FOR YOUR EYES ONLY...TOP SECRET....IT'S NEARLY CHRISTMAS !

Last year it felt like christmas started about June. This year i feel like it has been quite quiet and we've been spared the x-Mas torture of non stop adverts of people in sweaters and bobble hats going up snowy roads to collect parcels wrapped in bows and wrapping paper on shelves ,i wonder how they know what they're buying as they're already wrapped up to go under the tree by the roaring log fire. At christmas ,everyone has a roaring log fire....The rest of the year they have boring old central heating? Getting the shopping in during our weekly jaunt to Asda i let a loud groan out as that god-awful CLIFF RICHARD  song about "logs on the fire and happy children ,etc ,etc" was played throughout the store i thought, "'ere we go! It's started." But  i thought 3 weeks before the days not too much overkill

There is a reason that i think i may have missed a lot of the build up. My darling daughter is mostly ensconsed in the back room watching NETFLIX, on the computer ,skyping and texting. The Lovely Lynne is working away or home late ,but it means i plough through SKY+ , ON DEMAND and the SKY MOVIES,etc....This means that i manage to almost totally avoid advertisments. These telly channels and services mean you find yourself ploughing through continuous episodes of various series. Recently i'm going through a spy /action phase. I've ploughed through the STRIKE BACK series ,tons of blood and snot; The lovely arse kicking assassin  MAGGIE Q as goverment assassin NIKITA; PERSON OF INTEREST about an ex C.I.A. assassin who's trying to help people. But i got the DVD collection of the classic CALLAN; I waded through the BOND films to brace myself for the long awaited SPECTRE, which i've seen a mere 3 times and i managed to catch THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. which i also enjoyed. So while the rest of the world has been warming in the pre -festive glow i've been living an imaginary life of  extreme violence from mean steely- eyed charming ex-special services spies. Santa  better watch out when i comes a calling as i go to bed with my WALTHER PPK, Bonds weapon or Callans NOGUCHI 38 MAGNUM under my pillow.

M.I.5.M.I.6.C.I.A.K.G.B.S.M.E.R.S.H.S.P.E.C.T.R.E.T.H.R.U.S.H....THE OTHER SIDE..AND THE TAXMAN?..NOT EASY BEING A SPY!

Spies are back ......Not that they ever really went away ,but the new JAMES BONDfilm  'S.P.E.C.T.R.E.' is on it's way in and sadly ,as i've not seen it and wanted to the new 'MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.'film is on it's way out! 

It's been strange as for many years all the film and telly spies have fought 'the other side in a quest for micro films and dots and killing enemy assassins , but spies were taking a back seat in their Austin Martins as the assassin took over the role of screen hero. Nowadays trained kickboxing killers are filling our screens. steely cold hard eyes and gutteral speech patterns are replacing the smooth ,suave ,sexy ,sharp quipping secret agents like Bond and Napoleon Solo.

No idea where the first spy came from. Maybe once upon a long time ago a lincon green clad English lad  by the name of Jameson of the Bond was dressed in animal furs given a horned metal helmet and paddled across the North Sea to infiltrate the Viking hoardes massing to invade our green n' pleasant land. I dont know how our first spy got his 'intel' scrolls back to 'YE OLDE M.I.6. but he didn't do too good as the viking hoardes hoarded over and gave us a good kicking and did stuff to the maidens fair ,of the day ,thats how some of us have viking blood coursing through us!

Through the years the spy has evolved from the sneaky slimey untrustworthy worm of the middle ages as seen in Robin Hood films and stuff like that as spies were always spying on the 'good guys' for the nasty king ,etc. As the centuries clicked by and the world became a bigger place and we discovered lots of new exciting enemies like the French and the Spanish spying became a lot more complicated and for the greater good of the country as the French and the Spanish as we all know can't be trusted and don't like the British 'cos we're much better than they are. So they decided to  rule all of Europe then invade us . I'm sure a spy discovered the plans for the SPANISH ARMADA and reported home .Things were a lot slower in them days so our spy got the Armada 'intel' back home to ye olde MI6 in a mere 6 months which was fine as the Armada probably took about 5 years to get prepared then 6 months to sail, so we just about managed to negate their head start and met them about half a mile out to sea and gave them a good kicking.

