Phew! What a Scorcher!

Monday. 6.45 a.m.Oh, dear! I think I've pinched a headline from some tabloid newspaper, possibly The Sun, for my latest blog post title. I could have chosen something better, but as it's so good and appropriate, it can stay as it is.

Watching Good Morning Britain, ITV's answer to BBC Breakfast. Richard Madeley has taken over from Piers Morgan, who walked out in disgust over some racist comment, but I'm not sure what happened exactly. I am rather sick of the BBC's 'we know best' style of journalism, which is why I have decided to watch this today.

What I find crazy is that the BBC sold off Television Centre in White City. Meanwhile, ITV closed their studio down on the Thames, formerly home of London Weekend Television, so that it could be upgraded, bought into the digital age, and ITV moved Good Morning Britain to Television Centre, which has been revamped, with offices and flats in part of the site, but some of the studio space which remains (not sure how many are left since the refurbishing.) is rented by the BBC, through their Studioworks subsidiary, and several independent television companies rent the space for their own productions, many for both BBC and ITV. A really crazy situation and I can't see what the point of all this is. ITV must have sold off quite a few of their studio space all around Britain when the various local companies that used to make up the federated ITV when they all merged to become ITV p.l.c. back in the early 2000s. Not only is it crazy that ITV moved to  Television centre, but BBC Breakfast decamped to Media City in Salford. When Granada used to produce 'This Morning', (yes, I know. This is getting confusing, because Richard Madeley used to present that show with Judy Finnigan as the original presenters.) it used to come from Victoria Docks in Liverpool and THEY moved the whole thing to the former LWT studios on the River Thames when it became the main centre for ITV plc. Confused? You will be after all this! What was the point of all this? Just to decentralise the BBC, make it less London-centric. As for ITV, it's just confused and lost it's heart  and soul,when it was made into one conglomeration of all the smaller companies which it was made up  of, since its inception in 1955.

I've produced a second batch of scones. I made a double quantity of the dough and cut it with a larger, fluted cutter. I set the oven temperature a bit higher than last time and baked them for fractionally longer than the first batch and they came out slightly more golden, but much better generally. I have to say, still well cooked, centre fluffy and the outside slightly crisp. Now stored in a tin. Unfortunately, because the kitchen is so warm, it's not an environment I can work in comfortably, even with the window open.

Tuesday. 6.25 a.m. Yet another bright and sunny morning. Again sitting here with Good Morning Britain on my television. 

Just read on the Daily Telegraph website about how the EU is threatening Britain over imports of sausages to Northern Ireland. It just sounds like something out of one of those brilliant Ealing Comedies, made in the 1950s. Or perhaps it reminds me of 'The Goodies' comedy series, with Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and  Graham Garden, where they used to do very silly things. In one episode, where they sent up 'Northern' things, there was a scene where they played a game called 'Ekkey-Thump,' where they had to hit each other with black puddings. You probably wouldn't get away with it today, what with 'political correctness.' Probably the EU would put an end to it with some crazy directive. I don't think the EU bureaucrats would see the funny side. They have very little sense of humour,, or perhaps none. When did you ever see Angela Merkel laugh, or even break into a smile?

Later. 3.25 p.m. I've been out with Alfie. I was somewhat shocked by the amount of litter as we walked around Oldbrook Green. Going along the path on the Evans Gate side of the Green, there is a couple of picnic tables, and under and on the top, I see a certain amount of discarded packets of what look like crisps, burger boxes and drinks cans. A crow is walking around on the grass and it suddenly hops onto the table. It pecks around and then discovered some discarded snack, what look like Hoola Hoops. It manages to pick a couple up in its beak and flies off and lands on the grass nearby to eat the Hoola Hoops. It returns to the table for another couple of the aforementioned snack. It again flies to the grass, with the Hoola Hoops in its beak. I should say it's quite a difficult operation to pick them up and fly with them. A second crow comes along and must have discovered what the first crow was doing. It seems as if the second crow had learnt from the first crow, that it could get a free meal because some stupid human couldn't be bothered to put their rubbish in the litter bin which is close by. It's just fascinating watching all this going on, as I sat on a bench, but, unfortunately, Alfie isn't going to allow this. Sitting on a bench isn't interesting enough for him, so we leave the crows and walk on around the Green. Just fascinates me watching these highly intelligent birds. Alfie finds sniffing and stopping to have a wee far more entertaining!

