Danskcolin: Monday October 16th 2023

10:45 It's time to bid a tearful farewell this morning to my little sister Jill, who's returning to her home in Cambridge by train today, after staying 2 nights with my wife Lois and me, at our new-build home in Malvern, Worcestershire. And in the family tradition that Jill and I and all our 5 daughters are wedded to, we arrive crazily early, "to get there in good time even if there is an unexplained traffic jam or other unusual incident that holds us up en route".

Makes sense to us, anyway! You can take risks with that kind of malarkey if you're brave enough!

Lois takes these 2 pictures of me and my younger sister Jill,

outside Great Malvern train station as we see her off

on her train home to Cambridge

As Jill's train pulls away we can hear the ghostly voice emanating from the train, advising passengers for Cambridge that they should be sure to change at Birmingham (New Street).

By the way, did you know that GWR (Great Western Railway) are completely mystified about these ghostly voices on their trains? I read the astonishing facts on the influential news website Onion News just the other day.

GREAT MALVERN—Clarifying that none of their trains features intercom systems, the Great Western Railway company revealed Monday they have no clue where the disembodied voice speaking to everyone on their trains was originating from.

“GWR has never at any point hired a speaker to tell passengers ‘Stand clear of the closing doors’ or ‘We are delayed because of train traffic ahead,’ so we urge anyone who hears one of these disturbing notices to contact us immediately,” said GWR's acting chairman Fernando Ferrer, adding that the individual reportedly likes to repeat these phrases tens of thousands of times a day and is, thus, clearly unstable and probably dangerous.

“Our aim has, of course, always been to give travellers a silent experience, so the fact that a mysterious woman is apparently shouting the names of each station, telling people to beware the platform edge, and listing all available transfers is deeply, deeply troubling to us. There’s not a single carriage that the violators have missed, so we’re encouraging all travellers to be especially vigilant until we apprehend these obviously unhinged people.”

Ferrer added that travellers should also disregard any and all posted advertisements on their trains, none of which have ever been officially approved for display in GWR railway carriages.

I don't know. What a truly crazy old world we live in !!!!!

21:00 Lois and I are tired after our 3 days of hosting visitors, and we decide to go to bed on the first half of a Channel 5 documentary all about the 1970's sitcom "Man About The House", later repackaged for the US market as "Three's Company", close to, but much better than, the subtitle for the original British version, which was "Three's A Crowd".

And "Three's Company" was every bit as successful over there, if not more so, and it kept Lois and me and our daughters laughing during our 3 years in the US from 1982 to 1985.

The series, first shown in 1973, was considered daring at the time because it featured a man sharing a London flat with 2 single women.

The flat-mates were Robin (Richard O'Sullivan), Chrissy (Paula Wilcox) and Jo (Sally Thomsett).

And the sitcom also featured a strong sub-plot featuring the trio's landlords, middle-aged couple Mr and Mrs Roper (Brian Murphy and Yootha Joyce), who lived in the flat below.

the three flat-mates Chrissy, Robin, and Jo, the ditsy blonde..

...and their landlords Mr and Mrs Roper

And it's nostalgic for Lois and me tonight to see scenes from the original pilot episode, first broadcast on August 15th 1973, a date when we would have been about to celebrate our 1st wedding anniversary.

Do you still remember the pilot's opening scene where Chrissy and Jo had woken up with hangovers after the previous night's party, and Jo was desperately trying to vacuum up all the mess their party guests had left behind them in the flat. Lois and I certainly remember it, that's for sure!

Chrissy's hangover was being made worse by the noise of Jo's vacuum-cleaner - do you remember?

Chrissy speculates about whether there had been something wrong with the drinks at the party, and she stumbles into the bathroom to start running a bath. And in her hungover state, she doesn't even notice that there's a man sleeping it off in the bathtub, Robin, who later in the course of the series becomes the two women's new flatmate.

The pilot episode also introduced the sitcom's sub-theme featuring the flat's middle-aged landlords Mr and Mrs Roper, living in the flat below: Mildred being a sexually voracious woman and George being totally uninterested in meeting her needs, to put it mildly. Oh dear!

The morning after the party, George spots a crack in the couple's ceiling, which Mildred said was the result of a buzz bomb in World War II. George, however, speculates that it was the late-night party going on upstairs that caused the crack.

Initially George seems to be excited by the goings-on in the flat above and the party that went on till 3 am, but Mildred brings him back to reality.

Tremendous fun !!!!!

Lois and I try to remember what we can of the US version, "Three's Company", which we and our young daughters Alison and Sarah used to watch reruns of, almost every evening, during our residence in the US from 1982 to 1985.

What were the differences from the UK version?

Well, we're pretty sure that the landlords' names, Mr and Mrs Roper, were kept in the US version, and that they eventually became a spin-off series, "The Ropers", just like "George and Mildred" did over here.

However we think that the names of flatmates were changed, and oddly, Robin Tripp, the eponymous "man about the house", was given a slightly different last name over there, Tripper - I wonder why?

And we don't remember that the theme of Mrs Roper's sexual frustration was repeated in the US version. Perhaps we've just forgotten, or perhaps it was just too risqué at the time for American audiences do you think?

Either way, I think we should be told, don't you!

We remember the American Mr and Mrs Roper as being much more upbeat, even, dare I say it happier than the British Ropers etc, and Mr Roper not being just a miserable old sod and slightly "seedy", like in the British original.

Still that's us Brits for you, isn't it, that's the kind of thing we like, isn't it let's face it haha!

the American Ropers, "happier and more upbeat"

- what madness !!!!!

Also, by a weird coincidence, American actress Suzanne Somers, who played the ditsy blonde part in the apartment's trio of tenants, sadly died yesterday.

Chrissy (Suzanne Somers - centre) with Janet (Joyce DeWitt)

and Jack (John Tripper) in the US version of the sitcom, "Three's Company"

Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it !!!!! And Lois and I look forward to seeing the second half of this Channel 5 programme another evening this week, hopefully.

Nostalgic footnotes: (1) Lois and me on top of a hill in Wales, during August 1973, the month that the "Man About The House" sitcom was first screened.

And (2): us at our house in Maryland USA during our stay there from 1982 to 1985, when, with our two young daughters, we used to watch reruns of the US version "Three's Company", almost every evening.