Tuesday 21 September 2021

So Farewell Then...

John Challis, the actor who played Boycie in Only Fools and Horses has died.  He was wonderful, like the whole cast.  It seems to me, rightly or wrongly, that comedy is much harder to act than tragedy, as mistiming can kill the funniest line.

Anyway, as a tribute to John Challis, here is one of his great lines - and it was, of course, beautifully delivered:

‘I’ve left my Mercedes parked downstairs and you know what they’re like on this estate. They’d have the wheels off a jumbo if it flew too low.’ 


"We have a problem" said Captain Butterfly grimly as he fluttered back upstairs on Sunday morning.  "Someone has been smashing china on the Green, and throwing some of it over the wall onto our cars."

What?  And Why?   And yes, the Green was littered with shards of rather good quality white china, some of which had obviously been hurled over our wall in the early hours.  None of the parked cars were damaged, thankfully, but some had shards of china on them.

Very very strange.  Captain B went down and cleared it all up and emailed all round.

There is a locked-room mystery by Carter Dickson called "The Ten Teacups".   Could this inspire my own next thriller?   "The Ten Smashed Teacups"?  

Well, not so far, but who knows.   My only Sherlockian thought so far is that one of our local restaurants had been broken into and vandalised... but i haven't heard of any such incident.

To return my blog to where it began, John Challis.  Will he live again, when the time comes for the resurrection?   He contributed a lot of happiness to many of us while he was here, so I feel very hopeful.


I got a lovely review of not just Disraeli Hall, but my whole oeuvre (the other two books), from a fellow author.  I hope to be able to post it in my next blog - which I had probably better title: The Ego Has Landed.  And we have had a smashed-crockery free night.

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