samkydd

Alan Bennett is 71 now and I thought that television would at least have a retrospective of his work to celebrate his 70th birthday last year. Does anyone know if they did?

Ever since I was about seven I've liked his work, and he must rate as one of the best writers and performers we've ever had, and a great voice! I listen to Talking Heads and The Lady in the Van on audio tape regularly in the car, and he always manages to capture that unique Britishness that we all seem to love and try and seek out in British films and drama!

His diaries kept me sane when I was unfortunate enough to have to travel to London every day on the train, and endure broken points, broken signals, broken aircon and broken promises! Then from Waterloo, enduring multiple sweaty armpits and BO on the overcrowded Underground system during the summer of 2003, when the temperatures reached 98 degrees, and trendy spectacled yuppies no longer had the energy even to hold their Harry Potter books at arms length to show other passengers what they were reading (no danger of that with my books, I still put brown paper covers on them like we did at school, even the non-mucky ones)!

His television work has always been "tip top" as a Thora Hird character might say, and I'd love to see a season of his work repeated. So if no-one else had already said so, thanks Alan you've kept me entertained for most of my life so far!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Fellwanderer

I'm sure he was born 70 - still, first rate for all that

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A signature is no substitute for a life

samkydd

I think he's one of that rare breed that is very good at a lot of things he does but doesn't feel the need to shout about it from the rooftops like most.

Felix Aymler was born when he was 73, Wilfrid Hyde-White was 80 even at primary school, and Robertson Hare was at least 62 on his 21st birthday! I couldn't imagine any of these as children!

It's very stange that in old black and white films because of the clothes and the hairstyles, even quite young actors looked old or middle aged! I think it's because they dressed like your Dad or Grandad! One thing I've noticed as I get older, there are no ugly women any more!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

samkydd

Now you don't mean that! The grass is always greener until you jump over the fence and find out you've landed on green painted concrete! Most of us have had the opportunity to run off with some 24 year old Brazilian or Swedish girl (definitely not another British one though).

But the best thing about getting older is that you can see beyond the lure of the flesh, and you know that after a few weeks of carving her name on wooden benches and embarassing yourself trying to dance in a night club liked some pissed up uncle at a wedding reception, having your old faithful clothes replaced by ridiculous looking flared fashionable stuff and a trendy haircut making you look like an ageing TV game show host that nobody recognises, that reality creeps in.

Within a month or so you'll regret giving up your home for a lover's bedsit and stone cold Baby Belling, and she'll start looking in estate agents' windows at flats you could only just afford if you'd stayed with "'Er indoors"! Sooner or later your Bank Holiday Weekends spent in bed for a John and Yokoesque marathon love-in together will soon change to Bank Holidays in B&Q and IKEA, the lure of the laminate flooring and the pining for pine wardrobes will be too much for her to resist, and you'd be the one that has to put it on your plastic! After all, that sort of thing is very new to her, and you'll have to play Mr Christian to her Captain Bligh on a voyage of domestic discovery!

When it does finally dawn on you that the beautiful nymphette you pulled in a wine bar is in fact bleeding you dry physically, financially and interlectually "Yes of course I'll get you the giant pink teddy darling, and the pink fluffy bath and toilet mat and seat cover set! Yes don't they look yummie" you'll realise that you made a big mistake and that an evening at home with the wife enjoying a nice meal in front of Footballers' Wives was sheer bliss!

OK so the sex is something else, but with all your new and old financial worries and the physical and mental trauma of living with Imelda Marcos' daughter have left you impotent anyway, and soon you start making excuses like you have to work late so that you can sneak off to see your wife behind her back, playing the mid-life crisis trump card to try and worm your way back into your own house!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Fellwanderer

I hope that is a sign of a very active and vivid imagination!

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A signature is no substitute for a life

samkydd

For once, I'm saying nothing!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

samkydd

OK let's discuss a knighthood for Alan Bennett in the New Year's Honours List. I know he's not a footballer, rugby coach, sitcom actor, or even an international illegal arms dealer and coup d'etat financier with a famous mum and 10 Downing Street printed on his business cards, but he's worth one all the same!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

aaron

samkydd,
Your 'stream of conciousness' rants are one of the highlights of this forum, - and remarkably accurate..... umm, so i'm told

'He who is not one up...Is one down'

samkydd

Unfortunately these days I prefer 'streams of unconsciousness' and often go to bed very early and fall asleep watching a film, rising before dawn to afford an hour or so of "quality time" with just me, a cup of coffee and total silence before embarking on yet another day of winning bread. The madness we call driving to work, where we arrive so full of dread, and every day is like the first day of school, and our best efforts at something we're really not the slightest bit interested in are rewarded with a limited amount of currency to pay for those little luxuries like food, gas, electricity, council tax and diesel.

You look forward to getting old so you can be forced to retire, and buy cheap beige clothing with matching shoes and go on coach holidays to Yugoslavia with the rest of the cottonheads, taking an interest in garden centres, jigsaw puzzles, and go to Christmas lunches with all the other dribbling fossils who make WH Auden look like an "after" model in Oil of Ulay ads. Spending sunny days sitting on a bench dedicated to "Ethel May Skinner 1919-1987 Loving wife of Percy" that stinks of pee, sucking on a barley sugar sweet and reminiscing on how wonderful life has been to be able to afford such joys before you eventually give up and peg out on a NHS trolley in some draughty shiny corridor trying to explain to some East European porter that you've mistaken for a doctor that you've been feeling a little queasy lately!

If I hear another acktorrr or direcktorrr whining on the telly about having to get up early to be on set on location for three weeks out of fifty two, and having to "live rough" in a $100,000 dollar motorhome I'll take my collection of DVDs and load them into a clay pigeon launching machine and get the 12 bore out!!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Fellwanderer

Are you quite sure you're not Alan Bennett?

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A signature is no substitute for a life

samkydd

No but I feel like I'm a lot older than him sometimes! I think it's because as I child I preferred to watch Malcolm Muggeridge on the telly rather than Mary, Mungo and Midge!

But someone must have originally misheard the well worn phrase "Life begins at forty", I'm convinced it should have been "Life begins at fourteen!"

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"