I Will Show You Fear In A Handful Of Dust

There is, dear blog reader, a distinct nip of autumn in the air. Well, it is late September after all and, any Indian summer that may crop up for a few days during the next month notwithstanding, we're into the period of the year where we shiver with anticipation at the oncoming bite of winter. Not that most of us have the option of sticking the heating on and warming up a bit - it's far too expensive for that. So, takes this blogger's advice, dear blog reader, put lots of clothes on, fill a hot water bottle and stick it down yer trousers, get some of those big fluffy boots for your feet and settle down to read a blog of your own choosing. Ideally, this one. From The North will keep you warm.

How Will Doctor Who Say Goodbye To Jodie Whittaker In Her Last Episode? asks the Den Of Geek website, somewhat rhetorically. To which the answer is, 'we don't know yet and won't until the episode is broadcast on 23 October. But, we can guess. And, we're going to.' Nice work if you can get it.

It is important to remember, dear blog reader, that we actually do know the answer to the age-old question 'how many Doctors does it take to change a lightbulb?'

Still on the subject of former Doctors, From The North favourite yer man Smudger has been doing a lot of publicity for some show about dragons of late, cropping up on numerous chat-shows on both sides of the Atlantic. During his appearance on NBC's Today, last week (looking sharp, let it be noted), he made a rather alarming claim.

Another former Doctor - The Crap One, admittedly - turned up in a 1971 episode of The Mind Of Mister JG Reeder broadcast on Talking Pictures earlier this week. Colin Baker would have been about twenty seven when the episode was made, in late 1970 and transmitted the following year. Even then, however, he had already perfected that rather stagey, overly bombastic and highfalutin' one trick pony acting style which he would play (and continues to play) for the rest of his career. The Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley moustache didn't last, though. For which, let us all be grateful.

Speaking in the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine, Sacha Dhawan has suggested: 'I wanted [The Power Of The Doctor] to be epic and moving and when I watched the episode myself, I thought, "I'm so glad we landed that", because it kind of takes your breath away a bit.'

Christopher Eccleston has spoken, in his usual candid-to-the-point-of-rudeness manner, about his 'complicated' relationship with his Our Fiends In The North co-star Mark Strong. Big Ecc revealed he and Strong didn't like each other that much on-set, though their personal incompatibility didn't prevent them from working together. Which was kind of evident already since the acclaimed drama did, indeed, get finished and made the screen. The two actors starred in the 1996 BBC drama chronicling the lives of four fiends from Newcastle across three decades. Written by Peter Flannery, the series also starred Daniel Craig and Gina McKee. You knew that, right? 'We detested each other. We really did not like each other at all,' Eccleston recently said of Strong in an interview with the BBC. 'It was very interesting for me, because I didn't like him as a person and he didn't like me as a person, but I admired him so much as an actor,' he continued. Eccleston then said that the dynamic between his and Strong's characters Nicky and Tosker called for a quiet hostility and that their personal differences helped achieve that on some level. 'When we did the scenes together, that dislike, which was key between Tosker and Nicky, was useful but it was also put aside,' he explained. 'We were professional, we weren't sabotaging or hijacking, because we had so much respect for Peter Flannery and the project.' The actor also likened the experience of being on-set with someone you don't like to going to any office and not necessarily enjoying everyone's company. However, he admitted to respecting Strong's performance in the series, saying, 'Mark's was possibly the best performance in it.' This blogger reckons that's, actually, Danny Craig's title, though they were all terrific.

David Tennant (taking time off from watching, fascinated, as his father-in-law changes a lightbulb, see above) has suggested that the forthcoming - and much anticipated - BBC drama Inside Man, in which he stars, is 'unlike anything else on TV.' And, this startling revelation constitutes 'news'. At least, it does according to the Edinburgh Evening News.

If you're looking for something to listen to as you slowly freeze to death in your drum, dear blog reader, the excellent Strangers From Space podcast's latest episode of their TV Club strand focuses on Nigel Kneale's bone-chilling 1972 ghost story, The Stone Tape and is well worth checking out, here.

The Screen Rant website which, as this blogger has previously noted, already has considerable form in anticipating a renewal of From The North favourite The Sandman even though Netflix haven't, yet, confirmed such a thing, have been at it again. In what they claim to be 'an exclusive', The Sandman's VFX Supervisor, Ian Markiewicz, 'gives an exciting update on season two confirming it has a story arc that is being fine-tuned.' Which, once again, got lots of people very excited and claiming that the second series of the acclaimed adaptation of Neil Gaiman's comic had, clearly, been greenlit. It was left to yer man Gaiman himself, a few hours later, to 'clarify' on Twitter, 'we don't have a season two. But the scripts have been written and the VFX department has been working on it.' This after someone had asked 'Did Neil just off-handedly confirm a second season?' and Gaiman had replied, somewhat wearily one suspects, 'No. I didn't.' So, whilst the Bleeding Cool website produces an article explaining, carefully, why it's high time Netflix got off their collective ass and announced a renewal, until they actually do all of this 'planning' for a second series is meaningless. As this blogger, sadly, had to tell a rather over-excited fan on Facebook recently when she claimed that Neil had 'confirmed a second series', 'no Neil has not. He's confirmed they want to make a second series and, also, that should Netflix not pick up their option they will try to shop the production around to other streaming services and broadcasters. But, unless Neil is planning on paying for it himself, given that the first series cost a reported one hundred and fifty million dollars, until someone actually puts that sort of budget on the table and says "yes, go away and do it", all this speculation is just speculation.' This blogger doesn't like being the - potential - bearer of bad tidings, dear blog reader, but the longer this situation goes on, the less surprised he'd be if Netflix were to announce that they're not going to fulfill the dreams of millions and make more Sandman. That's the way of the world in these times of global financial crisis.

This blogger has previously mentioned - on several occasions - just how big a fan he was of The Goodies when he was a nine-ten-eleven-twelve years old (most recently when writing the From The North obituary for the much-missed Tim Brooke-Taylor in 2020). The series wasn't without its flaws even then and the 'topical' nature of many episodes' targets for spoofery means that one often needs to have a degree in the social and cultural history of the 1970s, to understand even a fraction of the allusions when watching Goodies episodes in the Twenty First Century. Fortunately, this blogger has got one of them! So when, completely by chance, he discovered a handful of unused Amazon vouchers in a cupboard at The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House, it wasn't long before he ended up at this Interweb page and clicked 'order'. (This blogger is really tempted, at this point, to quote from the episode Dodonuts: 'Was it going cheap?' 'No, it was going SQUAWK!' But, he's content to let that opportunity pass.) Therefore, thanks to Amazon's 'next day delivery' offer, have a gander dear blog reader at what - at some positively obscene hour of Tuesday evening - rocked up at The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House looking as Seventies as a bottle of Hai Karate Aftershave®™.

Good, eh? As a reminder of a time when Bill Oddie was, actually, still funny (there was never any doubt concerning Tim and Graeme on that score) and as a handy collection of, in no particular order other than the purely chronological, the likes of Radio Goodies, Kitten Kong (Montreux Special), The Baddies, Superstar, Invasion Of The Moon Creatures, Goodies & The Beanstalk, The Race, The Movies, Wacky Wales, Frankenfido, Scatty Safari, Kung Fu Kapers!, Lighthouse Keeping Loonies, Bunfight At The OK Tea-Rooms, The End, Goodies - Rule OK?, Lips, Or Almighty Cod, It Might As Well Be String, 2001 & A Bit, Scoutrageous, Earthanasia and U-Friend Or UFO, it's unbeatable. Even the worst episodes (like, for instance, the bafflingly-popular Saturday Night Grease) have something worthwhile about them. The best of them remain every bit as funny, now, as they were in the 1970s.

