A limerick a week #167

The actress formely known as Demelza…

Anyone who is familiar with the tosh served up in this blog will be aware that I batted for Team Demelza in the maelstrom that was her relationship with Ross in TV’s most recent serialisation of Winston Graham’s Poldark novels (I even once managed to find a rhyme for ‘Demelza’ for one of the ALAWs).

Like a lot of TV productions it went on for one series too many, particularly as the final run was not based on Graham’s writings, but upon an interpolation of events that bookcased a gap in the timeline of Graham’s stories. Nevertheless, I was concerned to see that the newly-invented storyline obliged Demelza to frown just as much as she did in the earlier series. I wonder if Eleanor Tomlinson, who played Demelza, would rather her next TV role generated laughter lines rather than fixing for eternity Demelza’s  knitted brow!

Tomlinson as Demelza. A performance not to be frowned upon!

Which brings me to the BBC’s new adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. The series’ show-writer, Peter Harness, is on record as saying that it is “not massively faithful” to Wells’ book. “Not massively faithful” – a bit like Ross, then, in his relationship with Demelza – and, “yes”, its heroic, newly-minted and independent lead, Amy (for Tomlinson is she) frowns rather a lot too. Well, if your world was being invaded by extra-terrestrials, I suppose you would.

I’ve only seen the first episode of The War of The Worlds, and I’m struggling to come to terms with Demelza-as-Amy. Tomlinson’s striking looks and the shared independence and resilience of her character portrayals make one wonder just how the heck Demelza ended up in early-Edwardian Surrey after last being seen in late-18th Century Cornwall!

Tomlinson as Amy. Still frowning after all these years!

Please, I would ask, do not blame me
When I say that it’s all cockamamie
The red hair’s the same,
But not so her name
‘Cos Demelza has turned into Amy!

Postscript: Me and Demelza…

A limerick a week #3

Me ∩ Osborne = {Team Demelza}

A limerick a week #8

A limerick a week #88

A limerick a week #88

What a Carry On, Demelza…

Things have been rather quiet on the Poldark and Demelza front for a little while. Until now, that is. For what has become very much a two-lead show, Eleanor Tomlinson, who plays Demelza, has expressed the very reasonable wish to be paid the same as Aidan Turner who plays the scything six-pack that is Ross.

It was fair, she said, that Turner got paid more at the start because he was the big-name draw, but now, after three series, she felt she had earned parity. I agree and not just because I’m biased as a time-served member of Team Demelza (see posts passim)!

How about this headline for starters?

The production company argues otherwise as Ross has more screen-time than Demelza. That sounds like a post hoc, poorly made up excuse to me. They might as well have said Turner gets paid more because Ross has more extra-marital couplings than Demelza. ‘Tis utter b******s, and neither I nor the rest of Team Demelza watch the show because of Aidan Turner’s cumulative-time-on screen (or out-of-wedlock trysts)! ‘Fair pay for Eleanor’ I say (or, as the late-lamented Sid James would have said: “Demelza’s not getting enough!”).

Which reminds me, it’s limerick time again:

While Poldark is strutting his stuff
Like a diamond that’s cut from the rough,
It seems really unfair
To get more than his share
While Demelza gets barely enough!

Carry On Demelza (with apologies to Carry On Doctor)…

Ross: You may not realise it, but I was once a weak man.
Demelza: Oh, don’t worry. Once a week’s enough for any man!

 

 

A limerick a week #8

Revenge of the redhead …

So, the current series of Poldark has just finished and we now have to wait until 2017 to get our next ‘fix’.

Regular readers will know that as far as Poldark is concerned I am on ‘Team Demelza’ and not ‘Team Ross’, partly because my ‘Party Seven’ can’t compare to Ross’s ‘six pack’, but mostly because I’m a bloke and Demelza is class.

Meantime, Ross has shown himself to be more crass than class by cheating on Demelza with Elizabeth (boo, hiss) in the most villainous and odious of ways and, as any fule kno, it’s not good for your health to p**s off a redhead and, boy, was Demelza pi**ed! Even Nicola Adams (our double Olympic boxing gold medallist) would have been proud of the blow with which Demelza later felled Ross (I told you she was class!).

