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Wolfie has recovered from her operation in double quick time and was well enough to come home today, albeit with a cone of shame, which makes navigation round the house difficult or hilarious depending on your point of view.
I am sure she'd find it funny if I had a cone on my head and kept bumping into things. No one else in my family laughs when she does though.
She was very glad to see us and perky to begin with, but understandably a bit lethargic once she was home. It's great to have her back. Her removed bits (they took out a few suspicious bits and bobs, plus her whole spleen) will be tested and we'll have more of an idea of how long she might have. But I am hopeful we might measure it in years rather than months, even if it's just a couple of years.
Having a time limit does make you appreciate someone properly and I will be letting her know that I love her more than anyone in the world on a daily basis.
What is Russ Abbot parodying here?
The band is called Daftness, which suggests we are going to get a take-down of Madness and perhaps there's a little bit of that in the trumpet players and the choice of subject matter. But the music is nothing like them really and Russ seems to be dressed as a New Romantic with hair reminiscent of Terry Hall and Les Dennis on keyboards looks like a Thundercat.
Have the writers just decided to have a go at all modern music in general?
Usually when a middle of the road TV show tries to mock young people's culture it comes out awful. We used to refer to attempts to parody punk bands as having people dressed like "Mel Smith punks" and a line in my play "Punk's Not Dead" went something like "you look like what a middle-aged bloke who has no idea about anything would think a punk looks like - Mel Smith punk."
This was a bit unfair on Mel Smith as looking back at Not The Nine o Clock News they got the look of the bands they parodied pretty well or at least not cartoonish rubbish
The interesting thing about Russ Abbot's Daftness is that it doesn't really seem to be taking the piss. It's actually quite a decent tune and Russ (who had his own pop career) sings it well.
And lyrically it feels more like a regular comedy song - listing advice from a father that turns out to be bad, with the punchline being the final advice from his dad is to not listen to him as his ideas are shit - that they just decided to give a modernish spin to, possibly because it wasn't quite funny enough on its own.
And the performance and the jaunty tune are very engaging. Russ puts in the odd sniff and sly smile, which again are almost the only attempts at any kind of parody. Les really enjoys his little turn to camera and does it three times (the camera more or less misses the first one).
I think I find it fascinating as I can't quite work out what they are attempting to do and it seems to be four things at once and I think it might be the greatest three minutes of comedy ever. Even the unpleasant bit about hitting women is explained by the fact that all the advice given is awful.
It's certainly more palatable to a modern audience than
their Spinners parody - partly because no one will really remember the Spinners now, but mainly because... well, you know.
Can't wait to see Ebeneezer. I always wondered what this bloke's back story was.
