Futtocks

Until I was eight, I'd only watched TV twice in my life.

Both clubs coming off a confidence-building win in their first Middle Eights game, but Leeds will probably win this. Hoping for a full-on Broncos performance and maybe an upset, though.

In all seriousness, while I still love music, I miss my own youthful obsession with it. But I find the less tribal, cliquey, exclusive way that we enjoy music these days much more healthy. And the sheer quantity of stuff I'd never discovered before from the past, even from my own teenage years, is great.

Thanks to BBC4, we still have exactly that. This also applies to Black Lace, Racey, St Winifred's Girls' School Choir, Paul Nicholas singing 'Reggae like it used to be', The Birdy Song, Rene & Renata and Rick Dees' 'Disco Duck'. And, given the hail of urine-filled bottles that greeted him at the 1971 Weeley Festival, Marc Bolan may have regretted appearing on TotP.

Poor old today's youth; all they have to fall back on is virtually instant access to every single thing since the advent of recorded music. Us folks in the old days (before the reissue industry and the internet) had a choice of everything in the racks of our local record shop. Weren't we lucky?

Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema saved the best episode for last. Excellent series!

No wonder its never their year.

The first sentence of that article is an embarrassment to journalism, whether you agree with GH or not, and I don't.

George Duke's Zappa Medley. An affectionate and fun tribute from some phenomenal musicians.

Someone else put it well; he was a celebrity because he was such an outstanding chef, rather than the more common "celebrity chef" because he courted TV and other media. And I quite like that he's most fondly remembered for his mashed potatoes, rather than some tower-like, agonisingly-tweezered assemblage of exotic ingredients.

My parents bought me and my sister a single Premium Bond each, some time in the Seventies. I'd forgotten about them entirely. Then, in 2014, I won twice in three months! Only £20 each time, but quite a surprise!

Never had a big win, but did have a lucky streak once - without my parents' permission, I sneaked off at some holiday attraction and put 10p in a fruit machine. Hit the jackpot straight away (not a not of money, unless you were on 50p a week pocket money, as I was then). I was then given the option to hold each time for the next four or five goes. The total winnings, before it started spinning again as normal (and I cut my losses) was £20-£30, which was a lot more brass in pocket than I'd ever had at that very early point in my life. I probably shouldn't have been alllowed to play a gambling machine at that age, but this was a laxer era, I suppose, as one of the people working there congratulated me as I left with bulging pockets.

Fantastic!

As a part of their upbringing, the Mitford girls were hunted with hounds by their father as some sort of demented character-building exercise. The result? Two chummed up with Adolf, another became a hardline Communist, two became controversial novelists and one became a poultry-farmer. The latter was the one who didn't get the hunting treatment, so draw your own conclusions.

A shame for him. Time to forget the internationals and rebuild his body.