by Kim Newman
Perry White’s catchphrase on the 1990s show Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. A replacement for the traditional ‘Great Caesar’s Ghost’
The theme for Top Cat
http://www.telesearch.org/themesonline/index.htm
Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb
A 1972 Hammer horror film. It features a living, bleeding severed hand and plenty of torn-out throats. Before you do the research, I think I mention it for its associations, not because it actually was on television that evening.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0068290/
Genesis
You know he thinks the band sound better with Phil Collins.
http://www.punk77.co.uk/punkhistory/whendinosaursromaedtheearth.htm
NHS
National Health Service
pulling
ie: ‘Scoring’, ‘picking up’, forming an instant sexual liaison.
Hello!
Celebrity-focused magazine, obsessed with anodyne gossip. Mild-mannered equivalent of a US supermarket tabloid.
http://www.hellomagazine.com/
Amazon Queen
Superheroine staple of the ZC Comics universe. Mickey Yeo kills her in The Quorum.
Noel’s House Party
BBC1 Saturday evening show in the 1990s, hosted by Noel Edmonds, who played purportedly humorous practical jokes on minor celebs and members of the public who then had to pretend to be amused. Spun off the unaccountably-popular pretend children’s TV character Mr Blobby. Its popularity was almost certainly a sign of the apocalypse.
http://www.ukgameshows.com/atoz/programmes/n/noels_house/
See especially: http://lordofthemoon.com/disasterarea/noel.html
Gladiators
The UK version of American Gladiators.
http://www.ukgameshows.com/atoz/programmes/g/gladiators/
East Enders
The BBC’s long-running TV soap.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/eastenders/
http://www.jumptheshark.com/e/eastenders.htm
One Foot in the Grave
Sit-com about a curmudgeonly old git.
http://www.tvheaven.ca/victor.htm
Avengers
The ITV surreal thriller series, not the Marvel Comic.
http://theavengers.tv/forever/welcome.htm
animated Hand of God
A feature of the initial television ads for the Lottery.
squirt cider in your ears
See: Guys and Dolls,, the Broadway musical by Frank Loesser based on the short stories of Damon Runyon, filmed with Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra.
public-school
ie: private, fee-paying
monstrous snarl and glowing red eyes
see: ‘Where the Bodies Are Buried’.
the Wimpy Bar
UK chain of hamburger restaurants, named after the character in the Popeye cartoons. Superceded by the arrival of American-style fast food chains in the 1980s. But they’re still hanging in there, even if my local Wimpy closed down and was replaced significantly by a Starbuck’s.
http://www.wimpyburgers.co.uk/
Shinbone
The town where Liberty Valance got shot
petrol tank
ie: gas tank
Tom Robinson
Wrote the gay pride anthem ‘Glad to Be Gay’ in 1977. He briefly went through the absurd indignity of being harried by the tabloid press for having a long-term relationship with the woman he later married and had children with. In case the reference here, filtered through an embittered and cynical character, is ambiguous, it should be noted that Robinson strikes me as a genuinely decent, even heroic public figure.
http://www.tomrobinson.com/
Dixon of Dock Green
In the UK, the BBC-TV series Dixon of Dock Green (1955-76) manages to be the equivalent of both Dragnet and The Andy Griffith Show, at once a reassuring police procedural about how crime is swiftly beaten and a family fantasy about the caring, fatherly copper. George Dixon (Jack Warner), who was shot dead in the feature film (The Blue Lamp) from which the show spun off but resurrected for a long run, epitomises the image of the bobby on the beat.
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/D/htmlD/dixonofdock/dixonofdock.htm
‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’
The second most famous Nazi anthem ever written by Jews (after ‘Springtime for Hitler’), this John Kander and Fred Ebb number from Cabaret was most remembered at the time this scene takes place for a performance on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image in which a newly-reelected Thatcher government sang it to an effect more chilling than comic.
Refuseniks
Those who refused to pay the community charge/poll tax as a protest.
pull the fanny
‘pick up chicks’; ‘fanny’ is a UK vulgarism for female genitalia — so US expressions like ‘fanny-pack’ tend to excite hilarity in Britons. Then again, Americans look askance at Brits asking ‘can I bum a fag?’
gyp
n. Trouble. As a verb, ‘to gyp’ means cheat or swindle. Derived from ‘gypsy’, it is probably outmoded because of the implied ethnic slur.
