Whither Katie Boyle?

It's the Eurovision Song Contest final once again. Come and have some fun on Twitter while it's going out live. I'm @lfbarfe, and if I hit the Twitter limit in any given hour, will be moving over to my backup account, which is @cheeseford.

Big George Webley (1957-2011)

So there I was on Sunday, knackered after an 8 hours on various trains and glad to be home. Kiss the wife, check up on sleeping daughter, let the dog go mad and lick my face half-off, check the various online sources of information on which I rely. I'm perfectly prepared for the usual round of duplicity, despair and intrigue, but am not prepared for a news story about someone I regarded as a friend dying at the age of just 53.

I first made contact with Big George when he was doing a superb Sunday night show on BBC radio stations in the east, about eight years ago. I'd been a fan of his theme tune work for ages, and I knew his reputation as a top session bass player, but what I didn't know until then was that he was also a great communicator. He only played what he liked and he told you why he liked it, what made it great and so on. At the time, I was working on my first book - a history of the record industry - and I started emailing in with bits and pieces of information following up on things he said or played. Sensing a kindred spirit, he had me on the show when the book came out for a very extensive chat and wrote my first Amazon review - a rave. From then on, we stayed in touch, with the conversation always being raucous, slanderous and hilarious.

George did an overnight show at BBC London for a good long while, and was a master of the genre. Talk radio hosts in the UK tend to be either scrupulously even-handed (and dull), rampantly biased (and unpleasant) or devil's advocates taking up ludicrous positions to get a reaction. George was no fence-sitter. He had his opinions and he made sure you knew what they were. However, there was always a warmth and respect underneath. He was always happy to go at it hammer and tongs with a caller, but there was a decency underpinning it all.

Funnily enough, I was just about to email him asking for his thoughts on a work project I'm beginning. I suspect he'd have been full of good advice and eminently usable anecdotes. Now I can't. The loss felt by his family and his partner, fellow BBC London presenter JoAnne Good must be immense. In comparison, I barely knew him, but my sense of loss is great enough.

Anyway, about a year ago, he released a cover version of 'Alfie' recorded in downtime at the end of a jingle session. Danny Baker opened Monday's BBC London show with it. It's stunning. Remember him THIS way. RIP Big George.

Calling at Superin Junction, Gagging Order Halt...

Forget your Twitters. Cheeseford is the home of the real news about this 'superinjunction' shizzle that's going down in the high courts, with the A-listers all enlisting their learned friends to keep uncomfortable details of their private lives out of the red-top blatts. As I have an exemption from prosecution for defamation that I bought out of the back pages of Health and Efficiency for a tenner, I can blow the lid off. That's enough about my flatulence, though. Here's what the big names don't want you to know:

• T*d Rogers was f***ing D*sty B*n.
• L**d C***les went off the rails after the death of R*y Al*n, and began pimping T*ch and Qu*ckers in a M*yfair fl*t to feed his gin and quaalude habit.
• The B*C N******n D***e O******ra and the D******m G*rl P*pers - the details are too sordid even for this blog.
• Ch*rlton, with numerous Wh**lies, in his dressing room at C*sgrove-H*ll.
  
• That take 1 of the H*rry W*rth opening titles featured the comedian doing the wind*w trick st*rk b*ll*ck n*ked.
  
• The identity of the illegitimate offspring of the Y*rkshire T*levision ch*vr*n and the B*rder ch*psticks.
  
• B*lly D*inty and B*tty the T*a L*dy - Let's just say that I'll never watch EBC1 in the same way again.
• Al* B*ngo - the unconventional way in which he made things disappear, the cheeky scamp.

More as we have it. Cheeseford will not be cowed or silenced.

Bright and not so beautiful

The existence of the BrightHouse chain of stores goes some way to explaining why we're in so much trouble as a nation. The company describes itself as "the leading UK rent-to-own retailer, providing quality branded household goods on affordable weekly payments". What this means is that you can have your consumer durables now as long as you don't mind spending the next few years of your life paying through the nose for them. Let's take as our example a mid-range flat-screen television such as this Philips 32" LED set. If you have the cash or a credit card with the headroom to buy it, you can have it for a shade under £760. Or you can pay over 3 years at £7.01 a week, and it'll cost you a total of £1093.56. However, there's every chance that the item in question will be broken by the time you've finished paying for it, so, of course, you pay the extra 'optional service cover', which takes the total cost of that telly to nearly £1700.