There's a 'but' coming here. You all guessed that, right? The Complete BBC Collection, released in 2018 by the usually very reliable Network, contains all sixty nine The Goodies episodes made for the BBC between 1970 and 1980 (apart from the original 1971 version of Kitten Kong which is, sadly, missing-in-action from the archives) all on a twelve-disc set. So far, so brilliant. This includes, for example, such little-seen rarities as 1972's A Collection Of Goodies (Special Tax Edition) which was, basically, a compilation of footage from five of The Goodies segments from Engelbert With The Young Generation and the same year's Christmas Night With The Stars sketch, The Goodies Travelling Instant Five Minute Christmas.

There is but one extra, An Audience With The Goodies. Which is, somewhat annoyingly, dominated by Stewart Lee who was supposed to be there just to ask Tim, Bill and Graeme some question and then allow them get a word in edgeways. But doesn't. There was, apparently, a very limited (a thousand copies only) deluxe version of this set, called A Binge Of Goodies which sounds much more like there kind of fan-pleasing release we're used to from Network; it included more extras, a three CD-set of original music and a book by the TV historian Andrew Pixley on the making of the series. But, the standard edition was all that was available to this blogger so that was what he bought. And, he has to say, he is a smidgen disappointed. Though Keith Telly Topping does not want to overplay this, it is not a This Is The Worst Thing That Ever Happened-type scenario.

Nevertheless, like the Reverend Llewellyn-Llewellyn-Llewellyn Llewellyn at his most sour-faced and ranty, this blogger can't pretend that he's not just a bit welded to 'The Hot Seat' on the issue of The Complete BBC Collection's aesthetic inadequacies. A genuine tragedy, dear blog reader, but there it is.

This blogger has no issue with the episodes themselves, of course - although The Goodies was never a series that was particularly well looked after in terms of archive preservation and a couple of the episodes exist only as black and white telerecordings. The digital transfer and restoration of the material is ... adequate. It could've been better, but it could've been much worse. The (rather minimal, see below) sleevenotes suggest that the set 'includes episodes restored for previous Network compilation releases as well as brand new restorations for the remainder of the colour episodes. Work includes re-grading, restoring film inserts and grain/noise management.' The main titles have also been 'remade with original footage where possible on all series.' Australian censor cuts from the episodes The Lost Tribe and Commonwealth Games have been recovered and re-inserted to make complete episodes (though some viewers will notice a drop in quality with the re-inserted material).'

But the package overall is, well, something this blogger never thought he'd say about a Network DVD set, rather shoddy. This blogger's box already had a big crack in the plastic outer cover when it arrived ('damaged in transit', no doubt). As for the packaging and content, certainly compared to the two 'best of' DVD compilations that the same company released in 2003 and 2005 (The Goodies ... At Last and The Goodies ... At Last A Second Helping) this is sub-standard. Those sets contained not only eight digitally restored episodes on each but, also, commentaries on several episodes, a smattering of out-takes and clips from things like Crackerjack and the pre-Goodies Tim and Graeme vehicle Broaden Your Mind, a Pixley booklet and some original script PDFs. Those releases, clearly, saw care and attention lavished on them. The Complete BBC Collection (which could be done under the trades description act since it's isn't quite 'complete', per se) rather feels like it was thrown together at a-quarter-to-pub by some bored employee who'd been told to produce a Goodies DVD set 'with as little care and attention as possible.' If that was his or her brief, they've fulfilled it to the letter. To find out what episodes are on which disc you have to pull the DVD's cover out of its sleeve (okay, it's not the greatest hardship in the world, but still ...) and then all you get are long list of episode titles with no indication as to which episodes belong to which series and which the specials are, et cetera. Jeez, for a hundred quid this blogger would've knocked up a factually-accurate one-page giveaway for them containing all of that info and original UK broadcast dates (it's not like this stuff is hard to find, it's all on Wikipedia these days. I'd have even thrown in a few jokes for free). Whinge over, dear blog reader (bet you're all beyond-glad about that).

So, whilst this blogger will, indeed, be spending the next couple of weeks doing a complete series rewatch of a comedy that he thought was the sodding business when he was naught but a youngling there will, undeniably, be a slight (but, probably, noticeable) scowl plastered right across his mush when he thinks of the opportunities that were missed. Come on, Network, you're better than this!

And now, dear blog reader, an important message from exactly the sort of house parties that this blogger regularly attended in the 1980s. 'I've got "War" tattooed on that hand and "Peace" tattooed on that hand. And The Brothers Karamazov tattooed down me spine but you can't see that cos I've got me shirt on.' 'Doesn't it hurt?' 'Nah. It's polyester and cotton!'

As noted in previous From The North updates, via Keith Telly Topping's recent essays on British post-war B-movies, The Yellow Teddybears, Saturday Night Out and The Black Torment, The Pleasure Girls, Hell Is A City, Cup Fever, Face Of A Stranger and Yield To The Night and Hell Drivers, From The North has been in some danger of turning into a film blog which, sometimes, discusses telly. Rather than the other way around which is, in theory, its raison d'être (and, that's yer actual French, that is). To which this blogger is happy to report that there still seems little reason to stop such doings any time soon.

'So Man has sown the wind - and reaped the whirlwind. Perhaps in the next few hours, there will be no remembrance of the past and no hope for the future that might have been. All the works of Man will be consumed in the great fire out of which [sic] he was created. But perhaps at the heart of the burning light into which he has thrust his world, there is a heart that cares more for him, than he has ever cared for himself. And if there is a future for Man - insensitive as he is, proud and defiant in his pursuit of power - let him resolve to live it lovingly; for he knows well how to do so. Then he may say once more: Truly the light is sweet. And what a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to see the Sun.'

A movie about man-made climate catastrophe. One in which the government lies through its teeth about the impending disaster to the people they've been elected to serve but the story leaks anyway, thanks to a whistleblower (who is, promptly, locked up by the Security Services for passing the story to a journalist). A tale of science being the only, potential, answer to a problem created by science in the first place. A movie with a strong central female character who is every bit as tough as the patronising men she has to deal with all the time. This all sounds very contemporary in 2022, does it not dear blog reader? In fact, the above is a description of Val Guest's The Day The Earth Caught Fire, a BAFTA-winning movie from 1961 which was 'green' at least two decades before its time and which, with a genuinely uncanny accuracy, predicted the apocalyptic possibilities of climate change.

Val Guest had been at the forefront of Britain's SF cinema boom in the 1950s, directing both of Hammer's first two Quatermass adaptations as well as a further Nigel Kneale screenplay, The Abominable Snowman (1957). Each of those films was notable for a gritty - almost nihilistic - sense of realism which belied the fantastical nature of the stories they told. And so it was no surprise that when making an SF movie which had what, at least seemed to be, an altogether more plausible narrative - one that played very much into then current fears of nuclear annihilation - Guest would come up with something that transcended what anyone else in the genre was doing at the time. Stripped of mutated monsters or alien invaders, The Day The Earth Caught Fire instead feels like a contemporary thriller - Guest, of course, made several of those, including the two movies he made immediately prior to The Day The Earth Caught Fire, From The North favourite Hell Is A City and The Full Treatment (both 1960). The film he made straight after The Day The Earth Caught Fire would also be a thriller, the excellent Jigsaw (1962).

The Day The Earth Caught Fire, in one way, feels very down-to-Earth; it just happens to be about the - potential - end of that Earth. The result was possibly the best British science fiction film ever made, certainly of the finest half-a-dozen or so. It's also a film that remains as timely as ever, with the doom-laden predictions concerning climate change suggesting that the scorched Earth theme of the film may be just around the corner, if not already with us already, sixty years later.

