I've had a long weekend, so there's shedloads in my mailbox. All replies are in the order in which they arrived in my box. On Fri, 3 Apr 1998, JOSEPH FOSTER wrote:

The song that reveals how I feel about sex is ' whatever happened to you', the theme tune to 'whatever happened to the likely lads'.

Snuff do a punk cover version of this. It's on the Deceptive 50 album. On Sat, 4 Apr 1998, Dr E.J. Edwards wrote:

Why has no-one mentioned PlayAway?? With the God like stature of Brian Cant (now to be heard over dubbing a cartoon for Lee & Herring).

Saw him doing a show in the MacBob in Stirling, accompanied by Jonathon Cohen on piano. The only joke I remember is him saying he would get the name of someone in the audience, and instantly think of a song with their name in it. A girl shouts out her name, and he launches into Happy Birthday.

and for those really young at heart is it the round window, the square window....?

I read somewhere that the choice of window was meant to relate to the topic of the film, so if it was about making footballs, they went through the round window. For this reason, the arch window was almost never used. On Sat, 4 Apr 1998, jon g. wrote:

I think we're going to have to have our own separate list for kids tv discussions.

For those of you with newsgroup access, there exists uk.media.tv.childrens for this kind of discussion. On Sat, 4 Apr 1998, Alan Prior wrote:

I went to see Glen Michael's Cavalcade live, y'know...was this programme broadcast in England? Probably not. I've still got his autograph somewhere, I think...

It was only on in STV-land. I went to one of his shows, too, and won a jigsaw with him and Paladin and Rusty on it. I'm still upset that he didn't read out my birthday when my mum sent it in, though.

Someone mentioned 'Gregory's Girl'... Omigod, I love this film!

Much as I love it, I'm really concerned about the news that Bill Forsyth is making a sequel. The story is apparently going to be about Gregory now that he's approaching middle-age. I can't imagine it will be anything near as gripping as the original. On Sat, 4 Apr 1998, John Jackson wrote:

Yes well you could apply this to anyone. Someone posts something that you perceive to be really offensive but you know them so that's ok. Someone else posts something you don't like but you don't know them so you send something to the list giving them a telling off. Double standards maybe?

That's the way it seems to me. One list member told me that he was pissed off by my flippant comments about "Kate Winslet's tits and hand shandies" (his words, not mine), but the posting of the Sinister sleaze-quiz (anal sex and masturbation featuring quite heavily) drew nary a complaint from him. And I have been accused of being a misogynistic racist cunt after posting that Spice Girls gag, by someone who clearly has no idea of what "racist" means. Describing someone as "black" is not racist. Stereotyping someone *because* they're black is. I do not get offended if someone describes me as blond. If someone said "All blond people have small willies", I might have cause for complaint. (oh, and as for the "misogynist" tag, tell that to my sister who originally told me that joke.) On Sat, 4 Apr 1998, Alan Prior wrote:

Yay! Just found 'Gregory's Girl' video, so i'm off to watch it again. then maybe 'Dazed & Confused' again.

After the Ferris Bueller discussions on here, I bought the video on Saturday for a fiver. Spent the weekend at my parents' house, and what should be on satellite but... Ferris Bueller. Along with The Breakfast Club and another John Hughes teen-angst movie. An effing top night was had by all.

so many ways of avoiding revision/homework...

Worms 2 is standing me in good stead at the moment. (two weeks til my finals. <sigh> I'm panicking about how little I've done, and yet can't get motivated to do anything. I wish I could be a committed go-getter type, but I just cannot be arsed.) On Sun, 5 Apr 1998, Courtney Knopf wrote:

I finally visited Rod's page. I was endlessly amused and I cannot wait for his review of the Spice Girls concert. baited breath, I tell you;)

Well, to start with, here's the 50-words-or-less review I wrote for Melody Maker's "Readers Lives" section: "Tonight, the Spicey bandwagon rolled in to town, and though it may damage my cred to admit it, I was there, slamming it to the left, with 8,000 like-minded fans. I can be an indiekid the other 364 days. Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be Pop Boy." The concert itself was just unreally great. I danced, I jumped, I screamed, I waved, I cheered, I sang. It was terrific. The gals were onstage for about 1hr 40mins, which is impressive when you consider that the two albums combined are only 1h20m. Their costumes were smart and Mel C got the biggest cheer of the night when she came on in a Scotland football top. Surprise of the night goes to Victoria's voice, which was *astounding*! Considering the fact that when Wannabe came out, I described her as "the one at the back who doesn't sing", it was incredible how great she sounded when doing songs like Viva Forever. The audience was mainly pre- to early-teen girls (with parents in tow), but it has to be said that they were nowhere near as up-for-it as me, my sister and her friend (ages 21, 19 and 20 respectively). I mean, they *sat down* for goodness sake! We were up on our feet the whole time, and I fear that the 10-year-olds next to me were thinking "What is that wanker on?", the answer to which being "GIRL POWER!" It opened with William Shatner's voice booming "SPICE... the final frontier. Their mission: To boldly go where no girl group has gone before", and finished with them leaving the stage to the riff from "Firestarter" And the songs... well, you know them all already, but the way they ripped through them was unreal. And they finished with a storming version of "We Are Family". What? Did you expect a bad review? On Sun, 5 Apr 1998, Alan Prior wrote:

did anyone see TMWRNJ ("TMWRNJ!!!" repeat until not funny) today. The fake Rod Hull from Fist of Fun was on!!! Yay! "Jelly!" Omigod, thats another tv show i forgot about, The Pink Windmill!

Saw Rod Hull & Emu live once at the Kings Theatre in Embra. They weren't very good though.

i visited everyones websites last night...i think jong & bethey's is sooo cool. "funky with a y", as they say...and sarah has manics bits! hooray. and a lovely piccy. couldn't be bothered going any further than the opening page of rod's. no real reason, just wanted to go back to jon's one i think. so can't say anything about that.

<sulk> Humph. Well, if you want a reason to go back, I've got about 15 photos of me (ranging from baby to early teens) in my bag which I'm scanning in after I've finished going through all the Sinister mail, and which I'll put online soon. Try http://www.begbie.com/rod/photos/ after about three o'clock. I'll get around to doing webpages around them some other time.

i went off the last album for a bit, 'specially as people kept singing bits out of 'Disco 2000' at me.

It's going to get worse... Jarvis is going to be minted after next December. On Mon, 6 Apr 1998, Adrian Evans wrote:

I'd just like to complain about the travesty that was this weekends Stars In Their Eyes. Clearly the audience consisted of 250 members of Rod Begbies family.

Explain... (I was out at the afore-mentioned concert on Saturday night, thereby missing my weekly laugh at Matthew Kelly's tallness) On Mon, 6 Apr 1998, minigo wrote:

Imagine GG with overdubs, kind of like what they did to Trainspotting a few years ago! (not that I'm comparing the two!) Perish the thought. Keep it in Scotland.

They *did* do this. I saw a version of SKY a few years back, where they'd dubbed the Scottish accents with... Scottish accents. Completely freaky. Phew, that's everything. Tune in on Thursday for another exciting installment of Rod's Brain. And please, don't have knightmares... Rod. Rod Begbie @ http://www.begbie.com | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | You know that I've been drunk a thousand times, | And these should be the best days of my life. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . Listen, this is pish, I think I'll leave -----------------------------------------------------------------------