That 1190s Show

The second episode of the second series of the BBC's notoriously anachronism-prone 2006-09 Robin Hood series, "Booby and the Beast": The plot of breaking into the Sheriff's booby-trapped strongroom bears an uncanny resemblance to the 90s gameshow The Crystal Maze. (It's kind of hard to sum this up in a single screengrab, so you might want to just watch the episode.)

The sixth episode, "For England..!": The setpiece of Robin and traitorous Merry Man Allan-a-Dale being forced to fight each other over a pot of boiling oil bears an uncanny resemblance to the 90s gameshow Gladiators.

The eleventh episode, "Treasure of the Nation": The plot of a treasure hunt around Sherwood with devious cryptic clues bears an uncanny resemblance to Treasure Hunt, which was actually a gameshow from the 80s, but oh well. (It would also seem remiss in all this to not note that Little John is played by the original host of the National Lottery draw, Gordon Kennedy.)

So, clearly someone on the production team, quite probably one of creators Dominic Minghella and Foz Allan, was taking inspiration from somewhere, even if it was kind of an odd place to find inspiration for your Robin Hood series tasked with providing a contemporary feel to the legend.

And would you believe that the thirteenth episode, "We Are Robin Hood!", features an actual Gladiator, Mark "Rhino" Smith?

The Case of the Stand-Up Comic

On 13 February 1989, at least if Amazon is to be believed, The Utterly, Utterly Amusing and Pretty Damn Definitive Comic Relief Revue Book was released into the world, collecting sketches and songs from the last 30 years of comedy. Song lyrics from Spitting Image rub shoulders with transcripts from At Last the 1948 Show and Fry and Laurie's days in the Footlights. Grant Naylor, the Goodies, Bob Newhart, Victoria Wood and Douglas Adams are just some of the names thanked for letting their material be used. But what we're interested in is the contents of page 42.

Following on from our success in working out exactly which issue of the Beezer is visible in One Foot in the Algarve, can we work out which issue of the Beano was used for this photoshoot?

The Tintin Table

The above is on display in the Hergé Museum in Belgium, and the photo in question comes from my visit there in November 2019: A table of every character who appeared in more than one Tintin album, and how they looked in it.

I just think it's neat, is all.

Witch Magazine

From 1984 to 1986, the official Fighting Fantasy magazine Warlock published thirteen issues, each containing a miniature adventure gamebook. One of these was a reproduction of the first title in the FF range, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, split over the first two issues, and issues 2 and 3 also featured shorter, 'demo' versions of two books that were about to be published: the ninth book, Caverns of the Snow Witch by Ian Livingstone, and the tenth, House of Hell.

As you can see from the above links, I've already gotten posts out of the magazine versions of Firetop Mountain and House of Hell, but the preview of Caverns that was published in the magazine is much less interesting, because it is literally just the full-length adventure chopped in half (well, 190 sections); the editorial for that issue states that the book effectively contains a second mini-adventure right after the one that was originally in the magazine. Nevertheless, there are one or two things worth noting, so I may as well complete the set.

R.I.P. J.H.

As a small tribute to J. H. Brennan, who I was very sorry to belatedly learn went to 14 last month, I would like to share with you section 123 from the third GrailQuest gamebook, Gateway of Doom, which I read not long after discovering the concept of adventure gamebooks when I found a boxset of the first three books in a second-hand bookshop, and is one of the funniest things I have ever read.

There's a man eating plant in here.

The plant he's eating is a carrot and it's screaming for help. This Ghastly Kingdom gets more like a loonybin every step you take.

'Help!' screams the carrot.

'Ignore it,' remarks the man, with a friendly nod in your direction. 'This is one of the most appallingly evil carrots ever to pollute the face of the globe. I shall die instantly when I finish eating it, but I willingly sacrifice myself for the good of humanity which will be all the better for the demise of this evil carrot.'

'I'm not evil! I'm not evil!' shouts the carrot. 'I am a beautiful young princess bewitched by an Invisible Wizard who haunts this Ghastly Kingdom. Please rescue me!'

'You will be making a terrible mistake if you try to rescue this carrot,' says the man mildly. 'It's a vampire carrot.'

'He's lying,' shrieks the carrot desperately.

But is he? Or is it? Or are they both? Desperately you look around for some clue to help you make your decision. Your eye catches a prominent notice on the southern wall. It says:

RESCUE THE CARROT!

You reach for EJ, but then you catch sight of a second notice on the western wall. It says:

DON'T RESCUE THE CARROT!

You allow your hand to fall away in confusion. You glance upwards. A huge poster painted on the ceiling says:

PLAY YOUR XYLOPHONE!

Which seems as sensible a course as any in this lunatic situation, provided, of course, you brought an xylophone.

So what will you do?

If you decide to rescue the carrot, go to 112.

If you decide to ignore the whole affair and try to find a saner room, go to 143.

If you happen to have an xylophone with you and feel like playing it, go to 149.

The Best Thing Ever to Appear in Doctor Who Magazine

Schedule of Horror

In November 1996, the BBC took ownership of the first four seasons of The Simpsons, including the first three Treehouses of Horror. Even back in the 90s, broadcasters didn't always make a special effort for Halloween... but now the Beeb have three Halloween specials it would take minimal effort to schedule around that time of the year, didn't they? Well, the show started its terrestrial airings too late for Halloween 1996, so what do we find if we jump forward to 1997?