So - Who really was Clint Eastwood's old Dad?

You know, I caught the old Carry On film, Carry On Screaming a couple of days ago. Yes, I know, the Carry On films, especially the later ones in the 70s, were not at all PC. Funnily enough, as the 70s progressed I think that they became progressively less funny and more un-pc in a weird, inverse ratio. But I do think that a few of them, especially those parodying a specific genre – do stand up quite well, even today. I still find Carry On Cleo extremely funny, as an example. But I was writing specifically about Carry On Screaming. It’s not to my mind quite as funny as Cleo, but still has a few good lines – The Master is dead . . . But I’ll see if he can see you.’ For example.

A prominent role in the film is played by Fenella Fielding, and this immediately made me think of one of the more famous urban myths that found its way into quiz questions back in the day. Namely – who is the famous brother of Fenella Fielding? The answer given in more than one quiz I played in was Marty Feldman. This is, of course, a complete set of what my Auntie didn’t have (presumably) and my Uncle did (presumably). I googled this in an idle few minutes at work, and the AI feature attributed this to Feldman being Fenella Fielding’s real birth surname. This may well be the origin of the urban myth, but I reckon the quiz popularity of it was due to it featuring in the Pears Quiz Companion.

I’ve written about this volume before o I’m not going to go on about it now, but it did sterling service to me when I first started compiling quizzes for the club back in the mid-1990s.. Many was the time I’d turn to it when I was stuck for a question belonging to a specific category and it rarely let me down. There was another couple of quite well known errors in the Quiz Companion. One was  that the lovers in Aida were burned alive rather than buried alive. Another was that Nelson’s statue in Trafalgar Square was sculpted by one Edward Hodges Banley rather than Edward Hodges Bailey. I’m pretty sure that these were typographical errors, though.

One of my favourite urban myths quiz questions I heard second hand. Dai Jenkins, an all round good egg who was our Deputy Headteacher for a while and went on to become a Headteacher in Bridgend, once asked me “Who was Clint Eastwood’s real father?” I replied that I didn’t know, and he said that in a quiz he’d attended the night before, the question master had sworn blind it was Stan Laurel. Well, I investigated this one, but it is pure urban myth, spun out of the fact that I believe that the Laurels had a son who was either still born or died not long after being born at around about the same time that Eastwood was born. I couldn’t resist asking it in the club one night. A number of teams did actually put down Stan Laurel, but my answer was Clint Eastwood’s father was . . . Clint Eastwood (senior).  That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Dirty Harry.

Words guaranteed to make your heart sink

There are certain words that I hate. Of course, if you really want to unpick it, it’s not so much the words themselves, per se. As it is there are few if any words that I hate for themselves, although quite a few I’m very fond of. The name of the capital city of Burkina Faso, for example, Ouagadougou, is in and of itself an utter delight. So really and truly it’s what the word represents that I hate. Such a word is workshop.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. The portmanteau word workshop is of itself perfectly inoffensive. As is the proper meaning – a space in which work is carried out. When used in this way to mean a place where things (preferably material) are made or repaired  is in fact a pretty pleasing concept. My hatred for the word really began concurrently with my teaching career. I’ve written before about INSET (in service training). For the vast majority of my first 30 years as a teacher, my heart used to sink at the prospect of INSET generally, but it would then sink several floors further if the words ‘workshop session’ were mentioned.

“We will be having a workshop session.” Translation, we will be expecting you to listen to someone who probably has no experience inside any classroom and certainly has no experience of the particular situation in YOUR classroom lecture you for at least 60 minutes, then you will be instructed to perform some totally random exercises which have very little real connection with the subject of the INSET and absolutely NO practical relevance to what goes on in your classroom. Hey, I was an English specialist and I just objected to the hijacking of a perfectly innocent word. Because despite what the authorities might have thought, just calling some pile of crud a workshop did not automatically transform it into an experience where something useful was produced or made better. We genuinely had a saying in the school I taught in for my first 29 years – never trust anything that calls itself a workshop. To be fair, by the time that the school closed, even the senior management had stopped using the term.

Why do I mention this? Well, in my current position as an NHS patient coordinator with the Dental Access Portal, from time to time I get sent generic emails inviting me to take part in inappropriate and irrelevant training. The one I received today used the offending w word. Thankfully it’s totally irrelevant to me now.

It’s difficult to think of other innocent words which so arouse my hackles. On a personal level I suppose there’s ‘organise’. A perfectly innocent word, I grant you. But in her personal idiolect, Mrs. Londinius uses it as a synonym for ‘do’. So she will say ‘Will you organise the washing up?’ when all she means is ‘Get off your bum and fill the dishwasher’. She has many, many excellent qualities, I should hasten to add, but this one little linguistic idiosyncracy is a persistent niggle.

