Month: December 2024

Advent #24

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Doctor Who, Family, Friends, TV

I recently discovered that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” is only half a saying (wasn’t that a Tommy Steel musical?). The full Wilde-ism runs, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness” which has a rather different connotation. Likewise, poor old money gets a bad press, but actually it’s THE LOVE OF money that is the root of all evil.

Similarly: I often cite Frasier from the final episode of Cheers, saying “Time goes by, so fast. People move in and out of your life. You must never miss an opportunity to tell these people how much they mean to you” – which is a worthy and insightful observation from Boston’s premier psychiatrist… But the significant detail is that he fails to follow his own advice, and remains silent. It’s advice that’s easier to agree with than to act on – I think so anyway (other than one uncharacteristic moment several years ago, in the freezer aisle at Tesco).

Not that I want to give the impression my entire life philosophy is founded on sitcoms, but… One of the great sitcom moments is in The Vicar of Dibley where boring old Frank, broadcasting on Radio Dibley, begins his show, “I first discovered I was gay…” He goes on to say how he has wanted to tell his friends for years, but is now finally able to from behind a microphone.

I suppose it’s just that one step of removal, and perhaps it’s the same with ‘social media’ – easier to write it down, easier to make sure we express ourselves correctly (“I do hope I do it all right” as Joyce Grenfell said). 

So with that in mind, with the hope that we’ve all made it safely to harbour once again,  I’d like to wish you a good Christmas. Whether you celebrate the true spirit of the season (ie, watch the Doctor Who Christmas special) or if you’re a non-believer; whatever you’re doing and whoever you’re doing it with, I hope you have a peaceful and relaxing and enjoyable time of it.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good night.

You Have Been Reading

x

Advent #23

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Moaning

It’s just an opinion, but I think the tide may have turned against the Christmas card.

Don’t get me wrong, ours have been sent out as usual (both of them). But we’ve only received three, which is less than previous years. I’m choosing to take that as a positive (as opposed to an “are we sending one to that old grump this year?!”). Not necessarily a positive in the sense that finally people are coming round to my way of thinking, but at least in the sense that in the modern age when we’re worried about natural resources and we have other means of communication, maybe the humble Christmas card (humble in isolation, not so humble if Google is correct in telling me the UK sends over a billion (!) each year) has had its day.

I appreciate there’s a lot of employment generated by the greetings card industry. And yes, true, it keeps the Post Office and the Royal Mail busy. But apart from that, what have the Romans ever d– Sorry, no, what has THE CHRISTMAS CARD ever done for us?

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My cousin and her wife have rather brilliantly side-stepped the whole knotty problem, and their ‘cards’ always arrive in the form of decorations of some sort. This year’s, for example, is a stylised Christmas tree. Or at least, it is now we’ve got the hang of the assembly instruction and put it together properly (there may have been just a hint of Celia Imrie and Victoria Wood’s, “apply to bracket D with flange channel outermost” to proceedings). After Christmas it will join its predecessors, and go back in the box of decorations ready to be reused next year. Brilliant.

Anyway – that’s quite enough rambling on from me.

I wouldn’t want you to get card-bored!!

Advent #22

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in BBC, Christmas, TV
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Although Morecambe & Wise are a Christmas institution I’m slightly too young (yes, you heard me!) to remember them at the time. No, if I associate any comedy duo with Christmas, it’s more likely to be The Two Ronnies.

Nowadays, like Eric & Ern, we tend to get ‘Best Of’ compilations of Ronnie & Ronnie, meaning we’re used to seeing great sketch after great sketch (and perhaps giving the misleading view that EVERY one was a classic).

Four Candles of course. But also the Mastermind sketch, a clever idea brilliantly exploited. Ditto the phone booth sketch, and F.U.N.E.X. Then there’s the two tramps (“I’d be richer than Rockefeller”) and my particular favourites the two guys in the… What, in the thick of it?…In the know, do you mean?… No, in the pub, the two guys in the pub.

What I love is that on the one hand Ronnie Corbett is ALWAYS Ronnie Corbett, whether he’s playing a businessman, a bus driver, or a housewife (that’s not an insult, they used to say the same thing about Humphrey Bogart (well maybe not the housewife)). Whereas Ronnie Barker is NEVER Ronnie Barker. He’s always so immersed in the part that he sounds different, he looks different, he moves in a different way…

But of course that contrast is the nature of the Two Ronnies, who weren’t really a ‘traditional’ double-act at all. Two individual comedians brought together by the BBC, brilliant together, able to go off and be brilliant on their own. Meaning they are a different kettle of fish to Morecambe & Wise, and meaning there’s plenty of space for both of them (all four of them!) at Christmas – whether they’re bringing us sunshine, or bringing us just a few late items of news!

And with that, it’s goodnight from him.

Advent #21

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, TV
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Over the past few months I’ve been getting into The Archers. (After seven decades I thought maybe I should find out what all the fuss is about.) I’m enjoying it a great deal, although just very occasionally it’s difficult not to be reminded of Tony Hancock’s version: “oh dear… they’ve all fallen down that disused mineshaft, etc.”

