RoverAndOut

1st December 32 The Wombles — Wombling Merry Christmas 25 José Feliciano — Feliz Navidad 24 John & Yoko etc. — Happy Xmas (War Is Over) 24 Andy Williams — It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year 24 Bing Crosby — White Christmas 24 Kate Bush — December Will Be Magic Again 23 Darlene Love — Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) 22 The Waitresses — Christmas Wrapping 22 Wham! — Last Christmas 22 Burl Ives — Holly Jolly Christmas 21 Bing Crosby & David Bowie — Peace On Earth / Little Drummer Boy 21 Jona Lewie — Stop The Cavalry 21 Donny Hathaway — This Christmas 21 Run-DMC — Christmas In Hollis 21 Perry Como — God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen 21 Frank Sinatra — Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas 21 The Ronettes — Sleigh Ride 21 Nat King Cole — The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You) 21 Chuck Berry — Run Rudolph Run 20 The Pogues ft. Kirsty MacColl — Fairytale Of New York +4 20 The Pretenders — 2000 Miles 20 Tom Jones & Cerys Matthews — Baby It’s Cold Outside 20 Elvis Presley — Blue Christmas 20 Ray Conniff — Carol Of The Bells 20 Coldplay — Christmas Lights 20 George Michael — December Song 20 Band Aid — Do They Know It’s Christmas? 20 The Darkness — Don’t Let The Bells End 20 Chris Rea — Driving Home For Christmas 20 Kay Starr — (Everybody’s Waitin’ For) The Man With The Bag 20 Gene Autry — Here Comes Santa Claus 20 Greg Lake — I Believe In Father Christmas 20 The Jackson 5 — I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus 20 Wizzard — I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday 20 Mike Oldfield — In Dulci Jubilo 20 Perry Como — It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas 20 Bobby Helms — Jingle Bell Rock 20 Dean Martin — Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! 20 The Beach Boys — Little Saint Nick 20 Mud — Lonely This Christmas 20 Boney M — Mary’s Boy Child (Oh My Lord) 20 Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters — Mele Kalikimaka 20 The Carpenters — Merry Christmas Darling 20 Shakin’ Stevens — Merry Christmas Everyone 20 Bob Dylan — Must Be Santa 20 Leona Lewis — One More Sleep 20 The Eagles — Please Come Home For Christmas 20 Ray Conniff — Ring Christmas Bells 20 Brenda Lee — Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree 20 Eartha Kitt — Santa Baby 20 The Crystals — Santa Claus Is Coming To Town 20 Jim Reeves — Silver Bells 20 Elton John — Step Into Christmas 20 Queen — Thank God It’s Christmas 20 Gabriella Cilmi — Warm This Winter 20 Johnny Mathis — When A Child Is Born 20 Perry Como — Winter Wonderland 20 Destiny’s Child — 8 Days Of Christmas 18 The Ronettes — Frosty The Snowman 18 Stevie Wonder — What Christmas Means To Me 18 Kelly Clarkson — Underneath The Tree +4 16 Ed Sheeran & Elton John — Merry Christmas 16 Slade — Merry Xmas Everybody 15 Mariah Carey — All IWant For Christmas Is You 14 Ariana Grande — Santa Tell Me 12 Michael Buble — Jingle Bells  4 Paul McCartney — Wonderful Christmastime 0 Justin Bieber — Mistletoe -6 See ya, Bieber. Sad I didn't get to kill off Cliff instead - for the rest of my days, I have to accept that was Number 1 on the day I was born... Think you've done a good job covering most of the bases, can't see any glaring absences at the minute. I'd have Bubble's It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas over Como's and The Boss's Santa Claus Is Coming To Town but I'll fucking deal with it. Starting off by propping up a rare modern classic - Kelly's is a banger.

And Sandra Day O'Connor puts me over the top on the first day of December! 21-17 over the Committee, and a new DL record if they'd gone with my perfectly deathlisty names.

And while I was finding that, saw this fitting tribute from Tim Shipman. Lot of similar sentiments today.

This caught my attention yesterday from Peston...

With Darling, I can't remember another day recently when 4 people have had death notices on the BBC News homepage in one 24-hour period. Woke up to Kissinger, checked at break and saw Dean Sullivan, checked at lunch and Shane McGowan was lead story and a few entries down was breaking news about Darling!

I believe I have now hit 20 for the year, tying the official Deathlist record with a month to spare! 20-17 to me over the Committee.

