THE BRITISH THREAD II

Did anybody see Norris open the box on Corrie?

It was quite funny.

It's a tad embarassing. I was hoping for a lesbian relationship to be outed between her and her Tongan housekeeper, but nothing yet.

Hey Obama wouldn't grant Brown a meeting.

Is this the end of the (one-sided) Special Relationship?

And Tony and GW were practically blood brothers, too. Oh, the shame.

I've not seen Corrie since Elsie Tanner and Ena Sharples' day.

Where would you choose to play Mac if you were one of the best footballers? One of the top teams eh?

Well then--Corrie is top of the ratings which is code for paying top money. So where would the best scriptwriters go?

I see very little of it myself in the summer months but now that the curtains are being drawn early in the evening I expect I'll be picking it up again.

In my opinion it is high class stuff. And not that easy to follow. It is mainly denigrated by snobs who believe that disparaging it locates them higher in the hierarchies. I understand that The Queen watches it.

Fair enough. I'm not denigrating it, please note, just saying I don't watch it.

My pal Packy watches it and he's more intelligent than I.

Why is he called that Mac?

He comes from a mining area where there was a lot of Irish immigration in past centuries. In that community, Packy is a not uncommon diminutive for Patrick (as Packy Bonner, goalkeeper for Glasgow Celtic FC) although his name is not Patrick, it is John.

I hope that's cleared that up.

Yeah ... so Patrick is like a nickname for your friend John, and they just call him Packy for short?

I've had a good few nicknames in my sheltered upbringing. The period before I began my interest in the real America on A2K rather than what I had been relying upon previously: namely cut and paste jobs trying to make Doris Day sexy type of thing.

There was Tav. His name was McCall and he had a hot sister who was aiming higher than any of his pals. It sounded Scottish. So MacTavish became TAV. He ended up a motorcycle cop. Pulled one of us up once for a laugh.

Tiny was 6ft 6" in his barefeet which were something to behold.

And LBJ, pronounced ellbeejay. Before then her husband was Harold and he was about 5ft tall. And Little H got going and stuck. He's still Little H today and I'm going back further than I like to think about. After a while Jean, his wife, who was also short, was Little Jean. Her being Little H's her indoors. Then she became Little Big Jean because of the size of her norks which were out of proportion to her stature. Then some wit had been watching a programme about American politics and had seen a placard reading All The Way with LBJ. And she is still LBJ despite having blown Little H out, taking 3/4 needless to say, and re-barnacling.

We had a Clang. He became a research chemist.

Scuzzer was another.

Doris Day was very sexy.

Just listen closely to her vocal on "Move Over, Darling". That could get a reaction from a corpse.

Helluva singer. She was a top big-band vocalist before she was a film actress.
I believe her autobiography is well raunchy, btw. It tells of the days before she was a professional virgin.

Sort of, but there's more.

In this country, Jack is a commonly-used familiar form of John. I don't know why.
In his case apparently, when he was small, Jack became Pack became Packy.

In the Glasgow TV drama Tutti Frutti, the bass player in the band was called Fud O'Donnell.

And in the west of Scotland, "fud" means vagina.

I was only having a bit of fun Mac. I read that Doris Day turned down the Mrs Robinson part because it was too naive.

...and in Newark New Jersey, an "Elmer" is getting a hand job from a guy. So Warner Brothers had this chracter named Elmer Fudd. hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

That's a bit Barry Manilow effemm.

Red Dwarf had a Planet Smegma and a character called Ace Rimmer.

The chidren's TV series Captain Pugwash, popular in the 1960s,



rejoiced in characters like Seaman Staines and Roger the Cabin Boy.

Or not, sorry.

http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/pugwash.asp

The news was interesting tonight. They showed the PM reading the names of the 37 soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the House of Commons began its summer holidays a few months back so that the record was set straight and the relatives of dead soldiers who were killed when the holidays were on didn't feel discriminated against compared to the relatives of those soldiers killed when they were in session, filling out their expenses claim forms, and could be read out and the sympathies of the House expressed as they happened in ones and twos.

I was hoping this event would be shown in full but alas the producers of the News obviously didn't think we could take it without reaching for the remote what with 37 being a large number of names of soldiers and their regiments, or other outfits, and our PM's dreadfully dull delivery The members of the House of Commons are made of sterner stuff. It was cut off after 3 names were recited to make way for some blather and then the last two in the list were shown.

But, of course, a fast-paced cutting edge News programme does have to be fast-paced. The video of the dousing of the kids at the bus stop by a woman driver yet to be named driving at speed through a large puddle was shown, I think, 6 times. Each the same piece of video. And then an interview with one of the smiling victims and her mother who said that she could see the funny side of it now but her daughter was in an awful bedraggled state when she arrived home soaked to the skin. The video had been copied and pasted off U Tube where the anonymous driver had aired it.

So whatever illusions we might have about our priorities are not shared by those whose job it is to bring us the nightly news.

Well that's right, Spendy.

I like the Jon Stewart Show on our More4 channel (orig from Comedy Central, NY) where he often mocks US news channels for focussing away from the new on to trivia and comedy items.

I used to think out media were better than that, but we're going that way, it seems.

Still, do you think the nation would have been better served, in an early-evening programme, by showing the Prime Minister reading out all 37 names and regiments? It's not a memorial service. I saw the piece, and I thought the gravity was adequately reflected.
And it made me think, what might Browns' secret thoughts be, as he read out the names of the dead in an illegal conflict which he voted for.