Coronation Street 35th Anniversary Commemorative Stamps (1995)

These Local Issue stamps were issued in 1995 by St Mary's in the Scilly Isles as part of a joint Omnibus issue to commemorate the 35th Anniversary (1960-1995) of Coronation Street. On this particular stamp is the great Ena Sharples (Violet Carson)

Picture Show & TV Mirror - Angie Dickinson (1960)

This edition of Picture Show & TV Mirror dates back to 1960 and featuring as its cover is the glamorous Angie Dickinson.

The Seekers EP (1965)

THE SEEKERS: The Seekers EP (Original 1965 UK black & blue Columbia label 4-track 7" vinyl EP with intact push-out centre, featuring; A World Of Our Own, Sinner Man, I'll Never Find Another You and Open Up Them Pearly Gates.)

Z Cars - 309 Ford Zephyr (1965)

This was the 309 Ford Zephyr from the classic Cop series, Z Cars. This white Z Cars Ford Zephyr was made by Tri-ang under the spot on brand and was produced back in 1965.

Totally Tiswas! - The Dying Fly (1978)

Yes folks, I'm going Totally Tiswas again and taking a look back at the phenomena that was the Dying Fly!

Chris Tarrant reads out a letter from a viewer back in 1980 asking what on earth has happened to The Dying Fly?.......All of a sudden, chaos ensued in Studio 3 at ATV Centre and both adults and children would lay on their backs and participate in the manic, Dying fly. This chaos and pandemonium is what made the ultra, excellent Tiswas stand out from the prim & proper Swap Shop.

The Dying Fly was often featured on the great Tiswas. It was first introduced by Comedian Jasper Carrot when he appeared on the show back in 1978. The rest as they say is, History!

This is definitely what they wanted!

Happy Days Action Figure - Potsie Webber

This is the Action Figure of Happy Days heart-throb, Potsie Webber played by Anson Williams in blue jeans and Jefferson High jacket. 

Fawlty Towers - Series One, Episode Three - The Wedding Party (1975)

Basil is disgusted when two young lovers, Alan and Jean, begin 'hanky-pankying' under his very nose while checking in. He becomes convinced that they and two other guests (a couple called the Lloyds) are engaged in group sexual misbehaviour, somehow also involving Polly. Meanwhile, circumstances conspire to put him in apparently compromising situations whenever they are around.

A heatwave has hit Torquay, bringing Basil's incompetence - not to mention his intolerance - to an all time high. When he realises that the two young lovers Alan and Jean, who are checking in, aren't married, he tries to force them into single rooms on separate floors. Meanwhile, Mrs. Peignoir, an attractive French antique dealer, seems to have taken a shine to Basil, much to Sybil's annoyance. Alan returns to the lobby and asks Basil if he knows whether any chemists are still open. Basil initially assumes he wants to buy condoms, then when Alan says he wants batteries Basil - still assuming it must be sex-related - tells him that is "dis-gusting". When Alan explains that he wanted batteries for his electric razor, Basil tries to save the situation.

Later that evening, Mrs. Peignoir arrives home and drunkenly trips over Basil as he crouches on the floor picking up her purse that she has dropped, ending up sitting on him. At that moment Alan and Jean also arrive, witnessing what appears to them to be a very intimate situation. Later that same night Manuel, who had been out celebrating his birthday, returns home drunk with his umbrella (a birthday gift from Basil) outside Basil and Sybil's door and accidentally hits Basil over the head with the umbrella. As Basil crumples to the floor in pain, Manuel drunkenly sits over him, saying "Mr Fawlty, I love you, I love you ...." and once more Alan walks in on the situation. Then Basil strangles Manuel.

Jean's mother and stepfather Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd arrive next morning. Basil soon notices strange going-ons between the Lloyds, Jean, Alan, and Polly. For example, Basil accidentally walks in on Jean hugging Mr. Lloyd, and not realising that they are family he tries to keep Mrs. Lloyd from the room where he saw them embracing. He shows her the kitchen, where Manuel is sleeping off the previous night's celebration in the linen basket. Finally he lets her up to the room, only to discover Polly (a family friend of the Lloyds) is now hugging Mr. Lloyd. He again distracts the now very edgy Mrs. Lloyd by showing her another room, explaining that the Lloyds' room is not as nice. When Mrs. Lloyd enters the room, she realises that it is exactly the same as the one Basil showed her. As he is leaving the room, Basil hears loud moaning noises from Alan and Jean's room and Polly hurries out, dressing herself (she has been trying on a dress Jean made for her and the moaning was because Jean had been massaging Alan's shoulders).

