If Sir Giles Gilbert Scott were alive today and strolled around the streets of Anytown UK and witnessed hundreds of people with mobile phones clamped to their ears while they shouted into the mouthpiece, I’d hazard a guess he’d be appalled. As he would at the sight of zombie-eyed, slack-jawed pedestrians clogging up pavements as they shuffled along, reading or sending texts, oblivious to the people trying to negotiate their way around them.

Sir Giles was the architect who designed the iconic red telephone box which first appeared on the streets of Great Britain in 1935.  Oh, you remember the day?  You’re older than you look. Keep taking the vitamins!

I don’t use the word ‘iconic’ lightly as one or two Welsh newspapers (not this one) do to describe anything from a brutalist 1970s office block to a grungy nightclub briefly graced with a post-gig visit by a now-dead rock star who probably didn’t even know what country he was in, let alone the name of the venue.

There are still many red telephone boxes around and more than 2000 of them have been ‘adopted’ and cared for by local communities. Because of the thickness of the glass and the heaviness of the doors (remember how difficult they were to open?), if you made a phone call from one you could talk as loudly as seemed fit without being overheard by other members of the public.
Although there are people today who’ve never stepped inside a red call box, they must have some sort of deep-seated ‘folk memory’ about them, because even when they’re on buses or trains (indeed anywhere where they’re surrounded by strangers) they talk as loudly on their mobiles as if they were inside a sturdy iron phone box. That many people talk loudly on their mobiles, caring not one jot whether their often intimate conversations are overheard by people who care not one jot about their intimate conversations, is without dispute. However, there is a plus side to their ignorance.
Occasionally I’ve overheard conversations that tickled my funny bones, like…
‘He spends all day in his room watching them science-friction films’.
‘I said to him, I said “I’ve let you get away with it too many times, but now you’ve overslept the mark!”
And . . .
“We’ll never be invited back to their house again after tonight. You made a testicle of yourself!” I hope they tickled yours. Your funny bones I mean,
What did you think I meant?  I’m surprised at you.

Will you be celebrating St David’s Day next week?

What’s special about it?

St David was born towards the end of the 5th Century. He founded a Celtic monastic community at Glyn Rhosyn (The Vale of Roses) on the western headland of Pembrokeshire at the spot where St David’s Cathedral stands today.

The date of St David’s death is recorded as 1st of March. The year, however, is uncertain, but it’s thought to be around 601. That’s round about the same time as the news starts at teatime in Wales.

For centuries, March 1st has been a national festival. Indeed, the 17th-century diarist Samuel Pepys noted how Welsh celebrations in London for St David’s Day would spark wider counter-celebrations among their English neighbours and life-sized effigies of Welshmen were symbolically hung.
By the 18th century, the custom had arisen of confectioners producing “taffies”— gingerbread figures baked in the shape of a Welshman riding a goat on St David’s Day.  This tradition can often be seen re-enacted in Port Talbot on a Saturday night.

Happy St David’s Day for next Wednesday!

It’s a subject that crops up every couple of years and leaves me with ‘A face like a £10 summons’.  And if you’re not familiar with that old saying, then you might well be one of the people who took part in the latest university survey into old British sayings which concluded that many are close to being ‘Dead as a doornail’.

I have an idea I wrote about this matter a few years ago, but as I’ve been writing these columns for 52 weeks of the year for almost 10 years, I beg your indulgence. Besides, the latest survey shows that even more old sayings have ‘bit the dust’ because many of them were related to trades that are no longer around.

Talking of which, did you know there was once a job called ‘A SAGGER MAKER’S BOTTOM KNOCKER’?  I kid you not. Look it up if you think I’m joking.

‘Mad as a hatter’ referred to the Victorian practice of using a solution of mercury in the manufacture of top hats, which affected the nervous system of the workers and made them appear insane. No wonder men changed to flat caps.

Another saying which seems to have died out is ‘To cast pearls before swine’, which means offering something valuable or interesting to someone incapable of appreciating it’s worth. I’ve felt like that after coming off stage a few times!