The key phrase above is "if you have the cash or a credit card with the headroom". Nobody with either would go to BrightHouse (Obviously they're not loan sharks. Their name contains the reassuring words 'Bright' and 'House'. Shiny. Shiny. Nice. Not at all sharky.) unless they like pissing money up a wall. The company's whole business model is based on preying on the acquisitive poor, who are likely to get poorer and poorer if they keep supporting companies like BrightHouse. Interestingly, the company is an offshoot of what used to be known as Radio Rentals, from whom my grandparents rented a Baird TV (and later VCR) for about 30 years. In those days when TV sets were, by necessity, massive items of expenditure and the cathode ray tubes were notoriously capricious, renting made sense even if you were the sort of person who didn't hold with 'easy terms' for anything. Then is not now, though.

If you can get on without that state-of-the-art flat-screen set (and let's be clear, this is a case of want not need), you can have a lovely telly for 2/10 of sod all. There's Freecycle/Freegle for starters. Also, about 200 yards up the street here in Lowestoft, there's a giant British Heart Foundation charity shop selling second-hand furniture and electronics. They have a wall of widescreen CRT sets, all with 28" screens, for £45 a throw. Not £45 a month over 3 years. A perfectly serviceable TV for 15 pints of beer (or 10 at London prices), and you'll be saving a lot of plastic, metal and glass from going to landfill. OK, your spanking new flat-screen TV will be HD-capable, but how many HD programmes will you be watching on it? Even if you think that flat-panel TVs are better than CRTs (and the jury's out on that as far as I'm concerned), is the set in question 24.3 times better than the second-hand set from the charity shop? And even if you can make that leap of perception, is it really worth enslaving yourself to the likes of BrightHouse for years on end? If you can make the leaps of logic required to answer yes, you're buggered, and you deserve to be.

Herring Fishery Score

Good news, Richard Herring's Christ on a Bike is coming to the Marina Theatre, Lowestoft, on 28 April. Having been in a cocoon of Dawsonage for the last few months, I failed to notice this in the list of upcoming attractions, so I am grateful to Reverend Kyle Paisley of Oulton Broad Free Presbyterian Church for bringing the "infantile" and apparently blasphemous production to my attention. The Rev Paisley (now there's a name that cries tolerance and understanding, dontchathink?) plans to lead a protest outside the theatre. Good luck to him. It's a free country (still, just about). However, his fulmination has resulted in at least one extra ticket sale for Mr Herring, namely mine. What's that about the law of unintended consequences?

AV in Colour

I can't fault a word of Beetwaste's analysis of the AV debate. I'm in favour and will be voting accordingly. AV isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's an improvement on what we have. Also, a win for the no side of things will kill the debate on electoral form for a generation or more, as the victors present rejection of AV as a comprehensive rejection of any sort of change.

Michael Jackson - Up the Wall

There is a recording studio in London called The Premises. Until a couple of weeks ago, it was best known for its commitment to renewable energy and the recordings that have been made there. Right now, though, it's best known as 'that place with the statue of Michael Jackson dangling the baby out of the hotel window', and the studio website has been deluged with messages from Jackson fans condemning both the statue and The Premises for displaying it. The artist has, according to one fan, racked up a hell of a lot of 'Karmic debt'. What's the karma exchange rate for dangling a child out of a window? Anyway, three questions spring to mind:

1) Is art that depicts distasteful events intrinsically distasteful?
2) If you have a problem with what the statue represents, don't you have a problem with Jackson himself and his baby-dangling antics?
3) Do you have to be stupid, mad and deluded to be a Michael Jackson fan, or is it optional?

We've been here before, of course.

Lovely...lovely...

It takes a hell of a lot to get me wearing a tie these days. Why, then, did I wear one to sit watching archive television and drinking myself into oblivion (or Mr TSW 1982, as oblivion is known officially) with several good friends last Saturday?

This is not just any old piece of neckwear. It is the LWT staff tie I was given for use in last year's advent calendar. It says everything about the quality of the company I was in last Saturday that I was lucky to escape with both my life and the tie when I finally made my exit. No item of clothing owned by me has ever been coveted by anyone (and, in this assessment, I am including nude tramps) before.

So, what other broadcasting-related ties are out there? I know of an excellent one, owned by a friend and sometime reader of these pages. Also, which bit of broadcasting iconography would you most like to see embroidered into a bit of neckwear? I'm in the market for a cravat depicting the original Harlech ident.

The Daily Mail: what is point?

