I have a confession to make. It is one of my guilty secrets. Admittedly, there are others but they will remain unspoken for the foreseeable future.
Anyway, here goes (he gulps hard). Please don't ridicule me but I like to watch two early evening quiz programmes on I.T.V. - namely "Tipping Point" and "The Chase". At least it's not an addiction to cigarettes or heroin. Surely, it's pretty harmless.
Because I have an enormous reservoir of general knowledge and interesting trivia, I like to pit my wits against the question setters.
Hosted by the genial Ben Shephard, "Tipping Point" is the slower moving of the two quiz shows. It reminds me of visits to seaside amusement arcades - dropping 2p coins into tipping machines. I have never been able to resist them.
"The Chase" is hosted by cheeky chappie Bradley Walsh - a very familiar face on British television. Contestants are chased down by one of the five chasers - Paul Sinha, Jenny Ryan, Ann Hegarty, Shaun Wallace or Mark Labett (aka "The Beast"). I like the fast pace of this show and the large number of questions that are posed in each episode. There's little hanging about.
So there you have it. My guilty secret is out. One or two of you out there in the blogosphere may have imagined that I am an intellectual giant who struts around reciting lines from "Hamlet" or contemplating my own navel but such suppositions are misguided. I am just TV quiz show fodder, hooked like a rainbow trout in a Scottish river or a plastic duck at a fairground.
Do you have any guilty secrets you are prepared to share?
And there was I imagining you as a whiz at University Challenge and Mastermind. My guilty secret - I'm a secret blogger.
ReplyDeleteWell blog some secrets then dude!
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DeleteAbsolutely no guilty secrets whatsoever. (That I will be sharing.)
ReplyDeleteMmm... now I am wondering what they are.
DeleteI am truly devastated to discover that the one person I had hitherto considered to be the epitome of human intellect and utter genius has turned out to be a mere watcher of cr@p TV quiz shows in order to show off his knowledge of general trivia.
ReplyDeleteAnother great monument topples as the hero tumbles from his pedestal.
I am just like Edward Colston though I swear I was not involved in the trading of slaves.
DeleteOh I love The Chase. Tipping Point nearly as much. We’ve given up our tv subscription, no more shouting out the answers for me.
ReplyDeleteSubscription? Both shows are free to watch on terrestrial TV - unless of course you are in a foreign land Jane.
DeleteNot an evening goes by when we do not watch both programmes and if we miss them at 4 o'clock we watch them on ITV+1 at 5 o'clock and if we miss them altogether we watch them on catch up. lol
ReplyDeleteSo you see you are not a silly billy cos if you were them we would be as well and I know we are not, lol
Briony
x
sorry about the lol's.
BRADLEY WALSH What do the letters l.o.l stand for?
Deletea) lubrication of loins b) liver on lentils c) laugh out loud
As you say, there are far worse addictions :)
ReplyDeleteHere is one of my guilty secrets - I put my feet up on the coffee table when I read in the evening. To be fair, it's not used as a coffee table but as an overflow for the stacks of books everywhere, and I do clean it before company comes :)
I'll also tell you my husband's guilty secret - he watches crap TV, says it helps his mind to stop ruminating. I just wish he'd keep the volume down as I'm forced to listen to a braincell-killing dose of it from the other side of the house! Do you annoy Shirley with your shouting? lol
The clue is in the name "coffee table" = a table for putting coffee on, not smelly feet! No I do not annoy Shirley - she worships the ground I stand upon.
DeleteYour true friends know there are a lot more guilty secrets to be self-outed, Lad. While your mates were enjoying reruns of Are You being Served? and On The Buses, and watching University Challenge so we could ogle brainy girls in Angora sweaters, your hidden television life was taking a Left-Handed Path as occultists say.
ReplyDeleteBy a tracking device which I myself patented and sold to M15, we now know you were watching (going back to Year Zero) Mrs and Mrs, The Price is Right (with Lesley Crowther) and 3-2-1 with Ted Rogers. Nothing wrong with any of these, at least in moderation, but in later years we tracked you watching ... Dogging Tales, Just Tattoo Of Us, Beauty and the Geek, Two Pints of Lager And A Packet Of Crips, Pink Lady, Pretty Little Liars, Heil Honey I'm Home, Baywatch Nights, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Naked Attraction, How I Met Your Mother, Spring Break With Granddad, and Young Pretty Broke And Welsh - I dread to what that was about; I just closed my eyes and only heard the giggles. Stephanie Beacham in a shower in Dynasty I tolerated.
Sinking even lower, you were addicted to Geordie Shore (*It's like Romeo and Juliet if Romeo was a Twat*), Dogs Might Fly (*Oh he's pooing, he's pooing*) and Riverdale, the tacky U.S. drama in which Archie and Veronica make love after Veronica's Dad is shot.
