Blackpool's Comedy Carpet

The Comedy Carpet, situated on Blackpool's promenade in front of the famous tower, is according to Gordon Young, it's creator, "a celebration of comedy on an extraordinary scale...referring to the work of more than 1,000 comedians and comedy writers, the carpet gives visual form to jokes, songs and catchphrases dating from the early days of variety to the present." Quite. It sounded a bit shit when first mooted and quite frankly, another waste of money by the Council but credit due, when you see it, either by day or night, it's quite a breathtaking, striking piece of art. And very amusing.

It's not a carpet as such. That would be crazy! Imagine the fluff and grit. And the hoovering of course. No, it's actually an intricately tiled area on the newly created Tower Headland, which, as you can see, you can walk on. To be honest, there's so much going on there that you could probably visit it several times and see something new on each occasion. It's quite gratifying as well that it's not just playing up to the idea of comedy in seaside resorts being just typical end of pier raucous Summer Season stuff, or old 50's comedians pedaling the same old gags. No, this truly does what it says on the tin. Ken Dodd next to Reeves and Mortimer, Python sharing space with Les Dawson, Carry On quotes mixed with Porridge. It's not often you find Chris Morris and Norman wisdom together is it? It treats funny then the same as funny now, with no boundaries, no distinctions.

Of course, one thing that, in years to come, will bind together visitors with a collective sense of non-plussedness is that there's no context given for the quotes. Unless you buy the guide book that is. You either know where it's from or you don't. Give it a few years and reading the carpet will be like watching Arthur Atkinson on "The Fast Show" doing his stupid catchphrases and not knowing what the hell the audience are laughing at. Which is funny in itself. I suppose "Where's Me Washboard?" isn't that far away from the Boosh doing a crimp about tasty soup. If you think about it, there are teenagers out there who think the "Father Ted" Christmas Special is just something that's always shown each yule, like we used to think about Morecambe and Wise specials. Brrrrr. Scary.

"I can't see any Horne and Corden quotes"

Of course it's highly ironic that the Council spend £2.6m on this, then realise it's too close to the trams and vandalize it on "Health and Safety" grounds without permission from the artists who created it in the first place, and who pointed out this design flaw at an early stage only to be told to "Carry on Regardless" by the same Council.

Top experts carefully remove the highly unsafe stones using delicate equipment

"Well done lads. now let's see if we can find another cock-up to fix." Anybody would think that someone on the council is deliberately trying to make work for certain building contractors who may or may not be rewarding them for doing so. I wouldn't think that of course.

The new improved Blackpool Council Version which now doesn't credit some of the comedians or writers, the artists themselves or Ken Dodd who formally opened it. Another winner.

Blackpool Borough Council - I bet any member couldn't find their own arse with both hands.

Despite this, it's still great. You can find more info on the map here: http://comedycarpet.co.uk/ and here's some of my pics of Gordon Young's brilliant designs...

 

Bring Back Alcopops!

Ahhh. Whatever happened to good old fashioned alcopop drinks? Hooch, Metz, Red Square, etc. Massive in the 90's, gone now, much like Heather Small's hair. Written out of history. I bloody loved them. The weirder, the better. I only mention it as I stumbled across this ad in an old magazine for one of my faves, Wild Brew, as seen in the advert above, and to your right. This contained guarana, so it was basically a vodka and Red Bull variation, just much better. By the way, what ever happened to those Cadbury's Boost bars, with the green wrapper that contained guarana? They were great. But I digress, and so soon as well. It apparently got banned because of a "marijuana type-leaf" on the bottle. Lame.

Of course, the one everybody remembers is Martini Metz, the schnapps drink. Bloody great that was. Just that sodding "Beware the Judderman, when the moon is fat" advert that freaked most people out. What were the marketing bods thinking here? And of course the later advert with a pre-Boosh Julian Barratt as a barman wearing an eyepatch banging on about the medical condition known "as a judder". I never felt the judder, but then again I was probably too pissed on disco vomit pop.

Nearly all of them went eventually, leaving the pathetic selection we've got today. Smirnoff Ice is possibly the classiest we get. All the others seemed to be aimed at people who live on council estates. WKD... I ask you.  Bloody hell. Of course the reason they were pulled was because it encouraged under aged drinkers, and the removal of such temptation from the shelves would help curb that worrying trend. Yeah, that worked didn't it?

Beware the Judderman...

Back To The Sweet Shop - No.2: Pink Panther Candy Bar

Anything with the Pink Panther on it was cool. Plus it had his groovy car! Cool! And look - PP was clearly a smoker! Err...not cool. This was EXTRAORDINARILY sweet which surely would rot your teeth in an instant. Well, if you ate enough, which I could have done had I had the funds. 2p was a lot! And you don't care about teeth when you're a kid. Yeah, that will come back to haunt you later. Created by "NESTLE'S" - before they got up themselves and became just "Nestle" and in turn, evil. 

Cheap crappy sweets, you can't beat them. Of course the Pink Panther name lives on today with the cheap crappy pink wafer biscuits, which are also unbeatable.

The rinky-dink Pink Panther - a gentleman, a scholar and an acrobat.

Before They Were Famous - Pet Shop Boys

From THE SMASH HITS YEARBOOK 1983... an article about t-shirts. But can you spot the SMASH HITS writer who's part of an electronic duo, alongside his bandmate who just happened to be hanging around on the day of the photoshoot?

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, a pre-fame Pet Shop Boys.

