Best of British

PAUL O’GRADY’S LOST TV

REMEMBERING PRUNELLA SCALES

GRUTS FOR TEA

Born in 1923 to Jewish immigrants who had hoped to go to America but ended up in Glasgow, Ivor Cutler joined the RAF in 1942. The story is that he was trained to be a navigator but was grounded for “dreaminess”. So, he worked as a storeman throughout...

THERE’S NOT A GHOST IN MY HOUSE

If things go according to plan (and they seldom do), about the time you are reading this, I will be having a couple of pieces published in collections that will include fictional ghost stories. This is a bit of a full circle for me, as one of my first...

KNIGHTMARE

My local football club, Peterborough United FC, AKA the Posh, have recently unveiled its new crest. The emblem was commissioned to reflect the club’s desire to evolve, with the chairman saying: “I look at the big clubs and see how they are evolving, we...

RECORD BREAKERS

Seventy years of the Guinness Book of Records

AN HONOUR… AND A PRIVILEGE?

Earlier in the year I was going through one of the piles of paperwork around my home (itself an action worthy of a column) when I came across the file from the time I was trying to get a seat in the House of Lords. Back in 2000, the government of the...

MAD ‘PROFESSORS’

Brighton’s forgotten pier divers

ADVENTURES IN LUNCHTIME AND SPACE

When I first started watching Doctor Who, my dad must have been almost 20 years younger than I am now. I’ve been lucky enough to have met a few people associated with the show over the years. When I was at school, a theatre company came to put on a...

DRAGONS? SNAP!

As Robert Browning wrote in his poem Home Thoughts from Abroad – “Oh, to be in England, now that April’s there…” Whether it is remembering William Shakespeare or commemorating Saint George, there’s something about the showery month that does seem to...

PROGNOSTICATION

I’ll admit that I like a bit of progressive rock now and then. Getting into music in the late 1970s/early 80s it was one option in the buffet of rock at the time. The Enid played our local theatre three or four times. Later, I took coach trips to see...

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Don’t we all love a bargain? My day job is around the corner from a nonspecific supermarket, so, twice a day (before and after work), I like to see what they’ve put out with a yellow label on it. Even the colour of the label is designed to attract the...

THE UK’S TOP NOSTALGIA MONTHLY

CHRISTMAS TREE, OH CHRISTMAS TREE

My day job is a mundane administrative thing but, over the years, parts have been outsourced. One thing the facilities company did was organise a Christmas tree for the offices scattered around the country. Delivered and decorated early December, taken...

THIRTY (THOUSAND) THANK YOUS

As the editor of a publication that celebrates classic television from The Avengers to Z Cars, films such as the Carry On and James Bond franchises, and bands such as the Beatles and Slade, it came as a surprise to discover that I owe my career to the...

EVERY DAY’S A SCHOOL DAY

Like the BBC of old, the purpose of this magazine is to inform, educate and entertain, although not necessarily in the right order. Working on BOB has taught me a thing or two, and while much of this knowledge learned from reading your letters and...

TURN ON, TUNE IN, COP OUT

As a Doctor Who fan, I know only too well how incomplete the BBC’S archives are. Barring a miracle, I’ll never get to see the William Hartnell epic Marco Polo, or Patrick Troughton’s debut story, The Power of the Daleks. Other cultural moments absent...

IT’S A MYSTERY

Despite an acting career that goes back more than 50 years, not to mention a Top 10 hit with Blur, Phil Daniels is probably best known for his starring role in Quadrophenia. Still, it’s not a bad legacy to have; after all, Quadrophenia is one of the...