Every month we award a bottle of Glengoyne 10 year old single malt – the finest whisky available to humanity – to a commenter who tickles our fancy…
Jon Hotten’s brilliant post on the sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles, quiet English despair and the game of cricket seemed to strike a chord with many Dabblers. Martin, the main character, as played by the brilliant Richard Briers, is
…a pedantic, obsessive-compulsive valve salesman with a photocopier in his garage and moral code as inflexible as a periodic table. In 2012, he would reside somewhere on the autism spectrum; back then he was just funny, and not unrepresentative. Most people knew someone like him.
I suppose I might take issue with the “knew” in that last sentence. Surely, the interwebs have given a new outlet for the Martins of this world…
Anyhow, we thought Jane’s was the pick of a crop of great comments. She thought “[t]his show represents one of the many peaks of Richard Briers’ career. The only reason I didn’t see more of it was because I found its pathos unbearable…” She was also able to shed some light on Brier’s striking ability to evoke this sort of character:
His family lived opposite the flat my parents now occupy in Raynes Park and he went to Rokeby School. I think growing up in this environment helped him portray the internal life of those who live in the English London suburbs.
Raynes Park has another famous actor son, one who might be thought of as the anti-Briers: Oliver Reed. I feel the Briers/Reed dualism sums up something of the mystery of the English suburbs.
Anyhow, I hope Jane manages to savour her bottle of delicious Glengoyne more than Olly who one evening in the invincible company of some 36 rugby playing friends, managed to polish off 32 bottles of Scotch, along with 60 gallons of beer, 17 bottles of gin, four crates of wine and a bottle of Babycham. As Martin would no doubt advise, ‘enjoy sensibly’.