Top of the Form
Radio and TV children’s quiz show.
http://www.staugs.org/television.htm
Make-your-mind-up-time
Catch-phrase of Hughie Green, host of the long-running ITV ‘talent’ show Opportunity Knocks.
http://www.ukgameshows.com/atoz/programmes/o/opportunity_knocks/index.htm
Goose Green
Site of battle during the retaking of the Falklands in 1982.
Black Monday
October 19.
http://mt.sopris.net/mpc/finance/blackmonday.html
Bob Monkhouse
Lottery presenter. Long-time UK-TV (and film and radio) personality, recently a surprise cult figure as the voice of Mr Hell on Aaaagh! It’s the Mr Hell Show.
http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/PersonDetail/personid-53677
How to Steal a Diamond in Four Un-Easy Lessons
UK release title of the 1972 caper movie The Hot Rock.
the char
Charlady, domestic servant.
Captain Mainwaring
Pompous, inept bank manager/home guard officer played by Arthur Lowe in the sit-com Dad’s Army.
Girl Guides
UK equivalent of Girl Scouts.
http://www.girlguiding.org.uk/
CID
Criminal Investigation Division; the rough equivalent of an American police force’s Major Crimes Unit
Deselection
The process whereby a politician holding public office is replaced by his or her party as a candidate at the next election; it’s a particularly humiliating way of lame-ducking someone who refuses to resign gracefully.
The Comet on Sunday
Derek Leech’s Sunday tabloid.
benefits
Welfare
England lost the Cup Final in 1966
See: ‘The Germans Won’ in my collection Unforgivable Stories
the Star Trek episode in which Spock has a beard
‘Mirror, Mirror’
Jeffrey Hunter
Captain Pike in ‘The Cage’ aka ‘The Menagerie’
Sausage toad
Sausages or sausage-meat cooked in Yorkshire pudding, also known as toad-in-the-hole. No amphibians are actually involved. Here are some recipes:
http://www.west175productions.com/Great_Food/recipes/recipe033.htm
http://brunch.allrecipes.com/AZ/SvrySsgTdinthHl.asp
Arthur Mullard
Gravel-voiced cockney character actor, most often seen as comic criminal dimwits (Two-Way Stretch, The Wrong Arm of the Law, Vault of Horror).
http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0611972/
going spare
Losing one’s nerve, temper or sanity.
Moose Malloy
The hulking thug in Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely — played by Ward Bond, Mike Mazurki and Jack O’Hallorann in various fi
lms.
Arthur and Guinevere
Randomising machines used by the National Lottery, which was then operated by a company called Camelot.
Match of the Day
A long-time BBC-TV Saturday evening fixture, this show selects several of the many football matches played on Saturday afternoon and screens them with the duller stretches edited out. Struggling these days thanks to live, unedited football matches on many cable sports channels owned by Rupert Murdoch.
"http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/match_of_the_day/default.stm
Mr UN Owen
This is a reference to the Agatha Christie novel published originally as Ten Little Niggers, but now usually known as And Then There Were None or Ten Little Indians. ‘U.N. Owen’ is the mysterious, pseudonymous host who invites the ten characters to a house party only to accuse them of murder via gramophone record and then kill them off one by one.
toss off
masturbate
crazy-paving
A jigsaw-like arrangement of irregular slates or tiles, used for patios or garden paths.
cagoule
A brightly-coloured, rainproof hooded garment popular among walkers, campers and other wilderness types.
Doc Martens
Boots favoured by fashionable hardnuts.
http://www.drmartens.com/_flash/default.asp?country=USA
the bogs
The toilets
A game of potatoes
You know the drill: one-potato, two-potato, three-potato, four ...
kit
Clothing or gear.
Bounty bars
Coconut-filled chocolate.
http://goodwoods.safeshopper.com/14/971.htm
sweets
candies
Council tenant
In the 1980s, the Thatcher government allowed tenants of council-owned houses to buy the properties; one effect of this was a drastic reduction in the availability of affordable public housing.
South-West Gas
In The Quorum, Candy is told as a teenager at a seance that she will work for the gas company.
