busker

Hiker's Guide

Hilarious trailer just before 'Sin City'. If the movie is of the same calibre, we're OK.

Is that Stephen Fry's voice? Looking good.

Ancient BBC radio version story: for most of the 1970s, I wore the tread off my expense account in a wonderful drinking room called Muriel's (or the Colony Room Club, rather, but we hardly used that).

Full of famous folks - so much so that once when I left and went down to drink in the French, Peter Owen asked who was up there. I said "Just Lucian Freud." How we laughed. As Peter pointed out, we were sure that Lucian himself would not like to be thought of as "just" Lucian Freud.

Anyway, one evening who should be sitting there alone on the bench than actor John le Mesurier. Gloomy looking cove but i plucked up courage and offered him a drink which he accepted with a sigh.

I complimented him on his reading of the Wise Old Bird and he gave me a weary look and a smile and thanked me.

"Do you know, Christopher - I was happy to help out and all that, but I don't think I understood a single word I came out with."

If you look John up in his various online biogs, there seems to be scant mention of his part in the cult radio series that halted Britain in its tracks, rather as the Goon Show had done 20 years earlier.