[This should be up on the BBC News website soon]
There is a famous and hilarious episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, the BBC sitcom from the 1970’s, in which our eponymous Geordies, Bob and Terry, spend an anxious day trying to avoid hearing the result of a crucial football match because they will be watching it later that night on Match of the Day.
It was one of my mum’s favourites, partly I suspect because she came from Hebburn and had grown up among men who resembled the Likely Lads in many ways, my dad among them.
Despite many mishaps and near-misses all goes well until just before they are about to settle down in front of the TV, but the ending is both funnier and less predictable than you might expect, as it usually was in this fine old British comedy, so I won’t give it away here.
I thought of Terry and Bob this weekend, since I found myself avoiding Facebook and other social network sites, refraining from reading much email and staying far away from any of the many manifestations of Twitter for fear that someone would give me even the smallest hint of the denouement of Battlestar Galactica, which has just come to an end after seventy-three episodes and numerous webisodes and extras.