The Chocolate Ocelot's 2016 Fringe - Day Three

SUNDAY 7TH AUGUST 2016


Celts
Exhibition Gallery 1 @ National Museum of Scotland
The idea of a shared Celtic heritage across ancient Europe retains a powerful hold over the popular imagination. But many ideas about the people known as Celts are more recent reimaginings, reinvented over the centuries.
The Ocelot says: Look, I like a good exhibition as much as the next person who likes exhibitions exactly the same amount as me, but do we really need to see 37 gold torcs and 53 silver brooch pins? I contend that we do not. Two or three gets the message across quite adequately. You could keep the rest safely locked up, or even flog them to the Chinese and free up more museum space for, I dunno, a celebration of Oor Wullie or something more interesting. I did like the wooden chariot though, and the silver Gundestrup cauldron. It was just like in Slaine. 3/5

Fête Worse Than Death
The Annexe @ Paradise in The Vault
Welcome to the village fête in Llanfairchwaraesboncen, nestled in the South Wales Valleys. Join your host, 76-year-old village busybody Eirys Evans, in a fun-filled romp complete with competitions, slide shows and audience participation. 
The Ocelot says: Jolly good character comedy from Karen Sherrard on her first Fringe (we had a bit of a chat beforehand). She played a little old Welsh lady running a crappy village fete and the fete's star guest, not-Charlie-Dimmock lady gardener Esme de Flange, whose stream of relentless horticultural double-entendres was like a Viz strip come to life. Sadly I didn't win anything in the raffle. 4/5

Etherwave: Adventures with the Theremin
Grassmarket 3 @ Sweet Grassmarket
Notorious performer Hypnotique tells her personal story about the world’s first electronic instrument (from 1920s Russia) and its influence on music today – including Led Zeppelin, Kraftwerk and Portishead. In this multimedia talk and music performance, expect tall tales of KGB espionage, spooky soundtracks and her encounters with Amazonians, Bob Moog and Simon Cowell.
The Ocelot says: The theremin's a weird instrument. Like the violin, if played badly it's a dire assault on the ears and the soul. Still and all, Miss Hypnotique puts on a most entertaining and educational hour about the invention and use of the peculiar electronic instrument. 3/5

Tom Neenan: Vaudeville
Buttercup @ Underbelly Med Quad
Backstage at the Vaudeville Theatre hear dark and hilarious tales of magic, malevolence and misfortune in this one-man portmanteau horror comedy from master storyteller, comedian and writer Tom Neenan.
The Ocelot says: Always a pleasure to see one-man maestro Tom Neenan put on another spoof, this time a riff on the portmanteau horror format like Dead of Night and Dr Terror's House of Horrors. I thought I would be safe on the front row with him, but sadly I was roped into a bit of audience participation, though just for a card trick (which was very well done). The high point for me were the three theatrical agents, played Macbeth-witch style by Tom and his two hands - all very Falsetto Sock Puppetty, which is no bad thing. 5/5

Marvellous Adventures of Mary Seacole
studio 2 @ C venues – C nova
The fascinating story of the Jamaican/Scottish woman who braved the Crimean War to tend to wounded soldiers, described as ‘a warm and successful physician, who doctors and cures all manner of men with extraordinary success’. We watch her progression from a child identifying medicinal herbs, to the horrors of war and epidemic when she entered Sevastopol.
The Ocelot says: Jolly fine life story of the lady in question by Cleo Sylvestre though I remain unconvinced that Seacole made any significant medical contribution, she was evidently a brave and kind woman. Well done to Cleo Sylvestre for doing the whole performance in full heavy Victorian frockage. 4/5

