Basil Rathbone IS Sherlock Holmes

Over the years there have been countless actors ho have played the world’s most famous fictional detective, but in my eyes one man is the definitive Holmes. This is similar to my choice of Tom Baker as Doctor Who on Day 21, and would probably be as divisive if anyone actually read these posts.

Growing up, and during the school holidays, BBC would show a season of the Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films early in the morning and I ate them up. This was before I read any of Conan-Doyle’s tales of the master sleuth, but I was wrapped by Rathbone’s performances, so much so that I rented some of the classic stories from the local library. It was the first time that I had any desire to follow up something I had seen in the cinema or on television via the source material, and while the Holmes I read at that time had flaws not addressed in the films, the core character was all Rathbone.

The films also introduced me to the scariest creature ever, with the introduction of The Hoxton Creeper, brilliantly played by Rondo Hattan in The Pearl of Death. So much so that I slept with my back against the wall for years.

Powerful stuff.

Tablet

Oh sweet, almost sickly vixen.

Your taste sets my teeth a-tingle.

My tongue flicks your rough hind

and laps at your stickiness.

When I bite … oh my

delicious

Scottish

buttery

joy.

Heart palpitations.

copyright The Smorgasbord, December 2009

Margaritas

Oh yes. Nothing finer on a summer evening than a good margarita in a cool glass with a salty rim. Actually, never mind the summer, winter works too and I’m pretty glad of the all year round awesomeness of margaritas as my father-in-law makes some of the best ever. Of course its not as good that we’re not in Florida to get some limes from their trees, but perhaps a project this Christmas is finding local ones good enough to make this delicious drink.

And isn’t a 99cent frozen margarita the best drink you can have in Las Vegas?

I think it is.

The Two Ronnies

Remember how I mentioned way back on Day 15 that Monty Python seemed to be something different compared to the usual comedy fare I watched as a child? You don’t? Don’t worry, I did. I did miss one out from the list though, and that was deliberate because The Two Ronnies were a class above the rest. Yes, people effused about Morecombe and Wise and they were funny, but for me Messrs Corbett and Barker were the classic comedy double act.

The list of classic sketches rolls off the tongue:

• Fork Handles
• The Ministry for Sex Equality
• The Opticians
• Crossed Lines
• A Spokesman for the Ministry of Communication
• Answering the question before last (a la Mastermind)

Add to this Ronnie Corbett’s weekly joke – an keen demonstration of wonderful tangential thinking but with a poor, often pun filled punchline – and lots of hilarious fake news bulletins and you have fantastically funny show.

However, then you add in some sparklingly inventive musical pieces and a few truly wonderful episodic sketches stretched across the series (The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town; The Worm that Turned; Charlie Farley and Piggy Malone) and its a wonder this show didn’t go on to rule the world.

Ealing Comedies

Its interesting, checking back on the history of Ealing Comedies, that the Ealing Age spanned just 10 years between 1947 and 1957. A short time of course, but when you look at the number of classic films they produced in that time, its amazing they amount of quality they managed to squeeze out of a decade.

Whisky Galore!, Passport to Pimlico, The Lavender Hill Mob, all classics of their time and they don’t date, I promise.

My favourites though are Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Man in the White Suit and The Ladykillers and a big reason for that is Sir Alec Guinness whose performances in each one are fantastic. The innocent turned fugitive inventor who creates an unbreakable, unstainable cloth; the leader of a band of criminals who pits his wits against an aged landlady; or the tour-de-force as 8 members of the D’Ascoyne family (male and female) offed by a manipulating, vengeful relative.

I like to think of Ealing Comedies not just as classics of the genre, and of past times, but character studies fleshed out into beautiful tales of morality.

Between The Lines

Each generation of TV viewers has a police or crime show that resonates with them. Over the years I’ve enjoyed ones such as Streets of San Francisco, Callan, Starsky and Hutch, Cracker… hell, even Dempsey and Makepeace. While nowadays its all CSI, The Shield and The Wire, back in the 90s a show hit the BBC which really seemed to hit the spot for me.

Between The Lines was a police show, but centring on the Complaints Investigation Bureau – a sort of British Internal Affairs – where the decent beat cops and those on the take in some form or another are investigated by what should by all rights be a crack squad of the very best. However, the protagonists are either flawed, on the take themselves or extremely reluctant doing the job in the first place.

The first series was excellent with episodes tackling some extremely tough subjects, all intertwining nicely with an overarching storyline with very Senior officers implicated. The performances by the main cast were superb and you could tell a lot of effort was put in by both the actors and the writing team fleshing out the characters. This was key, because without the flaws, doubt, borderline alcoholism, backstabbing and womanising the show wouldn’t have been half as good.

Sadly, after the second series the show hit the buffers, taking the team out of the environment which had made them and setting them up as pseudo private detectives.

A shame, but there are two great series of this show still around which are engrossing.

Parrot Fish Coco De Mer

I can’t find a picture of this and that is a good thing. This dish is absolutely wonderful, made even more magical as Kate and I had it on our honeymoon twice in the Seychelles.

The owners of the cafe were so nice that they gave us the recipe and while I’ve tried to cook it twice, its pretty hard to find parrot fish in Edinburgh and even if I did, it would never take as spectacular as on a beach on a warm evening.

One day, we’ll go back and have some more.

Freedom Force

Okay, take a guy who likes comic books. Then create a game which is based on the superhero genre of comic books. Put them together and you have the recipe for some fun times. However, then get a talented community on the Interweb who spend a huge amount of time customising and creating literally hundreds of models based on the characters who kept him glued to those once reasonably priced comic books? What happens then?

Heh.

The Man With Two Brains

Once again I find myself re-writing one of these posts over and over, but the words don’t seem to do it justice.  In this case, how do you do justice describing a frankly hilarious movie starring one of the best comedy actors of all time, a sultry femme fatale at the height of her… eh… sultriness, and one of the best villainous actors evah!

So, never mind reading this. Just go out and rent, or better still buy, The Man With Two Brains starring Steve Martin, Kathleen Turner and David Warner.

Now.

Doctor Who

aka Tom Baker.

Yes, there have been plenty of others and at one time or another they’ve all done good work in the role, but for me Tom Baker was THE Doctor. Of course before him, John Pertwee was THE Doctor but once he was bitter by a giant spider and changed into Tom Baker, there was and would be no other. Even the first enemy he fought, The Giant Robot, freaked me out for a good few years and all that was was a Giant Robot. Through the Baker years not only did I become familiar with the nemeses of Davros, The Daleks, The Cybermen, the worst/best Master evah! but also the horrors of The Sontorans, and the Brain of Morbius. Plus, a cracking story where he’s accused of trying to assassinate the President of the Time Lords and he just breezes through it all.

Add to this some of THE BEST assistants of all time such as Sarah Jane, Leela and K9 and pretty much this is the watershed era of Doctor Who.

Still I’m pretty sure that when Liam gets to my age it’ll be the David Tennant or Matt Smith era.

We’ll see.