Tossed Salads And Scrambled Eggs Callin' Again

I was excitedly reading about the reboot of the brilliant Frasier and was humming 'Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs' while reading about who will be coming back from the original show (only Roz and Lillith) and disappointed that the star of the show for me, Niles, won't be but the silver lining to that is no Daphne and her mangled English accent (despite being English) and her awful family who really stunk up the show but in the list of new roles was one that i had to read about three times before it sank in.
Playing the role of university professor Alan Cornwall and Frasier close friend is our very own Nicholas Lyndhurst. Yep, THAT Nicholas Lyndhurst of Butterflies, The Two of Us, The Piglet Files, Goodnight Sweetheart and Only Fools and Horses fame.
Apparently Kelsey Grammer worked with Lyndhurst in the West End cast of Don Quixote musical Man of La Mancha in 2019 and thought he would be perfect for the role of the British, boozy and larger than life character he had in mind for his series.
I wouldn't have thought many Americans know Nicholas Lyndhurst, it it unlikely the excellent Goodnight Sweetheart about a time travelling TV repairman made it across the Atlantic but Lyndhurst was not one i had on my turning up in an American show Bingo Card although i am more than happy that he is.
The Frasier sequel is due to be shown in the UK October this year and sees the psychiatrist in Boston although the original Frasier was so good that i fear after 20 years away it won't live up to its previous high standards as one of the most successful sitcoms of all time.
Frasier will still be a radio psychiatrist only in Boston so we may see some old Cheers buddies drop by having moved from Seattle and Grammer promises the new show will pick up from where it left off which if memory serves, saw Martin move out and Niles and Daphne get married and Frasier on an airplane but as Fraiser is till shown on TV here, i am hoping that i catch the last series before the new one starts.
Those tossed salads and scrambled eggs are thankfully callin' again.

Singing Wakey, Wakey, Wakey Rise And Shine

The Big Breakfast was once described as like being woken up by a pair of cymbals which described it perfectly, it was loud, funny, colourful, anarchic and it just seemed to fall it's way through from 7am to 9am every weekday morning with mad game shows and weird humour which sometimes sailed very close to the edge.
It really hit it's stride with Johnny Vaughn and Denise Van Outen in 1997 and then in 2002 it ceased to be and left a huge void in many peoples Breakfast-time viewing, mine included because i loved that show.
This morning, almost 20 years later, Channel 4 bought it back for a one off special as part of it's Black to Front campaign which saw black presenters host some of Channels 4 most successful programs and with AJ Odudu and Mo Gilligan in the Big Breakfast seats, it was as brilliant and mad as i remember.
With the TV on offer while you eat your cornflakes limited to Good Morning Britain or the BBC Breakfast, i did wonder if the bosses at Channel 4 would use today's one off show as a pilot to judge reaction to possibly bring it back to our screens and my initial reaction is i hope so but the more i think about it, maybe not.
As much i miss the fried egg wallpaper and the whole madness at 7am, they tried it without Johnny Vaughn and Denise van Outen when they left in 2001 and after trying many different presenters, it sang its last wakey, wakey, wakey rise and shine song a year later and despite the same format, it was never the same.
I was never much of a fan of Johnny Vaughn in anything he has ever done since, i find his whole laddish thing a bit much but him and Denise was perfect together and so with a heavy heart i say don't bring it back, the odd special is fine such as today which was for a very worthwhile cause but those 4 years from 1997 to 2001 was as good as it was ever going to be, anything else, as funny, mad or brilliantly bizarre as it may be, it would be a pale imitation so let it go Channel 4 and don't ruin the fond legacy it has amongst us fans.

