1995.
What a year for me.It all started in January.Got up,went to work,went to bed,the next day,got up went to work,went to bed and so it went until sometime in December.
It's all gone down hill a bit since then 
Tortoise
Blouse
Beer
Socks
Black holes
Trombone
The one that got away
Bling
London Palladium
3 in 1 oil
Quote: john tregorran @ 18th October 2019, 1:17 AM1995.
What a year for me.It all started in January.Got up,went to work,went to bed,the next day,got up went to work,went to bed and so it went until sometime in December.
It's all gone down hill a bit since then
Did you go to the lavatory?
Quote: Paul Wimsett @ 19th October 2019, 3:03 PMDid you go to the lavatory?
Ewww, 'ark at us with "the lavatory", swipe me aren't we posh. Bog not good enough then. 
E L Wisty famously went to the lavatory.
I'm like the royal family,we don't do things like that.
We are all clearly struggling with these topics so I'm adding fifteen new ones so there is no excuse.
First Ten
Tortoise
Blouse
Beer
Socks
Black holes
Trombone
The one that got away
Bling
London Palladium
3 in 1 oil
Second Fifteen
Worms
Amsterdam
Bicycle
Art Gallery
Curry
Prostitutes
Phil Collins
Newspaper Round
Dustmen
Baby Oil
Scarborough
Grass
Thailand
Comedy DVD
VD
I can remember as a child watching Sunday Night at the London Palladium and thinking to myself 'This is load of shit'
Quote: Teddy Paddalack @ 15th November 2019, 1:30 PMI can remember as a child watching Sunday Night at the London Palladium and thinking to myself 'This is load of shit'
I can remember doing the same thing.
Most of the acts were pretty dull but I used to enjoy the comedians.
One night however (in 1963?), an unknown comedian walked onto the stage and his destiny was to change British comedy overnight - from ancient to modern.
It was Jimmy Tarbuck.
The Beatles changed British pop music forever and I think it's fair to say Jimmy was the Beatles of comedy.
Liverpool comes in for a lot of stick occasionally but when it comes to music, football and comedy - it's a city to be reckoned with.
And that's from a Mancunian! 
Jimmy Tarbuck is about as funny as getting shot at . He's a a Tory boy who robbed jokes off real comedians and sold out to the Surrey Set with Cilla and Maggie Thatcher. Eddie Braben the butchers son that's a funny Scouser.
The Beatles rocked the world but I don't have any of their tunes but I do have The Stone Roses The Smiths New Order and Oasis.
As for football yes Everton are the founder members of the game and to this day they remain in the community and supported by the community , hence their name 'The Peoples Club'
Quote: Teddy Paddalack @ 15th November 2019, 2:21 PMEddie Braben the butcher's son - that's a funny Scouser.
One of the funniest ever, I'd say.
Yes - Braben is very good. So are the La's.
If either of you feel you have done your Palladium story you can replace it with a different topic for the list. We are probably not going to get anything more for that one unless somebody has performed there or the roof ever fell in .
Quote: A Horseradish @ 15th November 2019, 4:20 PMIf either of you feel you have done your Palladium story you can replace it with a different topic for the list. We are probably not going to get anything more for that one unless somebody has performed there or the roof ever fell in .
Bugger! I'd forgotten the nature of the game and was simply adding to Teddy's observation about the London Palladium.
Accordingly, it should be Teddy who replaces the Palladium in the list of topics with one of his own.
Amsterdam - Part 1
I took the job in order to escape my boss. For all of its supposed "glamour" there is no way otherwise I would have taken it. Anxiety would have overwhelmed. It was only to be an average salary, they said in the interview. Would I still be prepared to travel to the UN in Switzerland to take notes for a fortnight every July and every December? Oh yes, I said, hardly believing my ears. The jet set life was the stuff of other people. Obviously I had not expected them to accept me. I had been turned into a quivering wreck in interview one by the physical posturing of the immediate manager to be, an ex hippy who had discovered his inner greyness via a hobby in burial grounds and had his legs stretched out on a desk two feet above me. Later I realised I had got off lightly. Had I been female it would have been half an hour of manspreading.
