‘I can’t say I’m all that bothered about the planet, to be honest. Never really liked the place. But I guess a few romantics out there among you have a bit of a thing for it’ It Ain’t Half Hot Mum star was ‘gentle human being’
As if life isn’t miserable enough, now they want to stop us eating any more than 1/10 of a sausage to save planet
TRIBUTES have been paid to It Ain’t Half Hot Mum actor Windsor Davies, who has died at the age of 88.
His daughter Jane said the comedy star, who topped the charts with Don Estelle in 1975, died peacefully on January 17. She said in a statement: “His wife of 62 years, Eluned, passed away in September. They leave a large and very close family who will all remember them with love, laughter and gratitude.”
Actor Tony Robinson was among those paying tribute to the star, writing on Twitter: “Whispering grass don’t tell them who kissed there long ago. Why tell them all your secrets, the trees don’t have to know.’
“Whispering Grass. UK No1 with Don Estelle 1975. RIP Windsor Davies.”
Producer Jonathan Sothcott wrote: “Oh no! RIP that wonderful comedy actor Windsor Davies: unforgettable in 70s sitcom It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and the lead in 2 of the later Carry Ons.
“Impeccable comic timing. Just his voice made me smile. Thanks for all the laughs.”
His It Ain’t Half Hot Mum co-star Melvyn Hayes told BBC News: “I considered him my best friend, even though we hadn’t been in contact for many years.
“To work with him was a pleasure, a sheer delight because he was so generous in his work. You couldn’t buy him a drink because you’d go into a public house and they’d say ‘ Windsor has put some money behind the counter for you’.
“He was nothing like the character he played – he was a charming, quietly-spoken, gentle human being.”
WHAT to eat? We ask ourselves that at least twice a day. If you take the average human lifespan as, say, 80 years (not for viewers in Scotland), and assume that a person is independent from the age of 20, my Bonko executive-style calculator from Lidl says we ask ourselves that question nearly 44,000 times during our lifetimes. My maths isn’t good so it could be out by about a million either way, but you get my drift or lack of direction. And if it sounds a little nuts, then good and well, because that’s what we’re being asked to eat, instead of meat, if we want to save yonder planet.
I can’t say I’m all that bothered about the planet, to be honest. Never really liked the place. But I guess a few romantics out there among you have a bit of a thing for it. The nuts recommendation comes from a group of 37 scientists from around the world working under the aegis of the EAT-Lancet Commission (anyone remember those halcyon days when organisations had normal names?). They’ve devised a “planetary health diet” to stop us damaging the joint any further – maybe it should stop damaging us first – and also to feed the billions more people who are planning to live here in coming years. Meat is the main target, as growing it accounts for between 14.5% and 18% of humanmade greenhouse gas emissions. In Britainshire, the drop in meat-eating required would be 77%. That would mean you could have one burger a week or one large steak a month (though you could still have some chicken and fish). For protein, you can fill your face with nuts and legumes. Fruit and veg is also inevitably recommended, but tatties and other starchy food are oot, so you’ll have had your chips.
Many folk will sympathise with this idea. Professor Walter Willett, one of the researchers, said he’d grown up on a farm eating three portions of red meat a day and had converted to the diet no problem. The key was not to expect an entitlement to your favourite food every day. “We need to change the way we view some foods, to make them special,” he said.
That sounds sensible, though part of us wants to say: “As if life wasn’t miserable enough already, you expect us to look forward to having a packet of dry-roasted and some carrots for our tea.”
For that reason, I think this beneficent diet is unlikely to catch on. Already, it has encountered vein-throbbing opposition from the meat-inflamed. Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the right-wing Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “I welcome this report because it reveals the agenda of nanny state campaigners. Their desire to limit people to one-tenth of a sausage a day leaves us in no doubt that we are dealing with fanatics.”
Possibly. Even I, as someone who believes in a strong nanny state, have to accept that one-tenth of a sausage might fail to satisfy. Unless you tax meat (the only language punters understand), homo sapiens will unwisely carry on scoffing what it wants, with no thought for the morrow. Of course, cutting out the amount of humans we give birth to a day (world population is predicted to soar from 7.7 billion today to 10 billion by 2050) would be an easier route to take, but we’re too dumb to manage that. Apart from which, I keep trying to tell you we’re not far off from the day when meat is produced in laboratories, which will change everything. But nobody listens.
Information to die for
PROVIDED we still have a planet upon which to waddle, it might be handy when planning holidays, pension schemes and football season tickets to know what our individual lifespan was going to be.
Disturbingly, a scientist at that
Edinburgh University may have brought us a little closer to such a nightmare scenario. I say “nightmare scenario” because I’d really rather not know. I have achieved my current status in society by blundering about in complete ignorance, and that is how I plan to continue.
In the Bible – not the Bible; what’s that other one? The Lord of the Rings – when Galadriel the elf invites the Hobbits to look into a basin of water that predicts the future, all they see is disastrous. That tends to be the way with these things. To be fair, I think that, unusually, the popular prints have hyped the story up a little, and that Dr Peter Joshi’s DNA research uses fairly sensible predictors from genetic variations to give you a rough idea of how things might go. But you can still alter it by runnin’ aboot and other exercises. And, of course, by eating more nuts.
Something to think about
YOU could also try meditating. I’ve thought a lot about meditating but, when I’ve tried it, tended to spend less time clearing my mind or focusing on nirvana and more wondering what to have for my tea.
I’ll be quite candid with you here and confess that I’d never have imagined Prince Harry being a meditator, but his wife Meghan appears to have grabbed his soul by the goolies and is dragging it backwards into the New Age.
Betraying the influence of Scots existentialist philosopher Robert C Nesbitt on her spiritual outlook, Meghan told reporters: “I will tell you this … I am just happier. And meditation has much to do with that.”
This was followed by the bombshell announcement from hubbie Harry Krishna that he meditated every day. Worse still, the couple are said to be building a “floating yoga studio” in their hoose.
This is disturbing news. One could never imagine much-admired previous royals such as Henry VIII or Princess Margaret doing the downward facing dog or the cockeyed cobra, let alone sitting in the semi-lotus and meditating for inner peace.
They knew full well that the same effect can be had with a large vodka or a small vat of port.