Thinking the worst, Basil prepares to fire Polly and tells the Lloyds to leave. Sybil explains that they are one family and that Polly went to school with Jean, and has known them for years. He argues with Sybil about apologising to them, saying sarcastically "No, no, I suppose it's all my fault, isn't it?" But Sybil insists and advises him to "Tell them you made a mistake." So he rehearses the apology (to Sybil, to Polly, to himself and to empty space) "I'm so sorry, I made a mistake", but by the time he reaches the guests' room, the sentence has become "I'm so sorry, but my wife has made a mistake!"

Sybil's good friend Audrey has split up from her husband, much to Basil's irritation as she's constantly on the phone and repeating the phrase 'Ooh, I know'. She goes to visit Audrey the following day and, as Major Gowen puts it, "listen to all that rubbish" while consoling her friend. A flirtatious Mrs. Peignoir tries to charm Basil that night while Sybil is away, and he is very jumpy in the evening. As he tries to undress someone keeps knocking at his door, and he believes it to be Mrs. Peignoir trying to seduce him again. However when he realises it is actually Sybil returned early, he opens the door and unconvincingly says "Oh, what a terrible dream," trying to explain his previous whispers to Mrs. Peignoir (as he thought) to go away. Sybil, however, doesn't notice his odd behaviour, as she tells Basil that she has heard a burglar downstairs. Both are unaware that it is actually Manuel, who has awakened from the linen basket, still hung over. Basil quietly creeps downstairs in his underwear and hits 'the burglar' over the head with a frying pan. Manuel is revealed unconscious, and Basil crouches over him in the foyer. Just as Basil realizes who it is, Alan, Jean and the Lloyds walk into the hotel, where they are confronted by the sight of Basil apparently lying on top of Manuel with no trousers on. They creep past, bemused by his behaviour, and Mr Lloyd, slightly drunk, says to Basil "We've been to a wedding". In frustration and humiliation, Basil draws back the frying pan for a final vengeful clout ...

Coronation Street 35th Anniversary Commemorative Stamps (1995)

Back in 1995 Corrie celebrated its 35th Birthday.  To mark this occasion Granada released a collection of commemorative stamps depicting certain characters over the years.  This particular stamp features the Street's first & best scally, Mr Raymond Langton himself played by the excellent Neville Buswell.

Billboard Hot 100 (1963)

The year is 1963 and  just when you thought the 50s were behind us "Puff the Magic Dragon" by Peter, Paul and Mary is banned from play at many radio stations because it is believed to be a reference to marijuana. Radio was not the only censor, on television Bob Dylan is not allowed to perform a anti-segregationist song on the Ed Sullivan Show. He refuses to perform at all and boycotts the show.

Little Stevie Wonder is yet another huge success for Berry Gordy and Motown Records. Despite two lack luster albums in 1962 Wonder finally scores big with "Fingertips" which remained at No1 for three consecutive weeks. That was Motown's only No1 spot this year.

And as if it were a hint of what was coming next year, the Beatles first album "Please Please Me" is released in the U.K. where it hits No1 and stays there for an unheard of 30 consecutive weeks. The single "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was released prematurely in December of 1963 just a couple of weeks before their first visit and concert in the U.S. That "visit" in early 1964 was the very first volley in the British Invasion.

Country music lost one of the most influential and successful female artists of this time. Patsy Cline was killed at the age of 30 in a private plane crash. Her crossover success was already helping to bring country music into the mainstream with her 1961 hit "I Fall to Pieces".
"Louie Louie" became pretty much the only hit or other mention for the Kingsmen. It was however famous because of the poor enunciation of lead singer Jack Ely the lyrics were incorrectly interpreted as being indecent. The song was banned by several radio stations as well as the entire State of Indiana until the band proved that the lyrics were harmless.

