Who else has watched the US version of Ghosts?
We watched US ep 1 last night, then watched the UK original pilot (for only the second time). It's stunning how much the US version loses. Mostly the funny bits. The UK show is laugh out loud from the start, and has the characters nailed in just a few lines, while the US version rambles, misses dozens of opportunities, over-explains, and generally dumbs down the whole mixture.
Odd choices of ghosts from the US, prompted obviously by the fact that they have less history than us. They have no caveman, replacing him with a Viking; no medieval burnt witch or headless Tudor, replacing them with a Native American whose date is yet tbc; a War Of Independence captain replacing our WWII captain; no Georgian Kitty or Romantic Poet, replacing them with a 1920s jazz singer; and they retain only the Victorian Fanny, the scout-leader Pat, and the pant-less politician, but making him way too cool and handsome. And they add a 1960s hippy, and a 1950s headless guy, which seems way more icky than a Tudor one, I'd have thought.
It's good to be reminded just how good Ghosts, the original, is, and this remake does just that.
Oh dear, you know what this means. I have to support Wales.
I mean, I won't be going so far as to actually watch a match, obviously. But given that I now live in Wales, and that my own country (Scotland, you knew that) generously chose not to qualify, again, Wales is my country. If I knew a word of Welsh I'd say an appropriate one right here: (Insert Welsh word later).
My Welsh location now joins my Scottish nationality as something that nobody will ever quite believe, or agree is 100% true. After a lifetime of having to insist to people I'm Scottish, despite sounding like an East Midlands Bertie Wooster, I now live in Chepstow which is, literally, on the English border. And it's part of Monmouthshire which, if you look at any 19th century map, isn't even accepted as a proper part of Wales! (Maps and books refer to Wales And Monmouthshire, and draw the border one county further to the west).
I hope my half-hearted and largely disputed support helps them to whup the asses of Iran, USA, and England in their group. And I look forward to watching their bus go by the end of our road when they make their way home next week.
Watching Peter Ustinov in Arab black-face on Talking Pictures led me to Wikipedia. Who knew he was descended from the Ethiopian Royal Family?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ustinov
You know who’s going to miss Twitter? People like me who used to be Facebook friends with fellow comics, then those guys got famous on the telly.
Then one day you’re being asked to “like” their Facebook fan page, and they’ve vanished from your friends list.
Who predicted Twitter would turn out to be the new Woolworths?
Secure in the knowledge no-one will notice either way, I'll still be on Twitter and I'm also on Insta and FB.
Being one of Earth's late adopters, I doubt I'll find out what Mastodon was until it isn't any more.
Happy Birthday The Charts.
I used to love the charts, me. There was a time I could name every number one from when I was about 12 to when I was about 19.
I could have been using that brain space to learn the Periodic Table! Kids...
Watching SAS Rogue Heroes I joked that they were the sort who, 30 years later, would organise a right wing coup to try and overthrow the government.
I thought I was joking!
Who are we going to glorify with a TV docudrama next? Oswald Mosley?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Stirling
Where am I this morning, kids?
Truly it seems to me Autumn 1982 was when the 80s began, with the birth of Channel 4 and revolutions in comic books beginning with Alan Moore in 2000AD, Warrior, and the following year DC's Swamp Thing.
And it was also, as few people have mentioned on here, the last time Britain started a war. Does anyone else remember The Falklands? As students we were all against it, and some were fearful that it would lead to conscription and us youngsters all getting called up.
For that reason it was the year I stopped wearing a poppy on principle, a position I haven't changed since. (To reiterate, I don't want anyone to see me wearing a poppy and think it means I supported the wars in the Falklands, Northern Ireland, Iraq or Afghanistan. Or whatever comes next, if it's unjust - they usually are - and we start it again.)
On the positive side, Alan Moore's introduction to the first volume of V For Vendetta was terribly pessimistic about the state of the nation and, if I remember correctly, saw him threatening to leave the country (for where, I can't imagine).
As it turned out, we weren't a fascist state by 1985. (It took another 40 years, amIright kids? Little bit of politics, I'm Ben Elton etc)
Nov 4: This time 40 years ago Hev and I (students at the time, still together) sat in our flat which had slug trails on the carpet and watched the opening of Channel 4.
We’ve just rewatched the first episode of Cheers, which is as good now as it was then. Then on the channel’s second night was The Tube , which was great, but was always tinged with a certain disappointment.
I should have been on it.
There’s a group photo of us all somewhere (in the The Tube annual, in storage I guess) with me in a line up including presenters who made the cut, like Magenta Divine and the bloke who sang Life In A Northern Town. Sadly I didn’t make the show.
This was my first taste of being television presentation’s equivalent of Crème Brûlée.
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