Duran Duran Arena (An Absurd Notion) on DVD

As this blog will testify, I’ve wasted a lot of money during my life. Countless books, records, films and games, hard earned wages thrown away in a vain pursuit to fill my waking hours. But my excess pails into comparison put against the band Duran Duran, who decided to spend what must of been a huge chunk of their earnings on this very strange feature film.

According to Wikipedia, the band were reluctant to issue a straight forward concert video, and so instead hired Australian director Russell Mulcahy to do something a bit different. He’d already directed a number of their promos, and had just finished his first full length movie (unless you include Derek and Clive Get the Horn, which I must make a note to write a blog post about one day) Razorback.

I have no idea what budget they handed Mulcahy, but the film looks expensive. They shot the fantasy elements on the Bond soundstage at Pinewood, the concert segments at the Birmingham NEC. The storyline, such as it is, concerns the origins of their name, taken from the Jane Fonda movie Barbarella. Doctor Duran, the evil presence of that film, keeps on hearing his name and so returns to Earth to battle these impudent humans who have stolen his identify. I can only imagine the reaction of the average 14 year old Duranie, sat watching the rather bizarre opening five minutes of utter nonsense, alien Brummies and all, before the band launch into song.

What’s good about Arena? Well, it’s got a Time Bandit in it, so that’s something. The concert scenes are pretty thrilling, spoilt somewhat when the filmed elements creep back in, particularly the characters in the lift during the opening song. The song choices are all quite safe, sticking to the bigger singles, so a fan hoping for something musically more interesting would be disappointed.

The centre piece is the full promo for Wild Boys, which is extraordinary in so many ways. Not just for it’s absurdity, or how despite this it takes itself utterly serious, as the band spin on windmills and bang their heads on car bonnets. Possibly the presence of TV chef Rustie Lee on a monitor is the sanest part of the whole piece.

My first introduction to Arena came when my brother bought the VHS. I was about 15, and whilst I liked the band I wouldn’t say I was a fan. I’d never even bought one of their singles, let alone an album. I was still more into computer games than music, a situation soon to be massively spun on it’s head.

My reaction when he played it was mostly one of utter confusion. What was this? Is it a film, or a music concert. It annoyed me that it couldn’t make up it’s mind what it wanted to be, something I still think to this day. The clip below of The Reflex from the movie says this more clearly than I ever could.

So many bands of the era went down this road. The strangest is Pet Shop Boys and their movie, It Couldn’t Happen Here, which tellingly has yet to recieve a DVD release. I have only seen it once, and remember it as being like an art house Carry On Film. One minute Chris Lowe is chucking fried eggs over Barbara Windsor, and then you have Gareth Hunt messing around with a dummy. Their songs are few and far between, the character elements drawn out and boring.

So why so I own a copy of Arena? Well, my wife is possibly the biggest Duran Duran fan on the planet, and so she bought the DVD reissue when it came out. It sits alongside her other Duran Duran DVD, Sing Blue Silver, another treat for the senses.

It was late into the 1980’s when I bought my first Duran Duran record, when I purchased the 12″ of All She Wants Is. I also bought the album it belongs to, Big Thing. These days, I love Duran Duran. I’ll listen to their albums at work and they bring me great pleasure. I’m not sure though I would ever have the patience to sit through this sorry excuse for a movie again though. Personally, I’ve spent about £50 on Duran Duran. When you add in my wife’s contribution to Le Bon’s boat fund, the household’s spend it considerably higher.

 

 

Battlestar Galactica The Movie on DVD

I was born in 1970, thrust into a decaying Britain, a land of power cuts, economic ruin and strikes. Not that much of this bothered me. We sometimes got the candles out, and I don’t recall many exotic holidays, but I left all the heavy lifting to my parents and got on with enjoying life. Such as Star Wars, and anything that remotely resembled it.

Its hard to imagine what life would be like if George Lucas had decided to carry on making small, art house films, rather than epic space operas. One thing’s for sure, we wouldn’t have had the glut of sci-fi films that followed in it’s wake. Disney wouldn’t have made The Black Hole. John Boy from the Waltons wouldn’t have been able to recruit George Peppard to banish John Saxon in Battle Beyond the Stars. No Last Starfighter, no Starcrash, no Spaceballs The Movie, and absolutely no chance of Battlestar Galactica seeing the light of day. Which to me would have been a huge loss.