'They've shifted the tilt of the Earth. The stupid, crazy, irresponsible bastards! They've finally done it!' The premise of the film is relatively simple, even if the science is perhaps a bit anti-theoretical. The USA and USSR both - completely by chance - carry out simultaneous nuclear tests in different parts of the world, the power of which is enough to cause the Earth to marginally shift on its axis and start inching towards the Sun. It takes a while for this catastrophe to become apparent, with the knowledge that something is wrong only coming slowly through increasingly extreme weather conditions that result in a massive heatwave across Britain. And, other parts of the world too, we hear, it's just that the audience only gets to see what's going on in London (and Brighton). Investigating these oddities is Daily Express reporter Peter Stenning (Edward Judd), who has been drinking in the last chance saloon as far as his job is concerned; as well as drinking in it and, indeed, every other bar in town in a more literal sense. Bitter about a recent divorce and current custody battle (he has a young son whom he seems to adore but gets to see far to infrequently due to his ex-wife's intransigence), he's boozing away a once promising career. To such a point that he's frequently getting bailed out from missed assignments by his seen-it-all colleague and mentor Bill Maguire (the always superb Leo McKern who spends the film dispensing pearls of sage wisdom like: 'No woman's irreplaceable, no matter how much you love her. There will be somebody else, sooner or later. London's full of somebody else's!')

However, a routine visit to the Met Office in search of a silly season story about sun-spots and a forthcoming solar eclipse puts Stenning onto the fact that there may be more to the strange weather conditions than the government is, actually, letting on. A testy first meeting with Met Office telephonist Jeannie Craig (From The North favourite Janet Munro) leads - rather more convincingly than in most films of this kind - to a somewhat torrid love affair between the two. When she tells him details of a conversation she has overheard about the Earth's axis being tilted, Stenning betrays her trust and reports the story in his paper, leading to her arrest by The Fuzz. But soon, everyone has much more to worry about than government departmental leaks and the Official Secrets Act. It becomes devastatingly apparent that Earth's nutation has been altered by eleven degrees, affecting the climatic zones and changing the positions of the poles and the equator.

'There's a chap in Leeds says he can extract water from the atmosphere. Oh, as you were, he's been certified!' The increasing heat causes water to evaporate and mists to cover much of Britain. The solar eclipse occurs but days ahead of schedule. It turns out that the world has - if Bill's maths are correct (and, they probably are) - mere months left before total burn-up unless the imbalance can be corrected. As the superpowers prepare to explode unprecedented amounts of nuclear bombs simultaneously in an attempt to reverse the effects of the earlier explosions, water is rationed, society explodes into anarchy, rioting and violence and Stenning and Jeannie (who has now been released and given a job by the Express as a thank you for the whole 'getting her arrested in the first place' thing) rekindle their relationship. In the end, it's left to Stenning to chronicle what could be either a new beginning or the beginning of the end.

Tautly written to within an inch of its life by Guest and Wolf Mankowitz, The Day The Earth Caught Fire feels unlike any other British SF movie, with the possible exception of Guest's own Quatermass 2, with which it shares a naturalistic style that makes the fantastical nature of the story all the more believable. (Ironically, Talking Pictures TV recently showed both The Day The Earth Caught Fire and Quatermass 2 back-to-back one Saturday evening on what this blogger described at the time as Val Guest Apocalypse Night!) Not that such scenarios would have seemed too fantastical at the time - the threat of nuclear destruction hung over everyone throughout most of the second-half of the Twentieth Century and it wasn't so hard to imagine that the end could come just as easily from a nuclear accident as from war itself. (It's worth remembering that The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred about eleven months after The Day The Earth Caught Fire was released.) At a time when ever-more powerful atomic weapons were still being regularly tested by America, the Soviet Union, Britain and France (and, within another couple of years, China too), this story probably didn't seem such a stretch of the imagination for cinemagoers. The fact that, scientifically speaking, it would take a Hell of a lot more than two atomic explosions to shake the Earth from its axis notwithstanding. And, one suspects that the makers of the movie knew that and also knew that the audience probably knew it as well but didn't let that worry them when making something which feels as thought it's plausible even if, strictly speaking, it isn't.

The sense of hyper-realism is helped by the fact that the film plays more like a newsroom story or a conspiracy crime thriller than science fiction for much of the time. In that, it anticipates things like All The Presidents Men, The China Syndrome and Edge Of Darkness by, in the case of the former two movies, a decade and in the case of the latter, two decades. While the stock cynical reporter was not exactly an unfamiliar character in cinema, here the portrayal of the newspaper world feels extremely authentic. The fact that it was set around a real newspaper (and hard as it is to imagine these days, there was once a time when the Max Beaverbrook's Daily Express wasn't a risible Princess Diana hagiography but rather a campaigning newspaper of some note) brings a certain gravitas to the story. And the sets, perfectly recreating the Express newsroom, loan the film a kind of cinéma vérité documentary realism. So do most of the performances, with overlapping dialogue, characters dropping pithy quips and generally sounding and acting like real, properly rounded people. McKern is on top form as the paper's science editor who puts all the clues (and the silences) together, having a natural style that barely feels like acting at all. And, he gets the majority of the best lines; one superb exchange with Stenning will give readers a flavour of Leo at his very best: 'I'm not up on my sci-fi. So, we're orbiting towards the sun, but how many billion light-years ...?' 'If that's true, I'd say there's about ... four months.' 'Before what?' 'Before there's a delightful smell in the universe of charcoaled mankind.'

Eddie Judd is also impressive as the reporter who is saved from his own self-destructive urges just as the world may be coming to an end and even Arthur Christiansen - an actual former Daily Express editor drafted in to give the film even more realism - seems somehow right. He can't really act as such, but he didn't need to, careful editing gets a sympathetic performance out of him and he at least sounds authentic when bellowing orders to his newsroom underlings.

The government imposes a state of emergency and starts rationing water. Scientists conclude that the only way to bring Earth back into a safe orbit is to detonate a series of nuclear bombs in the Western Siberia. Stenning, Bill and Jeannie retire to their local pub, Harry's Bar, to listen to a radio broadcast of the event. The bombs are detonated and the shockwave causes a sprinkling of dust to fall from the bar's ceiling. At the newspaper print room, two versions of the next day's front page have been prepared: one reads World Saved, the other World Doomed. The film ends without resolution as to which one will be published, or if there will be anyone to read it and, in the words of Stenning, whether 'humanity will recover after all this horror.' The film is, in fact, almost entirely told in flashback. It opens with a continuation of the final scene, Stenning walking through a deserted London back to the Express offices, discovering his typewriter won't work due to the heat, speaking to Jeannie on the phone and then getting through to the print room to get them to type up his story for an edition that, it's quite possible, no one will read. 'It is exactly thirty minutes since the corrective bombs were detonated,' Stenning begins. 'Within the next few hours, the world will know whether this is the end or another beginning. The rebirth of man or his final obituary. For the last time, man pursued his brother with a sword and so the final fire was kindled. The Earth, that was to live forever, was blasted by a great wind towards oblivion. It is strange to think that barely ninety days ago...' And then the scene switches to three months earlier, with the news of the simultaneous detonation of the American and Soviet bombs. It's a really clever framing device which gives the audience a question to ponder from the very first scene that isn't even resolved when we get back to the same scene ninety eight minutes (or, three months) later.

