56 replies to this topic

[sandy]

If you put Peter Ustinov into Youtube and then scan your way down you will come across "Peter Ustinov - The Grand Prix of Gibraltar".

I make no further comment other than just to say listen to it - you will have no regrets.

[RogerFrench]

I thought everyone here had already listened to it.....

[JacnGille]

[E1pix]

I thought everyone here had already listened to it.....

Hmmm... I haven't.

Is there a Ustinov-listening club I've been omitted from? ;-)

[Tim Murray]

Here’s a link:

https://youtu.be/umIT5NlRAYE

[Dipster]

I think it helps if you have visited or viewed pics of Gib, even in the pre-pedestrian main street era. You then realise how farcical the thought is!

[Doug Nye]

That is certainly true - as is the unpalatable fact that to be familiar with the GP of Gibraltar one must have been around and taking notice circa 1960...those of a younger generation have a valid excuse...

 

DCN

[alansart]

It was given away free with Motorsport, probably about 10 years ago now. I can remember listening to it on my way to a race meeting at Anglesey. Possibly not the best listening along the lurid A55 but fun all the same.

Edited by alansart, 27 November 2017 - 19:43.

[opplock]

I still have the Motorsport CD. For anyone unfamiliar with the Grand Prix of Gibraltar it is well worth listening to.   

[sabrejet]

I'd seen Nigel Roebuck mention it in fond terms many times but have to admit that (again from the CD mentioned above), when I finally listened to it, I found it a lot less amusing than I'd expected. 

[Doug Nye]

Indeed - Ustinov at his pleased-with-himself best was not to everyone's taste...though he was well regarded within the motor racing world as a visiting celeb.

 

DCN

[AAGR]

Thanks Doug, for stating what I did not dare to confirm. But isn't it interesting to know that some people we find hilarious don't impress others - and vice versa.

 

Now, if only I was brave (and I am not ....) I would start another thread by naming several commentators/presenters who I did not/do not enjoy watching/listening to..... And by naming others who I don't feel are appreciated enough..

[Odseybod]

Thanks Doug, for stating what I did not dare to confirm. But isn't it interesting to know that some people we find hilarious don't impress others - and vice versa.

 

Now, if only I was brave (and I am not ....) I would start another thread by naming several commentators/presenters who I did not/do not enjoy watching/listening to..... And by naming others who I don't feel are appreciated enough..

 

As Mrs Doyle says ... "Aw, gwan, gwan, gwan."

[Mallory Dan]

Muddy Talker, perchance? Dreadful commentator.

[Tim Murray]

Isn’t nostalgia wonderful? I used to get apoplectic at some of Murray’s gaffes, but when I listen to the bungling twit who is the current main F1 commentator on BBC Radio Five Live, I’d have Murray back anytime. No race was dull when Murray was commentating.

[AAGR]

Oh, and can I please start another thread about awful, over-hyped, self-advertised, 'distinguished historians' ....?

[RogerFrench]

Some humour falls out of fashion. When I first heard it, the Gibraltar GP was entertaining, but not so today.
On the other hand, I can watch old Dave Allen sketches and still be in fits of laughter.

[RogerFrench]

Oh, and can I please start another thread about awful, over-hyped, self-advertised, 'distinguished historians' ....?

Pompous, too..

[2F-001]

Dan, Tim,

I was never too comfortable with Murray's commentaries; rather than gaffes, it was over-excitability that I found a bit intrusive - and frankly embarrassing at a time when I was still trying to encourage others to become interested in motor sport (have largely given up on that score).

I find I don't need someone whipping up the 'atmosphere' and screaming crazily about every detail - any more than I need loud pumping music to accompany a live sporting event; it's the organizer saying he doesn't have any confidence in the activity itself to entertain.

Ben Edwards was a very fine and knowledegable commentator (and an ex-racer, of course) particularly at the circuit, but his tv roles have clearly pushed him further into a more volatile, Murray-esque mode.

However... I concluded that Murray was expected to cultivate and expand upon that manic, slightly buffoonish image. I've had the good fortune to briefly meet him (post-tv-gp-commentary role) at a handful of social events and found him calm, engaging, perceptive and very, very sharp.

Edited by 2F-001, 28 November 2017 - 10:48.

[AAGR]

I daren't be too specific, but one always preferred to attend events in his 'Royce', while another was an over-dressed poseur who thought that no article was complete without at least one Latin or Greek quotation ....

