Odd the things you find when surfing quietly. I was looking up Tommy Handley after the old man reminded me of him (tho Handley was dead long before I was old enough to listen to the radio). Over the years a few of the catchphrases from ITMA* got caught in my memory, e.g. “Shall I do you now sir?” and “Don’t forget the diver”.
The trivia I picked up was that the latter was a reference to Handley’s days as a youngster going to New Brighton for the day and watching a one legged man dive off the pier into the water for pennies thrown by people on the ferry.
It’s amazing what people have to do for a living… tho of course this was back in the earliest part of the last century.
People today would do well to look back and remember those days before welfare and state support was widely available. It’s easy to criticise and condemn unions for their restrictive practices, but when you see how far we’ve come since those dark dismal days you understand why they were necessary… and why it’s imperative for us to maintain controls over governments before they control us… even if it *is*, as they often claim, “for the greater good”.
I wonder which way Tommy Handley would have voted?
*ITMA – for the uninitiated, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITMA
The Eclectic Interweb 