I had absolutely no idea that my fuzzy, warm image of one of my favourite childhood authors was totally out of whack. Enid Blyton wasn’t so much warm and fuzzy as cold and barbed it would seem.

I’d heard some rumours about Blyton’s taciturn character but I’d never really taken much notice, and I suspect that’s because, as I mentioned, her work ranks right up there on my Top Ten Childhood Memories, in the Rose Coloured section, so it was rather a disappointment to me to witness her vileness.

But Helena Bonham Carter did a remarkable job of portraying a woman who was no doubt plagued by inner demons but thought nothing of making miserable lives – quite by design – for those who crossed her or didn’t interest her, her own children included. Read more & comment »

I’ve been trawling the net for a fix of Lost gossip and I’ve found lots of little nuggets of info about season six. Yippee!

Some of the info in this article contains spoilerish news so don’t read on after the jump if you don’t want to know! Read more & comment »

Fans of David Tennant will have been drinking him in as the Doctor last night, for his time is nigh. After two Christmas episodes, Matt Smith will become the eleventh incarnation of the famous Doctor, and Tennant shall be a mere memory. Awwww.

But what a way to go; sticking his beak in on Mars in the year 2059 where there a real problem with the water. Not just those air bubbles you get sometimes and wonder if it’s something icky – this water can kill you. And unpleasantly at that.

On Bowie Base One – love that – Captain Adelaide Brooke, excellently played by Lindsay Duncan, is showing that in the future, women are still in charge of anything that’s important. However, Brooke and her team dropped a clanger in that they melted some ice in the ice fields and let loose a nasty virus. Worse than Swine ‘flu even. Or David Cameron. Read more & comment »

I’ve always hated wasps; they’re useless critters and sure enough, as if I needed more reason to dislike them, it was a spawn of Satan wasp that caused the Collision.

But I suppose to give the wasp its due, it also caused love among the pile up. Mind you, one of those love affairs would’ve meant a bloke leaving his wife… mmm, every silver lining has a cloud eh?

I must say, it was a factor that took me a tad by surprise in a drama that had been filled with intrigue and what-ifs, but the wasp did in fact make its presence known in the very first episode, so the clue was there, we just had to be able to absorb seemingly useless trivia.

The scene in which the waitress tried to kill it didn’t seem especially relevant at the time but of course, with hindsight, if she’d swatted it, none of what happened would’ve happened. It’s all very interesting and chaos theory, which for me, added to the general excellence of the drama. Read more & comment »

Can you believe that it’s just a month to Christmas? Panic!

But the good news is, this week, we get to see last Christmas’s Gavin and Stacey special again. I wish I’d got it on DVD actually so I could watch it over and over… hope you’re reading Father Christmas?

Anyway, without further ado, here’s what we recommend you take a look at this week. We haven’t included Friday’s Children In Need because, well, you won’t need a reminder from us that it’s on! Read more & comment »

On Monday, Doug spots a lonely looking David eating in the café and tries to talk to him about Leyla. Doug insists girls like Leyla are one in a million and he’d be stupid not to fight for her.

David plucks up the courage to visit her at the shop and they agree to talk once she’s finished work. Later, at Leyla’s house, David reveals his date with Priya didn’t go very well and it made him realise how much he misses Leyla, although he’s not sure he’ll be able to trust her again. Thrilled, Leyla urges David to let her earn his trust back and assures him she’ll never let him down again. Are David and Leyla back on track?

Sally gives Ashley a “get well soon mummy card” that she made with the children to give to Laurel in hospital. Later, as Sally cooks dinner for Ashley, she insists she doesn’t mind and there’s no use in hurrying Laurel home before she’s back to her normal self. Is Sally preparing to move in on Ashley? Read more & comment »

On Monday, Archie wanders into the Vic and asks Roxy to call Peggy for him. Roxy, however, reminds him that he shouldn’t be there as Peggy’s barred him. While waiting for Peggy, Archie talks to Jack about Sam and claims that she won’t last long if she’s sent to prison.

Having seen the pair kiss the previous week, Archie suggests that Jack should help Sam because she trusts him. Jack’s left thinking it over while Roxy eventually tells Archie that Peggy’s not even in and that she’s at Aunt Sal’s.

Later, Archie’s having lunch with Sam at Fargo’s and he broaches the subject of prison. Sam claims that she’s prepared for whatever life behind bars has in store for her if she’s sent down, but Archie suggests that she get a second opinion on her legal position. Read more & comment »

On Monday at 7:30pm, Tony’s a desperate man and as he frantically tries to cling on to the new life he’s created, he packs Maria off to a health spa for the day, knowing the police are about to come calling.

