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inty that anyone born after april 2017 i e anyone currently under nine years old can be placed firmly in the no camp when presented with the question at the top of this page i would argue to truly be said to have met anyone you would have to be at least two years old perhaps this is unfair as a baby in the 1970s one of my friends had his nose affectionately tweaked by the trade union leader arthur scargill when his mother visited a conference my friend has no memory of this can he truly be said to have met one of the most controversial figures of the 1980s i think he would argue that he did not but opinions may differ on this scargill is still alive anyway he is 88 so it s never too late if anyone wants to seek him out and request he tweak their nose for them what about if you are under 30 as of today s date april 22nd 2026 chances are if you are now a member of gen z i e if you were born roughly between 1997 and 2012 you are unlikely to have ever met a genuine victorian queen victoria died in january 1901 it s not out of the question though cast your minds back did you ever meet anyone who you knew to be 100 years old or over perhaps an elderly relative or the queen mother or if you are a royal both if so then please join the yes camp remember you don t have to be able to remember any of the 20th century to have met someone who was born during the 19th incidentally i m counting the queen mother and anyone else born in the year 1900 as coming from the 19th century wikipedia seems to disagree with me on this but that s up to them needless to say the person you met certainly wouldn t have to be famous however if they are it can make it easier to clarify when they were born at the other extreme most people over sixty five or over will fall unhesitatingly into the yes camp i doubt it was the first thing they noticed but when my parents were born during the second world war everyone in the world who could genuinely be described as old as well as quite a few who were still middle aged were all born in the 19th century churchill stalin hitler mussolini fdr and the king all fitted neatly into this category more crucially in terms of people my parents would definitely have met so did their grandparents many people born in the previous century were not only still alive but of working age back then some of their teachers probably qualified and my father remembers some first world war veterans who still worked in his office when he started work in the early 1960s virtually everyone who fought in that war was born in the 19th century in the 1950s it would have actually been impossible to go through life without meeting someone who had been born before 1900 but what about me i was born in 1976 and am thus nearly 50 for me the picture is much less clear the boring truth is that i almost certainly have met someone born before 1900 but try as i might i cannot remember anyone who i know for sure definitely was i clearly remember my maternal grandparents and a few other elderly relatives all of whom were born during the first world war or a few years before my paternal grandparents sadly died before i got to meet them but even if i had they were not born until 1905 and 1911 anyway my great grandparents were definitely victorians one actually lived to 95 but all were gone by the time i arrived on the scene my wife like me is a child of the 1980s she has a clear very distinct memory of attending a woman s 100th birthday with her school so that s a yes from her another friend born in 1970 has a childhood memory of meeting lord stockton that is harold macmillan 1894 1986 the last prime minister born in the 19th century but i have no memories like that i do remember visiting some pensioners with my school when i was about six it was 1983 were any of them born before 1900 i don t know quite possibly but it would have been rude to have asked them i must have seen lots of people born in the 19th century and doubtless spoke to a few any child growing up in the 1980s and 1990s is bound to have done but the fact is i cannot confirm anything then i remembered in 1987 the children s author h e todd visited my junior school i remember him being a pleasant cheery character who wore a brightly coloured jumper he was best known for writing the bobby brewster books i have never read those he seemed in good health and we were surprised to hear of his death soon after his visit he apparently visited lots of schools and i see now that he lived in berkhamsted which is within easy reach of my hometown of peterborough i can also see that he died three days after his 80th birthday he was born in 1908 dammit though to be fair i didn t really meet him anyway he talked to us and had a nice time but i don t remember talking to him myself if only i d known i d have made more of an effort as a young child to befriend the queen mother or perhaps sir oswald mosley 1896 1980 who died in the same month as my fourth birthday the former politician edwina currie born 1946 incidentally said obviously she remembers her grandparents and only a young person would ask this question when it was put to her by someone else online at 49 i no longer count myself as a young person i nevertheless find it a fascinating question it is awe inspiring to imagine that within the lifespan of my parents they have met people who were born in the middle years of the victorian era as well as people like my young nieces who may very well still be alive at the dawn of the 22nd century these different lives cover an epic period of time spanning 250 years i find this a thing of wonder posted in uncategorized tagged ancestry family family history genealogy history leave a comment february 28 2026 brian blessed the facts the loudest sound ever recorded was caused by brian blessed sneezing in 1992 it is widely believed that if you listen hard enough from anywhere on the earth you can always hear brian blessed talking in the distance somewhere brian blessed greatest fear is said to be that he will one day encounter his evil nemesis brian cursed posted in uncategorized leave a comment january 23 2026 book review a shellshocked nation britain between the wars by alwyn turner book review a shellshocked nation britain between the wars by alwyn turner published by profile books available now the time from the armistice of november 1918 and the declaration of war in september 1939 was less than 21 years for perspective the same amount of time has passed between march 2005 and today but the years between the wars were undoubtedly eventful ones which saw britain change fundamentally forever politically the period saw the liberals fall and labour replace them as the main alternative to the tories in 1918 the last ever liberal prime minister david lloyd george was still in downing street by 1939 labour had already been in government twice and would emerge from the 1939 45 conflict with a huge electoral mandate elsewhere union membership rose and the year 1926 witnessed the nine day general strike music halls declined as cinemas flourished and radio audiences soared car use grew in the 1920s bright young things listened to jazz and danced to the charleston in the 1930s life was increasingly overshadowed by the great depression and concerns over the rise of fascism and the growing threat of a new war in 1935 king george v celebrated his silver jubilee but expired the following year his successor edward viii who was either depending on your view