Sad to hear that puppeteer and special effects man Richard Gregory passed away suddenly last week.
As most Gerry Anderson fans will know Richard worked on Terrahawks and Space Precinct, as well as the fan funded Thunderbirds 1965 episodes and the brand new 'Firestorm' minisode.
Here's Richard on stage with fellow puppeteer, Judy Preece holding Zelda from Terrahawks.
Richard also worked on many feature films designing and working on animatronic effects and designs including the Bond blockbusters 'Skyfall', Quantum of Solace, and 'Casino Royale'.
Are you a good packager? You know, packing things up to put in the post like old toys that you've sold on Ebay and the like. I take forever packaging, largely because I'm slow and I'm paranoid about stuff breaking in transit. Despite this I still have had some breakages over the years. My technique is to use any boxes and inner material lying about the house: shoe boxes, bigger supermarket boxes, smaller boxes like tea, toothpaste and oxo for fillers and lots and lots of shredded newspaper and magazines. We have a small stock of bubble wrap as well for fragile stuff. I always finish with brown paper wrap and parcel tape. Over the years I've had some right rubbish packages sent to me. Fragile carded blisters simply stuffed in a jiffy bag all the way from another country; items placed in a box with no inner material at all and items wrapped solely in brown paper and nothing else. Still, some things are unpredictable. I recently sent a DVD to someone in a jiffy bag, which was all fine. What I didn't expect was the DVD to detach inside the case and slide around in transit getting scratched allover. That was unexpected when the buyer told me. What's your packaging experience been like readers?
Taking another trip down Memory Lane, I've been watching Abbott and Costello monster movies online.
I saw reference whilst reading up on them about Who's On First, their most famous sketch, which they developed in the 1930's!
Now Who's on First and all that rang a bell with me. I'm pretty sure I'd heard it mentioned in the movie The Rain Man by Dustin Hoffman's character. Not knowing the original Abbott and Costello sketch though I checked it out on You Tube. Here it is, Who's on First. What do you think?
This signature sketch is part of a long tradition of such sketches for every comedy double act there ever was. The British equivalent of this has to be Fork Handles by the brilliant Two Ronnie. Like Who's on First, its a classic play on words and one which I always think of when I see a box in our cupboard which simply says Biscuits for Cheese!
Here it is courtesy of You Tube once more. What do you think?
Which signature sketches from comedy doubles do you know of?
