As someone once said "If a fly went in one of your ears and came out of the other, what would it be known as?" Answer - a space invader.
But first a bit of pride. Not so long ago I had an article printed in the local media about the Wulugu project which builds schools in Northern Ghana and which is organised by Lynne Symonds from Great Melton which is a couple of miles down the road. Following that article a benefactor came forward with a large donation which enabled the project to build a new school in a village about the same size as Hethersett.
I have done an update for the press and various publications and include a few photos with this blog which I love. Just look at all those smiling faces and all the colour.
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Thanks to Alan Mann, the mystery of the date of Billy Cotton's appearance at Norwich Hippodrome has been solved. I had narrowed it down to either 1953 or 1959 and it was actually 1953. Thanks to Alan for the information and telling me that his wife's father worked the curtains at the Hippodrome. Alan admits to having seen Old Mother Riley there. Now there's a comedian.
Old Mother Riley was actually Arthur Lucan (no relation of the ever disappearing Lord Lucan). He came from Lincolnshire and was a regular on the variety stage dressed up as Old Mother Riley.
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For some reason a couple of days ago I had another flashback to my childhood. My parents owned a greengrocer's shop in Hellesdon just outside Norwich. My mother ran this whilst my father worked as a television engineer. Next to the shop was the hardware store Dixons. It's still there but nowadays is divided into a number of separate franchises. I remember Dixons always had a row of dustbins etc in a line and I would race my pedal car around these. It was long before people used to park their cars there. I had a bright red pedal car. But the flashback was in the corner shelf of Dixons where they had Airfix models. I used to save up my pocket money to buy these. Model aircraft, Beefeaters and many other models. I would buy them, take them home and then sit for hours gluing them together. I don't know what prompted that memory.
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Not really a ridiculous quiz answer but a mispronunciation by Ben Shephard who said prostrate rather than prostate. A lot of people get interment and internment mixed up and in Norfolk we talk about cerstificates rather than certificates. Only words after all. Here's a ridiculous quiz answer from Tipping Point. An amoeba has how many cells? Answer - none.
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Coronation Street is getting ridiculous. It's the only soap that I still watch having been with it since the first episode in December 1960. But at times the plots have got more and more contrived and stretching reality to breaking point. A couple of nights ago armed police with machine guns smashed their way into the solicitors' office. It was just plain ridiculous.
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Sad to hear that Bamber Gascoigne has died. Somebody else I felt I grew up with. His calming voice and laid back presence always saw me gravitating towards University Challenge for which he was question master for something like 25 years. I still enjoy the quiz but Jeremy Paxton is nowhere near as cultured or humble as Bamber. The best comment I have read came from Victoria Coren Mitchell who said: "No quiz host has ever seemed more like they could answer all the questions themselves."