Tag Archives: writers

What happens when classic TV gets remade?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

. . . Or perhaps more importantly, why does classic TV get remade? Why not just let sleeping TV classics lie? What! When there’s more money to be made! The thing about classic TV is that people know what it’s about. When they made Mission Impossible into a movie with Tom Cruise we all knew that somewhere in the movie Cruise would get to listen to a recording giving him some impossible mission with the reminder that ‘if any of your people are caught or killed, the secretary will disavow knowledge of your actions!’ The PR man’s job is half done already, done by the collective TV memory of millions of people who watched the TV series.

Recently movie producers did the impossible, re created (re-imagined to use movie-speak) Kirk, Spock, and Scotty from the original Star Trek. The first was a pretty good movie, the second, Into Darkness, I wasn’t so keen on. Someone must have liked it though because director JJ Abrams has now been recruited to inject new life into the Star Wars franchise.

Every day the more visible you are on the internet the more stuff comes into your inbox. Some of it is unwanted, TAG_Teaser_Email_05_asome of it is junk but occasionally you get something pretty interesting. I recently received this picture to the left and a week later the video link below. Looks like there is a new version of Thunderbirds in the offing.

As a school kid I was brought up on Gerry Anderson’s TV productions. I vaguely remember Four Feather Falls, a cowboy puppet show, but then came Supercar, Stingray and Thunderbirds, all part of Gerry’s vision of the future. What was great about Gerry’s TV shows was that they were aimed at kids but all had a serious adult perspective. They didn’t look down at kids, they treated children more as future adults. Supercar, Stingray and Fireball XL5 were all thirty minute shows but Thunderbirds was a full hour and many of the episodes were serious and complex.

One episode entitled the ‘cham cham’ was about a musical code written into a song and it was up to Lady Penelope, the Thunderbirds London agent, to get to the bottom of things. Another Lady Penelope episode that comes to mind was ‘Vault of Death’ in which an employee is trapped in the vault of the Bank of England and the international rescue guys try to save the man before the oxygen runs out. Of course it is Parker, Penelope’s chauffeur, manservant, and former safe cracker who manages to open the vault with a hairpin!

Scott Tracy Thunderbird 1 pilot

Scott Tracy Thunderbird 1 pilot

Sylvia Anderson, Gerry’s wife, was the voice of Lady Penelope and Sylvia always had a credit on the shows for characterisation. It was always the characters that brought the shows to life, not just the incredible Thunderbirds craft launching from under the swimming pool or other hidden places. Gerry and Sylvia went on to make live action shows like UFO and Space 1999 before they had an acrimonious split. Later Gerry tried for a comeback children’s show with Terrahawks but without Sylvia’s characterisations the show didn’t really hit the mark.

Anyway, I do wonder how the guys from this new series targeted me. I must have left something somewhere, some random cookie in cyberspace that let the marketing people know that I used to watch Thunderbirds years ago. Well, I’m not ashamed to say that I did and I also subscribed to the Gerry Anderson comic TV21 and built a plastic kit version of Thunderbird One. Hope the new series lives up to the old one, although I seriously doubt it. Anyway, if today’s kids don’t enjoy the new Thunderbirds, they can catch the classic original on DVD!

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Be nice to people on your way up, because you’ll meet them on your way down!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-jpg-771

I’m not totally sure of the origin of that quote. I personally remember it from one of David Niven’s classic books about the golden age of Hollywood but when I looked it up it is attributed to quite a few people, Walter Winchell, Jimmy Durante or even George Raft for instance so who really said it first I can’t say.

Many years ago I used to be a bus driver. In fact I started work on the buses at the very tail end of the driver and conductor years and one of my colleagues was a guy called Neil. Now Neil was a nice fella but he was also a very rum turkey indeed. Way back then there were conductors like me who were honest, well reasonably honest. There was always the passenger who paid right at the last minute as he was getting off the bus and there wouldn’t be time to snap off a ticket. Those few pence went into the drivers’ and conductors’ brew fund and when we stopped at the next canteen (back in the late seventies and early eighties there was always another canteen on the horizon) I’d get the brews in with those few pence. Of course there were conductors who made a habit of approaching customers who were just getting off the bus and they made a regular brew fund out of those last minute bus fares. Others, those more dishonest ones, and I am sad to say Neil fell into that category, went out of their way not to give out tickets or even issued blank tickets. 

