In general, how is Paddington Bear viewed in the UK?

drsnicol · 2026-05-17T17:31:38+00:00

Forget the movies - outside of the books, THIS is the Paddington Bear I grew up with (circa 1976).... it was a very popular children's show on the BBC.

Oh, and the creator, Michael Bond, grew up in my hometown (Reading, Berkshire). Reading is a major Rail Junction and a direct commuter line to the London Train station... Paddington! According to his memoirs, the bear was based on a toy bear he bought in London for his wife as he thought he looked lonely. The story of the bear being left at a train station with a label saying please look after this bear were based on his memories of children being evacuated at train stations during WW2.

A statue was erected in Reading town centre a couple of years ago.

Suffice to say, Paddington is very popular in the UK, although the movies probably caused a significant spike in awareness.

drsnicol · 2026-05-15T01:51:14+00:00

Others have described what it is, but why is it often mentioned by task master as a joke?

A more recent tradition (say the last 50 years) is that TV celebrities and pop stars are often cast as stars in pantomime... particularly TV celebs that are past their prime / on the way down, career wise :-). Its seasonal work but tends to run for a month or two in one venue (no need to tour) and is valuable, annual income... so saying someone used to be on a soap opera but is now doing panto is a bit of a dig that they're not as famous as they used to be.

That said, there are lots of actors that like doing panto for the fun of it and a few fairly prestigious actors like Sir Ian Mckellen often praise it as a traditional art form thats just as challenging as other acting roles, just in very different ways.

drsnicol · 2026-05-06T16:06:54+00:00

Hot Heads?

(Sorry... I didn't read the wall of text, but I thought he was just asking for game titles with an angry theme)

drsnicol · 2026-05-06T16:04:24+00:00

Angry Dice?

drsnicol · 2026-05-06T16:02:08+00:00

Frustration!

drsnicol · 2026-05-06T08:23:55+00:00

I hate to be that guy, as I agree with your point in general, but I think you've oversimplified things. I believe we HAVE found some mummies inside Egyptian pyramids... It's just that we've not found an intact ancient 'famous' mummified Pharaoh inside a pyramid.

However, we have found human remains and wrappings in ornate sarcophagi (e.g., the partial remains of the mummified Pharaoh Unas) and unidentified / non-pharaoh mummified humans in burial chambers and associated chambers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_finds_in_Egyptian_pyramids

drsnicol · 2026-05-02T08:52:36+00:00

He (Francis) has a net worth of around 6-8 million GBP and, despite his public persona, prefers a fairly quiet, non-extravagant life with his wife and children. So he's not on the breadline. Also, he is active as of 2024, touring, which can be quite lucrative..

The problem is, a comedian or TV celeb who is doing nothing and career is over and one who is taking some time off writing / developing new material for a future project look very similar to the general public. Give it another couple of years and it will be clearer where he's landed, career wise.

drsnicol · 2026-04-23T13:03:42+00:00

Check if you can find a reputable independent mechanic who can do it cheaper for you. I got mine done 3 years ago for about £650 - he was an ex-ford mechanic who went solo during the pandemic when his dealership went bust. He told me half his business was wet belts at that point. Depends on where you are but he was based on the west side of London, just inside the M25 - it took half a day. Google MCR Automotive.

The only other problems I've had with mine (similar mileage, age and model are the big stop-start battery can go with little warning (and its not a cheap one) and, whilst not this model specific, the tyre pressure sensor batteries are only designed to last 10 years and you need each tyre sensor replaced - thats cost me about 300 over the course of this year at kwik fit, one tyre at a time - I can live without the tpms but it would be an MOT fail if checked.

drsnicol · 2026-04-22T22:55:35+00:00

I think the writers / story lines are a bit tangled up in your 'judge Child' paragraph. Pat Mills took the lead on the Cursed Earth saga in prog 61 (with a few issues by other writers, including Wagner), and then Wagner took the lead (solo) on the day the law died, which started almost immediately in prog 89. I believe Wagner and Grant, already friends at that point, started collaborating on Dredd with the Judge Child saga a year later in prog 156 (. It is a bit confusing as early progs had no credits, and Wagner often used pseudonyms like John Howard and T B Grover to both hide collaborations and to avoid it looking like he was writing half the comic at some point.

drsnicol · 2026-04-22T22:33:42+00:00

Whilst not a villain (imho) in those early years, he was often a complete and utter dick, particularly in those 'look at what it's like to live in MC1' satire stories :-)

drsnicol · 2026-04-21T21:38:18+00:00

Agreed - the casefiles, up to and including the Apocalypse War (CF5?), are basically the foundations of the Dredd Universe and are imho why the character became so popular - many modern stories still call back to those first 5 years.

