Those of you who like watching celebrities dance on TV may well be horrified to have learned that the new Strictly host is Josh Widdecombe. Not a patch on the former host, old Wink' (Claudia Winkelman).
Following the appearance by Doctor Jones ("the dog was called Indiana") on yesterday's Snapshots, I thought it would be nice to lead today with a woman who could always drink him under the table: Marion Ravenwood, aka Karen Allen. She was pretty good at dealing with Starmen too.
8. Fictional world - anagram rejected on grounds of taste & decency.
I could not bring myself to come up with an anagram for Bucks Fizz.
Before you accuse me of scraping the barrel, Bucks Fizz will always have a special place in my heart as the band that encouraged my sexual awakening. This track is just pure cheese though...
So my mission to introduce Sam to as much of my musical back catalogue as I can (before his own musical tastes kick in and he starts hating everything his dad loves) continues, mostly in the car with my hand-curated CDs. We're now up to Sam CD 90 (we do also revisit the earlier ones) and he's often keen to hear the next.
"Have you made Sam 91 yet, Daddy? Will you make it this weekend?"
However, I'm not sure whether that's because he likes my musical choices... or because he's obsessed with numbers and is desperate for us to get to 100. I think more of the latter, though he has developed many favourite tunes along the way as well.
Friday night though, on the way back from swimming, was a bit of a milestone.
"Yay! My favourite band!"
In this life we will all have many favourite bands, and who am I to judge Sam's first self-proclaimed favourites... when mine may well have been Bucks Fizz?
(What can I say? I was 9 years old. That dance routine represented an inexpicable sexual awakening.)
Still, I have to confess, for just a moment, I was a little chagrined by Sam's choice.
I mean, the friggin' Beatles!? How bleeding obvious!
This passed very quickly, when I realised the selection said much more about the Beatles than it did about my son. Indeed, it reinforced why the Beatles were as big as they were and why they still maintain that untouchable ubiquity, even though proper musos (which I will OBVIOUSLY never be) know there have been far better bands in the history of pop. Like The Four Tops, The Housemartins and Huey Lewis & The News, to name but three. (You're not quite sure if I'm serious, I know. And I LIKE that.)
As mentioned before, despite going through an obligatory Beatles phase in my late teens, I've been down on the band for many years since. But choose a random song - particularly an early one - and judge it on its own pop merits, and the mass appeal becomes obvious. There's a simplicity and a clean, no-nonsense aesthetic to recordings such as this one which make it universal. There's no hemi-powered drones screaming down the boulevard in the lyrics, for a start, or punctured bicyles on hillsides desolate.
Baby's good to me, you know She's happy as can be, you know She said so I'm in love with her and I feel fine
Of course you're gonna like a band that sings simple, catchy songs like this if you're a 6 year old. Or someone older who doesn't want anything more complex than a nice r 'n' b rhythm and clear, uncomplicated words to sing along to in a traffic jam.
And I Feel Fine is a great song for Sam to declare his allegiance to as well, because beyond the simplicity, it's got that Lennon edge, kicking off with the feedback, and the raw quality to his vocal that he softened in later years. Good video too - it finally made me see the point of Ringo.