Bye Bye Piers

Piers Morgan has long led the crusade against Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and he once called them 'a pair of repulsive, deluded narcissistic tools' and as a repulsive, deluded narcissistic tool himself he would know but he wont be polluting our early morning Television anymore because he has flounced off and handed in his resignation.  
His big girls blouse moment came during a debate with weatherman Alex Beresford over the Harry and Meghan interview with Piers continuing the tirade and dismissing the claim that the question from a senior royal to Harry asking if he was 'worried about the colour of his baby's skin' was racist, Piers said
no and then made the claim that none of the Royals are racist and therefore conveniently forgetting the many examples of Prince Philip's racism.
The thing that got under Morgan's skin was when Alex bought up how he was sore at Meghan over the way she had 'cut him off' from their relationship and the sound of nails being hit on the head was deafening.
It wasn't that long ago Morgan was tweeting Meghan was 'perfect princess material' and 'a lovely lady; smart, warm, funny and more than a match for Prince Harry' so what happened?
Seems Piers and Meghan were pals on Social Media back in the days before she met Harry and then after she came to England and they went for a drink together and then, in his words, 'I never heard from her again. Not a word. I'd been ghosted'.
So the reason he hates her and has carried out a nasty and sustained campaign against her is because she hurt his feelings but if he didn't want her to know just how much of a repulsive tool he actually is, he shouldn't have met her and confirmed it.
Anyway, if anything good comes out of this it is that Piers Morgan is no longer on the TV when we are eating our cornflakes and if ITV have got any sense, they will promote Alex Beresford to take his place as the shows host beside Susanna Reid.

Dolly Wasn't Clueless

I found out today that the TV show, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, probably wouldn't have existed if it hadn't have been for a Country and Western singer.
The Buffster began as a so-so film which even Joss Whedon wasn't best pleased with but an executive at the production house which co-produced the film, Sandollar, convinced the company to acquire the television rights.
Sandollar was co-founded by Dolly Parton and her manager in order for Dolly to get into the movie business and it had a big hit with the film Clueless in 1995 and it used the proceeds to hire Whedon to write a pilot based on the Buffy film, and the rest is blood drenched, vampire gore history.
Us Buffy fans have the person who wrote the world's greatest song about tumbling outta bed and stumbling to the kitchen to pour ourselves a cup of ambition working from 9 to 5 to thank for giving us the best TV program ever.
Thanks Dolly.

CNN New Day With John Berman And Alisyn Camerota

I haven't seem much of the American News broadcasts lately but they haven't had a very good reputation for asking the tough questions and were rightly pilloried for such regarding George W Bush in the build up to his Iraq War debacle.
Fox News is banned in the UK because of its blatant bias but we get CNN and whilst i am still currently working local for now, i have seen a few of the New Day shows recently with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman and i have to say things have certainly changed for the better there.
You would have thought that having Donald Trump in charge and his cringe-worthy views and sheer awfulness during the pandemic, it would be an open goal for broadcast journalists and i don't know about the rest of the CNN output but Alisyn and John are doing a great job of holding the failing President and his sycophants feet to the fire.
With America sitting top of the nations death list with 140,000 deaths and a seemingly endless list of failures and embarrassing quotes at their disposal, it should be a no-brainer that the people who try and defend the President and his administration get a hard time and i quite enjoyed Poppy Harlow on CNN Newsroom last night giving a Trump Campaigner a right grilling and using the tried and tested strategy of using direct quotes from the President to undercut her, to be brutal, outright lies. 
CNN had vastly improved since the last time i saw it, which admittedly was a while ago but the presenter Richard Quest is a bit of an enigma, obviously British judging by his accent which seems to be a generic English accent, like the accent someone would do to impersonate an English speaker but he does slip into the occasional 'northern English accent', probably unnoticed by American ears.
His Wikipedia page says he was born in Liverpool and educated in Leeds which makes sense why he flattened his speaking style out, if he spoke with a scouse or leeds accent in America nobody would understand him, even us British struggle with those accents, but i see he was originally trained at the BBC...so say no more, carry on.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Back

Hard to believe that the last episode of Buffy aired in 2003, a show that tops my list of all time favourite programmes.
It doesn't feel that long ago but watching the nightly week-day re-runs on E4, it is amusing to see how young the actors and actresses who lived above the Hell Mouth in Sunnydale look although it does give a sad tinge of 'where did those years go?'
We were wondering just what the cast have been doing since the last show aired and some seemed to have faired better than others.
 
Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Geller)
Gellar moved into movies, most well know being 'I Know What You Did Last Summer', 'Scream 2' 'Scooby-Doo' and 'The Grudge' and married fellow Scooby actor Freddie Prinze Jnr. 

Willow (Alyson Hannigan)
Alyson shifted her Willow character across to Angel and then starred in the American Pie movies and has been a permanent fixture in the TV sitcom 'How I Met Your Mother'. She married Alexis Denisorf who played Wesley.

Xander (Nicholas Brendon)
Brendon stayed in TV and appeared in TV series, Criminal Minds, and now writes Buffy comic books.

Angel (David Boreanaz)
The very easy on the eye Boreanaz starred in his TV series spin-off Angel until 2004 and now stars as FBI Special Agent, Seeley Booth, on the television crime drama series Bones.

Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter)
Carpenter moved from Buffy to Angel and then onto another supernatural TV show Charmed. After appearing in several TV shows, she played the role of Lacy in The Expendables movie.

Spike (James Marsters)
Despite his immaculate English accent, Marsters is American and also made the move across to Angel and appeared in Smallville, the Dr Who spin-off Torchwood and the short lived revival of Hawaii Five O but has now carved out a career narrating audiobooks.

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce (Alesix Denisof)
Denisof was another who joined the cast of Angel and then moved into theatre and made a fleeting appearance in 'How I met Your Mother' alongside his wife Alyson Hannigan and appeared in movies 'The Avengers' and 'Much Ado About Nothing'.

Dawn Summer (Michelle Trachtenberg)
Trachtenberg starred in Six Feet Under and in the movies 'Harriet the Spy', 'Inspector Gadget' and 'Black Christmas'.

Oz (Seth Green)
Green went on to create 'Robot Chicken', appear in movies 'The Italian Job', 'Party Monster' and 'Austin Powers' series but is most well known for his voice role as Chris Griffin on Family Guy.

Anya (Emma Caulfield)
Since dying at the end of Buffy, she has appeared in movies 'Darkness Falls' and TiMER.

Joyce Summers (Kristine Sutherland)
On leaving the Buffy series, Sutherland attended a photography course and subsequently set up a photography studio.

Faith (Eliza Dushku)
Dushku was another who joined the cast of Angel and then into her own supernatural series, Tru Calling. Her movies include 'True Lies', 'Wrong Turn' and 'Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back'.

Drusilla (Juliet Landau)
Landau also joined Angel and has since appeared in several Tim Burton projects

Every now and then someone suggests a reunion and possibly a new Buffy film but as much as a Buffy fan as i was, and still am, i want to remember the wise-cracking teenagers of the late nineties and early noughties as they were, a TV show that was as near to perfect as it gets.

Feeling The Pain Of Game Of Thrones Fans

I did try to get into Game of Thrones when it started because it has all the aspects that i look for in a TV series but for some reason it just never clicked with me.
I did try again a few series later because it was all everyone seemed to be talking about but once again i just never connected with it so gave up so the final series doesn't matter much to me but i do sympathise with those who are mourning that after the final episode they will be Games of Thronesless as there have been several TV series that i have been genuinely gutted when they
have ended. 
The one i feel keenest was Buffy The Vampire Slayer, i would make sure that my Tuesday nights were clear to watch the Scooby Gang and was beyond disappointed when it was announced that they would no more be picking up their stakes and freeing Sunnydale from hordes of vampires, demons and other things from various hell dimensions.
Over the years i have felt a pang of disappointment when Angel, Red Dwarf, Frasier, Blackadder, Quantum Leap, 'Allo 'Allo, Father Ted and Due South came to an end but they live on in Box Sets under my Television.
I'm sure that after Game of Thrones has gone to that big TV screen in the sky there will be talk of a film or a reboot but it won't be the same because it will be different actors or even worse it will be the same actors but they will be older and not so young and pretty and it will be like bumping into the guy you had a crush on at school years later and realising that actually, he is not as handsome or cute as you remembered him.

