Bloggertropolis

Date: Sunday, 2nd August 1989 Time: 13:49 Location: Back Garden I’ve taken my temperature and it’s slightly higher than it should be. Blood pressure, rising. Tenseness, shortness of breath, all on the increase. This is starting to scare me. A friend of mine warned me during a CND march a few years back that this might start to occur. He told me not to leave Shepherd’s Bush. That it was dangerous out there. Strange things happen. It’s not safe. Of course I didn’t disbelieve him, but...Read Full Story

I nearly didn't write about this. (1) because it's a "minority interest" post - many of my international readers won't have watched Ashes To Ashes (or it's forerunner Life On Mars) and (2) those of you that have will be behind the UK in its scheduling of this show and I really don't want to ruin the ending of the entire series and franchise by peppering this post with spoilers. Which is going to be damned difficult to do. But I am going to do my best. To say this has been (for me) the best TV...Read Full Story

On Monday afternoon the wife and I decided to make the most of the last day of our holiday staycation by following in the footsteps of many and spending a pleasant few hours in the local park with the kids. And by “the kids” I, of course, mean our kids specifically rather than “the kids” generally. I’m afraid the days when I’d sit on a park bench necking back a bottle of Diamond White with the local yobbery are far behind me. There are, after all, only so many cars that you can nick, joyride...Read Full Story

When I was an impressionable teen I got into magic. Or rather the idea of magic. In fact this occult interest lasted well into my impressionable twenties. At the time the occult section of Waterstones (now, I believe, respectably entitled “Health, Body and Spirit” or some such) was bursting at its magical seams with middle class grimoires from the likes of Laurie Cabot and other darker tomes from the late, great and dangerous-to-know Aleister Crowley , who is in fact a fellow Leamingtonian. I...Read Full Story

+++ APOLOGIES +++ MINORITY INTEREST POST +++ So. Torchwood . The Doctor Who spin-off returned for a third outing last week in a lavish new 5 part story that was broadcast every day, Monday through to Friday. I was, I admit, dubious. Series one and two of Torchwood were disappointing. Like a chocolate cake that just wasn’t quite chocolaty enough (the diet coke of sci-fi). Good ideas were there – but were spread to thin. The acting was good but the scripts were frequently weak. The stories...Read Full Story

The funniest comedians are physically unattractive. Discuss. We were talking about comedians at work this week and being a shallow lot the discussion quickly moved on from merely which ones we thought were funny to those we thought were attractive. And it quickly became apparent – certainly from the males – that if they found a female comedienne attractive they tended not to find her very funny. But this was OK. This lack of comedy skill was forgiven totally provided there was the redeeming...Read Full Story

I don’t believe it. They’re bringing back Knight Rider . Re-made, re-cast and possibly retro-fitted, Michael Knight and his camp Kit car are already gearing up to turbo-boost back onto our TV screens sometime this Autumn. And I feel nothing but dismay. Some things are just best left alone. Most of the TV shows from the eighties being a case in point. Although I have fond memories of Knight Rider, The A-Team and Airwolf et al, they are time-locked into a small, blessedly sealed, period of my...Read Full Story

Julia Bradbury . Not a megastar. Not an A list UK celeb. But kind of always there. Grafting away. And in my opinion delivering some of the Beeb's higher quality programmes. Lakeland Walks and the more recent Railway Walks spring to mind. If you're an avid hillwalker - always out and about with your waterproofs and your mountain boots - these programmes are an invaluable source of ideas and inspiration. And if you're a hillwalker who's strapped for cash these shows offer the opportunity to...Read Full Story

The wife and I greatly enjoyed the first part of Survivors broadcast here in the UK on Sunday night. The premise is an old one most of the population wiped out by disease / catastrophe; only a handful of people come through the initial disaster; we vicariously follow their struggle to survive in a world that has regressed without technology to something akin to the Dark Ages. It's a school boy "what if" adventure yarn and I don't categorize it thus to denigrate it. I love stories like this...Read Full Story

Knickers have been a little twisted in the UK this week over an issue which, quite frankly, has not merited the amount of column space given over to it. And here I am adding to the word count when other bloggers have written about it at least half as well as I am about to (ha ha ha)...! To clarify for my international readers: we have a kids' channel here in the UK called CBeebies and they have employed a lovely blonde presenter called Cerrie Burnell to do the fill-in slots between the...Read Full Story