Love it....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ONCE MORE WITH EALING!!!

The 12th of July sees the Carryonline gang return to Ealing, filming location for numerous classics of British comedy including Carry On Teacher and Carry On Constable. Meet up with fellow film fans and join Carry On stars Anita Harris, Laraine Humphrys and Fenella Fielding for a day of film fun, gossip, beer, chat and all the pickled eggs you can eat!

Tickets are priced at a highly bargainous £30.

====================================

For the brave and foolish and slightly hungover we will meet at 10am outside South Ealing Underground Station for a quick tour of some locations from Constable followed by a leisurely stroll past Ealing Studios. From there we journey to the Haven public house, opposite Ealing Broadway station. The pub serves food all day and has a sizeable beer garden which of course will be bathed in lovely summer sun. After lunch and booze and possibly a quiz we will be joined by stars of stage and screen to chatter away endlessly about the Carry On films and indulge in a little light autograph hunting. There remains the possibility of more star names to come...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Albert Einstein was born into a Jewish family in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire on March 14, 1879. His father was Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer. His mother was Pauline Einstein (née Koch). In 1880, the family moved to Munich, where his father and his uncle founded a company, Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, that manufactured electrical equipment based on Direct current.

The Einsteins were not observant of Jewish religious practices, and Albert attended a Catholic elementary school. Although Einstein had early speech difficulties, he was a top student in elementary school.

When Einstein was five, his father showed him a pocket compass. Einstein realized that there must be something in the space, previously thought to be empty, that was moving the needle and later stated that this experience made "a deep and lasting impression". At his mother's insistence, he took violin lessons starting at age six, and although he disliked them and eventually quit, he later took great pleasure in Mozart's violin sonatas. As he grew, Einstein built models and mechanical devices for fun, and began to show a talent for mathematics.

In 1889, family friend Max Talmud, a medical student, introduced the ten-year-old Einstein to key science, mathematics, and philosophy texts, including Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Euclid's Elements (Einstein called it the "holy little geometry book"). From Euclid, Einstein began to understand deductive reasoning, and by the age of twelve, he had learned Euclidean geometry. Soon thereafter he began to investigate infinitesimal calculus.

In his early teens, Einstein attended the Luitpold Gymnasium. His father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering, but Einstein clashed with authorities and resented the school regimen. He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in strict rote learning.

In 1894, when Einstein was fifteen, his father's business failed, as DC had lost the War of Currents to alternating current (AC). In search of business, the Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and then, after a few months, to Pavia. During this time, Einstein wrote his first scientific work, "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields". Einstein had been left behind in Munich to finish high school, but in the spring of 1895, he withdrew to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to let him go by using a doctor's note.

Rather than completing high school, Einstein decided to apply directly to the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule (later Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH)) in Zürich, Switzerland. Lacking a school certificate, he was required to take an entrance examination, which he did not pass, although he got exceptional marks in mathematics and physics. Einstein wrote that it was in that same year, at age 16, that he first performed his famous thought experiment visualizing traveling alongside a beam of light.

The Einsteins sent Albert to Aarau, Switzerland to finish secondary school. While lodging with the family of Professor Jost Winteler, he fell in love with the family's daughter, Marie. (Albert's sister Maja later married Paul Winteler.) In Aarau, Einstein studied Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. At age 17 he graduated, and, with his father's approval, renounced his citizenship in the German Kingdom of Württemberg to avoid military service, to finally enroll in 1896 in the mathematics and physics program at the Polytechnic in Zurich. Marie Winteler moved to Olsberg, Switzerland for a teaching post.

Following graduation, Einstein could not find a teaching post. After almost two years of searching, a former classmate's father helped him get a job in Berne, at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property,  the patent office, as an assistant examiner. His responsibility was evaluating patent applications for electromagnetic devices. In 1903, Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent Office was made permanent, although he was passed over for promotion until he "fully mastered machine technology".

 

In 1906, the patent office promoted Einstein to Technical Examiner Second Class, but he had not given up on academia. In 1908, he became a privatdozent at the University of Bern. In 1910, he wrote an expository paper that described the cumulative effect of light scattered by individual molecules in the atmosphere, i.e., why the sky is blue.

During 1909, Einstein published "Über die Entwicklung unserer Anschauungen über das Wesen und die Konstitution der Strahlung" ("The Development of Our Views on the Composition and Essence of Radiation"), on the quantization of light. In this and in an earlier 1909 paper, Einstein showed that Max Planck's energy quanta must have well-defined momenta and act in some respects as independent, point-like particles. This paper introduced the photon concept (although the term itself was introduced by Gilbert N. Lewis in 1926) and inspired the notion of wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics.

