time

The beer thread is "extra-curricular".

I was 13 in 1973, and can honestly say it will have no significance to me whatsoever.

Betty Moore, widow of the Intel founder Gordon Moore, dead aged 95.

Where's the faux outrage from the Daily Express?

Compared to the amount of money wasted on yachts faulty PPE etc, its an absolute bargain.

Dingle-buried!

"Unpopular" is not the same as "the majority of British people want Harry tried for treason".

*citation needed Is that you Piers?

Ken Mackenzie of the expansion NY Mets team, has died aged 89. He was the only pitcher with a winning record (5-4) that season as the Mets finished 40-120.

TV writer, producer and director Britt Allcroft is 80 today. She is the person responsible for bringing Thomas The Tank Engine (and friends) to TV screens, following a meeting with The Rev. W. Awdry while making a documentary about steam trains. The failure of the 2000 film Thomas and magic Railroad lead to her resignation as Vice-Chairman of her eponymous company, which she co-founded in 1980 (with then-husband Angus Wright), and was removed from any day-to-day involvement, though she remained a shareholder. In 1993, the company was taken over by HIT Entertainment, and she was invited to join the board.

My Advent Calendar gave me this today... Its a 10% Trappist ale so strong you almost need a spoon. Apparently the world's first Quadrupel and definitely not a session beer (or even a nightcap after a day's DLCon drinking).

Actress-turned-hotelier Anouska Hempel is 82 today. Born in New Zealand of Russian/Swiss-German ancestry, and after school in AUstarlia, she moved to Britain at age 21. She's played archetypal blondes in numerous roles in Bond, Carry On, Hammer and numerous TV programmes. She was also a regular panellist on game show Whodunnit and appeared on Celebrity Squares (useful if you're looking for future HPDP picks). She was also married to theatre director and Everton owner Bill Kenwright for a couple of years back in the 70s.

Can we either change the thread title to "20th & 21st Century American Sitcoms" (or more pithily "American Sitcoms"), or can people stop posting about 21st Century Sitcoms (for example The Big Bang Theory - debut 2007 & Brooklyn 99 - debut 2013)?

Who's 86 now? Only Connie Francis!

The last GE was four years ago today. Happy Anniversary everyone!

That reminds me I have Music From The Body filed away somewhere. Must give that another listen!

Smile Direct Club customers have nothing to smile about.

Scotland's answer to Captain Tom (but without the parasites), Margaret Payne, has died aged 93 (Would have been 94 tomorrow). She climbed her stairs 282 times, equivalent to climbing Suilven (731 metres) and raised £435,000 for charity. She was awarded a knighthood British Empire Medal.

Its 82 years since the death of John Gillespie Magee Jr, an Anglo-American Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, killed in a training accident at the age of 19. Whilst attending Rugby School he began to write poetry, winning the school's poetry prize in 1938. World War II broke out while he was visiting his father's family in the US, preventing his return to the UK, thus missing his final year at school. Wishing to aid his friends in England, he decided to join the RAF, actually joining the RCAF in 1940, rather than attending Yale, to which he'd been offered a scholarship. He received active-service posting to England in August 1941, and was engaged in one air-battle against the Luftwaffe. In his tenth week of service, he was on a training exercise when, rapidly ascending his Spitfire through a break in the cloud, he collided with an Oxford trainer. He managed to bail out but was too low for his parachute to fully deploy, and was killed on impact with the ground. The Oxford pilot, LAC Pilot-under-Training Ernest Griffin, also died as a result of the collision. Magee is remembered for the sonnet he wrote, said to have been inspired by a Spitfire flight to 33,000 feet - High Flight. The poem is often recited at funerals of aviators and astronauts, and is inscribed on the Space Shuttle Challenger memorial at Arligton Cemetary.

Attended 2 Christmas parties over the weekend, and somehow came away unWhammed, so doing better than last year. (Apart from hearing Fairy tale of New York everywhere)

I'm getting "I'm only doing this because I have to" vibes.

As I said, taking longer than anticipated, but it is finally read! If you have an interest in death (and let's face it, who doesn't) it's well worth reading to see how it's celebrated (if that's the right word) around the world. Next up (which I've already started) in which author Ian Ridley copes with his partner's premature death through the medium of cricket.

My mistake, it was TalkTV.

looks like he was on GBeebies earlier debating with Joey Barton, so not in hospital it seems.

I got 13, missing out on the Matthew Perry & Betty Boothroyd questions. The Sinead O'Connor and Smiths questions were one's I wasn't 100% sure of but opted for the right answer. Some of them I got right because I recognised the answer in the multiple choice (e.g. Mystic Meg's real name - if anyone had asked me I wouldn't have had a clue, but seeing it there it rung a bell).