#quote source: monty python

[vililae]

That one conversation with the peasants in Monty Python and The Holy Grail, but make it the early part of Kamoshida’s palace.

Bonus:

[tf2incorrectquotes]

Sniper: Why are you so obsessed with giving the men of the Classic Team baboon uteruses?!

Medic: I want to have babies.

Sniper: ...you want to have babies?

Medic: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.

[skullmakesmelaugh]

Marissa: I am your queen!

Marissa: Long may I reign

George: Well I didn’t vote for you

Marissa: You don’t vote for queens

Holly: How’d you become queen then?

Marissa: Ezekiel, his head wreathed in the purest shimmering golden light, held aloft this bracelet from the bosom of the garden, signifying by divine providence that I, Marissa, was to carry Talent. That is why I am your queen

Skull: Listen, strange apparitions lying in gardens distributing bracelets is no basis for a system of government

Kipps: Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical supernatural ceremony

Marissa: Be quiet

Skull: You can’t expect to wield extreme executive power just because some ghostly tart threw jewellery at you

Marissa: Shut up

Flo: I mean, if I went round saying I was an emperor just because some apparition had lobbed a bracelet at me, they’d put me away

Marissa: Shut up! Shut up! Will you shut up

Marissa: *releases Ezekiel*

Lucy: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system

Marissa: Shut up!

Lucy: COME AND SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE SYSTEM

Lockwood: HELP HELP I’M BEING REPRESSED GHOST-LOCKED

Marissa: BLOODY PEASANT

[save-the-garden-gnomes]

Sophie, confused about Elvin food after her first day in the lost cities:

Sophie: *pointing to a random, inedible tree* so how do you cook that?

Fitz: uhh... You don't?

Sophie: *now thoroughly confused* I'm supposed to eat it raw??

[incorrectly-quoting-mxtx]

Shen Qingqiu: Now stand aside!

Tianlang-Jun: ‘Tis but a scratch.

Shen Qingqiu: A scratch?! Your arm’s off!

Tianlang-Jun: No it isn’t.

Shen Qingqiu: *points at his severed arm on the floor* What’s that then?

Tianlang-Jun: ...I’ve had worse.

[welcomehomeincorrectquotes]

If Wally turns out to be E̷V̶I̷L̸:

Poppy: *to the Welcome Home Restoration Committee* Now you lot listen here, he is not the Anti-Christ; he is a very naughty boy! Now go away!

Wally: *sulking in the naughty corner*

[shit-the-vampyr-cast-never-said]

Fergal: ‘Tis but a scratch!

Jonathan: A scratch? Your arm's off!

Fergal: No it isn’t!

Jonathan, pointing to the arm on the ground: Well, what’s that then?

Fergal: …I’ve had worse.

[roseofithaca]

Dutch, with his arm around John: One day, son, all this will be yours! *gestures to the camp*

John: What, the tents?

[hellbeast-go-walkies]

Richie: Eddie-baby, when you first started in the...

Eddie: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I don't like being called 'Eddie-baby'.

(Later)

Richie: I didn't really call you Eddie-baby, did I, sweetie?

Eddie: Don't call me sweetie!

Richie: Can I call you sugar plum?

Eddie: No!

Richie: Pussy cat?

Eddie: No.

Richie: Angel-drawers?

Eddie: No you may not! Now get on with it!

[sonictacocat]

Renfield, eating spiders: I'm invincible!

Seward: you're a looney

[summerblueringo]

they really said

[tf2incorrectquotes]

Medic “that could of been worse!” Vs Heavy “YOU LOST YOUR LEFT FOOT!?!”

Medic: 'Tis but a scratch!

Heavy: A scratch? Your legs off!

[incorrect-idolmastersidem-quotes]

Kazuki: I always preferred the outdoor life...hunting...shooting...fishing...getting out there with a gun and slaughtering a few of God’s creatures.

Daigo: Sensei! NOO!!

Ryo: GYAOOOOHH!!

[welcometoqueer]

Can confirm (with sources)!

At this point, Musk has lost more than $16 billion and Tesla stock has plummeted 50% since December. Within the last day or so he’s appeared to have lost upwards of $100 billion and is steadily losing more.

In response, Musk blamed activists and “Ukrainian hackers” for his losses.

Trump also recently had a midnight hissy fit and propped up his billionaire bestie (read: puppeteer) in response to Musk’s apparent unpopularity. He blames radical leftists and accuses them of “illegally boycotting” (what??) Tesla. Now, he’s acting as a salesman promoting and even buying Tesla.

Anyways, we can do better! Let’s get those numbers and losses up gang!

likes to charge, reblogs to cast

[welcomehomeincorrectquotes]

If Ronald Dorelaine is the villain:

Dorelaine: I AM YOUR KING!

Julie: Oh, I didn't know we had a king!

Wally: I thought we were an autonomous collective.

Frank: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship!