One day Neil got his hands burned. He’d issued a blank ticket to a customer and who should board the bus but the fraud squad. They checked the tickets and pulled Neil up regarding the blank ticket. Neil went to a tribunal where he was accused and faced the sack but an incredible stroke of luck came his way. The fraud squad lost the evidence. They’d misplaced the offending blank ticket and Neil managed to hang onto his job with a stern warning. The fraud squad Inspector, a not very pleasant chap nicknamed Himmler, came up to Neil and told him in no uncertain terms, he had him in his sights and one day he’d get him.

Well, Neil went on to become a driver and then a one man driver and by then, as far as I know, he had left his nefarious past behind him. Still, you never could tell. Some busmen took fare fiddling to a fine art form and it wasn’t always the ones like Neil who were the perpetrators. One guy, I’ll call him Arthur, spent a pretty uneventful life working for the bus company. He never upset anyone, was always on time and was rarely off sick. He was very good with money, and apparently invested his bus driving pay packet well. Of course he was one of the first one man drivers and on a good wage. Anyway, he did really well for himself and owned a nice holiday home in Prestatyn. Good on him you might think. Then he dropped dead one day of a heart attack and a few weeks later his widow came into the depot with Arthur’s spare ticket machine. Spare ticket machine? What spare ticket machine? Nobody had a spare ticket machine! Has the penny has dropped yet? Arthur was issuing tickets and taking fares for himself! Somewhere along the way Arthur had ‘acquired’ another ticket machine. Nice scam. No wonder he had a holiday home in Prestatyn! At least the Depot Inspectors didn’t tell the wife.

Anyway, back to Neil although before going completely to Neil I have to tell you this, Just on the A6 in Levenshulme, we had a small busmen’s canteen. The thing about this canteen was that if you were on the Manchester to Hazel Grove or Stockport route you usually stopped here for your breakfast or lunch. Now if you were going towards Stockport the canteen was actually just by two double yellow lines. Just past the canteen was a turn in to the bus parking bays but if you were due for a meal break and your bus was carrying on to Stockport you had to go through the traffic lights and stop in the lay by, leave your bus and then walk back to the canteen. Now, what most people did was stop on the double yellows then shout into the canteen for the new crew. It was wrong but that’s what we did and no one made a fuss. Anyway, one day an Inspector’s job came available. Various people applied but the guy who got the job was Neil and he decided that his first order of business as an Inspector was to stop buses parking on those double yellow lines! He did so and made himself a very unpopular fellow indeed. He’d wait by the canteen door and ‘book’ any driver stopping on the yellow lines and plenty of times myself and other crews would be coming along, ready to stop and we’d see Neil waving us on so we’d carry on, through the lights and on to the layby.

Now here’s where Neil’s past caught up with him. In those days a new appointment was probationary for six months and Neil went along to an Inspectors’ meeting chaired by one of the senior Inspectors who just happened to be, yes you’ve guessed it, it was Himmler. Now Himmler took Neil to one side. Asked what he was doing in Inspector’s uniform and by the end of the week Neil was back driving his bus and someone else was in charge at Lloyd road.

Neil of course, had upset many people in his short term as an Inspector and he had forgotten the golden rule: Be nice to people on the way up because, well, you know the rest. No one ever spoke to Neil again and he cut a sad figure, shunned by his workmates and always sitting alone in the canteen. Shortly after he packed the job in.

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Floating In Space: Last day to download free on Kindle!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Yes, you can download ‘Floating In Space’ free for your Kindle until 22nd January.

It’s a novel following the adventures of a young man in Manchester in 1977. No mobile phones, no Internet and a pint of bitter cost only 25p. Here’s me talking about it in Manchester;

 

The funny things kids say!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve not been lucky enough to have kids but many years ago I remember watching TV with my girlfriend’s daughter, Wendy. I can’t remember the film we were watching but the star was Christopher Reeve, most famous perhaps for playing the part of Superman. Wendy was wondering why he wasn’t ducking into a phone booth to change into Superman and streaking up into the air at the drop of a hat. Well, I thought, it’s time for a serious talk with Wendy about the movie world.

I explained, pretty thoughtfully I thought, about how movies were made, about cameras, shooting, screenplays and actors. Wendy seemed to take it all in but after a while she looked at me, looked back at Christopher Reeve and asked;

“Right, so he’s lost his powers then?”

Here’s another one. One day Tania, Liz’s daughter was asking for a drink of juice. She was very young at the time, just learning to talk so Liz filled her cup with juice and handed Tania the drink. She was expecting a word of thanks but when it wasn’t forthcoming Liz held onto the cup. Tania tugged harder, Liz waited for a thank you. Eventually she said; “Tania, what’s the magic word?”