Don't Get Well Too Soon Piers

Good Morning Britain presenter and all round irritant Piers Morgan has issued pictures of himself in hospital with tubes in his nose.
Immediate thoughts were to wonder how the operation to get his head surgically removed from Donald Trump's backside went but it turned out he was suffering from stomach gastritis and inflammation of the small intestines. 
The good news is that it means he will be off our screens for a few weeks as he is too ill to go back to interrupting Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain but the bad news is that he will only be off our screens for a few weeks unless the doctors can find another reason to keep him in.
Maybe the medics can find something else, nothing bad obviously, but something that requires 12 months recuperation and definitely no appearing on TV until at least January 2020 if not for him, think of our mental health at having to wake up to his inane chuntering every morning!
As for Good Morning Britain, give Richard Madley a call and try and get him back while Piers is having an NHS bathwash, he at least didn't make me want to throw my bowl of Cornflakes at the TV screen at 6am.

CNN Seems Fine To Me

Since Fox News, along with RT, was removed from the air in the UK for breaching Ofcom’s rules regarding bias and generally being unfair and not balanced, my options for American news coverage is CNN and CNBC and i found myself seeing quite a bit of CNN Live when Hurricane Florence blew through over there the other month.
CNBC seems much more interested in the Economic World and i'm not so CNN was my port of call for all things American.
Now i know CNN get's a regular bashing from Donald Trump but as it is still on our screens after Ofcom's cull of those news outlets that it deems bias so that's in its favour and the items i have seen they appear  a very professional outfit without the hyperbole of Fox and it's presenters who were unashamedly and embarrassingly bias.
The Broadcast Media here, in order to be balanced, must have opposing views on it's items so for example if you have someone pro-Brexit, you must also have a guest who is anti-Brexit which is the reason why Nigel Farage and his awful UKIP come to prominence.
That doesn't seem to be a thing with American News Outlets and admittedly i only saw a narrow band of what CNN do and that was mostly a man stood outside getting battered by 100 mph winds, but unless the rest of their items are wild accusations against the deplorable right-wing which seems to be gripping America at the moment, i see no problem with CNN and obviously neither does Ofcom so i conclude that they present the News as it is and as Trump is such a laughing stock around the World, he just doesn't like that they are not kowtowing to him.
If i lived in America, CNN would be one of my choices of news outlet for finding out exactly what the President was doing in my name.

Leave Frasier In The 90's

Rebooting 90's shows seems to be becoming a thing with news that plans are afoot to not only bring bring back Buffy but now the brilliant Frasier as well. 
I have three concerns for this, the first being the same as Buffy in that Frasier was near on perfect the first time around and  so high was the bar that it could never live up to that standard.
Secondly, John Mahoney, who played Frasier's father Martin, died in February and he was a vital cog in the show, the counterfoil to his high-brow, pompous children and without him an integral part will be sadly missing.
Thirdly, the problem is Kelsey Grammer himself who only has to look at Roseanne Barr to see where any possible reboot is heading.
Frasier came off the air 14 years ago, before Twitter and Facebook became the downfall of so many celebrities and Grammer is a die hard Republican and Trump advocate and in an age when old Tweets resurface to destroy reputations, Grammer is going to be moving into a very uncomfortable spotlight.
In 2015 Grammer Instagrammed a photo of himself wearing a T-shirt that likened abortion to gun violence which should be enough to give any executive cold feet about the whole idea and avoid the potential cost and hassle of another Roseanne.
That said i would love to see the excellent David Hyde Pierce back on our screens, a very under-estimated comic actor, but while my heart hopes they do go ahead with it, my brain says leave it in the past because it just can't be anywhere near as good as it was the first time around.  