Val Guest said in a 2003 interview that there was a lack of enthusiasm to make the film from just about everyone he approached (including Hammer, which is surprising given the subject matter would seem to have been right up their usual street). He only managed to persuade British Lion to finance it by putting up his profits from his recent, very successful, adaptation of Expresso Bongo as collateral. The film was made in black and white but in some original prints (including the ones that usually show on TV), the opening and closing sequences are sepia tinted a rather sickly orangey-yellow to suggest the heat of the sun. It was shot with thirty five millimetre anamorphic lenses using the French Dyaliscope process. The critic Doug Cummings said, concerning the look of the film, 'Guest manages some visual flair. The film was shot in anamorphic widescreen and the extended frame is always perfectly balanced with groups of people, city vistas, or detailed settings, whether bustling newsrooms, congested streets, or humid apartments. Although the film's special effects aren't particularly noteworthy, matte paintings and the incorporation of real London locations work to good atmospheric advantage (heavy rains buffet the windows; thick, unexpected fog wafts through the city; a raging hurricane crashes into the British coast). Guest also, cleverly, incorporates stock footage to depict floods and meteorological disasters worldwide. The visual style of the film is straightforward and classical, but each scene is rendered with a great degree of realism and sense of place.' Another reviewer, Paul Green in a lengthy essay wrote, 'Guest and his editor Bill Lenny worked with archive footage. There's a quick shot of a fire-engine from The Quatermass Xperiment - but, otherwise, you can't see the joins.'

In his commentary for the 2001 Anchor Bay DVD release of the movie, Guest stated that the sound of church bells heard at the very end of the American version (and, indeed, the version that usually plays on TV in the UK - as in the recent Talking Pictures showings) was added without his knowledge by the distributor, Universal. This was, he said, in order to suggest that the emergency detonations had succeeded and that the Earth would be saved. Guest speculated that the bells motif may have been inspired by The War Of The Worlds (1953), which ends with the joyous ringing of church bells after the emergency (and a nuclear explosion) has passed. But Guest maintained that his intention was to always have an wholly ambiguous ending. The film, which was partly made on location in London and Brighton, used matte paintings to create images of abandoned cities, a dried up Thames river and desolate landscapes. The production also featured exterior shots of the real Daily Express headquarters, the Express Building in Fleet Street, with the paper, seemingly, delighted at this early example of product placement and loaning the production its full cooperation.

It is From The North favourite Janet Munro who was the film's most impressive asset. Her character is not only sympathetic but, fascinatingly, out of time - a modern woman stuck in a 1961 film; she is sexually confident (Stenning doesn't so much seduce her as gets seduced by her), smart and with a moral compass that sees her doing the right thing even if it isn't the easy thing ending banged up in 'protective custody' for her trouble. She pulls the film together and has some of the most impressive moments ('It's in the Met Centre Facts Of Life file. Dogs bark, cats meow and Stenning drinks'). She's also at the centre of the film's surprisingly frank sexuality. Guest had already shown that he was willing to push the boundaries of censorship in sexual matters in From The North favourite Hell Is A City and, here, he features a teasing topless scene (more explicit in the publicity shots which were included on the DVD/Blu Ray) and has Jeannie sleeping nude, barely covered by bedding and soaked in sweat. That she is happy to sleep with Stenning on their first date is also unexpected in a film made just after the end of the 1950s. The film was rated X (minimum admittance age, sixteen) by the British Board of Film Censors on its initial release. Although often listed as having been cut by the BBFC, the then-censor, John Trevelyan, passed the film - which he said he greatly admired - uncut according to his memoirs. The X certificate was given due to the subject matter and the occasional tough language plus the briefest of brief glimpses of one of Janet Munro's nipples as she is drying herself after coming out of the shower. The 2001 DVD release was given a BBFC certificate of Fifteen. On the 2014 BFI release, the rating was further reduced to Twelve, the same rating that Talking Pictures gave it for its recent TV screenings. There is, probably, an essay in all of that on the changing priorities of society in terms of moral frankness over the last sixty years!

Paul Green's excellent essay for the Culture Count website mentioned earlier discussed many of the themes in the movie: For example, the news media: 'We see a media landscape that is largely defined through the press and its heavy-duty Gutenberg technology and a political landscape that is defined through the Cold War ... The bustling newsroom with its exhorting wall poster slogans (Go For IMPACT!) is a nexus of conflicting information and misinformation, conjecture and rumour as the hacks try to get an angle on freak weather conditions in the silly season.' Green adds: 'Today the sequence reads like an elegy for the old Fleet Street culture of "The Print" which gave life-time employment to thousands of Cockneys, until Murdoch introduced computerised newsrooms, smashed the print unions and moved operations to Docklands, eventually dragging the rest of Fleet Street with him.' Nuclear weapons testing, is another key theme: 'The premise of the film - that nuclear tests alter the Earth's orbit, disrupt the climate and send the planet spiralling towards the Sun - makes a deeper impact ... Global destruction through nuclear war is becoming an existential reality. Nuclear holocaust anxieties in movies were not new, of course. But these fears were usually externalised as monster mutation narratives.' In terms of escapism: 'Everyone's keeping busy except boozy Stenning, who clearly resents being tasked to write a lightweight piece about sun-spots, when he used to be the paper's hotshot columnist with serious ambitions as a writer. He'd rather be in Harry's Bar, a cosy all-day drinking club modelled on Fleet Street's El Vino's.' There is also a sharp focus on social class (as with many British movies of the era): 'Stenning's discontent is not explicitly political, in any specific ideological sense ... But there's the same restlessness about the restrictions of class. Stenning voices a distrust of traditional upper-crust Anglo-Saxon attitudes that parallels the increasingly awkward questions the narrative raises about the inertia of the British Establishment, as well as the mood of a Britain on the edge of social change. "You ought to see the way they're bringing him up, Bill. It'll be the right prep school next. And then the right boarding school. And by the time they finish with him, he'll be a right bowler-hatted, who's-for-tennis, toffee-nosed gent, but he won't be my son.' And, of course, gender politics is discussed, front and centre: 'This encounter with Jeannie signals the beginning of Stenning's slow transformation. It also exemplifies the transformation of gender politics in UK bureaucracy since 1961. Today a bright woman like Jeannie would probably be running the whole department rather than servicing a duplicating machine, which is where Stenning discovers her. "I'm not women!" she informs Stenning, when he makes one of his bar-room generalisations.' With regard to the end of the world leitmotif, Green notes: 'Stenning manages to photograph the flaring black disc of the Sun - a superb piece of metonymy for the looming threat of extinction. As IQ Hunter points out in British Science Fiction Cinema, the film progresses through a reprise of the city's collective memories and myths of World War Two - the Blitz, fire-storms, black-out, the miseries of rationing, evacuation of children, black marketeering and gangsterism. It raises the issue of whether post-war Britain could maintain the Dunkirk spirit in the face of a new threat. There's a hint, voiced by Maguire earlier, that "we've gone soft" and that under these new and even more extreme circumstances, social cohesion might unravel and give way to hysteria.' Other reviewers over the years have been equally impressed. From The North favourite Mark Kermode, for instance, give the film a fan-esque overview in 2014 when the BFI released it. Which you can check out here. 