Somehow I had passed that bit and it was not without irony that I was warned by him that the next bloke up was very intimidating. "He chairs the Committee" I was told. "He thinks he commands the respect of the world and is old school but his bark is worse than his bite". In the first thirty seconds of interview two, I was told that generally he was accompanied to Geneva by a woman. He thought he could put up with me on the grounds that my father would be of the age to have done National Service. "He had rheumatic fever as a child and so he was let off it" I said. The over-dramatic coughing and spluttering suggested I had blown it although he reddened when I told him Dad had been poor and lived in damp houses.
That night I saw Kev. A good mate but as friendships go it was seen widely as unlikely. I was a bit leftish at that time. He was UKIP before UKIP was invented. It was like a younger equivalent of the friendship of Michael Foot and Enoch Powell which by all accounts was strong and known in the press as the Unholy Alliance. Kev would have been manager two's ideal candidate if he had been forced to have had a bloke to support him. Tall and with a sergeant majorly bearing he was not in personality unlike Foggy in Summer Wine. He had visited every league and non league ground in the UK by the age of 27 and had only recently reached his 30th birthday. In the three intervening years, he had managed to tick off most of the Belgian non league grounds while fitting in trips to the theatre and reading the entire works of Dickens and Jane Austen.
"You're buggered if they say yes" he said. "Why?" "You're 28, you've never been in an aeroplane and always said you would find it impossible to fly". "Oh, I hadn't thought of that" I replied "but it's not going to happen. They didn't like me". "That was the case with your interview in our section" he said. "You still got the job even though you turned up 30 minutes late because you had followed a wrong street sign and eventually greeted the Tory boss by showily displaying a copy of The Guardian. Look, if they say yes come with me on my next trip abroad. If you lose the plot, it won't matter to me and you will still have the time to turn them down." "Where?" I asked. "I'm going to Amsterdam next for FC Haarlem and Anne Frank" he said. Two days later, Power Legs and Mainwaring said yes. Damn. Ain't life a bastard at every twist and turn.
Amsterdam - Part 2
"Oi, oi.....Amsterdam....you dirty bastard. Birds and whatever else takes your fancy. Coffee shops. You old dog. F**kin' 'ell, Amsterdam". It was Friday night and I was down the Red Lion with the regular crowd of reprobates to whom I was susceptible in varying degrees. Some in truth were great and long term mates. Others not so much. The one who was seven stone three and five foot five who generally left us at around 9pm tended to be a bit much. Accusing us all of being pussies as we wouldn't join him in heading off to be a part of a bukkake film shoot in Waterloo. I wouldn't have minded but he was the one person I had to manage in work at the time. And when the American "actress" moved in with him it was so bizarre and beyond the pale I couldn't handle it. "Who are you going with then?" "Kev". "Oh. Not Kev as in Kevin?"
"Yep". "Oh Christ, well good luck on that one. Why?" "Because unlike you I am preparing for the dream job I have just got where I will be mixing with the world's leaders". It is worth pointing out here that there were three reasons why Kev and I got on sort of well. First, at that frosty earlier interview, he was the one person who came up to me and shook my hand saying "I hope you get the job." People going out of their way to be welcoming always is a big plus for me in uncertainty.
Next, he was no less pleb like in background than I was. In fact, it had emerged that my Nan who was virtually a cockney and his Nan had lived on the same road which created a bond. And thirdly, I have always enjoyed the stories which can arise from people some avoid for seeming a little eccentric, especially when they involve a robust sort of quality which reinforces my confidence. I knew that one of Kev's best moments had involved a solo non league expedition to Northern Ireland where he had single handedly taken on the IRA. Using a map from the early 20th Century so as to get to a ground, he had become furious on finding as he was on route that there was a brick wall with barbed wire stopping him getting there on time. One daubed with the slogan "British Troops Out". Kids in the yard beside it threw stones at him until they were lured into Kev world. Ultimately they all agreed that the map maker was totally out of order and with apologies they arranged for him to be ferried to the match. You just don't get that sort of colour with people who are run of the mill.
