Hoo-Ray!

So glad to see Ray Quinn win the last-ever Dancing On Ice.  Incredible to think he’s an amateur.  Here’s his Bolero:

My favourite skate:

His solo skate:

What am I going to do now DOI has finished forever?  Sad face.

I guess I’ll have to watch Strictly.  Sadder face.

Tilly Bud Is Impressed

 

Image via Wikipedia

 

It’s hard to believe we’re only in week 4 of Dancing On Ice.  Check this out (the girl in black and the guy in silver are the amateurs):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt5yHzq98VU

Sorry it doesn’t appear here; I still can’t show You Tube videos and the WordPress techies don’t know why, without visiting me at my home and disassembling my computer.

A TV Curiosity

Laura Ingalls has weird hair – despite being in braids all day long, when she goes to bed and wears it loose, there’s not a crinkle in sight.  How is that possible?  Is there something in the pioneer air?

 

Disgusting: Nothing But Repeats

Image via Wikipedia

Today’s post title comes from the popular British pastime of complaining about the telly; in particular, the summer telly.  We didn’t have a summer, of course – a repeat of a different kind – but we had lots of repeats on the telly. 

I’m sorry: I don’t mean to keep repeating ‘repeat’.  Or ‘telly’.

I never understood why the BBC and ITV repeated everything; and then I started blogging. 

Sometimes it is accidental, telling a story that I’ve told before, but in a slightly different way.  On tv, it happens in soap operas, where everybody sleeps with everybody else and they all work in the same place, drink in the same pub (even respectable old ladies who’ve taken the pledge get their daily lemonade fix from the Rovers or the Queen Vic at a quarter of their weekly pension instead of buying a 21pence 2L bottle from Morrisons that will last them a week) and live out the same dramas – I give you Kevin & Sally Webster: how many times have they been married, cheated on each other, split up and got back together again?  I know it’s a lot, and I haven’t watched Coronation Street for ten years.

Sometimes it’s a re-hash of stuff: I lift bits from other blogs, websites, emails – always crediting the source, of course.  In tv, it’s the inevitable 1000 Greatest TV Ads/100,000 Greatest TV Shows/1,000,000 Greatest Talking Heads Desperate For Any Kind Of TV Appearance So Long As It Keeps Them In The Public Eye And Funds Their Kids’ And Seven Stepkids’ From Four Previous Marriages Expensive Education.

Then there’s the outright We’re tired; we’ve nothing new for you; look at this old stuff instead repeat.  In tv, it’s Murder, She Wrote.  In this blog, it’s one of my earliest posts, tarted up.  Enjoy (R).

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Eight year old Spud came out of school one day and asked me, ‘What’s a tw*t?’ (The * is an ‘a’: you must be clear on that to make sense of the story).  Once I had regained my balance, I asked him where he had heard it.

‘Oh, Mrs Taylor used it on one of the boys.’

Clutching the school gate as I staggered, I explained what an awful word it was and how he must NEVER EVER EVER use it.  It was a bad word and I would be having a word with Mrs Taylor.  I was surprised at Mrs Taylor, was he sure he had heard her correctly?

On the way home I got the full story from him.  It appears that Mrs Taylor is affectionately abusive to the children, calling them ‘daft twits’.  I suspect that either Spud misheard it or she had a slip of the tongue and ignored it, hoping the children wouldn’t notice.  What really tickled me was when Spud climbed into bed with me at midnight that night, crying that he couldn’t sleep because he had been ‘accidentally very naughty’ because he thought it was such a great word he had used it all afternoon on his friends….

I had to go into school next day and pre-emptively apologise to the Head before the parents’ complaints came rolling in.  I’m so glad I stopped having children.

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If you want to read stories on a similar theme, visit Tinman’s post, Little Ears.  Read the comments as well.

Come Dine With Me In Stockport

If you think that’s an invitation from me, hunger must have made you hallucinate.  Unless you like hysterical harridans serving inedible plates of unidentifiable mush?

I don’t really do dinner invites.  Visit me any time, yes, and welcome.  Sandwiches, a buffet, Christmas Dinner: no probs.  But an evening meal?  With all the food ready at the same time?  I have been married twenty-six years and I still panic if the eggs go in the pan before the bacon is burnt.  I once prepared chippolata sausages at my brother’s house and had a meltdown because the Hub wasn’t there to tell me when to stop cooking them.  At least I learned where charcoal comes from.

My favourite meal is leftovers and chips, because the food that has survived me well enough to end up in the fridge only needs warming in the microwave.  I get through microwaves like I get through deep fat fryers.

No, dear reader, your stomach is safe; and safer still if you don’t live in Stockport or the surrounding areas.  The television show Come Dine With Me is to film in Stockport in August, and they want you to provide the meal and the entertainment for the viewing public, with the possibility of a thousand pound prize at the end of it.  Ain’t that grand?

Here’s the blurb (they asked me to post it up in my window but the grease blocks the view):

Come Dine With Me

follows FIVE strangers, all budding chefs, as they take it in turns to try and prepare the best meal, be the best host and hold the best all-round dinner party for the others. The best host at the end of the competition wins £1,000 cash!

We’re looking for anyone over 18 years old, from any walk of life, who feels they have what it takes to throw a great dinner party!  So if you are passionate about cooking and you’d like to find out more, or if you know someone who could be a perfect candidate for our show, then please get in touch with us as soon as possible and leave your contact details on:

0871 244 4142

(Callers from a BT landline will be charged a set up fee of 10p per call plus 10p perminute. Calls from other networks may be higher and from mobiles will cost considerably more.)