The Day The Earth Caught Fire also fitted in really well with a then-current vogue in British SF for stories of global cataclysm such as those by authors like John Wyndham (see The Day Of The Triffids, for instance). It's worth bearing in mind that many Londoners going to see this film in cinemas when it was first released would have had memories of the Blitz and the V1 and V2 strikes only twenty years or so earlier. Indeed, many of the extras shown running from the strange fog which is engulfing them would have run from Wernher Von Braun's ballistic missiles and clouds of smoke on those same streets in 1944. The city's experience of trauma adds something powerful to the mix and the film also addresses concerns about the Boomer generation, whom Guest's generation were beginning to realise had been somewhat spoiled and to mistrust accordingly. Here the 'Beatnik' gangs are seen treating impending disaster as a reason to have a party, drinking in the streets and engaging in petty vandalism and (in one quite horrific scene), borderline sexual assault. As older people try to take what control they can over the situation, evacuating the cities, these young scallywags provide a visual representation of the chaos (and, oddly, the hedonism) which the worsening disaster inspires. In that regard, The Day The Earth Caught Fire has a claim to being the first 'punk' film, fifteen years before the term (or, its creative limits) had been defined. Another example of the way in which Guest's movie was, in a faux-naïf way, ahead of the curve.

Eddie Judd, twenty eight at the time the film was made, had been a jobbing movie and TV actor throughout the 1950s and this was his first starring role. It has been suggested - and, some circumstantial evidence supports the claim - that, on the strength of this performance, he was one of a number of actors considered for the part of James Bond in Doctor No which started filming a few months later in 1962. It's hard to imagine Judd in a tuxedo, drinking vodka martinis and playing Baccarat at Les Ambassadeurs Club. He's a handsome man, but with rather rugged and tough features; less 007 more hard-drinking hero of a contemporary British New Wave drama. He's of the Stanley Baker/Albert Finney breed of leading man rather than Connery or Roger Moore. Judd's success in The Day The Earth Caught Fire saw Columbia Pictures sign him to a long term contract. However, according to Val Guest, Judd 'was such a pain in the ass to everybody. He had an enormous opinion of himself and was his own worst enemy. Columbia just loaned him out here and there and then let him go.' 

Judd made several more SF movies in the years following including First Men In The Moon (1964), Terence Fisher's Island Of Terror (1966) and, in between those two, another of the best SF movies ever made in the UK, Alan Bridges' Invasion (1966, in which Judd plays, essentially, the same role as he did in The Day The Earth Caught Fire). He also worked in TV and the odd movie, mainly in character roles, continuing in regular employment until the late 1980s when he, effectively, retired from the business and worked in banking. For a certain generation of TV viewers he was the 'Think Once, Think Twice, Think Bike!' man from a memorable 1975 public information campaign to make motorists aware of the risks faced on the road to motorcyclists. There is some tragedy in his story, too. His first marriage was to the actress Gene Anderson who also appears in The Day The Earth Caught Fire as May, the wife of Harry, the owner of Stenning and Bill's local. Gene died suddenly, aged thirty four, just four years later from a cerebral haemorrhage whilst filming an episode of Z Cars. Judd's second marriage was to another actress, Norma Ronald, with whom he had two daughters. He died in 2009.

Janet Munro's story was even more sad. She had already won a Golden Globe for her performance in Disney's Darby O'Gill & The Little People (1959) and received a BAFTA nomination for Basil Dearden's Life For Ruth (1962, another From The North favourite). She also had a memorable role the big-screen version of The Trollenberg Terror (1958), appeared in The Young & The Guilty (1958), a melodrama written by Ted Willis as well as doing lots of TV work (she was Miss English Television Of 1958). An appearance opposite Ian Hendry in an Armchair Theatre play (Afternoon Of The Nymph) led to the two beginning a relationship and they were married in 1963. The couple had two daughters and Janet took a period away from her acting career although she still found time to appear in movies like Bitter Harvest (1963), Cy Endfield's thriller Hide & Seek (1964) and Sebastian (1968) as well as episodes of Vendetta (The Running Man) and Thirty-Minute Theatre (Turn Off If You Know The Ending). She travelled to New York to star in a TV adaptation of The Admirable Crichton (also 1968) and featured in Play For Today (The Piano) and several episodes of ITV's Adam Smith. She also had the lead in a highly regarded adaptation of The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall (1969). Reviewing the latter, some oaf of no importance at the Gruniad Morning Star called said she was 'a revelation. She is no longer the B picture girl next door. She is a woman and her acting has power and experience of life.' Guest claimed in an interview with Starlog that 'Janet's life was a disaster ... [she] didn't become an alcoholic until she met Ian. She tried too hard to keep up with him.' Having had a miscarriage, Janet and Hendry were divorced in 1971. Hendry offered no contest to the charge that the marriage had broken down due to Hendry's 'unreasonable behaviour.' Janet died aged, aged just thirty eight, in December 1972 on her way to hospital after collapsing at her home in Tufnell Park. Her death was ruled due to a heart attack caused by chronic ischaemic heart disease.

The Day The Earth Caught Fire also has a minor footnote in film history as it featured a, very brief, appearance by a young Michael Caine (this was three years before his big breakout role in Zulu). He's in one scene, playing a policeman who allows Stenning through a roadblock so that he can get to Jeannie's flat whilst the Beatniks are revolting in the street. Caine's unmistakable voice is heard telling Stenning: 'There's some teenage kids kicking it up a bit. They've lit a few fires, looted a bit of water.' And, after letting Stenning through the barrier: 'If you see any of them, keep driving. They're either drunk or drugged. And stay clear of Chelsea. They say it's pretty rough down there.' Well, Ron Chopper Harris had just made his debut for the first team, after all.

The London of 1961 had not yet, quite, begun swingin' like a pendulum do and the film, made on the cusp of a new decade, evidences societal anxiety about the years which lay ahead. The city's hip youths are dangerously unpredictable; their reckless abandon is fierce and yet there is, similarly, a scepticism towards politicians and official spokesmen, both frequently mocked by Bill as either stupid or liars. Or both. Pig-headed in their militarism and reductive in the euphemistic platitudes they use to try to calm the populace, the off-screen establishment in The Day The Earth Caught Fire are disdained in a manner which slices through much of the patriotic trajectory of British cinema of the 1950s. In general, the Britain depicted here is a fragmented, rather mean place where threads of togetherness are fragile and the idea of nationhood can come apart quite easily in the face of oncoming disaster. Heroism is in short supply (Stenning, the movie's nominal 'hero' is, like Bill, a cynic who has the intellectual heft to get The Big Picture but would sooner find his answers at the bottom of a whisky glass). But, heroism does - albeit quietly - persist in some cultural traditions: play it cool, maintain perspective and hold your drink despite the insurmountable forces of a global catastrophe on the horizon. It's Keep Calm & Carry On, essentially - a snarkier, more fractured and more British take on impending disaster than film audiences have, subsequently, become accustomed to via Hollywood.

Perhaps understandably given its age and how much it cost to make, certain aspects of The Day The Earth Caught Fire have not dated all that well. But the rapidly warming world of 2022 still has much to learn from it. The movie's fifty fifth anniversary, in 2016, was the year that parliament decided to renew the controversial nuclear programme, Trident and though their decision probably won't throw mankind spinning towards the Sun (we hope), with Russia and Ukraine going at it toe-to-toe, the consequences of nuclear war are no less terrifying today than they were half-a-century ago. In its final scenes, The Day The Earth Caught Fire, as noted, turns back to the colour-scheme it began with, from monochrome to a scorched sepia tint, as if the Sun is burning up the negative itself. A chilling ambiguous climax (those bells, aside), it ends unusually without a single credit or title card. Instead there is just a fade to black, ushering in a future which could spell deliverance or destruction for the entire planet. Which was exactly Val Guest's intention.