Spies came into their own and job centres all over 17 n' 18th century Britain were dragging people off their ye olde job seekers allowance to spy on the French and Spanish when a certain French dwarf decided to rule the world. Napoleon ,apparently he was fond of spies and lots of them galloped around Portugal ,etc gathering 'intel' for 'Boney!'. Watch any episode of Sharpe and you'll see what i mean.

Spies come in all shapes and sizes as we all know real spies are fit and incredibly handsome and irresistable to women . They travel the world on incredible expense accounts ,gambling ,eating and drinking the finest cuisine at the finest restaurants, hotels and casino's and oddly enough for SECRET AGENTS are known and recognised throughout the world?

It has been said that spies are trained to blend in and look normal and  not attract attention, be grey and go about their devious doings unoticed, but that wouldn't be much good for a film or telly series.

As we all know the enemy have what we call 'SLEEPERS' and what they do is settle down make a good old boring domestic life ,get a job ,maybe even raise a family waiting for a call from the 'motherland' through their 'Handler' who may drop them a coded letter or a phrase , a trigger for them to do what they were trained to do before they became domesticated ol farts like the rest of us. They may work in an office or the local chippy, but they have to inflict damage or kidnap ,or steal important documentation (maybe the new menu in the chippy!) for their masters in the Kremlin ,or wherever!

Through the years theres been lots of enemies. Traditionally , there was the Nazis' then the Russians and everybody in behind the IRON CURTAIN this was spying's glory years...Tons of countries whose names finished with SLAVIA, SLAV, BOSTOFF, etc ,etcOFF i honestly dont know which were real and which were made up, but every 'MAN FRO UNCLE and most tell y spies where in these places fighting the K.G.B. or  S.M.E.R.S.H. And there was East and West Berlin and the 'WALL'...That was a spies dream. But the spies who dealt with the wall were the more gritty ones HARRY PALMER and my favourite CALLAN. The film 'THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD'  with Richard Burton as an agent drinking himself senseless as he pretended to be braking down and pretending to defect....I could do that ,i think i've been doing it for years, qualified to be a spy ,thats me ,i reckon!

There was also the CHINESE and Asian ,all points East baddies. The spies didn't actually go there according to fiction ,but the Chinese were everywhere plotting to destroy the western devils with nuclear missiles in secret bases and nerve gasses ,whereas we Brits wouldn't do that sort of thing we just discovered their devious plans for world domination and stole the micro films. Fictional baddies were like Bond vs S.P.E.C.T.R.E. or U.N.C.L.E. vs T.H.R.U.S.H. ; Then many of the enemy agents were just 'THE OTHER SIDE!' Now we've dealt with all other points east ,it's the middle east popping up on the BADDIE NETWORK!

Our heroes would in the early days doff a mackintosh over coat ,hat and glasses and infiltrate 'The other side' for secret documents, then codes and their cyphers ; Then micro film came in with those clicky little cameras every spy had; Micro dots, i never quite figured out how you discovered which full stop in 'war and piece 'held the details of the Russian missile system. Now we've computer hard drives and those computer 'dongle' thingee's that drain all the info from computer hard drives. 

In old films and books the info was simple , but important, so the micro film was important for the freedom and safety of the west. Now they explain the wheeling and double dealings that take place with the politics and spy networks, just watch the average episode of 'SPOOKS' ...I love it....Can't understand it ,but still love it!

