I've moved the laptop to it's more natural home in my bedroom near my bedside, only this time it's not on the bed itself, but on the wooden table next to it, which makes things a lot more convinient and laid back, compared to having it on the wooden desk near the window.
The only problem is, where to put my radio alarm clock if I end up bringing that back to Canterbury. I could probably place it on top of my USB CD writer, considering I hardly use the radio itself because my mobile makes very loud put-putting noises when near it which isn't the most ideal thing to wake up to in the middle of the night.
I'll go onto more unwelcome intrusions of a similar nature later.
I didn't watch a heavy amount of television tonight apart from an edition of the
Weakest Link featuring the "stars" of Strictly Come Dancing. Craig Revel Horwood was the first to be voted off despite not getting any questions wrong, in the same way that Bernard Manning was the first one off in an edition devoted to stand up comedians including Iain Lee who ended up winning, Arabella Weir who has barely made me laugh since the Fast Show, and fellow Man City supporter Eddie Large.
The winner of tonight's special was Mark Foster who unfortunatlely for me took off his shirt after winning against Anton Du Beke who continued to prove the he's one of the worst losers.
The most interesting part of the show however was spotting a certain Hannah Dorey in the end credits who works on the show as a production co-ordinator.
It appears that she's continuing to go into even better things in television and good luck to her too. Judging by a few of her photos on Facebook, she looks even better than she did when she used to visit me as part of a befriending scheme 8 years ago.
Although discovering her on there was just part of the daze I ended up going through last summer when just about every girl on Facebook I adored would be mentioned in my notes.
On the subject of gameshows the uploads on TV-Ark were spot on with such examples as the final edition of Blockbusters transmitted on ITV back in 1993, Bob Says Opportunity Knocks which is memorable to me mainly because of the use of Kiki Dee's "Star" as the theme tune, and HTV's Keynotes broadcast in the legendary 9:25 slot on ITV daytimes before trash such as Trisha and Jeremy Kyle took over. One of the constestants on Keynotes happened to be then Invicta FM breakfast presenter Daryl Denham who's done pretty well in his radio career after being sacked from the station in 1993.
I'll have to upload a few of his naughty PAMS jingles from his X-Rated Hallam FM show in the late 90s which are hilarious.
It's worth mentioning the end credits to Family Fortunes with Bob Monkhouse as one of the consultants on there happened to be Ian Messiter, the inventor of possibly the best radio game show "Just A Minute".
There are also a few more recent examples such as the heavilly underrated Friends Like These with Ian Wright, and from the show's former hosts "Pokerface" another superb show which Ant & Dec happened to invent during a conversation in the pub like all the best ideas.
And to a lesser extent there's "The Vault" which ran for three series with three different presenters with Melanie Sykes being the one featured on the site who presented for one and a half series before having a baby, and who I developed a bit of a crush on.
Despite the fact she was rather wooden at presenting and the questions seemed to be harder than University Challenge.
On that subject there was a very interesting documentary about the series on BBC 2 tonight and I must re-view the film "Starter For 10" which was one of the many I tried viewing whilst recovering from my illness and being unable to stay still.
The best upload has to be a rarity of the opening titles to TVS's revival of Concentration from 1988 with Nick Jackson as the host. This was his only venture into presenting as he was best known for being a voiceover man on shows such as Name That Tune,
The £6400 Question (to give it it's true prize value) and of course Catchphrase during its golden era with TVS.
And there's the opening titles to that show from 1987 complete with the TVS ident at the start where Nick can also be heard, although whereas on Concentration he sounds more bold and authorative without being pompous, as the voiceover man on Catchphrase he sounds more like an even camper Dale Winton.
"Comedy" Dave Vitti even used him as the voiceover for his Challenge pilot "Reverse-A-Word" as presented by Scott Mills originally attempted on The Chris Moyles Show although I doubt Moyles regarded it as one of their achievements compared to getting Peter Andre to Number 1.
However having watched both the Home Alone movies whilst in Norfolk, I'm certain that Tim Curry as the "evil" hotel attendant bares an uncanny resemblance to the voiceover artist who according to his website used to read the news on both Radio 1 and Radio 2 during the 80s.
And it's definitely worth mentioning his stint on the original Radio Victory back in the mid 70s where he was known as "Nicky Jackson". A photo of which can be seen over at This Is ILR.
Definitely a voice I would consider using if I had the cash although I doubt Dan Roberts our branding guy at Smoke would agree. He'd probably see the funny side however.
This would probably be a good time to give my views on what BBC 1 has to offer from next weekend and it doesn't look too good.
Richard Hammond is set to present the UK version of what we're calling "Total Wipe Out" which to me looks like a bigger budget version of Hole In The Wall done on location.
If that's the case I may become addicted.
That's definitely not likely to be the case with Graham Norton's new show "Your Country Needs You" with heavy emphasis on the first syllable of the second word because once again it will involve Andrew Lloyd Nobber, who claims he has what it takes to create "the winning Eurovision entry".
However Thursday sees the return of The Krypton Factor to ITV1 which I'll definitely be watching and with a bit of luck, people at Uni will start to associate it as a television show rather than me walking across the bicycle posts on a Monday night.
Whilst that could be one of the contenders for the best gameshow, the worst one to have been made has to be HTV's "Star Quality" shown on ITV in 1989.
It was so bad that TVS didn't even bother to show it and instead repeated all of Jeremy Beadle's episodes of Chain Letters. I don't know if Thames showed it where I lived at the time but luckily I was fortunate enough never to see this embarrasment of a television show.
Hosted by Gyles Brandreth, contestants competed against each other answering general knowledge questions and audtioning their "individual talent" amongst a set of judges. And too many judges at that.
If my description barely makes any sense (and not surprising either) then it's worth having a gander at an item about the show from the first series of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe as explained by Robert Popper, ex head of comedy at Channel 4 and co-creator of the superb "Look Around You" on BBC 2.
It was this show that actually inspired my favourite episode of LAY series 2 based around music where three performers competed to win a recording contract commencing in the year 2000.
The best one being Tony Rudd as played by Kevin Eldon who comes up with the goods once again.
As you'll see in the clip above, Tony Rudd happens to be the real name of one of the contestants unlucky enough to be taking part in the Gyles Brandreth hosted show and Robert's comments about the graphics are perfect.
I really love bright colours used within television graphics with The ITV Chart Show circa 1989 being a prime example of course, but this is just tacky and embarrassing and the prime example of how not to make a television programme, period.
I'll need to be up early to sort the potatoes out for tomorrow lunchtime as nothing is getting in the way of Robbie Vincent on Jazz FM and his ever superb selection of Sunday Morning Soul.
I'm just glad I'm back in my own room and can go to sleep with Jazz FM playing from the television via Freesat as opposed to the rather cold room at the house in South Creake where I ended up waking up at 12:45am when the Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4 came on, with that music as composed by Ronald Binge. And yes, that is his real name and possible rhyming slang.
I know it's meant to be soothing but at that time of night, the overall presentation of it all is rather sinister for that time of night and is up there with Thames Television, Lorimar, Universal Television from around the 80s, and the original News At Ten theme as the sort of thing I would not want to hear when least expecting it in the middle of night.
It's mainly the long gap between the music and the annoucer reading the forecast itself that makes it unnerving.
I really doubt David Hendy will appreciate those above paragraphs.
Anyway, bedtime waits for no man.
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