When I started the Patreon in 2018 and begun listing things I wanted to cover, this series was top three, with one particular image seered into my brain as the most broken anyone has ever been by reality television; a statement I believe still holds true today, even given the untold thousands of hours of broadcasting since. Frustratingly, actual footage was elusive, outside of learning institutions, ...
2024-01-08 22:34:55 +0000 UTC View Post
Some extra house-cleaning business for the end of year, as this is the last post of 2023:
- Shamefully, I have to apologise for the audio quality again. Maybe it's not as bad as it seems to me, but I think what's happened here is a combination of the old mic dying and my hearing taking ages to come back properly after Covid, which essentially left me deaf in one ear for about four months. I make these pretty far in advance sometimes, and at the time I obviously didn't notice ho...
2023-12-22 22:31:42 +0000 UTC View Post
For me, the phrase 'New Year's Eve television' sparks memories of Jools Holland, an enormous Sir Captain Tom looming out of the sky, and watching as Claudia Schiffer – introduced by Clive James as the World's Most Beautiful Woman – is described by my gran as “an ugly old trout.” But amid all the year-end background noise, there's one notable show, having earned a massively skewed rat...
2023-12-04 22:21:47 +0000 UTC View Post
In the pantheon of British puppets, wretched Orville aside, Roland Rat's the one I've got the least affection for, with an entire routine consisting of “I'm a world famous superstar, yeeeeah!” Created by the man who does the voice and sticks his hand up there, David Claridge, Roland's personality was expanded on by writers Colin Bostock-Smith and Richard Curtis – adding to the latter's...
2023-11-03 22:23:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's that other hayfevery voiceover, apologies for the raspiness.
2023-10-14 21:00:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Since last we sampled Walker, Texas Ranger, it's become another series, along with McGyver and Magnum P.I. that nobody knows nor cares has been on air for ages as a 2023-10-04 21:08:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Build-up to the coming millennium was a wild time, with round-number enthusiasts stockpiling for the end of everything. Who knew what awaited us, chugging alcopops in our JNCO jeans as the clock struck midnight? Perhaps a plane falling through the conservatory from Y2K; perhaps the fires, floods, and asteroids as foretold by multitude Doomsday cults; or maybe even that long awaited return from the bi...
2023-09-04 21:10:58 +0000 UTC View Post
For every junior-aged kid, there's something which looms overhead like a coming storm. Someday, unavoidably, you'll be starting Big School; a bigger building filled with bigger boys. Having fit that demographic myself in the eighties, my expectation was coloured by portrayals, often written by ex-public schoolboys, as post-war landscapes of pet frogs in pockets, japes and pranks, and history masters ...
2023-08-05 21:26:17 +0000 UTC View Post
On sheer brand recognition, The Brady Bunch is one of history's most culturally significant sitcoms; at least in its infinitely parodied opening titles, where the cast's boxed heads look each other up and down against a clear blue background. As explained so succinctly and saccharinely in the theme, a mom (“a lovely lady”) with three blonde daughters marries a man with three bru...
2023-07-06 21:36:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Regular readers know the people I'm most drawn to are those who decided they'd become a character, from which they never broke. Hulk Hogan. John McCririck. Dave Courtney. Late 90's culture was fascinated with gangland figures, due in part to the 60's revival, yearning for a return to swinging London, to hang out with Michael Caine, Twiggy and the Krays. Into this fad, along with Howard Marks speaking...
2023-06-16 22:09:14 +0000 UTC View PostAlright?
It felt weird not putting anything up for so long, so I wanted to post a quick note to thank you all for sticking around during Plague Month. The lighter schedule really allowed me to get back on track, now (mostly) recovered and raring to go.
Depending on when I recorded them, my voice is gonna be weird in videos for a bit – sometimes Bea Arthur, sometimes Phyllis Pearce – but normal scheduling has resumed, and we're coming in hot on the non-fiction tier with a video...
2023-06-03 19:11:14 +0000 UTC View Post
As you've probably seen me harping on about, a few weeks ago, I got laid up with a well-bad case of Covid, and couldn't breathe without coughing up my entire spine, much less take 10,000 words of notes about an old episode of Bill Oddie's Saturday Banana.
I'm better than I was, but still pretty rough, and my voice is wrecked. Consequently, I couldn't record any voiceover tracks. By this point i...
2023-04-24 12:37:48 +0000 UTC View Post
As alluded to at the bottom of the most recent post, Covid finally came for me, and good god, Whitty wasn't kidding. Never been so ill in my life. Every night I'm expecting to see Bobby Ball reaching his hand out from a white tunnel. I had planned to post the new Bad Blokes chapter on the 12th, but I'm putting it back at least a week. I can't edit to sufficient standard when I'm like this. It's take...
2023-04-11 09:19:17 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm gonna level with you. I know it goes against everything it means to be British, but I am not a pub man. Never have been. Though it's social suicide to admit such a thing, I'm very much of the school which believes “Pay for a drink? There's perfectly good taps in the kitchen sink!” and pubs; with their socialising and urinals are just not my tempo. As such, catching only glimpses of t...
2023-04-08 19:51:46 +0000 UTC View Post
