071: Bilko's Merry Widow

The nearby Women's Club is offering $500 for the first producer to bring a professional theatre company to Roseville - part of their "fight to bring culture" to the town.

Meanwhile, Bilko has blown the platoon welfare fund on the horses again. But he notices the advert for the $500 in the local paper, so he decides to put on The Merry Widow.

It's another vehicle for Phil Silvers to impersonate an eccentric foreigner; in this case a theatre producer. Where all the elaborate costumes for these initiatives come from is never explained.

I must say Bilko goes to a lot of trouble to get hold of the $500, but I suppose it was worth a lot more back then. While I can appreciate the talent that goes into the theatrical scenes, it's all a bit too far removed from the basic Bilko idea for me.

Interestingly the audio quality in this one is a bit different; a bit distant. The audience laughter is a bit more uproarious, as well. I think this must be the point at which they stopped filming in front of live audiences.

Haven't started the Ferguson tome yet but I did start the next Reacher novel, The Hard Way. Good one, quite distinctive and more of a detective story than usual. About half-way through, all of it consumed on a Kindle rather than an audiobook. I could only do that while on holiday.

Took about 15 mins today.

Wordle 631 4/6

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Now that I'm back in Blighty I shall catch up on the ones I missed using https://infinite-sword.github.io/ReWordle/

Wordle 624 4/6

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About two minutes. Strong second word that.

Wordle 625 4/6

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Another quick one. Two minutes or a bit less.

I took a stash of episodes on holiday with me on a phone, so my Bilkothon continued unabated, one episode per day. So:

063: Radio Station B.I.L.K.O

The local radio station is closing down, so Bilko decides to open one at Fort Baxter, in the hope of raising some advertising revenue. Grover is naturally reluctant to allow the signal corps radio equipment to be used for this but soon comes round when he's offered a role as the station's singing Irish tenor.

For a while it looks like this is going to be a pretty ordinary farce based on Bilko trying to keep his unmilitary activities secret during a general's inspection, but a clever plot idea involving Colonel and Mrs Hall elevates it to something special.


064: Bilko the Marriage Broker

A particularly military and strict company commander arrives to take control of the motor pool platoon, and he's unhappy with their lax attitude to discipline and hard work.

Before long he has Bilko and his men doing rigorous morning exercises, hikes, drills and other strenuous activities.

Bilko applies some Freudian analysis and decides that the new lieutenant needs a girlfriend. His attempts to fix him up with a new female lieutenant descend into glorious farce.

Very good one; for once not based on a scheme to make money.


065: Bilko Acres

Bilko's convinced that the swampland just outside Fort Baxter will be worth a fortune once the Army tries to buy it to extend the camp. So he buys it with the platoon's money first, expecting to make a killing.

Unfortunately the Army has no intention of doing that, so Bilko is left with a worthless expanse of waste ground. This story is about Bilko's imaginative ruse to sell it at a profit. There's a clever plot twist that leads to a very funny payoff.


066: The Big Scandal

A hypnotist comes to entertain the troops at Fort Baxter. Bilko's so impressed that he decides to try it for himself, in the hope (of course) of winning some cash by making bets on the outcome of his efforts.

The results though are mixed. He completely fails to hypnotise Ritzik, but what nobody notices is that Doberman, obviously paying too close attention while looking on, completely falls under Bilko's spell. The unfortunate consequence of this is that the hapless private believes himself to be hopelessly in love with the colonel's wife.

The situation descends into absolutely glorious farce after Bilko intercepts one of Doberman's calls to Mrs Hall, and - not knowing the identity of the mystery caller, intervenes to attempt to save his commanding officer's marriage.



There's also a hilarious subplot about a lovestruck medical officer, and a delightful character known as "Stacked Susie" makes a very welcome appearance. I watched this episode on an Android phone in a cruise ship cabin and quite honestly, I was tempted to sneak the phone into the bathroom and knock one out. It's a bit sobering to think that she'd be about 100 if she were still alive.

I'm not kidding, this is a comedy masterpiece.


067: Bilko's Perfect Day

Opens with a mystical, echoing voice from the heavens explaining that everyone gets one lucky day, and today it's the turn of Master Sergeant Ernest Bilko.

Absolutely everything goes right for Bilko from the moment he gets up. His shower runs hot when everyone else's is cold. He can't lose at cards. His every wish is granted. He gets off the hook for damaging the Colonel's car by a fantastically improbable turn of circumstances and he cannot fail to win when he makes a bet. Unfortunately, capitalising on his supernatural good fortune is not so straightforward.

Danny Dayton from Bilko's Television Idea appears again in this one.


068: The Colonel Breaks Par

It's that time of year when the Colonel vacations, and as he does every year, Bilko intends to turn the camp into a sort of "fun land" while the boss is away.  Crap games, poker, a hay ride and even a cock fight (!) are planned.

Disastrously though, it turns out that the Colonel intends to vacation in the winter instead. But Bilko has already ordered the catering and made all the plans. How to rescue the situation?

