It is the last minute of Are You Being Served. Captain peacock appears to have ended up in a ridiculous situation, and Mrs Slocomb has mentioned her pussy. John Inman makes a double entendre and the studio audience go wild. Good luck to them all. And[…]

“While boys often expressed nostalgia and affection toward Action Man… renouncing Barbie appeared to be a rite of passage for many girls”[…]

The comic with the worst ending of all time is THE MEAN TEAM, which ran in 2000AD in the 1980s.

This story started as a future gladiator sports story and was alright if you squinted. The Mean Team were the fiercest fighters in a killer capture-the-f[…]

I’d never thought much about this before — but endings of adult lit aren’t as difft from endings of kids’ books as you’d perhaps expect. But perhaps this is unsurprising: one of the basic social facts about adult lit is […]

It was in the appropriately theatrical Harlequin the other night that our attention was drawn to the marvellously luvvie valedictory address given by Joseph Grimaldi the clown on the occasion of his retirement.
Here it is (copied from A History of P[…]

p13, casino royale (1953)
“… Bond undressed and took a cold shower. Then he lit his 70th cigarette of the day… ”

IF died in 1965 — guess what of :( :([…]

(“He was an awfully big marine.”)
Here’s a sketch riffing on this standard ending to many urban legends from Lionel Nimrod’s Inexplicable World [1.1 MB mp3].
The 2nd and final series of Lee and Herring’s early radio show[…]

Comment on (and identify) the following:
1: “The gun, [____] had finally convinced himself, was after all a dream.”
2: “Night is falling. On the first floor of the Hôtel Printania two windows have just lighted up. The yard of the[…]

identify (and comment on) the following final sentences(es):
i. “He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.”
ii. ” … now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth[…]

It’s what disgruntled employees scheme for and aspire to at their farewell drinks, but only get as far as “accidentally” forwarding a telling e-mail to “everyone”. But the KLF were at the top, and their jump from the par[…]