Hello Nick And David
The 'Nick' here applies to a couple of Nicholas' and David's. To make sense of this title we are going to have to run around being frangible and come back to the same aircraft carrier we left from. Art!
Yes, that there is one of the Nick's we are talking about here: Nick Lowe. Please be aware that he claims he knew nothing about David's celebrated single success from the album we see above: "Breaking Glass". Conrad remembers this stuff as it was around the time he got into music, when you could record 'music cassette tapes' from the 'John Peel Show', because John didn't talk over the beginning or end of the songs. Als
ANYWAY both Nick and David had hit songs about being destructive with panels of supercooled-liquid. Art!
How can one top lines such as
"Don't look at the carpet
I threw something awful on it"
Conrad, because that's the way his mind works, immediately wondered exactly what David had thrown on the carpet. The perils of being literal-minded.
ANYWAY of course this is a preamble to the main Intro, I just thought I'd work in the themes of glass being broken and a couple of chaps named Nick and David, because - Art!
Those actors are Nicholas Lyndhurst, David Jason and Whomever (who got replaced anyway when he made the bad career move of dying). You see how things link up?
OFAH was a British institution and the much-abused title 'much-loved' is applicable here. It strayed into drama territory in it's later iterations, which is a risk any long-running comedy series dices with.
ANYWAY AGAIN everyone has a favourite scene. Today we're going to look at the background to one of the more famous ones: the chandelier. Art!
Rodney and Del Boy in "A Touch Of Glass"
The background to this is that Del Boy, ever the chancer, had persuaded an aristocrat that he knew all about chandeliers and how to clean them, which was a complete untruth. Said aristocrat had a couple that needed cleaning and of course - obviously! - would pay for this service. Art!
Uncle Albert pulls up a couple of floorboards and gives the retaining bracket a mighty wallop with a hammer, and -
 |
| An 'Oooops' moment ensues |
Yes, they were underneath the wrong one. Come on, you knew that was coming with all my guff about 'breaking glass'. There's a little more to it than what you see, as Nick was taken aside by the director, Ron Butt, and warned -
Ron explained, a little tersely, that he wanted Rodney and Del Boy to hold eye contact for about thirty seconds, as it was intended to play the episode's end credits over this scene. No pressure, then. Except there was. According to Ron, if Nick corpsed and laughed that would blow the scene, which was already very expensive thanks to the prop chandelier that the props department had made. A replica, not the real thing, but still very pricey.
If Nick blew the scene it would ruin the whole episode, further explained Ron, meaning they had only five episodes and the BBC had contracted for six, so they wouldn't take the series, port would be passed to the right, Atlantis would sink, cats and dogs living together -
You get the idea. Art!
I Googled 'Ron Butt' and got this. You're welcome.
Heavens only knows how Nick and Dave kept their faces appropriately straight and unmirthful, but they managed it. Champions! One presumes that David Jason had been given a similar, if slightly less shouty, version of the instructions that Nick got, David being the bigger star of the two.
Nick also related that he could see Ron, hovering out of shot below the ladders, keeping a patrician eye upon the thespians he had ordered about. Come the instant when the chandelier went crashing to the ground, what did Ron do?
He took out his handkerchief and stuffed it into his mouth in order to stifle his laughter, shoulders heaving all the while. Yeah, Ron, one rule for the thesps and another for you, hmmmm?
And that, gentle reader, is how we justify today's title. Art!
In The Company Of Derangers
Here's the second part of Konstantin's torrid tale of corporate woe, from "Inside Russia". It's not pleasant reading if you're a Ruffian businessman working inside Mordorvia.
'Company B' is another private manufacturing business, making gas compressor stations, which - you may be ahead of me here - compress gas in pipelines. Their customers were part of Gazprom, and they'd been around for ages as a very successful business. Art!
Gas compressor stations. Given the colour scheme, not Ruffian.
Sales have dropped precipitously, but not to zero as with Company A. The contractors who supply Company B are now offering 'Open book contracts' with ZERO profit margins. 'Twould seem that these suppliers of Company B are going under and are willing to only break even, because that means they are still in business, however parlous that might be. And to think that being in the gas supply industry used to be a licence to print money.
Oooops.
"The War Illustrated Edition 207 29th May 1945"
Back to the old montage pages again. Art!
This imposing edifice is situated in Leipzig, and is a typically enormous Teuton memorial to the defeat of Napoleon in 1813. According to the blurb it housed 150 Nazi fanatics, prepared to hold out indefinitely. This ferocious will to resist lasted all of a few hours until South Canadian artillery gave them a taste of what was to come, and they promptly surrendered. Here South Canadian troops are moving in to accept their surrender - note everyone has their weapon slung and they're all bunched together.
This happy band of Teuton prisoners have been taken by the Royal Scots Fusiliers outside Verden. They seem to be playing 'Sardines' in the Bren Carrier and I suspect it's only being used to corral them, not as a mode of transport. Because those two Tommies sitting on the front would be liable to fall off at the slightest bump in the road, and having 2 tons of armoured vehicle drive over you is nobody's idea of a fun time. Note that some clumsy dastard has smeared away the 'Watch' part of "The Black Watch", chalked on the hull front.
More Bull!
How glad am I that I chanced across the rich pageant of 'Bull' and it's derivatives in my "Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable", and I expect you cannot wait for more such definitions. Okay.
BULL SESSION: Stated to be a South Canadian or British American phrase, it means a meeting of men only, where matters concerning the world, football and poker are discussed in a calm and methodical manner. Usually with cigars. Art!
Take your pick.
BULLDOG: The canine referred to thus is so-called because of it's history in bull-baiting. Winston Churchill once described the British bulldog and how it was bred to be able to bite and hold on whilst breathing through it's nose, meaning it was both implacable and tenacious. This has given rise to describing members of Hom. Sap. with these attributes as having a 'bulldog nature'. Art!
A stance and expression that says "Who are you looking at, mate?"
BULLERS: new to me, these, apparently, are ceremonial officials who appear with the proctors at Oxford University. Art?
Ah, I see. They are a species of constable responsible for securing the University's premises and property. Now we are all better-informed than we were five minutes ago.
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