Most of the old traditional stuff will eventually die out but can you imagine a world without the Gloucester Cheese Rolling competion or Bog Snorkerling at Llanwrtyd Wells. What could possibly replace those kind of events. Answers by texts no longer than 7 letters please.
The B words like De Beers and Bulova. seem to resonate wealth Talking of firsts. Bulova had the very first TV commercial
The first television advertisement was broadcast in the United States at 2:29 p.m. on July 1, 1941. NBC affiliate WNBT aired this 10 second spot before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies, displaying a Bulova watch over a map of the U.S. with a voice over of the company’s slogan “America runs on Bulova time!” The Bulova commercial was the world’s first legal television commercial and cost the Bulova Watch Company a whopping $9.00 USD.
We couldn’t afford that kind of money so saved up our pennies and played it safe with our first TV ad which was the 1955 Gibbs SR tingling toothpaste ad. A dead cert seller if ever there was one.
“We couldn’t afford that kind of money so saved up our pennies and played it safe with our first TV ad which was the 1955 Gibbs SR tingling toothpaste ad. A dead cert seller if ever there was one”
I remember that SR toothpaste ad well Solo, I was going to say I remember it clearly but that would be a lie, the TV reception for ITV over here was chronic, remember the “Snow” all over the 17” bubble screen? maybe it wasn’t so bad over there but here it was terrible, the result was the aerials became higher and higher, especially over the public houses, thousands of the things everywhere, the whole city looked a huge mess of weird shaped aerials back in the early sixties.
It wasn’t until 1963 that we got our own TV station here, then the greedy buggers managed to get jam on both sides of their bread by influencing the powers that be, they got the TV licence money AND advertisement money too!, they managed to keep it that way up to the present day.
Yes what Brendan Behan once said is very true over here, “The National emblem of Ireland is the Harp, and the more strings you can pull the better for yourself”;-)
B/W TV never amounted too much in my early world as I was an avid Radio fan and saw TV as a bit of a killjoy. No one I knew spoke or dressed like they did and on the odd occasion we deigned to watch something we all ended up hooting with laughter at their accents or what was being worn. Folk with plums in their mouths weren’t up our street at all. Evening dress or bow tie to us seemed a bit over the top to just tell the news. Our mams and dads could have done it a whole lot better in their aprons and shirt sleeves and at least we would have understood them.
Radio gave your imagination wings whereas TV took that away. By the way if a TV aerial dared show up in our street it was great for catapult practice.
Fraid not. Well Marquis Marconi being Italian and me being a lover of Sivoris ice cream at the time slightly swung it for our devoted radio loyalty especially as all Logie had to offer was something called haggis and a postage size flickery image.
We kids had heard of ice cream but had never heard or tasted haggis. We knew which side our bread was buttered on even in them days. Nothing changes does it
From August
“What ails thee Jock?”
So said Thomas Babington Macauley a child prodigy whose first words, legend has it, were: “What ails thee, Jock?”; This was at the age of 4.
I have a ruddy complexion and people often say I look as if I’ve been on holiday. This being the case I was shocked when two lady friends nurse Gillian and I had coffee with last Tuesday, made a point of saying to me this morning,
“Oh you did look ill on Tuesday, we were quite worried about you”
It fair spoilt my day. I felt great first thing, but now I wonder if I’ve got something brewing. I think I’ll get out my old trusty , dog eared FAMILY DOCTOR & check what I might have.
My God Solo, when I read RJ’s post that’s the first thing that came into my mind “My word you do look queer”:surprised:
Don’t go checking too deeply RJ, the way I look at it is sometimes it’s better to have something and not know you have it than to have it and know all about it, it’ll only add mental anguish to the something you have, or think you have in the first place, whereas if you hadn’t bothered to check you wouldn’t be worried whether you had it it or not, if you follow me, no I didn’t think you would, follow me that is.
I always thought John logie Baird was the inventor of Television, but it seems there were several names involved, Philo Farnsworth, and Charles Francis Jenkins also pop up and it seems we can’t put all the blame on any one person.
Anyway Logie was a great man God bless him, and like all men he had his ups and downs, especially in his early days.
Who would connect Logie with diamonds and Doc Marten boots?
“Some of Baird’s early inventions were not fully successful. In his twenties he tried to create diamonds by heating graphite and shorted out Glasgow’s electricity supply. Later Baird invented a glass razor, which was rust-resistant, but shattered. Inspired by pneumatic tyres he attempted to make pneumatic shoes, but his prototype contained semi-inflated balloons, which burst (years later this same idea was successfully adopted for Dr. Martens boots). He also invented a thermal undersock (the Baird undersock), which was moderately successful. Baird suffered from cold feet, and after a number of trials, he found that an extra layer of cotton inside the sock provided warmth” Wiki.