MMORPG Show
Ballroom @ Gilded Balloon at the Counting House
Combining improvised comedy with tabletop gaming in an epic, sprawling, open world, entirely made up fantasy quest of the audience's own devising. Every show is different. Every choice has a consequence, every success or failure decided by a large D20 (20-sided dice).
The Ocelot says: Paul Flannery of Knightmare Live fame stages a tabletop adventure for 3 'randomly selected' volunteers from the audience, and with silly suggestions from the rest of us, they attempt to roleplay and roll their way through a short quest. At least 2 of the 3 volunteers (bad luck CJ for coming second at Hungry Hungry Battle Hippos) have their own shows on here, including Erin McGathy from the Harmontown podcast. Only problem with this show is that I didn't completely enjoy it coz I secretly kinda wanted to be one of the three adventurers. 4/5

Tdipus Rex
Frooty Goose @ Platform 13
The classic Greek tragedy acted out entirely in dinosaur costumes. Betrayed by his best friend, in love with his mother and far from home, can Tdipus overcome close harmony Persians, Geordie harpies and Cyclops from the X-Men and save the day?
The Ocelot says: Of all the Greek sauropod dramas on at the Fringe, this is the best seen so far. The most memorable scene comes when the titular hero struggles to claw out his own eyes with his pathetically short arms. 3/5

Lady's Guide to the Art of Being a Wingman
Balcony @ Gilded Balloon Teviot
The Desperettes are girls dressed as boys, using techniques for picking up women to pick up men. Got it? Good!  Expect sharp comedy and tight harmonies as the girls defy gender singing a huge soundtrack of classic pop, including Destiny’s Child, Justin Timberlake and Salt’n’Pepa.
The Ocelot says: Slick comedy cover songs from three talented performers from Australia, dressed as Reservoir Dogs in pink beehives. Some light sauce and gentle audience interaction and a fine medley of ladypop singing. 4/5

Quirky Incident
Managed to lose something again. Again! This time it was my trusty dictaphone thing, with which Herself and I record our reviews post each show. This is a) to help me remember stuff for this here blog and b) to make us look sort of like gonzo journos in the hope that someone cool will want to talk to us. I can report that b) has not yet happened. 
But on the plus side, I did find the dictaphone voice thing when I ran back into the Counting House and found it where it'd fallen out of my rubbish jeans pocket. Damn you, rubbish jeans and your shallow front pockets! I lost twentyfive quid out of you at Salute in April, but I was too ashamed to admit it publicly. UNTIL NOW.

Forgot to mention I saw this too

Five Batshit Things You Never Knew About Sherlock Holmes

For almost 130 years, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective has captured the imagination of audiences in print, on the airwaves and on screen. Presented here are - however improbable - some curious footnotes in the history of Mr Sherlock Holmes.

The Kid

The Baker Street Irregulars, a gang of street urchins who made several appearances in Holmes' adventures, were originally inspired by the cheeky hi-jinks of a troupe of child performers in London's music halls. Among them was one Charlie Chaplin, whose costume of rumpled, oversized clothes and clown-like but indefatigable persona were to form the basis of the Irregulars' young leader Wiggins.

It's Good, But It's Not Right

Holmes' catchphrase in response to his associate Dr Watson's exclamations of awe at his deductive prowess went through several versions before settling on 'Elementary, my dear Watson'. Here are a few examples from Conan Doyle's early submissions to The Strand magazine:

• "Yes it is."
• "Let's do a deduction!"
• "I loooves me a mystery."
• "Let's wait until more suspects have died."
• "Durrr Watson, you joey."

Gibt es ein Ostwind

Adolf Hitler was purportedly an incurable Holmes fan, going so far as to view reels of Basil Rathbone movies in the private screening room of his Wolf's Lair. When Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror came out with its strong anti-Nazi message, Hitler was incandescent with rage and immediately ordered propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to produce his own Aryan version of Holmes on screen, one which would espouse strong National-Socialist values.

The result, Sherlok Holmes und das Geheimnis des bayerischen Forellen, was screened to Panzer crews before the Battle of the Bulge, but was said to be so laughably bad that it was never shown again, with all existing prints subsequently burnt or else impounded by the Soviets after the war.

