Monty Python’s Dad
AT the beginning of 1968, teatime television was turned on its head by a comedy phenomenon which had hordes of schoolchildren, myself included, racing home desperate not to miss a … Continue readingMonty Python’s Dad
A compendium of musical delights by Alan and Margaret Ashworth
AT the beginning of 1968, teatime television was turned on its head by a comedy phenomenon which had hordes of schoolchildren, myself included, racing home desperate not to miss a … Continue readingMonty Python’s Dad
FOLLOWING my parade of screen lovelies chronicled here and here, this is a selection of actresses suggested by you, the readers. First we visit The Avengers, the slightly camp, always entertaining British espionage series which … Continue readingThe fairest of them all? Part 3
IF, LIKE me, you have read every line of PG Wodehouse’s 90-odd books – at least half a dozen times each in the case of the Jeeves novels – your … Continue readingWodehouse, plus sex and violence
RETURNING to my personal parade of screen beauties which began last week brings me to two movie versions of the 1934 James M Cain novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. The story concerns … Continue readingThe fairest of them all? Part 2
WHO could forget the scene in Dr No when a white-bikini-clad Ursula Andress emerges from the Caribbean watched by Sean Connery as James Bond? I certainly never have, and neither did those … Continue readingWho is the fairest of them all?
MY Uncle Tom was a gifted raconteur, talented pianist and all-round good egg. He was also, to my knowledge, the only former public schoolboy and university graduate to make a … Continue readingA Bachelor of Hauling Coal
IN the 1990s I would race home from work in the early hours of Saturday to watch a video recording of that night’s Fantasy Football League on BBC2. Irreverent, often filthy and … Continue readingFantasy Football League, then and now
WHEN I wrote in May about the expression ‘standing around like cheese at fourpence’, I promised a future column on the joys of Lancashire cheese. And here it is. So far as … Continue readingSay t’cheese
MY late father, who as I described here was once lowered down a long-drop lavatory to rescue a cat, was also a talented amateur conjuror. Specialising in card tricks, he was an … Continue readingA woman suspended in thin air
IN common with most folk of a certain age, I remember winters in unheated bedrooms where you would wake to find ice patterns on the inside of the window and … Continue readingBedroom secrets