Have just started Mondust by Andrew Smith
The Apollo Moon Programme has been called the last optimistic act of the 20th century. Over a strange three-year period between 1969 and 1972, twelve men made the longest and most eccentric of all journeys and all were indeliby marked by it. Of those astronauts who walked on the Moon only nine are still alive. One day in the near future there will be none: no one on earth will have known the giddy thrill of gazing back at us from another world. In Moondust, Andrew Smith sets out to find and interview the remaining Moonwalkers in order to learn how their lives, and ours, were changed by this surreal adventure forever.

Geoff.

Read that a while ago; great read. Funny, but the thing that stuck in my mind was how difficult it was to get an interview with John Young, and how strangely he behaved; sitting at the other end of a table and not looking directly at the author, and referring to himself in the third person, ie “John Young believes…” Enjoy.

Speculation now about something washed up on a beach in Thailand, though it doesn’t really look like aircraft wreckage to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc-gslfnjuE

I’m sure the Tories will have fun with that; after all, it would be like an aircraft carrier without aircraft…

I have the feeling that also the Grumman Hellcat is little underrated outside the US. One should take a little from P-51 and give it to Grumman Hellcat .. For gods sake this ugly and clumsy looking fighter has won the war in the Pacific !! called ‘ the ZERO killer ‘

Absolutely. Not as glamorous as a Corsair or as pretty as a Mustang or Spitfire, but a phenomenal record. Only two major variants, so they got the design pretty much right from the start, and having done it’s job it disappeared from the frontline very quickly after WWII.

From Wikipedia;

U.S. Navy and Marine F6F pilots flew 66,530 combat sorties and claimed 5,163 kills (56% of all U.S. Navy/Marine air victories of the war) at a recorded cost of 270 Hellcats in aerial combat (an overall kill-to-loss ratio of 19:1 based on claimed but not confirmed kills).

Thanks for that. As an aside, I think I read somewhere that Tim Brooke-Taylor (of The Goodies) very nearly became one of the Pythons.

Author and Humanist David Nobbs. Best known for Reginald Perrin and “A Bit of a Do” but IMHO his masterpiece was the novel “Second From Last In The Sack Race” featuring the trials and tribulations of young Henry Pratt. Have to say I think he lost his way a bit in his later novels though, which seemed a little self-indulgent and where he had an irritating habit of talking directly to the reader on occasion.

It always amuses me to see ‘Dirty Sanchez’ in the Radio Times or on TV trailers; would that be possible if more people knew what it referred to?

If you don’t know, I wouldn’t suggest looking it up (as I had to); you’re better-off not knowing!

Or buy a copy of “Roger’s Profanisuarus” –

http://viz.co.uk/category/rogers-profanisaurus/page/2/