Radio

Kathy Burke meets Joe Strummer in Little Crackers’ Better Than Christmas

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By Johnny Foreigner

I knew actress Kathy Burke mainly for her brilliant performance in the 1997 film Nil By Mouth, when she played a battered woman terrorized by her brutish husband (played with equal brilliance by actor Ray Winstone.) As comedienne, Bates also played “Magda” on  AbFab, and delivered a hilarious line in Sid and Nancy – “John got beaten up by fascists.” (wonderful!)

When I came across this great short biopic from 2010 about a young London schoolgirl (Ami Metcalf portraying a teenaged Kathy Burke) meeting her rock n’ roll hero Joe Strummer – it left me wanting to see the rest of the series. IMDB describes Little Crackers as “a series of short comedy-dramas with a Christmas theme, written by British artists recalling moments from their childhoods.”

Here’s how Kathy Burke the Writer sums up her Little Crackers “Better Than Christmas” mini biopic:

Kathy Burke turns 16 in two days and is about to leave school after sitting one final exam. Kathy’s passion is music and she dreams of being a writer for the NME where she’ll interview the likes of Paul Weller and Johnny Rotten. As Kath and her friend Mary celebrate their freedom, they’re stopped in their tracks by an almost unbelievable vision. There, in front of them, are The Clash. While an awestruck Kathy clutches her now-autographed NME, her hero, Joe Strummer, offers her some life-changing advice.

 

 

Why people talked funny in old movies

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This speech pattern isn’t completely British or completely American.

By Todd Perry

There’s a distinct accent that American actors and broadcasters used in the early days of radio and in pre-World War II movies.It’s most obvious in old newsreel footage where the announcer speaks in a high-pitched tone, omits his “Rs” at the end of words, and sounds like a New Yorker who just returned from a summer holiday with the British royal family. This speaking style is also heard in the speeches of Franklin D. Roosevelt and just about any performance by Orson Welles.

But today, this accent is all but nonexistent, prompting the question: Did Americans speak differently before the advent of television?

The video below, “Why Do People in Old Movies Talk Weird?,” reveals the secret of this distinct inflection known as the Mid-Atlantic accent and why it was so prominent in early 20th-century American media.

 

Source: Cool video reveals why people talked funny in old movies – Good

The Goon Show “The Ying Tong Song “

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by Johnny Foreigner

Here are The Goon Show’s Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, and Spike Milligan performing “The Ying Tong Song.” You will either forever love me or hate me for delivering you this precious British earworm.

The Goon Show was an extremely influential British radio comedy program, broadcast by the BBC throughout of the 1950s. John Lennon once said, “I could go on all day about the Goons and their influence on a generation” – high praise from a jealous guy.

Wrote NY Times in 1972 : “Goon comedy was in equal parts the harmless violence of Warner Brothers cartoons, the wordplay of James Joyce and the lowbrow japes of the English music hall.”

Monty Python’s Terry Jones has called The Goon’s Spike Milligan ”the father of Monty Python.” John Cleese called him the ”great god of us all.”