Craig Sawyers

Broadcast by the BBC in 1959 https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/hi-fi-fo-fum/zjt6kmn

Indeed. From https://www.mylondon.news/whats-on/whats-on-news/outrageous-life-notorious-chef-marco-21602394 "Allegedly, Marco even once made Gordon Ramsay - renowned for being a tough chef who regularly causes jaws to drop on shows like Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - break down in tears. Australia's news.com.au reports Marco trained Gordon at his restaurant Harvey's, and "exposed [him] to daily rituals of humiliation, foul language, flying knives and almost unbearable pressure," according to a 2006 profile in The Telegraph. Marco said: "I can’t remember what it was about, but I yelled at him and he lost it. The next thing I knew he was sobbing in the corner, holding his head in his hands, with tears rolling down his cheeks. "He was saying things like, 'I don’t care what you do to me. Hit me. I don’t care'." The problem is that the bullied and humiliated become the bullier and humiliator. I've had two bosses who fell into that category, alas (Both now safely dead). The poet Philip Larkin wrote a bleak poem called "This be the Verse" that describes this sort of process: They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.

Thing with Ramsey is that he is a very serious chef. His main restaurant (Restaurant Gordon Ramsey) has three Michelin Stars. His "persona" in the various shows he does is just that - a persona. I'll bet that the three star kitchen he has is calm. The chef team cannot cook at that level if the main guy in the kitchen is yelling at people. In Le Manoir au Quat'saisons, Raymond Blanc's three star restaurant, it is very definitely calm. The first time we went there, it was a mate's significant birthday. Now he trained as a chef, so I had a quiet word, and organised a kitchen tour for him. They had just spent a quarter million refitting the kitchen. And there were the same number of chefs in the kitchen as there were diners. And that is why it costs loadsa money to eat there. It will be the same in Ramsey's three star. Calm.

RIP those stabbed to death in a Sydney mall https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-68805401 Story is still emerging https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-australia-68805458 currently 5 confirmed dead and many injured.

Think back to ancient prehistory when Telex messages were a thing. In those far distant days, I worked for a technology consultancy company. Now noise on a Telex line could give rise to garbled messages. This is one I received from a client company: "WHATEVER HAPPENS, THE ASSEMBLY MUST FIT IN A QWAK NOT P-KNOB"

At least you don't have these lurking. They are prevalent in the area my daughter lives in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_funnel-web_spider

Swankiest butt plugs I've seen 😁

A very happy birthday, Al!

Wen we bought our house, new, maybe 30 years ago, I went into the front room and jumped up and down. "It's a concrete floor! We've got to buy this!" Mind you my speakers are a fraction of the weight of Wilsons. But I get no floorboard boing. Note this guy has ornaments on the shelf behind one of the speakers. I eradicated those in our room, after clapping my hands to listen for anything untoward, there was a chorus of pings from glass ornaments and plates. And he has a guitar behind the other, which will resonate nicely. Yuk.

Alternatively

On the set of Skyfall. Having a laugh and a joke.

Just getting back online in NZ, so a truly belated one Steve!

A very very belated one Dan, new zealand time!

I did not realise that he was born in the same county as me - Co Durham in the North East of England. He was from here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horden He seems to have learnt a lot from HP Lovecraft's style, including tales about Cthulu. Still 86 is not too shabby an innings. RIP Brian Lumley

I have to fess up here. In the Falklands, Rapier missile emplacements were dropped on the beach head. Rapier missiles were tracked to their (aircraft) target at that stage using S-band microwaves. That neatly jammed the radar on our own ships - who promptly told the Rapier crews to turn off the missile tracker. That left them with the only option to sit in the launcher nest and manually track using a rate joystick and sighting crosshairs. Now they were not good at this, and led to a need to train crews in how to manually track. From the Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapier_(missile) "In the 1980s, a new training simulator system was constructed in Stevenage. This consisted of a 10-metre (33 ft) radius hemispherical dome whose inside surface was used as a movie screen onto which terrain images were projected. A copper vapor laser projected images of targets and the missiles in-flight on top of the background imagery, while a smaller helium-neon laser simulated the Rapier's tracking flare. A complete Rapier targeting unit was placed in the center of the dome, and its guidance signals were captured and sent to the simulator to update the position of the missile. The projected laser imagery was bright enough that it could be tracked by IR imagers and seekers, allowing it to be used with the updated Darkfire versions of the Rapier with their IR cameras, or other IR seeking missiles like the Stinger. This system was sold separately for use with other missile systems under the name British Aerospace Microdome. And laser image projection system was developed my me as a consultant when working for https://www.paconsulting.com/about/global-innovation-and-technology-centre . The whole British Aerospace simulator was darned impressive. There was a 1kW audio system in there to give a realistic sound effect of launching, as well as sound effects from the targets (helicopters, jets etc). Scared the bejeesus out of me when we were testing it.