Last Christmas my brother bought me an extraordinary book, a large format graphic novel, beautifully illustrated in moody black & white, all about Hancock’s life (and death). A mix of biography and fantasy, it was clearly a labour of love for its authors – reflected in the price tag, which I hope bruv managed to get a reduction on!

Every year as Christmas and birthdays loom, Mr Curnow senior (well, senior-er than me anyway) asks for suggestions for presents  – and I have to confess, every year we fail to come up with anything and he’s left to his own devices.

To be honest it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem, and I’m regularly amazed by the things he gifts us. So, for example, Mr Hudson’s Diaries when I was going through my Upstairs Downstairs phase; Septimus and the Danedyke Mystery, evoking great memories of 1970s ITV Sunday afternoon serials; and a vintage book chronicling 10 years of Take The High Road.

It’s as if he’s riffing off the plot of The Evil of the Daleks and using a time machine to bring antique items back from the past into the present day. (Or he has an eBay account, either of those two scenarios would fit.)

It’ll be interesting to see what he’s come up with this year – and to be honest, with all the hard work he puts in, it’s no wonder he deserves the occasional pint.

A pint?! That’s very nearly…

Advent #20

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Work
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My Dad recently made the point, although more eloquently than I’ve time to expand on here, that he doesn’t really want or need anything for Christmas.

My Grandpa once made the same point (although we ignored him) as did my father-in-law on many occasions (we ignored him too) – and for that matter, the past couple of years I’ve said the same thing myself. (But have been ignored.)

I certainly don’t feel that I need anything. My Mum, I suspect, may worry that I need more shoes. I’ve only got two feet – slightly above average, but even so there’s a limit to how many I can wear. Meanwhile my wife seems to be obsessed with my underwear—

No, I just mean she keeps looking at my pants—

Oh dear, I should have said, sometimes she rummages in my drawers–

>ahem< My wife, to clarify, has formed the opinion that I could do with some new undergarments in the rotation. I disagree. (As in, I think I have plenty – not as in, I disagree with the principle of undergarments.)

I actually said last year (just prior to being ignored probably) that if I went through the whole of Christmas Day without getting any presents it genuinely wouldn’t bother me. That’s not to say I don’t like presents, far from it. But what I really enjoy is the break from the normal routine.

I don’t work over Christmas, but we do stay open, because after two days off my boss says he’s bored with nothing to do. Personally, even away from work I can usually find something to do – plus there’s the luxury of time at Christmas to be able to do a bit of nothing inbetween all the somethings.

As for Dad, and buying Christmas presents…

Obviously we’ve ignored him. (Sorry.) 

Advent #19

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, 1980s, BBC, Christmas, TV
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Not that I want to suggest all I do is watch TV but…

Oh! BUT– actually, maybe I DON’T. Because I’ve never watched Gavin & Stacey!

I may have caught two minutes of it once (Alison Steadman discussing her breakfast I think) but that was en route to something else and I didn’t hang around. Apart from that brief encounter, it’s a show that entirely slipped under my radar. Likewise Count Arthur Strong, Ghosts, Miranda…

For all that we like to bemoan the death of the sitcom, actually it still seems to be in fine form. No, not every show is a triumph – but nostalgia has made us forget that even back in the day, for every The Good Life or Yes Minister there were half a dozen Goodbye, Mr Kents or Sweet Sixteens.

Gavin & Stacey is currently making my radar ping like there’s a U Boat fleet headed straight for me, because a whole load of hype in recent weeks has made it very clear that it’s coming back for one final episode on Christmas Day. It’s the BBC’s big hope for huge festive viewing figures.

Of course, ‘huge’ is different nowadays – you can no longer ever expect to claim that almost half the population of the country has watched something, as they did back in, for example, Del & Rodney’s heyday. TV is now too fragmented, and the days where “Stupid Boy” or “Listen Very Carefully” or “Just the One, Mrs Wembley” or even “You Plonker!” would enter everyday language by cultural osmosis have gone.

But that’s not to say TV is dead (thank goodness). Less high profile, but I see there’s another one-off revival on Boxing Day, with a new episode of “Outnumbered. Now that I AM looking forward to.

Not that I want to suggest…

Advent #18

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Confused
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One song which doesn’t get much airplay, oddly, is River by Joni Mitchell.

I don’t know if it was intended as a Christmas song (it was released in June 1971, rather than December) but frankly if you’re going to mention Christmas trees and reindeer in a song you have to accept that sooner or later (almost certainly sooner) we’re going to claim it as ‘Christmassy’.

The first time I ever heard it was in an episode of Ally McBeal (if you want to carbon date which series, it was between ‘death of Billy’ and ‘OMG Bon Jovi’) and was sung by boyfriend de jour, Robert Downey junior – and I assumed it had been written specially for the episode.

