RIP Pope Francis

[George 1978]

Pope Francis, the Pontiff and leader of the world's Catholics, has sadly died aged 88 at 7.35 am local time on Easter Monday. I am going to try and keep this brief and leave it like this.

I have to admit that although his health was failing, it was still such a shock that it happened...

[George 1978]

I know that the bombing was so soon after Nicholas Ingram's execution which is how I remember it - and of course, McVeigh got the same treatment as Ingram in 2001....

[George 1978]

There happens to be just four weeks to go before this year's Eurovision Song Contest but one has to say that it has not been a very good week for the British nostalgia market of the Contest. First of all, we have lost the great Colin Berry (his 1979 catchphrase: "Israel: 12 points!"), and...

[George 1978]

There are some radio presenters which give listeners a warm glow when they listen to their voice, particularly when they usually broadcast at a certain time of the day such as the early hours of the morning, and at some point in our lives, quite often during the seventies or eighties. Radio 2 went 24...

[George 1978]

I do vaguely remember in early 1986 the news of something happening in space, and I had it on my mind in hindsight that it was Halley's Comet, which comes around once every 75 years or so (a bit like waiting for a bus, except there never seems to be two coming along at once when one waits almost an...

[George 1978]

In the 1990s ITV shown old episodes of Rising Damp in that 5.15 pm post-spot spot on Saturdays, roughly the same time as Are You Being Served? and Dad's Army were on BBC 1, and Yorkshire TV put their the current end cap at the end of the episodes, rather than the ones which mentioned "(c) Trident...

[George 1978]

Running Scared did have that Kate Bush song as its signature tune - I assume that she sung it specially for the series? That was definitely from 1985 as HG said - probably one of the main songs which I strongly associate with that year.

I know that Julia Millbank - (Debbie from the Look...

[George 1978]

Easter 2025 is almost amongst us, and it only dawned to me rather recently that "Urbi" means "urban" and "Orbi" means "orbit" as in His Holiness' appearance at 11.00 am, which seems to be cut down to around 15 minutes, mostly because Pope Francis has been suffering...

[George 1978]

Some 1966 episodes of The Likely Lads were on Talking Pictures last year - a pity that they were in monochrome.

Rising Damp is probably the most repeated ITV sitcom, and as long as Yorkshire TV had its franchise, it would always be seen in one way or another....

[George 1978]

From what I have seen on YouTube, Austria seems to be tipped to win the contest this year - Luxembourg, Ireland and Austria are all in the second semi-final, and so if Luxembourg or Ireland doesn't get through, then I might go with Austria as well.

[George 1978]

It's just occurred to me that Luxembourg's entry this year could be an indirect homage to Sandie Shaw's 1967 hit - I know that Luxembourg had a song in the contest with a similar French-language title during the years when they were taking part and winning it - late 1960s and early 1970s-ish....

[George 1978]

Yes, as Richard mentioned above, we didn't like Budget Day as kids either - not because of the cost of road tax being increased by 10%, but because children's TV programmes were moved to BBC 2 or were even dropped altogether if it was Children's ITV. I used to refer to it, ironically as The Budgie....

[George 1978]

I can't quite imagine an optician coming to a school to examine pupils - doctor, yes - dentist, yes, but not an optician. Certainly not representatives from High Street opticians such as Dollond and Aitchison or the like - the mountain would not come to Muhammad when it came to that! In the era of NHS...