RIP Pope Francis

[George 1978]

I was shopping in the main Tesco a couple of months ago and I heard on their radio, Tears for Fears' Everybody Wants to Rule the World which took me back to 1985 and travelling to open fields around a mile away on a Sunday afternoon back then and then coming back to get an ice cream or a small bottle...

[George 1978]

If you watch the very first episode from 1960, around 2:50 in at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00H0ycLk52I, you will find that Dennis Tanner was the first man to be seen in Coronation Street. His first line was: "where's what?"

There are now just only three living former cast...

[George 1978]

Just watched the the BBC One funeral coverage - what a great send-off for such a great pontiff. Bless him.

[George 1978]

I thought that I would bump up this thread when I found out today that McVitie's chocolate digestives have are celebrating their 100 years of production in 2025! No, the biscuits are not 100 years old, but the recipe for them certainly was successful to begin with. I don't think that they will get a...

[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....