Thursday, January 04, 2007

Donald, Thomas and Leslie


There was an article on the BBC site today called Bluebird's Last Journey or something http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cumbria/6228503.stm about the restored wreckage of Donald Campbell's boat which is currently on its way to a museum near Lake Coniston where he met his maker. I'm not one to discredit the name of a national hero, but this last journey has taken 40 years in which he's travelled no further than five miles down the road. A swift calculation tells us this involves an less-than-impressive average speed of approximately 0.00001 mph. My two-and-a-half year old son can do more than that on his Thomas the Tank Engine scooter and that's not in a museum. Once again, it's one rule for aristocratic daredevils and another for the rest of us.


Celebrity Big Brother started yesterday which, along with a glut of other reality shows is proving that everyone in the world is becoming steadily famous and it's only a matter of time before Hello magazine looks like the Domesday Book. Tenuous brushes with fame will undoubtedly increase. I met the Honey Monster once in a south Wales supermarket, but this pales into insignificance compared to my wonderwife who can boast once sharing a bouncy castle with the late Leslie "The Price is Right" Crowther.

1 comment:

Dan said...

Steve,

Please can you confirm whether Leslie Crowther was late at the time of your wonderwife's sighting?

I'm imagining a slightly stiffening be-suited figure, bouncing up and down on a yellow bouncy-castle due to the forces of his fellow bouncers...