The Affair of the Pimlico Pigeon Fancier

In his later years, Conan Doyle struggled to capture the magic of those early Holmes stories, and began experimenting with ever more unlikely scenarios, such as the use of monkey glands in The Adventure of the Creeping Man. An even more improbable tale was The Affair of the Pimlico Pigeon Fancier, where the culprit in a series of seemingly impossible rooftop robberies is found to be a not-so extinct pterodactyl, in an unofficial crossover with the author's own The Lost World.

A staunch believer in metaphysical phenomena such as the Cottingley Fairies, the writer was said to be working an even more fantastical adventure for his most famous character at the time of his death, His Master Stroke, in which the now-retired detective uncovers the incredible truth behind the strange disturbances around his precious beehives.

Adopt, Adapt and Improve

Like any popular work of fiction, Sherlock Holmes has been endlessly revisited, reimagined and spoofed, from early Ellie Norwood to classic Rathbone and Cushing, from the teenaged Rowe to the sepulchral Brett, from two-fisted Downey to the ethereal Cumberbatch. Here are three less well-known adaptations of the consulting detective mythos:

• Carry On Sleuthing - one of the lesser entries in the Carry On... series, this TV special featured Sid James as a leering 'Sidlock Holmes', Peter Butterworth as his bumbling assistant Doc Whatsup, and Kenneth Williams as a braying Professor Moribundy.

• Sherlock, Homes - 90s US comedy adventure series transplanting a Latino Sherlock and his posse from Baker Street to Bakersfield, CA. As the script for the pilot puts it:

SHERLOCK: (inhaling deeply) "It's a three pipe problem, ese."

• Elem-Entry, My Queer Watson - the most notorious example of the burgeoning Holmo-erotica sub-genre that has blossomed in recent years.

Desert Island Drawings

Time to get all Brian Sewelly on you and talk Art. Close personal friends will know that I am not a great fan of the Old Masters and their ilk. The closest I ever got to enjoying a piece of proper art was at a J.W. Waterhouse exhibition a couple of years ago where I tried to spot all the hidden witches, ghosts and toads in The Magic Circle.

No, I thought I’d tell you about artists that I personally like for various reasons. You might even say that they’re influential, but that would pretentiously suggest that I’m an artist myself, which I amn’t. So let’s just say that these are artists that I dig. I dig their style, their subject matter and usually the memories they evoke.

I dashed this list off yesterday in about five minutes, so it’s by no means exhaustive. I could’ve gone on about my many, many favourite comic book artists, but I tried to broaden this out and cover a slightly wider field of artist. Not amazingly wide as you will see. No Banksys or Emins or Hirsts here, but a decentish selection of my Desert Island Drawings. Maybe you’ll dig them too.

1) Ben Eine
I know, I know. I said No Banksys and here I am with another street artist. But I beg your indulgence on account of having walked past Ben Eine’s art twice a day every day for two years. His Alphabet Street letters cover 26 metal shop shutters along the length of Middlesex Street, which I would pass on my way to and from work. I liked how jolly and colourful they were, and it was fun watching each letter spring up overnight as the weeks went by. It gives the place a colourful Sesame Street feel, minus the giant forlorn yellow bird (sadly).


Come and play, everything's A-OK...

2) Hannes Bok
What a cool name. I mean, if I knew nothing of the man’s artwork, I’d still love him for his name. Pseudonym actually, but more power to him for choosing something that sounds like a cross between a Dutch painter and a Hyborian necromancer. I came across his artwork in one of those massive ‘Fantasy of the 20th Century’ coffee table books that parents and rich friends might give you as presents, but which are too damn big for your Billy bookcase. Check out his wraparound cover for The Wheels of If (1948). It looks positively psychedelic, predating Steve Ditko’s freaky dark dimension art for Dr Strange by fifteen years. I love how his style, unlike most other fantasy cover artists, seems to evade dating to a given period – it’s just his own weird surreal look.

The Dread Dormammu is just out of shot.