SONG	ARTIST	No OF WEEKS	DATE
Go Away Little Girl	Steve Lawrence	2	1/12
Walk Right In	Rooftop Singers	2	1/26
Hey Paula	Paul & Paula	3	2/09
Walk Like A Man	The Four Seasons	3	3/02
Our Day Will Come	Ruby & The Romantics	1	3/23
He's So Fine	Chiffons	4	3/30
I Will Follow Him	Little Peggy March	3	4/27
If You Wanna Be Happy	Jimmy Soul	2	5/18
It's My Party	Lesley Gore	2	6/01
Sukiyaki	Kyu Sakamoto	3	6/15
Easier Said Than Done	The Essex	2	7/06
Surf City	Jan & Dean	2	7/20
So Much In Love	Tymes	1	8/03
Fingertips - Pt 2	Little Stevie Wonder	3	8/10
My Boyfriend's Back	The Angels	3	8/31
Blue Velvet	Bobby Vinton	3	9/21
Sugar Shack	Jimmy Gilmer & Fireballs	5	10/12
Deep Purple	Nino Tempo & April Stevens	1	11/16
I'm Leaving It Up To You	Dale 7 Grace	2	11/23
Dominique	The Singing Nun	4	12/07

"Here's Looking At You Kid" - Casablanca (1942)

Can you see George Raft as Rick? Jack Warner did, but producer Hal Wallis wanted Bogart. Considered by many to be the best film ever made and one of the most quoted movies of all time, it rocketed Bogart from gangster roles to romantic leads as he and Bergman (who never looked lovelier) sizzle on screen. Bogart runs a gin joint in Morocco during the Nazi occupation, and meets up with Bergman, an old flame, but romance and politics do not mix, especially in Nazi-occupied French Morocco. Greenstreet, Lorre, and Rains all create memorable characters, as does Wilson, the piano player to whom Bergman says the oft-misquoted, "Play it, Sam." Without a doubt, the best closing scene ever written; it was scripted on the fly during the end of shooting, and actually shot several ways. Written from an unproduced play. See it in the original black and white. 50th Anniversary Edition contains a restored and remastered print, the original 1942 theatrical trailer, a film documentary narrated by Lauren Bacall, and a booklet.

Casablanca was a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War 2 , it focuses on a man torn between, in the words of one character, love and virtue. He must choose between his love for a woman and helping her and her Czech Resistance leader husband escape from the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis.

Although it was an A-list film, with established stars and first-rate writers—Julius J Epstein, Philip G Epstein and Howard Koch received credit for the screenplay—no one involved with its production expected Casablanca to be anything out of the ordinary; it was just one of dozens of pictures produced by Hollywood every year. The film was a solid, if unspectacular, success in its initial run, rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied Invasion of North Africa a few weeks earlier. Despite a changing assortment of screenwriters frantically adapting an unstaged play and barely keeping ahead of production, and Bogart attempting his first romantic lead role, Casablanca won three Academy-Awards, including Best Picture. Its characters, dialogue, and music have become iconic, and Casablanca has grown in popularity to the point that it now consistently ranks near the top of lists of the greatest films of all time.


Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is a cynical American expatriate living in Casablanca in early December 1941. He owns and runs "Rick's Café Américain", an upscale nightclub and gambling den that attracts a mixed clientele: Vichy French, Italian, and Nazi officials; refugees desperately seeking to reach the United States, as yet uninvolved in the war; and those who prey on them. Although Rick professes to be neutral in all matters, it is later revealed he ran guns to Ethiopia to combat the 1935 Italian Invasion and fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
Ugarte (Peter Lorre), a petty criminal, arrives in Rick's club with "letters of transit" obtained through the murder of two German couriers. The papers allow the bearer to travel freely around German-controlled Europe and to neutral Portugal, and from there to America. The letters are almost priceless to the continual stream of refugees who end up stranded in Casablanca. Ugarte plans to sell them to the highest bidder, who is due to arrive at the club later that night. Before the exchange can take place, Ugarte is arrested by the local police under the command of Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), a self-admitted corrupt opportunist. Ugarte dies in police custody without revealing that he had entrusted the letters to Rick.


At this point, the reason for Rick's bitterness re-enters his life. His ex-lover, Norwegian Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), walks into his establishment. Upon seeing the house pianist, Sam (Dooley Wilson), Ilsa asks him to play "As Time Goes By.". When Rick storms over, furious that Sam has disobeyed his order never to perform that song, he is shocked to see Ilsa. She is accompanied by her husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a fugitive Czech Resistance leader who has escaped from a Nazi Concentration Camp. The couple need the letters to leave for America to continue his work. German Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) arrives in Casablanca to see to it that Laszlo does not succeed.

When Laszlo makes inquiries with Signor Ferrari (Sydney Greenstreet), a major figure in the criminal underworld and Rick's friendly business rival, Ferrari divulges his suspicion that Rick has the letters. Laszlo meets with Rick privately, but Rick refuses to part with the documents, telling Laszlo to ask his wife for the reason. They are interrupted when Strasser leads a group of officers in singing "Die Wacht am Rhein". In response, Laszlo orders the house band to play "La Marseillaise". When the band looks to Rick for guidance, he nods his head. Laszlo starts singing, alone at first, then patriotic fervor grips the crowd and everyone joins in, drowning out the Germans. In retaliation, Strasser has Renault close the club.

