General Chat

It appears that Andrew Sachs has died at the age of 86.

Que.???
RIP Andrew, a very funny man. <3 <3

Such a shame, watched clips of him this morning & it still makes me laugh. We don't make good comedies like it anymore. Pity he had dementia but hope he is at peace now. :-(

He was brilliant as Manuel but I'll always remember him for this, back in the 1980's his son John Sachs was a DJ on our local radio Swansea Sound, one April Fool's day John arranged for his dad Andrew to phone the station pretending to be an Australian who had left town in a hurry after burying some treasure in a local park. At the time dozens of people descended on the park with shovels!!
It's mentioned here:
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/day-andrew-sachs-prank-called-12261942

I too was saddened to hear that Andrew Sachs has passed away.

A wonderful and talented actor and comedian.

My favourite episode of Fawlty Towers is The Germans, which includes my favourite ever bit, where the Major thinks the Moose Head is talking to him - but it's Manuel practicing his English under the reception desk :-D :-D

Remembering "Manuel" and his "hamster" :-D

RIP Andrew Sachs <3

My tall dude (built like John Cleese, a stork only skinnier) is out at his post-stroke group so I will relay the news when he gets home.

Fawlty Towers is one of his favourites. He videotaped the series from television long before we met, and still has it all ... and we even have a VCR somewhere we could play it on. We've watched it countless times (I say, not being quite such a big fan) when it is rerun somewhere on the airwaves.

This weekend would be a good time for a memorial marathon.

Good story, JustJanet. :-)

UK BBC are putting out Fawlty Towers on Fridays, it is available on iPlayer at much better res than old VCR tapes.

But old videotapes are like old LPs, no? ;-)

The sights and sounds of one's youth ...

I bought a betamax which had much better video quality than VCR. I was more interested in shooting video at the time than recording tv shows. I thought then and now that VCR was rubbish and still do. Same for K7 tapes. The media industry never used VCR it was betamax all the way.

THe real pits of VCR was a copy of a copy or a tv show recording/ If your luck was really out you might be invited to a "dinner party" followed by group watching of one of these tapes. Abigail has much to answer for.

I don't miss the hiss crackle and pop of poorly maintained LPs played on cheap kit, Dansette and worse. I have even seen people stack LPs on a Dansette and care not when the third or fourth disk started slipping.

They were an assault on the ears. That said good quality LPs ( not digitally remastered from Walmart and Sainsbury) played on some decent kit have much better sound color than today's lo res MP3 which seems to please most. Quite wky CD is so lacking in color I have never worked out. Sony did and brought a high res version which was great but never caught on.

Me, I just want to hear the same scratch as Leonard Cohen sings Suzanne that I heard when I was 16 and he first sang it. <3

You'd love my LP collection (which hasn't had any outings in many a year).

The apartment I moved into when I settled in a new town to go to school, many years ago, burned down the night we finished a week of painting and cleaning. Actually the fire burned up the wires in the walls, but the firefighters hacked the walls open and threw stuff out the window. My bedroom was the epicentre of their despoilery. My LPs were covered in plaster and water and smoke. I bathed them, and a local record shop donated 100 empty album covers when I went in to see what they might suggest I do with them. I own about 20 copies of something very green called Desiderata, and I forget what the others are, if you believe the sleeves! It was always fun when new boyfriends decided to browse the collection.

And no, the plaster bath did not improve the sound. ;-)


Your great-grandfather didn't happen to live in Nottingham, did he? If so, we must be cousins. My great-grandmother was the servant. :-)

Well I still own the Martin D45 guitar I had back in 1969, (No I wasn't rich it was inherited ). I would be mortified if it burned to death nearly as bad as losing a pet. When not in use it is kept in a fire resistant case.

I can still play Suzanne and other Cohen songs - he was not an especially ambitous musician and so easy for beginners. Ah the feeling of triumph when I could play "Anji" (.Simon ).

Most of my vinyl collection is in France not really poss to shift is back and forwards. 'cos I used to record the albums onto K7 they are mostly still in v good nick - the oldest one is a mono LP 1963 "With the Beatles" which cost 32/6 (£ 1.62 or over £ 30 allowing for inflation. No wonder Lennon could afford a Roller.

One of my GF lived in Nottingham though he was not born there. He made a living as a stained glass artist and a bookmaker working his way up from being a "runner" to his own stand at all the major northern race courses. I inherited his love of fast horses and fast ... never mind. My mum did one better though and inherited his "junk". Amongst the junk were two biscuit tins full of five and ten pound notes .

The destruction of Nottingham 1960-2000 was heart breaking though things have picked up and the awful Victoria shopping centre is set for the chop. I love the new trams and lots of excellent pubs have survived. So has the Goose Fair :-) All the same I liked Nottingham better in the hey day of Players, Boots, Rayleigh, Saurday Night and SUnday Morning when the Meadows and the Lace Market were not a very good address. The Meadows is alleged to have improved but imho that is questionable.

One of my cousin's sons is a well known Nottingham R&B guitarist.