The film opened at The Odeon, Marble Arch, on 23 November 1961. Happily, the movie proved to be popular with the general public (in Britain, at least), making British Lion a small profit on a one hundred and ninety thousand knicker budget (reportedly around twenty two thousand quid) and winning Guest and Mankowitz the 1962 BAFTA for Best Film Screenplay. Variety described it as 'one of the classic apocalyptic films of its era' and its influence on future SF movies and TV series concerning the world in peril is beyond any reasonable doubt (it's impossible, for example, to imagine Doctor Who producing Inferno a decade later without this as a mile-marker).

There is a highly readable piece by the Gruniad Morning Star's Philip French on the movie which suggests 'The fourth estate is somewhat whitewashed, the disrespect for politicians marked but restrained (the PM, heard on radio, is a pompous, complacent Macmillan soundalike) and the special effects now invite the epithet "impressively stylised."' Also worth a read is Patrick Bresnihan of the Authority Research Network's analysis of the movie in the context of today's climate concerns. The TV Tropes website gives a decent overview of the movie and has a lot of fun noting many of the genre cliques which appear in The Day The Earth Caught Fire (some of which it, actually, seems to have invented). Meanwhile, the Movie Locations and Reel Streets websites are very useful if you want to go location-spotting in London (the latter including numerous excellent screengrab to illustrate the article).

Also shown on Talking Pictures this week was another of this blogger's favourite British films of the 1960s and, by a distance, one of the best of the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series of B-movies produced at Merton Park Studios between 1960 and 1965. Game For Three Losers is a film that we've mentioned on this blog before albeit, somewhat in passing. It deserves a bit more in-depth coverage.

'Do you want me to be honest or tactful?' 'Honest, every time.' A married businessman and MP, Robert Hilary (Michael Gough) is blackmailed for having an almost-but-not-quite affair with his pretty new secretary, Frances (Toby Robins). The blackmailer is her brother, down on his luck ex-solider Oliver Marchant (a right bad'un played by Mark Eden). Hilary blusters but pays the three hundred knicker that Marchant demands for his continued silence only to be told, of course, that the blackmailer wants more. An outraged Hilary throws him out of the office and confesses all to his solicitor Fletcher (Roger Hammond) whilst still keeping his wife, Adele (Rachel Gurney), in the dark. He then goes to the police led by Superintendent Manton (Colin Douglas). Marchant is arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to Seven Big Ones in The Slammer for his naughty demanding money with menaces. But the - very public - trial at the Old Bailey is a disaster for Hilary (despite prior assurances of anonymity). The judge refuses to hear the case in camera, Hilary is harshly grilled in the witness box by the defence counsel (Allan Cuthbertson) and the ensuing publicity suggests that his political career is ruined ('a politician's life is like a boxer - they never come back') though his marriage seems safe as his wife says she will stick by him. Frances, meanwhile, avoids jail but her life spirals into depression and alcoholism. Hence, this is a situation with, as the title suggests, no winners, only losers.

With a screenplay by the great Robert Marshall, based on a novel, not by Wallace for once, but by Edgar Lustgarten, Game For Three Losers packs a shitload of plot into its fifty five minute running time. The Producers acknowledged the assistance given to them by the owners of Upper Court in Esher, where Hilary's country home exteriors were filmed. Director Gerry O'Hara keeps everything moving along at a good pace and the acting by the whole cast is never less than excellent. From The North favourite Gough (married at the time to another From The North favourite, Anneke Wills) does 'haughty but slightly desperate' better than just about any other actor this blogger can think of. Eden is always good when he's either playing slimy and criminal or sexy and criminal. Here, he gets to do both.

One of the last of the Wallace series made, Game For The Losers was released in April 1965 on the Rank circuit and played as a supporting feature to various A-movies at Odeons and Gaumonts up and down the country. It might've been 'just another B-movie' but for the quality of the acting and writing in particular. This blogger first saw it in 1988 when Channel Four were screening the Edgar Wallace Mysteries in a late-night slot and he immediately recognised its quality, an opinion shared incidentally by this blogger's mother who admired the rather ambiguous and downbeat ending in particular. It was a real joy to see it again this week.

All of which brings us nicely to Memorably Daft Lines From Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Eight: Sean Connery: 'Positively ssschocking!' Goldfinger. Did you exsssschpect me to mishhh it?

This blogger must extend his thanks to one of his beast fiends, Clay, for providing him with a link to this photo-essay from Life magazine concerning the 1967 auditions for Mister Connery's replacement in the role of 007 for On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Memorably Daft Lines From Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Nine: Richard Bull: 'How come you get a telegram here?' George Maharis: 'Magic.' Richard Bull: 'I'd certainly like to know what it says.' George Maharis: 'I'll bet you would.' The Satan Bug. Second Alistair MacLean adaptation in the first ten of this on-going From The North feature. A clear reflection of the influence of this blogger's father's reading material on Keith Telly Topping's early life.

Memorably Daft Lines From Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s (Or, In This Case, 1959): Number Ten: Cary Grant: 'You're police, aren't you? Or is it FBI?' Leo G Carroll: 'FBI, CIA, ONI ... we're all in the same alphabet soup!' North By Northwest. Twenty-four carat masterpiece. This had many claims to being Hitchcock's finest (this blogger still, slightly, prefers Rear Window, but it's a close-run thing).

Memorably Daft Lines From Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Eleven: Lee Marvin: 'Any questions?' Telly Savales: 'Do we have to eat with n*****s?' Richard Jaeckel: 'What's going on, sir?' Lee Marvin: 'Oh, the gentleman from the South had a question about the dining arrangements. He and his comrades are discussing place settings now!' The Dirty Dozen.

This blogger remembers being asked once - at dinner with a fiend - how many of The Dirty Dozen he could name. He got about seven (maybe eight) of them. Including Trini Lopez! Mind you, that was after he'd been asked to name all of The Magnificent Seven and had started 'Brad Dexter ... and six other blokes!'

Memorably Daft Lines From Blockbuster War, Espionage & Cult-Religion-Chase-Musicals of the 1960s: Number Twelve: Ringo Starr: 'They have to paint me red before they chop me. It's a different religion from ours. I think.' Patrick Cargill: 'So this is the famous ring?' Ringo Starr: 'I'm in fear of me life, you know!' Patrick Cargill: 'So, these are the famous Beatles?' John Lennon: 'So, this is the famous Scotland Yard?' Patrick Cargill: 'How long do you think you'll last, then?' John Lennon: 'Can't say fairer than that. The Great Train Robbery? How's that going? ... Hold on, it's them! Only me and Paul know we're here.' George Harrison: 'I know we're here.' Patrick Cargill: 'Allow me. I'm a bit of a famous mimic in my own small way, you know. James Cagney ... Hello, thurrr, this is the famous Ringo here, gear, fab. What is it that I can do for you, as it wurrr, gear fab?' George Harrison: 'Not a bit like Cagney!' Help! The number of Memorably Daft lines from Help! that this blogger had to exclude from this list to get this particular one in would have filled an entire From The North semi-regular feature all on their own. Mind you, that would have been pretty much the entire script. Which would've definitely been a fiendish thingy. 'You've failed, blogger!'

Memorably Daft Lines From Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Thirteen: Robert Stephens: 'This is all very flattering, but surely there are other men, better men?' Clive Revill: 'To tell truth, you were not the first choice. We considered Russian writer, Tolstoy.' Robert Stephens: 'Oh, that's more like it. The man's a genius.' Clive Revill: 'Too old. Then we considered philosopher, Nietzsche.' Robert Stephens: 'Well, absolutely. First-rate mind.' Clive Revill: 'Uh-uh. Too German. Then we considered Tchaikovsky.' Robert Stephens: 'You couldn't go wrong with Tchaikovsky.' Clive Revill: 'We could and we did. It was catastrophe.' Robert Stephens: 'Why?' Clive Revill: 'You don't know? Because Tchaikovsky, how shall I put it? Women, not his glass of tea!' The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes. One of the greatest, funniest, most perfect films ever made. Even the Memorably Daft bits are great!