To the best of my memory, Battlestar Galactica was shown in the UK every Thursday, by the commercial ITV network. My region was Thames, which meant smooth voiced Philip Elsmore more than likely announced it. I was about nine, and every week on that day I used to have to go with my Grandparents and visit my Great Grandmother to get her shopping.

I don’t know why I had to go. Generally, in my childhood I spent at least one evening a week with the Grandparents, presumably to give my parents a break. There was a ritual to these Thursday trips. I would be collected from my house after school, and we would drive down to the sheltered accommodation where she resided, park there, and walk to the very beige and orange Sainsbury in the High Street five minutes away. We would then walk back with her shopping bags (old people food like tins of meat and prunes), stopping at the chip shop on the way back for tea. This place was called The China Sea and I loved it in there, all steamy and stinking of vinegar. I would always take my time with the shopping trip, because it was boring at my Great Grandmother’s flat. She had the smallest TV you could get, so I would have to sit on an uncomfortable armchair, usually with a week old comic, listening to her talk about her corns and lumbago and the old people she shared a communal lounge with.

Then Battlestar Galactica started, and everything changed. First I begged not to go, or for it to be a different night, but as a nine year I had very little to negotiate with. The compromise was that I could watch it at her house, if we got back in time. So we would tear round the supermarket, and if we were running late, get a quick bag of chips instead of the full fried monty. That meant we could be back at the flat, and I could spend the rest of the evening vainly shushing everyone as they talked about age related ailments. So not the best conditions in which to watch what was fast becoming my favourite programme.

Obviously, now I would give anything to spend time with my aged relatives, even if they did just talk about their ailments, but that ship has sailed. Battlestar Galactica stayed part of my life, and I enjoyed both the main series and Galactica 1980, particularly the episode featuring Starbuck and a Cylon stranded on a planet together. I love the two first episodes of the original series, with the death of Apollo’s brother and the weird Ovion planet. Another highlight is the two episode special featuring a deranged Lloyd Bridges.

There are some gloriously over the top performances. Baltar, for example, played by John Colicos. Even as a child I wondered what he did in that chair all day, the one that spun round when odd robot man Lucifer popped in to give him bad news. Did he just sit there thinking? The Cylons themselves are amazing creations, and the good guys are superb. I loved Starbuck, and had a soft spot for characters such as Jolly and Boomer. Every time they went into battle my childish brain was anxious for their safety, even though each battle generally featured a pilot I’d never met before, destined to die.

I’m guessing action figures were rather hard to come by, as I only had two, and they were weird ones. I had an Ovion, and the Imperius Leader, a strange, frog like figure you hardly saw in the programme. They mucked in with the Star Wars gang in my play. I still have them – they currently reside in a shoebox and my own son plays with them from time to time. My Grandfather also got me some transfer sets at an airshow, which I loved. They came with a card diorama, and a set of transfers you rubbed with a pencil to stick on your picture. Hours of simple fun.

As with most programmes, Battlestar Galactica faded from memory, until the DVD era. In 2001 I was laid up with a bad back, confined to bed, and so to pass the time got the boxset from Play.com and spent a happy weekend watching the lot. Some episodes really dragged, and watching them back to back showed just how much repeated footage there was, every space battle identical, but the stories themselves were pretty good and the characters well drawn. Starbuck is every inch as good as Han Solo in my opinion, and the bad guys goofy and sinister.

I have spent £80 over the years on this space epic. I bought the first series of the re-imaging on DVD, but didn’t enjoy it much. It was too serious for my tastes. I know it wouldn’t have existed if not for Star Wars, but so what. It deserves to exist in it’s own right, and has given me a fair bit of space based pleasure.

 

Threads on DVD

I’ve always had an anxious disposition. Things worry me, get stuck in my head. Some people drift through life with barely a care in the world, but I brood, and allowing concerns to erode my thoughts. And I know that this is not just in adult life, due to my overwhelming concern as a teen that I would be blown up by a nuclear bomb.

I was terrified of nuclear war, and obsessed by the notion way more than was necessary. Childhood diaries are full of nuclear predictions, fears of sudden escalation between world powers, and of accidents and disasters. I worried far more about Chernobyl than I needed to. You’d think I lived in Kiev, not a sleepy town in the Home Counties of England. I was staying at my Grandparents at that time, and remember lying in bed, convinced that thick clouds of vapourising dust were steaming over Europe, ready to turn crops to powder and blacken my lungs.

