Fifty years ago today, on 10th April 1960, the premiere of the film Hell Is A City took place at the Apollo cinema in Ardwick. (more…)

In 1978 I was a teenager and one afternoon switched on the local ITV channel — Tyne Tees — at about 5.15pm to watch the US sitcom Mork and Mindy. However I nearly fell off my chair when it turned out that the episode was all about their evil landlord who was called ‘Arnold Wanker’.

Although a Wikipedia page about the word claims that the show was severely edited by ITV when it was shown (and wrongly calls him ‘Oliver’), the word certainly wasn’t cut in the north-east. I can only imagine no one at Tyne Tees had viewed the episode before screening it!

Now like many dimly-remembered shows from years gone by it has turned up on YouTube.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Laurel and Hardy.

This week I found a silent film that Stan Laurel made in 1923 called ‘The Soilers’. A camp cowboy appears regularly throughout the ten minute film. Here are two clips:

Stan grew up in and around theatres in Britain because his father was a theatre manager. Many of the characters and routines in the early days of the movies would have been inspired by variety acts in the music halls and no doubt this kind of character would have been part of that. But it’s unusual to get a glimpse on film from this period and for it play such a major part in the storyline.

Bea Arthur, who starred in the US television sitcom The Golden Girls has died of cancer at the age of 86.

As well as winning an Emmy for The Golden Girls and an earlier sitcom Maude, Bea Arthur won a Tony for the musical Mame.

In Britain The Golden Girls was something of a gay cult in the late 1980’s, when it was shown by Channel 4 and, in October 1988, the cast appeared on the Royal Variety Show at the request of the Queen Mother.