tv

BBC Breakfast ran a story this morning about the sale of woodlands. The gentlemen responsible for selling woodlands was quite a comedian. He started his act with:

'In these difficult economic times, people are looking to invest in woodlands to hedge their bets...'

and then, referring to the potential investment opportunity and without a glimmer of a smile, he delivered the immaculate line

On Saturday night, BBC2 broadcast a retrospective on 'The Office' and broadcast all of Series 1 together with soundbites from the creators (Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant), the cast (Martin Freeman, Mackenzie Crook, Lucy Davis) and celebrity fans (Ben Stiller, Christopher Guest, Matthew Perry, David Baddiel, Richard Curtis).

Recently noticed a couple of additional HD channels now available on Virgin Media.

• C4 - not that much of a bonus.
• ESPN - will broadcast all the football matches previously screened by Setanta - in High Defintion - at no extra cost. Superb.

Slightly irritating that Virgin Media can send me a fun packed newsletter (via email) but don't have a blog or sensible way of communicating this useful information to me.

'You see - Thora Hird. I am aware of her work. You fancy her.'

This is the first in a series of 'open letters' when I send emails to people who I admire or have had a major influence on my life.

I will post my 'open letter' and subsequently will post the individual's response (with their permission).

To kick things off, an open letter sent in February 2008 to Tony Hawks (UK author, comedian and occasional 'talking head' on those interminable BBC series that look back to the 1980's).

Rejoice ! After 18 months, Rupert and Richard have ended their standoff and the Sky channels will be returning to Virgin Media.

Now, I wonder if some kind soul could fill me in on the last 18 months of 'Lost'.

Thoroughly enjoyed 2 hours of 'The Story of The Who' last night on BBC4. What a story it was.

The ultimate rock'n'roll band. A Rolls Royce driven into a swimming pool, copious amounts of drugs, lots of girls and the premature death of two band members. During one gig, Moon was carried off stage - completely comatose.

I finally caved in and replaced a 15 year old Sony TV with a Panasonic 32″ LCD TV (TX32LXD700) for Christmas. Although the aging Sony still worked fine, it did cycle through Red/Green/Blue and took 5 minutes to fully warm up.

There was an interesting program on ITV last night called The Shot That Shook The World about photographs of historic moments.

9/11

Mesmeric, tragic, horrific and yet somehow those images are always compelling. I guess this was the JFK moment for my generation where everyone can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing.

What would you do with 1 million GBP ?

Would you buy a mansion, a yacht and a Ferrari, give up your job, go on holiday, donate it all to charity, buy your parents a new house, take over your local football club or get U2 to play at your son's birthday party ?

Don't worry - I haven't succumbed to the lure of '1001 subjects to blog about' for people with vacuous brains.

This was precisely the quandry facing Patrick Gibson in 2004 when he scooped the top prize of 1 million pounds on the ITV show 'Who wants to be a Millionaire'.