Bloody hell, I knew that the Daily Mail was a stinking dross-heap of a publication, but even I was slightly taken aback to read this tale of its non-existent ethics. At the moment, the degree of blame to be shouldered by the journalist who wrote the article is unknown. A hell of a lot can happen when subs get their hands on an innocent article, with 'improving' it on their minds.

Happy 80th Birthday Les Dawson part 3

Here, from 1984, is a snippet of Les Dawson in conversation with Roy Plomley about his epiphany in Hull, and whether he can play the piano for real:

Happy 80th Birthday Les Dawson part 2

For the second part of this blog's efforts to mark what would have been the great Les Dawson's 80th birthday, let's go back to 16 November 1974 for Dawson's debut appearance on Parkinson:

Happy 80th Birthday Les Dawson - part 1

Right, let's get the Les Dawson 80th birthday celebrations underway with this spiffing show opener from the first Sez Les of series 8, currently available on DVD. Script by Cryer and Nobbs, tailors to the gentry:

The Dawson Watch

Les Dawson would have been 80 this coming Wednesday. As my biography of him is nearing completion, I am more aware of this than most. I've spoken to many of the people who worked with him, and all loved him. His spirit has been a benign presence in my house for the two and a half years since the book was commissioned, and while many biographers end each book with diminished respect for their subject, mine for Dawson, already high when I set out, has grown. I shall mark the occasion with fine Scotch whisky and a black pudding taste test. Dawson once got into a heated debate about the way this fine delicacy should be cooked. Dawson maintained that they should be boiled, but the other participant held that they should be fried. That the other participant was the Duke of Edinburgh and that Dawson was able to disagree with him good-naturedly but forcefully in the face of protocol and etiquette says much about both men and the respect they had for each other.

Meanwhile, how is this occasion being marked by broadcasters? ITV is showing a 10-year-old half-hour documentary about the great man. I'm not complaining, because my VHS recording of the original transmission is missing the first five minutes, but is that really it? The BBC, which employed him for the last 15 years of his life, and which could repeat his excellent and charming Comic Roots documentary from 1982, where he visits the Mancunian streets of his youth and the cotton mills where the prototypes for Cissie and Ada worked, isn't bothering at all. Sadly, I can't share that one, but expect some good clips to appear here on Wednesday.

In the mean time, enjoy my good friend Walty Dunlop's review of the new Jokers Wild series 1 DVD set.

Frinton for the incontinent

Happy new year to all my reader. Take your place at Miss Sophie's dinner table.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 24 part 4

To close the festivities, we return to Marty Feldman, aided and abetted by Tim Brooke-Taylor, in a Punch and Judy show. After this, Marty pays tribute to the unsung heroes of the BBC. About time that someone did, too.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 24 part 3

Nearly there. The penultimate selection in this year's advent calendar is a festive selection of items from the Fishguard news desk, staffed by Hugh Pugh, a man with an abrasive manner and a microphone that's never plugged in. Watch out for the table of Jesus-related artifacts. Re-watching that bit earlier caused the inhabitants of the Cheeseford living room to burst out laughing in a manner that bordered on indecent.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 24 part 2

From Danny Baker's appearance on the TV version of Room 101 (Get well soon, Candyman), here's a devastating critique of consumer shows. "Heh heh. Old Joe...".

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 24 part 1

As it's Christmas Eve all day and gremlins have hitherto prevented me opening some of the windows of this advent calendar at the correct time, we end with a bumper rollover jackpot of clips, chosen largely out of pure selfishness. We kick off with Martin Alan Feldman and John Junkin with the George Mitchell singers, rewriting 'The Whiffenpoof Song'. My good friend Gavin Sutherland showed me this sketch during a mammoth session of port and brandy at his luxury Wanstead penthouse flat over a decade ago, and it's been in my pantheon of TV greatness ever since. Not least because the end credit is sung. Take it away, ladies and gentlemen.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 23

Here we see Les Dawson getting a curiously muted response to one of his gags. What's wrong with this audience? Don't they appreciate quality? What's wrong with the audience is that there isn't one. Any laughter you hear is the crew in studio D at the BBC's Elstree centre at the stagger-through for the 1990 live final of Opportunity Knocks.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 22

Take two grown adults arsing about on a hillside in fake slow motion, an election slogan that we can all stand by and Frank Ricotti's wonderful arrangement of 'On a Clear Day You Can See Forever', and you have my favourite closing credit sequence of any programme ever: the end of the last episode of The Beiderbecke Affair. Alan Plater was a great man and, on the one occasion when I met him, everything I hoped he would be. Funny, interesting and kind. He's missed already.