Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Old People Say the Funniest Things

Old people say the funniest things

THIRD attempt at a post today. The earlier ones (shoved back in a drawer marked "Beware of the Leopard") were still half-baked and may return without warning.

OMD: Scaring old ladiesMy great aunt and my gran were both came out of Raj India, and had a rather different perspective to life than those of us brought up back in the Old Country.

Great Aunt Dorothy was incredibly old-fashioned, and hardly ever left her home in Seaford for fear of running into normal people, or God forbid, colonials, seeking out white flesh for a continuation of the Indian Uprising.

A random quote whilst watching absolutely ANYTHING on TV: "There's too many niggers on the television these days." And that came during Songs of Praise. Mouth: like a goldfish.

When Moira Stewart made her first appearance on the BBC News back in the early 80s, I genuinely thought she was going to explode.

She wouldn't let us watch ITV, which was "run by people who wear jeans". If she had her way, she would have tied them all over the mouths of cannons and BOOOM!

Watching Top of the Pops one Thursday, we sat through any number of acts that could have raised Great Aunt Dorothy's elderly ire (including, if my memory serves, The Ruts doing the punk classic Babylon's Burning*). It was only when twee electro group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark came on doing something soppy that she exploded.

"Look! LOOK! He's got his shirt tails hanging out!"

He wasn't wearing a tie, either. And he needed a decent short back-and-sides, like they have in the army, "a bit of National Service would soon sort out his slovenly ways I don't know why I pay my TV Licence, the BBC's full of long-haired communists these days..."

Andy McCluskey, you're a granny-worrying thug.

* My memory is a good seven years out. It was, after studying the Top 40 of the time, almost certainly the Jesus and Mary Chain. Or Iron Maiden. Or The Stranglers. Details, Shmetails.

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