In 1911, Einstein became an associate professor at the University of Zurich. However, shortly afterward, he accepted a full professorship at the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. There, Einstein published a paper about the effects of gravity on light, specifically the gravitational redshift and the gravitational deflection of light. The paper appealed to astronomers to find ways of detecting the deflection during a solar eclipse. German astronomer Erwin Finlay-Freundlich publicized Einstein's challenge to scientists around the world.

In 1912, Einstein returned to Switzerland to accept a professorship at his alma mater, the ETH. There he met mathematician Marcel Grossmann who introduced him to Riemannian geometry and more generally differential geometry, and at the recommendation of Italian mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita, Einstein began exploring the usefulness of general covariance (essentially the use of tensors) for his gravitational theory. Although for a while Einstein thought that there were problems with that approach, he later returned to it and by late 1915 had published his general theory of relativity in the form that is still used today (Einstein 1915). This theory explains gravitation as distortion of the structure of spacetime by matter, affecting the inertial motion of other matter.

 

Blah Blah Blah

 

In 1922 Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".

It was long reported that Einstein gave the Nobel prize money directly to his first wife, Mileva Maric, in compliance with their 1919 divorce settlement. However, personal correspondence made public in 2006 shows that he invested much of it in the United States, and saw much of it wiped out in the Depression.

On 17 April 1955, Albert Einstein experienced internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an aortic aneurysm, which had previously been diagnosed and reinforced. He took a draft of a speech he was preparing for a television appearance commemorating the State of Israel's seventh anniversary with him to the hospital, but he did not live long enough to complete it. He died in Princeton Hospital early the next morning at the age of 76, having continued to work until near the end. Einstein's remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered.

Before the cremation, Princeton Hospital pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein's brain for preservation, without the permission of his family, in hope that the neuroscience of the future would be able to discover what made Einstein so intelligent.

 

Bad hair day.... relatively speaking

 

 

 

Born in Shaftmoor Lane, Acocks Green, Birmingham, which, in one of his books, he reckons, "sounds like a home for a professional rapist." Carrott was educated at Acocks Green Primary School and Moseley Grammar School. He then worked as a trainee buyer at a city centre department store called The Beehive with schoolfriend Bev Bevan and later attended Aston University in the heart of Birmingham.

In Feb. 1969 he started his own folk club, "The Boggery", in Solihull with his friend Les Ward. There, he would perform folk songs as well as MC. Before long, his banter with the audience overtook the actual songs: he became known more as a comedian than a singer. He also worked as a musical agent (in partnership with John Starkey, who became his manager in 1974 until 1992), as Fingimigig, managing (among other acts) Harvey Andrews. He toured the UK, appearing in Rugby clubs and the like. He independantly recorded an album, financed by himself, called "Jasper Carrot - In the Club", which he sold out of the back of his car/van.

 

He had a surprise UK top-5 chart hit in 1975 - the novelty record "Funky Moped", written by Chris Rohmann and was produced by Jeff Lynne. The B-side of this single was a risqué monologue parodying the animated children's TV series The Magic Roundabout. This was banned by the BBC, which is widely believed to have aided its commercial success.

 

By the end of the 1970s, Carrott had developed a number of anecdotal sketches which he still performs in similar form some thirty years on. Often these sketches purported to be auto-biographical; many of them celebrate Birmingham accent and culture, including his support of his beloved Birmingham City. His sketches were captured on records such as Jasper Carrott Rabbitts on and on and on... and Carrott in Notts which were recordings of live performances. Notable hits were Bastity Chelt a complete song in Spoonerism, The Football Match describing a visit to Old Trafford, The Nutter on the Bus including the well known cry of "Has anybody seen my camel?"), The Mole ("There's only one way to kill a mole - blow its bloody head off!") and Zits - an explanation of an American slang word for spots which brought the word into use in England.

In 1979 he published A Little Zit on the Side which purported to be a humorous auto-biography. The follow-up, Sweet And Sour Labrador, mixed sections of his stand-up routines with similar autobiographical material, much of it related to his world travels.

 

On 15 September 2007 he was inducted into the Birmingham Walk of Stars at a presentation as part of the Arts Fest 2007 celebrations. The award was presented by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham. Carrott is the 2nd inductee, following Ozzy Osbourne.

 

Jasper Carrott was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the British Comedy Awards 2008 on the 6th December.

 

His break into television was with the LWT series An Audience with Jasper Carrott in 1978. This was followed by Carrott's Lib - a Saturday night comedy show broadcast live on the BBC - and then by a string of different shows. The most notable of these were Carrott's Commercial Breakdown, which broadcast weird and wonderful adverts from around the world, and the sketch and stand-up shows Carrott Confidential, 24 Carrott Gold, The Jasper Carrott Trial and Canned Carrott, some of which also gave TV exposure to the comedy partnership of Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis.