3) Alex Ross
Imagine reading comics for twenty years, where all the art is broadly from the same ‘pencil in the outlines, ink in some shadows, colour in the white gaps’ school. Then imagine picking up issue #1 of Marvels in 1994 and coming across a fully painted three-dimensional scene of the android Human Torch staggering across the road, his white hot body reflecting off every surface. Man, it was like going from black and white to colour, or 2-D to 3-D (except that 3-D sucks). Alex Ross makes superheroes look both cool and real. You can see Spider-Man’s costume ruching up as he climbs past a Daily Bugle window. You can actually tell all the blond heroes apart. And Iron Man looks like Timothy Dalton! His artwork was a revolution in the comic book world, a style often aped but never matched. My favourite piece of his? This enormous Crisis On Infinite Earths anniversary poster, a joint effort between Ross and legendary penciller George Perez. I had it on my bedroom wall and would stare at the tiny details for hours. You can’t beat a good shot of Superman cradling a dying Supergirl (she's actually dead but I'm still in denial).

Still time to save the world...

4) Neave Parker
Who? You may well ask. Only the bloke who painted the black and white postcards of dinosaurs I had when I was little. I don’t think they started off as postcards though; they originally accompanied articles in the Illustrated London News. Amazing what you can find out online. Have a gander at his noble Triceratops or that most British of terrible lizards, the Iguanodon. How cool are they? I really wanted to include his classic depiction of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, but the internet has let me down badly. Suffice to say that said beast is shown standing fully erect, as T-Rex used to in the 1950s. These days he’s all head-forward and tail-out, the slovenly wretch. But back in Parker’s day, the king of the dinosaurs stood loud and proud.

The Fonz of the early cretaceous.

5) Steve Thomas
I came across this chap’s artwork about a year ago, courtesy of Art You Grew Up With run by the enthusiastic Russell Singler. What I like about Steve Thomas’ work is the smooth way he’s rendered classic Star Wars subjects in the style of early 20th century commercial art. His Cruise The Galaxy poster makes the evil Empire looks like a pretty sexy crew to fly with. Cleverly done, and yet so so wrong.

Fly the Imperial skies.

6) Jan Pienkowski
Polish-born Jan Pienkowski has one of those names that is bound to stick in a young British child’s mind as they grow up. At least, if you read Meg and Mog or the splendidly silhouetted The Fairy Tales. But if the man never did anything else other than create the pop-up book The Haunted House, I think he could rest easy in the knowledge of a life well lived. It’s worth it for the ghost materialising over the sleeping figure in the four-poster bed alone.

No, we don't get many visitors...

7) Boris Vallejo
The master of muscle-bound dudes and chainmail chicks, Boris Vallejo and his wife Julie Bell are responsible for a large portion of the photorealist fantasy art genre. Hovering somewhere between Conan and Playboy, his anatomically detailed work made me want to simultaneously become a painter and a body builder. I still haven’t resolved that one. Now I could’ve chosen any number of swords and sorcery barbarianettes as an example of his work, or a particularly erotic shower scene involving a bar of soap with teeth, but instead I went with Chrome Robot on account of the cool metallic effect.

Good looking fella. Shame about the ears.

8) Russ Nicholson
I must confess that I didn’t even know Mr Nicholson’s name until I looked him up yesterday. I had his art down as belong to another Fighting Fantasy illustrator, John Blanche (who also deserves a mention here for his work on The Shamutanti Hills and other surreally inked adventures), but that’s memory for you. I chose Russ Nicholson over Blanche and other D&Dish artists like the Bok-esque Erol Otus or Jim Roslof (of Keep on the Borderlands fame), because of the sheer impact his drawings had on me when I played The Warlock of Firetop Mountain as a 12-year old. His black and white artwork is superbly atmospheric, and kept me playing the book so I could finally get to turn to the picture of the Warlock himself at the end. Though it was the spooky shots of those four zombies looming in a dungeon cell and the close-up of that decaying ghoul springing to life that really did it for me. I tried to find a nice shot of the original black and white ghoul online, but all I could find was some new-fangled colourised version for an iPhone app of the gamebook. Ptui.