Nowadays spying looks decidedly nasty and dangerous ,as a kid i'd watch and dream of being a spy. In them days when they were captured ,which was every week , they were interrogated, not tortured ,interrogated. Our hero may get a blooded lip ,work up a sweat and you knew it was tough, esspecially when his tie was loosened and top button was undone. Now it's a good beating in the cellars of 'The other side ' Water boarding ,electric shocks, etc .....As we all know know our greatest enemy is our biggest ally!....The good ol' U.S.of A....The C.I.A. who seem to have their sticky fingers into everyones business and seem utterly ruthless.....The CIA make the soviets look like sweethearts. Assassinations ,drug running ,arms dealing with ...everybody on all sides...According to whatever you watch or read ,everybody is after their own agenda ,did they kill JFK?....Etc ,etc!  Do spies get the chance to retire or do they get 'removed', permanently?

One thing i never understood is how much and how does a spy get paid?....If an agent is undercover ,say in Russia , why don't the Russians just check his bank details.....£20,000/month from the Ministry of Defence....Bang!...Your dead, Tovarich!

The reason i wanted to be a spy was so i could wear a shoulder holster....Nowadays its not as cool as the automatic pistol is shoved down the back of the agents trousers, not half as good as the ol' shoulder holster.....At one point...Ok , i still do , i fancied adapting the shoulder holster for holding pens at a caricature gig!

I said before real spies come in all shapes and sizes ,but it's not just that ,you don't even have to be alive, possibly the best ,most successful agent was a dead body. An agent doesn't just steal 'intel' ,but can feed false 'intel' to the 'other side'! In 'OPERATION MINCEMEAT'...A body was washed up on the Spanish coast durring WW11 around 1942

with notes detailing the British intention to invade Greece and Sardinia which the Germans swallowed 'hook, line and sinker' ,whereas us crafty Brits were going to invade Scicily instead and up through Italy!....And a certain Mr IAN FLEMING was involved with that scheme!....Wonder what happened to him?

BRITISH WILDLIFE AND ODDIE ,BILL ODDIE LICENSED TO KILL AND TWITCH !!!!!!

Always being a lover of spy films ,books and telly series there are certain requirments of a top class agent, first off ,a good spy'ey name ;NAPOLEON SOLO; ILYA KURYAKEN; CALLAN; HARRY PALMER; MAXWELL SMART; MATT HELM.....ANTHONY BLUNT(" The names Blunt , Anthony Blunt ,dear boy hmmmmm!)?????....And , of course the new kid on the block: JASON BOURNE!

Without doubt though, the greatest ,smoothest ,coolest ,smartest ,suavist ,sexiest ,most ruthless, most dangerous  killing machine and trained assassin ,licensed by her Majesty's goverment 'to kill' ,is ,of course JAMES BOND!

When IAN FLEMING decided to create the most famous secret agent (known all round the world?)....He speciffically broke the cardinal rule about spies having great names and gave the most famous glamourous agent ever the most boring hum drum name he could find. Ian Fleming gave his creation the name of an ORNITHOLOGIST!...A BIRDWATCHER!! ...A TWITCHER!!....We must be thankful as JAMES BOND  could've been the smoothest ,coolest ,most deadly, trained killing machine .....ODDIE ,BILL ODDIE, Licensed to kill !!!!!!

Although Bill Oddie isn't travelling the planet fighting SMERSH or SPECTRE and all those other nasty evil sorts( I'll gloss over 'the women!).....He wanders through the violence and unrestrained danger of the BRITISH COUNTRYSIDE as part of those SPRING/SUMMER/AUTUMN/WINTER WATCH programmes which fill our telly screens for much of the year with MICHEALE STRACHEN looking windswept and ,er ,interesting! surrounded by equally enthusiastic pain in the arse presenters in knitted hats and sweaters ,kagools and those sleeveless khaki jackets full of pockets always bulging ,but nothing ever gets taken out. 