The Marvellous Toys Of Gerry Anderson

On the 26th of December, Boxing Day, 2012, Gerry Anderson passed away, aged 83. He was best known to the public as the film and television producer who created the 1960's puppet show THUNDERBIRDS, along with CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS, STINGRAY and SPACE:1999. He passed away in his sleep, having been suffering from increasing dementia over the last few years. To those of us born in the 1960's or 1970's though, he along with his production teams, were visionaries. Our childhood would have been a great deal poorer without his shows, and the remarkable ideas and spectacle contained within. Most importantly, without Anderson, we wouldn't have had some marvellous toys to play with. So I can't think of any better way to pay tribute than to take a look at some of those toys...

Nearly all of the fantastic array of vehicles and spaceships which were featured in Anderson's many TV shows were reproduced in die-cast metal toy form by Liverpool toy manufacturer Dinky Toys, a subsidiary   of Meccano. What you got was a toy that would take some hammering - built to last. Looking at the catalogue extract above, I think I had nearly all of these and more - the Lady Penelope Pink Rolls Royce unfortunately never crossed my path. Some were new, some were second hand, but that was the thing about these toys - virtually every boy would have at least one of them.

I'm going to assume that anybody reading this has a bit of knowledge of the shows they came from. If not Wikipedia is your friend. Here's my top five...

5. U.F.O. SHADO 2 MOBILE

What to say about this bad boy? Don't drop it on your foot or you'll cause serious damage. And not to the toy. This thing was like a brick. The first thing to notice was that it didn't look the same colour as the TV version.This was a strange anomaly with almost all the Dinky Anderson toys - why? Not a clue, but I won't dwell on it, honest. Anyway, the caterpillar tracks were usually the first thing to fall off, but that wasn't a worry as that just meant it could travel faster across the carpet. Sorry, forest. The real beauty here was in the flip top roof, which at the press of a button flipped to reveal a lethal missile launcher. And I mean, lethal. A spring propelled rubber tipped plastic missile, ideal for firing at the cat, (who obviously was of extra terrestrial origin - see also the Starship Enterprise post earlier), and which, if it hit you in the face, could cause some serious damage. So, excellent work from Dinky! 

4. SPECTRUM PURSUIT VEHICLE

From the CAPTAIN SCARLET series, the titular character's tank like pursuit vehicle, the SPV, is another ingenious idea from Anderson's Century 21 team. And another potential lethal object if thrown at someone. Which kids do. Has it got gadgets? Does Brains stutter? Of course it has. Missile launcher at the front of course, but not as eye-gouging as the previous toy. Plus it rarely worked. Caterpillar tracks at the rear for reasons which never became readily apparent. These also tended to fall off as well. Radio antennae which could be raised or lowered. Plus, the main novelty... press the button on the roof and the side door shoots out to reveal a little Captain Scarlet figure sitting in his driving seat. "But he's backwards" I hear you say. Yeah, the novelty was he drove his vehicle sitting backwards using video screen technology. Cool isn't the word. Bloody brilliant. I loved this, though why I felt the need to more or less destroy it I'm not sure. Kids, eh?

 
3. UFO SHADO INTERCEPTOR

Okay, lets get the major plot defect out of the way now. The show UFO was about an ongoing series of visits to and attacks on Earth by a mysterious alien race. So far, so Mysteron. So there were defences put in place by the secret organizaton, SHADO (Supreme Headquarters, Alien Defence Organisation). We saw one of the ground defences earlier at number 5, and there were also the undersea launched Skydivers, which you couldn't buy as a toy. BUT as the main first line of defence against the alien UFO craft, we have the very green and cool looking Interceptors... with it's ONE missile, Brilliant. So if it misses it's useless. Good plan as a first offensive (slaps hand on forehead). In the real world of the living room, this really was a weapon. Yes, the missile DID fire. Yes it did hurt. Yes, it did make contact with fur. Did I mention it was the wrong colour? Because it WAS. Grrrr.

2. THUNDERBIRD 2 AND 4

Surely some mistake? This is the best toy ever! No. It's not. It's close but not quite. Because it was the wrong frigging COLOUR. Thunderbird 2 is GREEN. Always has been, always will be. Were they all colour blind at the factory in Liverpool? It is NOT BLUE. I had to wait another 18 years for THUNDERBIRDS to become popular again with a new generation of kids before I could get one which is the right colour, made by Matchbox. So I mark this down out of spite. And my original blue toy never worked properly because some bright spark at the age of 5 decided to take the screws out and take it to bits, and then lost the screws. Didn't lose the little plastic Thunderbird 4 that sat in the pod, mind you. Please note that anybody who says that Thunderbird 2 wouldn't actually be able to fly, as it's wings were the wrong way round aerodynamically, is a twat.

1. SPACE:1999 EAGLE

Yes, this SHOULD lose marks due to it being green but they corrected it for the freighter, so there. THIS is the dog's bollocks. It's got everything. Well, that's a lie, it does sod all, but in your childhood imagination, it did it all. It's got a pod, like Thunderbird 2, which separates from the main craft. The transporter's pod has two doors that open. That's it. We were happy with that! The freighter's pod carries nuclear waste (not really - only pretend. That would have been a bit much even in the slipshod Health & Safety free 70's) which you can winch down on a little bit of string and magnet. That was it. No missiles. The cat was safe.

Why was it so good then? It just was. A great example of design and the concept behind the craft was great - these were working functional ships built for multi-purpose use. They were believable  And that was the great thing behind all of the craft and cars from Anderson's shows - there was thought and effort put in to make them seem as if they'd work in real life. They weren't just tacked on, they helped make the world created for each show seem a little more real, despite the puppets and stiff actors who populated them.

So there you go. Five great Dinky toys I had, and loved, to the point of destruction in most cases. But toys aren't for looking at, they're for playing with.

I also had JOE 90's car.

It was shit. Still, 5 out of 6 isn't bad.

RIP Gerry.