A new series of ITV quiz show “Tenable” began yesterday, Monday 11 September 2023. Here are the questions and answers for today’s episode, Tuesday 12 September 2023, in the format used elsewhere on this Blog: the questions, how the team fared and the answers. The Questions Tuesday 12 September 2023 [S6Ep26] Team name: Arabelles and… Continue reading “Tenable” questions, Tuesday 12 September 2023 [S6Ep26]
A new series of ITV quiz show “Tenable” began today, Monday 11 September 2023. Here are the questions and answers for today’s episode, in the format used elsewhere on this Blog: the questions, how the team fared and the answers. The Questions Monday 11 September 2023 [S6, no episode number given on my TV] Team… Continue reading “Tenable” questions, Monday 11 September 2023 [Series 6]
Things have been rather quiet on this Blog in recent months. It happens from time to time. I aim to have no more than a five-day gap between each post. I fell behind this target earlier in the year. In May I “back-filled” several months’ worth of pieces, going back to 2022 and explained the… Continue reading Three months to catch up on
Back in 2016, in this piece about Veuve Cliquot champagne, I mentioned my brother’s “ex-brother-in-law” Paco, a source of many anecdotes over the years. None of these anecdotes painted him in a good light. Brother-in-law might not be the right way to describe how the two of them were connected: my brother’s wife and Paco’s… Continue reading “Tell your father … that I killed this rabbit”
Following on from three earlier pieces (most recently this one), here are another 10 jokes from Tony Blackburn’s “Sounds of the 60s” show on Radio 2. Most of them come from the few minutes just before 8am on the live broadcasts when he and Dermot O’Leary discuss their week. Dermot’s friend was going out with… Continue reading Tony and Dermot, a fourth selection of jokes
Jo Brand has some good jokes. Like me, she became a parent in her 40s and more than once I have heard her say the following, about what happens when you have two very young children in the house. People stop visiting you. Not because you’re boring and all you want to do is talk… Continue reading “… in my opinion”
On 11 August 1979 I went to the Royal Albert Hall for the first time, for a “Promenade Concert”, or Prom. A schoolfriend invited me. His father was a senior management figure at a local brewery. The brewery, or their parent company, had a box at the Albert Hall, so that was where we sat.… Continue reading A box at the Royal Albert Hall, 1979
Earlier this year I wrote a piece about the Oscar winners that I have seen on the London stage. I counted up a dozen, 11 I had seen in London and one more (Jeremy Irons) in Stratford-on-Avon. Since writing those words I have found another theatre programme: “Antigone” at the Barbican, a production I saw… Continue reading A 12th Oscar Winner on the London stage
The story behind the song: “I Remember You”. Frank Ifield’s recording of “I Remember You” was the best-selling single of 1962 in the UK. It was #1 for 7 weeks, from late July until mid-September. The song was written over 20 years earlier, in 1941, by Victor Scherzinger and Johnny Mercer. Mercer wrote the words… Continue reading The story behind the song: “I Remember You”
There are some news stories that clearly made a big impression on people. When I was growing up we would only have leaf tea, brewed up in a pot. Right up until the 1980s we never used teabags. My father always said that the stuff that they put in teabags was only the sweepings from… Continue reading The sweepings from the factory floor
The Compartments 