Stuart Millard

Saturday Night Beadle

 In his heyday, the name Jeremy Beadle was national shorthand – settle down – for exasperating situations; synonymous with life throwing you a random, terrible curveball that must be a prank. If your plumbing burst or your car got clamped, you were on the lookout for some prick with a microphone, with a false beard glued on top of his real beard, to tell you it was all just a great ...

Tagteam

 To save the suspense on whether Tagteam – self-styled as a single word – is any good, it's with a heavy heart I must report the biggest missed opportunity since every participant in James Corden's Carpool Karaoke failed to nudge the wheel into oncoming traffic. ABC's 1991 pilot starring 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper and Jesse 'The Body' Ventura seems like a true can't miss, coming three scan...

Cartoon Spinoffs - Mister T

 It's hard to convey just how ridiculously famous Mr. T was in the eighties, and how fast it all happened. His breakout role of Clubber Lang in Rocky II hit theatres in May of 1982, with The A-Team debuted the following January, as an immediate hit. Later that year, in September of '83, the rather formally titled cartoon, Mister T, landed in the iconic Saturday morning...

Coming Next to the $5 Tier

 Down in the trenches of a British comprehensive school in the mid-80s, it's every boy for himself. But it helps to have a friend.
 

Scramblehead – a story in four parts, coming soon.

The Big Breakfast - First and Last

 Having previously covered Noel's House Party, it was inevitable that I'd eventually tackle The Big Breakfast, which puts us at the dawn of that baffling period when the nation was bewitched by Chris Evans. Yet, even the most cynical can't deny the show's genuine innovation, in a time when all breakfast telly followed the same format; of well-behaved presenters discussing the d...

Colonel Spokes

 This is the only known footage of Colonel Spokes, also known as the Rumble Tumble Man, or Ernie Tattles. A familiar sight to motorists of West Sussex throughout the 1970s and '80s, local legend puts him as the only survivor of a terrible car accident which took his entire family. As a result, he never got behind the wheel again, switching to his famous bicycle, and becoming a roadside spectacle to warn speeding drivers from a similar fate. Or perhaps to distract them straight to it.

Bonus Post: 2019 Beach Diaries #3

  A group of giggling kids loudly ask Siri if Yoda's circumcised. 

  I'm out walking a dog, and on our return journey, an alleyway we often use is roped off with yellow tape, guarded by a pair of policemen. As is my wont as a busybody, I take a look down it as I pass. The groun...

Great Moments in Pop Culture – Byker Grove Nukes the Fourth Wall

 Long-running shows often get defined by their endings, good or bad, which retroactively colour the perception of a series as a whole, like The Sopranos' cut to black, or the denouement of Lost, which was generally-beloved for the bulk of its run, but clouded by an unpopular final season. As I write this, squealing man-babies are voting next week's Game of Thrones 1/10...

Come Back Mrs. Noah

 Another of those series perennially sat on the worst-of lists, Come Back Mrs. Noah was a Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft joint; the pairing that brought us Are You Being Served? and 'Allo 'Allo. Airing in the gap between series 5 and 6 of Are You Being Served, it was a vehicle for Served's Mollie Sugden, taking a well-earned break from harping on about ...

Charlie and Me trailer

If you've been following my work for a while, you'll know that my Charles Manson novel, Charlie and Me, was *the* big project for me, which took up years of my life, so I was pretty bummed when it virtually died on release at the end of 2017. At the time, even the idea of a story based on an infamous murderer didn't get a great response, losing me more followers than I got sales, though I tried incredibly hard not to be exploitative about the events, and use them tell an interesting, relevant...

That Time Heartbeat Did An Alien Abduction

 Even today, ITV's Heartbeat is so bonded to its placement dead-centre of Sunday Night Dread, that on hearing its theme tune, I instinctively started getting a tummy ache in creeping fear of school tomorrow. A partial cover of Buddy Holly's song of the same name, Nick Berry's version includes the grossest phrase ever, “a love kiss,” but not Holly's inexplicable reference to...

Cartoon Spinoffs - Rambo

 Writing this latest piece about terrible cartoon spin-offs unwittingly dredged up a litany of embarrassing memories. Around the age of seven, I became fixated on Rambo; the lead character in a series of movies I'd yet to even see. Perhaps the young me, raised by a single mother, had hooked onto a child's idea of a strong male role model, with his biceps, rocket launcher, curly mullet packed int...

Index of Content

To save everyone scrolling back through dozens

Bonus Post: 2019 Beach Diaries #2

  There's a man swimming in the sea. The sun's quite warm when it breaks the clouds, but the water looks cold. When he wades back onto shore, he pulls open the front of his trunks and peers down, as though checking it's all still there.

 Since the last post, I hit a Bad Birthday. While w...

Great Moments in Pop Culture – Ricky Gervais Has a Fight

 One day, I turned on the telly, and watched Bob Mortimer beat Les Dennis in a boxing match. No, that's not a dream you've gotten stuck listening to me drearily describe right into your ear on the bus, but a thing that actually happened. The bout took place in 2002, during the heyday of celebrity boxing, in a year that also saw the battle between Willis from Diff'rent Strokes and Vanill...

Bonus Post: Occasional Beach Diaries 2019

 I've been rooting around in a few old notebooks, looking for Beach Diaries scraps I never got around to posting. Here's a selection, and hopefully I'll be able to get out more this summer and gather some new material. 

  A child's hat floats along the river. Some men in a boat stee...

Being Judas

 On Good Friday of this year, the area's local churches got together to perform a public Walk of Witness through the high street, recreating the capture, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus. In what would be my first public performance for about 25 years, I volunteered to play Judas. It's a long gap in the CV, with my most recent credits the dual roles of Fat Man (typecasting) and Jackdaw in a stage...

Big Game

Contains spoilers for last night's Game of Thrones (Season 8, Episode 2)

Slinger's Day

 Since starting the Shitcoms series, I occasionally get suggestions tweeted at me, and Slinger's Day has come up more than once. I'd never seen it, and at first glance, it didn't seem like it would be that bad. It's not one of the obviously problematic ones like Bottle Boys or Curry & Chips, nor poisoned with the presence of Jim Davidson, like Up the Elephant a...