That night, Ilsa confronts Rick in the deserted café. When he refuses to give her the letters, she threatens him with a gun, but then confesses that she still loves him. She explains that when they first met and fell in love in Paris, she believed that her husband had been killed attempting to escape from the concentration camp. Later, while preparing to flee with Rick from the imminent fall of the city to the German army, she learned that Laszlo was in fact alive and in hiding. She left Rick without explanation to tend to her ill husband.  With the revelation, the lovers are reconciled. Rick agrees to help, leading her to believe that she will stay behind with him when Laszlo leaves. When Laszlo unexpectedly shows up, having narrowly escaped a police raid on a Resistance meeting, Rick has waiter Carl (S.K Sakall) secretly take Ilsa back to the hotel while the two men talk.

Laszlo reveals he is aware of Rick's love for Ilsa and tries to persuade him to use the letters to take her to safety. When the police arrest Laszlo on a minor, trumped-up charge, Rick convinces Renault to release him by promising to set him up for a much more serious crime: possession of the letters of transit. To allay Renault's suspicions, Rick explains he and Ilsa will be leaving for America.

When Renault tries to arrest Laszlo as arranged, Rick forces him at gunpoint to assist in their escape. At the last moment, Rick makes Ilsa board the plane to Lisbon with her husband, telling her she would regret it if she stayed, "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."

Major Strasser, tipped off by Renault, drives up alone. Rick shoots him when he tries to intervene. When his men arrive, Renault pauses, then tells them to "Round up the usual suspects." Once they are alone, Renault suggests to Rick they join the Free French at Brfazzaville. They walk off into the fog with one of the most memorable exit lines in movie history: "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

The film was based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's then-unproduced play, "Everybody Comes to Ricks." The Warner Bros story analyst who read the play, Stephen Karnot, called it (approvingly) "sophisticated hokum", and story editor Irene Diamond convinced Producer Hal Wallis to buy the rights in January 1942 for $20,000, the most anyone in Hollywood had ever paid for an unproduced play. The project was renamed Casablanca, apparently in imitation of the 1938 hit Algiers.   Although an initial filming date was selected for April 10, 1942, delays led to a start of production on May 25. Filming was completed on August 3, and the production cost $1,039,000 ($75,000 over budget), above average for the time. The film was shot in sequence, mainly because only the first half of the script was ready when filming began.

The entire picture was shot in the studio, except for the sequence showing Major Strasser's arrival, which was filmed at Van Nuys Airport, and a few short clips of stock footage views of Paris. The street used for the exterior shots had recently been built for another film, The Desert Song and redressed for the Paris flashbacks. It remained on the Warners backlot until the 1960s. The set for Rick's was built in three unconnected parts, so the internal layout of the building is indeterminate. In a number of scenes, the camera looks through a wall from the cafe area into Rick's office. The background of the final scene, which shows a Lockheed Model 12 Electra model airplane with personnel walking around it, was staged using midget extras and a proportionate cardboard plane. Fog was used to mask the model's unconvincing appearance. Nevertheless, the Disney's Hollywood theme park in Orlando, Florida purchased a Lockheed 12A for its Great Movie Ride attraction, and initially claimed that it was the actual plane used in the film.   Film critic Roger Ebert called Hal Wallis the "key creative force" for his attention to the details of production (down to insisting on a real parrot in the Blue Parrot bar).

The original play was inspired by a trip to Europe made by Murray Burnett in 1938, during which he visited Vienna shortly after the Anschluss, where he saw discrimination by Nazis first-hand. In the south of France, he came across a nightclub, which had a multinational clientele and the prototype of Sam, the black piano player. In the play, the Ilsa character was an American named Lois Meredith and did not meet Laszlo until after her relationship with Rick in Paris had ended; Rick was a lawyer. To make Rick's motivation more believable, Wallis, Curtiz, and the screenwriters decided to set the film before the events of Pearl Harbor.

The first writers assigned to the script were the Epstein twins, Julius and Philip who, against the wishes of Warner Brothers, left the project after the attack on Pearl Harbor to work with Frank Capra on the Why We Fight series in Washington DC. While they were gone, the other credited writer, Howard Koch was assigned to the script and produced some thirty to forty pages. When the Epstein brothers returned after a month, they were reassigned to Casablanca and—contrary to what Koch claimed in two published books—his work was not used. In the final Warner Brothers budget for the film, the Epsteins were paid $30,416 and Koch $4,200.