[Vitesse2]

I daren't be too specific, but one always preferred to attend events in his 'Royce', while another was an over-dressed poseur who thought that no article was complete without at least one Latin or Greek quotation ....

Please don't be too specific on the second one! We've already had flak from that direction in the past. Although I'm sure most members will know of whom you speak ...

[2F-001]

Apologies - I removed the question I asked of AARG as it seemed to conflate two potentially contentious issues into one post...

I just wondered which historians he had in mind - and it was to some extent a rhetorical question... (though I had been imagining someone altogether more 'local' to TNF!)

Edited by 2F-001, 28 November 2017 - 11:03.

[Tim Murray]

Let's just keep speculating ... 

[Michael Ferner]

I'd seen Nigel Roebuck mention it in fond terms many times but have to admit that (again from the CD mentioned above), when I finally listened to it, I found it a lot less amusing than I'd expected.

Hear, hear. I heard it once, full of expectations, but didn't enjoy it. I'm not tempted to listen again.

About Muddly Talker, I think I said it before: after listening to him commentating on a number of YouTube clips, I suddenly wondered why I was always so critical of German F1 coverage - that was still miles better than MW!

Now Ben Edwards, he was a revelation! Together with John Watson on Eurosport, that was a dream team!!

[john aston]

I daren't be too specific, but one always preferred to attend events in his 'Royce', while another was an over-dressed poseur who thought that no article was complete without at least one Latin or Greek quotation ....

 

Can it be Long John Kickstart of whom you speak? Poseur ? Pas de tout . Overdressed ? Or daring to depart from what was then the rally jacketed norm? His erudition was not for hoi polloi  it is true , but he was undoubtedly sui generis . 

 

The Ustinov thing ? I  know Roebuck adores it but time has done it no favours- about as funny to my ears as The Goon Show (which I am afraid to admit never made me smile - not even un peu )

Edited by john aston, 28 November 2017 - 18:43.

[PayasYouRace]

Seems like everyone is talking about this at the moment. As a Gibraltar native and fan of Grand Prix racing, I find it hilarious. I’m far too young to have experienced the GPs of the 50s that it’s obviously meant to parody, but I think it still gets the message across.

[sabrejet]

Please don't be too specific on the second one! We've already had flak from that direction in the past. Although I'm sure most members will know of whom you speak ...

 

Short piece about the man in this month's Octane magazine. If I recall correctly, said person used to write for a long-defunct magazine (Supercar Classics?) and I gave up reading his column after a not very long time. I find that if I'm reading a car magazine, I really like to read about cars and car-related people but his writing often contained neither.

[Geoff E]

The Ustinov thing ? ... about as funny to my ears as The Goon Show (which I am afraid to admit never made me smile - not even un peu )

I actually had the same thought earlier today.

[Bumblyari]

I daren't be too specific, but one always preferred to attend events in his 'Royce'...

When I was studying engineering in the West Country a long time ago, a lot of my fellow students were employed by Rolls Royce who had just taken over Bristol Siddeley Engines.

They always referred to their company as "Royce's" which I suppose was because Royce was the engineer whereas Rolls was just (!) the salesman.

Engineering snobbery I suppose.

[zoff2005]

Seems like everyone is talking about this at the moment. As a Gibraltar native and fan of Grand Prix racing, I find it hilarious. I’m far too young to have experienced the GPs of the 50s that it’s obviously meant to parody, but I think it still gets the message across.

Good for you! A lot of people on this forum obviously have lost their sense of humour... I think of it every time I blow my nose before the start of a race.

Marcus

[Vitesse2]

Good for you! A lot of people on this forum obviously have lost their sense of humour... I think of it every time I blow my nose before the start of a race.

Marcus

"Nase blasen!"

 

Not quite as effective as Kimi's method of shedding weight just before the start though.

[Tim Murray]

Ah, but Kimi’s method could well have an adverse effect on the car’s handling. Although total weight is reduced, he is removing weight from very low down in the chassis, thus tending to raise the car’s C of G and increasing the weight transfer to the outer wheels. I wonder if the engineers factor such things into their calculations.

[RA Historian]

Good for you! A lot of people on this forum obviously have lost their sense of humour... I think of it every time I blow my nose before the start of a race.

