Pear Shaped Episode 13

 

Decisions decisions...

Seems the BBC have U-turned on Astra Zeneca being totally safe and are now saying I should trade my 0.1 per cent chance of dying from Covid19 for a 0.00017 per cent chance of dying from a blood clot.  Decisions decisions....

Pear Shaped 31st of March Tongiht

 

https://www.facebook.com/pearshapedcomedy/?view_public_for=252156881518836

Pear Shaped in Dystopia Episode 12

 

Pear Shaped 24th of March

 

The Sheriffs Are Coming to Croydon Council

This week I have been asked to sign a petition to call a referendum on the Shetland Islands staying as part of Scotland or becoming a crown dependency of the UK (see here).  "We are in a unique position as the Northern Gateway in this post-Brexit world.  We have a unique place in the UK and our historic relationships were with the Nordics and we also look to the Arctic."

Cllr James Stockan, who runs Orkney Islands Council siad:  “Both Shetland and Orkney punch above their weight economically and have GDP much above the Scottish average.”  I would call for independence for Croydon but we're totally stuffed financially and wouldn't survive.

Indeed, so broke are bankrupt Croydon Council that Ava Alexis even spotted the Council on "The Sheriffs Are Coming" ....

 

 

...prior to being forced to issue their section 114 notice the debt collectors were already beating at the door as can be seen in this video (about 10 minutes from the end).  Croydon Council owes £1900 in "legal bills" (for what one wonders?) and hasn't paid so (presumably after a CCJ) the Sheriffs come round... TV crew in tow.  After giving them half an hour to cough up or face the Sheriffs seizing their assets an employee is sent down to the lobby to pay the bill on a credit card.  Unfortunately their card is already maxed out so another Council minion is sent down with another card but he can't pay it either as it is above his card limit so eventually the bill is split over two credit cards.  TV crew are thrown out by this point.  This went out in 2018.  Prophetic?

 

There's a transcript here

 

My name's Mr Anderson. I've got a writ here for an outstanding debt that needs to be sorted today.

Can you tell me what it's regarding?

Consent order, for costs?

Yeah, I know about it, I do know about it.
It's been with our finance department. I'll take it upstairs and...

If you can ask your finance department to make a payment of the amount that I'm going to give you.

Well, I can do my best, that's all I can do.

Well, if they don't, I'll be wandering around and then walking out with chairs, tables and everything else.

Yeah, OK.

As long as someone comes down to show me proof that everything's been paid by 9:45...

Might be a little bit longer than that, cos I've got to find the person who's dealing with it.
15 minutes, cos we are a huge organization.

Well, a huge organisation should have had it sorted, then, shouldn't it really?

I hear what you say, but...

All right, I'll work with you. I'll give you till ten...

Thank you very much.

LATER

Croydon Council's skyscraper opened in 2013, and cost a reported £144 million.
Gerald and Rob haven't explored the internal winter garden or been up to the roof terrace, but there's plenty to admire in the lobby.
       

It looks almost like a military badge there, Rob.

It does. Nice little coat of arms.

What's that underneath it? Is it Latin?

That's Latin.

"Ad summa nitamur."

What does that mean?

I reckon, being the Council, it'll probably mean something like, "Strive for perfection."

-Yeah.

-LAUGHTER

Not bad, Gerald. It actually means, "We strive for the highest."
 

You've missed it but it's online...

Gardener's Television Time...

Some TV producer wrote in and asked if I would plug this for him.  He's looking for people who want their gardens made over...

Anyway I can't come up with enough content for this blog at the moment so I thought ...why not?

Youtube has finally restored my old channel - hooray"

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More Pear Shaped in Dystopia

 

In case anyone's still wondering how badly we're doing...

... We have the highest number of deaths per 100,000 population in the world. 
 

Whatever Happened in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads...

 

I am rather busy at the moment so haven’t had time to fill this blog with random nonsense… but it being two weeks since I wrote more than twenty words I think I should report that I have now watched (thanks to Ava Alexis’s Christmas presents) ALL of the Likely Lads and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads and the Likely Lads film which comes with the two old episodes of the Likely Lads that were only recovered in 2018.