His eyes flick open! You must fight! Turn to section 78.

9) Chris Achilleos
As a teenager, I was introduced to the Gor series of fantasy books by my well-meaning parents. The stories started off as John Cartery/Conany tales of barbarians, swords and giant intelligent animals, but swiftly metamorphosed into a sequence of misogynistic bondage parables loosely disguised as fantasy adventure. But that is a discussion for another time. One of the things I did enjoy about the books were the covers, especially those done by some chap called Achilleos. I particularly liked his depiction of an alien Kur from Marauders of Gor, and set about ripping it off for my Art ‘O’ Level. Later on, I discovered that Mr Achilleos was responsible for many of the fine Dr Who Target book covers I had also enjoyed as a child, though for slightly less suspect reasons than his Gor covers.

Look at Hartnell – Daleks shooting off all over him and he doesn’t give a monkey’s.

10) Tom Sutton
My last artist is one of the finest illustrators of simian shipboard action you are ever likely to see, and that is high praise indeed. Back in the 1970s, when my consumption of weekly Marvel comics consisted of whatever two wildly different titles the company had chosen to merge into one that month, I came across a gem of a story called The Future History Chronicles (as I was to find out some thirty years later). The plot, by comics mainstay Doug Moench, was to take the basic Humans vs Hairy Fellas conflict of the popular Planet of the Apes comics, but move the location to a massive ancient vessel called the Hydromeda, a sort of floating Gormenghast full of gorillas. The plot was cool in itself, but Tom Sutton’s intricate black and white artwork, looking more like something from the French Metal Hurlant magazine, realy blew me away. Too many fine examples to choose from, but I think this shot of the Hydromeda does the job.

Who's rowing? you ask. The human slaves of course.
Damn dirty apes.

Anyway, there you go. Some artists whose work I like. Comics and games and fantasy and dinosaurs. Big surprise.

Commie Ceratopsians vs earthbound Pterodactylia

I'm bored. Or as Mr Igward Pop would have it, I'm the chairman of the bored. It is 10:43 am. I have been in the office 27 minutes – yes, I am a terrible slacker for not getting in before 10:00 am – and I have run out of things to do already. The sum total of my email inbox was as follows:

• 1 test environment availability notification
• 1 train service alteration notification from the tweet-happy National Express East Anglia.
• 2 'working from home' emails from people with better sense than I.
• 1 'book in to your hot desk' reminder – already redundant as my pre-booked desk has been inevitably gazumped by one of the teenage laptop-jockeys that have invaded the office this week as part of some appalling 'cash in on the iPhone app market' project that's just been launched. Damn them and their promising career prospects.

So yeah, I'm bored.

I did just manage to kill about 2 minutes looking up the actor Neil Dudgeon on Wikipedia (so much more readable than IMDB). He replaced John Nettles as 'the new Inspector Barnaby' in the closing minutes of last night's Midsomer Murders in the most clumsy passing of the baton since the deceased El Bandido was swiftly replaced by his newly discovered son El Bandissimo.

El Bandido anybody? Bernie Clifton? Anybody?

Sigh. Am I the only person to remember this musical tour de force from Bernie Clifton's Comedy Shop (Radio 2, 1986)? Apparently I am. Poor Bernie. Poor me.

Tum te tum.

The spellcheck's been turned off of Word on this fershlugginer PC. It just let me get away with the 'nihgt'. Shocking. Can't seem to turn it back on neither. It says 'The spell check is complete'. Yeah, complete but bloody wrong. What am I supposed to do – check it myself, using my eyes? Oh, the pain, the pain.

I did once meet Jonathan Harris you know. He was very old. What do you mean you don't know who Jonathan Harris is? Does the phrase 'You bubble-headed booby' mean nothing to you? Tch, I say. Tch.

It's 11:10 now. 1 hour and 5 minutes until lunch time.

