Entertainment (?), Yorkshire style

How the mighty have fallen. John Surtees, our host here in this inhospitable land, once a high flyer at Yorkshire Television, with responsibility for overseeing the production of Coronation Street and Emmerdale Farm, is now contemplating work on a project for northern “comedians” The Chuckle Brothers.

Coronation Street, as many will know, is a very popular depiction of town life for the elite in Yorkshire. It is the kind of existence that most locals aspire to.

I have never seen the programme, and have no wish to, but I am aware of its popularity in the south, where is viewed as a comedy.  Conversely, I am also aware of The Chuckle Brothers who are clearly nothing to do with comedy and I cannot understand their popularity.

Mr Surtees retired from Yorkshire Television after making a name for himself by sacking half the workforce and closing the Yorkshire TV Bar, so perhaps it could be considered payback time to be forced into such a Chuckle Brothers scenario.

For all that he seems happy at the prospect, although if truth be known he will miss his ferrets when he goes back to work.

His pigeons and ferrets will also miss probably miss him, but one cannot stop the march of progress, and in Yorkshire terms a Chuckle Brothers TV series will be seen as progress, although I doubt the programme itself will be seen anywhere except Yorkshire, and as there are probably less than 100 TV sets in the county, I really can’t see the commercial viability of this.

Yesterday to lunch at the beautiful Crab and Lobster in Appleby, and it had a fantastic menu, and was faultless. It was good enough to have been adequate in Valbonne, that’s how good it was. Obviously it must be run by people from the south of England.

I should say here that probably the only reason we would contemplate visiting this county is at the invitation of some of our best friends, John and Rachel Surtees.

If there is a more beautiful and better endowed stunner in the whole of England as attractive as Rach then I would love to see her.

John however is a very different proposition. As taciturn as he is generous, I feel he fulfills Rachels needs for “a bit if rough’. However, such is his (frankly inexplicable to me) appeal to women that before that nice lady garden designer trapped me in marriage, she lived with John for 9 years!

Despite this we all get on extremely well, but there is for me one unresolved issue. Clearly John has “knowledge” of the current Mrs France, whereas I am not in a similar position with the current Mrs Surtees. I should say here that any position would do!  However, my suggestions about, as it were, “squaring the circle” have so far fallen on stony ground, clearly I am not rough enough for her tastes.

So after a brief siesta, early doors at The Bracken Fox, where Black Sheep is waiting to be drunk. Any mention of sheep will of course be of interest to sheep fancier Steve Weston (see blogs passim) but Black Sheep is not as Steve may be imagining as a cute little negroid lamb, but a Yorkshire beer.

Then back to chill in the Surtees conservatory and listen to the un forecast rain drum on the roof – such are the entertainment possibilities in Yorkshire.

Whilst partaking of a nightcap Rachel reveals that she once started an avalanche in the Alps by burping loudly – oh how we laughed!! The Chuckle brothers should be worried!! Max the dog was on his back!

Max, on his back in merriment

This morning to a hamlet called Leeds, where there is reputedly a shop.

Tomorrow my first golf of the trip with old git mate Dave Wurr, unless the overnight rain continues through the day in which case mudslides and the like may preclude my taking the customary £10.

Chris France      

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