Marcus

I must admit that I had the LP back when it came out in the 1950s and found it hilarious. I have it on CD now, and I find it hilarious. The parody is spot on, and Ustinov is brilliant in his satirizing racing in all its forms. 

 

My heavens, it is 60 years old! But a couple buddies and I still manage to work a quote into our conversations at appropriate times. 

 

Back in 1990 the sorely missed Denise McCluggage was at Road America for an old car event. She had recently written a column for Road & Track on the GP of Gibraltar. She was hanging on the fence at turn five with another esteemed writer, Peter Egan. I walked up behind her and said as imperiously as possible, "I am the observer, not you!" Got quite a laugh out of dear Denise!

 

Tom

[Arjan de Roos]

Mind you, the drivers in the Schnorrcedes had to sit with one leg forward and one backwards, such a revolutionary car. Did not Newey ask Coulthard if he could race with pedals mounted above each other in order to tighten the car nose... At least Red Bull drivers always clean their noses 7,5 minutes before the start....

[sabrejet]

Good for you! A lot of people on this forum obviously have lost their sense of humour... I think of it every time I blow my nose before the start of a race.

Marcus

 

Not sense of humour loss - just an awareness of that item's self-congratulatory smugness. I still enjoy Hancock, so it has nowt to do with age.

[Michael Ferner]

If that's humour, I'm glad I lost it...

[kayemod]

If that's humour, I'm glad I lost it...

 

Me too, after Nigel Roebuck's praise I was expecting more, but the CD that came with Motor Sport failed to raise even a faint smile. I only listened to it once, and switched off long before it ended. I once offered it free on here, but no-one was interested, Peter Ustinov's brand of "humour" hasn't stood the test of time. And I'm another who could never find anything remotely funny in The Goons, though maybe HRH Prince Charles would enjoy the GP of Gibraltar, he's on records on laughing at The Goons, but I'm going back to watching paint dry, much more amusing.

[Glengavel]

I've never heard the Gibraltar Grand Prix but I can listen to The Goons all day.

[PayasYouRace]

I have no idea what The Goons are, but the humour I find in GP of Gib is the parody of the racing world of the time, not the funny noises and comic foreign accents.

[opplock]

The Goon Show - British radio comedy in 1950s starring Spile Milligna (the well known typing error), Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe. Michael Bentine also featured in early episodes.  

 

Growing up in New Zealand in early 60s the half hour spent listening to Goon Show on the wireless was the highlight of the week. I enjoy the Gibraltar GP but fear that in today's world Ustinov snr would have been forced to pay road tax on young Peter due to his self identification as an Amilcar.   

[Charlieman]

And I'm another who could never find anything remotely funny in The Goons...

Taste is a funny thing. I'm too young to like the Goons but excerpts of 1960s satirical comedy (I'm not ready for the whole show) make me smile. What motivated 1970s and 1980s TV producers to employ lightweight jazz bands for programme intros and backgrounds? Memories -- or is that a start to an awful song?

[Doug Nye]

By complete coincidence I have just been listening this very lunchtime to a fine Goon Show episode repeat on Radio 4 Extra -'The Sinking of Westminster Pier' - Series 5, show 21 - First broadcast February 15, 1955.

 

Even in its modest moments I found it nostalgically simply SUPERB - especially when Bloodnok robbed the half-drowned Neddy Seagoon, and Eccles got deaded to cheer up Bluebottle who complained of having been deaded yet again...  

 

Classically British stuff, completely inexplicable to foreigners, to those who think in straight lines, to those who forget the environment of the day...

 

...and to those so unfortunate as simply to have been born too late...  

 

DCN (an unabashed fan - but NOT of the Ustinov piece)

Edited by Doug Nye, 01 December 2017 - 15:57.

[Nick Planas]

The Goon Show - British radio comedy in 1950s starring Spile Milligna (the well known typing error), Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe. Michael Bentine also featured in early episodes.  

 

Growing up in New Zealand in early 60s the half hour spent listening to Goon Show on the wireless was the highlight of the week. I enjoy the Gibraltar GP but fear that in today's world Ustinov snr would have been forced to pay road tax on young Peter due to his self identification as an Amilcar.  

