If you're unaware of it, it's Grange Hill for grown-ups (kinda). If I was about 12 I think I'd think it was the best thing ever.
Well I'm 45 and I still think it's pretty good. LIke Casualty or Holby City, it's one of those shows that because it's on all the time people think it's automatically rubbish. Not true. Some good actors, some not so good, some fanciful storylines, some firmly rooted in reality. I'm a fan, though I do miss Denise Welch. She was marvellous as rubbish French teacher Steph.
I've eulogised on here many a time about Cliff. And today he turns 70.
What a body of work. Far better known for his great singles rather than his classic albums (can you even name one?), he's been a constant through all our lives. We may not have liked everything, and for sure there have been some complete clunkers over the years, but recently I've been checking out some of his lesser known hits: Blue Turns To Grey, Sing A Song Of Freedom, Constantly, Joy Of Living (with Hank Marvin), Green Light, Suddenly (with Olivia Newton-John), the groovy Big Ship, Visions, Thrown Down A Line (with Hank again IIRC) and my absolute favourite The Day I Met Marie.
We've all got our favourites though. I've always had a soft spot for Wired For Sound, Devil Woman, Carrie, Please Don't Fall In Love and Do You Wanna Dance. You'll have yours whether you like him or not. Bit bored of Living Doll though.
Do you remember The Cliff Richard Show? In the early Seventies it was a Saturday night staple. He used to have guests and do comedy skits and Olivia Newton-John was always on. I remember a sketch where he came on and said 'I went out shopping today and bought Olivia a whole new wardrobe'. Cue Olivia coming on wearing... a wardrobe. I thought it was hilarious then, I still it's hilarious today.
When I interviewed Cliff about 11 years ago I wasn't disappointed. We had endless meetings before hand to hammer it all out. I interviewed him on the phone - he was at his Portuguese hideaway - and was told I had 15 minutes. But with so many stories to tell and and records to talk about, it was nearer an hour. The chat flowed and he was an absolute delight.
A few weeks later we went to shoot him at a hotel near his home in Weybridge. He's a small, slight man, quite intense, very well-preserved indeed but very tightly controlled by his management down to the last minute. I took along a bunch of singles and he signed them all most graciously. I was given a copy of The Millennium Prayer, and he was concerned it wouldn't get airplay. But it hit No.1 nonetheless. He was endlessly fascinating. There's no whiff of anything untoward, and if there was it was very carefully hidden. He was an all round Nice Man.
So happy birthday to you Cliff. You remain terminally unfashionable, there has been no revival or Tom Jones-like rebirth, though you did try with the whole Eighties Stock, Aitken Waterman thing, but it didn't make you cool. And the Young Ones just took the piss, albeit gently.
Like Matt Monro, Ken Dodd, Donald Peers, Val Doonican and Engelburt Humperdinck - wonderful voices all of them, he's in that naff bracket for most people, and though he's probably credited with kicking off British rock and roll no one ever says it too loudly. There has been no renaissance - he's always there. Long may he continue to be so.
Indigestion. It's a scourge, isn't it? I'm getting it all the time. I think it's not helped by stress. Not that I personally have much to be stressed about, but things in the course of your day can get you.
So when I woke up at four in the morning, dying of indigestion but convinced it was a heart attack, but realising it was the burrito I'd had earlier, I made a vow not to let things get to me. But I don't know how that's possible.
Sad to see Claire Rayner has died. I didn't realise she was so old and ill. She was a welcome staple of TV-AM, if I remember correctly, and despite finding her grating in the extreme, her presence was welcome and necessary.
There's something about her tied up with coffee, Woman magazine and my grandma and aunt that I find most comforting.
She's been off our screens for some time, but I'm glad - and I may well be alone in this - that her son Jay is on them. I like him on Masterchef and I gave that Food series a go on C4 but found the format wanting.
As I've said here many times, I fell down a pub cellar because I was walking down the street with a friend who'd spotted La Rayner outside Pret A Manger. In my effort to see her I plumemeted. That will be my abiding memory of her.
On my way to and from work I pass a little supermarket. It always looks quite sparsely stocked but it's local and convenient. In fact, it's more of a convenience store in the way VG, Mace or Maid Marian was back in the day.
I noticed it was having a refit, and not before time, I pondered. However i see it's now become a peculiar hybrid of convenience store and optician.
Now, would you go for an eye test at VG? Well would you? Eyes are a delicate thing and must be cherished. If you get it wrong you could be in trouble. I've had endless to-ing and fro-ing to the opticians who got my prescription wrong - twice. Then at my last visit they told me my prescription was way too strong. Trust the professionals, right?
Well, yes, but I'd still rather to to a David Clullow or my current fave the 20/20 Optical Store in Tottenham Court road, than Mace. The 20/20 Opitcal Store is a cavernous hangar full of frames and eye-related products (and strangely, women's clothes). But it does have a cafe. The staff are to a man Australian-Asian, which is curious, though last time I got a woman who introduced herself primly as 'Miss Khan' while calling me by my first name. Her colleagues giggled at her behind her back and she was clearly unpopular among her peers. Or perhaps I'm reading too much into it.
Anyhoo, while we're talking of eyes, here's a song that reminds me of this time of year.
I went to get the cat a new basket at the weekend.
'How fascinating F-C,' I hear you trill. 'Do tell us more.'