the ultimate romantic hero or an irresponsible nazi sympathiser relinquished the throne forcing his reluctant brother bertie george vi to rule instead happily while first italy and then germany and spain succumbed to fascism for all the political turmoil in britain we never really came close to rallying round the cause of sir oswald mosley s british union of fascists or indeed the other extreme of communism as always the excellent historian alwyn turner has produced yet another compelling insightful book about a fascinating and critical period in british history posted in chris hallam chris hallam freelance writer chrishallam_ hotmail com conservative party exeter freelancers history political book politics winston churchill tagged alwyn turner appeasement book review charleston chris hallam chris hallam book review chris hallam freelance writer chrishallam_ hotmail com david lloyd george election general strike great depression history book labour neville chamberlain politics published by profile books ramsay macdonald sir oswald mosley spanish flu outbreak stanley baldwin tories leave a comment november 24 2025 revisiting ben elton s stark why the comic s 1989 debut was years ahead of its time reading ben elton s very enjoyable recent autobiography what have i done reminded me of an often overlooked aspect of his work his career as a novelist ben elton was pushing thirty and still close to the peak of his first wave of fame when his first novel stark was published in 1989 he was a very familiar figure both as a smart suited stand up channel 4 s friday and saturday live had recently finished and as a stand in filling in for terry wogan on his holidays from his thrice weekly chat show elton was also known as a writer he had co written the young ones and the three good series of blackadder the last of which was soon to air he had also earned the ultimate status symbol of 1980s fame he had his own snazzily dressed miniature puppet on tv s spitting image he was something of a trailblazer then comedians turned novelists are everywhere these days look at bob mortimer graham norton or jo brand but in 1989 they were rare even stephen fry hadn t written any books then the original cover of stark showed a giant aerosol can flying through space this was a symbolic way of showing the book had an ecological theme there was a brief surge in interest in such issues at the end of the 1980s described then as the green revolution aerosols and their perceived connection to the growing hole in the ozone layer was very much part of the discourse then in a way which they are not now i don t remember aerosols featuring much in the novel spaceships did though in envisaging a reality in which a malevolent cabal of billionaires plotted to abandon a doomed earth in a fleet of star arks hence the book s title ben was way ahead of his time stark was the first thing which ever made me realise that humanity s environmental impact on the world might well end up having apocalyptic consequences i was about 16 when i read it in 1992 or 1993 in good time for the tv version i d heard was coming and the book s downbeat ending genuinely shocked me i enjoyed the book with two minor reservations as a reader of sci fi comic 2000ad i didn t appreciate stark s mockery of adult comic fans in general though i was not yet an adult myself and judge dread as it is misspelt in the novel in particular i also noticed a few passages were taken verbatim from ben s own stand up routines given how much he was writing back then however perhaps we should cut him some slack i remember clive anderson asking ben why his next two books gridlock and this other eden also had an environmental theme why didn t he write about something else for a change at the time i agreed with him more than thirty years later i think ben elton deserves credit for banging that particular drum so much earlier than most posted in uncategorized leave a comment november 3 2025 book review a mind of my own by kathy burke there have been a number of different kathy burkes over the years there is the best known kathy burke the much loved comedy star who collaborated with french and saunders and harry enfield and who starred in kevin and perry go large and in the sitcom gimme gimme gimme then there is kathy burke the genuinely great actress best exemplified by her powerful turn as valerie the victim of horrendous domestic abuse in gary oldman s harrowing directorial debut nil by mouth 1997 then there is kathy burke the accomplished playwright and theatre director as this memoir is i think her first book we should now add another kathy burke author fifty or sixty years ago however things looked far less promising born in islington in 1964 her early life was blighted by two stark realities the death of her mother when she was barely eighteen months old and the alcoholism of her remaining father pat with her father s drinking ensuring he could always be relied upon to be unreliable kathy was often effectively brought up by two older brothers or as often or not left to her own devices this could lead to trouble for example when she ran into two nasty local boys one of her brothers wreaks his revenge later after kathy points them out to him or when she innocently finds herself hanging around in a place which turns out to be a local drug den but this is far from a bleak book and many of her memories of her impoverished childhood are undoubtedly happy ones burke s life is transformed forever by her decision to attend the famous anna scher theatre school in the 1980s this leads directly to a part in the 1982 borstal drama scrubbers billed at the time as the female version of alan clarke s acclaimed scum which opens doors all over the place soon she is meeting her comedy hero rik mayall travelling to nicaragua to film alex cox movies and making her first steps onto national tv appearing with raw sex on the early 1980s jonathan ross friday night chat show the last resort although i read the hardback version of this the content would undeniably be improved by hearing the audiobook delivered in kathy s own unmistakable cockney voice her absolute confidence permeates her entire history there is never any sense of any sort of underlying career plan or even much ambition she simply seems to have taken up opportunities as they ve come along she is generally vague about relationships there do seem to have been some but she generally only hints at them there is little muckraking although she does admit to finding director danny boyle difficult to work with and describes actor kerry fox as a charmless prick she was deeply patronised by director shekhar kapur while filming the period drama elizabeth 1998 in which she played the virgin queen s half sister mary she doesn t seem to have enjoyed being famous much which is why she took a decision to back away from the limelight around twenty years ago this is also the point at which the book ends but this is a good read a tale of a girl who broke out of poverty to become one of our greatest national treasures book review a mind of my own by kathy burke published by gallery books available now posted in book reviews british comedy british comedy chris hallam freelance writer chrishallam_ hotmail com comics exeter freelancers history humor humour movies television uk tv drama tagged absolutely fabulous alan clarke alex cox book review book reviews chris hallam chris hallam book review chris hallam freelance writer 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