Back To Basics

Do you ever have a yearning to go back to quiz basics? I did last weekend. Don’t worry, I’ll explain. Since 2021 when I started going back to the Aberavon Rugby Club for the Thursday night quiz I’ve tried to compile the quiz and act as QM whenever I’ve been asked to do so. It hasn’t been on anything like as regular a basis as I used to, but that has been fine by me. Well, last time I did the quiz was about 4 weeks ago, and I’ve been asked to do it again.

Since 2021 every time I’ve compiled a quiz for the club I’ve used connections in the quiz. Is it because I think it makes for a better quiz? Well, one always hopes that it will, but that’s not the real reason. Selfishly I’ve done it since it’s been a way of keeping myself interested in the quiz while I’m compiling it.

Then last weekend, when I got round to sitting down to write it, it occurred to me – why not, for old time’s sake, do what I used to call a ‘bog-standard ordinary quiz’ with no gimmicks or connections, and compile it in the same way (or a similar way) to the way I used to do it in 1995 when I started. Not quite the same way since I did not have the internet in 1995 and I did it all with books. I’m sorry, but although I did use some books when compiling this quiz, the idea of not using the internet at all smacks of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

So basically, this meant finding a question for each round on several different categories, and two on popular entertainment. I have to be honest, I quite enjoyed it. You know , if you made me swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth I would admit it’s not the old quiz custom I would most like to see come back at the club. Up until Covid the question master and/or glamorous assistant would have the papers collected at the end of each round and mark them. Covid put a stop to that, understandably. But I’d just really like it to happen once or twice now. It doesn’t reflect very well on me but I will explain my reasons. Each team marks their own. I cannot help being highly suspicious that one particular team are being very economical with the truth about their scores. Let me admit that I have not lost a quiz at the rugby club since Covid. But the team in question nearly always come second. Okay. Now the suspicious thing about this is : - prior to Covid they were the worst team in the quiz. Also, when my teammates compile a quiz, they will (quite rightly) ask the odd question about up to date pop culture. And the team in question, all of whom are in the senior citizens age bracket, invariably gets a full house on these rounds! I long to go up and ask – which one of you is the (insert band/singer/video game) fan then? – I’m not proud of myself. Mind you, my suspicions were further heightened just a few weeks ago when they tried to award themselves 15 on a 14 point round! Could have been a genuine mistake. Just like my auntie could have had you know whats and secretly been my uncle.

 

Working for pocket money

Like a lot of men of a certain age, I am prone to exaggerate. Particularly when I’m mentioning my childhood, I do have a tendency to suggest a harsh upbringing akin to that of a Dickensian waif. Nothing could be further from the truth. So don’t give me any sympathy for what I am about to write even if you do by any chance happen to feel any.

I have just read a Facebook post by my best mate from University, in which he responds to the news that children are not having the opportunities people of our generation had to experience paid work in their most formative years. Me, I had a choice. Get jobs or have no money. Not strictly true. Get jobs or make do with your meagre pocket money would be more accurate.

Looking back, I started with delivering a local advertising paper called The London Market. You had a number of local streets to cover and had 500 copies to deliver once a week. It took two weekday evenings and after you’d given a cut to your Mum, then there wasn’t a great deal of money left. To be fair she did fold all of the papers for ease of delivery. From there, when I was 11 or 12 I progressed to a milk round. I was fortunate that at the end of Leighton Road, the street adjoining ours, was the Ealing branch of Jobs Dairy, and you could usually find a milkman to help on weekends. When I started with Stan, we would work from 6:30am until about 4pm on Saturday, because that was his day for collecting most of the money. Then on Sunday we would work from about 6:30am until about 10:30 am. Would you like to guess what I was paid? £2 for Saturday and £1 for Sunday. Now, admittedly this was the mid-late 70s and money went a lot further, but even so! This was the whole year round, too, and if you have never spent a winter in London let me tell you it can be a lot colder than you might think. Essentially the only thing that Stan did on a Saturday that I didn’t was driving the milk float. I would have done that too if he’d let me, but he was, thankfully too sensible for that. By about 1979 I was working for Paul, who collected money all week, so we’d be finished by midday on Saturday. He paid me £5 for the weekend. If we finished at noon, it also meant that I could go out and help another milkman for the afternoon and get anything up to another £5.

