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Post by dem bones on Feb 18, 2014 14:13:38 GMT
Dem, please never do that again. I have led a sheltered life and music helps me through the hard times. I actually had to look up wikipedia to see if this was done by a real person. But it was like a traffic accident - once I'd gone through 'Black Stockings', my professional ear detecting various excrutiating nuances, I simply had to look at the next musical victim. After the experience I needed some quiet time. Having taken stock I've now come to the conclusion that someone did really sit down and write the lyrics to 'Soccer Superstar' but I'm still wrestling with the question - why? The Showbiz Soccer XI are still with us - they played a game versus Madrid Maestro's at Wealdstone F. C. but a few months back - although sadly, the mighty Jess Conrad has hung up his goalkeeping gloves (at least they kept him out of the studio for a few hours). Anyway, Soccer Superstar, Black Stockings, Can-Can-Canada & Co. are just a warm up. Try The Showbiz Soccer Song where the whole ensemble get in on the act ....
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Post by ripper on Feb 18, 2014 14:56:37 GMT
Oh, my goodness, I'd forgotten all about Jess Conrad. I seem to remember him turning up on shows like Sunday Night at the London Palladium in the 70s. Never heard of that girl with whom he was dueting. To save my blushes, I made sure my headphones were firmly plugged in before I pressed on each song, and I'm glad that I did :-). They remind me of that "Showbiz XI" team that played the Slade Prison team in the movie version of Porridge.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Feb 19, 2014 12:34:23 GMT
Rip, how could you forget Jess Conrad?!?! Not only all those records beloved of Kenny Everett and Glampunk, but a fine actor is such grates (shurely greats?) as Konga and The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle.
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Post by ripper on Feb 19, 2014 13:05:10 GMT
Lol when I was young I always got Jess Conrad confused with Jess Yates, that bloke off Stars on Sunday, who would sit at an electric organ and introduce guests like Harry Secombe.
Ah, yes, Konga...who could forget that movie!
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Post by ripper on Jun 4, 2014 9:17:08 GMT
After having it sitting around for a few months, I finally got to read The Art of Coarse Drinking. Very good and funny, though perhaps not quite as uproariously funny as some of his other books. Askew, as ever, is to the fore, and provides many of the best anecdotes, particularly the one about the radiogram. I also liked Uncle Walter's comments. Reading through it brought back vague memories so I think I did read this one back in the day. Whenever I read one of Green's books I always get the urge to read another, so I shall be looking out for one or two more.
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Post by ripper on Nov 13, 2015 13:02:17 GMT
I re-read Michael Green's 'Book of Coarse Sports' last night. I am not sure if the chapters are extracts from his other books compiled together, articles he wrote for various publications or a book in its own right, but it is immensely funny with many laugh-out-loud moments. It covers sports such as rugby, cricket, golf, hockey, sailing and so forth, but there is more overall coverage devoted to rugby than the others. It's not a bad place to start if you are new to the 'Coarse' series of books and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a genuinely funny read. Some of the later paperback editions of the series had covers suggesting that their contents were akin to the 'Confessions' series. In my experience of reading them, this is not so. Yes, there are a few slightly risque parts but they are really rather tame by 'Confessions' standards, though as a series the 'Coarse' books are far funnier imo. Fans of the series will be pleased to hear that Askew features in a fair few chapters.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 13, 2015 14:02:57 GMT
I re-read Michael Green's 'Book of Coarse Sports' last night. I am not sure if the chapters are extracts from his other books compiled together, articles he wrote for various publications or a book in its own right, but it is immensely funny with many laugh-out-loud moments. It covers sports such as rugby, cricket, golf, hockey, sailing and so forth, but there is more overall coverage devoted to rugby than the others. Michael Green is (was?) crazy on the oval ball game, having edited a few grisly volumes of filthy Rugby Songs in addition to The Art Of Coarse Rugby, but sadly, no big fan of football, hence the lack of an Art Of Coarse Football which might have been fun. One that didn't really work for me - despite Askew being jolly good at it apparently - is The Art Of Coarse Sex. Michael Green - The Art Of Coarse Sex (Robson, 2001; originally Hutchinson & Co., 1978) John Jensen Blurb: In real life, as everyone knows, sex at its best is coarse. The romantic novelists, the sex therapists and the tabloid confessions may have you believe otherwise, but Michael Green knows the truth, and here, in the most hilarious and penetrating of his bestselling 'The Art of Coarse .....' series, he exposes some of the lies of the great game.Total swizz that there's no photo-inset in this one.
