5 Reasons I Still Love Prisoner: Cell Block H

1.The Nicknames

My favourite character was always ‘The Freak’ Joan Ferguson, the villain on which the show revolved. You knew it was going to kick off when she whipped out her black leather glove and pulled the I’m-going-to-shove-this-up-your-bottom face that we’ve all recognised on someone at some point.

‘Top Dog’ was the nickname adopted by the leader of the women inside, with the emphasis rather unkindly being on the latter half of the moniker. 

But none of these come close to competing with ‘Vinegar Tits’ which is a shoe-in as name for my new all-girl punk band.

2.The Scenery

So what if when the cell slams shut the doors shake like a Parkinson’s seminar on the San Andreas Fault? Who cares if the walls are more transparent than a tramp asking for change to ‘get the bus home’?

If you can use your imagination, none of this matters and you can concentrate on the storylines (which are thinner than the walls) and the theatricals on show.

3.The Acting

People say the acting is bad but I disagree. It does have moments that make Hollyoakes look like Apocalypse Now but that's all part of the charm.

The show wouldn’t have worked if every scene with Lizzie Birdsworth was an expert clinic in method acting.

I love the fact that half the cast come across like they’ve been given the job just because they turned up.

4.The Actors

Three decades ago there were only 7 actors from Australia, and one of them was Russell Crowe and he’s from New Zealand. So early 80’s Prisoner is a who’s who of classic Aussie soap turns.

You get used to it after a while. Susan Kennedy from Neighbours looking quite fit, Celia from Home and Away as Vinegar Tits.

But when Summer Bay’s original ‘Flaming Gala’ himself, Alf Stewart rocked up as the evil prison governor wearing a pair of Ray Charles’ finest gigs and chomping on a stogie, I nearly shat the couch.

5.The Knowing Wink

I’m sure when they were filming the first series they thought they were making The Wire, but just like Skynet in the Terminator films, the show grew to be self aware. It knew exactly what it was.

When I was 17 I went to see ‘Prisoner Cell Block H: The Musical’ starring Lilly Savage. More importantly, the original ‘Freak’ was one of the leads which told the story of jet-setting Lilly getting falsely fingered (never fun) for smuggling heroin into the country and put on remand at Wentworth. Cue a bunch of show tunes about leather gloves, a bizarre narrative and a total lampooning of the original show.

But just like The Freak’s famous body cavity searches, it was done with love.

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5 Reasons Cricket is Better Than Football

1.The Games Last For Fucking Ages

 

A test match lasts for 5 days which is longer than most relationships I’ve had.  You simply can’t beat the drama of long sporting contests, games with more twists and turns than a one-legged Morris dancer. 

To be fair, you do get that with some football matches but you certainly can’t fall asleep, go to work, lose your job, get a new one, have a shave, get divorced, do a big shop, have another shave, give birth, and then return to the match to see you’ve not actually missed anything.

2.Respect for Officials

Everyone uses Rugby as their example for how a referee should be respected but in the last Ashes tour Ricky Ponting was fined a load of money for talking to the umpire. 

Talking.  Not shouting.  Not screaming. Talking.

Oh, and he wagged his finger at him too.  The filthy animal.
 

3.The Commentary

The BBC’s Test Match Special is where it’s at.  I’ve spent days at a time listening to every single ball.  For this winter’s Ashes tour they’re even replaying the commentary from the previous night so you can listen to it as-live the next day. 

Why?  Because we will listen.  The warmth between former players from opposite sides oozes out of the speakers and when not focussed on the sport, they talk at great length about cakes that people have baked them.  And somehow, it’s fascinating.

Imagine listening to Alan Green or Clive Tyldesley for five days.  Demand for the Samaritans would go through the roof as people jumped off theirs.

I’ve never been to Guantanamo Bay (although I have stayed in a Travel Lodge) but they could do a lot worse than using the above as a sure-fire route to extracting information from suspects.

“Forget the waterboarding, Johnson.  This guy won’t crack for that.  Bring me the Tyldesley / Beglin commentary from the 2003 Group G scoreless draw between Manchester United and Basel...LOOPED EDITION!”

Instant confession. 

 

4.You Can Drink In The Stands

This feels odd when you arrive for most games around 10.30am and dive straight into the ale.  I was looking round for someone to throw me out but all I could see were lots of happy, friendly people drinking pints.  It seemed out of context, responsible adults enjoying alcohol together?  In public?   And  no-one’s been glassed?!?

The closest it came to kicking off was when two stag do’s morphed into a mega-do like a bunch of Jaeger-fuelled Power Rangers and started piling all their empty (plastic) pint glasses on top of each other to ‘feed the snake’. 

Hardly The Football Factory is it?

(By the way, I normally wish nothing but haemorrhoids on stag parties in fancy dress, but to the lads dressed as gorillas who spent half the day chasing their banana-clad stag, I doff my cap.)

5.We’re Quite Good At It

However you argue it, the England football team have failed other than in 1966 when a home crowd and dodgy decision got them over the line.  Two semi final defeats to Germany in 1990 and 1996 apart, they’ve been consistently shite.

Despite being recently given the kind of seeing-to by the Aussies normally reserved for a prison shower, the England Cricket team however are quite good in the scheme of things.  Mainly because there are only eight Test-playing nations and two of them are utter cack. 

And when you break it down we only really need to be better than Australia and everything is okay.

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