Inevitably, of course, whenever this blogger posts anything about Sherlock Holmes, the closest thing to an expert on the subject he knows, The Lord Thy God Steven Moffat (OBE), was quick to take a few minutes off from publicising his forthcoming Inside Man (starts next Monday on BBC1, dear blog readers. Be there or be square). And to let this blogger know, yet again, his opinion that The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes is the best Sherlock Holmes film ever. Bar none. 'The funniest but also the saddest,' he noted. 'Simultaneously a parody and a tragedy - and I'm not even sure how that's possible. There's a general view that it's flawed, because a huge amount was cut from it. Having read the whole gorgeous screenplay, the cuts help it. Good stuff was lost but the story was made tighter and better - and stayed just the right side of Too Silly (the cut stuff is often too comedic). It's not flawed, it's perfect. And what a score!' He's right you know, dear blog readers. Well, he usually is, to be fair. This blogger always defers to Steven on matters Holmes-related. Like that time in 2014 when he memorably strong-armed this blogger into buying the Complete Basil Rathbone DVD box-set. On this occasion, this blogger replied that of course, Private Life has been 'a huge influence on just about every take on Holmes thereafter (as well you know) and, in that regard, Billy Wilder did something he probably didn't even imagine he was doing at the time. Plus, Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely are probably my favourite ever Holmes and Watson (and they've got some serious competition). I think it's a gem.' As the blogger has mentioned previously on From The North, he tends to judge the success or failure of any Sherlock Holmes adaptation on how well John Watson is played. Blakely is superb. So, there you go, dear blog reader, if you've never watched The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes, then your life is nowhere near as complete as you may think it is. Get thee to Amazon (alternative online DVD sellers are available) and buy the flipper.

The Lord Thy God Steven Moffat (OBE) was also the subject of an interview by the Gruniad Morning Star's Stuart Jeffries this week, 'Insane Right-Wing Misogynist? I'm None Of Those Things!' Steven Moffat On Doctor Who, His BAFTAs & His Critics. Which manages to get the number of BAFTAs Steven has actually won wrong (it's five, not seven) but is, otherwise, a jolly fascinating read. Steven, mate, take it from yer actual Keith Telly Topping the only people that think you are those things or anything even remotely like them are effing numbskull morons. With, in the case of the male proportion of them, very small penises. And this blogger is a highly respected author, journalist and broadcaster so you should probably take his word for it on this particular score!

Memorably Daft Lines From Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Fourteen: Tom Bosley: But, you got captured?' Paul Newman: 'I didn't get captured ... I allowed myself to be captured!' The Secret War of Harry Frigg.

Which, as recently as recently, this blogger had long believed was the movie that the whole 'get it?', 'got it!', 'good!' routine originally came from. This blogger must now stand corrected on that score as he is, it turns out, extremely wrong in his bigly wrongness. Which is something that he, occasionally, is. Not often, you understand, but every now and again and this is one such instance. This blogger's thanks, therefore, go to two of his most lovely Facebook fiends, Johanna and Jan, for correcting him and noting that, as far as they know, 'get it?', 'got it!', 'good!' first appeared in 1955's The Court Jester in an exchange between Danny Kaye and Basil Rathbone a decade before Paul Newman and Sylva Koscina performed a variant of it in Harry Frigg. And, here's the proof. Everybody should probably makes a note of the date and time when Keith Telly Topping 'being wrong' occurred and use it against him at a later date.

Memorably Daft Lines From Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Fifteen: Michael Caine: 'One of my men - Hook - do you know him?' Stanley Baker: 'No.' Michael Caine: 'In the hospital, malingering under arrest. He's a thief, a coward and an insubordinate barrack room lawyer. And you've given him a rifle!' Zulu.

Memorably Daft Lines From Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Sixteen: Julius Harris: 'There are two ways to disable a crocodile you know.' Roger Moore: 'I don't suppose you'd care to share that information with me?' Julius Harris: 'One way is to take a pencil and jam it into the pressure hole behind his eye.' Roger Moore: 'And the other?' Julius Harris: 'Oh the other's twice as simple. You just put your hand in his mouth and pull his teeth out!' Live & Let Die.

The movie that (along with it's predecessor) as ten year old taught this blogger everything he thought he knew about America; a sleazy, sexy, dangerous joint full of Fillet O Soul restaurants and jive-talkin' gangsters. Every James Bond movie should, by The Law, feature a scene in which 007 escapes certain death by walking over the backs of crocodiles to safety!

One of the most quotable movies ever made ('Names is for tombstones, baby, y'all take this honky out an' waste him'), sour-faced critics claim it is little more than The Saint Gets Shafted. They're not entirely wrong but, like Kananga, they're over-inflated by their self-importance. It's this blogger's favourite Bond movie and has been from the day he first saw it until, in this ever changing world in which we live in (that's a line that doesn't make since, incidentally, Sir Paul), the day he lives and, if you will, lets die. George Martin's score is outstanding to the extent that, at times, you almost forget it isn't John Barry. And remember, dear blog reader, never go into a bathroom without a mongoose.

From The North favourite Mark Kermode's review of Brett Morgan's Moonage Daydream is, as you would expect from the world's best film reviewer, a little piece of Shock & Awe and this blogger thoroughly recommends it to the house. However, it is - unintentionally - aided immeasurably in comedic terms by whomsoever it was the put the mad subtitles on it; this blogger now desperately want to see Mammy Fell To Earth directed by Nick Rogue!

And so, with the terrible inevitability of the terribly inevitable, we come to that part of From The North wholly dedicated to this blogger's on-going medical skulduggery. For those dear blog readers who haven't been following this on-going fiasco which appears to have been on-going longer than the reign of the late Queen, it goes like this: Keith Telly Topping spent some weeks around Christmas and New Year feeling rotten; experienced five days in hospital; was discharged; received B12 injections; then more injections; somewhat recovered his missing appetite; got a diagnosis; had a consultant's meeting; continued to suffer fatigue and insomnia; endured a second endoscopy; had another consultation; got (unrelated) toothache; had an extraction; which took ages to heal; had another consultation; spent a week where nothing remotely health-related occurred; was given further - painful - B-12 injections; had an echocardiogram; received more blood extractions; did another hospital visit; saw the insomnia and torpor continue; returned to the hospital for more blood-letting; had a rearranged appointment to get a sick note from his doctor; suffered probably his worst period yet of the fatigue. Until the following week. Oh, the fatigue. The depressing fatigue. The never-ending fatigue. Then, this blogger returned to hospital for a go on the Blood-Letting Machine and, most recently, was back at the doctor's for another sickie. This week, dear blog reader, as difficult as this might be to believe - and, for only about the third week since February - nothing remotely health-related occurred in the vicinity of The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House. Lordy, issa miracle. 

This blogger's thanks go out to his most excellent Facebook fiend Ken. who has recently been posting examples of the crap we in Britain used to eat. All the stuff that gained us the unenviable reputation abroad of being, you know, bloody philistines when it came to cuisine. (This was, obviously, before we in Britain discovered Indian and Chinese grub and became all sophisticated, like.) Anyway, allow this blogger a momentary gasp of horror before exclaiming 'Kidney Risotto? What the actual fudge?'

Mind you, dear blog reader, if you think that's bad, get a load of this. And, ponder on the statement that it was 'ninety five per cent pure leg and shoulder ham' and then wonder what the other five per cent was. Or, perhaps, it's best not to know.

