Hauling Like A Brooligan

Stephen Gallagher

Author: Steve

  • Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy (2)

    UPDATE: Check out Andy Greenwood’s contribution to the comments section on the original post. Apparently the Laurel and Hardy collection exists in two forms, and Amazon withdrew the set from sale for a while due to a customer complaint about the goods as described. As far as I can see it’s a packaging issue and…

  • Pipe Bursts

    True story. The late ’70s weren’t exactly the biplane-and-barnstorming days of television technology, although looking back from today it can sometimes seem like it. In Granada TV’s Presentation Department we ran traffic control on live feeds both from network and our own studios, analog VT from two-inch tape, and an array of telecine machines that…

  • Terriers

    By one means or another I try to keep up with at least the pilots of the new crop of each season’s US TV shows, and in the current season one’s been the standout for me – Terriers, from FX, starring Donal Logue (who I thought was miscast in Life but is perfect here) and…

  • Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy

    I don’t often do this, but there’s an insane price for the complete Laurel and Hardy collection on Amazon right now; the boxed set originally retailed around two hundred quid. It includes foreign-language versions of some of the shorts made for export, with different supporting casts and, in some cases, extra routines and material. Plus,…

  • Theatre Ghosts

    How cool is this: the late Ian Richardson steps in to haunt the refurbished RSC theatre.

  • Of Candles and Darkness

    Anybody remember the great Splatterpunk vs Quiet Horror debate? If not, consider yourself forgiven. It was a small storm in a small teacup, but we got a fair few convention panels out of it. At its best, splatterpunk was Clive Barker; at its worst, it was everybody who tried to write like Barker but lacked…

  • Coding Your Book for the Kindle

    With more detail and clarity than I can offer you, Paul Drummond has added a page to his own website in which he lays out the process of setting up a manuscript for e-publication to a professional standard. “Each chapter was copied from the original Word document, converted to HTML and added to the .ePub…

  • This Wednesday

    A shout-out for Ellen ‘Audrey Deux’, singing with Sunday’s Child at the Cobden Club in Notting Hill this Wednesday evening. From the club’s website: Nottinghill’s local DJ/Producer Alistair hosts “Hoochie Coochie live Club” Every week 4 to 5 of London’s finest and best acts (both signed & unsigned) from acoustic singer-songwriters to soul/jazz to ska…

  • Super Duper 8

    I spent last Friday morning in the BBC’s number 4 grading suite at the Television Centre in London. For a while I’d been looking for some way of digitising the Super 8 that I shot in the late ’70s and ’80s, but there was always a problem. For all its reputation as a ‘bootlace gauge’,…

  • In Sickness and in Stealth

    Back in 1984 I travelled through Finland and Russia to research the book that would eventually become The Boat House. I say eventually because it was a far from easy road. Not the travelling, that was an adventure that I wouldn’t have missed for anything. Helsinki, Joensuu, Savonlinna, the towns of Western Karelia… then onto…