Are You Being Served?: Shop Soiled

Are You Being Served? is to be rebooted with an 'all-star cast'.

The sitcom had been rumoured to be in line for a makeover as part of the BBC's landmark comedy season later this year. Now it has been confirmed that the Corporation will return to Grace Brothers with a studio audience recording confirmed for March 5.

The BBC says the one-off episode will 'pick up where Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft's much loved comedy left off,' and promises to 'bring some of the nation's all-time favourite sitcom characters including Mrs Slocombe, Captain Peacock, Miss Brahms, and Mr Humphries back to life with an all star cast'.

The original sitcom ran for 69 episodes over ten series from 1972 to 1985 on BBC One and made stars of the likes of Mollie Sudden, John Inm and and Wendy Richard.

The BBC are also reportedly planning reboots of Porridge, The Good Life, Up Pompeii!, and Keeping Up Appearances as part of the landmark sitcom series, marking 60 years since Hancock's Half Hour first made the transition to TV.

However Christopher Biggins, who played Lukewarm in Porridge, has expressed the views of many when he said: 'I wish they would leave these things alone. I wish they would go and find new ideas.'

Visit the BBC website for to enter into a draw for free tickets to be in the recording of Are You Being Served?

Chortle.

Sake.

What next?

Love Thy Neighbour?

John Inman: Sake

The actor John Inman is the latest target of the increasingly insane Celebrity Nonce Squad. Far be it from me to point out that Inman died in 2007 and, just like Jimmy Savile, remains dead.

Since when has the lack of a live suspect ever stopped them? Having failed to arrest Savile while he was still breathing, the Old Bill have been trying desperately to pin bogus charges of 'historic' sex abuse on everyone from disc jockey Paul Gambaccini to the former Prime Minister Edward Heath, who is also dead.

This deranged witch-hunt has ruined the lives of countless innocent individuals and turned the basic principle of British justice on its head.

All those accused are presumed guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent. In the case of war hero Lord Bramall, absurdly accused of being a member of a VIP paedophile ring, investigating officers took a full ten months before contacting key witnesses who could testify that the allegations against him were nonsense...

Richard Littlejohn in the Mail.

Even a stopped clock...

PS The source of this story is the fiction factory and paedo obsessed, Sunday People.

John Inman: Probe

The bananas Sunday People has been the main pusher of child abuse fictions about Ted Heath, Harvey Proctor etc etc, usually taken off the mentalist conspiracy website Exaro.

I hope someone sues the fuckers.

Richard Littlejohn: Nurse, My Sides!

Richard Littlejohn, The Daily Mail.

One of your very best, Dicky.

Though if it did turn out he was a gayer you'd spontaneously ejaculate with joy.

Camp: And The Damage Done

In his perceptive [sic] analysis of gay men's attitudes to camp (What Alan Carr taught me about gay men's prejudice, 21 April), Owen Jones suggests that an aversion to it is a form of self-loathing. But for many of us struggling to come out in the 1970s and 80s, it was camp itself which represented self-hatred. Comedians such as John Inman and Larry Grayson personified everything that I did not want to be. They were almost a third sex: grotesque pantomimic creatures, willingly collusive in the mocking laughter of the TV audience. My generation of activists wanted to show people that we weren't all hairdressers or ballet dancers, just ordinary blokes who worked in factories and offices and drove trains and buses...

From an actual letter someone bothered to write to The Guardian.

God, there are some top-flight gaybores out there.

Who wants to be 'ordinary'?

And all the poshgays be like; 'Oh Owen, you're saying what we're all thinking.'

'I also hate the gays cause the gays hate the gays, yeah, that makes sense.'

PS Pink News readers continue to gaybore for England.

John Barrowman: Saucy Asides

TELLY hunk John Barrowman has launched a furious attack on “miserable” critics of his naughty panto patter.

The Scots-born Torchwood and Doctor Who star hit back after his cheeky on-stage double entendres were branded “smutty”.

Defiant Barrowman, 46, said: “People like that are just miserable bastards. They need to get over it.

“Or just don’t come back — we don’t need you.”

The US-based star lashed out after coming under fire from fellow festive show favourites and a disgruntled fan.

Orville the Duck ventriloquist Keith Harris, 65, insisted: “Panto is for kids but they don’t get smutty jokes made by people like John Barrowman.”

Veteran telly comic Jim Davidson, 59, added: “Panto’s a chance to be funny without being filthy.” 

But the actor was unrepentant — and promised more saucy asides at this year’s production of Dick McWhittington with The Krankies at Glasgow’s Clyde Auditorium.

He said: “These jokes go right over the crossbar of the kids, while all the adults sit there chuckling.

“The only reason kids laugh is they see their parents laughing away.

“That’s just old school panto and The Krankies are brilliant at delivering that sort of stuff.”

But John — who married long-term partner Scott Gill in California in the summer — admits he did receive one complaint during last year’s Jack And The Beanstalk run.

He said: “We had a letter saying I was making gay references and was being crude.

“I find it strange they didn’t complain about jokes about one of the girl’s boobs.”

The Sun - Scotch edition only. 

Fagburn recalls seeing that grand pantomime dame, John Inman, on TV once saying pantomime innuendo was "self-cleaning jokes".
Rather well put, I thought.

Julian Assange: I'm Meme!

I learn from The Sun that this "Spoof Assange pic is [sic] massive hit."
But for why? Apparently, it is "hilarious". 
The Sun explains helpfully; "But Assange — a lookalike of the actor — is definitely NOT free. He remains holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London’s Knightsbridge after being granted asylum, but is visited by girlfriend Sarah Harrison."
So now you know.

PS Think The Sun adding that he's got a girlfriend may be a legal thing.

Update Sunday: Just watched Julian's Evita moment at the Ecuadorean Embassy. I have a problem with Assange's ego, but good for him for drawing attention to Bradley Manning...