Tania thought for a moment and replied “Abra cadabra!”

Kids. What funny things have your kids said?

 

The Day the Cat War Started.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Theday the car war started

Neighbours! Well, there’s a subject! Some years ago I moved into a place called Newton le-Willows. A nice enough friendly place, I thought, but it was a black cat that caused the end of our neighbourhood harmony.

Okay, here’s how it started; My neighbour was a guy called Tony and he and his wife were going on holiday and he asked me to look after his cat Blackie. It needed to be fed once a day, in the morning, for a week. OK, not a big deal and it put me right where I wanted to be with my neighbour: him owing me a big favour so ‘no problem’ I told him.

Day1

I’m up and showered and all ready for work and so I nip into next door’s and sort out the cat food. Tony has shown me where it’s all kept, which bowl to use and so on. I sort it all out, set it down on the mat and who is there waiting and purring? Not one but two cats. I thought there was only supposed to be one so do I do two bowls? No, he specified the cat food and showed me the bowl (the one bowl) so OK it’s sharing time for the cats and I’m off to work.

I jump in my van and I’m off and as I drive away there are the cats giving me a little catty wave from the kitchen window. Happy days.

Day 2

I mention sort of randomly as I’m off to work that there were two cats in next door’s house and my wife (now my former wife) says, ‘What!’ in a big sort of screamy, scary way and I’m thinking, ‘here we go, what have I done?’ The thing is there is only one cat living next door so I’m tasked to throw out the intruder cat and just to feed the main cat. So, in I goes and I don’t really know which is the proper cat and which is the cheeky intruder cat. Neither of them seemed to respond to the name ‘Blackie’ so sod it I thought. Cat food sorted -I’m off.

Once again as I drive off there are the two cats happily washing themselves in the kitchen window and as I passed by a revolutionary thought occurred to me. One of the cats was actually a black cat so it could be (sound of penny dropping) that he was Blackie and the other cat, the ginger cat was the cat interloper.

Day 3

Feeling a little bit like Sherlock Holmes and armed with this new deduction about ‘Blackie’ I popped into next door and chucked out ‘Ginger’, sorted out the cat food and then left for work. Was I dreaming or did I really see the two cats once again at the kitchen window? Did Ginger have a sort of ‘you’ll have to do better than that’ look on his face? Surely not!

Day 4

According to my (former) wife it was a major criminal offence to have a strange cat enter your neighbours’ house and scoff half the cat food, so once again I chucked out the ginger cat. I did think about locking the cat flap but feeling this could have repercussions in case Blackie wanted to exit the property I left it open. Driving off as usual I spied the two cats smiling happily from the kitchen window engaged in their morning feline ritual of washing themselves, only this time they seemed to have been joined by a third cat! Christ, I thought, hope the neighbours get back soon before a cat colony starts up in their house!

Day 8

Our neighbours returned from their break in foreign climes. I wasn’t sure about mentioning the intruding cat but what the heck; I told them anyway and they said not to bother, ‘that cat comes in all the time anyway. We’re sure its owners don’t feed it properly.’

Day 9

I was outside washing my van and had a chat with my neighbour Elaine, the lady who ran our neighbourhood watch group. I told her about the cat caper thinking it was a pretty funny story but she seemed rather shocked by it all. Well, humour wasn’t one of her strong points I thought as she marched off to see Stella, another neighbour from further up the avenue who I have to admit I wasn’t too fond off. As the afternoon wore on I noticed Stella storm past me and knock on next door’s and have something of a minor row with the occupants. She stormed off fuming and gave me a pretty black look when I offered a cheery “afternoon!”

Day 9, later.

Tony gave me something of a black look too and didn’t respond to my friendly wave. I did wonder if this was vaguely connected to the cat saga. No, surely not I thought. Later, Tony’s wife came round and told me through a veil of tears that Stella had knocked on their door and accused her and Tony of being ‘A pair of f**king catnappers!‘ It turned out that Stella owned the ginger cat and Tony’s wife wanted to know why I had even mentioned it to Stella. Well, I don’t even really know Stella I said, the only person I mentioned it to was Elaine. “What!’ fumed Tony’s wife. (Wish I could remember her name!) The next thing you know she storms across the road, bangs on the door and appears to be having it out with Elaine. I couldn’t hear what was said but there was a lot of finger pointing, some at my house, some at Blackie wandering innocently along the avenue, some at her house and some, in fact quite a lot now I think of it, at Stella’s house.