Well not that interesting in itself, naturally, but it was one of those times when you think, what if i hadn't gone to get the cat a new basket? If I hadn't trekked miles to the Pets At Home superstore just so I could look at the bunny rabbits then I wouldn't have trodden in the most almighty dog shit that a nervous Staffy had just produced in the small animals aisle.
And I wouldn't have had to wait ages for a lackadaisical assistant to appear with some paper towels and Cif, while nearly gagging over the foul smell and trying not to look at said shit which had peculiar red bits in it.
The owner, clearly embarrassed, wasn't warning anyone so into it I stepped. I can still feel it now. Thank God I wasn't wearing shoes with treads. 'It's good luck' she offered, weakly. I smiled thinly.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I HATE cyclists.
I don't want to tar everyone with the same brush, but those who abide by the rules of the road are few and far between.
Yesterday, while stationary at the traffic lights, a cyclist went into me and somehow this was my fault. When I hooted my horn, just because I would have liked them to acknowledge they fallen onto my bonnet while trying to weave through the tightest gap because of course they have to be right at the front of the queue or else, I was told to fuck off and should have left more room.
Needless to say I was incensed. Even the motorcycles and mopeds around her were dumbfounded.
So why was that my fault. She looked embarrassed and pissed off that she'd gone into me and the taxi in front - and left deep scratches on both of us, but is that a reason to be so hostile. Whatever happened to apologising? Perhaps just a small wave of the hand to acknowledge she'd gone into my car and didn't mean to. I wouldn't have minded.
The other day an old duffer on a bike rapped on my window and told me I was in the bike box at lights. 'When did you care about the rules?' I asked, as he proceeded to jump the lights against the oncoming traffic.
Grrrr. They should be banned. At once.
Look at the picture; that's David Miliband. As I came out of the office car park yesterday morning he was walking by with his wife and child. I nearly said something, but he looked so dejected with a head full of thoughts, I decided against it.
Very sad to hear of the death of Sixties hitmaker Don Partridge. I've a huge soft spot for Blue Eyes, it's quite moving. The one-man band isn't to everyone's taste, but I liked it. His greatest hits is a lengthy affair, but if you're a sucker for a mouth organ then you'll love it.
So last night I went to a dinner at the Tower Of London.
I'd not been there since 1980 when we took our German exchange person to London on a day trip. He said he wanted to go to Stonehenge, being a bit Nuklearfission? Nein danke!, but dad wouldn't hear of it, he said it was too far away, although it wasn't, so off to London we went. Lipps Inc's Funkytown on the radio every half hour it seemed. He sulked the whole day. In fact he sulked the whole 10 days.
Anyhoo, I suppose we must have seen the crown jewels back then but I don't remember one single thing about it. So it came as a surprise to me just how interesting it all is. It's steeped in history at every turn. 'That's where Elizabeth I was imprisoned,' said the beefeater, 'and Anne Boleyn walked through that arch over there. In those towers the Krays were kept after going awol from the army.' You could feel the ghosts. It was a hauntologists dream.
It's so huge as well. At one time 5000 people lived there and there were more than 20 taverns. It's like a little other world. I once worked with a woman who lived there because she was married to a Beefeater. She had nothing but bad things to say about it, but frankly when it was all empty and floodlit it was quite beautiful. So clean and green and really...old. And I mean really old. No wonder Americans love it.
So we had a private view of the crown jewels, which was great not having to fight to see them through throngs of tourists - the excess is breathtaking. But the skip-sized gold-plated punchbowl would make any shindig go with a swing. Each scoop from it is a bottle-and-a-half of claret.
We had dinner in a tower, haunted apparently by Thomas A Beckett, and then got to see this ceremony where they lock up. It's all very atmospheric in the dark, whith no tourists around so it's all quiet and echoey. They do this every night I hear, whether there are people there or not, but if a tree falls in the woods and no one sees it... I love England.
I'd also never seen a raven before. They're huge and make a strange, almost tropical noise. There they were, all tucked up in bed, just in case they fly off and disaster subsequently strikes.
I used to walk past the Tower every day for two years when I worked round there, and it never crossed my mind to go in. When you live in a place you rarely make best use of it. It made me resolve to visit things like this more.
I don't normally blog about work stuff but I have to tell a little about the Coronation Street 50th birthday jamboree I attended on Friday.
I've never been to such a great do - and I've been to many. Much like the Silver Jubilee street parties of yore, it was a real treat. Almost the entire cast (no Eileen Derbyshire of course) were in attendance for pies, peas, singing, stalls and merriment on the very street itself. It was enormous fun, and for a lifelong fan like me a real sense of occasion. It's part of history, let's face it.
In my 15 years of going up and down to Corrie there are some people I've never met, some I've never so much as clapped eyes on. One of those was the legendary Betty Driver. I've never ever seen her until now. She's always reminded me of my grandma, a bustling woman from Wigan who was just like Betty. Seeing and meeting her on Friday was like grandma was born again. It made me feel quite weird. And she's just like she is on the telly, too.
Another enigma is Barbara Knox, who plays Rita. She may be elderly but she looks great and she was charm itself.
So after a day of drinking and chatting with cast and crew, we came away laden with Corrie goodies, like DVDs, books and flying ducks. It was quite a surreal experience, and one that's unlikely to be repeated in my lifetime.