Or email: cdwm@itv.com

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So, if you fancy being on telly while eating, as opposed to being in front of the telly while eating, give them a call.    My commission is only £10 and a taste.

Disclaimer: This has got nothing to do with me (that’s life).  I am the blogging equivalent of the lamppost that holds the poster advertising your lost cat.

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The Day The TV Stood Still

Image via Wikipedia

Sidey’s theme this weekend is UFO.  I can never hear ‘UFO’ without thinking of that programme from the Seventies with Ed Straker; do you remember it?

Here’s the thing: I’m pretty sure aliens were using it to control me.  Whenever I was off school – which wasn’t often – the same episode would always be on.  It didn’t matter if I was off morning, afternoon, all day or Saturday: the episode with the car driving down the road was on.

I think aliens were sending me subliminal messages not to drive.

Hmm.  Could the Hub be an alien?

<a href=”http://www.youtube.com/v/rB1k02yh43A?version=3“>

I’m still having problems embedding You Tube videos, so you’ll have to click on the link.

Don’t Read This If You Recorded The Last Episode Of ‘Over the Rainbow’ And You Haven’t Watched It Yet

This weekend was all about the tv: first we had the last-ever episode of Ashes to Ashes, a show which never lived up to its predecessor, the joint-first-best programme ever made (as decided by me in my poll of me): Life on Mars (its co-winner being The West Wing) – and I mean the original Brit version, not the Harvey Keitel abomination.  All the more surprising, then, that it was one of the most satisfying conclusions to any tv series I have ever watched.  

Over the Rainbow ended with an okay winner who was the only one of the eleven finalists to hit a bum note when singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow at the end of a show – watch her face when she realises her last note is flat:

I liked Danielle but I’m still sulking because Steph wasn’t in the final.

Britain’s Got Talent threw up this gem:

Thinking about reality tv and the transience of fame – and seeing Stacey Solomon hiding in a corner of Michael Bublé’s Audience With – reminded me of this poem I wrote last year:

Stars In Their Eyes 

After the door shuts,
the footsteps die:
no wife to swap;
no champagne pop;
adulation stops:
you’re a flop. 
Paparazzi don’t pap;
you fall through the gaps in the schedule. 
X-Factor marks the spot,
vacant for the next big thing, brother.
It won’t be you:
don’t bother. 
Fame – long wait;
short sell-by date
(fifteen minutes, tops). 
Don’t open that door.
Walk away; don’t try. 
You’re not a celebrity,
get out of there. 
Notoriety:
the great TV lie.

Talking of Michael  Bublé (as if I ever needed an excuse), here he is being fabulous on ITV last night:

Of course, the big tv event of the weekend was the last-ever episode of Lost being simulcast around the world; it was on at five this morning in the UK.  I watched the very first episode and it lost me at the sunbathing plane crash victim, so if you want an informed opinion, I’ll have to tell you to get lost.

Groovy, Baby

Oh, what a night – Donny & Marie were back on the telly again, reunited for one show only.  Joy to the world: I watched An Audience With… and they were fabulous.  It took me right back to the first time ever I saw his face, peeping out of a white Christmas tree masquerading as a rhinestone cowboy suit.  It was like having sunshine on my shoulders; he made me happy.  My eyes adored him.  Talk about your puppy love – get back, ladies; he’s mine.  He still makes me weak at the knees and I am ready to play that funky music all over again; or the silly love songs – I don’t mind.

He is an evergreen star, though; don’t you think?  And Marie.  Yes, it was a little corny, but that’s the way I like it.  Aha.  It was like being thirteen again, watching the Donny & Marie show; I even liked it at seventeen: it was a very good year.  Last night I was watching it all by myself, but in the Seventies I watched it with my parents and brother.  We would sit on our purple nylon carpet while Mum and Dad were on the brown & cream nylon sofa, watching our first colour tv in front of our bright red nylon curtains in our purple-striped nylon pyjamas.  The anticipation was electric.  Happy days!  Sometimes we would get mail while it was on and Dad would have to say, ‘Please, Mr Postman, stop bothering us.  And there’s really no need to knock three times; you can just ring my bell.’  Then some kung fu fighting would break out and Mum would yell at them to take it easy.  The postman would scream at Mum, calling her a ‘Witchy woman.’  If he had said it first thing in the morning it would have been true, because she had hair issues; but it was unfair in the evening: she was always beautifully groomed after eight a.m.

Anyway, the postman didn’t mean it: he was in love with Mum (you must have thought it odd that he was delivering post on a Sunday evening).  He suddenly stopped struggling, looked at her and said, ‘You’re the one that I want; I was made for loving you.’  Mum was astonished; Dad furious.  Mum turned to Dad and said, ‘Don’t worry, baby; everything will be allright; I only have eyes for you.’  Dad smiled and said, ‘You to me are everything.’  He turned to the postman: ‘Isn’t she lovely?’  ‘Ca plane pour moi,’ he replied (he was French but, strangely, we never had any French letters in the house).  The postman turned sadly away and whispered, ‘Gute nacht Freunde’ (we were part of the Common Market by then), ‘true love, that’s a wonder.  Never let her slip away.’

Mum blushed, said, ‘Oooh, I feel love,’ and suddenly sent us to bed.  Dad hummed Night Fever.  It was a logical song choice.