Tainted Stats

Weekly Stats Report: 15 Aug - 21 Aug 2011
Project: THE TAINTED ARCHIVE
URL: http://tainted-archive.blogspot.com/

	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun	Total	Avg
Pageloads	566	497	606	578	557	553	655	4,012	573
Unique Visitors	369	367	435	468	424	409	487	2,959	423
First Time Visitors	342	343	410	451	405	387	461	2,799	400
Returning Visitors	27	24	25	17	19	22	26	160	23

Keep em' Laughing - Dai Bando

THE LATE DAI BANDO

Seems to me that a blog is a place to write about one's passions and the Archive has always been eclectic in the subjects covered and so the coming week will see Comedy being a major theme, as I'm finding myself in the mood to write about the comedy that has touched me over the years.

I've done a bit of stand up comedy myself and until a few years ago I was regularly gigging, but the type of venues I played have been disappearing for some time now and comedy has suffered more than most from the bland march of political correctness - or at least the type of comedy I performed has. I used to perform under the name Dai Bando and my routine was a mixture of gags, many of them blue as well as observationial stuff. The latter I used to love writing and feel that I developed skills that have since served me well as a novelist.

I used to use a lot of material that relied on racial stereotypes, but there was nothing hateful in the routine, instead humour was used to explore race and, I hope, demonstrate that we're all the same beneath the skin. Nothing was intended to hurt and I'm of the opinion that racial jokes are fine as long as it's good natured. British Comedy has a long tradition of humour defined by race as well as gender with the kitchen sink thrown in for good measure. I suppose Dai Bando was a mixture of Bill Hicks, Tony Hancock, Woody Allen and Tommy Trinder.

"There was a Welshman, and Englishman and a Irishman..."

"My mother-in-law's so fat then when you take her knickers down her arse is still in them."

Stand up comedy is a difficult art to learn and often dangerous to perform, as I know only too well. I still remember performing several years ago in Tonypandy. when a heckler didn't like my come backs to his insults - he promptly jumped up on stage and with one well aimed fist, knocked me out cold. To add insult to injury the biggest laugh I got that night was when the bruiser knocked me out - the audience apparently thought it was part of the show and found it the funniest thing ever. Comedians getting their noses broken always goes down well in the Rhondda Valleys.

And so it wasn't too long after that event that Dai Bando left the rat race of live comedy  - my props (an inflatable sheep, a funny hat and a microphone shaped like a penis) were packed away and Dai Bando walked off into the comedy sunset.

Will he ever return?

Well, every now and then I feel an itch that need to be scratched as the urge to take to the stage  makes itself felt. Thus far I've not given into it and Dai Bando remains in retirementnever say never.

Next: Laurel and Hardy

The dead are getting restless

This October The Dead Shall Walk



Soon available for Amazon's Kindle and all other eFormats.
On sale everywhere - October 2011

Archive's Sunday Comics - Testing The Legend (again)

Let's jump into the Archive's time machine and go back to the time they called, The Sixties for this week's comic.

This week's offering comes from another Odhams annual of the 1960s and features Smash! comic's Legend Testers, Rollo Stones and Danny Charters, whom we have featured before at the Archive. It was written by a young Keith Chapman, long before his "Chap O'Keefe" western novel days, pursuing a writing and editing career in London.

 
He says, "Writing westerns, indeed, any form of historical fiction or story based on accepted myth, was vastly different in the middle years of last century. For me, hunting for good ideas that hadn't already been done to death by other scriptwriters meant trawling through musty tomes. I found the story of Eustace the Monk in a nineteenth century book that had been my grandfather's. Today, anyone can learn far more about Eustace in moments simply by going to Wiki. So I won't bother to haul heavy boxes up two flights of stairs to my office. But I guess it would be fun sometime to look through that old history book. Then I could work out exactly how I developed the facts recorded there into what I hope some will still find an imaginative fantasy yarn...."   

We've also reproduced the front and back covers from the Smash annual for your interest and enjoyment.

Remember double click any image for a larger version. The Archive's previous, Legend Testers strip can be found HERE

Remember the pen is mightier than the sword

Strange Days

A glitch in time is one of the theories surrounding the strange happenings at Monmouthshire’s Skirrid Inn. The building is over 900 years old and was first recorded in 1110. The Inn is still in use with the present day landlord being one  Geoff Fiddler.