Out of 2000 people surveyed, 71% of them had not only never used the expression “I need to spend a penny”…they’d never heard of it.

Now, you and I know that the results of these surveys are totally subjective and if most of the 2000 people surveyed were under 25s hanging around a shopping mall on a Saturday morning, of course they won’t know that ‘To spend a penny’ refers to the time years ago when the first coin-operated public loo opened outside the Royal Exchange in London and access was gained by dropping a penny in a slot. These days it costs a lot more than a penny!  The last time I used a public loo in London it cost me ‘An arm and a leg’.  It was my own fault.  I injured them, trying to leap over the turnstyle…

It’s safe to say that I’m not a big fan of call centres, or cold callers, despite the fact that everyone has to make a living.  But I draw the line when unsolicited calls from such establishments come through on my mobile phone.

My mobile number is only known to close friends and family. So how did that happen?

Our privacy is slowly but surely being eroded. Have you ever been browsing the internet for something and then all of a sudden your social media is flooded with what you’ve been looking for? That!

One telephone caller said that the information that he had was accurate and had been provided by a regulated and reliable source and I just needed to answer a few personal questions. I played along, knowing there was no way he was getting any more information off me.  Unfortunately, some people get caught up at this point into providing personal information. He then wanted to know my address. Then my previous mortgage companies.  It was then that I reminded him that it would be rather foolish of me to provide personal and sensitive information to a stranger over the phone.  This challenge obviously irritated him and he hung up. I know I have never been mis-sold any financial products in the past, so the gentleman was clearly lying and not even very good at it. Now I have even less tolerance of call centres.

With thousands of TV channels (or so it seems to me) that need to be filled with ‘product’ i.e. programmes 24/7 and require an endless supply of performers to present them, there seem to be hundreds of comedians around today. Even as I wrote that paragraph, another three emerged!

Obviously, I’m familiar with comedians who’ve entertained us for years, like Billy Connolly, Ricky Gervais, Steve Coogan and Mickey Flanagan.
But, because I don’t watch as much TV as the average viewer, whenever I flick through the channels to check what’s on, many of the comedians hosting or taking part in the endless array of comedy panel shows on every channel are often unknown to me.  Fair enough. I expect I’m unknown to them.

While I’m sure they’re all very amusing and have their own loyal fanbase, I do wonder, just because of the sheer numberof funny men and women around today – many of whom can fill arenas – which of them will still be remembered in 50 years’ time.  I ask this because the Gold channel recently broadcast a documentary entitled “Almost An Armful” about the comedian Tony Hancock, who died in 1968 and is still remembered and lauded by fans of timeless comedy, many of whom weren’t born when Tony was a massive TV star.  Gold also showed two colourised episodes of his iconic BBC series “Hancock’s Half Hour” which haven’t dated at all.

Surprisingly, the series (which followed his radio series of the same title) only ran from 1956 to 1960, when Tony defected to ITV to make what turned out to be a disastrous series from which he never quite recovered.   Yet, such is his stature in the comedy pantheon, the Gold channel rightly decided to make a documentary celebrating the work of a comedian who died 55 years ago.  His TV success might have been brief, but thanks to Ray Galton and Alan Simpson’s brilliant scripts and Tony’s masterly performances, it’s obvious by watching clips of him at the peak of his career that no-one today could match his delivery of …

“Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?

Brave Hungarian peasant girl who forced King John to sign the pledge at Runnymede and close the boozers at half-past ten!”  If I’m wrong, tell me in 50 years’ time.

Do you appreciate the love of your life? Is the love of your life human? It may be your dog, your cat or even your tortoise.  We live in strange times indeed, so I am not going to assume your significant other is the same species!

Now, I remember the good old days when you could only get petrol, oil and bags of coal from the local petrol station. How times have changed!
Today, most petrol stations are as well stocked up as the supermarkets, which is a blessing in more ways than one for many people, especially with Valentine’s Day around the corner!   The last-minute chocolates, cards and flowers can quite often save a relationship. Or indeed, pet food and lettuce!