Anybody with a long memory (and no doubt a despairing look) may recall earlier examples of my musical ignorance, never having heard of John Lennon until his death for example. Similarly I’d never heard of Joni Mitchell – so in that context I guess it’s not surprising that I didn’t realise a song I’d never heard before was written by a singer I’d never heard of either!

Fast forward a few years, and of course Joni Mitchell has become inextricably linked with Christmas (whether she likes it or not) by dint of another song appearing in ‘that Emma Thompson scene’ in Love Actually. THAT was the first time I’d heard Joni Mitchell’s name… although given how they talked about her, I assumed she was dead.

I wasn’t disillusioned of THAT until a news story another few years later reporting that she was gravely ill – and while obviously it’s stretching it to call that ‘good news’ it did at least demonstrate she was still alive, so…

In conclusion, I guess – I really don’t know music at all.

(But I know what I like!)

Advent #17

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Childhood, Christmas
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One thing I miss about being a child at Christmas, is the Selection Box.

Obviously there’s no law against getting one as an adult – but it’s a very unlikely present to receive, or if you do get one it’s probably meant to be ‘ironic’. I don’t mind ironic chocolate (it’s the dark stuff I can’t stand) but it’s not quite the same as the simple, unadulterated pleasure of having spent twelve months being warned of the dangers of too many sweets, only to not just hit the mother lode but actually be presented with it come Christmas.

I’m a child of the seventies, so of course our Selection Boxes were slightly, um, adulterated not just by perennial party pooper the Bounty, but also by the now-thankfully discontinued Topic – cursed with a catchy slogan forever proclaiming it as the answer to the question “What has a hazelnut in every bite?” (Or rather, one of TWO answers, the other of course being “a hazelnut” and NOT, as a friend in secondary school tried to convince me, squirrel s**t.)

Other than that, I seem to recall Curly Wurly and Mars being the big stars, alongside stalwarts such as Twix and the Double Decker – if comparative newcomers such as the Wispa ever reached selection box status, it was after my time.

Obviously I can hardly stress enough, this is simply an exercise in nostalgia. It’s important to make that clear because the danger of mentioning how much you miss getting a selection box at Christmas when there’s still a week to go, is that one runs the risk of everybody suddenly deciding to buy a selection box, with the result that I might end up with, well, with a whole selection of them.

Gosh. Goodness. Dear me. I certainly hope THAT doesn’t happen…

Advent #16

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning
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It’s time to get something off my chest. Namely, the Twelve Days of Christmas.

I don’t like it.

I don’t like the tendency for people to sing “GoldEN rings” instead of “Gold” – I don’t like the debate about whether twelve is drummers drumming or lords a-leaping – and I don’t like novelty celebrity versions. No, not even Julie “And a de-li-cious chocolate éclair” Andrews.

I mean, I probably OUGHT to like it. The song is just a list – and I’m a Doctor Who fan and we LOVE a list. Oh, but except that it isn’t just A list is it? It starts off as a list of birds (other than five, for no fathomable reason) but then at about seven or eight the author ditches that and starts yammering on about maids and pipers instead. A bit like the ‘play within a play’ business which Shakespeare totally forgets part way through The Taming of the Shrew.

But what I most especially dislike, is this modern trend of claiming that the poor benighted recipient gets TWELVE partridges (in TWELVE pear trees). OK, at a push I will accept that IN THEORY the song says that – but we surely haven’t spent all these years patiently explaining to the fundamentalist Christians that it might actually be an allegorical tree and that there never was a talking serpent; just to get all militant about the wording of this wretched carol.

In the old days, it was taken as read that this was a daily recap and that there was only ever one partridge, all the way up to only one batch of twelve drummers. And only five, NOT forty, golde– gold rings.

Anyway, I’m now off to take some deep breaths. And that’s all I have to say.

On the sixteenth day of Christmas.

Advent #15

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family

My wife and daughter are in a gang. They’re not part of the white slave trade, and they don’t suddenly burst into song as if they’re in West Side Story, but still, nevertheless, they have a gang. (The gang also has a WhatsApp group but then, who doesn’t?)

There are, I think, eight of them – although it is a fact that I’ve seen seven of them in various combinations, but have never seen the eighth. I’ve seen a photo but nowadays that’s easily faked, so frankly it could just be a massive wind-up to make me think there’s another person involved. (A bit like when people tried to convince me John Nettles had moved in down the road from us.)

Regardless of all that nonsense, today the seven-or-eight of them are going out for lunch together. A bit like a Christmas Works Do but without the niggling business of having to be at work together for the preceding eleven months.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a gang, certainly not since the turn of the century, although very occasionally I get involved (or at least, get briefly caught in the gravitational pull of it all). A bit like Elliot Gould in Friends, popping up from time to time, good-natured but bewildered. Wearing a funny hat in ‘The One With Liz’s Garden’ for example, or as the butt of the joke in ‘The One With The Cardio T-Shirt’.

I know, of course, being serious for a moment, that not everything in life can be compared to American sitcoms – so as they enjoy their lunch together, I’d just like to wish a merry Christmas to all eight (might be seven) of those Golden Girls.

Cheers!

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