Gerry Anderson on the BBC

Although Gerry Anderson's numerous sci-fi television series -- including the filmed in Supermarionation Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Joe 90 -- are closely associated with ITV, there are several generations of viewers who were introduced to them when the BBC repeated them in the 1990s, and again in the 2000s. That, however, is not quite the full story.

Solo Pide Un Diamante

Much thanks to commentator chyneeze for letting me know about this. Regular readers of the blog will no doubt be more than aware of my ongoing quest for the 1991 CITV Diamond Brothers series... a series that is deeply obscure because it was never repeated or released on home media.

Except it seems it might, in fact, have received a VHS release.

In Spanish.

A Little Variety

Anyone with some level of familiarity with Calvin and Hobbes is probably aware of the story concerning the "missing" cartoon. Here's a quick link to the two strips for 28 November 1985, just ten days into the strip's run; the alternate strip appeared in half the newspapers running the comic at the time, and the one that appears in the books (including The Complete Calvin and Hobbes) in the other half. Whilst no official statement was made, the generally accepted theory is that the one not archived was altered out of fear that children might try and imitate Calvin's desire to bathe in a washing machine.

Whilst that is the only case of a strip completely changing, there are five other C&H strips with two different versions. In three cases, these are dialogue changes, and Wikipedia's article on the strip gives the dates for the comics in question but not exactly what's different. So, if like me, you Googled those strips to see what was different about them after reading the Wikipedia article on Calvin and Hobbes... here you go.

The Clue Bibliography

Radio 4 comedy shows, especially panel games, don't seem to get an awful lot of tie-in books. The one and only such release for Just a Minute was Welcome to Just a Minute!, Nicholas Parsons' remarkably thorough history of the show from 2014. The News Quiz appears to have had at least one in the 1980s which I might look into at some point (there are a few other books called "News Quiz Book", but the title's so generic they might be unrelated to the radio show). The Unbelievable Truth had a pretty good stab at one a few years back, but perhaps covered too similar territory to the numerous QI books.

One happy exception to this rule is I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, which has had no end of attempts (well, eight) to replicate some of its various rounds in print since 1980. Since there doesn't seem to be any kind of guide to them available anywhere, I thought I'd have a go. (Since it has to expressly tie into the show, I have excluded things such as memoirs or other books by the regular panellists, and I have also reluctantly left out Jem Roberts' fully authorised history of the series, which needless to say you should buy if you haven't already.)

Coping With Nostalgia

I am sure that many readers of the blog around the same age as me will remember these. The Coping With... books, by Peter Corey, did for self-help books what Horrible Histories did for history books -- a terrible analogy, since they actually predated those books by several years, but never mind -- and lasted for twelve titles between 1989 and 2000 (plus a diary for the year 1999), each tackling a different subject, including Parents, Exams and Tests and the 21st Century. Each book follows a broadly similar formula: an introduction to the author and his entirely fictional team of researchers, a history of this book's subject, an A-Z guide to the subject, and then an afterword and appendices. Whilst the books had their tongues firmly in their cheeks, they did offer some sincere advice on the matter to hand. But the humour was what I wanted to cover here, since the books had a habit of getting crap past the radar which stuck in my mind beyond any of the sincere advice. Or, in some cases, just not bothering with any pretence of a radar at all. To cover the extent of said filth, I have decided to find, to my mind, the most risqué/risky joke in each entry of the series.

Poskitt's Puzzles

Last year, I looked back at the Killer Puzzles -- a series of notoriously difficult puzzle books from the 1990s. If you haven't read said look back, then for goodness' sake go and do so now, or this post will be even more inexplicable than it already is.

Into the Lyraverse

When I started looking into the various different adaptations of His Dark Materials that preceded the current TV series, I was interested in one specific part of one adaptation in particular: the much-derided 2007 feature film The Golden Compass, and its ending, which is probably the most notable thing about it apart from the fact that its box office performance played a big part in New Line Cinema getting merged into Warner Brothers. In the book, and indeed most adaptations, Lyra's friend Roger is killed when Lord Asriel severs him from his daemon in order to tear a hole in the Northern Lights that leads into another world... but whilst this sequence was filmed for the movie, it was cut during editing (various contradictory explanations seem to exist as to exactly why -- some sources say it was too depressing a note to end on, others claim that test audiences were confused and thought the meaning of the sequence was that Lyra had died and when she followed the opening into the other world she was actually ascending to Heaven). The stated intention was to open the sequel with it instead, but we all know how that turned out.

Best of 2020

The blog has been running for four years now, and this is the first yearly roundup since I ended my target of updating once a week for as long as I could. Perhaps not coincidentally, I feel the hit rate of articles has been higher, and I had a harder time than usual narrowing them down to a list of my particular favourites. But I managed anyway.