Unfortunately most of the original Likely Lads episodes have been wiped by the BBC but the episodes that remain are rather fun.  There is an innocence about them.  Clearly budgets all but precluded any location filming so when the boys go out on the town their exploits are often related in snapshot montages which have a comedy syntax of their own.  The studio audience seem well up for it too and very jolly and you can see a very direct interaction between them and actors.  No one’s breaking the fourth wall but there’s quite a bit of playing to the gallery.  This was Clement and La Frenais’s first TV comedy and I think one of them once said that this big break for them came entirely because someone had just invented BBC2 and suddenly they realised there was no content to put on it.  The episodes as a result, despite being conventional in many ways, have a refreshing feel.  Even now.  Of course the show’s old.  So old that Bob and Terry actually work Ellison's Electrical which is a factory – remember those? 

Cloughie and Jack represent the world weary and work weary older workers and Michael Sheard puts in a couple of memorable performances as an unlovable middle management type …before going onto a long career of playing sour unlovable middle class pompous bullies like Grange Hill’s Mr Bronson.

Sheila Fearn as Terry’s sister Audrey is possibly the most prominent secondary character.  It’s amusing that for all Bob and Terry’s strutting as young men about town they both still live at home with their parents and we encounter both Terry’s parents (Edith and Cyril) frequently.  Audrey regularly brings them down to earth with a bump.  Edith reoccurs frequently in the sequel but what happened to Cyril remains a mystery – although I think he may be referenced in reported speech sometimes.  Due to a lack of acting credits for Alex McDonald after 1973 on IMDB I guess he may have not been alive for the sequel…

At the end of The Likely Lads Bob Ferris joins the army only to be discharged for having flat feet but in the meantime Terry Collier has joined to be with him and is therefore stuck in the army on his own.  The two are separated and this sets up the premise for the following Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads.  The reason I remember Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads so well (apart from its many repeats) is that it was ahead of its time with its continuing storylines. 

Series 1 has a continuing narrative about Bob and Thelma’s impending marriage.  A storyline that takes 13 episodes to resolve.  

 It’s unusual that the writers and producers thought they had enough material to make what would be the equivalent of two normal six episode series back to back – and it works.  Another thing that I hadn’t noticed until I watched the episodes back to back is that there are actually two versions of the titles – both the same material but reordered so that Rodney Bewes appears first in the titles one week and James Bolam appears first the next with the result that they each had top billing on alternate weeks. 

One has to wonder whether there was any discussion about this – particularly given the reported antipathy Bewes had towards Bolam in later life.  Bewes said Bolam never talked to him for years but, well, unless you’re Laurel and Hardy who really were best mates what is there to say when you’re no longer working with someone?  I used to do lots of gigs with Jimbo but I haven’t talked to him for years.  This doesn’t mean I don’t care what happened to him but I think it would be a bit weird if I just rang him up out the blue all the time… Fortunately this has never stopped anyone on the Daily Mail website writing sage comments about how Bolam must be a nasty piece of work?  Perhaps he is, perhaps he isn’t but at least when Bewes died he had the grace to say he had fond memories of working with him.  Anyway I’m reviewing fantasy not real life and…

…I also realised that the rubble the children seem to be playing in is created by slum clearance and not, as I had thought for years, by WWII bomb damage…despite this being clearly explained in dialogue.  There was a lot of WWII bomb rubble about even in the 70s.  I think we see that car park from Get Carter too.  The slum clearance theme continues through the series and into the film…

Despite not having seen Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads in about 10 years certain parts of the series are etched in my memory.  For example Bob’s explanation of why he has to get married because he’s suburban and small town.  Not to mention the memorable episode where Bob decides not to have a stag night but still ends up in a prison cell.  Of course, Terry, in the early episodes is very much the ranting anti-hero.  Yet despite his protestations to the contrary he must, as Bob points out, have enjoyed his time in the army or he wouldn’t have signed up for a further tour. 

Like all good antiheros Terry’s often bigoted rants often contain a kernel of truth from which he has spun a ridiculous fantasy leaving them as entertaining enough to be funny – particularly when Bob picks at the corners of a premise.  Bob is often deluded too but in a more fanciful way.  For instance Bob has a poorly disguised crush on his secretary Wendy (Elizabeth Lax) who is completely disinterested in him which Terry picks up on.  Sometimes they even seem to gang up on Bob together – weary in different ways of his pomposity.

In episode 1 Terry has been invalided out of the army (how he managed to sustain such an injury in peacetime is never fully explained because “I don’t talk about it”) and so has effectively been made redundant in his mid-thirties.  While Bob struggles to get on in business, Terry had decided to drop out.  Although portrayed as bitter, irresponsible and feckless one wonders if Terry might also be suffering from some kind of depression brought on by his sudden redundancy.  He spends a lot of time in bed. 