I don’t why I felt this way. I once asked my Father about the Cuban Missile Crisis, which he lived through as a teenager. He response was purely based on facts, devoid of emotion and concern. To him it was news, despite the potential impact it could have had on his life. When I was a teen every mention of missiles sent my mind into spasm. To fuel this, I sought out any reference to nuclear war in books or television.

Domain by James Herbert is a good example. Its about killer rats, but starts with a terrifying, vivid description of a nuclear strike over London, bodies bursting like piñatas, skin crisping to pork scratchings. I was far too young for American TV movie The Day After but watched it anyway, which despite its attempt at an upbeat ending chilled me to the core. I videotaped it and watched the attack sequence over and over, soft pulpy humans flashing into skeletons around the city. Even the video to Two Tribes unnerved me, as did Midge Ure’s Dancing With Tears In My Eyes.

I was eleven when the BBC showed the programme A Guide to Armageddon as part of their QED strand, again far too young, and had many a bad dream. But nothing could prepare me for Threads. Again, I clearly wasn’t old enough, but my parents even let me set a video so I could watch it again and again. It follows two families, soon to be joined by marriage, who live their normal existence against the background of rising global tension. The first third of the film displays this beautifully, how people, powerless to do anything, just get on with it. Plans are drawn, walls are painted, we go to work and do the mundane, unable to do anything else.

The attack itself is a visceral experience that smashes the senses. It sounds wrong to call this a disaster movie, but no film before or since shows a scene of utter devastation more accurately. Some Hollywood movies spend tens of millions to achieve such an effect, but the BBC did it on a £400,000 budget, an astonishing achievement. The aftermath is the most frightening, Characters from the first third are just dead, forgotten, never mentioned. There is a scene where the parents, the children killed, lie cowering behind doors and mattresses. ‘I wish I was dead’ says the Mother, who was caught in the blast, her face burnt to pieces. The Father breaks down and starts to cry. Around you can hear distant screams from neighbours. No one is coming to help. Society has ceased to exist. No one will ever help again.

Whoever came up with the name Threads deserves to get the rest of the day off, because its a genius title. The bonds that join us, Government, friendships, the fragile links of society itself, would be torn to pieces in an attack. When you watch it again the scenes before the attack take on a special poignancy, this feeling of how all this will soon be forgotten and destroyed. Shops, offices, cars, radio broadcasts, television, the art of conversation, hopes, dreams, society itself, will soon be turned to dust. Never to return.

To say Threads ends on a downer is to do it an injustice. It is as bleak as it comes, Britain this curious mixture of the Dark Ages, with brief glimpses of the new world. There is a strange disconnect between people haggling over rats for eating before placing them in a Sainsburys plastic bag. One particularly haunting scene involves an old woman wheeling in a television for a group of children, playing them a fuzzy video of School’s programme Words and Pictures. She absent-mindedly mouths every word, hinting that this is the only tape they have. The jauntiness of the music and tone of the programme juxtaposes the grime and squalor of their surroundings. The fact the episode is called Skeletons and Skulls doesn’t help much either.

Threads had a lasting impressing on my teenage mind. I watched that VHS recording many times. Twenty five years later, the BBC repeated it on BBC4 and I watched it again. It had the same effect. I have bought it on DVD twice, purchasing the new edition issued in 2018.

I’m older, but remain scared stiff of nuclear conflict. I still keep a diary, and got my knickers well and truly in a twist during the North Korea posturing in 2018. In fact, that happened at the time this DVD was released, and I could not bring myself to watch it. It seemed too real, to close to comfort. It is such a powerful piece of television, and its hard to imagine such a programme being made today.

Threads has cost me about £40, for the two editions I have bought. And many sleepness nights.

 

 

The Wonder Stuff – Eleven Appalling Promos on VHS

I’ve covered The Wonder Stuff on this blog before, but I came across this tape in the loft the other day and couldn’t let it’s discovery go unmentioned. Back in 1990 I clearly had more money than sense, and should have been banned from ever entering a Woolworth’s at lunchtime.