I was very keen to show you how I spent my day on Tuesday, by retrieving my Internet Explorer history and breaking it down by website and category. This would have been followed by a detailed review of each web page for interest and content, possibly accompanied by some sort of Excel pie chart representing that day's web-usage. But I can't do that because of the aforementioned youth squatting at the desk I used on Tuesday. So I can't get at the PC and retrieve my history. My great boredom alleviating plan has been thwarted by malign forces. Maybe I can get him to move.

I'm thinking of setting up a kind of Scooby Doo fake monster scam, to frighten him off so I can get at the PC. I'll have to improvise the creature from materials readily available in the office, mind, so the likelihood of fashioning a glowing diving suit or trapjawed robot is slim. From what I can lay my hands on, the monster is likely to be The Plastic Cup Ghoul Of Desk BO19, which I doubt will generate the levels of stark terror needed to scare that meddling kid away. Bum.



I have now established that dour 1970's sitcom I Didn't Know You Cared was written not by David Nobbs (he of Reginald Perrin distinction) but Peter Tinniswood. Though they did collaborate on The Frost Report. So.

Have decided to compile a list of British sitcoms that have been remade in America. So far I've come up with Reggie (starring Richard Mulligan from Soap), Sanford And Son (which is a black Steptoe I think), Dear John USA (I suspect it wasn't called that in the USA though), and Coupling (which bombed unsurprisingly, being a remake of a remake of Friends).

Am thinking of coming up with a few more sitcoms for Americanization, such as Pa's Army (a platoon of overaged Californians stumble around harassing immigrant Japanese in the wake of Pearl Harbour), Y'All Being Served? (set in the unreconstructed deep south, where Mr Humphries is viciously beaten for being a good fer nuthin' faggot in episode one), and The Minister Of Dibleyville (where the main character is a painfully thin woman).

11:44. Half an hour to go.

Have just learnt that Jon Bon Jovi's first record appearance was on the Star Wars Christmas Album. Also, Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby from Fawlty Towers once appeared in Only Fools And Horses. So the morning hasn't been a total waste. I wonder what useful knowledge has been pushed out of my head by these recent additions? Probably something to do with traffic signs or how to cook vegetables – stuff I rarely use anyway.

Lunch comes. Lunch goes. Time stretches before me like a trackless ebon void, much in the style of popular 80’s video game Tempest.

2:23 pm. Things I have learnt to fear from films:

• Being lost in the trackless desert and trying to walk out but ultimately ending up walking in a giant circle because of my uneven stride length (and grotesquely fat right foot).
• Turning my back on any domestic appliance or kitchen implement without first unplugging them or locking them in a drawer. I've seen Final Destination, which makes my ironing routine a tad more health and safety conscious than it otherwise might be.
• Watching meteor showers, shooting stars or other celestial lightshows. I am genuinely convinced that the result will be total blindness within 24 hours, which will coincide with a disastrous upsurge in the number of ambulatory killer plants loose on the streets.
• Plastic bags blowing loosely in the street. First one will innocently tumble along the pavement next to you, then it will wrap around a foot, then another, then another, until you're completely smothered, just like Robert DeNiro. Brrr.

Have managed to kill some time reading a spirited debate on the accent of the new Worgen player race in online game World Of Warcraft. Is it 'fake Cockney' or 'standard British'? Apparently the cocks on the bulletin boards just can't agree. What is it about bulletin boards and forums (fora?) that bring out the arse in anyone who posts?

3:00 pm. Tea time. Blessed relief. Exchange thirty seconds of pleasantries with charming Polish girl behind the counter of Starbucks. This constitutes the longest conversation I’ve had outside my head in several hours.

Spend some time watching the ongoing chaos on the streets of Cairo, courtesy of Sky News and its shamelessly padded coverage (I stopped watching when I realized the so-called live feed had looped around after 10 minutes. Either that or two identical Egyptians just got two firecrackers lobbed at their feet exactly 10 minutes apart.)

