I was lucky enough to be able to meet Ray and Alan a few years ago, and to sit with them chatting at length about comedy and their careers, for a good few hours. Both really, really lovely men, with lots to tell. Very sad by the news this week. Both he and his talent will be greatly missed.
Not to be too crass, but splashing out on the wonderful new release The Galton & Simpson Comedy really would be a fitting tribute. It's an excellent series.
Quote: Paul Wimsett @ 9th February 2017, 4:45 PMRemind me, are Shakespeare and Magna Carta gone?
Did she die in vain?
Quote: Billy Bunter @ 9th February 2017, 8:46 PMDid she die in vain?
Yes, because the pubs still had to close at half past ten.
One half of the greatest comedy writing team of all time. They virtually invented British sitcom and should be seen as being on a par with significant novelists like Alan Sillitoe and Stan Barstow. While they met at a sanatorium rather than at school, they were of the generation born a decade before WW2 which was just one step before/ahead of the grammar school class. Intelligent, literate and liberal but the latter not as some 2017 thing. Rather it was always with an unparalleled understanding of and sensitivity to perspectives on the street, mainly on account of family ties to the working class.
I have friends who are 15-20 years older than me who are Bob Dylan fanatics. As they were "there" at the time he is a part of their outlook. They express both amazement and pleasure that I have 29 discs of his in my collection. After all, I wasn't born when he emerged. It was 1989 when I began to acquire a taste at all. Why do I mention this?
It is:
A. Because Hancock predated Dylan and hence me and yet that writing was part of my own outlook from as early as I can remember. I was born in the 1960s and a significant part of me represents it but with every decade there is an overhang from the previous one. There is a lot of the British 1950s too in me and those of a similar age even now just as there was in Galton and Simpson and it is still more real to me/us in many ways than anything in the culture since the late 1990s/early 2000s. See also Paul Merton etc.
B. Given these points, I always express amazement and pleasure when people younger than me appear to get it. And from what I can see, there are quite a lot of you around!
RIP x 20.
"I was born in the 1960s"
Son!? Was your mother Deidre Horseradish who worked the bacon slicer at the Co-op?
Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 13th February 2017, 9:40 AM"I was born in the 1960s"
Son!? Was your mother Deidre Horseradish who worked the bacon slicer at the Co-op?
The very one.
She was also a nippy at Joe Lyons's.
I remember before I retired one of my colleagues, who can only be described as "a young person", went to give blood. As he went out of the door I said to him, "a pint; that's very nearly an armful". Didn't have a clue what I was talking about (mind you very few people ever do).
Quote: A Horseradish @ 13th February 2017, 1:29 PMThe very one.
She was also a nippy at Joe Lyons's.
She was a gal and got around a bit.
Reminded me of the Peter Kay joke about the bloke who was threatened with the sack because he kept putting his cock in the bacon slicer and wouldn't stop doing it so in the end they had to sack her too.
Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 13th February 2017, 2:34 PMShe was a gal and got around a bit.
Reminded me of the Peter Kay joke about the bloke who was threatened with the sack because he kept putting his cock in the bacon slicer and wouldn't stop doing it so in the end they had to sack her too.
The odd thing about that joke is that it wouldn't work if the reference was to any other animal.
Quote: Billy Bunter @ 13th February 2017, 1:31 PMI remember before I retired one of my colleagues, who can only be described as "a young person", went to give blood. As he went out of the door I said to him, "a pint; that's very nearly an armful". Didn't have a clue what I was talking about (mind you very few people ever do).
A few years ago a party of us "insurance agents" (worse job I ever had) were taken to a "Well Man" clinic and were persuaded to have a blood test with the prick on the end of thumb and I thought it would be a great idea to say out loud "It maybe a smear to you mate", which went down well my peer colleagues but the staff looked at me like I was either f**king idiot or they'd heard it a thousand times over the years.
Everytime I meet a Ron or Ronnie I think of:
"Oh Ron"
"Yes,Eth."
Not something I would admit to my nearest and dearest.
Quote: wigwam willy @ 13th February 2017, 7:40 PMEverytime I meet a Ron or Ronnie I think of:
"Oh Ron"
"Yes,Eth."
Not something I would admit to my nearest and dearest.
I think I have mentioned this before on some thread yonks ago, but my Dad and Mum were called Ron & Eth so we always had a smile when we listened to the Glums in the late 50s, and when my Mother died and put in the double grave with my Father at the bottom of the headstone I had etched "Ron and Eth together again (TIFH)"
Quote: wigwam willy @ 13th February 2017, 7:40 PMEverytime I meet a Ron or Ronnie I think of:
"Oh Ron"
"Yes,Eth."
Not something I would admit to my nearest and dearest.
** Edit - 'Ere, what's that (I am half asleep!) got to do with Galton and Simpson? It was Frank Muir and Denis Norden who wrote Take It From Here. I feel all embarrassed now. 
Nice story 
