One of the many irritating toys to put in an appearance during my
formative years. Bit of fur on a string. Then there were Clackers: pair
of balls on a string which you banged together at high speed. And that
hosepipe thing you whirled around in the air. Worst of all - if not in
its own right, then as the spawner of something really evil - was the Stylophone.
Its pathetic renderings of Beethoven's 9th etc., Bach's Toccata etc form
the basis for almost every mobile phone you hear.
No she didn't: she stripped in the usual boring way. The Roman Way
was merely the name of a pub. A classic headline from the News of the World.
From the Macintosh factory, now a shopping centre. Funnily enough,
I noticed no such smell over Bournville the other week.
What I thought was the very first game of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
(It wouldn't have made sense otherwise.) So ancient I used to take a transistor
radio (for R4 was on MW in those days) into Junior School. Of course,
the games were very different in those days: pick-up song, one song to
the tune of another, straight face, late arrivals etc... Pre-Rushton, Mr
Brooke Taylor being partnered by Mr Oddie. Pre-Samantha, pre-Sven. (I don't
remember Mr Cleese being there, or anything about taking it in turn as
hosts)
"There was a young Scotsman called Andy,
Who went down to the pub for a shandy.
When he lifted his kilt,
To wipe up what he'd spilt,
The barman said 'Blimey! That's handy!'"
Limerick taught by Sid James to his - or perhaps someone else's!
- parrot in 'Bless This House'.
'The world's shortest poem', describing how if feels to be The Greatest.
Spelling and punctuation are only guesses. I.S.T.R he declaimed it on Look
East: I.S.T.F. why he was in the area! Perhaps beating up on J Bugner or
filming an after-shave advert.
From about the time of Socialism with a human face, an exceptionally mean jibe about the country that demerged without a blood bath. Super Moose - unrelated to any subsequent character of that name - was a strip cartoon character used to launch the chocolate bar of the same name. I forget who made it, but Mars already had Milky Way and it's hardly Charbonnel et Walker's style.
I.S.T.R. the wrapper had a scratch panel. You rubbed it off to get a coded message. The key was in the advert, and I'd rate the following as a pretty good reconstruction of the standard of cryptography:
Qmfbtf objm nz ifbe up Cbtjm Gbxmuz't xbmm.
Appeared in 'Look & Learn (incorporating Ranger)', whose 'The
rise and fall of the Trigan Empire' was cited by Ian Hislop (Torygraph
1/8/99) as a precursor to Star Wars. Hoping to beat your previous record
for libel damages?
Many years later, Victor Meldrew attacked the problem with Margaret's
sewing machine. But had he survived, Stuart could have told him that you
need only grab one ply and unwind it from the roll. Everything else lines
up perfectly.