Riveting as the running street battles and synchronized rock throwing events were, I can't help but compare them unfavourably with yesterday's excellent equestrian demonstration in Tahrir Square. Is it wrong of me to have got unhealthily excited at the sight of a man on camelback whipping his way through the mobs? Of course it is. Bloody entertaining though.

Right, there's nothing for it but to comprise a list of something to keep me occupied.

It was a close run thing between the two front-runners, but I've chosen My Top Ten Fictional Dinosaurs over My Top Ten Fictional Ghosts. Better luck next time, you spooks (as Mr Meaker would probably say).

1. Devil Dinosaur. Obviously. If only for his excellent dentistry and furry little chum.
2. Godzilla off the old Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Coz he was heroic and came to the aid of the crew of the Calico whenever they needed him (or whenever the bearded guy pressed the electronic Godzilla-signal, which suggests a questionable element of dino-brainwashing which I prefer to gloss over).
3. The excavator-dinosaur at the beginning of The Flintstones. I always wanted to slide down his back like Fred did at knocking off time. I've tried it with one of the larger chaps at work but it's not the same.

4. Droog. What do you mean you've never heard of him? Well, he was a big orange triceratops who spoke in rhyme and appeared in one issue of The Incredible Hulk in the 1970's. He was technically a bad guy as he was the loyal pet of the communist super scientist known as the Gremlin, but he was very cool, and I'm lobbying Marvel to give him his own mini-series, or at least a cameo in Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers.
5. Gwangi from The Valley Of. I pronounce that with two hard 'G' sounds, by the way. He held his own against a posse of cowboys and a circus elephant if memory serves, which is quite a stretch genre-wise. Well done to him.

6. Pterry. He of Jigsaw fame, home of Adrian Hedley and his tall hat, Janet Ellis and her big bosoms, Jigg the crap animated jigsaw piece, Biggun the unconvincing giant, and the nightmare made form that was Mr Noseybonk. Anyway, Pterry was a noble Pterodactyl, or possible Pteranodon. I'm unsure of the difference. He had trouble flying as I recall, not unlike Orville but minus the suspect relationship with Keith Harris.
7. The Chewits dinosaur. For his sheer voraciousness and fabulously mobile claymated mouth. For years I kept an increasingly squishy packet of Chewits with me, just in case I had the bad luck to be passing a major world attraction when the ever-hungry monster turned up.

8. Big Hungry. He was a nothosaur from the second book of the series Flesh in 2000AD, and spent his idle hours munching up prehistoric sea-life and menacing time-travelling fishermen, before being flung 'up the time lanes' as we Flesh-o-philes say, and plopping down in Loch Ness. Much to the annoyance of the Skarasen I should imagine.
9. The T-Rex in the original Tomb Raider game. My God, that was scary when he came round the side of the valley and charged Lara. But at least he forced me to learn the awkward 'backflip whilst firing' combo.

10. The brachiosaurus at Blackgang Chine. I believe he still looms over the treetop walkway as you enter the chine, which is both marvellous and a little intimidating. Even better his old head, the less impressive 'Ducky' as he is known, can still be seen smirking his big green face off nearby.

Feel free to contribute your own.

5:27 pm. Realize I have become far too engrossed in pondering the relative merits of rhyming commie ceratopsians versus tragically earth-bound pterodactylia, and should really make plans to slope off home, another productive day of work complete.

Annoyingly, workaholic colleagues surround me on all sides, having got into the office before me and are now seemingly intent on working into the evening out of some sort of misguided sense of corporate loyalty. Thus am forced to twiddle thumbs (in reality, rearrange my favourites on Internet Explorer into alphabetical order) until the desks have been sufficiently vacated that I can nip off without looking like a total slackpants.

Belatedly notice that my screen has been unwisely angled so as to be on view to the majority of the office all day and must now hope vainly that nobody noticed that the ‘design document’ I’ve been hammering away at all day has the unusual title of Bored. Tch.

My Favourite Dinosaur and The Best Football Matches Ever

Hello. Just to get a little topical here for a change, election fever has just broken out in the UK. Well, not fever exactly. Election sniffles. Possibly election tickly cough. At any rate, the media is abuzz with high-street interviews and vox pops. Who, they want to know, does Joe Public want as Prime Minister?

But they’re missing the big question of course. The question that’s certainly on my lips, and doubtless yours. What, I say what, is your favourite dinosaur?

I should very much like to think that your answer has sprung instantly to mind with nary a second’s deliberation. Of course it has. Surely, like me, you’ve had a fave dino since childhood. I have. Can you guess what it is? I imagine it’s quite a popular choice. It’s our old friend Triceratops. How about you? I mean, isn’t Triceratops the best one, hands down? Not the biggest or the fiercest for sure, but isn’t he the one you’d want backing you up in a fight?

To explain: I grew up on a diet of dinosaur books which were written in the present tense with stirring passages like

“The sluggish air of the cretaceous grasslands is stirred by the approach of a mighty predator. Look! It is Tyrannosaurus Rex, stalking the peaceful herbivores gathering by the water hole. His powerful hind legs and tail make short work of the distance as he lunges out, snatching a young Anatosaurus in his razor sharp mouth. But what is this? From behind come heavy footfalls and an indignant snort. It is Triceratops, ready to defend his grazing lands. Tyrannosaurus turns and bellows a challenge, confident of his savage power. But Triceratops stands his ground, lowering his tough bony frilled head to aim his long horns at Tyrannosaurus’ soft belly...”

I just made that all up, as you can doubtless tell. Factual corrections are welcome.

But riveting stuff all the same. By the time I had seen documentary-drama The Valley Of Gwangi, Triceratops’ role in dinosaur society was clear to me. He’s basically the sheriff of Dino county, always turning up in the nick of time to defend the weak against the obvious villain of the piece, T Rex.

Look at him – what’s not to love about Triceratops? He’s tough, armoured and he’s got a brilliant head. What’s Rex got? Yeah, the teeth, the legs, the tail, but look at them puny arms – they’re like Ma Rex was prescribed thalidomide or something. Plus, Triceratops is actually a herbivore – he doesn’t fight the Tyrannosaurus for meat, he does it coz it’s The Right Thing To Do. If he was a role-playing game archetype, his motivation would be Protect The Innocent. Rock on, Triceratops, you can be my wing-man any time.

There are people out there, amazingly, who have a different favourite dinosaur. Some will doubtless favour Johnny-come-lately Velociraptor, but I don’t count him as he was just invented by Michael Crichton in 1990. Herself’s favourite is the Plesiosaur, which she justifies convincingly by explaining that the Loch Ness Monster is clearly a plesiosaur and therefore great. Fair play. I always thought Nessie was an elasmosaur myself, but then I’ve always been a non-conformist.

A colleague at work said that her favourite is Stegosaurus. What she actually said was ‘that one with the things on its back’, which we eventually decided had to be Stegosaurus. I still have my doubts though, as this is the same women who described the monster in a horror film she once saw as ‘a muffin on a mop’.

Thinking about Triceratops got me thinking about my favourite living animal, which unsurprisingly is the rhino, surely the modern-day equivalent. I must have some weird thing for tough, horny creatures. Ahem.

Rhinos are cool though, aren’t they? I mean they were in Prince John’s royal guard in the definitive version of Robin Hood, which admittedly makes them baddies, but they do look fine in blue and purple uniforms. Not only that, but there was a rhino on the team in one of the three Best Football Matches Ever. Have a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPmESnXI7Vw

The other two Best Matches Ever are Escape To Victory (Allies vs Nazis) and that Nike advert (Cantona and co. vs Demons). ‘Au Revoir’ indeed. Can there be any football matches greater than these? I think not.

I confidently predict that this summer will bring us a blockbusting vampire nazis vs demon were-rhinos footie film. It’ll probably be called Final Night, or Blood Match. It practically writes itself.