Skip to main content

Load of Old Bully.


Jim Bowen was only forty-four when he started presenting Bullseye.

Bowen, Series One.

Yes, you heard me right: forty-four. That’s just ten years older than me. While I’m a fan of Bowen and see him as an institution, that doesn’t mean I’d want to look like him a decade from now. If I do, my degradation rate will be similar to Walter Donovan's after drinking from the wrong grail at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

(Classic reference.)

Jim, Circa 1981

To hammer the point home, I’ve compiled a list of famous people who are the same age now as Jim Bowen was then. It’s right at the time of going to press and is pretty comprehensive. Strap in…

David Tennant,
Matt Damon,
Ewan McGregor,
Gary Barlow,
Susanna Reid,
Lisa Snowdon,
Tamzin Outhwaite,
David Walliams,
Pete Sampras,
Ethan Hawke,
Jamie Theakston,
Tess Daly,
David Coulthard,
Melinda Messenger,
Mary J Blige,
Stan Collymore,
Katy Hill,
Sarah Alexander,
Patrick Kielty,
Penny Lancaster,
Zoë Ball,
Neil Hannon,
Des’Ree,
Beth Orton,
Gail Porter,
Jeremy Edwards,
Julian Assange,
Samantha Cameron,
Michelle Gayle,
Derren Brown,

…Amanda Holden. Actually, I take it all back.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...
Read more

'...I'm Gonna Look at You 'til My Eyes Go Blind."

Over the past week or two, I’ve been on a bit of a Sheryl Crow kick, largely thanks to rediscovering her cover of one of my most-liked Bob Dylan songs. She has one of my favourite female voices, yet despite this, I only own one CD and that’s just a single (her '97 release ‘Hard to Make a Stand’); on that basis, you can only imagine how much of her back catalogue I’d own if I hated her (it would fall into minus-figures). Dylan, conversely, takes up more of my collection than anyone else, save The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s solo work. He’s one of those artists who, when you get him, you really get him - and once I’d tuned into his style as a student, I'd time and again be blown away by his lyrics; he’ll have more jaw-dropping imagery in one track than other people fit in a whole career. These days, I mostly listen to music in the morning when getting ready, and more often than not, this will consist of a suggested YouTube playlist when I’m in the bath, r...
Read more

"Speaking Words of Wisdom, Let it Shine."

Tonight saw the second instalment of BBC1’s latest advertise-a-musical-for-months-and-then-cast-it-with-performers-too-inexperienced-to-do-it-a-thon ‘Let it S̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ Shine’ (or as I call it: ‘REAL AUDITIONS ARE NOTHING LIKE THIS’). I didn’t watch it (clearly), but being reminded of how angry seeing just five minutes of it made me last week caused me to mull over what I would call a musical based on the band’s songbook, if I was responsible for it. Here are a my suggestions: IDEAS FOR TITLE OF A TAKE THAT MUSICAL: Barlow! Dirty Fat-Dancing Orange! A Million Love-changes-everything Songs Owen! Howard's End Pray Misérables Mamma Marka! Babe (with a pig as the lead) …BUT MY FAVOURITE HAS TO BE: Jason & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. "It was Orange, Orange, Orange, Orange..." (TAKE) THAT’S ENOUGH OF (TAKE) THAT.
Read more