I won't out you for watching Bottle Boys with Robin Askwith as a randy milkman. I watched it myself, but only because I was waiting up for Patrick Moore and The Sky At Night. They say Princess Diana was allowed to stay up and watch it as a bairn. To think she is watching us now.
It is disturbing to see my past TV viewing history laid out like this. Do you work for MI5 or something? It was surprising to find you referring to "Mrs and Mrs" - the little known light entertainment show for lesbian couples.
DeleteNot M15, but in my dreams I wanted to be Alec Leamas (Richard Burton) in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, having Claire Bloom in love with me. I read Le Carre, Deighton, Francis Clifford, John McCarry (The Tears of Autumn) and Ted Albeury devotedly. Albeury was from the North.
DeleteIn The Guardian obituary of Albeury (online) Len Deighton said *no one really knew Ted* and that he lived for his family, avoided parties, and had worked for SIS into the 1970s. The other day I watched The Naked Runner (YouTube) based on Francis Clifford's novel. Sinatra is really good, and I enjoyed the London locations.
Harold Wilson wanted to see more films set in the UK, and did what he could to promote the industry in his brief times in office. Thatcher had no interest in the British film industry and must have hated Ken Loach.
By the way I see you like The Last Picture Show and Once Upon A Time in America which I saw on the big screen and watch on TV. Genius.
John
Did you enjoy those two films John?
DeleteThe plot of Once Upon A Time (1984) turned on a 35-year deceit which Max (James Woods) played on Noodles (De Niro). It is terrible to see Noodles ruining the one holy thing he had with Deborah (Elizabeth McGovern) especially when we remember Deborah as a child (Jennifer Connelly) dancing to Amapola. Carlo Affatigato writes of the film's mysterious ending (online) which we see in flashback. The frozen smile of Noodles in the opium den, and Morricone's stand-out music. Amazing, because the film parts from representational realism at certain moments and has a dream-like feel that goes with alcohol.
DeletePeter Bogdanovich had made two small movies before The Last Picture Show (1971). Some of the shots he lined up are ingenious. The opening caught me, with Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson) playing pool in the bar with the door banging in the dusty wind, and Clu Gulager making his dark entrance. The security of the boys (Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms) seems to go when they return from Mexico to learn that wise Sam is dead. Ellen Burstyn, Cloris Leachman, Eileen Brennan, Cybill Shepherd, and the great Randy Quaid give the best performances since, well, maybe On The Waterfront, or A Streetcar Named Desire. There's the loneliness of the ending, with the death of the simple boy who can't speak. The elderly lady in the cinema was a resident of the town; something about her presence is very moving. Bogdanovich did something very clever in bringing out the silvery tones of the last picture shown in the cinema, Red River by Howard Hawkes, where we see the faces of the John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Walter Brennan, and Noah Beery Jr. The tracks on the movie are so good I bought the CD as Xmas presents. *Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used To Do^!
If you like The Last Picture Show watch YouTube films on the life of Sam Shepherd, and Patti Smith's two pieces on Sam for The New Yorker (online). He would call her in the middle of the night (she in New York) from some unknown cowboy town. Shepherd knew these places were finished in the great scheme of things, yet was obsessed by the West. In the closing words of The Last Picture Show (spoken by ruined Cloris Leachman) ... *Never you mind, never you mind.*
Sam Shepard (1943-2017) is in two movies I watch again and again, Days of Heaven (1978) directed by Terrence Mallick and Country (1984) which he made with his wife Jessica Lange, set in North Dakota during a period when farmers were going broke and selling their land cheap to ruthless agents.
DeleteTom and I enjoy an occasional trivia type game show such as Jeopardy and sometimes a silly one like Family Feud. I sometimes get caught up in a TV show series or watch a movie on Netflix. Otherwise I don't watch much TV. I do spend a lot of time with blogs and some of my hobbies. My true guilty secrets are not to be told and also not guilty!
ReplyDeleteNow my imagination is in overdrive with regard to your secret indulgences Bonnie! Are you into pole dancing?
DeleteYou shouldn't watch Tipping Point, it's addictive. There's something about the thrill of watching all those giant, plastic coins go over the edge. No, I never watch it.
ReplyDeleteI realise that you and Paul are exclusively intellectual viewers Sue.