Going somwhat OT, I am a great fan of Spike Milligan's scripts & humour (sorry, I meant Spine, or was it Spije Milligna) - a lot of his humour involves twisting the meaning of words. "Will my aircraft need a hangar?" - "It'll lose its shape hanging on a nail..." What is amazing is that the humour is over sixty years old and can still sound fresh.

 

I have friends who just do not get the jokes at all, but they will roll around at slapstick humour instead, which of course is more visual. Radio humour requires you to create your own imagery, which may or may not work. The use of crazy voices helped, mainly supplied by Milligan and Sellers.

 

I don't have an problem with people not liking the Goons; they were, after all, fairly unique. I had some problems when I wrote a comedy musical with some fairly crazy one-liners and half the cast just did not get any of the jokes, while the other half were in tears of laughter. In a similar vein I once played in the band for a production of Spamalot (Monty Python), and one of the band members asked me what was meant to be funny about throwing a cow over the castle battlements... as soon as you have to explain it, of course it's no longer funny. Most of Milligan / Python is just plain ridiculous, like much of life really, and I think they just tapped into that in extremis.

 

When I first heard Ustinov, it was funny. Now I find it less so, but then humour has moved on, and I'm an old fart.

[David Birchall]

I am so glad to read the above comments after the earlier postings in this thread-I was beginning to feel I was in the wrong place!  Eeearghh...

[Vitesse2]

Eeearghh...

Thank you Major Bloodnok.

 

Humour is - by its very nature - both personal and transitory. I was too young to hear The Goons first time round, but cut my teeth on The Navy Lark, The Men From the Ministry and Beyond Our Ken, progressing to I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and all its spawn - At Last the 1948 Show, Monty Python etc etc. And then Dave Allen, Les Dawson, M&W. Most other late 1970s and early 1980s humour apart from Porridge and Open All Hours left me cold, but I could - and occasionally do - watch Yes Minister, Ever Decreasing Circles and Drop the Dead Donkey again and again. Same with Father Ted. Currently wallowing in nostalgia with the repeats of the first series of League of Gentlemen and looking forward to the three new episodes. But I'd prefer to have my eyes put out with hot coals rather than watch The Royle Family, Miranda, Mrs Brown's Boys or Michael McIntyre ...

 

It'd be a funny old world if we all liked the same thing.

[Doug Nye]

Aah yes - so true... Like my cooking...  

 

DCN

[kayemod]

It'd be a funny old world if we all liked the same thing.

 

Indeed it would but can our fond memories really be trusted? Humour and memory are strange things, many of us will say that we loved Monty Python, but was it really all that good? I was a devoted watcher at the time, but while there were usually a few sketches that were pure comic genius, an awful lot of it really wasn't all that good at all, though we didn't mind seeing the more forgettable bits, knowing that something better would come along in a minute or two, but it's the occasional brilliance we remember. The same applies to a lesser degree to Fawlty Towers, very good in places, but was the whole thing consistently as good as we like to remember?

 

On those examples given by Vitesse, I could tolerate The Royle Family (my wife loved it), but the examples that followed, Mrs Brown's Boys in particular, I couldn't agree more. Two that I loved were Whatever became of the Likely Lads, and Ronnie Barker's Porridge. I'll shock some by saying that some of my fave older comedians, which today would I suppose be referred to as "stand-ups", were Max Miller, Al Read, and wait for it (drum roll please), Bernard Manning. No really. I don't think BM left his native Manchester very often, but his live club act was a masterpiece. Not TV of course, where he didn't come across at his unfettered best, but the way that man could work a live audience was a lesson to all aspiring comedy performers.

[David Birchall]

"Me and the Regiment were marching along, when suddenly, quite by accident , me and the Regimental funds took the wrong turning"!

Eeeargh!

Also pronounced "Aeioughh"  for those with a celtic twinge...

Edited by David Birchall, 01 December 2017 - 01:39.

[Glengavel]

"Me and the Regiment were marching along, when suddenly, quite by accident , me and the Regimental funds took the wrong turning"!

Eeeargh!

Also pronounced "Aeioughh"  for those with a celtic twinge...

 

Bloodnok's exclamations are beyond man's ability to transcribe them.

 

_{"Bloodnok, you're a miserable coward!"}

 

_{"Nonsense, I'm a perfectly happy coward!"}

 

 

 

[Gary C]

...if anyone would like the CD that was given away with Motorsport at some point, I have it here & you would be quite welcome to it, just drop me a PM with your address.