The glitch in time theory is that somehow people can see events that happened in the past, as if they are somehow looking through a window in time itself. One other hypothesis is that the fabric of the old building and the land it stands on can somehow absorb and record things that have happened here. If a recording can be put on a CD or Hard Drive then why is it not possible, the theory goes, that nature can do this given the right geological conditions? The ancient Skirrid Mountain Inn lies at the foot of the Skirrid Mountain, just off the main road between Abergavenny and Hereford.. It is reputed to be one of the UK’s most haunted locations. According to historical records, the inn has been providing its patrons with hospitality  since at least 1104 – the era of the Norman conquest – and possibly, even earlier.

Ghosts said to haunt the inn include a local clergyman, Father Henry Vaughn. Fanny Price, who worked at the inn during the 18th century, is said to be very active throughout the Skirrid. It is believed Fanny died of consumption in 1873, aged just 35. She is reportedly most active in Room 3. Other ghostly occurrences include sightings of a spirit dubbed the White Lady, the sound of soldiers in the courtyard, the rustling of an unseen lady’s dress, a powerful scent of perfume.
It is the oldest pub in Wales.
It is believed that the first floor of the inn was once used as a Court of Law and over the period of a great many years, as many as 180 prisoners were adjudged guilty of crimes serious enough to warrant the sentence of death by hanging, a sentence that was carried out at the inn itself, the last case of capital punishment purportedly taking place sometime prior to the death of Oliver Cromwell  (1599–1658).
Owain Glyndŵr is said to have rallied his forces in the cobbled courtyard in the early 15th century before raiding nearby settlements sympathetic to the English king, Henry IV.

Over the years many strange happenings have been reported at the Inn from strange noises to objects moving about for no reason, and sometimes glasses have flown from shelves as though thrown by unseen hands. In fact the current landlord claims that about 15 glasses are broken in this way every week.
There are regular paranormal evenings at the inn and anyone interested in a little ghost hunting can find details HERE

The Hack - all the Writer's News you need

Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush, it's the Hack's report.

* The once lucrative UK female short fiction market is in turmoil - according to a report in Writer's Forum eleven magazines have dropped fiction in the last few years, and those that do still buy fiction are now only doing so from established writers. In 2005 virtually all women's magazine on the newsstand carried fiction and also accepted unsolicited fiction, but today that market has shrunk to a third of its size with magazines such as Take a Break, Bella, Woman's Weekly no longer running fiction amongst its articles. Of today's women's magazines only People's Friend, Weekly News, My Weekly, Woman's Weekly, Your, and Take A Break Fiction Fest are using short stories.


* US genre publisher, Library of the Living Dead are looking for original well written werewolf stories for a forthcoming anthology to be edited by Bill Tucker and Mike Michell. Find details HERE

* J K Rowling has parted company with her agent, Christopher Little which cuts him out of the forthcoming Pottermore initiative to sell the Potter books as eBooks.Christopher Little signed up an unknown writer, Joanne Rowling, in 1995, she was newly divorced, living in a one-bedroom Edinburgh flat, and had a six-month-old daughter to take care of. He secured the Harry Potter scribe a six-figure book deal and transformed her into a literary superstar. Both made a fortune. Now their fairytale partnership has come to a crashing conclusion.Mr Little, 69, is considering legal action against Ms Rowling, whose books have sold almost half a billion copies, after it emerged that the author has defected to a new literary agency, The Blair Partnership, set up by Mr Little's former business partner Neil Blair.

* The Duchess of Cornwell has become the patron of Booktrust, which is a charity set up to encourage reading in people of all ages.Booktrust is an independent UK-wide charity dedicated to encouraging people of all ages and cultures to enjoy books. The written word permeates all our activity and helps us to fulfil our vision of inspiring a lifelong love of books for all. 

* Argos which launched its online books store this April are to expand their range to include 5,000 titles.

*Big Issue Magazine has made several of it regional editors homeless by merging all of its editions into a single UK wide magazine edited by Paul McNamee

* The BBC are seeking scripts for dramas and comedies. Find details in their Writer's Room

* A late report added to this post with thanks to Keith Chapman for directing me towards this. Go HERE for an  interview with  comic legend, Pat Mills about his attempts to  revive a girl's comic line.