Keeping up the façade, Tony goes to work but when the police arrive and arrest him on suspicion of Liam’s murder, he can feel his world falling apart. Down at the station Tony’s interviewed about the Croppers allegations, and as the police pile on the pressure, saying they’ll speak to Maria, will Tony crumble and confess to murder?

Meanwhile, Roy and Hayley return to the café and are relieved to hear that Tony’s been arrested and taken to the police station. But as gossip about Tony’s arrest spreads, Maria arrives back on the street. Is she about to discover the awful truth about Tony? Read more & comment »

Actually John, the kids aren't alright

So, I was browsing through Toys R Us today and noticed John Barrowman’s visage on the front of a board game. Ah, celebrity endorsements, money for old rope, innit?

Well, no, not when your management can’t be arsed reading the text on the front of the box, which effectively encourages people to beat kids for money! Imagine what would happen if the tabloids got hold of this? The headlines:

• Torchwood star encourages child beatings
• No John, The Kids Aren’t Alright

Damn, I thought I could stretch that out a bit further before the ideas ran out. Any ideas from the floor?

David Haye and Sarah Harding join Jonathan Ross for this week’s Friday Night With Jonathan Ross on BBC One.

Sarah Harding tells Jonathan that Girls Aloud will get back together but they don’t know when: “We’re simply taking a break, we all felt it was time… we said about a year, but we’re going to see.”

Read more & comment »

Noel’s Christmas Presents returns to Sky1 this Christmas to reward more of the nation’s most deserving, hard-working and selfless individuals with a Christmas present they’ll never forget. Noel Edmonds will be surprising people across the country with more money can’t buy treats and trips, seeing to it personally that each of our specially chosen recipients has the time of their lives. Noel’s Christmas Presents is on Sunday 20th December. Viewers will also get a chance to revisit some of the faces featured in the last two years of the show in Noel’s Christmas Past.

Read more & comment »

The latest Wonderland series offering was no less quirky and odd than its predecessors, and last night, we saw the six-degrees-of-separation like stories of the paths taken by seven Staffordshire Bull Terrier pups, their subsequent owners, as well as their original breeder.

Born of Uggs, whose owner Jackie wanted to make money from selling her pups, the seven puppies were destined for very different lives, but more or less to a man, or pup, their futures weren’t looking especially bright.

That said, one of them did fare very well; Jackie’s sister-in-law Maria bought one of the pups to help her children to get over the grief of losing their dad, and of all the puppies, this one seemed the most suited to getting along with fragile children. Read more & comment »

Oh my… 14 kids and 8 of them delivered all at once. Nadya Suleman might’ve been better in a box under the stairs than in hospital, but I think even more weird than her being the – much vilified – mother to 14 kids, and nary a dad in sight, is that she’s turning her kids’ lives into a real life Truman Show.

And I’m not sure how to feel about that; on the one hand, at least she’s found a way to support her children, but on the other, it didn’t turn out to be the best thing in the world for Truman to be the subject of a lifetime TV series. And it must be a developmental psychologist’s wet dream of a programme.

Unlike Truman though, Nadya’s older children are fully aware that their lives are being played out in front of a TV audience, and some of them really don’t like it. One child, Elijah, even decided to lob a screwdriver at his mother in his frustration as he screamed “stop filming!” Read more & comment »

Yes, before it’s even happened, that’s the question that we all want the answer to. And we want to know who you reckon dunnit, or rather, will do it.

There are of course no shortage of contenders; Ronnie, Peggy, Phil, Janine, Ryan – who might do it out of jealousy – maybe even Roxy. Or perhaps a total surprise hitter might be Archie’s ex-wife Glenda – played by Glynis Barber – who’s due to appear in January.

We already know that Archie’s to be murdered on Christmas Day and his killer’s name revealed during the show’s 25th anniversary live episode in February, so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that she might bump him off… Read more & comment »

I’ve always liked Calum Best. He’s always struck me as a young man who fully realises that were it not for his celebrity dad, he’d be – most likely – just an ordinary bod. But I’ve always alternately felt sorry for him because of that fact and because it was almost an inevitability that we’d all be waiting with baited breath for him to follow in dad’s footsteps and fall off many a barstool.

And if he hadn’t, he would probably have faded into obscurity, but with the media waiting, cameras poised for those like-father-like-son moments, it’s often felt as if he had no choice but to become a serious boozer.

In making this film however, Calum demonstrated that he’s not about to turn into a raging alcoholic just to slake our thirst for a George Best clone and enable us to use clichés about apples not falling far from trees. Read more & comment »