R-I-Peel

[Nocturnal Submission]

Let's hope he doesn't sing at her funeral. People will be feeling low enough as it is.

[Me Old Flower]

Doncaster lass and Rugby League fan to boot.

RIP

[Various Artist]

A very famous bookstore on Charing Cross Road.

Ah! Thanks Amor.


NS, there's no singing allowed at the moment, so I think you're safe there. At my great-auntie's funeral last week they had to nix her wish for everyone to have a singalong to Knees Up Mother Brown, alas.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

VA, here's the Wiki page on Foyle's. It's a national institution really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foyles

I remember in the 1980s Foyle's had a reputation for being a place where it could be ridiculously hard to find the book you wanted, I think because of some counter-intuitive shelf stock organisation principle and/or poor information and customer support service or perhaps due to gaps in what they had in stock. Anyway, the main London rival to Foyle's at the time, namely Dillons up in Bloomsbury (since taken over by Waterstones I think), sought to capitalise on that by waging rather aggressive advertising campaign including posters on bus shelters just outside Foyles on CC Road with the slogan "Foyled Again? Try Dillons!" A university friend of mine had a temporary job at Foyles at the time and told me that Foyles staff were asked by management to brainstorm ideas for a counter-campaign, prompting desperately hopeless suggestions like "Don't Dilly-Dally on your way to Foyle's".

[Nocturnal Submission]

Trips up to Foyles were my first experience of travelling up to Central London on my own. It was such a quirky place. When you found the book you wanted, often in a pile on the floor rather than on a shelf, you took it to a counter where you were given a chit which you had to take to a payment booth. After you had paid, your chit was stamped accordingly and you then took it back to the first sales desk and collected your purchase.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

ha, I'd forgotten that chit system thing NS, thanks for the prompt to the memory!

Anyway, re the late DR, I plan to start working through my DVD collections of the Avengers series 4 and 5.

[Balderdasha]

Haha, the only place I've ever encountered that did that system of multiple desks where one person gives you a piece of paper, another stamps it and another takes your money, is Moscow. I thought it was a hangover from the Soviet attempt to provide lots of jobs.

[San Bernardhinault]

I only bought one book from Foyles ever because the process of buying a book there was so utterly bizarre. It seemed like it was explicitly designed to keep out the kind of riff-raff who don't already own almost every book ever published.

[Felicity, I guess so]

My 1st visit to Foyle’s I was queuing behind Michael Palin

[Sporting]

Talking of the area in which Foyles was located. my sister worked for a while in Booksmiths, which I think was on the corner of Charing Cross and Tottenham Court Roads, It specialised in remaindered books. It had two floors and as there was usually only one shop assistant shoplifting was rife. My sister once served Judi Dench there.

[Amor de Cosmos]

For a few months I worked round the corner from Foyles at Dixons on Oxford Street. I'd spend my lunch there most days. It was probably impossible to actually get lost in there, but the first few times you could certainly get "turned around" easily, and forget where you were. Wonderful place.

[Various Artist]

Talking of the area in which Foyles was located. my sister worked for a while in Booksmiths, which I think was on the corner of Charing Cross and Tottenham Court Roads, It specialised in remaindered books. It had two floors and as there was usually only one shop assistant shoplifting was rife. My sister once served Judi Dench there.

According to Tracey Ullman's impersonation of her, Dame Judi was probably the one doing the shoplifting.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Bet she had one of those coats with deep inside pockets

[Capybara]

I used to go into Booksmiths quite a lot, usually in combination with a trip to Sportspages, so I may also have been served by Sporting's sister. Foyle's was out of bounds because of the boycott, though I'm not sure when that ended. Probably just faded out.

[Sporting]

Approximately when was this?

[Capybara]

If I had nothing better to do on Saturday mornings I'd wander up in that direction, from mid-90s to early noughties.