Flickering images from the past

The past is a very surreal country. Just going through old cine film taken at Handsworth Grammar School in 1967. It's so grainy and black and white that lunch hour in the quad looks more like newsreel footage of recreation time in a POW camp. 

School quad or POW camp?

Suddenly there's me in the back streets of Brum wearing a houndstooth jacket, a fez and looking at the world through a tennis racket.There's Lew firing a fishing net from a bow. Scenes of a schoolmate being ambushed and beaten up, the masters versus the boys football match - referee 'Bing' Crosby. Bing again secretly filmed teaching us, and behind him on the blackboard what looks like Arabic but is some weird equation.

Looking at the world through a tennis racket

A passing parade of other masters - 'Winky' Watson, Froggy Knight, Mary Barber, Browning,  World Cup Willy Watton, Ken Doney, 'Gobby' Gilbert - all of them on their way home after a hard day's teaching. An old-fashioned number 70 bus floats down Grove Lane followed by a white-haired old man on a bicycle, me zooming past on the back of Lawrence's scooter, Jimmy Hinks silhouetted in the door of the butcher's shop, and all those young, familar faces: 'Eggy' Eggington, Billy Jackson, Gary Mills, Alan 'Gilligan's Island' Griffiths, Grant, the only black face to be seen. 

The number 70 bus floats down Grove Lane

And spliced into all this are scenes from 'Rodan', a Japanese monster film featuring a giant flying lizard. Thousands of fleeing Japanese and me, 40 years younger and none the wiser. It makes you think.

Rodan, star of Japanese B-movies

Revenge of the Three Stooges

People have always tended to look down their nose at the Three Stooges. Larry, Curly and Moe were never exactly subtle and their comedy was pure slapstick which revolved around poking each other in the eye and handing out a good slap in the face.

Moe, Curly and Larry in typical slapstick action

I’ve always had a soft spot for them, mainly because of an afternoon spent in a cartoon cinema in London with my mate Dancin’ Jones and a fellow film student called Scouse Annie. After spending lunchtime in a pub downing a few pints of Fuller’s London Pride we were up for a good time and found it  in the rolling programme of cartoons and short films.  

As always, we found the RoadRunner  particularly funny but were in hysterics when the Three Stooges flickered onscreen in a grainy old black and white movie called ‘Fifi Blows Her Top’.  I can’t remember a thing about the film except laughing until the tears rolled down my face.

All of this was brought to mind when reading Denis Norden’s book ‘Clips from a Life’ in which he recalls that at an American auction in November 1993 a signed group photo of Larry, Curly and Moe went for $1,820 while a signed group photo of Presidents  Nixon, Ford and Carter fetched $275. Quite right too. The Stooges churned out 200 films - 190 of them shorts - during their prolific career and probably brought more fun and laughter into the world than any President.

Who writes this stuff?

There are several things I find annoying about daytime TV and they’re all to do with the commercials. There are too many of them and often they’re just plonked willy-nilly into the programmes without any thought whatsoever – sometimes in the middle of a scene.

But my other gripe concerns the sponsors of these programmes whose mini-movies pop up at the beginning and end of each over-long commercial break. There's a company called Furniture Village who sponsor a load of recycled TV on channels like ITV10 and their strapline is 'You're in safe hands'. What the hell has that got to do with selling furniture? They’re not offering healthcare or insurance. They sell armchairs. Why shouldn't you be in safe hands when buying a beige sofa? Unless you're buying it in downtown Kabul. 

Why shouldn't you be safe buying a coffee table?

 Another ridiculous strapline comes courtesy of Wickes, the DIY outlet, who proudly proclaim  'It's got our name on it'. Not ‘Great tools for every job’ or ‘We can help you fix that shelf’ – but ‘It’s got our name on it’. What's so reassuring about that? This must be a dependable high-powered chainsaw  – it’s got Wickes written on it.

As for Simply Health with ‘We can be bothered’ well I should hope so. If you couldn’t be bothered I wouldn’t get my health insurance from you. 

Valentine's Night

Having been in agony for 10 days with sciatica I am unable to do very little - even sleep. However, when I did manage to drift off last night - thanks to the pain killers kicking in- I had a very weird dream.


I was walking down the street when I bumped into 1950s heart throb singing star Dickie Valentine. I immediately asked for his autograph on behalf of my old mate Dancin' Jones whom I knew would appreciate such a keepsake.

Dickie Valentine wearing the same coat as
in my dream

Dickie seemed a bit put out at my request and became even more impatient when  I spent ages searching my rubbish-filled pockets for a pen and paper. Eventually, I dug out a really tatty bit of paper and a leaky biro and Dickie duly signed his name. The weirdest thing is, when I awoke I found a scrappy piece of paper on my duvet and on it was scrawled "To Dancin' with best wishes from Dickie". No, not really. That would be ridiculous. This isn't The Twilight Zone, you know.
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