Dorelaine: *is ignored*

[culttvblog]

Denis Shaw Season: Tom Grattan's War - The Mysterious Lighthouse and The Wreckers

Next up in this series of shows in which actor Denis Shaw had a (usually small but nonetheless sinister) part we have Tom Grattan's War (1968 - 1970). 'WHOSE war?', I hear you ask if you're lucky. And you're lucky if you haven't heard of this show as I hadn't, because it's an absolute gem and I'm so pleased that digging down in Denis Shaw's IMDb page introduced me to it, so that if I'm introducing you to it I would be so pleased. This is another of those occasions on this blog when I will seriously encourage readers to stop reading my witterings and go away to watch this show because it will be a better use of the time left to you. There is an odd episode on YouTube if you want to try before you buy, and Network released the whole series on Region 2 DVD. For streaming you're on your own.

If you're still here I'm going to direct you away from the blog a second time and indicate a superb essay about this show which I will be drawing on for this post: it has actual academic references and sources and can be found here: https://forgottentelevisiondrama.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/tom-grattans-war-yorkshire-television-itv-1968-70/

The linked essay assigns this show to a genre which it quotes Mark Doherty and Alistair McGowan as calling: 'kids in anoraks on bikes, accompanied by a dog or two, roaming the countryside in search of smugglers and bank robbers and usually finding them in ready supply'. In fact until I dscovered that essay I was going to say that this show is like all the good atmospheric, adventurous bits of the Famous Five distilled in a show without the moralising, racism and dodgy gender roles.

In fact Yorkshire TV performed quite a feat with this show, which is notionally about the adventures of the titular Tom Grattan when he spends the First World War away from his native London, on a Yorkshire farm. He is about fifteen or sixteen. I don't even need to tell you that he ends up in lots of adventures with criminals, dodgy Germans, spies, the soldiers of our King, mines, lighthouses and derelict farm buildings, do I? However beyond that, (again this is from the article I link above) Yorkshire TV perform the remarkable feat of making a show which was intended to attract children from 8 years on, older children who were approaching young adulthood, and even adults. One of the stars of the show is actually Yorkshire itself, and full use is made of the Yorkshire scenery if you're into that sort of thing. Similar to the Famous Five's adventures, there would often be considerable danger or threat to Tom and his best friend, although of course this is always resolved. These are genuine adventure stories, with some examination of the characters' motivations and morals, beautiful camera work and scenery, faultless period settings and costume and what Monty Python would have called None of That. It's superb.

The two episodes I'm focusing on for this post have in common that Denis Shaw is in them, of course, but they also illustrate the tendency of the show to treat episodes as pairs with a cliffhanger after the first one. The story is that Tom and his friend walk to the coast and visit a lighthouse. The lighthouse keeper and his mate are suspicious and they find evidence that someone has been dragged into the sea. Of course it turns out that the lighthouse keeper and his mate are German spies who have seen to the real lighthouse keeper and moved the buoys with the intention of wrecking the ships of His Majesty's navy. Frankly, if you just shove a lighthouse in the middle of any old rubbish I will still be all over it like a rash, but as well as the simple fact you can't go wrong with a lighthouse, it's a classic adventure story, paced and carried out to perfection, over the two episodes.

Of course you have all guessed that the role Denis Shaw plays is as the fake lighthouse keeper with a cod German accent. He plays (and in fact fills) the role to perfection and is actually the embodiment of the jingoistic British conception of what Germans are like. The role isn't huge, but of course essential. He also uncharacteristically jumps out of a boat and swims fully clothed at the end, which seems unexpected for someone not apparently athletic.

I just have two questions or possibly criticisms of the whole show.

One is that even with the understanding that the show was aimed at a diverse audience you have to wonder sometimes what they thought they were doing. It deals with some incredibly sobering subject matter, yet also there are bits that look like they might have been intended for laughs (I haven't laughed since 1978 so didn't laugh personally. For example there is a recurring image of Tom running round an object with the villains following him which would probably be funny to younger children, and similarly some of the scenes where he is being chased by villains are obviously speeded up. I don't think this is intended to give a silent film impression and so it would probably be intended to be humorous, which seems a bit incongruent.

My only other criticism is that the show unusually begins every episode with us seeing a narrator telling us the background to the show. In each account he says that Tom is a boy doing a man's work (and in fact the premise is that he is only doing farm work until he is old enough to go to France to fight). I'm not very happy with what they're getting at here, because I don't think there has been a time when farm work has only been done by adults (and Londoners of Tom's generation would have been very familiar with the tradition of whole families leaving the city to go hop picking, something which used to happen even when I was at school). And apart from anything else, which we are not told what Tom was doing at home in London but he isn't posh enough to have been going to a public school and at this time the school leaving age was 12, only being raised to 14 in 1918 (my own mother left school at 14 in 1944). So whatever Tom was doing at home it would have been in the adult world of work and he can hardly be described as a boy doing a man's job. Now I really do feel like I'm nit-picking but the repetition of this makes it less credible each time.

These are really only quibbles and this is a wonderful, excellently-made series which I can't recommend highly enough.

Frustrate their knavish tricks!

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