if it’s news to me, it must be news to you!
Pizza the action: Hampshire-based Tom Gozney has designed the Roccbox, a portable wood or gas fired barbeque that can cook a pizza in 90 seconds and sausages in five minutes and has reached the semi-finals of the Virgin Pitch to Rich scheme.
The bad news is it isn’t due for release until September, three months after the end of the UK barbeque season.
Farting fact of the week: There is never an ideal time to break wind when in the company of people you don’t know or don’t know well, but apparently two to six months into a relationship is the perfect time to share windy moments with your significant other.
Ding, dong, Avon calling: The door-to-door cosmetics company that started life in the US as the California Perfume Company in 1892 is to move its global headquarters to the UK, good news for all those aspiring Avon millionaires.
Budgie smugglers: Actually, it’s pigeon smuggling really. The people of the Middle East have a passion for pigeons that crosses national and religious divisions, a passion that goes back to the 8th century. The best breeders are in Syria and the war there has made pigeon smuggling big business.
Brief lives: Anita Brookner, Booker prize-winning author and art historian; Sylvia Anderson, co-creator of Thunderbirds and voice of Lady Penelope; Christopher Zeeman, mathematician who developed catastrophe theory, the precursor to chaos theory; Paul Daniels, conjuror, game show host and entertainer; Frank Sinatra Jnr, actor and singer;
And Cliff Michelmore, broadcaster and the face of current affairs on the BBC from the 1950s and one of the news readers, weathermen and sports presenters who took part in the Nothing Like a Dame routine in the 1971 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show.
I recall Two Way Family Favourites with some fondness. Invariably, they linked up with British servicemen (and some servicewomen) who always seemed to be posted to such faraway places as Germany (usually Cologne or Munchengladbach), Aden, Hong Kong, Cyprus and the like. Some of these lads must have been terribly homesick – even if our British weather was pretty dreadful when they were lounging around on sin-kissed beaches. It was very “British” and it was on the air (if I remember correctly) on Sunday lunchtimes when we were tucking into our roast beef and Yorkshire Pudding. I think Doddy came on directly after and also Round the Horne and The Navy Lark. The heady days of British radio.
Cliff Michelmore and Jean Metcalfe were the ideal presenters for the times , a bit formal but warm and caring with it. What have we got now? Chris Evans and Clarkson – God help us!
…oops! for “sin-kissed beaches” read, sun kisssed.
I think I preferred ‘sin-kissed’! My memory is a little different from yours though. I thought Two Way Family Favourites came after the comedy hour on Sunday. They were heady days indeed with the likes of Jimmy Clitheroe, Kenneth Horne etc. I may be wrong though. About the timing I mean, not the comedy.
…and, from the Clitheroe Kid, don’t forget Danny Ross and, from Round the Horne, “I’m Julian and this is my friend, Sandy.”
It seems I was wrong and Family Favourites started at noon as you can hear from this clip.