Buffy Refusing To Lay Down And Die

Approximately 92 years ago John Logie Baird bought us the Television set but it wasn't until around 70 years later in 1997 when the Scotsman's invention reached it's peak with the brilliant Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Everything about the show was perfect, the cast, the story lines, the humour and the characters but after seven series it was bought to an end and as sad as it was, it went out at about the right time.
Now rumours are abound that in true horror style the Vampire series is refusing to lie down and die and is to be rebooted with a new cast and without the original writing talent of Joss Weedon.
When Buffy and the rest of the Scooby Gang finished battling the undead spawned by the Hell Mouth in Sunnydale in 2003, we were left with the memories of the wise-cracking, vampire-whacking teenagers of the late nineties and early noughties
The ingredients that made the show were perfect for the time and part of me wants Buffy to stay in the past, immortalised as one of the greatest TV shows ever to appear and not risk being sullied by a disastrous reboot.
Make something Buffy-like if you want but without Sarah-Michelle Geller and David Boreanaz dusting vampires it won't be anything like the same.
Casting the same actors will not do because they will be older and it will be like bumping into the guy you had a crush on at school years later and realising that actually, he is not as handsome or cute as you remember him.
Hard to say but i think they should just leave Buffy and the beautiful corpse well alone because it was so good the first time around, they would never be able to capture that again.

Another MASH Star Bugs Out

Over the past few years the list of dying stars has been strangely long and the grim list of stars from one of my favourite comedy's, M*A*S*H* has been steadily growing and the sad list has been extended today with news that David Ogden Stiers who played surgeon Major Charles Emerson Winchester III has died aged 75.
The actor replaced Larry Linville's Frank Burns character after Linville left the show after six series.
To anyone over 40, M*A*S*H* was one of the most loved television series ever and regularly crops up in lists of best ever TV shows.
Set in the Korean War, such was the excellence of the show and feeling for the characters that it still appears on TV stations today despite ending 35 years ago.
As the show was around from 1972, most of the shows actors are now in their 70s and 80s so who have we lost so far from the 4077?
Hawkeye Pierce played by the brilliant Alan Alda is still with us as is Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Loretta Swit),  Max Klinger (Jamie Farr), Radar (Gary Burghoff) and BJ Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell).
Hopefully it will be quite a while until we have to revise the list.

The Next Dr Who

Doctor Who is banned in China because the government authorities don’t want to promote anything that could be seen as rewriting history which means that they won't care who become the 13th TARDIS driver.
Rumours abound that the next Timelord could be a female with Phoebe Waller-Bridge name coming up continually especially after the BBC's own show Newsnight saying that: 'Waller-Bridge had denied claims that she’s going to be the first female Doctor but then Joanna Lumley has already played the role for Comic Relief, so that would technically be true'.
Kris Marshall was the leading frontrunner for the role but the latest favourite is Broadchurch actress Jodie Whittaker but the BBC has said that the identity of the latest Doctor will be unveiled after the Wimbledon men’s singles final today.
Capaldi, who replaced Matt Smith in the role in 2013, will relinquish the role after this year’s Christmas special.
Exciting stuff unless your Chinese but as much as a female Doctor would be great, Kris Marshall would be perfect for the role so i guess i am just going to have to sit and watch Federer running around in his tight white shorts for a couple of hours before i find out.