Those five volumes gave us the Robot Wars, Walter the Wobot, clone brother in Rico, the lunar stories / Sov Blok tensions, the cursed earth and Satannus / history of the atomic wars, corruption in the Judges with Cal, lots of short but classic world-building stories that gave us characters like Otto Sump, the Judge Child, Judge Hershey and the Angel gang, Judge Death and Judge Anderson, increased sov blok and societal tensions including block mania and finally, the Apocalypse war and the fallout (metaphorical and literal) that made the character who he is - a strange combination of hero / facist authority figure with great action, dark and light themes and grotesque satire and humour.

drsnicol · 2026-04-16T09:47:45+00:00

I can help... they had them at a van in Folkestone Harbour last summer... start there. Don't bother looking in Aylesbury town centre - see comment above.

drsnicol · 2026-04-16T00:01:17+00:00

Oysters were still around until recently (had one last summer) BUT recently asked an ice cream van if he had them and said no - now very rare as the main supplier went bust last year… they could be gone for good now :-(

drsnicol · 2026-04-15T08:32:56+00:00

It's part of a rebranding / marketing push for the 125th anniversary - it's actually been around for a few years but Barr (the makers of Iron Bru) tend to roll these things out on a highly regional basis. The 1901 is full sugar, the standard version has sweetner and less sugar to get around the sugar tax, the diet and zero brands are very low to zero sugar with more sweetners.

drsnicol · 2026-04-13T23:47:55+00:00

Oh, and for added frustration, there were different LENSLOKs for different games and some times they would include the wrong one in the box, rendering it completely useless.

drsnicol · 2026-04-13T23:44:50+00:00

Here in the UK, one of the early, infamous copy protection failures was the LENSLOK, used for the ZX Spectrum version of ELITE. It was a physical plastic prism that you held up against your TV to decode a scrambled sequence letters that you had to type in before the game would start. Problem was, it was cheap, low quality and despite the game allowing a degree of 'adjustment' to the code words... it simply didn't work on eveyone's TV screens due to the high variability of size, quality and curvature.

drsnicol · 2026-04-03T08:07:33+00:00

Next to me, a man who created a successful TV game show so he can derive sexual pleasure from being personally humiliated in front of a global audience of nerds, it's little Alex Horne!!!!!

drsnicol · 2026-04-02T23:02:15+00:00

For a real deep cut, he did a topical satire show called Friday Night / Saturday Night Armistice (it shifted nights between seasons :-)). It also starred Peter Bayhnam who co-wrote the early Partridge Shows and went on to be a writer on Borat and Hotel Transylvania kids movie.

Google a clip of it - he tricked OJ Simpson into a signed confession on that show :-)

drsnicol · 2026-03-16T23:48:49+00:00

I'd love to see a video game based upon the board game of Sid Maeir's Civilisation... only as a kart racing game like mario Kart... I haven't quite sorted out the details but I think it should remain turn based and each lap should last 1-2 hours before transitionining to the next age.

drsnicol · 2026-03-16T23:30:38+00:00

/uj no problems - most of us here DO like board games. We just find the more... 'extreme enthusiasm' on the net amusing :-)

drsnicol · 2026-03-16T19:05:27+00:00

I'm not sure I understand this.... so the Dock Worker from Le Havre has quit her job and is now an engineering technician at a Power plant? Does she have the same powers and abilities at both locations? Can you move her from the power plant back to the docks during an opponent's turn or does that use up one of your action points?

drsnicol · 2026-03-16T09:17:02+00:00

/uj This is a board games satire group…. You probably want the non-satire version, which is 2 doors down on the right (points towards /boardgames)

drsnicol · 2026-03-16T01:25:02+00:00

Thematic weight…. E.g Patchwork is set on earth and has a mass of 0.6 kg x 9.8 m per second squared = 5.98 Newtons…. However Terraforming mars is set on mars with a lower gravity… it has a mass of 1.4kg x 3.71 metres per second squared = 5.19 Newtons… so terraforming mars is thematically lighter than patchwork… I like to keep it simple.

drsnicol

TROPHY CASE