DeleteHoping to redeem myself in Mine Host's eyes, I nominate a teen drama, *Pam Fi Du?* which ran from 1997-2002. Dubbed the Welsh Grange Hill, it was filmed in the Rhondda Valley and Ysgol Gyfun Cymer, near Porth. Translated as *Why Me God?* or if you want to be agnostic, *What's It All About, Dai?*
ReplyDeleteAs a Glasgow man I avoided *Taggart* and all home-grown Scotch drama except the hated but wonderful Kailyard, *Dr. Finday's Casebook* the original and remake. (Only Scottish intellectuals hate Kailyard.)
I had you down as a Hamish Macbeth fan. A gritty and continuous portrait of authentic Scottish life in modern times.
DeleteRobert Carlyle (Hamish Macbeth) is a force. I remember him as an evil psychopath in a drama whose name escapes me. I liked that forgotten Welsh crime drama, A Mind To Kill with the gravel-voiced Philip Madoc as the CID Guv; and Hinterland series one and two, all of which I have on DVD.
DeleteWycliff with Jack Shepherd was impressive and I was fascinated to learn that the author of the books W.J. Burley had died before the media picked it up. As a youngster I loved Cluff with Leslie Sands, and I am pleased the novels by Gil North about this bluff Yorkshire detective have been released again in paperback. Leslie Sands was in a political play by David Mercer (born Wakefield 1928) called After Haggerty.
John (Haggerty).
Hey, I don't have any secrets. I'm just an open book!
ReplyDeleteAs the C.I.A. used to say, "All Reds have secrets!"
DeleteGood come back!
DeleteMy secrets are - and shall remain - exactly that: secrets.
ReplyDeleteYou beat me to it, Librarian. Same here. The moment you share a secret it's not a secret anymore. And you can bet your bottom Deutschmark that, with the rare exception of a true confidant, your "secret" will be shared with others who in turn are sworn to secrecy. Soon the whole village knows.
DeleteHowever, and to give him his due, YP asked about GUILTY secrets not just any old secret we all have. I have two. I don't beat myself up over them and will take them to my grave. However, Meike, and here is the amusing twist: In RE (religious studies) at school we were told that God is all seeing. HA! Nothing escapes him. Not even our secrets. Never mind. If I am going to be sent to hell so be it. I'll be dead and won't know it.
U
Ursula, there are advantages in being atheist.
DeleteAmerican writer Dominic Dunne (1925-2009) heard many guilty secrets from the super rich. *Tell me everything,* he used to say. His articles for Vanity Fair were collected in books. His novel A Season In Purgatory (1993) is about a golden family who sound like the Kennedys. Dunne was a friend of Truman Capote who was a confidant of powerful people, and heard many hidden scandals.
DeleteInspired by your comment I dug up my copy of "Capote - a Biography" by Gerald Clarke. In its rather thorough index the name Dominic Dunne doesn't appear.
DeleteHowever, taken from page 89 of the bio I littered with now rather withered yellow post-it-notes, and I quote: " One trick Truman learned from George that the surest way to find out a secret is to tell one - your own, if no one else's".
U
It is some time since I read Clarke's biography of Truman Capote. It's possible Dunne declined to be interviewed. He was not invited to Truman's masked ball about which a book appeared with the full guest list.
DeleteDunne's name does appear in a 1998 book, Ursula. George Plimpton's *Truman Capote* (Picador) an oral biography of many voices similar to one on Raymond Carver. Dunne's interview with Plimpton is on pages 249-250 and 414 of my hardback.
T.C. broke the journalist's rule by talking about himself and his childhood. It would appear that this gave him an advantage, at least with his Marlon Brando profile (The Prince in His Domain) and again writing In Cold Blood. He said he wanted to interview Mrs Nixon (unlikely) and Queen Elizabeth (impossible.)
He liked to say he was the only person alive to have known President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Jack Ruby. He met Oswald in Moscow while writing *The Muses Are Heard*.
If you like Capote you may enjoy the fiction of James Purdy whose short stories were published by Liveright in 2012. Admired by Capote, Vidal, Tennessee Williams and Susan Sontag, Purdy couldn't get published in his later years. There are good online articles, *Christmas With James Purdy* by Donald Weise (Lamda Library) and *I'm not a gay writer, I'm a monster* Guardian 11 March 2019.
John
These intellectual ramblings about Truman Capote etcetera are all very well and good but what are your guilty secrets? Tangents are like risotto - overrated.
DeleteWhen I was 15 I slipped into the Gaumont Cinema, Sauchiehall Street to see The Sound of Music. Not only was I convinced of the genius of composer Richard Rodgers, I fell for Julie Andrews.
DeleteIn my twenties I fell for Stacey Tenderet and Kiki Markham in Truffaut's Les Deux Anglaises et Le Continent. Stacey losing her virginity was something else.
When I took LSD I thought I had passed through the veil into the next world. I never touched drugs again; now just a glass or two of white wine.