Ken also posted several photos of collections of chocolate bars from times-past which had an unexpected side-effect. This blogger now desperately wants a Bar Six. And, he can't have one because Cadbury's stopped making them back in the 1990s. Sadly, it's the dark chocolate Club thing all over again. Why, for the love of God, why?

Whilst checking out the BBC News Channel's broadcast of 'live-filing-past-the-coffin-cam' on Friday (which, incidentally, this blogger doesn't have any problem with - it was a big news story, it had to be covered) this blogger found himself a bit startled by something which appeared on the scrolling news bar at the bottom of the screen: 'The government is providing live updates on The Queue on You Tube,' it said. You know, dear blog reader, how sometimes you misread one word in a sentence and it completely changes the intended meaning? This blogger initially read it as 'The government is providing live updates of The Queen on You Tube.' Keith Telly Topping thought, 'that'll be fascinating,' something along the lines of 'she's still dead, I'm afraid.' But, it turns out, it didn't say that at all. Which was something of a relief.

It's interesting to note that The Queue may now have ended but it has still acquired its own Wikipedia page, here. Then again, we do seem to rather enjoy the process queuing in the UK far more than in other places around the world. In the end, The Queen's lying-in-state ended in the early hours of Monday morning. The last person to view Queen Elizabeth's lying-in-state told the BBC News website it was 'a real privilege' to pay her respects. Which is nice to hear. Chrissy Heerey, a serving member of the RAF from Melton Mowbray, then rather spoiled it by adding that this was 'one of the highlights of my life.' This blogger has had several highlights of his life, dear blog reader. These usually concerned meeting people he had always admired (and finding that they didn't have feet of clay), having nice meals in restaurants with fiends and/or family, foreign travel to exciting new destinations, getting his first book published or watching his beloved (though, until recently, totally unsellable) football team occasionally doing something half-way decent for a change. Almost none of the highlights of his life have involved queuing for up to fourteen hours to spend about a minute walking past a coffin, no matter how much he admired the dead individual in life (and, as noted in the last From The North update, this blogger did rather admire the late Queen). Chrissy would, perhaps, be unsurprised to learn that some of those behind her who didn't get to have one of the highlights of their life and were turned away from Westminster Abbey by security were not best pleased. Ooo, pure-mad vexed, so they were. At least if the chap quoted in this article is anything to go by. The (anonymous) individual who didn't get to walk, slowly, past the Queen's coffin claimed that it was all the government's fault. Like much in life, seemingly.

In the event, the Queen's funeral - on Monday - went off very smoothly and proved, as noted in the last bloggerisationims update, that there are some things we do rather well in Britain, this sort of thing being one of them. This blogger does not intend to spend a lot of time on the funeral except to relay a thought which struck him as the coffin was being moved from its lying-in-state to the Abbey. 'This blogger is guessing that the Crown, Orb and Sceptre don't, actually, get buried along with Her late Maj. But, on the off chance that they do, that's an episode for the next series of The Detectorists right there ...'

Not everyone is happy with the succession, however.

According to the Royal Warrant Holders Association, the firm of Denhay Farms Limited of Devon are producers of the finest dry cured bacon and, by appointment to HRH The Prince of Wales (the website doesn't make clear whether that's the previous one or the new one), are official suppliers of various pork products to The Crown. Including, presumably, gammon. Odd, this blogger thought that would've been Piers Morgan's job.

And now, in this week's most desperate attempt to shoehorn oneself into a story about the late Her Maj, congratulations to twenty eight year old Nadia who told the BBC News website - that's the BBC News website. Which used to be run by adults - The Queen Adopted My Corgi's Brother. Congratulations are, of course, also due to the authors of this stunning, Pulizter Prize-nominated think-piece, Bonnie McLaren and Sam Gruet. We can't wait to read the follow-up which could, perhaps, be about someone whose cousin's husband's nephew's friend one cleaned the stains from the royal lavatories. To be called See That My Throne Is Kept Clean, one imagines?

Devon Live reports that King Charles Will Abdicate Next Year According To Psychic Who Reads Asparagus. They add that the alleged psychic who made this claim, Jemima Packington (who is, clearly, not mental - in so much that she seems able to acquire regular publicity piss-easily), also predicted 'the return of Boris Johnson. She famously correctly predicted Brexit, Prince Philip's death, Theresa May being ousted as PM and Harry and Meghan stepping back from the Royal Family.' What they fail to remind their readers of was a story that this blog picked up on back in July. The asparagus had, reportedly, assured Jemima that Ben Wallace would succeed Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. Shortly before Wallace ruled himself out of the running. The asparagus lied to you, Jemima, it would appear. Why would it do that?

After just three weeks in the job, a Naked Wines director has left, leading to analysts warning that 'something has gone awry' at the Norwich firm according to Eastern Daily Press. It is important, this blogger feels, at this juncture to stress that the name of the firm is Naked Wines, not that the individual in question quit because of any intentional or unintentional nakedness on his part as the headline Naked Wine Director Quits After Just Three Weeks In The Job may have suggested. Nor, indeed, that the phrase 'in the job' is an euphemism for anything other than being employed in a specific capacity by a wine company. Just so we're crystal clear about that.

The Brighton Argus has a story with the headline Hollingbury Mum Says McDonald's Big Mac Arrives With Bite Mark. 'My anger multiplied after speaking to the manager,' said Catrina Gore. 'The manager told me "my crew wouldn't do anything like that" but she also said it's not the first time something like that has happened. She said she is certain it's just the shape of the bun. If it's just the shape of the bun, how come it goes all the way through the burger?' Good question, Catrina. One deserving a good answer. So, did the manager have one? 'She said they would check the CCTV but I very much doubt she will due to her not even taking any details from me.' Clearly, dear blog reader, there is only one punishment suitable for such a heinous, shocking crime of the century.

The Banbury Guardian is also a contender for the latest From The North Headline Of The Week Award with Vulcan Bomber Overshoots Runaway At Wellesbourne - Narrowly Missing The Nearby Road. 'It is believed that the Avro Vulcan XM655 ... overshot the runway, narrowly missing the nearby road. But is has been causing a few traffic delays as motorist stop to take photos.' Well, that's just adding insult to injury.

Leeds Live reports that Leeds Estate Residents Hit Out At 'Nonsense' 'Soggy Bottom' Nickname. Could be worse, people, you could live in North Piddle, Pratt's Bottom, Great Tosson or, indeed, Titty-Ho. Then you'd have something to actually complain about.

Edinburgh Live makes a late run for the latest award with Edinburgh Burger King Customer Raging At Cold Vegan Whopper With No Sauce. 'Raging' in this case - and, if the accompanying photograph is anything go go by - standing in for 'being "slightly narked" but that wouldn't have got me in the local paper, would it?' As for the whole no sauce thing, this blogger believes this may have been down to a simple misunderstanding when the chap said 'can I have some sauce, please?' the Burger King employee asked 'HP?' At which point, the customer replied 'no, I'll pay for it.'

The good old, always reliable Daily Lies manages its weekly appearance in the Headline of The Week nominees with Lorry Full Of 'Dildos & Lube' Crashes & Items Scatter All Over Motorway. Bet that came as a surprise. Nah, lissun ...

And finally, just to prove that they do this sort of malarkey so much better on the other side of The Mighty Blue Ocean, from People magazine, Arkansas Couple Arrested After Man Saws Off His Own Leg in Front Of Five-Year-Old Daughter. 'Shannon Cox, of Boone County, Arkansas allegedly claimed he was Jesus and Satan as he got "verbally abusive" with his wife Sandy Cox, before amputating his leg.'