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Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

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    Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

    "19.00, BBC2 - Coast. Neil Oliver heads off to an RAF base on Anglesey ... and heading off to Blackpool to discover the enduring appeal of Britain's seaside towns is Hermione Cockburn ."

    #2
    Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

    "Georg Koch (born 3 February 1972) is a German footballer who plays for SC Herford in the Landesliga Westfalen 1, as a goalkeeper."

    Unconfirmed reports suggest he does not have a brother called Mike

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      #3
      Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

      I'm not sure Cockburn counts as an 'unfortunate name for a particular role' as a TV presenter. Maybe Hermione Changechannel would be worse. Or Hermione Corrieson.

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        #4
        Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

        It was more the fact she'd been sent to Blackpool to discover its, er, appeal ...

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          #5
          Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

          I see.

          Well, let's turn this in to a Blackpool thread. Let's discuss its appeal.

          It has none. Nothing. It is the most relentlessly grim place I've ever been to. Worse even than Morecambe. In season it is a haven for lairy yobs, and out of season it's a monument to broken dreams, endless drizzle and cheap facades.

          I'd love to live in Blackpool. In an attic room overlooking the sea. I would wear melancholy like a comfortable old cardigan, and misery would be my bedfellow.

          It's a uniquely British place. A snapshot of an Albion I can believe in. And, apparently, Disney are buying up land there at every available opportunity. The mind boggles.

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            #6
            Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

            I work occasionally in Blackpool, and so did my girlfriend when I met her. She also used to have a flat, in the South Shore area, where I stayed on occasion.

            I can honestly say that Blackpool is the shittiest fucking place I've ever been to, outside of the inner-city housing estate areas of placesd like London, Manchester, Leeds or Liverpool. The female residents of the place all appear to be grandmothers by the time they're 35, and the men are virtually all - to a man - covered with self-inflicted tattooes, play snooker every night, and love to boast about Friday night punch-ups in pubs.

            If they ever wanted to make another Snake Pliskin movie, they should set it in Blackpool. Although even he wouldn't last ten fucking minutes if he walked into the wrong pub.

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              #7
              Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

              As I know that I have no chance of matching the eloquence of either EIM or Rogin, I will keep it succinct: Blackpool is fucking terrible.

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                #8
                Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

                You wouldn't get this (unanimous) impression from their Wiki page. There, it looks quite nice. I mean, double decker trams?

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                  #9
                  Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

                  I loved Blackpool, it's mad and surreal and hilarious. I went up there as a Labour Party conference delegate, and that was a whole different kind of strange, but I just couldn't get over the trams going past my bedroom window looking like, well, nothing on earth. And the comedian tram conductors.

                  A funny, funny week that was.

                  Haven't been back since that week in 92 but I gather it's not changed much.

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                    #10
                    Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

                    It stinks of deep fat fryers, and all the gulls have heart disease.

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                      #11
                      Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

                      But one looks and feels so wonderfully lithe and fashionable by contrast.

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                        #12
                        Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

                        Coast is a wonderful programme.

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                          #13
                          Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

                          EIM is absolutely right. It must say something about the British that our premier seaside resort is not only a shithole in its own right, it's on the Irish Sea. And not even the southern end of it.

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                            #14
                            Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

                            I feel I must defend Blackpool in some way, so here are the finest words I've got to say about it.

                            It's not as bad as Weston-super-Mare.

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                              #15
                              Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

                              Weston might be a bit dull, but it isn't unpleasant and tacky in the way Blackpool is. It's a neon-lit shit-pit and Britain should be embarrassed by it's very existence, along with Skegness and Margate.

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                                #16
                                Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

                                Ah memories of a Blackpool B&B. I was there with a bunch of girlfriends for someone's birthday one October weekend. The illuminations glowed through the downpour as we trudged from depressing bar to depressing bar. Londoners, we were the only people wearing more than 3 items of clothing each. When we finally did find a miserable, half empty gay bar playing Kylie, we sat and steamed gently for a bit, perturbed. All of us had streaming colds by then. A man came over and said he was foreign, travelling on his own and could he sit down and join us. He was odd. We attempted to find somewhere to gamble, and I think there were fruit machines, and one of those machines that races little toy horses. The next day there was an England game, so we went to a vile, noisy, vast pub. There was chips & mushy peas from a chip shop down the road, because the pub did not have its own food so encouraged you to bring in takeaways. I don't remember the score. We also went to the bit with the rollercoaster. My friend Kate went on the Grand National one, the lame one, and didn't like it. I went on the big terrifying one. I was sitting next to the birthday girl's useless sleazy boyfriend and I refused point blank to scream. I was glad I did it, but it was hard to enjoy the moment. The very very best thing we did was the haunted house, it was great, properly scary. Kate and I stayed up much of the night in our beflowered dank, dripping B&B room, talking about boys. We bought delicious hot doughnuts on the beach early on Sunday morning and got several trains back to London. It took decades.

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                                  #17
                                  Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

                                  Bah, all you haters can fuck right off.

                                  Blackpool is all that EIM said and more. How can you not build a monument to broken dreams in a place where pathos is baked like clay into every brick of every house on every street of the town?

                                  On a December morning, abandoned and desolate, the town is almost post-apocalyptically beautiful. It's a constant surprise that the council chooses to attract visitors through more traditional images of beaches, donkeys and trams rather than, say, the skeletal remains of dead roller coasters, spindle piers heaving on rusted legs from the frosted sea and mugs of hot cheap steaming tea. Endless, endless tea.

                                  There are good reasons why the place is a one-off but I love it nonetheless. It's bracing and hopeful and hopeless and there's nowt like it.

                                  Admittedly I'm biased. I was born there, I grew up there and then, like everyone else, I left there. I'm a turncoat but Blackpool is still great and terrible and unique, and if it never existed then it'd be our duty to build it.

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                                    #18
                                    Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

                                    Bill Bryson (in "Notes from a Small Island"):

                                    "the illuminations are nothing if not spectacular, and they are not spectacular"

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                                      #19
                                      Unfortunate names for particular roles pt. 22

                                      I love Ubik's description, that's quite beautiful.

                                      God forbid Blackpool should ever be made "tasteful" and bland like so many of our cities.

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