I had a very jumbled dream a couple of nights ago. It involved taking my bike to a park where I left a coat but couldn't then remember which park it was. I had no lights on my bike so had to return home. I passed another park where Robin Hall and Jimmy McGregor were playing (Robin and Jimmy who I hear you say).
I may have mentioned this duo before as they seem to come into my dreams quite a lot and I have no idea why. I just wake up with their song "Football Crazy" pinging round inside my head. Mind you that song does in many ways sum up my life. I have been football crazy since the age of about seven.
And yesterday Norwich City were crowned champions of the championship which strikes me as rather a contradiction in terms. We were all just a tad p----d off that we couldn't be there to join in the celebrations. The roof of Carrow Road would have been lifted off. It's been a strange three seasons - champions and promoted, relegated, champions and promoted.
But thoughts of Robin and Jimmy (already mentioned) set me off on another road of memories, recalling some of the characters from my youth who seemed to be part of our every day life but who have since long moved on. People like Fyfe Robertson, Alan Whicker, Hughie Green, Michael Miles, Mike and Bernie Winters and many more.
I saw a travel documentary recently hosted by Alan Whicker. Has there ever been such a soothing voice on television? Mr Whicker travelled all over the world soothing us and showing us the wonders of the planet. He was everywhere. Australia (there's Alan Whicker), USA (there's Alan Whicker), Outer Mongolia (yes it's Alan), Mars (sadly he never made it there).
That voice and that delivery, well it still captivates decades on. I couldn't help think about the Monty Python sketch:
First Whicker: Today we look at a vanishing race. A problem people who are fast disappearing off the face of the earth.
Second Whicker: A race who one might say are losing a winning battle.
Third Whicker: They live in a sunshine paradise, a Caribbean dream, where only reality is missing.
Fourth Whicker: For this is Whicker Island.
Fifth Whicker: An island inhabited entirely by ex-international interviewers in pursuit of the impossible dream.
First Whicker: The whole problem of Whicker Island is here in a nutshell.
Second Whicker: There are just too many Whickers.
Third Whicker: The light-weight suits.
Fourth Whicker: The old school tie.
Fifth Whicker: The practised voice of the seasoned campaigner.
First Whicker: Cannot hide the basic tragedy here.
Second Whicker: There just aren't enough rich people left to interview.
On paper that doesn't look all that amusing but you have to put it in the context of the times and it's still hilarious compared to Alan Partridge. Does anyone on here find Alan Partridge funny in any way? Am I alone in not understanding the humour? Take the advert for his latest show where he berates an assistant for eating raw eggs and asks everyone "to be safe, be egg safe." How is this remotely amusing?
I have tried to like Steve Coogin's invention but failed miserably. I'm afraid I find Partridge unfunny and very tedious even if he does make jokes about Norwich.
Talking of football (and somebody needs to stop me doing so). Apparently they have renamed the town 45 miles up the road. It's now known as Ipswich Nil Town. Notice I point out that Ipswich is a town and not a city. It has applied for city status in the past and failed miserably. Now I've upset any Ipswich fans out there. Oh to explain the comment. Ipswich recently went something like six games of football without scoring a single goal (hence Ipswich Nil).
When I'm on a nostalgia kick I often turn to You Tube and have a look at TV shows/films of the past. I spent a whole week watching old editions of What's My Line." My most recent has been Juke Box Jury. Who remembers this programme?
There we were enjoying a music and sexual revolution when the real meaning of sex, drugs and rock n roll came to the fore and here was a show where a panel of so called experts (people like actors, actresses and Nina and Frederik) sat in judgement on the "new tunes of the day."
The show was hosted by David Jacobs and everyone spoke with terribly terribly posh accents - completely out of sync with what was going on at the time.
They were presumably hearing the songs for the first time and only got played a short snatch of them as well. Then they had to decide 1/whether they were any good and 2/whether they would be a hit or a miss. Being a hit meant getting into the pop charts.
There is a Juke Box Jury show on You Tube from 1960. It shows just how appalling the music industry was at the time and just how wooden the panellists were. This one features two married couples. The Danish singing duo Nina and Frederik and the married acting pair Jill Ireland and David McCallum.
Not to put two fine a point on it, their comments show a complete lack of understanding of music. Two of the pieces they voted hits were Eeny Meeny Miney Moe by Pinky and Perky (yes that Pinky and Perky the pig puppets) and "Lively" by Lonnie Donegan. Both are just about as appalling as music can possibly be.
Let's start with the squeeky voice of the pigs. Frederik declared that he liked rock n roll with a twist as this record illustrated, Ireland described it as "charming," McCallum, who looked and sounded as if he would rather be somewhere, anywhere else, said: "I get pleasant images in my mind when I hear this music". Mate it was two squeeky pig puppets.
They described "Lively" as a wonderful record that they liked very much. "Let's have more of this sort of thing," said Frederik. They didn't greatly care for Poetry in Motion by Johnny Tillotson which has become an early rock classic. "I don't like this song very much" said Frederik: "Not my kind of record" said McCallum. I told you they didn't have many thoughts.
Then there was the instantly forgettable ballad "In Pursuit of Happiness" by Adam Wade which McCallum said "had youthful appeal" but which was such old hat. They finished with Honky Tonk Concerto by Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson during which a primarily youthful audience sat looking entirely embarrassed. McCallum described it as "very ingenuous". I'm not sure he understood the meaning of that word and think he probably meant something else. Ireland gave a very perceptive and in depth analysis of the piece - "You could skip to it," she said.
Thank goodness that it was only a few years to go before the likes of the Beatles and the Stones came upon us to grab music by the throat and shake it into some kind of artform.
Happily most of the records featured have subsequently sunk without trace apart from Poetry in Motion which was the one the panel liked the least.
Throughout that show the two married couples seemed at one in a kind of stuffed shirt sort of way. But in real life Ireland and McCallum divorced in 1967. Ireland went on to marry actor Charles Bronson. She died of cancer in 1984. McCallum is still around at the age of 87. Let's hope he looks slightly less bored than he did on Juke Box Jury.
Nina and Frederik were divorced in 1976. On the show Frederik displayed a rather upper class clean cut appearance. That was rather destroyed later when he was involved in trafficking cannabis and ended up being shot dead. Nina is still around at the age of 88.
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I recently watched the Oscar winning film Nomadland set amongst travellers in the Nevada Desert. I was particularly interested in this as, a number of years ago, I drove through part of this land and was taken by its vastness and sparseness.
Whilst finding the film interesting I didn't find it riveting and it was more like a documentary than a work of fiction. Indeed the cast was a mixture of actors and real trailer people. This made it slightly confusing trying to work out which was which and who was who. Was the person being featured talking from a script or from real experience?
Finally today some photographs taken in yesterday's visit to Norwich and also a couple from Hethersett. Today if the weather holds I'm going to take up the challenge of taking unusual photographs in my own garden. Hopefully will post those tomorrow. It's Bank Holiday Monday but the weather forecast is really bad so I'm hoping I can bring just a tiny bit of sunshine into your lives.
If you enjoy looking at my photographs and once again I point out that I am very much an amateur photographer, do go to my You Tube channel where I have a number of galleries. Just search "Norfolk and Suffolk Photographs."