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Post by ripper on Nov 13, 2015 16:17:03 GMT
Association football is definitely conspicuous by its absence from the series. Perhaps, as you say, he just didn't like the sport. I can't think of it being mentioned in any of the 'Coarse' books I have read.
I have not read 'Coarse Sex' and it does seem like a slightly curious addition. Is it more explicit than the earlier books, Dem? Glad to hear that Askew is still in the thick of the action :-).
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Post by dem bones on Nov 13, 2015 23:54:24 GMT
No more explicit than the rest, Rip, and arriving late in the series maybe didn't do ... Sex any favours - the law of diminishing returns and all that. I wonder if Askew was based on Lord Dunsany's incorrigible Mr. Jorkens?
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Post by ripper on Nov 14, 2015 15:56:29 GMT
I'm glad to hear that it doesn't get any more explicit. I don't think Green's style would lend itself to a 'Confessions' type romp.
I'm not too familiar with Lord Dunsany's stories except for the usual ones that seem to turn up time and again in various anthologies. Is the character you mentioned part of a comic series that Dunsany wrote?
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Post by dem bones on Nov 14, 2015 19:22:43 GMT
I'm not too familiar with Lord Dunsany's stories except for the usual ones that seem to turn up time and again in various anthologies. Is the character you mentioned part of a comic series that Dunsany wrote? Dunsany published at least five volumes of Joseph Jorkens stories between 1931 and 1954. The gist being, Jorkens invariably arrives at his club financially embarrassed off the back of his latest extraordinary adventure, the details of which he's happy to relate if his pals could see their way to standing him a whiskey or several. Popular in their day, the stories long seem to have fallen out of vogue? Perhaps the best known - if only because Robert Aickman inexplicably revived it in 2nd Fontana Book of Ghost Stories - is the SF yarn, Our Distant Cousins. Other anthology appearances include The Electric King ( Fifty Masterpieces of Mystery), the mummy story, A Daughter of Rameses (John Hampden's Everyman Ghost Stories), and The Sign (August Derleth's Night's Yawning Peal. Where Askew favours rugby, Jorkens was more of a cricket man ( How Jembu Played For Cambridge, The Devil Among The Willows and The Unrecorded Test Match, none of which I've read. Dunsany also contributed Autumn Cricket to Cynthia Asquith's Second Ghost Book), and to best of my knowledge, he never attempted a contemporary Art of Coarse Sex though, like Askew, he could doubtless show Casanova where he was going wrong.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Nov 14, 2015 19:33:44 GMT
Robert Aickman inexplicably revived it That is Aickman for you! Inexplicable!
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Post by ripper on Nov 15, 2015 9:52:02 GMT
Thanks for the Dunsany information, Dem. A few of those titles I have heard of, but I am pretty certain have never read.
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Post by ripper on Nov 21, 2015 13:51:12 GMT
The Art of Coarse Sailing, first published in 1962, is a little different from the other 'Coarse Sport' books I have read and closer to the 'Art of Coarse Moving' in structure. It is more of a novel, following the misadventures of Green and six of his friends sailing on the Norfolk Broads. Although Askew does not feature in this one, there are still plenty of eccentric characters and laugh-out-loud situations. I know very little about sailing but you really don't need to in order to enjoy this book. Recommended to fans of the 'Coarse' series or to anyone who likes a book that will have you laughing out loud.
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Post by pulphack on Nov 22, 2015 12:00:20 GMT
Now there's a coincidence, as I was just going to post on ...Sailing having bought it in the last week and read it yesterday. It is an oddity in the series in that it's more like a novel than the usual style, but none the worse for that. I laughed out loud in places, which is not bad for a book that's over half a century old. I came to be quite fond of Beaver, even though he is a fool, and could see Joan and Dennis splitting up in tears and recriminations by 1970...
If I remember rightly, this was his second Coarse book, and it must have been a publishers direction that sent him back to the ...Rugby format. I think ...Moving was originally only a subtitle to A Roof Over My Head, so perhaps Mr Green was going for the comic novel market and the publishers panicked?? It made me look on-line, and I see he's published a couple of volumes of memoirs in the 90's, and is still alive and (hopefully) well at 88. I also understand the publishers panicking over ...Roof as his novel Don't Spell My Name Wrong, despite rave reviews, is actually unavailable from anywhere at the moment (suggesting really poor sales in the first place) and even Squire Haggard (which is his magnum opus in my view, despite the crap TV series made from it, and which I wish I still had) which had h/b and p/b in the 70's, and was reissued by Prion at the start of the 2000's, is ridiculously expensive - cheapest I could find was a tenner plus about a fiver postage. How is that so rare??
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