The uncredited Casey Robinson assisted with three weeks of rewrites, including contributing the series of meetings between Rick and Ilsa in the cafe. Koch highlighted the political and melodramatic elements, while Curtiz seems to have favored the romantic parts, insisting on retaining the Paris flashbacks. Wallis wrote the final line ("Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.") after shooting had been completed. Bogart had to be called in a month after the end of filming to dub it. Despite the many writers, the film has what Ebert describes as a "wonderfully unified and consistent" script. Koch later claimed it was the tension between his own approach and Curtiz's which accounted for this: "Surprisingly, these disparate approaches somehow meshed, and perhaps it was partly this tug of war between Curtiz and me that gave the film a certain balance." Julius Epstein would later note the screenplay contained "more corn than in the states of Kansas and Iowa combined. But when corn works, there's nothing better."

The film ran into some trouble from Joseph Breen of the Production Code Administration (the Hollywood self-censorship body), who opposed the suggestions that Captain Renault extorted sexual favors from his supplicants, and that Rick and Ilsa had slept together in Paris. Extensive changes were made, with several lines of dialogue removed and/or altered, and all direct references to sex in the film removed. Additionally, when Sam played "As Time Goes By" in the original script, Rick had remarked "What the —— are you playing?" This line implying a curse word was removed at the behest of the Hays Office, and both Renault's selling of visas for sex, and Rick and Ilsa's previous sexual relationship were implied elliptically rather than referenced explicitly.The film has grown in popularity. Murray Burnett called it "true yesterday, true today, true tomorrow". By 1955, the film had brought in $6.8 million, making it only the third most successful of Warners' wartime movies (behind Shine on Harvest Moon and This is the Army).  On April 21, 1957, the Brattle Theatre of Cambridge, Massachusetts, showed the film as part of a season of old movies. It was so popular that it began a tradition of screening Casablanca during the week of final exams at Harvard University which continues to the present day, and is emulated by many colleges across the United States. Todd Gitlin, a professor of sociology who himself attended one of these screenings, had said that the experience was, "the acting out of my own personal rite of passage". The tradition helped the movie remain popular while other famous films of the 1940s have faded away, and by 1977, Casablanca was the most frequently broadcast film on American television.  On the film's 50th anniversary, the Los Angeles Times called Casablanca's great strength "the purity of its Golden Age Hollywoodness [and] the enduring craftsmanship of its resonantly hokey dialogue". The newspaper believed the film achieved a "near-perfect entertainment balance" of comedy, romance, and suspense.

According to Robert Ebert, Casablanca is "probably on more lists of the greatest films of all time than any other single title, including "Citizen Kane" because of its wider appeal. Ebert opined that Citizen Kane is generally considered to be a "greater" film but Casablanca is more loved. Ebert said that he has never heard of a negative review of the film, even though individual elements can be criticized, citing unrealistic special efects and the stiff character/portrayal of Laszlo. Rudy Belhmer emphasized the variety in the picture: "it's a blend of drama, melodrama, comedy [and] intrigue". Film critic Leonard Maltin has stated that Casablanca is his favorite movie of all time.

Ebert has said that the film is popular because "the people in it are all so good" and that it is "a wonderful gem". As the Resistance hero, Laszlo is ostensibly the most noble, although he is so stiff that he is hard to like. The other characters, in Behlmer's words, are "not cut and dried": they come into their goodness in the course of the film. Renault begins the film as a collaborator with the Nazis, who extorts sexual favors from refugees and has Ugarte killed. Rick, according to Behlmer, is "not a hero,... not a bad guy": he does what is necessary to get along with the authorities and "sticks his neck out for nobody". Even Ilsa, the least active of the main characters, is "caught in the emotional struggle" over which man she really loves. By the end of the film, however, "everybody is sacrificing."

Casablanca
Directed by	Michael Curtiz
Produced by	Hal B. Wallis
Screenplay by	Julius J. Epstein Philip G. Epstein Howard Kock Casey Robinson
Based on	Everyone Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett Joan Alison
Starring	Humphrey Bogart Ingrid Bergman Paul Henreid
Music by	Max Steiner
Cinematography	Arthur Edeson
Editing by	Owen Marks
Studio	Warner Bros.
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	November 26, 1942(premiere) January 23, 1943(general release)
Running time	102 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$964,000
Gross revenue	$3.7 million (initial US release)