nicer than it looks.
I’ve learned that having a haircut really makes the work-in-progress beard look more like a beard. A neat do makes the old face hair look like it’s on purpose rather than just scruffy.
I also learned that my new haircut is called a “disconnected” cut cos the top is long and pushed back and the sides are super short. It’s BANG ON TREND apparently, which is deeply sad in a 39 year old man. (I also learned that when my barber approves of your style choice he properly goes for it. He’s always great but this time he went to town. Bless him.)
Whereas I learnt from photographs that the thinning hair at the front of my head, to accompany an existing bald patch at the back, isn’t an optical illusion only visible in shaving mirrors. Make the most of your locks, young Bob. I spent my 40s going thin on top and seem set to spend my 50s acquiring the matching set.
I have many many physical disadvantages but I do have a lovely strong hairline. My old man still has a luxuriant head of hair at 78, and there’s no male pattern baldness in my family, so I’m living in hope.
It’s your mum’s side of the family that baldness is inherited from, but if her males relatives kept their hair you’re probably safe.
And “I have many many physical disadvantages” – Afterword t-shirt!
Well, not quite, but it is true her genes do have a part to play. My bro is balder than my dad was, whereas I am less so, whereas my mum didn’t go bald at all, which, if not the point I was actually making, made me laugh. A little.
My latest Crohn’s test results came back with “Clinically Acceptable” scrawled across them in my GP’s hand.
Clinically Acceptable – form an orderly queue, ladies.
Is that not also a term used in digital sound engineering?
I’m the same! My dad at 74 isn’t even grey, apart from a few strays at the back that you would never see unless you were looking for them.
My mother’s been “as a mule” since her mid-30s, so who knows?
Still, I’m alright for now.
*tosses sun-burnished locks, causing dozens of nearby women to pass out with blind lust*
My father was suspiciously jet black when he died, and denied that there was anything in the way of ‘enhancing the colour’ going on.
Then again, he was a big Elvis fan.
Reminds me of the immortal words of Hank Hill. (You have to imagine this in his voice)
“If Ron Reagan died his hair, and I’m not saying he did, it was only to show his strength to the communists”
Stubborn….?
That as well. You’ve met my mother then?
So it’s only Homer Simpson who says “grey as a mule”.
“…the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for.”
So stubborn it is.
I learnt from a photo this week that I have almost exactly the same amount of hair on the top of my head as my 6-month-old step grandson, i.e. hardly any. What you see when you look in the mirror is not what others see, it turns out.
Watching South Park years ago, there was a lot of references to ‘I need TP for my butthole’. I thought it was a tent (teepee), but it is a USA shortcut for toilet paper.
I still feel embarrassed about it now.
But prepared to share on here.
That was Beavis and Butt-Head. Whenever Beavis has too much sugar/caffeine/other he pulls his t-shirt up over his head and scuttles around with his hands raised muttering “I am Cornholio. You have TP? For my bunghole?” and variations thereupon. It used to make the 19-year-old me fairly suffocate laughing.
Are you threatening me?
I learned that Bob Dylan during the Things Have Changed period at least , used a Manley VoxBox to for his voice.
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/video-reviews/2016/8/11/review-uad-manley-voxbox
I also learned that Mick Jagger was famous for “not having his wallet” when out to dinner. Michael Hutchence got suckered by this ruse and people just chuckled knowingly.
And finally I have relearned that asthma will eventually subside and I will improve. You’d think I’d have figured that out after 50 years, but like the airways its a narrow tunnel at the time.
Have just discovered that ‘nos da’, signature signoff of @pencilsqueezer of this parish, means good night in Cornish as well as Welsh.
Bore da. Bloody epic mun. Da iawn.
I have learned the value of employing a timer to maximize and focus my attention.
Times up!
It works well on my cat, to teach her eating hours.
Something else I didn’t know. There was a 5th-century Welsh saint called St Elvis (Anglicised version of St Eilfyw). He is supposed to have baptised St David, and there is a ruined church dedicated to him near St David’s in Pembrokeshire, also St Elvis’s Well.
Not far away are the Preseli Hills. I am unreasonably excited by this discovery.
And how did you come to learn all this arcane Welsh stuff Mike ?
It’s not unusual.
I cannot tell a lie. From reading the Oldie.
What is that ?
A Brit mag for the more mature reader. Comes with my Readly sub, and a lot more entertaining than you might think.
He’s talking about Tigger. The combination of liver spots and thread veins is quite legible and most informative, if you can persuade him to take his cardie off.