Day 10

A chance encounter at Tesco’s with Elaine. I’m scooting through the store, not really looking where I’m going as shopping is not high on my list of favourite activities and as I scoot along I’m throwing bread and milk and all sorts of stuff in my trolley when who should I bump into but Elaine.

“It wasn’t my fu**ing fault you know!” she said.

“That’s OK,” I told her, “I never look where I’m going with a shopping trolley!”

“I meant about the cat!” Elaine gave me a mean look and was gone, never to speak to me again.

Good job I didn’t mention that the third cat I saw in next door’s was hers!

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Love Isn’t

Posted on by Steve Higgins

 

Love isn’t some little thing that goes ding!

It isn’t a song that you can sing.

It’s not something that might happen in a flash,

It doesn’t happen while driving and cause you to crash.

 

Love isn’t something tangible, something you can see,

It might even be invisible, to both you and to me.

It’s something that will join us and hold us together,

It’s a feeling that will get better, whatever the weather.

 

Love isn’t the singing of a song

But it’s working together when things go wrong

It isn’t the chiming of a bell or the tooting of a horn

But It’s just tears of joy when a child is born.

 

 

The Sound of a writing hero: Dylan Thomas

Posted on by Steve Higgins

under-milk-wood I love lots of writers but probably my all-time favourite is Dylan Thomas. I love the outstanding power of his writing, his incredible imagery, and the wonderful pictures he creates with his words.

Dylan also is the sort of writer I’ve always wanted to be: A bohemian, pub crawling, boozing writer who fought with himself as he laboured to paint his word pictures. Whether that was really the case I don’t know but Dylan did like his pubs and he did enjoy a drink.

The fact of the matter is that I’m nothing like Dylan, except we both share a love of words, particularly the sound of words, which is the key to the richness of Dylan’s work, especially his poetry. If you think about it, there must be a connection between the sound of a word and its meaning, a deep organic connection. After all, how did words begin? Imagine some ancient caveman, just wanting to get some concept over to his mate. What are the deepest and strongest feelings for a human being? Well, for a caveman food must be one, and love too. Surely love was present in those primordial days when every caveman went out on Saturday with his club looking for his mate. There must have been a moment when ancient man strived to say something to his mate, tried to express his feeling and a sound that was the precursor to the word love slipped uneasily from his lips.

27th October this year is the centenary of Dylan’s birth and I’m sure Wales and Great Britain itself won’t let the occasion pass without celebrations of some sort. If you have read any of Dylan’s poems and are yet to understand his magic, let me give you a tiny bit of advice: Listen to Dylan’s voice. Yes, Dylan, like many poets wrote for his own voice and if you click on to any Dylan Thomas page or search anywhere on the internet you are bound to come across some old recording of his voice. Don’t make do with lesser voices, even when we are talking about great actors like Richard Burton or Anthony Hopkins. Search out Dylan himself and you will be won over, like me, by the power of his voice.

It’s not just his poems that are rich with the power of words. Dylan wrote and performed a good many radio plays and broadcasts and my very favourite is ‘Return Journey.’ It’s about Dylan himself returning to Swansea in search of his former self ‘Young Thomas.’ He visits young Thomas’ old haunts and meets with people who knew him fleetingly; like the barmaid who used to serve him, journalists who worked with him and even the park keeper where Dylan and his young friends would play in the park. It’s a lovely piece where drama merges with prose and we slip in and out of the two as the story progresses.

5737365722_15dde4c19c_bMany years ago I visited Dylan’s former home in Laugharne, now a museum dedicated to Dylan. I can only say I loved the place and didn’t want to leave. I wandered through its rooms and looked at the black and white photos on the walls and tried to imagine Dylan living here and banging out his poems and stories in his writing shed then later ambling down to the pub for a pint. I had to leave early the day I visited so I went back the next day and the staff recognised me and let me in without paying so in return I bought some books about Dylan and a copy of his collected stories.

At least I can say that in the mustardseed sun, I visited his house on stilts, high among beaks and palavers of birds . .

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When your mind is just a blank . .

Posted on by Steve Higgins

snap3I’ve been a bit busy this week, hence the distinct lack of new blogs on my web site. I’ve also been experiencing that blank paper syndrome; you know what I mean, you stare at the paper, nothing comes to mind, and the paper stays like that, blank.

I’ve been on a training course this week, a pretty interesting one but unfortunately not one I can talk about much as it relates to the data protection act and the computer misuse act and all sorts of legal stuff.

