I was going to add this to the original thread at:-
http://www.corfid.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=16950
but it is full of lengthy diatribes by myself and geodetic Steve so thought it better to start a supplementary new thread on the same subject
I have just spent two very busy weeks back in the UK (My first visit "home" since embarking on the QE2 for our honeymoon cruise to New York in June 2000)
I found hardly any time to watch UK television, except for attempts to glean a weather forecast demanded by Susan., not made very easy because since I left the UK has defected to the degrees Celcius camp so I had to constantly battle with the arithmetic of converting to degrees Fahrenheit.
One progamme I did fortuitiously catch was an old favourite that I was somewhat surprised to find is still being produced. A comedy discussion based on topical news stories called "Have I Got News For You"
Originally this had a regular cast of the genial Angus Deayton as the chairman with comments by Ian Hislop,aBritishsatirist, writer, broadcaster and editor of the magazine Private Eye. (he has appeared on many radio and television programmes, most notably as a team captain on the BBCcurrent affairsquiz Have I Got News for You) aided and abetted by the comedian Paul Merton
(who a 2005 Channel 4 poll of fellow comedians, saw him voted among the top twenty greatest comedians in history)
Hislop is the only person to have appeared in every episode of Have I Got News for You's nineteen-year history,
the edition I watched had as chairman
Michael Aspel togrther with Ian and Paul and two guest panellists and I now know that Angus Deayton was fired in October 2002 after scandalous revelations about his ptrivate life were published
the episode immediately after those revelation is on youtube:-
My reason for bringing this up is that it reminded me that I once spoke albeit briefly and peremptorily to Mr Hislop who at the time had a retreat near to my home town in Dorset ,where for several years I was the honorary treasurer for the Sherborne branch of the UK's Cancer Research Campaign, which in 2002, merged with the Imperial Cancer Research Fund to form Cancer Research UK.
one day a year we held a fund raising "Flag Day'. and one year I was on duty with my collecting can outside a local supermarket when up strolled the unmistakeable figure of Mr Hislop
I made some lame joke about him putting some dosh in my can, which he did.
__________________
"Sir" John Fowles Bt
Honorary Curator Bootleg Museum
(where Sir does not signify that I am a fully benighted Knight just a Bt which signifies a humble Baronet -?? read the wiki!)
I meant no one no harm
Once inside we found a curious moonbeam
Doing dances on the floor