United Airlines

I see one or two people have connected recent bad publicity for United Airlines with the 1970 Hunter S. Thompson bit The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy:

There is something in the corporate manner of United Airlines that reminds me of the California Highway Patrol, the exaggerated politeness of people who would be a hell of a lot happier if all their customers were in jail - and especially you, sir.

Flying United, to me, is like crossing the Andes in a prison bus.

(collected in The Great Shark Hunt)

Smallest crossover target audience

He thought he saw an Anthropoid

Listening to the Clive Merrison version of The Creeping Man just now, I thought of another Oxbridge don in love with an Alice many years his junior who might have resorted to rejuvenating serums...

In fact though, the difference in age between Professor Presbury and Alice Morphy is 37 years, whereas Dodgson was only 20 years older than Alice Liddell.

The gas was on in the Institute

John Betjeman's poem A Shropshire Lad intriguingly footnotes the phrase 'The gas was on in the Institute' with the quotation 'The Institute was radiant with gas', attributed to Boyhood by the Rev E.E. Bradford, D.D.

It seems Bradford (1860-1944) was a notable figure in the late Victorian gay scene, and was friends with the Samuel Elsworth Cottam who edited the magazine Chameleon which turns up in the trial of Oscar Wilde.

'Well, they certainly made a meal out of that one'

So my vague memories of Avon appearing in a Smash advert were vaguely on-beam - it seems they're based on this 1985 Wimpy advert feat. Paul Darrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjlLYtxzWFc

Happy Easter...

Just in case anyone else is searching for Syrup of Figs by Jo Heaton, broadcast on Radio 4 on June 30th 1986 and repeated in July, I have an off-air of most of it which I'll share free of charge.

Reading The Masters recently I got to a bit where there's an important description of the seating arrangements at a college meeting. I wanted to draw myself a diagram so I picked an old sheet of paper off the lower level of the coffee table - only to find that it already had exactly the same diagram drawn on it, from my last reading.