What are you reading now?

[Bryn]

Is that the Alan Bennet Authorised Version?

More like the T A Milligan version, surely?

[Bella Kemp]

More like the T A Milligan version, surely?

Forgive me, but even with Google I can't fathom who T A Milligan was or is.

[french frank]

Forgive me, but even with Google I can't fathom who T A Milligan was or is.

Was. If I can spike Bryn's guns: he told people he was ill, if I remember.

[Bella Kemp]

Was. If I can spike Bryn's guns: he told people he was ill, if I remember.

Thanks French Frank, but where does the TA come in?

[vinteuil]

Thanks French Frank, but where does the TA come in?

Terence Alan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Milligan

.

[Bryn]

Was. If I can spike Bryn's guns: he told people he was ill, if I remember.

Quite.

[french frank]

Quite.

Just as a point of interest, Bryn, did Spike say Esau sold his birthright for a cup of tea? Or do you mean it's the kind of nonsense he might have come up with?

[gurnemanz]

Gavin Esler: How Britain Ends

Alex Ross's thorough and densely packed "Wagnerism" is continuing to keep me busy.

[gurnemanz]

I remember laughing a lot at Milligan's Puckoon 50 years ago ("He rolled his trousers kneewards revealing the like of two thin white hairy affairs of the leg variety") and went on to enjoy his various war memoirs.

[Bryn]

I remember laughing a lot at Milligan's Puckoon 50 years ago ("He rolled his trousers kneewards revealing the like of two thin white hairy affairs of the leg variety") and went on to enjoy his various war memoirs.

I ordered a copy of "Silly Verse for Kids" as an 11th Birthday present for my next-door neighbour's son.

Puckoon is a brilliant novel. I love the allusions to Joyce's Finnegans Wake and so much else re Irish history. There was a film made, rather too loosely based on Puckoon. Best avoided. It left out way too much of what was in the book.

[LMcD]

Back in the mid-1960s, to the disgust of faculty staff, a group of arts students decided they would end their day trip in London by going to see, not the recommended Strauss opera, but The Bed Sitting Room. One scene that I've never forgotten involved a chap dressed in a kilt disappearing through a trapdoor, whereupon a small doll similarly clad was thrown onto the stage from below, to be greeted with the words 'Aha! the law of diminishing returns'.

[DracoM]

On the basis of his wonderful 'Fatherland', ordered very latest pbk from Robert Harris ' V2'
Total yawn.

[Bryn]

Back in the mid-1960s, to the disgust of faculty staff, a group of arts students decided they would end their day trip in London by going to see, not the recommended Strauss opera, but The Bed Sitting Room. One scene that I've never forgotten involved a chap dressed in a kilt disappearing through a trapdoor, whereupon a small doll similarly clad was thrown onto the stage from below, to be greeted with the words 'Aha! the law of diminishing returns'.

Now that's a play I think a fine translation into film was made of. I read the original in my youth but did not manage to get to see it on stage.

[gurnemanz]

Back in the mid-1960s, to the disgust of faculty staff, a group of arts students decided they would end their day trip in London by going to see, not the recommended Strauss opera, but The Bed Sitting Room. One scene that I've never forgotten involved a chap dressed in a kilt disappearing through a trapdoor, whereupon a small doll similarly clad was thrown onto the stage from below, to be greeted with the words 'Aha! the law of diminishing returns'.

I went to that mid-sixties Bed Sitting Room with my friend, two callow Sixth Formers. Details are a bit fuzzy but the Mermaid Theatre was not at full and I remember that at one point Spike asked for the house lights to be turned up. He came to the front of the stage and invited audience members seated further back to move nearer the front.

[LMcD]

I went to that mid-sixties Bed Sitting Room with my friend, two callow Sixth Formers. Details are a bit fuzzy but the Mermaid Theatre was not at full and I remember that at one point Spike asked for the house lights to be turned up. He came to the front of the stage and invited audience members seated further back to move nearer the front.

If memory serves, at one point a member of the audience stood up and starting haranguing the cast, which led to a lively exchange for a few minutes. I'm still not sure whether it was a pre-planned ploy to keep the audience interested. The only other cast member I can remember was Tony Hancock's Aussie pal Bill Kerr.