POST 370. RECENTLY LOOKED BACK.

AT MY ORIGINAL BLOG POSTS. e.g.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2006
24. As a newcomer to this blog lark...
NOTHING CHANGES. Well, not that much it doesn't. I become slightly more intractable and the people for whom I have the least time become slightly more irksome. My first sizeable bunch of blog posts was dated as above. Entries were brief and pictures were noticeably absent. Back then I was using the pseudonym Justin Thyme and, unknowingly (because I have no crystal ball), was just ahead of the rush to the net by increasingly unsaleable national newspapers.
Looking back I find myself scribbling much the same stuff now as I did then. Have no idea what the papers are saying on the net: I read them no more than any of them reads me. Still read the i in print six days a week. Our corner shop delivers it and I pay the full price for it: have never joined the i 'buy in bulk' price reduction scheme and suspect it's only the carefully rich among us who have. It was an innovative idea though.
Now I am pondering yet again whether to keep scribbling or - as I regularly snarl at political pundits on television - give it a fuckin' rest.
Oh, I'll probably just carry on. Nothing changes. Well, not that much. Government advice does: all the time. So, I'm sorry to say, does my twenty first century propensity for foul language.

Keep reading the tablets, eh?

POST 369. STILL LAUGHING AT

THE FAST SHOW.

NICE. This wonderful load of tele nonsense recently came around again and was as zanily likeable as ever. Originally the brain child of Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse (above), the show (which some wit once labelled 'a series of catchphrases') first came our way in 1994. What - or who - brought it up from the archives I'm not sure, but I think it may have something to do with a proposed revival. Everything's being revived now, isn't it. Little of it to its betterment. I can't see The Fast Show protagonists falling into that 'God! Not again!' trap: if they came back it would be to deliver an appropriately sardonic take on the twenty first century. They were always way ahead of their time anyway. POSITIVELY OF THEIR TIME.

MORTIMER AND WHITEHOUSE: GONE FISHING is back. And Series 2 is every bit as gently entertaining as its predecessor. Paul's best buddy attempts at furthering Bob's recuperation from 2016 heart surgery and, in the process, make an angler of him, are low-key hilarious. Bob, in his turn, shows a kindness of nature seldom discernible within the ranks of his comedic contemporaries. Mo and I, along with better half of the nation, are well and truly hooked. The scenery is wonderful. too. BUT IF YOU MUST HAVE A REMAKE

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL. To give the lie to my notion that no remake of a television series ever equals the original, this adaptation of James Herriot's vet stories appears, on the evidence of the first episode alone, to be every bit as good as the Christopher Timothy, Robert Hardy, Peter Davison BBC original. In the current (Channel 5)version, Nicholas Ralph as James, Rachel Shenton as Helen, Samuel West as Siegfried, Callum Woodhouse as Tristan and Anna Madeley as the excellent Mrs. Hall are perfectly cast as was Dame Diana Rigg as Mrs. Pumphrey.

Dame Diana died on the 10th of September 2020 aged 82. She was the gorgeous Emma Peel in The Avengers, the only Bond girl to marry James Bond (it didn't last), in her later years a formidable presence in an episode of Doctor Who, and an Emmy nominee for her performance in Game of Thrones, She was also a superb stage actress and the tongue-in-cheek arranger of the 'worst ever reviews' book No Turn Unstoned. RIP you lovely lady. And that's it for now. Mind how you go.