Saturday free and easy night

Me and Mrs Bucko were trawling through Youtube looking for tunes for the next 'Dance like your dad', when we found this:



Love is Strange by Mickey and Sylvia.

Being a typical female, Mrs Bucko says, "Ohh, Ohh, Ohh, I know that one. It's off Dirty Dancing". Is there any woman who hasn't watched Dirty Dancing?

My memory of this particular song comes from Lipstick on Your Collar, the mini series by Dennis Potter.I was eighteen when this first came out on the telly. I remember the first run well because I fancied the pants off Louise Germaine, the female lead who played fifties bad girl, Sylvia Berry.

Humana humana

My parents were big Dennis Potter fans, so they watched this series all the way through. I happened to catch a bit of the first one while walking through the living room, and one glance at Sylvia convinced me to join them.

I think they found it a bit strange that their teenage son sat with them and watched a program of mutual interest for six weeks. I tried to convince them I found it educational and funny but I don't think they bought it somehow. Rightly too, I've only now spotted that Private Hopper was played by Ewan McGregor. I was always under the impression he made his debut in that pants about heroin addicts.

I did eventually come to appreciate the series for more than just an impossibly sexy blonde though. My parents bought the series on video a year or so later. VHS. there were no DVD's back then and you couldn't watch movies on Windows 3.1, so I 'borrowed the tape and sloped off up to my room one Saturday afternoon to rest off a hangover and drool at the telly.

As it turned out, it was funny. And the music was excellent too. That series was more about the music than anything else, and it always seemed to be the craziest of the fifties tracks that were picked. This is one of my favourites, though not one of the craziest:



You can't go wrong with a bit of Jerry Lee Lewis.

Mrs Bucko is off out tonight. Her pool team are having a Christmas (Can I still say that?) do, so that leaves me to get up to a bit of mischief on my own.

I've fitted a set of speakers and a small flat screen telly in the new kitchen this afternoon, so I can watch stuff while I'm cooking. That wasn't part of the original plan but it's there now so it can stay. That's nowt. While she's out tonight, I'm going to swap the living room and the dining room around.

It's starting to get bloody cold now and the big wood fire is in the dining room. The little one in the front looks good but it doesn't put out a lot of heat.

I may have to wait up for her so she doesn't walk in and trip over a couch that she doesn't know is there.

I wonder if she'll like it?