I turned 16 in 1980, and after my birthday I started to work a couple of evenings a week and all day Saturday in the local Budgen supermarket, while I was doing my A levels. I transferred to the Coop after about a year. I can’t remember how much I earned, but it had to be more than the milk round(s) or I’d never have done it. In the summer holidays after securing a place at the University of London Goldsmiths College I joined a temp agency in Ealing Broadway for whom I worked every holiday until graduation. The money really wasn’t great or even good, for that matter. But occasionally the jobs you got were quite interesting. My first was working in Hoover in Perivale putting together repair manuals. I also had a stint on the delivery vans for Harvey Nichols, where a woman in Kensington called in a glazier to take out then replace her front window so we could get a huge sofa bed into her front room. For the most part I ended up washing up in the kitchens of various BBC canteens across West London. Looking back, the temp agency were actually pretty terrible people. They used to hold off paying you and then joke that this was all a way of helping you save. We finally fell out for good when they told me to go to a hotel kitchen to do a spell as an under-chef. I’m not a brilliant cook now but back then I was worse. I point blank refused to be part of what was so obviously an act of deception on their part.

They never offered me another job again.

I‘m going to end this with a recollection of my old Nan. This was my mum’s mum and it was her house that I grew up in. I loved her dearly, but I have to admit lying to her on one occasion. After I qualified as a teacher and was appointed to my first teaching post, her reaction was – Oh, lovely, you’ll be able to pick up some temping work during the long summer holidays!- My head said – I should cocoa!- but my mouth said, “Oh, Nan, didn’t you know? I’m paid a 12 month salary in 12 installments so I’m not allowed to work in August even though I’m not in school.” Did she buy it? Well, she didn’t argue and that was good enough for me.

The Power of a Brand Name

If you’re of a similar vintage to myself maybe you have the same reaction to the simple brand name Airfix that I do. Maybe you’re in your sixties or older and it doesn’t have any effect on you as it’s not something you were ever into– good luck to you. But for at least a fair proportion of us the mere mention of the name is enough to bring on a wave of nostalgia.

I’ll tell you why I mention it (eventually). I did really enjoy making Airfix Model kits from the age of about 6 or 7 right through until my early teens. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at Revell or Tamiya kits but I much preferred Airfix. I still remember the enjoyable anticipation of going to Brayleys on Northfields Avenue, the best model shop in Ealing in my humble opinion and seeing just how far my meagre pocket money would stretch. I started with airplanes but as time went on I wasn’t averse to land vehicles as well.

So, this is the month of June. Every June I take part in an internet event called the 30x30 Direct Watercolour Challenge. A direct watercolour is a watercolour painting that you make without sketching the design onto paper prior to painting. 30x30 means that you have to paint 30 paintings during the 30 days of June – 30x30, see. It does exactly what it says on the tin. The ideal is to make a painting every day, but as long as you complete 30 by the end of June, then there’s no problem.

I have completed the challenge 6 times in the years between 2018 and 2025. I didn’t participate in 2020. In 2024 I produced 8 crappy paintings and gave up. But now I have 2 simple aims each time I start the challenge. One is to finish it. The other is to try to make a better set of pictures than the previous year.

I’m currently 11 paintings into the 2026 challenge and ahead of schedule. One way I’ve achieved this was by planning to make a series of nostalgic beach paintings. Okay. Well, yesterday I painted an SRN4 cross channel hovercraft at Pegwell Bay near Margate. The SRN4 was the largest hovercraft in the world when it was first built. Large enough to carry over 200 passengers and more than 30 cars it is still the largest civil hovercraft ever built. These giants ferried passengers across the channel between the south coast and France between 1968 and 2000. Sadly there’s only 1 left – the Princess Anne- and that’s a static display in the Hovercraft Museum.

They were operated by more than one company over the years, but I knew that I had to paint it in the red and white Hoverlloyd livery. I wondered why, and then it hit me. This livery was the one on the cover of the Airfix model kit box.

I should probably state that I never built the Airfix model of the SRN4. This was very much one of the larger models of the range, the sort of thing to be longingly gazed at on the shelves or in the pages of the Airfix catalogue but not actually purchased. Airfix did market a model of the SRN1 – Sir Christopher Cockerell’s world’s first hovercraft which I did purchase being smaller and much cheaper. I made rather a good job of it too, as I recall. But I never bought or was given the SRN4.

