30 December 2017

Eric, Ernie and Me by Neil Forsyth & Morecambe and Wise's Home Movies


Another Christmas, another Morecambe and Wise drama and/or documentary ... The formative years of the duo having been covered already in Peter Bowker's 2011 offering Eric and Ernie, this new drama, Eric, Ernie and Me, by Neil Forsyth, moves on a decade or so and shifts the focus to Eddie Braben, the writer who gave Ernie the rather pompous and prissy Victorian-type character who helped boost the duo to their greatest television success.

9 December 2017

All-New* 2017 Christmas Quiz





Welome to the All-New 2017 Pismotality Christmas Quiz. (*May include traces of questions from earlier years.)

1 " 'Oh why don't we play cards for her?' he sneeringly replied."
 a) Name the song in which this enquiry features. b) Alright, Smartypants, now find a likely link to George Layton.
 

2 "Levitation's as easy as pie / Come on and hold hands with me in the sky." 

Who or what links these lines to Michael McIntyre, The Female Eunuch and an alleged bribe by an MP's wife?

3 True or false: at the height of the British Invasion, Freddie Garrity's group played in Canada, and the band was introduced by Dick Cavett. The elderly Groucho Marx, Cavett's guest, was called onstage and upon seeing the endless sea of faces in front of him, momentarily inhaled, in the manner of Neil Kinnock at Sheffield, and smote his breast, declaring to a delighted crowd: "I'm a Dreamer, Montreal!"

Spare the Rod (1961 film with Max Bygraves)



Directed by Leslie (father of Barry) Norman, who produced The Cruel Sea, and starring Max Bygraves as an idealistic teacher, the young Richard O'Sullivan as a pupil, plus Geoffrey Keen and Donald Pleasance, this is a film to slot in with Violent Playground and other late fifties/early
sixties British films which illuminate the times.

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