The Old Un’s Notes
How to buy The Oldie during
the lockdown The Old Un is afraid that many W H Smith shops and some independent newsagents have closed – so buying individual copies of The Oldie may not be easy. There are three ways of getting round this:
Order a print edition for
J K Rowling has just revealed a few tantalising glimpses of her next book.
The Ickabog takes place in two scrumptious-sounding places: Chouxville, famous for its cakes, and Kurdsburg, renowned for its cheeses.
There are strong memories here of a classic French children’s book, Fattypuffs and Thinifers by André £4.75 (free p & p within the UK) at: www.magsdirect.co.uk.
2. Order a digital edition at www.pocketmags.com for £2.99; scroll down to the Special Issues section.
3. Buy a 12-issue print subscription for just £47.50 and receive a free book – see
are Fattyborough, not far from Mount Bulge, and Thiniville. The two countries go to war over the disputed island of Thinipuff.
The book is marvellously prescient about the modern division in life between the obsessively fit and the self-indulgently fat. The page 47. And if you want to buy a 12-issue subscription for friends for as little as £8, see our special offer on page 7. Sign up for The Oldie e-newsletter and Barry Cryer’s jokes
During the lockdown, the Old Un is producing extra pieces every day on The Oldie
Thinifers spend all day in the gym, like ‘mechanical figures which never stop moving’. ‘They scarcely eat anything, they drink nothing but water and they even work without being made to.’
Meanwhile, the Fattypuffs live off chocolate éclairs ‘as fat as motor-tyres and cream website, including Barry Cryer’s jokes. Every Friday, we send a newsletter with the best pieces. Go to www. theoldie.co.uk and, at the top right of the home page, enter your email address in the white box, above which is written ‘ Sign up to our weekly e-newsletter’.
buns as big as bath sponges’. Their trains and houses are bulging and rounded, while the Thinifer trains are much narrower ‘because four Thinifers only took up as much room as one single Fattypuff’.
Who knows if J K Rowling was inspired by the French classic? Anyway, here’s hoping she will bring new readers to this masterpiece.
Of all the sights on our re-opening beaches this summer, donkeys will be one of the most welcome.
A small drove of donkeys, with colourful bridles and stripy blankets, ridden by children, will clop along our coast from Weymouth to Barmouth.
Donkey rides have been a seaside scene for over a century. They were originally used in the cockling and fishing industry. If there was no catch, a funny hat was squeezed over their ears and children were charged 2d a ride.
Donkeys are much better behaved on the beach than horses or mules. They’re more gentle, patient and
sure-footed. They’ll put up with almost anything.
But we’ve moved on from the era of saucy postcards depicting overweight ladies in tiny, ruched swimsuits struggling to keep astride Bobby’s blanket. Now Dolly and Daisy have their rights protected. In Blackpool, they work a maximum of a six-day week with every Friday off – the day holidaymakers would once leave and arrive. They’re guaranteed an hour-long lunch break for their barley straw.
The Blackpool donkey rides may be a Victorian tradition, but they’ve embraced the 21st century. They’re the first to accept contactless payments for rides.
‘Stone me,’ as Tony Hancock used to say. The BBC has launched a £5,500 bursary for comedy writers in honour of Ray Galton (1930-2018) and Alan Simpson (1929-2017), the scriptwriters of Hancock’s Half Hour.
Ray and Alan also wrote Hancock’s first feature film, The Rebel (1961). Hancock unwisely ended up sacking them.
Tessa Le Bars, who worked with Galton and Simpson for 55 years and still represents their work, says, ‘Tony wanted to break through with an international film. So he went and did The Punch And Judy Man in Bognor.
‘Is there anything less international?”
Galton and Simpson bounced back with Steptoe & Son. Steptoe was one of the first British TV comedies to be exported as a ‘format’ to the USA and other countries.
Tessa Le Bars says, ‘Ray and Alan were pioneers of British situation comedy. Their influence is still huge, and it’s marvellous they’re being recognised by the BBC with this new bursary.’
The Old Un has been enjoying the Reverend Steve Morris’s daily Celtic prayers on the Oldie website during lockdown.
The Rev tells him that, far from being fluffy treehuggers, our Celtic forebears were rather earthy in their tastes. Among his favourite prayers are one for the safekeeping of one’s buttocks and one to combat toothache – or ‘the teeth of hell’. The Old Un looks forward to reading his new book, The Journey Home, with 40 days’ worth of Celtic gems.
Two hundred years ago, on 1st July 1820, the most remarkable slim volume in English literature was published.
This little book, containing only 13 poems, gave us some of the most memorable lines ever written.
Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems appeared with very little expected of it. Its author, John Keats, was 25 and profoundly depressed. He was tormented by jealousy, convincing himself that his great love, Fanny Brawne, was in the habit of flirting with his friends.
He had had two haemorrhages and was spitting blood on account of consumption, which seven months later would kill him. It had already killed his younger brother, Tom.
On 12th July, his friend Maria Gisborne reported that
he was ‘under sentence of death’. He was advised to go to Italy to try to recover his health.
Five hundred copies of his book were printed, on sale at seven shillings and sixpence each. Not many sold, and even eight years later there were still some to be had.
Reviews were mixed. Keats’s friends were appreciative and kind, but others were dismissive. His genius was recognised by the poet Shelley who wrote to a friend, ’Where is Keats now? I am anxiously expecting him in Italy where I shall take care to bestow every possible attention on him. I consider his a most valuable life, & I am deeply interested in his safety. I intend to be the physician of both his body & his soul, to keep the one warm & to teach the other Greek & Spanish. I am aware indeed that I am nourishing a rival who will far surpass me and this is an additional motive & will be an added pleasure.’
In mid-september, Keats and his friend Joseph Severn set off for Italy – from where, of course, he was never to return.
Among the poems were six odes, including those to autumn, melancholy, a Grecian urn and a nightingale. As Keats wrote in Endymion, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.’
Who would believe the humble telegraph pole would have its own fan club?
The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society, set up by Martin Evans in the 1990s, celebrates ‘the glorious mundanitude of these simple silent sentinels the world over’.
Made from larch or pine wood and up to 11 yards tall, the telegraph pole is badged with coded pole tags and testing signs. The flashier of the species are crested with cross-arms and ceramic insulators.
Telegraph poles still stalk our land and continue to have a purpose: telephone cables, which replaced telegraph wires, have given way to cable television and network services.
A 119-year-old pole, one of the oldest in the country, has now retired to the Orkney Museum’s storeroom in Kirkwall.
Openreach, the infrastructure arm of BT, owns many of the UK’S poles and trains its engineers on them. It has launched a new service called Miis, to sublet its poles for mobile-phone use. There’s plenty of life in telegraph poles yet!
The Old Un has been offered the last present on earth he actually wants. For £1,190, you too can buy a