They film birds and hairy things that live in holes and swim in streams and eat each other . Its always nice to see some rare THROSTLE THROATED BLUE TIT WARBLER laying its eggs ,sitting on them being filmed for weeks and the same camera filming the otter thats snuck into the nest to savage the freshly hatched chicks the presenters have been "Ooohhing n' Aaahhing !"over for bloody weeks as they watch them hatch and ,beaks open wide feed from their mam n' dad, then "Aaahh!" again as the mam n' dad come back wondering where their 8 or was it 9 'effin' kids 've buggered off to. Wherever they go the countryside is bursting with all kinds of weird n' wonderful and plain nasty forms of furry ,scaley and feathered breeds of wildlife . The endless quest for survival is basically what every creature is working 24/7 to achieve, building nests and warrens ,holes and tunnels and even damming streams ,either for water or they've cracked hydro -electric power.

I walk through local woods and hardly ever see a damn thing. Having said that the place is crawling with squirrels .These are American grey squirrels as they've got rid of the British brown squirrel ,probably enticed away by offers of free silk stockings ,cigarettes and candy bars , see, things never change not even in the natural world. 

I did have the shit scared out of me a few months ago ,there was a hugh rustling in some bushes and a fluttering of bloody hugh wings as this massive bird took off ,apparently it was a Heron. With its long neck and long drooping wings i thought it looked like one of those old KLINGON BATTLE CRUISERS from the original STAR TREK, they used to be able to go invisible and drive CAPTAIN KIRK to "Fire Photon Torpedoes ...Maximum spread!"

I did stumble across some wild life ,impressing the females ,with loud swearing ,tatooes and gaily patterned and coloured track suits as they smoked ciggies to impress the others in the herd.  There was also some youngsters in a bit of a frenzy as one had climbed a tree and couldn't get down. "Hey ,Mister can you get me mate down ,pleez?".....So being the upright ,friend to all ,responsibility my middle name ,etc ,i started to climb the tree murmering words of encouragment to the little lad up the tree. The little bastard started screaming and shouting to ,"KEEP THE OLD MAN(?) AWAY FROM ME!".....The little get ,moved up the tree ,so i grabbed him and carried him ,screaming and shouting down to the ground, resisting the urge to kick his scabby arse back up there again ,i turned and with utmost dignity i could muster left the wild untamed woods and the venom of mother nature and  thought i'd watch wildlife on the telly.

EDWARD WOODWARD AS CALLAN WAS THE BADDEST GOODIE.....AND ANTHONY VALENTINE AS TOBY MERES WAS THE GOODEST BADDIE!....

The other day i was watching some of the mass of telly stuff that just keeps on collecting within the SKY + thingey box. One of them was an Arena documentary about the one and definitly only ROLF HARRIS. Our fave Aussie was "KERSPLONGING ;SPLURGIN' N 'CAN YE TELL WOT IT IZ YIT'IN?" away happily painting portraits of various tasty ladies of stage ,screen n' catwalk. But as he slapped the paint on and eventually they evolved into damn good paintings. The bit that struck me was he said that he never drew his pictures out before 'kerspluging'the paint on. I thought i'll have to give that a whirl.

The next programme i sat and watched alone, as the LOVELY LYNNE tends to have no interest in anything i tend to want to watch. As i dont record LOCATION,LOCATION,LOCATION, or, 'COME DINE WITH ME.'I tend to have the telly to myself as Lynne is absorbed in the I-PAD i bought her for x mas. But on this particular occassion as i sat alone watching COLDITZ. A great classic from THE BEEB. With a whole host of stars locked up in the castle. Amongst these 'chaps' were ILLYA KURYAKIN from ,THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E...DAVID MCCALLUM. ROBERT WAGNER, from IT TAKES A THEIF...And damn near every film ever made. But one fellah in it who stood out is the wonderful ANTHONY VALENTINE.The slim steely eyed young man isnt quite that these days. He's older, balder and carrying a bit of weight these days, but you may remember him from doing a stint in'CORONATION STREET' over the last year. But in the old days ,he was one of tellys favourite psycopaths and baddies. He played the commited Nazi officer in Colditz, but this was after his crowning achievment as possibly the nastiest man alive.