Mike is waaaay older than me. My thread veins are mere operating instructions compared to his liver spots epic novel.
Besides, I’ve decided to follow saucepot’s dad’s fashion trend for multi-layered shirts. Once you’ve got me cardi off, there’s still a lot of work to do.
Arbeit macht frei!
Huh. I’ll have you know that a complete stranger in Aldi the other day told me I didn’t look a day over 60. This after he’d asked me to guess how old he was and I’d got it exactly right. Random.
*pushes sandwich etc*
One of our family holiday rituals when in Pembrokeshire is to drive past the hand written sign for ‘St. Elvis’ ( on what appears to be a farm gate) just outside Solva & call out ‘jellypeanutbutterdoublecheeseburgerthangyouverymuch!’.
Very childish I know, but a lot of fun – when that’s done, we really feel like we’re on holiday.
Summer holidays in Pembrokeshire? I am envious, Jungle Jim. My mum was from a farm in the Prescelly Hills and every summer when we were kids we used to stay in Dinas near Fishguard. A verdant, magic kingdom for a suburban kid from Pinner.
Fishguard. There’s an evocative name.
Also a handy accessory.
Handy indeed, but more effective if you have the whole set, though:
Talking of evocative names, we used to holiday every year near Haverfordwest at a hippie hotel halfway down a cliff called the Druidstone. Magic.
I kid you not, if I ever found myself monstrously rich, I’d buy a snug little gaff near St Davids in a heartbeat. One of my favourite places in the world.
I understand that November to March (at least) is pretty damn harsh – essentially a non stop gale – but when the weather is merciful, it’s a beautiful as anywhere in Europe. ( Sighs)
Going to Portugal this year for some reason. Won’t be the same.
June can be pretty bloody cold too.
I’ve learnt that the concise reviews on Nights In (of which Bargepole is the undisputed master) tend to attract more thumbs up but it’s the longer Nights Out that receive more approval.
How are you measuring approval if not by thumbs up?
Privately messaged dick pics.
On the AW isn’t it more likely to be privately messaged Dick’s Picks?
Not in my recent experience………. ;-[
Night’s out not reader’s “knives”, that is
A Knorr Chicken Stock cube, in its shiny brown wrapper, glanced at on its lonesome on our kitchen bench, looks just like a piece of fudge.
But it isn’t.
That’s excellent Beezer. I’m going to be alert to this from now on.
Hyde Park is 5 minutes walk from Paddington.
47 years and I’ve only just found this out.
I may not be quick but I get there in the end
Today I learned that Diana Rigg is 79
and her full name and title is
Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE
Enid!
If your bag seems unusually heavy in the morning before work, it’s possible you’ll have to drive back home again since you can’t get any work done with the cat interrupting every 2,3 second.
No way! Flipping heck!
Helpless with giggling here, @Neela
A: How to build a Playmobil kitchen unit out of card, paper, sellotape, glue and patience. The wife was away for 6 days and I was the sole carer for our daughters, 3&6 years old.
I am keen not to gender-stereotype my three girls so instead of dolls and kitchen sets and Instagram, I have them enrolled here as members under assumed names. They are encouraged to interact like the (mostly) middle-aged men here as part of their foundational diversity training in order to get themselves Internet-ready and media savvy in a relatively safe environment. Two of them have flounced already after creating two separate spats about Richard Thompson, The third one is wearing the spats and wants to dress up like Blue Rondo a la Turk. She’s only 8 – what have I done?
Arf!
That no one checks your ticket on the fast foot passenger only ferry to and from Southampton and the Isle of Wight.
Still, work were paying so dinnae mind
That one of John Cooper Clarke’s biggest influences was…. Pam Ayres.
Oh.
(Pam Ayres joke)
This has made my day.
I knew about the Mikes Sammes Singers, but this is trivia gold.
That’s great!
Oh heck. I think that’s made me come a little.
*pushes potato salad to one side*
Ho ho ho
Hee hee hee
Ha ha ha!
Lies, lies, all lies!
Where we ever this young?
Kim Hartman, Helga from TV’s Allo Allo, is in the new Dunkirk film. She is also the aunt of the director, Christopher Nolan.
Lust For Life has got a piano track on it
Years I’ve been listening to that song and never noticed it before
The middle name of Steve Harris of Iron Maiden name isn’t ‘arry, as is commonly reported. It’s Percy.
Can’t believe I’m still waiting for someone to shout “Judas!” re the OP. I am most disappoint.