Still, the training, which was interesting and enjoyable, reminded me of a fairly funny training story that happened nearly ten years ago. It was when I had just started at the Highways Agency and in fact I was one of the first batch of operators to be recruited for the North West, a fact that I regularly bore my colleagues with. The HA sent us to some establishment in Salford for an induction course and I have to say, as much as I like my job, that course was pretty dull! It was fun meeting some new people and doing some interesting team building exercises but after a while, they started to get a little boring and we were all thinking when will we be able to start learning the nuts and bolts of our jobs?

One of the exercises, and to this day I don’t know the point of it, was for us to split into twos and one member of the duo went into another room where they thought of a holiday story to tell, and the other was asked to completely ignore their partner when they began to relate their story. In this instance my colleague was the storyteller and I was the ignorer! So she came back in and began her story. I polished my nails, yawned in her face, checked my watch, hummed a little tune to myself and so on. After a while some inner instinct made me turn to take a quick look at her, and it was lucky I did so because later on I reckoned I had been only a split second away from taking a hefty punch to the nose, however I was able to calm her down and explain it was all part of the exercise!

Later, towards the end of the course, boredom had truly set in. I remember one hot afternoon in this stuffy office cum training room and the lecturer going on and on about the chain of command and how issues had to be escalated to one’s line manager and one’s line manager would escalate things further if need be. I feel rather embarrassed to admit this now but I nodded serenely off into a private world of slumber. Later, and whether it was minutes or even hours later I really don’t know but I was jolted sharply back to reality by the voice of  our instructor;

“Steve! What would you do?”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Steve, you’re asked to work with a homosexual, what would you do?”

“Well, I’d . .” A sea of blank faces were looking at me so I tried to think back: What was the last thing we were talking about? Oh yes, I remember now:

“I’d escalate that to my team manager.”

“Refer that to your team manager? Why?”

“Well, er. . .”

“We embrace diversity at the Highways Agency so why refer that to your team manager?”

“In case he, er tried it on with me.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly . .”

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that feeling of digging a deep hole and then gradually digging it even deeper but that’s what was happening. Apparently we’d moved on to the subject of diversity while I had slept. I glanced over to my left, perhaps hoping for some help, but one of my new colleagues, actually the lady from the storytelling incident earlier, was looking at me as if I was a fully paid up member of the Nazi party. Over to my right two other colleagues were in a strange sort of state. One had gone almost purple in the face as he tried to hold in a tumult of suppressed laughter and another was covering his face and making strange noises as his shoulders pumped up and down hysterically.

Finally the lecturer, looking at me with contempt, observed that it might be better for me if I paid attention more and moved on.

Not the finest training course but not my finest hour, either!

 

Mr Todd and The sound of that elusive next blog!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-JPG-12Bloggers! What are you going to write about today?

Blogging, as any self-respecting blogger can tell you, is not that easy. OK, you’ve got the desire to write, you create your blog page and you start to write about your chosen subject or theme or whatever and at first you will have plenty of ideas and you’ll find yourself going strong. But, after a while, even the best writers will start to flag. You’ll find yourself thinking, ‘I haven’t done a blog for a week, what can I write about?’ It can be hard but you have to train yourself to create, to start looking at the world with a view to writing something about it whether it’s a blog about the crazy things that come into your inbox or the nutty people you find yourself sitting next to on the bus to work.

I was looking at a site the other day that gave writers prompts or themes to write about. Today, write 400 words about your garden! You get the idea. Nothing really got me going until I read further down, ‘write 400 words about a sound!’ Now that sounded a little crazy. A sound? What kind of sound could I possibly write about but then, a sound from my past came to me. It was a clicketty-click sound. The clicketty-click whirring sound of Mr Todd’s projector.

movie-projector-55122_640[1]Who was Mr Todd? Well he was a teacher at my junior school, Crossacres Junior School in Manchester and every Christmas Mr Todd set up his projector and we filed into the hall, sat down cross legged on the floor while the curtains were closed, the lights switched out and Mr Todd’s projector took us into another world, the world of films. They were mostly cartoons, things like Woody Woodpecker and Bugs Bunny and sometime he showed a few Walt Disney animal documentaries. Those Christmas film shows were just wonderful for us children, sitting in the dark watching those slapstick antics on the screen. I used to like to sit near to Mr Todd and marvel at the projector. He would open up little doors in the workings and make adjustments, and little shafts of light would escape until he closed the small doors again, and the whirring of the reels and the clicketty-click sound was a sound I loved.