He comes up with an idea to persuade the old boy to take part in an officer's golf tournament to get him away from Fort Baxter, by means of an elaborate scheme involving Sam Snead, who (it turns out) is an old army buddy of Bilko's.

I've always remembered this episode as one of the three or four Phil Silvers Show classics. Actually it's a good one but not brilliant. Mostly memorable for the hilarious scene where the Colonel attempts a putt and the ball plops into the hole like a guided missile with the help of a powerful magnet.

It does somewhat beggar belief though, doesn''t it, that all the other officers would turn a blind eye to Bilko turning Fort Baxter into a sort of Kansas Las Vegas, while the commanding officers is off the post?

I looked up Sam Snead; he was one of the best golfers in the world for decades. Died in 2002 at the age of 89. He was actually in the navy, not the army.


069: Show Segments

This one is the late '50s version of DVD extras, featuring several scenes cut from previous episodes glued together by a script in which Phil Silvers and some of the other actors appear as themselves, sitting at a diner in a break between rehearsals, talking about the scenes that fell victim to the editor's knife. Ed Sullivan also makes an appearance, again as himself.

Curiously, the actors who play Henshaw and Rocco, here appearing as themselves of course, address Silvers as "Sarge".

It's not great, but DVD extras never are, are they?


070: His Highness Doberman

This one is a rerun of a formula used in several previous episodes. Doberman falls for a posh society girl, but her parents are terrible snobs and won't have her seeing a soldier. So Bilko poses as a foreign aristocrat to convince them, largely by being similarly condescending, that Doberman is actually foreign royalty. Not bad. And that one, as it turns out, is the last one in the third series.

Quote from: dom on March 11, 2023, 11:57:58 AMEven better for David, Radio 5 live won't have any commentaries on today's football. What an unholy mess.

36 Tory mps are demanding an apology from Lineker. That's not going to happen.

You're right there, Lineker doesn't have the faintest hint of the integrity or honesty necessary for that.

I've been Linux-only for a long time. Not helpful I know, except that unless you need a particular Windows application, it's usually a very good choice. Especially for slower / older hardware.

I've never had to pay for it, never had to install A/V software.

Quoting Fox News doesn't exactly undermine my point; it reinforces it. I haven't looked at the Telegraph piece but would assume it's another example of statistics being misused, or misunderstood, or taken out of proper context.

Been bloody hot here in the Caribbean. Hope the snow's gone by the time we get back.

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062: The Secret Life of Sergeant Bilko

A New York newspaper starts printing phony stories about lax Army security. The dodgy journalist responsible decides to visit an obscure Army camp town in the midwest to see if he can get a soldier or two to spill the odd secret with some judicious largesse.

But Paparelli recognises him straight away. Bilko decides to take advantage, while getting a bit of revenge at the same time.

There's a delightful moment where Fender stumbles over a line and Silvers recovers brilliantly with an ad-lib. I think that's what happens. Might just be scripted.

The snoopy reporter is delightfully unpleasant, but preposterously naive.

A bit different, this one. Superb.

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Bad start, only took seven minutes though.

061: The Mess Hall Mess

Ritzik's culinary inventions don't go down too well with the troops in the mess hall. It turns out that he's experimenting with their food to win $50,000 in a contest to come up with "the best new American original American recipe".

I love the little gags in these scripts, the subtle touches. When the three master sergeants decided to eat out rather than suffer Ritzik's creation, the restaurant hostess welcomes them with "bonsoir messieurs". Ritzik mutters "I thought so, a Greek joint".

The food they order arrives in about 30 seconds, rather like the room service in the previous episode. But you've got to cut a half-hour sitcom a bit of slack.

Predictably, the food there turns out to be magnificent - so Bilko hatches a plan to win yet another contest with a large cash prize. The Phil Silvers Show can be a tad formulaic, but the writers managed to squeeze something different out of every episode.

Very good, definitely above average.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-64824436

Custodial sentence appropriate here? I think so. If she'd tried to do that to me I would have slapped her as I rode past.

Not a lot of time today, but I wanted to do 20 or so to get the March campaign off to a modest start. A cold wind was blowing from the NE. I went up through Coalville toward Zouch, then turned for Long Whatton and came back down via Diseworth, Top Brand, Coleorton.

I didn't wrap up warm enough and I was too cold. But at least it was dry. Back on 20.52 miles.



One thing I've noticed about the S Works is that it's much better geared, at least for me, than the X. I definitely find myself using a greater variety of gears over both chainrings, whereas on the X the big chainring doesn't get used that much. Something to think about if/when the time comes to replace the cassette.

Nice run out. The conditions weren't so hostile with a bit of a tailwind.

Note the flimsy-looking frame pack currently attached to the frame. It was very cheap, but it's very light. I had to truncate the velco straps with a hot paint scraper, they were far too long.

https://www.strava.com/activities/8648333268

Here's another one. This guy has really thoroughly ingested the blue pill.