How The X Factor Works

Seems you can't turn on the TV without seeing a show trying hard to 'discover' the next singing sensation and despite 13 years of X Factor not discovering one, okay possibly Leona Lewis, they still keep going and Simon Cowell and his gang are about to hit our screens again every Saturday and Sunday evening for the next five months.  
Luckily we know what songs we can expect to hear from this series of wannabe pop stars because luckily, they always sing the same ones so the top tune sang across all the Singing Talent shows according to Vulture Lists is 'I Have Nothing' by Whitney Houston.
Then is it 'Feeling Good' by Nina Simone, 'Piece of My Heart' by Janis Joplin, 'Alone' by Heart and 'Don’t Let the Sun Go Down Me' by Elton John.
Always amazes me how nobody seems to have cottoned on to how these shows are actually run and the manipulation of the voting system is glaringly obvious so the winner is always who they want it to be.
The shows production staff get to study the public's weekly voting patterns in detail and hence know exactly the levels of popularity that each contestant is enjoying.
When the presenter reads out the voting results each week and says 'in no particular order' there are plenty of production staff sitting there thinking 'we know the order'.
The nation thinks anybody could win, but from day one they know who's a hero and who's a zero and if A would be more of a money spinner than B but B is more popular then they can edit against B, give B a poor song and hand A a real stormer or give the 'standing applause' and gushing comments to A and give the 'bad week' or 'hope you survive this week' speech to B and if all else fails, it's the bottom two and the judges get to remove one from the competition and you can rest assured they know who to get rid of or if the 'public vote' will return the singer they want which gives the impression that it was the people making the premium rate phone calls who did it. 
After the first few weeks they can see who is leading the pack but they don't want us to know that they know because then it stops any semblance of it being a competition and people stop phoning in and Simon Cowell's bank balance takes a hit and he doesn't want that.  
The only time it is a real competition is the final but by then they have manipulated it so the one they want to win has the best chance of taking home the title, the contract and the chance to become forgotten before we break out the chocolate for the Easter weekend.
Of course knowing all this takes away the fun now you know when someone gets handed 'Angels' and a standing ovation from the judges while another gets to sing 'Long Haired Lover From Liverpool' and told it wasn't their best performance exactly what's going on behind the scenes.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: 20 Years On

The first working television system was exhibited in January 1926 but it wasn't until March 1997 that it discovered it's true purpose when Buffy the Vampire Slayer was first shown on it.
Hard to believe that it's 20 years since the first episode of Buffy was aired, a show that tops my list of all time favourite programmes and whose box set takes pride of place in my TV Cabinet, all seven seasons and 144 episodes of it.
It doesn't feel that long but to watch it now and see how young the actors and actresses who lived above the Hell Mouth in Sunnydale look, does give a tinge of 'where did those 20 years go?'
The last scene in the brilliant Buffy series was the scooby gang stood watching the entire town of Sunnydale collapsing into the Hellmouth cavern, leaving a large crater and Dawn saying 'What are we going to do now?'
Good question, so what have the cast of Buffy the Vapire Slayer been doing since the last show aired in 2003?

Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Geller)
Gellar moved from TV into movies, most well know being 'I Know What You Did Last Summer', 'Scream 2' 'Scooby-Doo' and 'The Grudge' and married fellow Scooby actor Freddie Prinze Jnr. She is still making movies today and has started up a business selling baking kits for children.

Willow (Alyson Hannigan)
Alyson shifted her Willow character across to Angel and then starred in the American Pie movies and has been a permanent fixture in the TV sitcom 'How I Met Your Mother'. She married Alexis Denisorf who played Wesley in Buffy.

Xander (Nicholas Brendon)
Brendon stayed in TV and appeared in another long running TV series, Criminal Minds, and now writes Buffy comic books.

Angel (David Boreanaz)
The easy on the eye Boreanaz starred in his own vampire based TV series spin-off Angel until 2004 and after making an appearance in the 2004 Dido 'White Flag' music video, stars as FBI Special Agent, Seeley Booth, on the television crime drama series Bones.

Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter)
Carpenter moved from Buffy to Angel and then onto another supernatural TV show Charmed. After appearing in several TV shows, she played the role of Lacy in The Expendables movie.