Visited Sweden for the first time. Amazing forest landscapes for 100s of kms, drivers very easygoing, payment (usually exclusively) by card, and the lovely old town in Stockholm (Gamla Stan) is a small island skirted by four lanes of traffic. Bit too utilitarian/charmless/insensitive? Oh, and the Oresund Bridge (as in “The Bridge”) between Copenhagen and Malmo costs a toll of €56!
And bloody musicians everywhere, every one of whom has a YouTube channel.
Yep, obviously technologically sussed.
Gamla Stan is only tolerable in the tourist free months of the year… 🙂
But seriously, whenever I walk around town in the summertime I pity the tourists who goes to all the wrong places (on the other hand it means that we get to have the good stuff to ourselves in peace! 😀 )
Ah @Locust. Yes indeed, my mate and I realised very quickly we were crap tourists and repaired to the nearest pub. Presently, he even managed to take in the Abba museum whereas I have suddenly acquired a few Abba albums and very good they are too, which I’ve needed 40 years to get around to. Being in Stockholm sparked this.
I am convinced, looking around for a few days, your country is amazingly matter-of-fact (and I live in Germany, which I’d previously thought was market leader in this) but generally in a good way: well-organised, everything functions, no visible poverty, but look the wrong way in Gamla Stan and you think, Jeez, even Dusseldorf managed to hide its central traffic arteries in tunnels to present its nice bits to mankind, have this lot never heard of world heritage and the likes. 😉
Only kidding. Gorgeous parks, good country. But pricey!
BTW This mother murdered with her 3 kids, has anyone been charged? I recognised the Aftonbladet headlines as the words are similar in German.
@Declan, the politicians have been fighting about that for close to 100 years, but they can never agree on anything, and when they finally vote some building plans through, they vote the wrong things through and get the citizens angry and protesting…it’s a never-ending struggle.
But actually, I’m against hiding those arteries in tunnels, I don’t like it when cities look too pretty and idyllic. But I’m a proper city rat; the last time I spent a week in the countryside I almost wept with joy when I upon return walked out of the Central Station and could smell the exhaust fumes from the heavy traffic in one of the ugliest streets in town – Home Sweet Home! 😀
Glad you liked it anyway, and had a good – if expensive – time. If you ever need a tour guide for a return visit, I’ll be happy to help if I can!
Edit: I’m on my holiday and have barely read a newspaper or watched the news in two weeks…I vaguely remember a story about something like that and I believe the husband was the suspect (surprise…) Don’t know what’s happened since.
How very kind, I’ll take you up on that!
And the mother/kids story? Oh okay (above). Had the impression that weekend that the very PC Swedish media were suppressing another Immigrant atrocity, just like down here.
Hilarious: your exhast fumes story.
No, they are very strict about not naming any names or showing photographs before anyone have been found guilty, same for everyone. That’s not PC, that’s just ethics and not wanting to have to pay damages! 🙂
Fair enough, Locust. Definitely a suspicion that directives had been issued to the press here in Germany not to stir up bad feelings, even if the perpetrators were clearly, y’know, foreigners. Talking about New Year’s Eve in Cologne, a year and a half ago, where the mainstream press needed 3 days to get down to brass tacks. The police needed even longer!
.
I learned that Spotify has a limit on the number of offline tracks.
Apparently it’s 3333 per device (upto 3 devices) so I should probably just take that as a sign to stop hoarding so much stuff on my phone Just In Case.
Today I learned that Bailey’s Irish Cream crosses the Republic of Ireland / Northern Ireland border five times before it’s sold. The milk goes north, the cream comes south, the whiskey gets added and goes north for bottling… it’s not a problem because there’s no border except in some angry old memories. There are some 200 roads that join the two countries, including a six-lane highway, but it’s okay, because they’re both EU member states.
This is only interesting if you’re involved, as I am, in trying to make fucking Brexit work. I can’t vent about this at work so I’m doing it here. I mean, COME ON
Carrots in the wild were originally white.
http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history.html
As this site comments, people have been diddling with carrots for centuries. Indeed!
That the new old (recorded in ’76, acoustic) Neil Young album is currently up for pre-order on amazon UK at a most attractive £16.70 on the vinly, only three quid more than on the shiny bird-scarer format.
Trying to work out if some of these tracks are part of Chrome Dreams. I assume they are
… that if you are anti the anti-racists at a rally, you are probably racist.
Isn’t that, by definition, against the law?
Being racist is not against the law. In fact, if you are a racist you can join the police force and go around shooting black people pretty much non-stop.
This was a good thread.