 

In addition to his television work, Carrott made a foray into cinema when he played Heinrich in the 1987 British comedy Jane and the Lost City.

Canned Carrott also featured a regular police drama spoof called The Detectives, co-starring Robert Powell, which was spun off into its own series. In 2002 - 2004, he starred in the sitcom All About Me.

 

He performed in several of the Secret Policeman's Ball charity concerts for Amnesty International, and returned to the stage in 2004 for several sell out shows at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham featuring classic routines from his career. He returned to a singing role for the musical "Go Play Up Your Own End" (written by Malcolm Stent, songs by Harvey Andrews) in 2005.

 

In 2005, he appeared in and put on "Jasper Carrott's Rock With Laughter". He appeared alongside performers such as Bill Bailey, Bonnie Tyler, Lenny Henry, Bobby Davro, the Lord of the Dance troupe and Bev Bevan.

 

In the summer of 2007, Jasper hosted the Endemol-produced game show Golden Balls for ITV1. Promising ratings led to a recommission, and the second series which began in January 2008. A third series began in April 2008.

 

He was the host of the Sunday night interactive national pub quiz, Cash Inn and also an investor in the company, operated by Innterplay, this company has since entered administration.

 

As well as the two autobiographical writings written above, Carrott also wrote a novel called, 'Shop! or A Store is Born'.

 

He turned his hand to business as part owner of the production company Celador, makers of the internationally successful Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. In 2006, he and wife Hazel sold their shares in the company for over £10m as part of a management buyout deal.

 

His daughter, Lucy Davis, is an actress best known for playing Dawn in The Office.

 

He is a proud supporter and director of the football club Birmingham City. He was made an OBE in 2002. The University of Birmingham awarded him a honorary doctorate in 2004.

 

As an April fool story in 2006, The Independent newspaper reported that the University of Birmingham's twinned status with its Alabama namesake led to a liaison between Carrott and Condoleezza Rice, whom he described as "a ferocious kisser". The story was subsequently featured as a University Challenge bonus round question on spoof news items.

 

Carrott still lives near Birmingham, in Darley Green close to Knowle and Dorridge. Carrott was a keen runner and supported his local Knowle Fun Run through sponsorship and publicity, including 2001 where he paid out several thousand pounds based on the £10 per person who beat him to the finish line.

Carrott has two Bassett Hounds that he enjoys taking for long walks. They are called Enrique and Patricia. Carrott hopes to add a third hound to his canine family, which he wants to name Matt Bianco.

 

He is also a long time patron and fundraiser for Sunfield Children's Home, a school for children with autism and complex learning needs. The school is located in the village of Clent just outside of Stourbridge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 14th 1914, saw the birth of a British TV comedy legend. Bill Owen, born William John Owen Rowbotham will forever be recognised as Compo from the long-running (longest running TV sitcom in the world, in fact) BBCTV sitcom, Last of the Summer Wine. Obviously, to some of us, he will also be forever associated with the Carry On series of films, having played a major role in the very first one, Carry On Sergeant, and appearing in several more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*****(the copy/paste bit)*****

 

Johann Strauss was the father of Johann Strauss II, Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss, who had a son called Johann Strauss III, born in 1866. He also had two daughters, Anna, who was born in 1829, and Therese, who was born in 1831. His youngest son, Ferdinand, who was born 1834, lived only ten months. Strauss's parents were innkeepers. Strauss had a Jewish Grandfather who converted to Catholicism.

 

Tragedy struck his family as his mother died when he was seven of 'creeping fever'. When he was twelve, his father Franz Borgias (who had since remarried) was discovered drowned in the Danube river. His stepmother sought to place him as an apprentice to a bookbinder Johann Lichtscheidl, but he took lessons in the violin and viola in addition to fulfilling his apprenticeship. Contrary to some assertions, he never ran away from his bookbinder apprenticeship and in fact successfully completed it in 1822. He also studied music with Johann Polischansky during his apprenticeship and eventually managed to secure a place in a local orchestra of Michael Pamer which he eventually left in order to join a popular string quartet known as the Lanner Quartet formed by his would-be rival Josef Lanner and the Drahanek brothers, Karl and Johann. This string quartet playing Viennese waltzes and rustic German dances expanded into a small string orchestra in 1824.

 

He eventually became deputy conductor of the orchestra to assist Lanner in commissions after it became so popular during the Fasching of 1824 and Strauss was soon placed in command of a second smaller orchestra which was formed as a result of the success of the parent orchestra. In 1825, he decided to form his own band and began to write music (chiefly, dance music) for it to play after he realized that he could also possibly emulate the success of Lanner in addition to putting an end to his financial struggles. By so doing, he would have made Lanner a serious rival although the rivalry did not entail hostile consequences as the musical competition was very productive for the development of the waltz as well as other dance music in Vienna.

