"Britannia comes on wearing an old fireman's helmet from 'Dad's Army'..."

"Britannia comes on wearing an old fireman's helmet from 'Dad's Army'..."

Warren came round yesterday (I never knew he was unconscious!) and whipped something out that surprised me.

He proudly unveiled 3 discs of the first series of 'Jokers Wild' and we spend an hour or so looking at a couple of episodes and talking about what I could expect from the show. The word Warren kept coming back to was 'shambolic' and the first episode we watched certainly fitted that description.

None of the cameras seemed to have zoom lenses and the opening shot is quite alarming as the the camera hares across the studio to go from a wide shot to focus on host Barry Cryer.

His device for dispensing the subject cards is not having a good day and there's a lot of wiring haning out the back of the monitor on his desk. In a later episode, we learn that once points have been awarded to a team, there's no easy way to take them off the scoreboard again if there's a penalty.

The set looks at best half-finished, with the audience seated on wooden deckchairs, half a dozen of which at the front are unoccupied.

But in the way of things, we still managed to enjoy ourselves. There are some very familiar figures on display here (Les Dawson, Alfred Marks, Roy Hudd) along with some names new to me. So if nothing else, it's mildly educational!

Warren left the discs with us, though thst might have been with a sense of relief...

In other news, he was kind enough to record a ten-minute video on how misleading some of the artwork was on (and in) the Target range of 'Doctor Who' books. Hopefully, we can do some more with young Mr Warren as I was very pleased with the results and he deserves more exposure. Though, of course, he does have a strict price-list for that sort of thing...

In the evening, we wanted to do a reaction to a 1978 edition of 'The Good Old Days' featuring Ken Dodd. This piece will feature on Episode 21 of 'Round The Archives' and goes off at some very odd tangents.

But then, so do some of the acts - the sudden appearance of a Spanish ventriloquist dummy crow that looked like the star of the Kia-Ora adverts took us all my surprise and his guttural rendition of 'I Was Born Under A Wand'rin' Star' was even more concerning...

We won't spoil the article here, but there was a moment towards the end where some celebratory placards did make me think of 'The Two Ronnies' doing the Army Kitchen song and dance routine...
"Rissoles!" I hear you cry. And I will not argue with you on that point...

(By Andrew Trowbridge)