Spike (James Marsters)
Despite his immaculate English accent, Marsters is American and also made the move across to Angel and appeared in Smallville, the Dr Who spin-off Torchwood and the short lived revival of Hawaii Five O but has carved out a career narrating audiobooks.

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce (Alesix Denisof)
Denisof was another who joined the cast of Angel and then moved into theatre after that series ended in 2004, his name was mooted when the James Bond character was up for discussion. He has made fleeting appearance in 'How I met Your Mother' alongside his wife Alyson Hannigan and appeared in movies 'The Avengers' and 'Much Ado About Nothing' and currently appears in the MTV television series Finding Carter.

Dawn Summer (Michelle Trachtenberg)
Trachtenberg starred in Six Feet Under and in the movies 'Harriet the Spy', 'Inspector Gadget', 'Black Christmas' and appeared in several TV series.

Oz (Seth Green)
Green went on to create 'Robot Chicken', appear in movies 'The Italian Job', 'Party Monster' and 'Austin Powers' series but is most well known for his voice role as Chris Griffin on Family Guy.

Anya (Emma Caulfield)
Emma was already known from previous appearances in Beverly Hills, 90210 but since dying at the end of Buffy, she has appeared in movies 'Darkness Falls' and TiMER.

Joyce Summers (Kristine Sutherland)
On leaving the Buffy series, Sutherland attended a photography course and subsequently set up a studio specialising in portraits. She has also appeared in several American television shows.

Faith (Eliza Dushku)
Dushku was another who joined the cast of Angel and then into her own supernatural series, Tru Calling. Her movies include 'True Lies', 'Wrong Turn' and 'Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back' and has voiced several characters in video games.

Drusilla (Juliet Landau)
Landau also joined Angel and has since appeared in several Tim Burton projects

Riley (Marc Blucas)
Blucas has appeared in several TV shows, most recently 'Underground'.

Nice to see that they have continued in TV and cinema and every now and then someone suggests a reunion and possibly a new Buffy film but as much as a Buffy fan as i was, and still am, i want to remember the wise-cracking teenagers of the late nineties and early noughties as they were, to try and recapture the magic again would spoil the one TV show that was as near to perfect as it gets.

Time For A Mrs Dr Who?

Such a shame that Peter Capaldi has decided to put down the sonic screwdriver and is moving on to pastures new leaving a Dr Who shaped space in the Tardis as i rather liked his grumpy Doctor regeneration but onwards and upwards and on to the next Doctor who it has been flouted, could be a female.
That caught the attention of the geek and nerd communities who put down their copy of Popular Science long enough to facebook and tweet how they would not tolerate a woman Doctor.
Obviously there is no reason why the next Doctor couldn't be a woman and there are many women who could do the character justice but just because it has always been played by a white man doesn't mean it always has to be which is the main justification of the nerd brigade.
As the Doctor himself said 'life depends upon change and renewal' so let's completely change the dynamic and throw a two-hearted Time Lord from Gallifrey with a pair of breasts and a womb at the Cybermen and Dalek's for a change.

Another Gone From The Cast Of MASH

The celebrity death toll for 2016 has been desperately large and the grim pleasure of the final star to fail to see in 2017 goes to M*A*S*H* actor William Christopher or Father Francis Mulcahy as he is probably better known.
To anyone over 40, M*A*S*H* was one of the most loved television series and almost always makes an appearance in the list of TV critics best ever shows.
The show may be over 40 years old but it still appears regularly on TV stations still today which is testament to the amazing writing and strength of the characters in the series.
My favourite was always Hawkeye Pierce played by the very underrated Alan Alda and Harry Morgans character Colonel Sherman Potter but all the characters, even the minor ones, were great to watch and it always amused me to see some actors cutting their acting teeth in the show who would become big names such as Patrick Swayze, Ron Howard, Leslie Nielsen and Shelley Long. 
As the show was around from 1972, most of the shows actors are now in their 70s and 80s so who have we lost from the 4077?
Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) is still alive and kicking as is Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Loretta Swit),  Max Klinger (Jamie Farr), Radar (Gary Burghoff), BJ Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell) and Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers). 
Sadly bugged out are Col. Sherman Potter (Harry Morgan), Dr. Sidney Freedman (Allan Arbus), Trapper John McIntyre (Wayne Rogers), Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson), Frank Burns (Larry Linville) and now Father Mulcahy (William Christopher).

