Danskcolin: Thursday September 25th 2025 "Have YOU ever been eaten by a bear at a bad moment? Lots of us have, haven't we!"

Yes, friends, have you ever been eaten by a bear after an otherwise satisfying evening in a tent? A lot of us have, haven't we!

And examples of this somewhat traumatic happening are "legion" seemingly! Did you see this morning's Onion News headlines?

Here's the story in full, in case you missed it! Or maybe you can't "bear" to read it - no pun intended !!!!!

Poor bear!!!!!

However, the story brings a real chuckle to the lower faces of me and my light-to-moderate wife Lois this morning as we take our daily walk, which today is over one of our favourite haunts - Old Man Lowsley's Farm, near our home in rural, semi-grassy Liphook, Hampshire, to put it mildly!

flashback to early this morning: my light-to-moderate wife Lois and I

take our daily walk over Old Man Lowsley's Farm, listening to the birdsong

and admiring the rosehips and old oak trees etc

"But why the chuckle on your lower faces this morning, Colin?", I hear you cry (!).

Well, you see, at 2:30pm this afternoon we're going to be logging onto the fortnightly meeting of the local U3A "Intermediate Danish for Old Codgers" group, which we lead, "for our sins" (!), and we know that there's going be a lot of "make up sex" going on: not for real (!), but something we'll all be reading about in the pages of the Danish whodunnit that our group is currently reading, which should be fun!

Lois and me at our laptop, trying to control another rowdy

online meeting of the local U3A Intermediate Danish for Old Codgers

group, which we allegedly "lead", "for our sins" !!!!

Yes, we're still reading Anna Grue's "Judaskysset" (The Judas Kiss), and once again ex-advertising executive and amateur sleuth Dan, and his feisty doctor-wife Marianne, are going at it hammer and tongs - a big fight followed by some "make-up sex" or, actually a "passionate make-up bonk" [Danish: lidenskabeligt forsoningsknald], as the Danes put it in their down-to-earth way (!).

(top) Dan, Danish advertising guy turned amateur "sleuth", seen here

in bed with his wife Marianne, in a Danish TV version of one

of their crime-busting adventures (actors Peter Mygind and Laurs Drasbæk).

and (bottom) the saucy text that our "old codger members" have to tackle today (!)

Lois and I think that our group members become even rowdier than usual whenever there's a bit of sex in the story, and we're quite exhausted when the meeting finally ends at around 4pm, and we can relax on the sofa with a cup of tea and a teacake.

Old people eh! What can you do with them!

20:00 Tonight we definitely need something funny to go to bed on, and what better than ITV's retrospective on the life and career of Aussie comedian Barry Humphries, and his outrageous Dame Edna Everage character, that Lois and I miss so much now he's gone.

The programme opens with Dame Edna's legendary sudden appearance in the Royal Box at the annual Royal Variety Show:

After that "wicked opener" (!), the programme goes back in time to trace Barry in his early years in Australia. We see photos of Barry's childhood in a conservative Melbourne suburb in the 1950's, and we hear how, in the early 1960's he came to England to seek his fortune as a comic.

For years, however, his career in England was in the doldrums, because his unconventional humour was puzzling audiences, and he became an alcoholic. He was even featured on a local news programme when, still as a complete unknown, he went for a walk and fell off a cliff in Cornwall.

His original Edna Everage character, lampooning a typically "frumpy" Melbourne housewife, wasn't a success with British audiences, accustomed to more conventional humour, until he conceived the idea of making Edna a pretentious would-be media star, with all the airs and graces that go with that.

Barry decided to award Edna a "damehood", and after that there was no stopping him.

By the 1980's, thanks to his totally unconventional approach, he had become the "must have" guest on all the chat shows of the era, and tonight we see him hobnobbing with movie stars, politicians etc, disarming them with the outrageousness of his patter, like this encounter with Hollywood royalty, Richard Gere and Lauren Bacall.

On the Michael Parkinson chat show, we see Dame Edna telling Richard Gere that he always brings out her maternal instinct:

And here Dame Edna is again, this time on the BBC's Terry Wogan chat show, with fellow-guests Donald and Diana Trump.

But "What about Barry the real person, beneath all the glamour and glitz of Dame Edna's outfits?", I hear you cry (!).

Well, friends say that, like many outrageous performers, Barry was always really quiet and nervous in his dressing-room before a show, but that he came alive the moment he walked out on stage.

And what turned him on most of all was to hear that gasp of shock after he had said or done something totally outrageous.

Barry always said he had no regrets about his life. He recalled, however, that he had been married 4 times, and he realised that, for his first 3 wives, "all remarkable women", he says, he hadn't been an easy man to live with.

Then came Lizzie, his 4th and final attempt at marriage, and then after that, everything seemed to go right, from that point on.

Here Lois comments, a bit cynically but no doubt realistically, that this was Barry had wanted all along - a wife to devote herself completely to him, and to have no real life outside that (!).

I wonder....!

Let's face it though - now that Barry's gone, there isn't really anybody to replace him, is there.