Sad about this, seemed a very solid and trustworthy hand on the tiller and the job he and Brown did on preventing financial armageddon in 2008 will only become more highly regarded as history moves on, especially when contrasted with the cluster fuck of last year. As you said, oh to have him in charge of the economy now!

The more I've reflected on it, the more I've come to this conclusion. It was a bit of Saturday night entertainment. For the most part it wasn't dense or serious, it was fun and exciting. There's been better episodes of New Who, but it was a perfectly enjoyable way to spend an hour on a Saturday night.

Also watched it, also thought she looked great. Still active, still insistent she has no intentions of stopping working, still up for some verbal sparring. Nothing wrong with her at the moment. Of course, at that age things can change very quickly (a stroke for instance).

As covered òn the previous page...

The present day bit doesn't bother me, technically we're only 13 years on from Donna's appearance in The End of Time, 15 if we're going from Journey's End. And I'm specifically going off what Sylvia says in the kitchen that it's been 15 years since her breakdown, and Donna was never pregnant when we saw her and she never had a child in her "home life" that we've seen. Anyway, Commtech seems to have given us the real life explanation! Thanks for this, always good to just admit to a dating fuck-up I find! Just a bit frustrating given the important role she's playing in normalising the lifestyle, gives a needless stick to beat to the fascists. I love the idea that her gender fluidity matches the Doctor's own, it was very cleverly done. Didn't actually realise when watching that Yasmin is trans herself, which is also important. And there will definitely be some blowback from some sections of the press and doubtless a few Whovians too. Just watching DW: Unleashed on Beeb 1 and Russell is teasing that it's building to an epic climax that's never been seen before in Doctor Who. So, you know, there's that to look forward to...

It wasn't quite 2009-10 levels of brilliant, but it did a decent job of continuing the story but telling a new story at the same time. Feels odd seeing Doctor Who with these levels of budgets. I'm not complaining but sometimes less is more maybe (The Meep was brilliantly realised though). @YoungWillz, I think the character development argument is a little misplaced when you consider that while each story is largely self-contained, they are all episodes of the same drama. So it is perfectly plausible that we'll see a little more development of the girl in the wheelchair (I was under the impression she'd be in more episodes too) and perhaps Shaun and Rose too. But nothing on the levels of the 1960s I'm afraid, I grant you. Anyway, girl in wheelchair is the UNIT Scientific Advisor, a role originated by the Doctor, what more character development do you need? My personal gripe was over Rose, which is annoying because I really liked her character and her role in the story. We are told that it is 15 years since Donna had a "breakdown" and got amnesia. So the maximum age that Rose can be is 15, since we know Donna hadn't had her before and, as far as we know wasn't pregnant when we last met her. And yet it appears that Rose is female...but that she was born a male (Jason?). But there's no way she's transitioned to the degree it appears she has at 15. And it's not as though she appears to be 15 either...she certainly seems in many ways to be closer to 18 than 15 (no idea how old the actress is but that's never an accurate measure in showbusiness anyway). Really liked the new design of the TARDIS, hope it's not just gone up in smoke inside 10 minutes and will be ditched after these 3 specials (although I fear it will be). Some nice foreshadowing of the other 2 specials, The Meep mentioning "The Boss" (presumably the Toymaster?). Excited to see the other 2 and how they stack up as a trilogy. @Commtech Sio Bibble - I think we're gonna see Wilf at some point (maybe at the end). I don't think there'd have been such heavy references to him if not, they could have re-shot the scenes or edited it to remove the references. They've teased that the Doctor wants to see him, so he'll get his wish and Wilf will be able to die knowing that Donna remembers everything again. As for the metacrisis solution, yes it was deus ex machina, yes it was ridiculously simple, but I like that it wasn't a big deal. We established the first time around that the Doctor-Donna has advantages over the Doctor because of that "little bit of human" and sometimes, there are surprisingly simple solutions to seemingly impossible conundrums. And, as @msc said, I imagine if you're a kid, you couldn't give a hoot. The evil gremlin was arrested, Donna is safe, the TARDIS is on fire - roll on next Saturday!

