The disordered mad of a brain man

I'm listening to the complete Round The Horne and in an 1967 episode, Kenneth Horne spots an ad for Julian and Sandy's latest venture, the Bona Bijou Tourette travel agency, via an ad in his monthly copy of Breezy Pics incorporating The Leather News and Amateur Paediatrician. I wonder if they lose that last bit in the BBC7 repeats?

Best lines, when trying to talk Horne out of going to Malaga:

Sandy: 'You know he got very badly stung.'
Horne: 'Portuguese man o'war?'
Jules: 'Well, I never saw him in uniform…'

I really will find and finish my 'review of 2008' soon, but apparently Don John (which I was greatly looking forward to seeing at the end of December) will be coming to London's Battersea Arts Centre in April for a month.

The email from the RSC (who hosted the original run) has two quotes:

'Magnificent… the finest Kneehigh production I have seen' Five stars Financial Times

'There's nothing to beat this company at their inventive best' Time Out

.. to which I have two comments:

How many Kneehigh productions have they seen? Just looking at their recent stuff, Brief Encounter, Cymbeline, and Nights at the Circus were all much better than this.

I would almost agree with the second (Improbable are better, but not much else) however alas Don John is not them at their inventive best.

The basic idea is interesting – take Don Giovanni, update it a bit (they've set it in the late 1970s), emphasise the women (who all retain their names from the opera, whereas all the men's names are changed) and… well it goes a bit wrong from there.

Including snatches of the opera only serves to remind you that it is better than this (disclaimer: it's my favourite opera) and I'll see if I can refind the review I agreed with that for some strange reason the RSC isn't quoting.

Someone's published a map of how many steps it takes to walk between inner London tube stations:

You'd think they'd get one of the basic tourist gotchas right – it does not take 822+1,275 steps to get from Queensway to Bayswater… That route probably involves walking to Notting Hill Gate, turning round, going back past Queensway and up the road to Bayswater! I'm a bit dubious about Euston to King's Cross St Pancras being under seventy steps less than Euston Square to Kings X too, plus they're ignoring the District / Hammersmith and City version of Edgware Road, thus meaning you can't see what they reckon it would take to walk the Circle Line.

A more useful map would show the number of steps needed to make the changes at the various interchanges. Some are trivial 'cross the platform' ones, others are hikes in themselves.

When I was one of the people running the London Bisexual Group, so oooh fifteen or so years ago, they'd be forty or so people turn up each week including five to ten new people.

One week, someone came back for their second time and was most miffed that I couldn't remember his name from the previous week. So miffed in fact that they declined – no, 'refused' would be a better word – to remind me, and continued to do so ever afterwards. I soon stopped bothering to ask.

Today, I saw them again, with someone rather more sensible and now I know.

Not that I'm likely to remember, mind.