Terry’s antipathy towards Thelma wears off throughout the series and it’s quite touching at the end when he sees them off on their honeymoon.  During the second series, however, Bob’s marriage that deteriorates as he endlessly tries to find excuses to go out boozing with Terry or off the rails and Terry seems to be the one who has a problem with this.  Memorable moments in this series include Bob’s monologue about the “sheer number of things you have to do” as he struggles with his life of trying to climb the corporate ladder, do night school and go on skiing holidays.  Bob is somewhat deluded about his skiing abilities and it’s a running joke that only Thelma can ski proficiently.  At one point when Bob is trying to find another excuse to go on the prowl with Terry, Terry tartly reminds him that “or you could go home to your wife".  Terry is, of course, somewhat jealous of Bob's seemingly happy marriage.

There are standard comedy episodes such a Bob and Terry having a cycling competition and both cheating to interrupt all this.  Bob and Terry also get in trouble with the law a bit more – such as when Bob gets done for drink driving and Terry comes up with complex Withnail &I type scheme for urine substitution … you wouldn’t get away with it today… they also end up in front of the local magistrate for brawling on several occasions.

As the 2nd series goes on Bob and Thelma’s marriage gets more and more rocky and by the time of the final Christmas special they’re going (knowingly or unknowingly) to a fancy dress swingers party where Bob actually does start cheating and even steals a car at one point.   

By the time of the Likely Lads film that followed the series things have come full circle and Terry is the one trying to climb the social ladder while Bob is fishing through the rubble of the recently demolished Fat Ox and openly talking about cheating on Thelma.  Indeed, he’s quite openly cruel to her.  Much of the story is very broad farce but it’s rather sad and poignant when after being literally caught with their trousers down once too often Bob says “We can explain” and Terry says “No, we can’t.” 

In the end Bob gets stuck on a ship bound for Barhain after Terry decides to emigrate and bottle it – a sort of reversal of the cliff-hanger ending of the original series.

Bob and Terry’s world is also memorably populated by some interesting side characters such as (a pre-Last of the Summer Wine) Bill Owen as Thelma’s philandering father.  Although given the way his wife (a pre-Miss Marple Joan Hickson who later regenerates into Noel Dyson) hectors everyone one can’t feel too judgemental about this even though it leads to Bob and Terry having to try and hide his affair from Thelma (with hilarious consequences)… And also of course a plethora of unseen characters including Norman Gordon, Alan Boyle, Barry Pringle, Malcolm Price, Ronnie Oliver, Alan Stamp, Vin Welsh, Celia Fulcher, Norma Braithwaite, Janice Wainwright, Briony Hunt, Jutta Baumgarten, Wendy Thwaites, and the much maligned Deirdre Birchwood about whom the lads frequently reminisce or tell parables …

Pear Shaped in Dystopia Episode 7

 

Pear Shaped in Dystopia

https://facebook.com/pearshapedcomedy/?view_public_for=252156881518836

with the following flotsum from the furloughed comedy world...

 

 

Pear Shaped 5

 

I have nothing to say on low traffic neighbourhoods....

 

I feel that I should mention that I am aware of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods but that is all I have to say on this hot button issue as according to Inside Croydon anyone who has the teeniest weeniest objection to the concept is some kind of kipper or other far right nut job who is totally selfish and destroys the planet.

Tales of cars pushing planters, criminal damage to cameras and other stories have reached my ears but I have nothing to say on them.  Grant Shapps has decided to spend £175million of emergency money from Covid-19 to stop the planet boiling its self to death and has given the spending of it to local authorities who are arguing about how to implement the schemes to the advantage/disadvantage of each other with predictable results.  Stopping people driving by making their journeys longer and parking harder... what's the worst that could happen? Well,...

They tried humps and people brought 4x4s to skim over them, they tried Congestion Charges, ULEZ zones, 20 zones ...it was surely only a matter of time before someone reached the inevitable conclusion that the simplest way to get cars off roads is actually to block them off to cars.

However, it's all going pear shaped down the High Court until they change the law again (see here).

Oh well.... no one can go anywhere anyway...

Thing is whatever you say on this issue upsets someone ...

...no idea why I'm blocked by the ABD ...was it something I thought?