I can only imagine that’s where I purchased this Wonder Stuff video. This was a good ten years before I’d waste my wages on Amazon. So I’m guessing I probably heard about this release in the music papers and sought it out in the wonder that is Woolies. The town where I worked had a store and I used to go in there a lot. I remember queuing for The Love Album by Carter USM in there, with both the person in front and the person behind clutching a copy. Imagine that. I bought a copy of Dark Side of the Moon on tape in that shop, probably alongside a pound of Pick and Mix, my first experience of Pink Floyd. So I was a sad man when they went bust in 2008.

I watched this video a lot. I am staggered by how much free time I had in my early twenties. I would finish work about five, go home, have my tea, and then there would be five hours stretching ahead of me, waiting to be filled. There were no distractions, no phones to flick through, no internet to clog my brain, just minutes to fill with television, music, and videos. I would do anything to have that attention span again, and in some ways to have a more limited selection rather than the groaning digital collection of everything, meaning I find it hard to chose anything. I had a shelf of videos above my bed, so each evening I would take one down and watch it, usually from start to finish. One lively evening the shelf collapsed, showering me and my bed in plastic boxes. I had sitcoms, films, and a large collection of music tapes.

A suspicious mind might consider this video an opportunity by the band just to get some product out there, a relatively cheap way of putting some money into the coffers. At the time the band were in a state of flux, original bassist Rob Jones having left for New York at the closure of their Hup tour. He features in a photo on the back and all through the videos, but his absence is largely unmentioned. In his diaries, Miles Hunt talks of the band occupying a rental flat provided by the record company, and they would spend their time there, going out drinking most nights, and often the same most days.

 

We get to see a glimpse inside the flat on this tape. They link the videos in vision, perched on the edge of an uncomfortable looking futon, cigarette boxes strewn on the floor whilst sharing what looks like a bag of prawn crackers. They are filmed talking about the videos, an early version of a director’s commentary, bored and listless, barely having one good word to say about any of them. They slate each of their promos in turn, complaining about the process of making them, the waste of money they represent, even turning on the very fans who foolishly went into Woolworths to buy one.

A few moments liven up proceedings. The band take a call from Pop Will Eat Itself’s Clint during the filming, which to me at the time was very showbiz and exciting. I talk about my love of that band here. At the end they all go out with the film crew to a pub, sitting with the lunchtime crowd, looking settled in for a long session. The band revert into characters. Miles Hunt is sneering and dismissive, Martin Gilks cool and above it all. Malcolm Treece, who I’ve always had a soft spot for, tries his best to be funny and engaging but is soon shot down by his colleagues.

 

 

The videos themselves are not all that bad. The early promos look cheap, but nowhere near as bad as the band make out. The clip for Don’t Let Me Down, Gently is great, and looks expensive, beautifully shot on high quality film. The duller videos (which perversely, are the ones the band like) are the later sepia toned live videos. Worthy of mention is the alternative cut for Circlesquare, shot at the Trocadero in London where you used to be able to film yourself against a green screen to your favourite song. It looks very naff but at least has some charm.

I guess this video cost me about a tenner. As I said I watched it a fair amount in my youth, and still get it out say once every five years or so and give it another viewing. How much money did I give Woolworths over the years? Obviously not enough, or they would still be going. As far as to how much I’ve given The Wonder Stuff I’ve covered before, but I don’t begrudge them a penny.

 

River Cottage Forever DVD Set

Here is proof that I shouldn’t be allowed a bank account, let alone a debit card or an Amazon account. Purely on a whim, I decided to purchase not one, but two River Cottage DVD’s. The programme that is on British television as frequently as the news and weather. Our house needs painting, the shower leaks, and I go out and buy Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall programmes. Let me try to explain…

I first saw him on television in the late 1990’s, when he hosted a show called TV Dinners. It was a peculiar programme, not particularly suited to his talents, where Hugh was tasked with cooking a meal for a group of civilians. More up Ainsley Harriott’s street, but Hugh managed to make his mark, cooking up human placenta in the first episode. He soon found a more comfortable setting in his River Cottage series, which was as much a rural soap opera as a cookery show.

Stick me in front of a TV and I could watch River Cottage all day. There is something very comforting about the cosy nature of his very existence, how he ingratiates himself into the community, making friends and cooking them meals. You get to know the characters and they become as important to the programme as the star. People such as Michael Michaud, the vegetable expert, and his slightly dubious butcher Ray, add a lot to the show, and you enjoy their presence when they make an appearance.

