EDUCATION IS ALL VERY NICE BUT PHYSICAL PAIN AND TORTURE GET YOU THE JOBS ASK JACKIE CHAN.

JACKIE CHAN AND BRUCE LEE IN THAT CERTAIN FILM!

As we all know we have to go to school to learn and be educated;Read the text books;Listen to the teachers;Do our sums and learn our tables;Read latin;Read the great literary classics which wouldnt be read by anybody if they werent compulsory in school. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE? The latin made more sense to me than he did. Then after all this brainboosting educational bootcamp is over we are qualified to go and work...Down the mines; Shovelling shit; Or spending the next 50 years at a desk doing something for somebody else whose doing a fraction of the amount that you are doing for an infinitly bigger chunk of money. Ah you cant beat a good education, lad!

I was reading about JACKIE CHAN the other week and how he got to the lofty heights he's attained. Everybody likes Jackie Chan , they may not be a fan of Chinese martial arts films, but you have to admit he's a likeable fellah and the choreography of the fighting and action is often bordering on genius. He's a bit like the ROY CASTLE of martial arts, whereas Roy Castle played a musical tune on ,well, anything, Jackie Chan uses Anything as a martial arts weapon. He was brought up in a torture camp called a Chinese opera stage school. They did gymnastics ,dance and WUSHU ,which is an acrobatic form of the martial arts as seen in competitions, displays and film. Totally different from the traditional martial art it came from originally. The kids ate a bowl of rice every 3 days got 20 minutes sleep in between excercising ,and getting a good hiding if things weren't up to scratch. Then after years of being forced into strange contorted body positions he left to join the HONG KONG film industry and spent his days making about 5 films a week and each one consisted of him having the shit kicked out of him in these awful original kung fu films. As well as being swung around studios on wire supports as for some reason in these earlier films the KUNG FUmasters could all fly and when they hit a baddy ,the baddy suddenly learnt to fly.

But our Jackie sprung to fame in a real 'Blink and you'll miss it' moment which ,ironically seems to be one of the most famous still shots from a certain film. JACKIE CHAN hit the big time by getting his arm rammed up his back and his hair pulled vicously back snapping his head painfully back. This was done by a certain BRUCE LEE in a little film entitled ENTER THE DRAGON. Jackie never looked back....Not because of any neck injury as a result of the nasty assault on his neck vertabrae, but he put his own twist on the martial arts films pouring out of the HONG KONG studios. Whereas all of a sudden everyone was copying BRUCE LEE esspecially as he 'popped his clogs 'and died soon after ENTER THE DRAGON was finished, so there was plenty of room for the 'new boys', Jackie went far away from Lee and went towards, of all people ...BUSTER KEATON and CHARLIE CHAPLIN ....The silent comedians knew all about physical comedy which in the very serious world of chinese 'KUNG FU' FILMS ,Jackie decided thats what was needed.Fame ,fortune ,international stardom, etc, etc was dumped on his small but perfectly formed frame and thats probably why he's always smiling...... I've been belted ,kicked ,battered had the shit kicked out of me and bear bumps, scars ,aches and pains, etc, etc ,but they never made me rich and famous .I did learn a lot of lessons, mainly when to duck and when to leg it.

"DAD, DAD, THEY'VE LANDED ON THE MOON N' ITS UPSIDE DOWN !!"

Long ago in the days of the old steam television, as the wonderful SPIKE MILLIGAN(spine Milligna, the well known typing error.) might've said. The steam telly was a huge wooden box full of valves which took about an hour n' a half to heat up and display a crappy old black and white picture on a tiny screen. The buttons were huge clunky things that you had to twist with both hands to turn channels, never mind turn on or off. It was just as well that there was only 2 channels in those long gone days as the levels of hernias would've been a lot higher. Do you remember horizontal and vertical hold; 405 and 625 lines, etc. Ahh in the days of digital telly, this is how proper tellys worked. But it was on one of these steaming box of valves that a nine year old(just, 5 days past the birthday)space mad, schoolboy watched the most mindblowing thing he'd ever seen. The MOON LANDING.

I would wait with mounting excitment every Tuesday night for the paperboy to deliver the TV21 comic, with all the GERRY ANDERSON-based comic strips exquisitly drawn on quality glossy paper ,a wonderful comic. Telly had PATRICK TROUGHTON as DR WHO; LOST IN SPACE; VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA; TIME TUNNEL; So, rockets, space and science fiction was 'it'. So, when the APOLLO boys started their 'stuff' it was great. I always remember being most excited when APOLLO 8 went off around the moon for the first time. I was stunned, and still am by the photos of the moon and the approaching darkness of mountains and crater walls as they orbited the darkside and then earthrise. A few months later PATRICK MOORE and JAMES BURKE are talking us, in great lengths through this grainy lousy telly(live from the the moon') ,mostly black, with a white chunk,at the top of the screen. The picture was,it turns out, upside down."Dad,dad,they've landed and the moons upside down"... I pondered on the possibility that they had landed at the south pole,or the moons bottom. Then the picture rightened up and cleared up a little and NEIL ARMSTRONG stepped on the moon. And a 9- year old schoolboy busting a gut with excitment, in his grey school sweater and black school shorts on a bright sunny morning was yelling for his dad ."Dad,Dad, he's walking on the moon!!!"When i got to school we we're moon skipping around the playground for weeks.

Even today the conspiracy theorists are still blathering on about shadows; Reflections in visors; Flags waving; Multiple shadows; Lack of blast craters and on and on. As i've said before the yanks cant keep a secret among a few people for long ,never mind thousands for 40- odd years. It must be frustrating for the astronauts. I had to laugh when i read about BUZZ ALDRIN giving somebody who claimed he'd never gone to the moon, a 'smack in the gob.'Good on yer, Buzz. I've been watching programmes over the last week or so and some of the re-digitallised lunar footage is ,to me ,truly mindblowing, after all this time .The 9-year old schoolboy is now a 49 year old schoolboy. And to complete this nostalgia fest. I recently mentioned DANNI and DISHI(over on the links)These are the people who supply the comics on disc. They sent me a disc with all the old COUNTDOWN comics on.Countdown was a sort of extension of the TV21. But they used to feature a lot about the APOLLO programme. I remember the first issue with , GERRY ANDERSON'S ,U.F.O.Thunderbirds, Fireball, Stingray;JON PERTWEE'S Dr Who, and stuff ,but with a huge free gift. A poster that you had to add stickers over the weeks to, to show the whole Apollo moon shots n' stuff. I, of course filled it up and it held pride of place on my bedroom wall ,right up there with the BRUCE LEE posters.