Permanently Bewildered22 Jul 2008 01:44 pm

Nearly Smelling

By Nelson

About some programme called “The Thatcher Years” I think.

Truly a gritty story and one overall well tackled by the BBC. Although I do have to say that the war committee spoke to each other in a most non-government type fashion, which was rather poor. Margaret Thatcher was a lot tougher and harder than this portrayal of the woman. Her involvement was to secure a vote for herself at any cost. Sadly this was to mean British and Argentinean lives. She nearly smelled of roses if you believed this actress.
Mark Latley, Glasgow

It was indeed a VERY non-government type fashion. None of them were wearing their ceremonial codpieces and Lady Thatcher’s mighty Golden Sceptre of Power was portrayed as being a mere 3-foot long.

Watched and much enjoyed, but for one glaring error. The car Dennis Thatcher was driving when he first met Margaret in 1949, was a red Jaguar XK150 Drophead. This model was not launched for another eight years, in 1958. I think that one of your researchers was not doing their job. The Jaguar sports car he would have been driving in 1949 would have been the XK120. Otherwise an interesting and well put together show.
Jeremy Littlewood, Malaga, Spain

Utterly tragic.

Unfortunately, by the time I’m 65 I’ll probably be writing to the BBC to tell them that Duran Duran could not have appeared on Top of the Pops with a DX7 until at least 1983.

43 Responses to “Nearly Smelling”

  1. on 22 Jul 2008 at 2:12 pm   Nelson

    This is because I’m a bit of a synth nerd. Not because I’m a massive Duran Duran fan.

  2. on 22 Jul 2008 at 2:13 pm   Rich(MMath)(Oxon)

    …and much enjoyed, but for one glaring error. The car Dennis Thatcher was driving when he first met Margaret in 1949, was a red Jaguar XK150 Drophead. This model was not launched for another eight years, in 1958. I think that one of your researchers was not doing their job. The Jaguar sports car he would have been driving in 1949 would have been the XK120. Otherwise an interesting and well put together show.
    Jeremy Littlewood, Malaga, Spain

    This part went off the boil a bit. But otherwise, it was an interesting and well put together post.

  3. on 22 Jul 2008 at 2:41 pm   Wellington

    This is because I’m a bit of a synth nerd. Not because I’m a massive Duran Duran fan.

    I honestly don’t know which is worse.

  4. on 22 Jul 2008 at 2:48 pm   JonR

    leave him alone!

    hey Nelson, come round, i’ll get some wine, we can show each other our patch cords.

  5. on 22 Jul 2008 at 2:52 pm   Mr Clovis

    DX7′s are for girly-men. Real men admire the 0B8.

  6. on 22 Jul 2008 at 3:01 pm   Nelson

    Just cos you can’t program FM.

  7. on 22 Jul 2008 at 3:13 pm   Kelvin

    If it ain’t a moog, it ain’t in vogue.

  8. on 22 Jul 2008 at 3:42 pm   arsebanana

    How could anyone watch a program about Thatcher without kicking the telly to bits? So he couldn’t have been driving some wanky posh twat car in 1940 whatever. Howabout, the scene where a blood-drinking she-demon became prime minister should never have happened, unfortunately this program reminded us that it did, lets all jump off a cliff.

  9. on 22 Jul 2008 at 3:57 pm   Rotwatcher

    So what do you think of the XP80? I bought one a few years ago but I lost the will to live trying to understand the instructions.

  10. on 22 Jul 2008 at 3:59 pm   Matt

    Bah. ARP2600 ftw.

  11. on 22 Jul 2008 at 4:03 pm   Tim

    Real men admire the 0B8.

    No, real men only admire cold war Soviet synthesisers made out of valves from submarines…..

  12. on 22 Jul 2008 at 4:06 pm   JonR

    no, real men build their own filters and own at least one oscilloscope.

  13. on 22 Jul 2008 at 4:07 pm   dirigible (RX7)

    “How could anyone watch a program about Thatcher without kicking the telly to bits? ”

    Some sort of straitjacket or restraints presumably.

