Eating olives instead of pork scratchings

Yesterday's high temperatures caused a man from West Yorkshire to morph into a hot-blooded Continental.

Tom Logan from Leeds was ordering a cheeky pint on his lunch break when he had an uncontrollable urge to ask for an Aperol spritz instead.

Logan explained: ‘Before I knew it I was eating olives instead of my usual pork scratchings and undoing my shirt buttons low enough to reveal my chest hair.

“I couldn’t stop shouting effusive greetings at people I knew, when a surly ‘Eh up’ normally suffices. I never even went back to the office; I just took the rest of the afternoon off. No particular reason, just ‘because’. And it felt like that was okay.

“My colleagues eventually found me sunning myself on a bench in Park Square, or Parco Piazza as I insisted on calling it, wearing polished leather shoes with no socks and flailing my arms around as I spoke.

“They suggested we kick a ball around to try and snap me out of it, but when I began flinging myself to the ground dramatically pretending to be injured, they understood I really was Italian.

“I haven’t quite reached the stage where I’m shouting, ‘Bella! Bellissima!’ at passing women, but I fear I’m not far off, and I doubt the women of Leeds will stand for that crap. Yeah, I’m pretty sure this ends with me getting punched.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

A genuine, fourteen carat, gilded barmpot

A man who thinks his flat cap makes him resemble a stylish 1920s gangster actually resembles an elderly Yorkshireman in a gentle comedy, according to friends.

Stephen Malley claims to be only wearing the hat to keep his head warm, even though it rests lightly on top of his hair and does not cover his ears.

Friend Martin Bishop said: “Thing is, when Cillian Murphy’s in that hat, he exudes sexy menace like he’s about to smash someone’s face in on a door.

“When Stephen wears it, he looks more like a pensioner from the Dales. The curmudgeonly one played by Brian Wilde, not the nice, gentle one played by Peter Sallis.

“I’d tell him, but then he might go back to wearing the pork pie hat he thought made him look like Mark from Take That.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

And just for the sake of it...

Ronnie Hazelhurst Orchestra - Last of the Summer Wine theme

[The "real" story]

Night, Night, Gromit

Oh dearie me - hot on the heels of dear old Johnny Noakes, two more stalwarts of classic British TV have gone to that great goggle-box in the sky....

Roy Barraclough (who died last week) was a veteran of old-school repertory theatre (in those halcyon days when people had to slog for years before fame beckoned; unlike today when it appears all one needs to do is appear on a reality telly programme). Once he did make the jump to television, he made his name primarily in comic roles - and his spirit of self-deprecating humour made him perfect for the part of Alec Gilroy in Coronation Street, perpetually sparring with his wife Bet (née Lynch) and Rovers Return patrons alike. But it was for his long comedy partnership with "national treasure" Les Dawson for which he is most loved by us aficionados of camp innuendo - not least for his recurring part as "Cissie" to Les's "Ada":

Cissie & Ada - The Art Gallery

Far more gentle was the comedy of Peter Sallis, whose death was announced today. Having trained at RADA just after the War, he had a lengthy stage career and numerous character roles on telly before (finally) in 1973 he became a household name playing "Clegg" in the BBC's longest-ever running comedy series Last of the Summer Wine. He was the only actor to appear in every single episode, until the series finally ended in 2010. To international audiences, however, he was far better known as the voice of "Wallace" in Wallace and Gromit, from which this is a classic scene:

Wallace and Gromit - Breakfast

RIP, both.

Roy Barraclough MBE (12th July 1935 – 1st June 2017)

Peter Sallis OBE (1st February 1921 – 2nd June 2017)

Another pinny has been hung up for good

One of a long line of "formidable British battleaxes", as portrayed by the likes of Mollie Sugden, Violet Carson, Irene Handl, Stephanie Cole, Edna Dore, Joan Sanderson, Yootha Joyce, Patricia Routledge and (of course) Peggy Mount - as well as fellow cast member, that stalwart of the "shooing duster", Kathy Staff - Jane Freeman's tour-de-force as Holmsfirth cafe owner "Ivy" in Last of the Summer Wine was one of the strong female characters who held this show, and Corrie, and so many other UK telly series, together.

Miss Freeman, a graduate of Cardiff's College of Music and Drama [a familiar campus for me, overlooking as it did the infamous cruising ground that was Cardiff's Castle Grounds, but I digress], had a long career on the stage before television success beckoned. Among the parts for which she was renowned were "Kath" in Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane and "Amanda Wingfield" in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie; before she gained her foothold on screen, and appeared in (among others) the first Blackadder series.

With her demise, we have a mere handful of actresses who can play this dying breed of matriarchs...

RIP Jane Freeman (born Shirley Ann Pithers, 12th June 1935 – 9th March 2017)