Not as sad as gratuitously inserting a Raccoons reference into the fforum...

How did they ever publish that paper without going bust? Nobody ever seemed to read it. I reckon it was all a front for Ralph's lucrative Columbian Import business....



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Columbian Import? Nah, far too tame.



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There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

Granted. It'd explain his behaviour though...



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Hmm, yes.

They annoyed me, those racoons...



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There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

I was never a huge fan. Strange how I remember so much, though. Do you remember that 'Wheeled Warriors' thingummy? I can remember that they were responsible for battling some giant weed in a sort of adolescent Titchmarsh kind of way, but nothing else - including the title...



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Okay, this is obviously a Pommie thing, coz I have absolutely NO idea what you're talking about.

*gasp* No idea? No idea about 'Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors'?

Well, in fairness it was a bit poor. Definitely runner-up to 'Ulysses 31' and 'The Lost Cities of Gold'. Eeh, now I'm showing my age.



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"Whisky-wa-wa," I breathed - she was dressed as Biffo the Bear.

And I've never heard of THEM either!

I speed read naturally too. I'm not sure if that's why I have problems remembering plots for more than a few months - I can sometimes repeatedly re-read detective novels with no idea who did it. Which is handy.

Don't know how long it took me to read HP5, probably... about 5 hours? I read it in bits.



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Do something pretty while you can...

Cities of Gold was fantastic! I've still never seen the last episode though :(



I drink to drown my sorrows. Unfortunately they've learnt how to swim.

Well, let's see - they get the big metal condor going with the sun and moon amulets, it turns out Esteban is heir to the Aztec empire, and Jesse Birdsall goes off with that-one-out-of-'The-Bill's-wife. Oh no, wait, that was the final episode of 'Eldorado'.

More Pommie things, kaz :) 'Eldorado' was a Brit soap opera they scrapped 'Doctor Who' in favour of. Let's see, 'DW' lasted 26 years and guttered in 1989 with a low of just under four million viewers; 'Eldorado' lasted one season and, as I recall, barely scraped two million viewers. Game, set and vortex.



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"Whisky-wa-wa," I breathed - she was dressed as Biffo the Bear.

2 million viewers? That's amazing, considering everyone in the country remembers it and bits of the plot and characters... I remember Pilar. And Birdy.



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Do something pretty while you can...

I may have mis-recalled. It certainly did sufficiently worse than 'DW' for the Beeb to give it up in a hurry. Qv the recent attempted relaunch of 'Crossroads'.



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"Whisky-wa-wa," I breathed - she was dressed as Biffo the Bear.

And I'll bet the branch that sells shows overseas didn't make nearly as much on Eldorado either, while I know Dr. Who was broadcast (in reruns) by stations in Oz, the US and Canada.

Actually, I'm sure I read somewhere that Eldorado was a massive hit in Albania. where it was mistaken for top-notch political satire.

On reflection, I could be wrong.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I adore Tom Holt's humourous novels, but then I have a wide range of taste. Mr. Fforde's books are good b/c when I get one of the in-jokes I giggle to myself like a little kid with a secret. (okay, I accidentally typed "ni-jokes" and then giggled again).

Aren't ni-jokes something to do with Monty Python?

You should probably be warned, Mr H*lt is not universally loved round here, as he wrote a somewhat, erm, ungenerous review of The Eyre Affair for SFX (I think it was). Myself, I've never got on with his comic novels, but the historical novels are IMO really accomplished books.

And, by the way, welcome . . . you'll like it here, I'm sure (anyone who giggles to themselves a lot will find it a second home, I reckon . . .)



Jesus saves; Buddha does incremental backup.

I've never really got on with that entire genre of comic novel - the Holts, the Rankins, the Pratchetts (well, to a limited extent). Where His Jasperity scores over these other authors, as far as I'm concerned, besides using humourous footnotes in a way *that I actually find funny*, is in the high volume of literary gags. Mmm, literary gags - more please! I think what won me over fully was the idea of Shakespeare with audience participation. Oh, and the brutal gunning down of incidental Dickens characters. You wicked, wicked man, Mr Ff.



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"Whisky-wa-wa," I breathed - she was dressed as Biffo the Bear.

yes, ni-jokes was a MP reference. hee!

I tracked down the Tom Holt article after you mentioned it and , who-hoo-eee! Man, is that pointedly arrogant, and Mr. Fforde's response was alarming (I read it on his website) ... I blushed while reading because I felt I had intruded onto a private argument made public.

anyhoo, I'll avoid talking about Mr. Holt if it upsets people --

however a great old funny and intelligent book that Mr. Fforde's stuff reminds me of (a little) is '1066 and All That'. And although that books ends with the assumption that after WWI, America was Top Nation and history came to a .

I presume to argue that after Mr. Fforde's book, the history of humorous fiction will come to a .

In a good way of course.

Yes, our Jasper does indeed stand heir to a proud tradition of which Sellar and Yeatman are a part (do not attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once).

Changing the subject slightly, I read a book lately that Jasper always raves about; Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut. Most odd, and quite interesting, but in the end rather disappointing. I felt more could have been made of the weird elements, and the disjointed time-frame was rather half-baked. It struck me as in inferior version of Catch 22, without the jokes. Anyone else read it?



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty