Friday, November 23, 2018

bullseye and birmingham

hello there


quite a tricky one this, to be sure. let me be honest, look you see. although i was rather close to Birmingham (the one in England) recently, i was not in Birmingham as such. so i cannot speak with absolute certainty about if you can or cannot watch Bullseye in Birmingham (the English one).

but, such trivialities have never really stopped me before. so, let's get on with whatever it is i propose to write in this post, hopefully for the entertainment of someone somewhere or other.



indeed, yes, that is His Excellency, Jim Bowen, presenting Bullseye, broadcast once more via the magic of that free to air TV channel called Challenge, or something like that. as i mentioned in passing above, strictly speaking this was not in a hotel in Birmingham as such, but not far off.

actually, and this is quite exciting, it was really close to Tipton. can't recall exactly what the sat nav thing said, but i was only 3 miles or 3 minutes away from the place. it is somewhere i want to go, having after all spent several years reading of the exploits of Hugo Guthrie, the apparent "in the job for life" Mayor of Tipton, in The Viz. my imagination stretches as far as assuming it would be quite class to meet him.



no, that's not where i was. far from it, in every sense you can think of. some of you will no doubt recognise the above, but if not, yes, that is indeed Vietnam. presently, or recently (or some time ago if you are reading this many years from now), Spiros went over there for a bit of business.

whilst he was there i asked him, if he would not mind, to look out for speedboats. yes, mostly i actually asked him to look for cheap cigarettes (he says next to no one smokes in Vietnam), but also speedboats. some of the research what i have done for my book on where all the class prizes off of Bullseye have ended up has led me to believe that a number of the speedboats won as prizes have been used to travel to distant parts of the world. well, relative distant parts, since taking a Speedboat off of the Bullseye studio and all the way to Vietnam would be a formidable voyage.



yes, that's me, where i was, which was close to Birmingham but not actual Birmingham proper. still, they had the smart accent and all that, so there you go.

and further yes, that is a canal behind me. any, or many if i press the "m" key properly, will already know of this, but for those who do not, there is currently an ambitious project underway to turn all of the major roads and many of the minor ones into canals across all of most of the Midlands, which will presumably (you would think) see most cars and lorries and trucks and that be replaced with boats. so, if anyone in that area happened to be someone what won a speedboat off of Bullseye has kept it in good condition for some 20 - 30 years (i have no idea how long a boat or ship would last, all that comes to mind is one particularly massive one what didn't even last one full journey), they will be able to go about their business normally as and when this roads into canals work is complete.

why exactly are they changing all the roads to canals and similar waterways? i do not know. my suspicion is that it is the genius of Hugo Guthrie, Mayor of Tipton, behind it. of his many characteristics, it is known that he is a big fan of science fiction works such as Jurassic Shed and Waterworld. perhaps he just wanted some of the latter in his life, and decided to share it with the wider geographical population.



that's not near Birmingham, no. as point of fact the above image, presented in the splendour and magnificence of Commodore 64 mode, is some 200 miles north of Tipton and similar.

indeed, it is a harbour, or if you like marina, like area which i visited as part of my research into the speedboats of Bullseye. whereas i would not care to say specifically where this was, it is of course true that Hartlepool is likely to follow the lead of the Mayor of Tipton and replace all roads with canals. they really, really hate cars in Hartlepool, so would be delighted to be rid of them. also, it is not like this would be the first time Hartlepool has simply copied the Midlands model. creativity and original thoughts are in the same room as Hartlepool just about as often as one sees Bruce Wayne and Batman sat together.



some Tony Green action, then. nothing is quite so reassuring as the voice of Tony Green telling you to relax and take your time. it is particularly welcome after one has driven for several (four) hours, is all alone and missing their family a great deal. or so i have heard.

indeed this was all in a hotel where i was staying. a reasonably posh hotel, although for goodness sake do not order coffee and cake at the same time in the restaurant, as it leaves the staff confused and bewildered. perhaps i shall do a post on that subject at some other, future date. not one in the past, then.



another selfie, for those what are for some reason interested in how i am looking these days, or if you will how i looked when i wrote this. yes, that is in a shop for all things celebratory of a football team quite close to Tipton. boing boing is their anthem, i think, or bouncey bouncey or something like that. splendid, magnificent stuff.

perhaps the title of this post is a bit misleading. whereas i have mentioned it in passing, kind of, not much of this has focused on the relationship between Bullseye and the soon to be mostly aquatic Birmingham. well, as far as i am aware you can indeed still watch repeats of Bullseye in Birmingham, so long as you have a television set and the requisite access to the channel what broadcasts the repeats.



one more image from Vietnam, courtesy of Spiros. as you can see he did make the effort to see if any speedboats off of Bullseye had made it that far. having got to a body of water, however, Spiros decided that his time would be better spent having a try of the ale that they sell there, rather than looking for some peculiar prize offered by a gameshow that he is only vaguely familiar with. and why not.

well, anyway, that was this, and this is all that for now. more, so to speak, soon. or later.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




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