THE BRITISH THREAD II

Notice how DP slips from one subject to another so that she never has to go into anything below the surface.

One might have hoped that-



would have produced a flurry of activity.

Well it didn't. I'm not that stupid. You remind me of Hannibal Lecter.

Who on earth is Hannibal Lecter?

You are kidding. There is no literate person in Britain who does not know who HL is- even I know, and I have not even seen the film(s)

Perhaps that's just as well Mac if he's anything like me.

But I suspect that if DP knows all about him that is most unlikely.

Walking home from the pub tonight with a keen easterly driving near frozen drizzle into my face I got thinking about what it must have been like living in the wattle and daub huts until next May and it struck me as being quite amazing that women don't bow to all the men they pass in the street and say "Thank-you Sir."

They sure are hard to please.

Anyone saw Cranford?

I loved it - didn't want tit to end.

I was in bonnet heaven.


Trouble is it makes me talk funny for a few days:

Really, Mr Smith!

It is most unseemly to to enter upon a Jobcentre, and address a lady, whilst wearing a hat!

And I shan't be receiving anyone today - if they attend outside the permitted calling hours of between 12 and 3.

I shall be wearing my new Yellow bonnet today. Expect I'll be the talk of Didsbury...

It's French!

I bid you Good Morning.

x

Good morning, smorgs - have a good start in the week. (But if you really want to go to the office - it's okay :wink: )

Nice caricature in today's The Guardian

Morning Walter!

x

I liked the bit where the woman said

"My sister does not approve of the term "to suck""

and then

"We shall retire to our room and consume our fruit in solitude"

Gordan Broon has just made a speech of historic importance. I was watching it when live coverage was interupted to go to a back garden in margate where a grieving father was questioned about how he felt that his daughter had been murdered.

The BBC have lost the plot. We are forced to pay them to lie to us.

They know their audience Steve.

Well they dont know me and I'm no longer going to pay fantastic index linked pension for "Our Strictly correspondent"*.

*a dance competition apparantly

I am fed up with these tossers who dont know a gigawatt from giraffe presuming what I should be interested in.

You are talking like one of those old Third Programme fanatics Steve.

They do not presume to say what you should be interested in. They cater for majorities. Ratings.

As soon as Mr Brown gets launched into his blather about how good he is in every sense of the word the majority reach for their remote and if they find gardens being dug up to find the bodies of sexually assaulted and murdered girls being covered they stay with that and the BBC has lost them. It may well put on its murder sequence when the others are doing Mr Brown. It's just the way Premier League Newsrooms play the game. They are dealing with a shifting target but they know what interests it the most. Sex, death and money.

You are to be commended for your iconoclastic attitude. I went through it my self many years ago. My narcissistic period I call it now.

These people are at work. It's a job. It's high stakes. Sky's the limit, speaking poetically, as I suppose I ought to point out to a scientific person.

You are missing the best of telly once you start watching the programmes themselves rather than how the magic works.

I saw 10 minutes of Cranford and it was consistent with what I had been led to believe and, indeed, come to expect. It is a remake of Chubby Brown's UFO with piss-taking of the lower-middle class lady for trimmings. The ones sat watching it I mean.

From what I can gather Mss Birtwistle, Conklin and Silburn scoured, and when Mss's scour it gets scoured, the other writings of Mrs Gaskell, a Manchester lady who wrote a beautiful biography of dear Emily Bronte, for stories that would not only increase the narrative drive but point a moral in the direction one might expect three Mss to point. Ceiling busters. Networkers.

Mr Titchmarsh was far better. That had class. It will soon be Sir Alan I fear. I mean-- don't we live in a beautiful land? Just the bloke we need for Head of Programmes. He's a smoothie alright. He probably apprenticed at a garden centre selling all that torture equipment to happy couples out for a drive who saw the bunting fluttering. I've seen them come in for an Afternoon Tea and going out with two bags of peat, a cherry tree, and stake, and ties, a bag of fertiliser, a twist-fork and a barometer, and leave an order for a 20lb turkey for Christmas.

Thus spake Spendathustra. Always worth a read.

Steve, don't knock Strictly, Mrs McTag and yours truly are big fans. Although not of Brucie, of course. And I wouldn't kick Claudia out for eating biscuits in bed either, tho' I daresay she'd be a bit to gobby for Spendy, who prefers his woment pink, plump, frilly and silent. Until spoken to. Apparently.

Like I said...

Cranford was brilliant!

I've been wearing my bonnet all day.

I didn't know Cranford was based on Knutsford though.

Thanks for the information about Elizabeth Gaskell, spendy, sweetie...

Like we didn't know.

Good job we've got you here on THE BRITISH THREAD to inform us ignoramus's about English literature.

An excess of boastfulness, is quite unbecoming in a gentleman. And it is considered quite impolite to inform the already informed. Opinion is best kept to oneself when in the presence of a lady.

In other words...

Bugger off! (kind Sir)

x

Well I'm probably just jealous because I've never seen it and dont understand it. What is it? And how come the BBC employs a "Strictly" correspondent to report on one of its own progammes?

No doubt the strictly person will be a celebrity in her own right. And we will have competitions between different strictly/pudsey reporters with reporters reporting.

What if it were toast?

I find toast crumbs far more of a distraction.

x

You are being unfair on me smorgsie.

Simply because you have a smattering of knowledge about Mrs Gaskell is no reason to assume that other viewers also have or to seek to inhibit my attempt to bring them all up to your standards.

If somebody was explaining what toad-in-the-hole is I wouldn't go interrupting just because I happen to know. It would be vulgar.

Steve wrote-



You mean like when Kate Burley got so excited about finally being allowed to show her fans her bottom and front gusset in the skating competition.