I interviewed JP Donleavy in his rural home in County Meath. He told me where the lavatory was, but I blundered through the wrong door, and saw his beautiful young wife lying in the bath, the water clear, no soap bubbles.
For a year I belonged to a dreadful cult run by Sri Chinmoy Ghose, a pervert, liar, and charlatan. He told an American girl she had been a water buffalo in a previous incarnation, that's when I saw he was insane. I then read a book by Francis Schaeffer and was converted to Christianity.
I became a fan of Prisoner of Cell Block H, finding the dim prison sets soothing. Joan the butch warden, who definitely DIDN'T turn me on, was a brilliant piece of writing and acting.
I was enraptured by the blonde girl (Samantha?) in Picnic At Hanging Rock and I find her unchanged as she is today (YouTube) when she went back to the locations.
I want Nat King Cole singing That Sunday, That Summer played at my committal when the coffin goes into the flames, then followed by a Welsh choir, Abide With Me.
When I watch Bill Evans playing jazz piano on YouTube I only want to pour myself a very large dark rum with Rose's lime, soda water, fresh lime slice, and ICE. Listen to My Foolish Heart.
I must have watched The Last Picture Show, video and DVD, 20 times, and each time was fairly drunk by the end. Same with Woody Allen's Radio Days. But I hate the DVD of Woodstock, though it's my generation.
I am happiest sitting in country churches in the Cotswolds; and I think the road from Cheltenham to Stow-in-the-Wold, just where a signpost points to Salperton, is some kind of portal to Heaven.
I miss everything about the past. The tramcars. The de luxe cinemas. The Italian cafes. The department stores with their tearooms. The Art Deco shopfronts. The ceramic tiled dairy shops. The home bakeries. The Victorian pubs. The way men and women made an effort in the way they dressed.
I would like to open a secondhand bookshop like the one in Henrietta Street, Cheltenham where my sister lives. The owner is a gentleman. Look it up.
Anne-Louise Lambert played Miranda, not Samantha, in Picnic At Hanging Rock. The Australian television miniseries was first-rate, great cast and locations, but without the film's mesmerising score, and spoiled by a disappointing solution to the mystery. It's clear the girls were abducted by ETs who have a penchant for fifth-form girls in filmy frocks.
DeleteWracking my brain for guilty secrets here....I'm sure I have many!
ReplyDeleteI watched "The Dog House" and UK "Ambulance" for 3 hours on Saturday night. I turned it off when repeats of One Born Every Minute started
Your confession has been noted Kylie.
DeleteWe're half way through watching every episode of "Death in Paradise" on iplayer right from the beginning. It's about as violent, mentally taxing and stimulating as we can cope with at the moment. Two episodes a night puts in the right frame of mind for a good, nightmare free sleep. When we've watched them all we'll probably go back to the beginning and see if we can remember whodunnit in each episode!
ReplyDeleteI haven't really seen it but it seems quite innocuous - in spite of the weekly murders!
DeleteAs you may remember from recent blog posts, I am completely useless at quizzes and have a considerable antipathy towards them. I will watch University Challenge though because if I'm going to be made to look stupid then I might as well be joined by many others. I have realised that my idea of hell would be to sit in front of a TV watching quiz programmes and then be told I had to sit through Eastenders as well.
ReplyDeleteOnce I was addicted to "EastEnders" but I gave it up in the summer of 2013 and have not see an episode in seven years.
DeleteLately the guilty secret is....... Silent Witness, gory and occasionally violent but I shut my eyes in the bad bits and reassure myself that the slab of liver/kidney is only animal offal. Can't do quizzes never swallowed any encyclopedias in my past life!
ReplyDeleteYour confession is duly noted Thelma. Your blog proves that you are someone who likes to examine evidence before reaching a conclusion. Just like "Silent Witness".
DeleteAny Rock music channel featuring seventies, eighties and nineties music. The missus doesn't like them though.
ReplyDeleteGet her some ear plugs Dave.
DeleteOn cold rainy winter evenings, we occasionally join with Her Majesty, and watch 'Pointless'. The most interesting part being the introduction of the contestants.
ReplyDeleteI like that show because it is so well-mannered. Not an ounce of unpleasantness.
DeleteGuilty secrets...I have a few. But I don't like opening myself up to the judgment that might follow disclosing them here!
ReplyDeleteIt's okay Jennifer. I know you have a crush on Justin Bieber.
DeleteWhat's wrong with quiz shows?! Nothing to feel guilty about! We used to watch "Eggheads" and "University Challenge" quite regularly but we've gotten out of the habit.
ReplyDeleteIt was just a device Steve, a pretence. I am not really ashamed of watching quiz shows.
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