  14. on 22 Jul 2008 at 4:07 pm   Royce

    I always seem to get stuck next to people like Jeremy Littlewood at dinner parties. The healthcare bills for sticking forks in my eyes ran to many tens of thousands of pounds last year alone.

  15. on 22 Jul 2008 at 4:16 pm   dutchthecap

    Ah come on Royce, you’ve got to make the most of these opportunities. If I were unlucky enough to spend time with Jeremy, I’d set myself a goal of bullying him till he cried. then I’d stick forks in HIS eyes.

    Imagine the size of his adenoids.

  16. on 22 Jul 2008 at 4:35 pm   Gary Nulabour

    You kids will play with a Sequential Circuits Pro One, or you’ll have no tea.

  17. on 22 Jul 2008 at 4:40 pm   JonR

    Oberheim Prommer. you whippersnappers have got it too easy, i had to burn *my* breakbeats onto EPROM chips.

  18. on 22 Jul 2008 at 4:46 pm   Nelson

    Pah. In my day, a sampler was something you bought instead of a house.

    I do actually have an SCI Drumtraks though, with a couple of spare chips with different kick + tom sounds on :) But I bought that later on in 1992 or something when it was considered “a bit shit”.

  19. on 22 Jul 2008 at 5:12 pm   themagicmonkey

    Can anyone else see themselves turning gay for Nelson? I fancy him a little bit more every time he writes something. Synth…ahhhh.

    Jeremy Littlewood is definitely one of those gruesome English expats in Malaga, the ones who make no effort to integrate or learn the language (and then bemoan people doing the same in the UK) and are now stuck there because the values of their house has plummeted and they can’t afford to go home. Brian Hanrahanrahan did a report on them a couple of weeks back, and could barely suppress a large smirk.

  20. on 22 Jul 2008 at 5:43 pm   Lancelot Ramsbottom, XK Jaguar Owners Club (President. Ret.)

    The car Dennis Thatcher was driving when he first met Margaret in 1949, was a red Jaguar XK150 Drophead. This model was not launched for another eight years, in 1958. Jeremy Littlewood, Malaga, Spain

    Jeremy? Are you some sort of simple-minded cretin? I saw that program. Red? RED? What on earth do you mean, ‘red’? It was Royal Burgundy, you triple-bollocked twat.

  21. on 22 Jul 2008 at 6:42 pm   Kelvin

    Pah. In my day, a sampler was something you bought instead of a house.

    Honestly, what kind of idiot would buy anything in preference to a house?
    Opinion courtesy of The Daily Express six months ago

  22. on 22 Jul 2008 at 7:09 pm   domino

    Can anyone else see themselves turning gay for Nelson? I fancy him a little bit more every time he writes something. Synth…ahhhh.

    I don’t need to, being a GURL and that.

    *skips around in a girly fashion*

  23. on 22 Jul 2008 at 7:22 pm   lisa simpson

    jeremy clearly thinks he is an authority on such things but if he was. really paying attention he’d know Denis Thatcher had only one N in his name. shame on his pedantry credentials.

    I’m not usually this much of a geek.

  24. on 22 Jul 2008 at 7:23 pm   lisa simpson

    damn that typo. bloody crap iPod keyboard.

  25. on 22 Jul 2008 at 9:52 pm   cheesewog

    It’s that wonderfully English combination of nerdiness about one subject that he wants to wank himself off about, and utter ignorance of another – i.e GYAC retard there isn’t a magic space garage staffed by pixies that contains every fucking car ever fucking made in every fucking colour that you can wander into and pick from in order to shoot a television programme. The turd.

  26. on 22 Jul 2008 at 10:07 pm   The Gnome Secretary

    All of you should consider trading in your synths, so we can all club together and buy a Con Brio. THE WORLD’S MOST ADVANCED DIGITAL SYNTHESISER

  27. on 22 Jul 2008 at 10:10 pm   The Gnome Secretary

    If I the ability to spell synthesizer that is.

    Can anyone else see themselves turning gay for Nelson?

    I pood in his mouth last night, does that increase or decrease your desire?

  28. on 22 Jul 2008 at 10:14 pm   The Gnome Secretary

    Triple posting, cock smoking … the reason I popped over today (before getting distracted) is to let you know that this blog has linked to by a well-known MacTard.