Which is okay. I know that the Airfix name and brand has passed in and out of the hands of different owners and even administration since, but there is an Airfix brand out there now, which uses a lot of the original artwork on boxes (a good move that) and it is possible to buy the SRN4 model now. Well, I could, but I don’t want to. I just don’t fancy building it. That was part of the me that I was in the mid 70s, not the me that I am 50 years later. But you know, for all that, I can’t help wishing that I had bought it and made it back in the day. Oh, what, you’d like to see my painting? Well, all I can say is, don’t say I never do nothing for yer. Here it is:-

Nobody's Fool - The Landing

So I suppose the question I need to consider is this – did the final of “Nobody’s Fool” stick the landing?

Well, in one way at least, it did. In the previous couple of shows I had started to feel that events on the show were being manipulated in favour of one particular contestant. The shock of one player being eliminated through breaking rules about revealing cards in the elimination vote, which meant that the two players up for elimination were saved, initially made me feel that special efforts were being made to get the weakest player in terms of General Knowledge through to win the jackpot. But then in last night’s final, she was happy to accept the offer to take a couple of grand and leave. Sensible person. It’s more than 3 of the other finalists got.

Then we saw the final four playing for an advantage. They had to listen to a small chamber orchestra playing versions of well-known popular tunes, ( I wonder if they ‘stole’ the idea from my son-in-law, Dan) accompanied by an operatic tenor singing the lyrics via the medium of another language. You got one point if you could buzz in and identify the song and artist (the most famous version, I guess). Then the music began again. When it stopped, you had to buzz in and sing the next line. The prize for the contestant with most points? To pick the next player to be eliminated.

From this it was straight to the quiz pods. Isolated from each other, the three had to pick which one of the other two to eliminate. The person with two votes would have to leave. Now, you have to consider that at this point the three did not know what the final game would be like.

As for the final game, well, the two players sat on opposite sides of the elimination table. On the desk were a set of cards. Each card had a category on the back. The other side of the cards had two statements. One of them was true, and the other false. Each contestant had to take turns to pick one statement and read it to the other. The recipient then had to say whether the statement was true of false. Get it right, you win a point. Most points won the moolah.

How do I feel about it then? Actually, fairly satisfied as it happens. While the pure quizzer in me might think that it should all have been settled by a strenuous two minute round of hard general knowledge questions against the clock, the show was never really about the quiz aspects. Not really. For me, the quiz rounds were not about showing the opposition how smart you were, as much as they were a way of generating a cash total that could be admitted or lied about. And that’s okay.

You know, when you get right down to it, making a show to appeal to fans of The Traitors – and I’m sorry, but you will not convince me that this is not what Nobody’s Fool set out to do – isn’t easy. After all, you can’t just remake The Traitors. You have to change the ingredients, or mix the same ingredients in a different way, or both. And of course, if you do that you can end up with something that just doesn’t quite work. I do think that the show avoided some of the pitfalls that can mar a show like this. Personally I think that there’s no need for a presenter tag team and one person can do it just as well, but the key thing is that neither of them grated on the nerves. A little of Danny Dyer can go a long way and the fact that he was pretty restrained throughout proceedings helped the show. The dilemma faced by the contestants was interesting. For all they knew they would have to face the most knowledgeable and/or intelligent member(s) of the opposition in the final. So the incentive was there to vote them out. However, if they didn’t vote out the person who had contributed least to the pot in the previous quiz, then the prize money would be halved. So the incentive was there to keep the strongest players in. That dichotomy made it interesting.

One of the things which helped Destination X work last summer was that I genuinely liked some of the contestants – Jackie P’s husband, I’m looking at you. And I found that I rather liked most of the Nobody’s Fool contestants too. Because, I think, that the makers realised that if they kept the amount of quizzing shown in each programme to a minimum, there would be more time for personalities to come through. If you compare it with Channe 4’s disappointing “The Inheritance” I couldn’t help disliking many of the participants while not really caring one way or another about the rest.

Summing up then I enjoyed “Nobody’s Fool”. It isn’t “The Traitors” (although one suspects that it rather wishes that it was) but I watched the first two shows on demand then made a point of being around to watch each show of the rest of the series as it aired. The big question, though, is whether enough viewers felt the same. I hope so. If it comes back, I will watch it.

 

Destination X Series 2 Delayed

A thought hit me this morning. I remember that after the first series of Destination X the BBC announced that they would be commissioning a second series. Good stuff. SO I wondered whether it would be on this summer at around the same time that it was broadcast last year.

No no no no. Apparently there have been some significant hold ups behind the scenes. My sources did not give any hint about what these might be. With the upshot that the show won’t be back until some time in 2027.

It’s disappointing. I’m willing to accept that the delays, whatever they might be, are unavoidable, but leaving it so long between series really doesn’t help/ Anticipation for the series, any series, will only last for so long. Oh well.