What The Buck?

No!  That Is Not A Thinly-Veiled Swear
It applies directly to the M.E.N. getting a cryptic crossword clue wrong, WRONG, WRONG.
     WRONG!!
     I know putting two exclamation marks is bordering on Shrieking Female Hysteria As Exemplified In Hollywood (And Also 'Doctor Who'); bear with me, for I have a barely credible tale of angst and enmity, error and terror, ondes and martenot tom and jerry.
     First of all, let us cast our collective minds back to a few days ago, when Sean Pertwee was doing his very best not to gloat about all the props he got to take home, because his dad was playing The Doctor.  Art?

A famliar profile

"Doctor On Call Keep Clear 24/7"

     This was the mischievous and witty end to an advert about mobile phones, where an un-named character who greatly resembled Jon Pertwee (because it was him) stood in front of a pair of archway doors, as a pair of inept secret agents headed off into the sunset, having failed to locate the source of some temporal interference.  "Doctor on call" indeed!
     Did I mention Shrieking Female Hysteria?  As per 'Doctor Who', for Jon's inaugural season they brought in Professor Elizabeth Shaw, who was a scientist, and a girl, who was to be his new assistant, and also a girl, and be an intellectual counterweight, whilst also being a girl, except she ended up shrieking in a corner when menaced by aliens or monsters.  Like a girl.

Note the Brigadier's eyes remain above leg and neck level.  That's a professional soldier for you.

     She went back to Cambridge, before you ask why she vanished after a season.   Doubtless bearing all the intellectual freight acquired from working with an intelligent extraterrestrial; I wouldn't be surprised if all mobile phones across the globe are in fact derived from Liz Shaw's work - but I diverge.
     Back to the horrors of a cross word.  Art?

     That was 7 Down.  Note the breakdown of 4,3,3.  Now, observe the actual crossword itself.  Art?

     I did rather goose it with 14 Across - "Gives a rise to one amongst the entertainers" which I worked out as STAIRS being a combination of STARS and I (for "one"), when the answer was HOISTS.  
     Anyway, that 7 Down is clearly made up of 4,3,4.   What's going on?  Well, look at the clue again:  Approve the gymnasium apparatus, but accept no responsibility.  The answer is indeed PASS THE BUCK, which satisfies the latter part of the clue, but the compiler has confused this with the first part of the clue, which would have been PASS THE BAR, an answer coming in at 4,3,3.

Passing the baa.  Close enough.

     Is it any wonder I am sitting here, sauteing in a puddle of Frothing Nitric Ire?
     Motley!  Put on that motorcycle helmet and run into that glass door until one of you breaks.  We're doing shear limit testing.*

Some GCHQ Gadgetry
There is an exhibition of various pieces of espionage kit at GCHQ, though you have to wonder how much they aren't going to show you, and also whether any of it was invented by Liz Shaw.  

Extra-secure telephone

      This particular Devil Box has a setting for "Secret", and another for normal, so if you're calling to inform the lady wife that you've gotten hold of a cheap chicken, you're good to go on normal, though she might retort that you need to get some Baby New Potatoes on the way home.  If, on the other hand, the chicken is a two-ton monster mutant that glows green in the dark and which preys upon traffic enforcement officers - that's what 'Secret' was invented for.  One wonders at that warning upon the dial - for this is back in the day when phones were electro-mechanical in nature and you had to physically move bits of them around - if you're using the 'Secret' button?

What it says in the caption

     This is one of umpteen radios that were unearthed from a domicile used by a couple of Sinister spies; built into the walls, put under the floorboards, that sort of thing.  Along with a skipful of other stuff that they didn't get a chance to destroy.  The Krogers, before you ask.  There's an interesting story associated with them - of which maybe more later.

"Magic powder"

     GCHQ takes Data Protection seriously.  Very seriously. Very seriously indeed. In fact <Mister Hand intervenes to redact a blatant attempt to puff up the word count) - exploded by remote control!
     That collection of powder is all that remains of one of the GCHQ computers after it's useful life has come to an end.  Not willing to risk anything being retrieved from said bit of kit, it is literally ground to powder.  This is then mixed into concrete blocks and sunk in the North Sea.**

Gee, see HQ

More Of Memory
You may recall Conrad's gloasting yesteryon about successfully tracking down a book from his youth, and a vague allusion to another, similarly forgotten tome lost in the mists of time.

NOT THAT MIST!

     Once again, this memory lacks both title and author.  I do remember that it featured an orphan, who had been left at the orphanage by his hideous, rotten-toothed, dubious-natured father (who probably didn't pass the port in the right direction, either, the dirty cur!).  He gets acquired by a rather haughty gentleman and they eventually go looking for pirate treasure - possibly in South Canada.  I remember there was a wager about drinking, which our orphan hero won because his adoptee got rid of all their water whilst riding back to town in the blazing sun. Oh, and something about fruit, too.

"Oooh, arr, Jim lad!" - no - hang on, wrong kind of pirate -

     It may have been something to do with author Leon Garfield, though I've had a quick flick at his bibliography and nothing jumps out at me.  Or, the mystery author's work may have sat next to Ol' Leos on the shelves.  O treacherous memory!
Finally -
At some point I am going to tackle "Russians and alcohol", though in small, easily digestible pieces, as it's a topic with a long history going back many centuries.  In the meantime, how about the Ruffian disregard for danger, which appears to go alongside a lack of the Common Sense Gene?  I refer to those who go bathing and posing in the toxic waters of a power plant's waste pond.  Art?

Smooching with death

     It's not blue because Tropical, it's blue because POISON.
     Sheesh.  Ruffians, eh?



*  I say this but we're not really - we're just being sadistic funsters!
**  My imagination may be working overtime here.***
***  But then again ...