I don't actually recall much of the flight over or back. A bit of "how lovely it is to be above the clouds - it reminds me of when I was on my garden swing" but I would never have said it. It would have gone down like a trippy lead balloon. There was bad news in my ears - I am one who suffers with pressure - and a few issues with baggage. But no panic attacks. That was a testament to me but probably more the starched stiff-upper-lip rigidity of Kevin himself. Such a thing is a strange support. Budget obviously. Budget flight. Budget accommodation heavily on the agenda. Budget in terms of having to deny that Amsterdam was anything like its reputation as a matter of army order. His concerns about the potential liberalism of the VVV opposite Central Station were only outweighed by its practical convenience and the fact that it is where all budget people go. Get in. Sort it quickly. A military strategy is best. It will beat all the backpackers, the daft sods.
Amsterdam - Part 3
The queue at the VVV was longer than anticipated. Consequently this provided Kev with an opportunity to provide me with my instructions. No illegal substances throughout the weekend. A twin room for lower than the price on any of the VVV boards. Some cultural history, yes, but not the biggest museum as it would interfere with the football schedule. And definitely no red light district. He had drawn lines on his map to ensure that we could do what was a long walk to avoid it.
Luckily, accommodation was subsequently offered at a lower price than anything stated, albeit with a quizzical frown from the person helping us. We were given a key and told that it was only seven minutes away. Terrific. Except when I came to give Kev my half of the money it transpired not without confusion on both of our parts that it wasn't needed. What we had hoped would be a dirt cheap price for each of us had inadvertently been the price for the room so that that was utterly ludicrous. Something like £15 for three nights all in. Still, it had been done so the next thing rationally was for us to find it.
Seven minutes later, he announces "it's here". "Kev" I say. "That's a multi-storey car park". "Oh yes, so it is" he says. "It must be around the other side of it". A minute later we were at the end of a road with a bloody great wall to divide it from any other road and the reverse side of the car park, albeit one with a beaten up door. Now what? "Well, I suppose we will have to open it" he said so we did and were faced only with a set of bare concrete stairs. On its second level, it opened out a bit and there was a lift. Having no other strategy we got inside it and went up a further flight. And from there the start of a labyrinth of corridors appeared where clearly there was a series of numbered rooms, behind which was the sound of cars.
Narrow. No carpet. Fag butts strewn along the walkways. Less inviting than the worst estate in Britain. But quite quickly we did find a room with the same number as the key. The key fitted. I say room. It looked for all the world like a cell. No sink. No furniture whatsoever other than the twin beds. The beds had been pushed together with barely any space around them so we pushed them apart so far as we could. Still, there was insufficient space for either of us to walk between them. ""Let's go back to the VVV" I said. "I don't want to stay in a multi-storey car park". "Nah" he replied. "It's only three nights".
The first questions which arose in our heads concerned washing or more specifically the communal bathroom. Where was it? What would it be like? A search through the labyrinth established that there wasn't one. Shortly afterwards, it was me who raised the matter of a toilet. Kev liked his ale. I was not averse to it. We were quite young and while I could just about contemplate not needing to get up for a pee in the night I couldn't see me going to sleep without needing one before.
"We will just have to find a bar very near to our hotel at the end of the night" he said "and try to piss about three times in half an hour there. That should sort it." For now, I sort of accepted it. It was helped by the fact that whenever we were on our way in and or our way out there was not a soul around. It was eerily quiet apart from that distant rumble of engines. That became a permanent plus for me. With him, no. While I went out like a light on every night and slept really well, he claimed he barely got a wink of sleep. He was full of rage about "revellers at some unearthly hour". Loads of shouting from women and men and doors slamming. It seemed counter-intuitive to me, Had it happened or was he imagining it?