Q
Glossy music monthly.
http://www.q4music.com/
Hallam Moseley
Star bowler of the Somerset county cricket side in the late 1970s.
http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Players/3/3727/3727.html
utility belt
Batman’s gadget-filled apparel; sometimes, it seemed as if he was likely to keep an autogiro in there.
queen’s evidence
the UK equivalent of state’s evidence
rugby scrum
Six blokes interlocked and holding each other’s buttocks struggling to control an ovoid ball with their feet.
You nut Sean
i.e.: You head-butt Sean
goolies
testicles
pud
pudding
the nick
jail
Real Records
A Derek Leech Company
dabs
fingerprints
The TV Times
ITV’s listings magazine, far more tabloidy than the BBC’s Radio Times.
Blu-tack
Putty-like adhesive material used in place of thumbtacks.
Holloway
Women’s prison
The Financial Times
Daily national newspaper, printed on distinctive pink paper, with an especial bias towards business and money matters.
the Admiral Benbow Inn
Site of the marvellous opening chapter of Treasure Island.
stodge
Fatty foods.
bovver boots
Boots designed as weapons rather than footwear.
At Her Majesty’s Pleasure
A prison term. The expression comes from the formal phrasing used by judges in sentencing convicts to serve a sentence ‘at Her Majesty’s Pleasure’.
Anton Diffring
German character actor, typecast as Nazis. He was in The Colditz Story and Where Eagles Dare.
http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0226446/
Muttley
Dick Dastardly’s sidekick in the TV cartoon show Wacky Races; his distinctive grumbling sounds like ‘rassin frassin grassin Dick Dastardly!’
http://www.hotink.com/wacky/dastrdly/
Sally Rhodes
See: ‘Mother Hen’, ‘Twitch Technicolor’, ‘Gargantuabots vs the Nice Mice’, ‘Organ Donors’, The Quorum and Seven Stars.
Myra Hindley
With Ian Brady, one of the so-called Moors Murderers, among the most despicable of British serial killers. They abducted, tortured and killed children.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial4/moors/moorsindex.htm
Lord Lucan
A peer who disappeared in 1974, suspected of the murder of his children’s nanny. It is assumed that he either disposed of himself invisibly or became an international fugitive. Legally, he is presumed deceased. See: http://www.lordlucan.com/
Bobby Moore
Captain of the world-cup-winning England football team of 1966.
http://www.ironworks.com/westham/moore.htm
the Man From B.U.N.G.L.E.
character in the British comic Smash.
ropey
Cheap and unreliable.
porridge
UK slang: time in prison
transhumance
This brand of Swiss crop rotation is seared into my generation’s brain by geography O levels. We also know what barkhans are and how a shaduf works.
Iain Scobie
See: ‘Where the Bodies Are Buried 3: Black and White and Red All Over’
GBH
UK police slang — grievous bodily harm
Broadmoor
An Institution for the Criminally Insane.
Dennis Nilsen and Peter Sutcliffe
UK serial killers; Sutcliffe was the Yorkshire Ripper. Apparently, they really do argue about what television channels to watch.
good books
Killing for Company, Brian Masters, about Nilsen; ... Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son, Gordon Burn, about Sutcliffe.
Michael Eaton
Screenwriter of the underrated Fellow Traveler and occasional contributor to Sight & Sound magazine. As a writer for television, he does specialise in true crime drama: The Tragedy of Flight 103 (the Lockerbie crash), The Flowers of the Forest (a child abuse panic) and Shipman (the serial killer doctor). We can assume that Keith’s feelings about Mountaintop are coloured by personal involvement, since Eaton’s work is remarkably tactful and insightful in a genre rarely distinguished by those qualities.
orienteering
The practice of being dropped in a wilderness and making your way out using only a map; once a common school afternoon-off exercise, a holdover from the days when British boys’ schools worked some sort of military training (ROTC — Royal Officer Training Corps) into the syllabus.
treated privately, of course
ie: Outside the National Health Service. Though NHS care is provided for all British citizens, those who can afford it can opt out and pay for supposedly higher-quality medical treatment.
an e-bomb
In this alternate timeline, such things are possible; in our real world, 2001 has come and gone without it. In my defence, Neal Stephenson, who is a lot more clued-up about computers than I am, posited exactly the same thing in his Cryptonomicon, which is set before 2001.
yobbish
Thuggish. A yob (backslang ‘boy’) is a young, violent man of limited intelligence. Ooh look, a note on a note.
Table of Contents
Kim Newman
Dedication
Getting Around in Life’s Lottery
Life’s Lottery
