I only ever watched one of them - the one with the pig. Just a bit too hateful and cynical for me.

I'm considering doing another bike ride to Wales and back soon, and looking for an alternative route to the one I did the last two times. This photo, taken from Street View, contains both England and Wales. The camera is in England and everything behind the telegraph pole is Wales.

Wordle 686 4/6

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Just right this morning, ten diverting minutes.

We had new blinds fitted in the living room, and yesterday I got round to removing the little double-sided hook that the cord was tied round on the old blind. It was screwed directly into the frame of the UPVC window.

As soon as I'd got one of the screws half way out, water started to come out of the screw hole. The frame must have filled with rain water. About half a litre streamed out of it. And yet the water was really clear. And the screws holding it in place didn't have so much as a spot of rust.

I guess there must be a drainage hole in the frame on the outside that's blocked. I'll have a closer look when I can.

125: Bilko's Credit Card

Bilko's on a date in San Francisco with a babe, but he's broke. When she finds out that he can't afford to pay for dinner, she decides to dine with Grover - who's inconveniently just turned up at the restaurant - instead.

Bilko decides to apply for a credit card. Unsurprisingly, once his creditworthiness has been established, his application is declined. But he decides to start his own credit card club for the Camp Fremont service personnel.

Not unreasonably, the various service personnel are a little reluctant to take advantage of this opportunity. But Bilko has a plan to bring them round.

And he does, but that's not the end of his troubles.

A British Army officer makes an appearance in this one - a bit of a caricature of an upper-class Englishman. But to be fair I expect a lot of them were probably like that in the late '50s. Or I like to think so, anyway.

Not a classic, but pretty good.

The phrase "King of England" is simply wrong; there is no Kingdom of England and hasn't been for hundreds of years.


Must say I agree with the quote from the piece there; a rare lucid moment for the Grauniad.

About 90 minutes, most of it finding a third word to fit. Suppose I'd better do some work now!

Wordle 685 4/6

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124: Bilko's Grand Hotel

Bilko and the motor pool platoon are about to open their own pizza stand, the "Pizzarama". It's 40c for a mushroom pizza. Inflation, eh?

Unfortunately the stand burns down at the grand opening, largely due to Paparelli and Zimmerman being a little inept with the cooking equipment.

But Bilko reads about a hotel tycoon visiting Grove City. He puts two and two together - and decides he must secretly want to buy the town's old, derelict Grand Hotel to refurbish it. Can the wily master sergeant buy it first, then sell it on at a huge profit?

The first part is easy enough; the second not so much - since it turns out that his assumption was somewhat wide of the mark.

But a chance meeting in a coffee shop inspires an elaborate plan.

This episode is perhaps most notable for an appearance by Irwin Corey as an eccentric vagrant. He was a stand-up comic as well as an actor. Lenny Bruce considered him to be "one of the most brilliant comedians of all time". He died at the ripe old age of 102 in 2017.

It's not bad at all.

Yes, long time since I started with two blank lines myself.

Looking at the remaining PL fixtures for Leeds and Forest:

LEEDS : Man City, Newcastle, West Ham, Spurs

FOREST : Southampton, Chelsea, Arsenal, Palace

They're level on points (Forest have a worse goal difference) so I give Forest better odds of staying up, quite honestly. Big Sam could easily lose all four games and considering the time he'll have had to prepare and the quality of the opposition, there'd be no shame in it at all.

Of course they could both stay up, at Leicester's expense.

Leicester's remaining fixtures are: Fulham, Liverpool, Newcastle, West Ham.

About seven minutes .. the solution was a word I considered using on the third go. Bit annoying.

Wordle 684 5/6

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A dry, sunny day today. With rain in the forecast for most of the next couple of weeks, clearly a decent run out after work was in order. Forty miles or so, I thought.

Quite an annoying moderate / strong wind coming from the east. I thought I'd do 20 miles or so of the Eastbound Route then come back. That's pretty much what I did, except that I detoured via Top Brand through Diseworth on the way out (I sometimes do that on the way back, but rarely going east). I got as far as Narrow Lane after 23 miles, then detoured through Wymeswold and Rempstone on the way back. A sort of figure-of-eight route.



A bit cooler than I'd have liked but I got away with bare legs. I took the Boardman to assess the performance of its new bar tape. Apart from looking cheap, it's not quite as comfy as the old tape. I may wrap some more tape directly over it, for a dual-ply super padded arrangement.

Back on 43.21 miles, that's 110 for the month already. I'm aiming to do 435 this month.

https://www.strava.com/activities/9004706609

123: Bilko's Hollywood Romance
 
A movie starlet called Monica Malamar has been the subject of a sustained bout of negative publicity, mainly because of her own low-rent behaviour. So her press agent embarks on a campaign to clean up her image. His first thought is to have her appear at Camp Fremont, where she can be seen in the company of "simple, clean-cut young soldiers".

Naturally, Bilko is keen to be the principal clean-cut soldier to soak up the attention and expensed entertainment. It doesn't take a lot of wangling.

Even better, Monica's agent has the brilliant idea of getting her to start a romance with Bilko - just for a couple of weeks, for the publicity. In order to arrange this, her agent tries some clever manipulation on the devious master sergeant. has Bilko been out-Bilkoed?

Yes, but of course it's not long before Ernie has the upper hand.

Intriguing one, this. It's a sort of tennis match of devious conniving between Bilko and Monica's management. One of those where Bilko's ego gets the better of him and he goes into a sort of theatrical prima donna mode, which I find a bit irritating.

And another of those episodes in which Bilko's usual squeeze Joan doesn't exist. And while it might be tempting to assume that she's left the camp, in fact she does appear again at least once as his girlfriend in a later episode.

Not bad, not great. I did love the payoff, though.

Wordle 683 4/6

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Four minutes.

122: Bilko's Bopster

A famous jazz drummer named Skinny Sanders is enlisted into the Army, and (of course) he's assigned to Bilko's platoon. Yep, essentially a rerun of the Elvin Pelvin episode, although I don't think the young musician in this one is based on anyone real. He does have a passing resemblance to Buddy Rich actually, but I think it's coincidental.

The lad wastes no time in annoying his NCOs and platoon mates by practicing drumming on available objects and listening to his transistor radio at unsociable hours.

I must say I really dug the cat's crazy 1950s hepcat talk. Hilarious, Daddy-O. But the local jazzers that Bilko finds in a club are even funnier. An absolutely hysterical parody of beatnik hipsters. Genuine laugh-out-loud material.

When he very nearly gets Bilko into serious trouble by inviting the local police chief's 16 year old daughter round the barracks, it's the last straw. Bilko tries to have him transferred. Until he finds out that Skinny is famous, when - of course - he becomes an opportunity.

Captain Barker is in charge of the camp again in this one. We haven't seen Colonel Hall for a few episodes. But that's no bad thing, because Barker is actually quite a nicely fleshed-out character in his own right - he has a certain neurotic tendency that Hall doesn't have.

One of the Fort Baxter officers from the first couple of series is back in this one, as a recruiting sergeant. The number of people who got to play more than one part in this show is remarkable. We haven't seen Frank from Kojak for a while, though.

Skinny was played by Ronny Graham, who apart from being a very talented comic actor was a successful theatrical composer, night club comedian, author and director.

This one is superb. A top ten candidate.