He soon became one of the best-known and well loved dance composers in Vienna, and he toured with his band to Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, England, and Scotland. The conducting reins and management of this 'Strauss Orchestra' would eventually be passed over to the hands of his sons variously until its disbandment by Eduard Strauss in 1901.

 

On a trip to France in 1837 he heard the quadrille and began to compose them himself, becoming largely responsible for introducing that dance to Austria in the 1840 Fasching, where it became very popular. It was this very trip (in 1837) which has proved Strauss' popularity with audiences from different social backgrounds and this paved the way to forming an ambitious plan to perform his music in England for the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838. Strauss also adapted various popular melodies of his day into his works so as to ensure a wider audience, as evidenced in the incorporation of the Oberon overture into his early waltz, Wiener Karneval op. 3 and also the French national anthem La Marseillaise into his Paris-Walzer op. 101.

 

He also married Maria Anna Streim in 1825 in the parish church of Liechtenthal in Vienna. His marriage was relatively unstable as his prolonged absence from his immediate family due to frequent tours abroad led to a gradual alienation and he later took on a mistress, Emilie Trampusch in 1834 with whom he had six children. This personal decision marked Anna Strauss' conviction to further Johann Strauss II's first development as a composer as Johann senior previously forbade his sons to undertake music studies at any point of time. With Johann senior's open declaration of his paternity of a daughter born to Emilie, Maria Anna sued for divorce in 1844, and this effectively allowed Johann junior to actively pursue a musical career. Strauss I was a strict disciplinarian in the Strauss home called 'Hirschenhaus' better known in Vienna as the 'Goldener Hirsch' (The Golden Stag), and imposed his will on his sons to pursue careers that were not musically-related. Likewise, his brother Josef Strauss was destined for a military career whereas the younger Eduard Strauss was expected to join the Austrian consulate.

 

Despite family problems, he also toured the British Isles frequently and was always repared to write novelty pieces for many charitable organizations there. His waltzes were gradually developed from a rustic peasant dance into one which posterity would recognize as the Viennese waltz. They were written in three-quarter time with a short introduction; often with little or no reference to the later chain of five two-part waltz structure; usually appended with a short coda and concluded in a stirring finish although his son Johann Strauss II expanded the waltz structure and utilized more instruments than his father. While he did not possess a musical talent as rich as his eldest son's, nor a business mind as astute, he was among the handful of early waltz composers along with Josef Lanner to actively write pieces with individual titles — with the view to boost sales of their sheet music— which enabled music enthusiasts to easily recognize those pieces . In fact, during his performances at the Sperl-Ballroom in Vienna, where he established his name, he actively pursued the concept of collecting a fixed entrance fee from the patrons of the ballroom instead of the old practice of passing around a collection plate where income is only guaranteed by the goodwill of the patrons. 

 

Johann Strauss II often played his father's works and openly declared his admiration of them although it was no secret to the Viennese that their rivalry was intense, with the press at that time fueling it. Johann Strauss I himself refused to play ever again at the Dommayer's Casino, which offered his son his conducting debut, and was to tower over his son during his lifetime in terms of career advancement, although Strauss II was to eclipse him in terms of popularity in the classical repertoire.

In 1846, Johann Strauss I was awarded the honorary title of K.K. Hofballmusikdirektor (Director of Music for the Imperial and Royal Court Balls) by Emperor Ferdinand I. 

 

Strauss died in Vienna in 1849 from scarlet fever obtained from one of his illegitimate children. He was buried at the Döblinger cemetery beside his friend Josef Lanner. In 1904, both of their remains were transferred to the graves of honour at the Zentralfriedhof. The former Döblinger Cemetery is now a Strauss-Lanner Park.

 

Hector Berlioz himself paid tribute to the 'Father of the Viennese Waltz' by commenting that 'Vienna without Strauss is like Austria without the Danube'.

 

       Johann Strauss

 

      

 

 

 

 

 

OH, I WISH I'D LOOKED AFTER MY TEETH
by
Pam Ayres

Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth,
And spotted the perils beneath,
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food,
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.

I wish I'd been that much more willin'
When I had more tooth there than fillin'
To pass up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers
And to buy something else with me shillin'.

When I think of the lollies I licked,
And the liquorice allsorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.

My Mother, she told me no end,
"If you got a tooth, you got a friend"
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.

Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-and-down brushin'
And pokin' and fussin'
Didn't seem worth the time... I could bite!

If I'd known I was paving the way,
To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fiIlin's
Injections and drillin's
I'd have thrown all me sherbet away.

So I lay in the old dentist's chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine,
In these molars of mine,
"Two amalgum," he'll say, "for in there."

How I laughed at my Mother's false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath,
But now comes the reckonin'
It's me they are beckonin'
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.