DANGER - angry redhead alert (ANSI Z535.5 Definition: "Indicates a hazardous situation that, if not avoided, will result in death or serious injury. The signal word "DANGER" is to be limited to the most extreme situations).
DANGER – angry redhead alert (ANSI Z535.5 Definition: “Indicates a hazardous situation that, if not avoided, will result in death or serious injury. The signal word “DANGER” is to be limited to the most extreme situations”).

All of which leads to this week’s limerick:

So Ross, what is wrong with your eye?
Is it a bruise that I seem to espy?
It must surely be hell, sir
To be thumped by Demelza
‘Cos, boy, does she not half let fly!

I don't know what effect she will have upon the enemy, but, by God, she frightens me.
… or as Ross may have paraphrased the Duke of Wellington: “I don’t know what effect she will have upon the enemy, but, by God sir, she frightens me“.

(It may not have escaped your attention that in the final episode of the series and even with two of his retainers to help him, ‘Evil George’ Warleggan couldn’t fell Ross the way that Demelza did!)

Postscript: The ‘Party Seven’ was a can of Watneys beer that held seven pints – a small keg really, hence: “I used to have a six pack but now I’ve got a Party Seven” (a middle-aged man’s self-deprecating generational joke).

Thankfully the Party Seven disappeared in the 1980s (the beer was awful). I remember drinking from one shared between three of us (all under age) whilst watching a charity rugby match in 1974 between England and France at Twickenham; a game that was held to raise funds following the Paris air crash of that year.

The match was memorable for Michael O’Brien, an Australian, becoming the UK’s first mainstream sporting streaker. One photo of the event became the most syndicated press picture of the decade, LIFE Magazine’s picture of the year and the source of numerous humerous caption competitions (as I recall most seemed to involve a bad case of dandruff).

streaker
An Aussie in England: “Strewth, it’s cold mate. I thought I’d be charged with exposure, not die from it!

And just to show that the old-fashioned policemen’s helmets were gender neutral, here’s one in use when Erica Roe repeated O’Brien’s stunt in 1982:

erica
So tell me, constable, how did you know I fit a 38G?

Me ∩ Osborne = {Team Demelza}

I would never in a million years have thought that George ‘Gideon’ Osborne and I had anything in common, but bizarrely we do. It appears that we are both on Team Demelza regarding the current TV production of the Poldark novels.

Initially rather shaken by this discovery, I can show this to be the only thing that we have in common through the following illustrative diagram in which Team Demelza comprises the sole element belonging to the intersection of Osborne and me or, as the mathematicians would have it:

Me ∩ Osborne = {Team Demelza}

The intersection of me and George Osborne

As far as the Poldark series is concerned, I view Osborne as more of a George Warleggan type, or ‘Evil George’ as the Graun’s commentary on the series calls him … now there’s a coincidence 😉

A limerick a week #3

‘Team Demelza’ strikes back …

He may have a six-pack, he may be Pol, dark and handsome, and he may have a voice that buckles the knees of womenfolk at 100 yards, but it’s not all about Ross …

While the girls have gone wild about scything
And fantasize all about writhing
With muscular Ross,
I don’t give a toss
‘Cos it’s Demelza with whom I’ll be ‘jiving’!

... but I already do!
… I already do (with Management that is, not Demelza) so glass duly raised!

 

Quotes that made me laugh #14

Okay, so I have to admit to watching Poldark last night even though I had some concerns during the last series after Management seemed a tad over-interested in Ross and his six-pack, only to be:

(i) reassured by her exclamation during his topless scything scene that: “I don’t like men with squares on their chest“;

and

(ii) rather concerned by her somewhat loose grasp of anatomy

Anyway, none of that is of current interest as the highlight of the present series, for me at least, was last night’s exchange between Demelza and Sir Hugh Bodrugan;

Sir Hugh: “Have you come to steal my heart?

Demelza: “No, sir, I’ve come to visit your cow.”

They don’t write ’em like that no more! A true classic.

Poldark once he's got the girl (image posted by Bulloverman's Tomb of the Bizarre)
Poldark once he’s got the girl (image posted by Bulloverman’s Tomb of the Bizarre)