One of telly's absolute classics was CALLAN. EDWARD WOODWARD was ,as they say ,'a down at heel' working class goverment assassin with a consience but still as hard as nails and mean as hell.....Great as the 'baddest goodie' on the box. But his 'sidekick and partner was the upper class, possibly not as hard ,but definitly meaner, TOBY MERES, a slimey smart ,slim ,steely eyed ,evil smiling ,old school tie and trendy suited psychotic killer who hated Callan as much as callan hated him, but they were a team and had a fascinating on screen relationship. Meres was played by ANTHONY VALENTINE.The goodest baddie on the box. The I think Toby Meres could've got his own series ,or Valentine could've made a great baddie in a BOND film.

I thought i'd have a go at painting a caricature of our favourite anti-hero, but had a murderous job finding a decent nasty picture of Anthony Valentine. Much to my chagrin ,lots of pictures of him laughing and smiling and looking like the goodfellah he sadly is. But i had a go. The result looks a little funny ,as acrylic paint seems to darken considerably when copied onto the screen. But as a treat to my followers and fans ,just to show how wonderful i am, i've even thrown the Edward Woodward picture i did the other month when he 'popped his clogs', gawd bless 'im. I might get away with the dubious likeness , as its only old farts like meself who remember 'nerdy' stuff like this.

YOU CAN EQUAL THE EQUALISER, BUT YOU CAN'T EQUAL CALLAN...EDWARD WOODWARD (R.I.P.)

The hardest toughest meanest fellah on the telly has gone and popped his clogs, the wonderful EDWARD WOODWARD has died. People think of tough mean spies like James Bond and Jason Bourne, etc, but the meanest and most ruthless was a fellah in an old suit ,a battered macintosh and a wooly scarf tied in the old fashioned way your dad and grandad would've tied it ,not the trendy way of tying scarves beloved of every 'celeb' these days. He had one friend ,a pathetic smelly little man called 'Lonely', who ,when he wasn't beating him up, used to remark on his lack of personal hygene as he gulped his whiskey, as he liked a drink a little too much .None of your 'Vodka martini, shaken not stirred ', for this fellah, but a pint and a large whisky. This was CALLAN....An assassin for a deniable section of the secret service. Everybody remembers the swinging lightbulb which swung over the opening morose music, then the single shot smashing a mirror with Callans reflection. Anthony valentine ,wonderfully vicious and nasty as Toby Meres, Callans partner, even though they couldnt stand the sight of each other. And the late Russell Hunter as Lonely.

He did a film ,THE WICKER MAN, which was a B-film until it attained cult status to become a classic. I thought Woodward was great,but the all singing dancing CHRISTOPHER LEE took more than i was able to give, to get my head around that.I nearly killed a nephew when he said it was a rip off, of the NICHOLAS CAGE film. Another cracker was a court room drama in the Boer war, BREAKER MORANT, based on a true story.

Callans original story 'A MAGNUM FOR SCHNEIDER' was made as a film. And a few years later Callan was back in a one off telly film, THE WET JOB.....No, He hadn't gone into the porn biz, it wasn't mucky, just had to come out of retirement and murder someone, as you do.

Then he became THE EQUALISER, which gave him a chance to drive around the streets of New York in a nice Jag and blow the baddies to bits.It brought fame fortune and a couple of heartattacks. From cleaning the streets of New York he came back to England to clean the streets of an English town in a corporation bin wagon inCOMMON AS MUCK. But he was in tons of stuff ,always had that mean steely eyed Callan look, even took over CI5 when they did the NEW PROFFESSIONALS. But that in a shell casing is one of my favourites, MR EDWARD WOODWARD(Even if his name did sound like a fart in a bath.)