My favourite series is Beyond River Cottage, which was broadcast in 2004. I bought it because I came across the series on the lifestyle channels on Virgin, but had missed some earlier episodes. Rather than wait 10 days for the series to rotate round again, I hopped onto Amazon and bought my own copy. This series is larger in scale, with our hero purchasing more land and buildings, expanding his empire in an attempt to attract tourists and food lovers. It ends with a ludicrous Christmas special, where Hugh somehow manages to place ten birds inside each other, an avian Russian Doll that looks impressive but practically inedible.

As I sit and watch, I envy his life, although I know I lack the tenacity he has in spades to make his situation work. I would love to sample his lifestyle, but you can tell it is far from simple. His rustic surroundings are clearly the shop window for whirring industry, as his empire expands from stickers on soup pots to a High Street dining experience.

But at the centre are the characters, like foraging expert John Wright, or the unassuming Gill Meller, a chef of considerable skill. And all the background residents, members of the cider society or vegetable contest entrants, who pepper the scenes with colour. I’m sure for every person  in the area who welcome Hugh there are five who hate him, but the positivity of the programme is attractive and makes the area seem a wonderful place to live.

So that’s why I bought those DVD’s, despite the fact there is zero chance it will never be on television. It would take a scandal of epic proportions to drive it from our screens. It is a programme I can watch again and again, and I’m not really sure why. But I return to it, and because of this rather daft purchase (£30), I can do that whenever I want.

Robert Gillespie ‘Are You Going To Do That Little Jump?’ hardback book

Britain in the late seventies only had three television channels, so I was somewhat limited in what I could watch. It also meant the same for jobbing actors, who moved around the channels popping up in any show that would give them work. Often, it felt as if television was resourced by a repertory company, particularly in sitcoms, with the person you saw as a milkman in Rings on Their Fingers suddenly popping up as an insurance saleman in Fresh Fields.

Some performed within a particular niche. Reginald Marsh would always appear as a gruff, no-nonsense company director, playing such a role in The Good Life, George and Mildred, and of course as Sir Dennis in Terry and June. If he were my boss I think I’d tell him where to stick it, but Terry seems to take it on the chin. The superb Milton Johns played dull, rather wet characters, but usually stole the scene. He adds extra value to an episode of my favourite sitcom of all time, Ever Decreasing Circles. There is something deliciously subversive about this exchange, despite its apparent banality.

Another favourite of mine is Roger Sloman, who appears as Keith in the incredible Mike Leigh television play Nuts in May. His performing style is very unique, on the cusp of caricature, but somehow managing to stay believable. He was never leading man material, but still acts to this day. He was great in the first series of Grange Hill, and of course was in The Young Ones, adding to his legend. You can read about my thoughts on that programme here.

My absolute favourite of this type of actor is Robert Gillespie. As he himself puts it in his book blurb, he is a non-award winning actor, who has worked continuously since 1953. A quick glance at his IMDB page shows how he used to pop up everywhere, from sitcom to drama. His characters always seemed to have a hint of rebellion. Even when he played a policeman (which he did on many occasions in the Man About The House extended universe) he had an edge to him. In The Good Life he plays a residents association chairman with charm and elegance, even giving Margot a run for her money.

In 1980 he was awarded the opportunity to star in his own sitcom, something he seizes with both hands, putting in an excellent, eccentric performance as Dudley Rush in Keep It In The Family. I was nine at the time and loved this show. It was made by Thames, the TV region for where I lived, and I never failed to miss an episode. The theme tune was indelibly burnt into my brain and I was thrilled when Network released it on DVD a few years ago.

Keep It In The Family is quite an odd sitcom at times. The premise is a long married couple, at that point in the relationship where they are comfortable friends rather than lovers. They live in a big house with a rental flat underneath. They let their daughters rent this space, rather than leave home, so the parents live upstairs and the children beneath, hilarity never far away. Dudley Rush’s boss is played by Glyn Houston, another actor of this type who would pop up here, there, and everywhere. His IMDB page is longer than a boring opera.

Without Gillespie, the programme wouldn’t work. His character is a comic strip artist, who often works at his drawing table with a puppet holding the pen. He puts so much of his personality into the role, making his character likeable right from the first episode. You can tell that he is working incredibly hard, his mannerisms and expressions scaled down for television. His onscreen wife sometimes edges towards theatre, projecting her part, but Gillespie forms a relationship with the viewer, which prevents the quirkiness from being annoying. The cast do talk to each other in a stilted manner, where you can tell the conversations have been reversed engineered back from the punchline, but it is often very funny and engaging.

