(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

I don't know how much this will mean to non-Scots, but the sight of our esteemed First Minister on Children in Need, imitating the famously gloomy and misanthropic Scots minister the Rev I.M. Jolly cheered me up no end.

Here's the original, played by the much missed Rikki Fulton (Hogmanay's never been the same without him):

... adding a new terror to religious broadcasting.

And here's Alec Salmond:

Comments

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

One of the experiences of reading my grandparents' copy of The Sunday Post on most Sundays growing up was absorbing these stories of comedians of whom we'd never heard in north-east England, including Rikki Fulton.

[tree_and_leaf]

The Sunday Post is absolutely awful - but Rikki Fulton was tremendously funny, though possibly too culturally specific to travel well.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I rather liked The Sunday Post - its conservatism is quite Scots-specific as well, so that didn't travel, leaving only a bafflingly charming quaintness, Oor Wullie and The Broons, puzzling creations who behave as if the present day was the 1930s. It was only when David Murray launched the Sunday Scot in 1990 or thereabouts (also widely distributed in north-east England, I think... though The Sunday Post can be picked up almost everywhere in the UK in larger retailers at least) that I came to understand what he meant when he called the Post a 'michtie me' newspaper.

I always thought its Westminster politics coverage was bad, though - creative writing triumphing over journalism. As for the Francis Day/Patience Strong school of poetry...

[tree_and_leaf]

I once had a humourous book on Scots history. It was about as good as these things usually are when they aren't written by Sellars and Yeatman, i.e. fitfully amusing, but one bit that did work was the series of parodic Sunday Post editorials scattered through it, each lamenting the replacement of the good old days (which were clearly awful) with a horrid new modernity (which always turned into the good old days of the next piece). They all ended "Aye. Changed days, that's for sure", which sums up the SP in a nutshell.

Don't get me started on Francis Gay and his bloody Friendship Books....

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

My grandmother had several Francis Gay Friendship Books. I think that a relative regularly bought them as Christmas presents, with the idea that they would be plundered for sermons. I can't remember any sign of them being read, happily.