Having said that, the Welsh are actually quite lucky – we get St Dwynwen’s Day on the 25th January, which I’m convinced was created as a three-week pre-warning just so we don’t forget Valentine’s Day.

Last year, I decided to get that special person in my life some lovely flowers for St Valentine’s Day. The landlord of my local was quite touched and displayed them in a vase on the bar for weeks after.

What is it about murder mysteries on the big and small screen that fascinates us?

Every night we have a choice of British and American TV series to choose from and, for those with the patience and theeyesight sharp enough to read the subtitles, BBC4 often screens dark, brooding series referred to as ‘Nordic Noir’.

‘Noir’ originally described those black and white thrillers of the 40s and 50s featuring the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Alan Ladd and Robert Mitchum wearing trench coats and world-weary expressions.

Film noirs were set in seedy nightclubs, grubby top floor offices and rain-soaked streets reflecting lurid neon signs.  And they’d always feature a femme fatale who, in the words of Raymond Chandler, possessed “A face to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window”.

There’s never been a better time for mystery fans. If you’ll kindly join the other suspects in the drawing room, I shall explain why…

On TV we’ve been treated to the final series of Sally Wainwright’s excellent “Happy Valley”; the sequel to 2019’s “Knives Out”, entitled “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” starring Daniel Craig as an unorthodox American private eye with a slow Southern drawl and a taste in pastel-coloured fashionwear; and the Gothic mystery “The Pale Blue Eye” in which a New York detective played by Christian Bale investigates grisly murders at the West Point Academy in 1830, aided by a young Edgar Allan Poe.

Mystery fans will recognise that Bale’s morose detective Auguste Landor is a thinly-veiled version of Auguste Dupin who appeared in the very first detective novel “The Murders In The Rue Morgue” penned in 1841 by…Edgar Allan Poe.

These articles aren’t just thrown together you know.

In 2023 Agatha Christie’s classic thriller “The Mousetrap” celebrates its 71st year in the West End; a touring version will visit theatres all over the UK; and it’ll open on Broadway for the first time.

This year the copyright on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation Sherlock Holmes runs out, so we can expect a lot of new Holmes books and films, including one in which he’ll be played by Eddie Izzard.

So, if you wanted, you could write a new Holmes mystery.  But make sure you put your name on it before you send it to a publisher, otherwise they won’t know who-dun-it!

I’m too clever for my own good sometimes.

When I was a lad, our house always seemed to be full of grown-ups, our small living room bursting at the seams with friends, neighbours, strange relatives and relative strangers, the rent man, the Man From The Pru, the bailiffs . . . all of them larger than life and full of bonhomie.  Or, in the case of Aunty Glad, full of Dubonnet.

I’d sit under the dining table – which wasn’t easy as I was five feet tall at 12 – and ear-wig the fascinating conversations buzzing back and forth around the room.   Politics, religion, nuclear war, what should go on a scone (pronounced ‘skown’) first – the jam or the cream? No subject was deemed too controversial to discuss in front of me.

As people tended to talk over each other, sometimes I didn’t hear clearly what was said.  For example, I misheard a neighbour say, “Neither a borrower or a Brenda Lee”, and thought she was criticising the 60s pop singer who these days we only hear on the radio in December, singing “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree’.

Then there was Uncle Hugo, who’d explored many previously unexplored regions of the world that were no longer considered unexplored regions because he’d gone and spoiled things by exploring them.  I was convinced I heard him say, “There are flies, damn flies and stick insects”, referring to one of his trips along the perilous upper reaches of the River Tawe.  In fact, he’d said, “There are lies, damn lies and statistics”, and I thought about my late uncle (he’s not dead – just always late) recently when I read that by 2050 the number of people over 60 in the world will top two billion. Imagine the queue in the Post Office on pension day!
And, with so many old people around me, I’ll have no chance of getting a full house at Bingo.  Dear, oh dear. It’s all very worrying.
I wonder if Aunt Glad drank all the Dubonnet?