Gadzooks..Not Him Again!!

Every British schoolchild is made to read Shakespeare, it is on the curriculum so therefore schools 'legally' have to pin down children and shout 'Forsooth' and 'To be or not to be' in their ears.
I am not particularly sure why Shakespeare has persevered all these years and why 400 years after he Soothed his last For we are still wittering on about him but i believe it is a Emperors new clothes thing where nobody is prepared to stand up and say 'hang on, his stories are more Suckspere then Shakespeare'.
There must be better and more relevant books written for our children to read from the past four centuries, books that are written in a language we understand and doesnt contain sentences such as 'You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe!' and 'thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch!'
As i am knocking down well loved historical characters, how did Van Gogh ever become as famous as he did? Have you ever seen a Van Gogh painting?  What about Picasso, another artist who you wonder who the hell paid money for a painting of a woman with one eye next to her nose and the other in her forehead. If a seven year old gave me it i would use it to mop up the spilled tea on my coffee table.   
Oliver Cromwell was so loved he had a song written about him and a statue in Westminster while in France they have statues of Joan of Arc dotted around but all she ever did was pick up a sword, get caught and set on fire by the English which lowers the bar considerably for receiving a sainthood. 
Anyway, as the TV is full of Shakespeare plays to commiserate his death, i just say 'Forsooth, what through yonder window breaks..ti's my works of Shakespeare book'.

Bricking In America

Thoughtful folk us British which is why Channel 4 has taken a decision to help our friend and most well liked relatives, the Canadians who face a potential predicament in the near future.
When Donald Trump enjoyed a number of wins on Super Tuesday the number of American Google searches for 'How to Move to Canada' spiked by 1500% so in the event of the Trumpster becoming President, us British have began putting the wheels in motion to build a wall between the USA and Canada to calm the fears of Canadians that their country will face an influx of yanks. 
Adam Hills is the man behind the project , called 'Bricking It For Canada' and explained on his Last Leg Show that the problem with fleeing Americans is that:  'They are harder to look after than any other refugees because they need way more food. Plus Americans don’t speak basic English, they carry more guns and they refuse to assimilate with other cultures'.
A website has been set up at Bricking it for Canada and at the time of writing, the campaign had already seen 750,889,382 of the estimated 1,545,454,550 bricks required to wall off Canada although so popular is the website that it keeps crashing.
As America has previous experience of voting in fruitcakes and loonytunes (Reagan, GWB twice!!) this is not a threat that we should take lightly so please go to the website and pledge a brick to help keep Americans where they belong, in America.

Down With This Sort Of Thing

For a sitcom character who spent 99% of each episode asleep and only had a dialogue of 3 words, Father Ted's Father Jack was as memorable a character as television has ever had.
The actor who played him, Frank Kelly, has died and it was on the anniversary of the death of Dermot Morgan, who played Father Ted and who died of a heart attack on 28 February, 1998.
The foul-mouthed, hard-drinking Priest was most well known for his catchphrases, which included 'Drink!' and 'Girls!' and 'Feck!' had been suffering with Parkinson's disease and had previously battled bowel cancer and skin cancer.
Still repeated now, Father Ted was for me one of the greatest comedy series of all time but his first acting role was in The Italian Job in 1969, escorting Michael Caine’s character out of prison.
Appears that The Grim Reaper has chosen 2016 to steadily work his way through his list of celebrities.