Every cloud has a silver lining ...

... today's announcement that Mary Berry will hand in the oven gloves & resign from TGBBO is sad as such - someone who seems to be genuinely decent, knowledgable & not some overnight one-trick wonder - but more than compensated by hearing that Paul Hollywood will follow the sticky dough to Channel 4 where (surely) the show will sink like an under-heated Yorkshire pudding.

(Truly the Son of Clarkson. Vroom-vroom! Await the obscene salary & spin-off deals. Then the behind the camera tantrums ... )

Not forgetting the welcome news that the pun in the arse sisters - Mel & Sue - will stand down. The icing on the cake.

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While still in posting mode ... I had the misfortune to hear the resurrected Radio Active 'comedy' (sic) on Radio 4. Embarrassing from start to finish. Thirty years ago that kind of Edinburgh fringe-sub Python-John Cleese asperity still had some edge. Today ... er ... Who, I wonder, gave it the nod?

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Whereas ... in preparation for a series of classes on Beckett I watched The Music Box on the e-board - a Laurel & Hardy short from (I'm guessing) the 40s?

Pure joy.

The way Stan lifts his leg with his hand - as if communication with this limb has broken down ... How Oliver reproaches Stan for being stupid trying to lift the piano off the carriage on his own only to insist on kneeling down for it to slide over his back ... The constant twang of piano strings implying the instrument must be falling to bits inside the box ...

A student who happens by watches entranced.

This kind of comedy has no sell by date.