    I made sure to correct his use of ‘period’ as punctuation. Considering he is a Brit, this behaviour is almost as unacceptable as the BBC using the wrong Jag.

    Last post for this story, promise.

  29. on 23 Jul 2008 at 12:18 am   Mr Clovis

    “no, real men build their own filters and own at least one oscilloscope.”

    …a theramin and a Prophet 5. I once touched Kate Bush’s Fairlight. Fortunately, the keyboard cleaned up nicely afterwards.

  30. on 23 Jul 2008 at 1:51 am   Nelson

    YOU TOUCHED KT’S FAIRLIGHT???

    So many emotions. Excitement. Envy. Rage. Sexual excitement. I think I might have to go and have a little cry.

  31. on 23 Jul 2008 at 2:16 am   DC

    A small part of my childhood just got raped out on the wiley, windy moors.

  32. on 23 Jul 2008 at 12:19 pm   C4RO

    I have met AND touched Kate Bush… although not in the fairlights…

  33. on 23 Jul 2008 at 12:46 pm   Nelson

    I used to fancy her something rotten when I was about 17. Now I just want to play with her Fairlight. Oh and, obviously, I still think she’s brilliant. Those were the days eh? Proper pop music that was weird and good. I might phone the BBC and complain about MODERN BRITAIN.

  34. on 23 Jul 2008 at 1:07 pm   Dingleberry

    The video for Babooshka did very funny loop-da-loop things to my 14 y.o. emotions (circa 1983). Not wishing to appear sychophantic, I have to agree with Nelson on the massive Kate Bush crush. Though the words on Hounds of Love suggest she’d be a tricky girlfriend.

    (namedrop: An old mate played trumpet on one of her albums in the 90s and went out to her farm in Ireland where she’s got her studio. He came back shuffling his feet and grinning shyly about how utterly lovely she is.)

  35. on 23 Jul 2008 at 1:18 pm   Kelvin

    To quote some excellent graffiti, One in Kate Bush is worth ten in the hand.

  36. on 23 Jul 2008 at 1:41 pm   skunkpussy

    To quote some excellent graffiti, One in Kate Bush is worth ten in the hand.

    (C) Rab C Nesbit, BBC Scotland’s ‘Naked Video’, 1986

  37. on 23 Jul 2008 at 3:34 pm   Kelvin

    Nah, it was in one of Nigel Rees’ Graffiti books years before that.

    Yes, I know, Quote Unquote and all that, but in my defence I was about 15 when I found it at a jumble sale and it had swears in it.

  38. on 23 Jul 2008 at 4:07 pm   themagicmonkey

    Kate Bush lives near me. Nelson if you come round mine we can do the sex, and then go and camp by her extravagant front gate. Deal?

  39. on 23 Jul 2008 at 4:31 pm   Nelson

    K. I guess that “sex with internet strangers of unknown gender” is just the price I’ll have to pay for not finding her address out on my own.

  40. on 23 Jul 2008 at 5:05 pm   Em

    Real men admire the 0B8.

    No, real men only admire cold war Soviet synthesisers made out of valves from submarines…

    etc…

    http://xkcd.com/378/

    [As an acoustic musician, that's the nearest I can get to a contribution on this one]

  41. on 23 Jul 2008 at 5:26 pm   Mr Clovis

    Nelson and Dingleberry,
    I know, I know. We all do.
    KB stirred the loins of many, but it was knowing that it was HER keyboard, where she sat and composed, that was so arrousing.

    But what of the reverse? I repaired one of INXS’ keyboards, and spoke to Mike Hutchins himself. Sometime later, he hanged himself while engaged an act of auto-eroticsm. Coincidence? You decide.

  42. on 24 Jul 2008 at 12:19 am   America (The House With No Name)

    Internet sex, Kate Bush and 80s synths. You guys are all so cute. I think I’ve found Nerdvana

  43. on 25 Jul 2008 at 3:25 pm   The Sexually Ambiguous Placebo Dude

    I once stole Kate’s “Wunning up dat hill” song and tore it an extra synthy angsty new one.

    C’mon c’mon baby c’mon c’mon darlin