Cliff Richard Looks at Birmingham

Not to be outdone by Telly Savalas, Cliff Richard gets in on the Birmingham love, six years prior to everyone’s preferred shiny scalped, lollipop-loving tough guy.

As in the case of Telly Savalas Looks at Birmingham, this clip from 1973′s Take Me High serves as a mini-travelogue of the city following the 1960′s slum clearances and redevelopment scheme. Albeit one featuring Cliff-(insert your own favourite expletive)-Richard. Ar kid wouldn’t approve.

Horror of horrors, he even sings, so you may wish to mute your screen.

Give me the “liquid tones” of Telly Savalas’s ‘Who Loves Ya, Baby’ anyday.

Edit Bugger! It appears Cliff doesn’t wish to appear on Have Pen, Won’t Travel. Ah well, if the prospect of his asinine cat-strangling hasn’t put you off, you’ll just have to click on over to Youtube to watch.

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So long Birmingham… Here’s lookin’ atcha!

There’s every chance that during his 72 years on the planet, Telly Savalas never once set foot in Birmingham. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop him recording the voiceover for this wonderful little Quota Quickie, Telly Savalas Looks at Birmingham, which ran in cinemas as a supplement to the main feature in the early 80s.

Filmed in 1979, the city shown has changed a great deal in the intervening years and would probably be unrecognisable nowadays to those who’d not known it through the 70s, 80s and for the greater part of the 90s. Despite the cheesiness of Kojak’s dialogue, it’s still a rare treat to see the old town as it once was. An artefact of a time long passed.

So long Birmingham, indeed.

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George Lucas’s Halloween Horror

It’s ironic that ITV should be showing Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones on Halloween, for I’m sure George Lucas had something horrific in mind when he wrote the screenplay for this and the other two prequels.

That there is now a generation of kids who, through the shortsightedness of ITV, will be seeing the Star Wars films for the first time in the incorrect order, is something close to a bloody great shame.

The fanboy references peppered throughout the prequels – such as Jabba’s appearance in The Phantom Menace, Jango Fett’s armour and the brief glimpse of the Death Star plans in Attack of the Clones, and the final ten minutes of Revenge of the Sith – will mean very little to anybody unfamiliar with the original trilogy.

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