Fair enough. I was surprised in some ways it was only 75 minutes, was expecting at least 90, especially having seen how much was cut. It will be interesting to see if they do give any more the same treatment. Was perusing the Whoniverse on iPlayer earlier and have noticed they've really tried to make it as complete as possible, including animated versions of lost visuals for partial or whole stories. I said I enjoyed it! TV generally was very different back then, much slower paced and brooding. And I did admire the levels of detail to what was ostensibly a kids show. Turning a 7 part episodic drama of 25 minute instalments into a 75 minute TV movie is a difficult task, as they are completely different media. I think New Who made the right choice for the 21st century to make most stories self-contained, rather than maintaining the episodic nature of the original run, suits the current pick 'n' mix nature of tv, and you don't have to follow everything to enjoy it. But there are arcs if you're looking for them. Season 1 has lots of references to Bad Wolf (graffiti, comments, etc.), Season 2 has lots of references to Torchwood, which is the setting for the finale, Season 3 mentions Mr Saxon a lot, who is the Prime Minister (and also the Master we discover), Season 4 features a lost planet in every episode, leading to Davros's masterplan, Season 5 is cracks in space-time, Season 6 is the secrets of River Song, Season 7 is The Impossible Girl (Clara Oswald) and Season 8 is whether Capaldi is a good man/Missy's plan and identity. They've been less pronounced in more recent seasons (or maybe I stopped noticing - I'm not as young as I used to be!). World's totally different now though: back then, there were 3 channels and if you didn't watch it live, you'd missed it. Event TV in every sense. Nowadays you can watch it live, watch it later, wait 'til the series has finished then watch it all in a day, watch it in the background while you play on your phone. It's sad but true. I do find it puzzling that Chris Chibnall, who's big success with Broadchurch was built entirely on character development, seemed to have such trouble with this regard in Doctor Who. There were good episodes of Jodie's run, but it was much more up and down than some of the earlier seasons.

I watched it in 2013, it was really good. Going to have to take a look at the final scene if it's really been updated! Didn't watch it again on Thursday, but watched The Daleks in Colour before it, which was enjoyable. Surprised to see that the 75 minute edit came from an original that was 7 episodes and 167 minutes long though! It felt a little slow paced as it was, I dread to think how much was cut out! But it was nice to see the origins of some classic baddies.

Not that bold, I said the same thing a month ago!

I was listening to a pre-Autumn Statement report last week which suggested the Chancellor might bank his extra cash until the Budget in Spring to keep the measures fresh in the mind for an election and avoid wasting the positive of making people feel "better off" (such as it is). The fact he's chosen to announce the measures now and they all come in between January and April next year would support the idea that there may be a May election after all.

What nonsense. The housing market outstripped inflation donkeý's years ago. In 1952, the average house price was £1,891. In 2022, the average house price was £269,914. Had it followed inflation, it should be around £63,300. https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-10893633/How-high-house-prices-theyd-matched-inflation-1952.html That's a cool 200k banked tax-free thanks simply to being able to own a home. Alright for some.

Been there, done that HIGNFY!

A good day for the Committee and an ok day for me, I had Rossalyn but not Ackland. 18-15 to me, and I need 2 more in the next month to tie the Committee's record!

It is worth pointing out that, having looked up the speech, she's specifically talking about tolerance and fellowship towards commonwealth citizens (her father was a British citizen in Kenya, so presumably in Cruella's mind she was never an immigrant i the first place). And she does express hope that the "current" Tory renegotiation with the EU will allow for the relationship to continue to prosper for decades to come - but that doesn't mean she thinks it should, nor does she suggest that she's optimistic the terms will be acceptable. She is less reprehensible in her maiden speech, says nice words about both Jeremy Corbyn and her Labour predecessor as MP of Fareham. But maybe it was all just a mask for the callous human being she was all along. Full text here: https://www.ukpol.co.uk/suella-fernandes-2015-maiden-speech-to-the-house-of-commons/

We should have done this years ago!

If City are guilty on the sort of scale we're talking about, then I don't see why they shouldn't face the same punishment as Juventus in Serie A, which would mean relegation to the Championship. It would have given them a material advantage for a number of years. I don't think they'd reassign trophies, and I suspect City could keep hold of their big stars for a single year in the Championship, where they would presumably win every game. De Bruyne and Haaland in the Championship...he'd score 100 goals.

The fact it only takes 29 Tory MPs to vote against the government for them to lose their majority. There's enough right-minded Tories among their 350 MPs to vote against such a motion without exceptional reason. Theresa May, David Davis and Charles Walker gives you 3 straight away. Believe it or not, some do not want to prolong the agony. Hell, even Cruella might vote against it - she wants Rishi out ASAP and if it takes a general election then so be it.

Jesus wept. I've read essays by 14-year-olds that are better written than that. Grammar all over the place, sentences that seem to stop in the middle and selective with the facts. Utter drivel.

You're glad they voted for a ceasefire? I thought you wanted them all dead?