Welcome to the Palace Flophouse Grill

John Steinbeck

Finally watched the BBC4 programme on one of my favourite authors, John Steinbeck. It was good despite Melvyn Bragg who insisted on quoting from 'The Grapes of Wrath' and 'Cannery Row'. Big mistake. He sounded nothing like Henry Fonda - he was all nasal and South Bank Show.

Back in our carefree student days, my mate Dancin' Jones and I had several ambitions - including writing a hit musical about the plumbers of Balham - but chief among them was going to live with Mack and the Boys at their doss-house shack which they called the Palace Flophouse Grill. Nothing to do all day but laze around in the California sun, drinking cheap whisky and scavenging food from Lee Chong's grocery store. It's all in 'Cannery Row'. Here's the beginning:

Mack and the Boys

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses."

Now we need a decent documentary about Ernie Hemingway. He was once challenged to write a novel in 6 words and came up with "Baby shoes for sale. Never used."  So much for his tough, grizzled old git image. Of course writing all those Mills & Boon romances didn't help him any either.

Did either Stenibeck or Hemingway write the Great American Novel? Possibly. Melville's 'Moby Dick' is supposed to be up there as a contender but I must confess I've never read it. I only know the first line ("Pardon me, boy, is that the Chatanooga choo-choo?" Later a hit song for Glenn Miller not to mention his orchestra.) According to Seinfeld, the second time you read 'Moby Dick'  Ahab and the whale become great friends.

Art Pickles and his whistling yo-yo

Who today remembers world yo-yo champion Art Pickles who endorsed and recommended a breakthrough in yo-yo technnology - the first whistling yo-yo? I do for a kick-off, thanks to one of the best Christmas presents I received this year -  the best of the Eagle comic in the 1950s.

The book features an amazing array of adverts from the '50s including the unique whistling yo-yo (reduced from 3/- to 1/6d and personally autographed by Art) which was available when you bought Outspan oranges - although the connection between oranges and yo-yos escapes me. There was a coupon so maybe, in order to receive your whistling yo-yo, you had to send that in with some orange peel.

You could also buy Dan Dare raincoats (Dan was the pilot of the future for those of you who didn't know). These guaranteed that you would "look smart and keep warm all year round". One thing puzzles me. If Dan Dare was zooming around outer space why did he need a "Cravanette-proofed" gaberdine raincoat? Does it rain on Mars?

Dedicated followers of fashion could complement their raincoat with a Dan Dare tie. In one of the comic strips featuring the Pilot of the Future  it was predicted that by 1996 cricket would feature wickets with four stumps. Nice try, Dan but no cigar.

It all brought back memories of a rubber Dan Dare glove puppet which I had when I were a lad (hours of fun for everyone) It would probably be worth thousands now on the open market - the sort of thing that they clamour for on the Antiques Roadshow. Alas, it was chucked out along with all my Superman and Victor comics not to mention those Beano and Film Fun annuals. Mothers have a lot to answer for...

Talking bloody heads



Pete and Dud in action - pity the Heroes of Comedy programme didn't show more of them


Just watched a Heroes of Comedy TV programme about two of my favourite funny men, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Really infuriating.

All these so-called comedians I've never even heard of coming out with the most inane tripe. One of them said, "With 'Beyond the Fringe' people began to think, hey, comedy can be funny." What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Then four of these so-called "experts on comedy" were shown all repeating the famous line - "I've got nothing against your right leg" etc - from the One Leg Too Few sketch. Just saying it! The only intelligent person was Neil Innes who said "What do I know? I don't wear corduroy trousers and have a sociology degree."

And all the time you just wanted to see more than two seconds of Pete and Dud in action. Fat chance of that. I switched off in disgust. These talking head programmes really annoy me - cheap television at its most crass. They almost ruined the programme about Victoria Wood's TV career. Almost, but not quite. At least you had people who knew and had worked with her - plus lots of good, funny clips that had me laughing all over again.

Is Cheetah the Chimp Dead?



Nice family snapshot of the Tarzans at home

 Apparently the chimp who played Cheetah in the old black and white Tarzan films died last month in an animal sanctuary in Florida.

He was said to be aged 80 which caused one expert to say it couldn't possibly be Cheetah the movie monkey as "living into your 70s is pushing the limits of chimp biology".

The woman who runs the sanctuary claims Johnny Weismuller, the ex-Olympic swimmer who played the first Tarzan, left the chimp to her in his will and that the the monkey "was soothed by Christian music and also enjoyed finger painting and watching football, though she was unsure if he had any favorite teams". 

Mia Farrow, whose mother Maureen O'Sullivan, played the definitive and by far the prettiest and sexiest Jane, spread the word about the chimp's death on her Twitter account. Apparently her mother always referred to Cheetah as "that bastard". Nice.