Keep It In The Family ran four years before reaching a conclusion, with various changes of cast along the way, although Gillespie remains a constant. As far as I know, it was never repeated, so I approached the DVD’s with mild trepidation, wondering if my 10 year old’s memory was misleading. I was wrong to worry. Myself and my wife watched the first series in one happy sitting, and I’ve watched it again since then.

This book was published about two years ago, and my wife kindly got it me for Christmas. It is a great read, although talks solely about his time working in the theatre, with nothing on his television work. His writing is as quirky as you would imagine, so sometimes you do have to read a sentence again for it to sink in, but the presentation is superb and it makes for an interesting story. He has promised a second volume about his television roles, which I am looking forward to.

In my professional life, I am somewhere in the middle. I’m not destined to be a company director like Sir Dennis, but I’ve done well enough to be proud of my achievements. In the world of acting, Robert Gillespie rose to middle management, never quite hitting the heights of Richard Briers or Anton Rogers, but enough for what I’m sure has been a happy and satisfying life. The DVD’s cost me about £50, and for the number of times I’ve watched them, that’s pretty good value.

V The Final Battle DVD Box Set

I was thirteen when V first aired on British television. Also, I was in a caravan.

In 1984, the BBC had the rights to air the Summer Olympics, which took place in America during July and August. Every year, my family took a trip in Hopton on Sea, sharing a tiny caravan and enjoying everything a British holiday camp had to offer (you can read more about this here). At the time there were only four television channels in the UK, and so ITV, the main commercial rival to the state run station, stripped V to play every night of our holiday week.

This did not go down well with me, or my parents. They had plans to go out in the evening to the Razzle Dazzle Disco at the entertainment complex, sipping a half of lager whilst enjoying a slightly blue comedian. I had my sights set on settling down in front of the television night after night, watching what looked to me to be the greatest sci-fi epic since Battlestar Galatica. A compromise was formed, where I would stay and they would go, but wet weather meant my dad and brother stayed the first night, watched it, and were soon hooked, much to my mum’s disgust. Therefore, it became the holiday of fun on the beach and arcade by day, reptilian overlords by night.

I loved V. I thought it was the business. It was on for two hours a night, Monday to Friday, and I lapped it up. Americans got the original two part series, followed by The Final Battle the next year, but us plucky Brits got the whole lot in one data dump. I was in Heaven, sat there in a little caravan, watching it on a television no bigger than a microwave door.

I loved the premise, the story, the characters, the effects, everything. The pitch shift on the Visitors voices unnerved me, and I nearly lost my mind when Diana ate that hamster (the tiny television being kind to the special effect team). I thought Donovan was the business, but it was Ham Tyler (and his fat buddy) I remembered most. In my mind, he was in every episode from the start, and it was a real surprise upon viewing it again how late in the day his character made an appearance. My other main memory from my holiday viewing is the grisly alien baby, and Willy, another great character, with the added bonus of an amusing name.

I went home from that holiday without much of a suntan, but with fond memories of alien invasions. As far as I know, the rather dire series that followed completely passed me by. In fact, I don’t even know if it was shown on British television. I mostly forgot about V, despite the impact it had on me back in Hopton on Sea.

Fast forward 17 or so years, when the whole package came out on DVD. When I saw it advertised on some website it was as if a door had been opened in my mind, and I was transported back to that caravan. I bought it as soon as it came out, wondered where Ham Tyler was, before catching up with him again when the sequel mini-series was also released. I even bought the following full series, which was indeed absolutely terrible. Even Janine from Spinal Tap can’t save it. I didn’t make it all the way through the DVD’s, which proves how awful it is.

As far as the original five episodes go, I was captivated all over again. I tried to get into the remake but didn’t enjoy it. But the original, particularly those first two episodes, is amazing. The story is more allegorical than I remember, maybe a little heavy handed at times (thank you Mr Bernstein), but really well written and engaging.

The DVD’s cost me about £50. I Ebayed the series, so got back about a tenner, so I’m £40 down on the deal. Happy with that. As the Starchild would say, ‘Pretenama‘. What more can I say.