Later. Just leant that Twitty and Unbalanced have said that lockdown restrictions being lifted should not happen until at least the beginning of July. I do hope we can just get out of this situation a good deal sooner rather than later. I for one have lost at least 18 months of my life. I haven't seen my grandchildren since Christmas 2019. I think by the time I get to see them they'll be starting university. I haven't seen the newest one at all, born on 10th May. People who don't have the vaccine are being irresponsible and selfish. They may not catch covid, but they are still likely to spread the virus without realising it. No excuses to not have it when offered.

Working on 'Hale and Pace'

In the early 1990s I managed to sign up with an agency in London run by Ray Knight. I had heard that he was taking on new people to go on his books and I wrote to him. Long before email, you had to actually put pen to paper and I enclosed headshots, because if you're going to do walk-on work in television they always need to have recent photographs to go on their books. Nowadays they would be uploaded onto a website. His office was somewhere in north London, and I visited for an interview and I was accepted. As a result I got no end of work, and was doing jobs on such programmes as 'House of Cards' (the original B.B.C. production with Ian Richardson.) and did several days on that, some at the B.B.C. Elstree studios and various locations in and around London. This is described in far more detail in an earlier blog post on here.

Over one weekend I had jobs on two shows for London Weekend Television (LWT). On the Saturday I did work on 'Hale and Pace'. I was to go to a location somewhere in the East End of London. I can't say I remember where it was exactly. Some sketches were filmed in and around the area, but the interiors were done in what looked like a disused office block and they made various rooms within the building to be such places as a dentist's surgery and a sitting room.  I have never ever seen any of the shows when they were originally transmitted back in the early '90's, but having done some research on the internet, particularly I.M.D.B and YouTube, I have at last managed to track the episodes I was in. Hale and Pace had  several continuing characters, particularly Bobby and Billy, who were sort of kids television characters, the sort of characters you'd have in such shows as 'Play School' or 'Play Away' with the two boys dressed in bright coloured bib and braces. In this sketch I was in they were supposed to be policemen and I am a mugger! I must say it's odd seeing it now, some 25 years later! It's all in series 3 of the Hale and Pace show, which was originally broadcast on a Sunday at 10 p.m. and some of the material is what you would call adult, although probably considered somewhat tame by today's standards. I was a man living in a box, a sort of tramp or something. To this day I have no idea what that sketch was about. I hope I manage to find it in one of the episodes on YouTube. Another I was supposed to be a patient in a dentist's surgery and one of the boys sat on my legs on the dentist's chair. I'm not sure whether it was Hale or Pace and I can't remember what else happened in that sketch. They were done in such quick succession, there was very little time in between set-ups and they didn't do a lot of takes. I do remember that one of the production crew, a cameraman or lighting assistant, I'm not sure which, took a liking for the pins I wore on the hat I was wearing. I used to collect pin badges, the sort which are metal enamel with a separate pin which you put inside your clothes and the pin sticks through the fabric and the other main part pins to it. Well, he was determined he was going to have them all, but I insisted they weren't for sale or even barter. Strange what you remember and it wasn't clear whether he was being serious or merely trying to annoy me. Some people are difficult to decipher.

On the Sunday I went back into central London.  I was working on location at Smithfield Market and St Bart's Hospital on an episode of 'Poirot,' the episode which was done for the centenary of the publication of the first Poirot story by Agatha Christie,' The Mysterious Affair at Style's.' It was an extremely hot day I seem to remember, but we were dressed in extremely thick and heavy Edwardian suits and there was no way you could keep cool on the set. It was so warm the tarmac on the road we were working on began to melt in the heat. It was the opening sequence, done with the titles. They used a crane to do a wide shot. As it was a Sunday it meant they could close the streets to traffic. We were supposed to be the walking wounded, back from 'The Front' in France. Some people had plaster casts on their legs and were wheeled in wheel chairs, others had their arms in bandages and I think I had my head bandaged. We were walking in through the entrance to St Bart's Hospital. They did no end of takes, and we had to go back to original positions several times for fresh takes. There was a particularly bossy unit manager (or production assistant or assistant director, I'm not sure which he was.) who kept hasstleing us to get it right. On another set-up they had traffic in the street, all vintage vehicles, cars, busses and bicycles. I was supposed to be on a bicycle, but at the last minute I was taken out from the scene. Perhaps because I was going to be used as walking wounded as it would be odd to have me in two places more or less at once, one minute on a bicycle and able-bodied and the next as a wounded soldier. I don't in all honesty think it would have mattered because you are usually in the background in a scene, although  there is always somebody who will point such things out.