Logie is a wonderful name, I searched to find out why John Baird was called ‘Logie’ and discovered that as a child Logie was very small for his age, his mother, who was a widow, fell in love with an American inventor, when the American first saw young John Baird he was taken aback by his size and said “Gee woman, who’s the low guy?” and the name stuck.
Logie sure gave us a lot to think about there with all his dabblings but I thought Mr King Camp Gillette with his replaceable head was the razor whizz.
Mind you with a middle name of Camp, gawd help him if he had met with Logies mums lover for who knows what would have been said or what consequences it may have had…or maybe he did and that’s how the idea for replaceable heads came into being.
I have enjoyed reading the discourse prompted by my post
“What ails thee Jock”.
In passing, I recall a German student who stayed with us for 3 weeks in August of 1996, who told a self deprecating tale of a relative whose child didn’t speak until he was 4 either.
When pressed for a reason, the child replied
“I have not had reason to complain until just now”
WHAT AILS THEE JOCK (alternative version)
Famous first words
Thomas Carlyle never spoke at all until he was two. Then one day he heard his brother crying and asked,
“What ails thee, Jock?”
I can’t remember my first words, probably they were something like,
“Are we there yet.?”. On second thoughts, that can’t be the case because we didn’t have a car until I was about 11 years of age, the same year I was given an encyclopaedia of natural history edited by the splendidly named Professor Bertha Morris Parker. I still have it, and 60 years later still read it from time to time.
I can remember one of my first sentences (very apt word sentence.) dating from my first day at school
“Thank you Miss Chalk, it’s very nice here but I don’t think I will be coming back again.”
Why a four year old boy who thought his name was “Shaddup” until he arrived at school was so keen to stay at home is hard to explain.(The more astute reader will draw their own conclusion)
As a late talker but avid early reader my parents took the course that if I wanted to learn anything I would regardless of how it was done, so I was taught to count playing crib with my Father and learnt to read from a fascinating old book Enquire Within upon Everything and Old Moore’s Almanac which were full of things to fire a childs imagination. Although well thumbed, faded and dog eared I too still have that book.
Never lost my love for books, can still get my change worked out faster than the best cashier or calculator but can take or leave conversing
Got to be top of the class in the academic subjects, but not sure why, don’t remember learning maths or writing, there is always a distinct possibility I was the best of a bad lot.
Yes I noticed you are excellent with the statistics Spitty, fair play to you.
I always wondered what goes into those little boxes on official forms, you know the ones where there is an empty box and it says over it “For Official Use Only”
Once you’ve filled in the form and sent it off that’s it, they never tell you what went into the box, any ideas? or do the just use a rubber stamp saying “Refused” or “Granted”, depending on what humour the clark is in, I always arranged my posting of said forms to arrive in government buildings on a Friday morning, ain’t been refused any pensioners household repair grants yet.
The mention there of Logie’s mother put me in mind of that very famous painting “Whistler’s Mother”, while I do like most art, I have to be truthful and say that every time I see that painting it depresses me, why oh why could he not have painted her smiling and ‘looking at the camera’ so to speak, she looks so drab and sad that one would think her house burned down and all her children had died in the fire, or as me old Dad used to say “She looks to me like she’s just delivered a heavy confession to Father Moore and is waiting for her penance”(father Moore was the Parish priest and was notorious for his severe penances, you’d be up all night praying if you robbed an orchard)
We should be all grateful this posing position didn’t catch on, can you imagine the flood of mother paintings all sitting sideways that could have emerged? Marlon Brando’s mother, Edward G Robinson’s mother, Silvester Stallone’s mother,(oh my God!) Maggie Thatcher’s mother, and there wouldn’t be a canvass big enough to paint Jimmy Durante’s mother side ways. thank God for small mercies i say.
By the way that was painted when Whistler was in London, with his mother of course, a man could lose himself in London without his mother you know.;-)
Not surprised she looks a bit miffed Jem. You would to if you were just being used as a stand in for someone who had not turned up. Then you are officially designated as an Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1. Really James!
If that wasn’t enough to add insult to injury your precious son then paints you with sprawling flat peasants feet instead of your usual neat pretty slippers. Enough to make any mother weep.
An interesting lady though, cumbersome feet or not