One day, and I think it must have been my last year at junior school Mr Todd retired but not only did he retire, he took his projector and films with him and the last Christmas at Crossacres was empty without him. I remember sitting in the hall listening to the choir or some play or other and hoping that eventually someone would give the signal to close the curtains and the projector would be wheeled in and the fun would begin. Mr Todd and his projector however, never returned and Christmases were never the same. Still, whenever I hear the sound of that projector the memory of that Christmas film show returns to me. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Hitchcock movie ‘Rebecca’, but there’s a sequence in the film where Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier start watching their home movies and we hear that clicketty click projector sound again.

I’ve always liked that movie, maybe that’s why!

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My Favourite Movie Director (Part 1)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ll come straight to the point; my favourite movie director? Well, it’s complicated because I’ve got more than one; hence the part 1 in the title, but anyway, Woody Allen is probably my very favourite. Now why a working class guy like me brought up in a suburban council estate in Manchester would relate to the Jewish intellectual New York humour of Woody, well, I don’t know but I just love this guy’s films.

My very favourite moment from one of Woody’s film is probably the one from take the Money and Run when he goes into the bank to rob it and hands a note through the window. The note says “Give me the money, I have a gub!”

“Does that say gub?” asks the bank teller.

picture courtesy wikipedia

picture courtesy wikipedia

“No that’s gun! I have a gun!” replies Woody and soon all the staff are discussing the spelling and the robbery is forgotten.  That movie was right at the very start of Woody’s career when he was a stand up funny man turned movie maker and as his movies got gradually more serious and more thoughtful, well, I probably loved them even more.

I love the opening of Manhattan where Woody narrates over the opening sequence;

“Chapter One. He adored New York City. To him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity that caused so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams in… no, it’s gonna be too preachy, I mean, you know, let’s face it, I wanna sell some books here. Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat.”

Another Allen movie that opens with a monologue is Annie Hall. His character, Alvy Singer, says: “There’s an old joke. Two elderly women are at a Catskill restaurant. One of them says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is just terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah I know. And such small portions.’ Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life. Full of misery, loneliness and suffering and unhappiness – and it’s all over much too quickly.”

Apart from Woody himself and his casual comedy chatter I’ve always like the look of Woody’s films from the black and white of Annie Hall, Manhattan and Broadway Danny Rose to the full colour Hannah and her Sisters and the jump cuts of Deconstructing Harry. I like the way the camera moves, or really doesn’t move. In Hannah and her Sisters Woody doesn’t follow Michael Caine when he goes into the bedroom and continues a conversation. Why should we? We all carry on long distance conversations with our partners in the bathroom or dining room when we are in the kitchen. We don’t need to see the other person, just hear them.

Woody’s films have a natural unobtrusive style which enables you to sit back and enjoy his humour and his observations. Another great Allen movie is Crimes and Misdemeanours. It’s a movie with a dark side but with the same flashes of Allen humour to keep you smiling. Martin Landau stars in the film and gives a wonderful performance. No longer the rather wooden actor from the TV series Mission Impossible or that Hitchcock movie North By Northwest. Here, Landau delivers a thoughtful and human performance and there are lots of the usual Woody Allen touches like returning to old homes and discussing morality then flipping to the next scene where Allen and Mia deliver some more comedy as a counterpoint.

I can’t write a blog about Woody Allen without mentioning Bananas. If I need to cheer myself up, this movie works every time, especially the bit at the end where Woody and Louise Lasser’s wedding night becomes a TV sports event with commentators and interviewers.

It’s almost an ‘in’ joke with Woody about how his older movies are funny and the later ones are not but all his movies have a certain something; not always laugh out loud humour, but some well observed human element. I love Woody himself in his movies which is why it’s a little odd that one movie I can watch over and over again is Radio Days. Like it says in the title, the movie is set in those days before TV when people had their ears glued to the great shows and performers of the time. Woody narrates the movie and we see him as a little boy entranced by a crime show, so much so that his parents take him to see the Rabbi. ‘You speak the truth, my faithful Indian companion’ quotes the young Woody much to the dismay of his parents, not to mention the Rabbi. In some ways I can see myself as a young lad, obsessed with the TV shows of my day and this is the crux of Woody’s films because in many ways he is turning the camera round, and the camera is pointing at us, the viewer.

My love affair with the movies encompasses many genres but when I want to smile it’s usually the Woody Allen DVD I pull down from the shelf.

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