MAGIC MOMENTS

If you missed my appearance on yesterday's BBC Radio 4 programme, Before Your Very Ears, you can 'Listen Again' on the BBC's Radio 4 website for the next seven days.

And on the subject of magic: last Saturday, David took part in a Charity Gala Concert in aid of the Slough, Windsor and Maidenhead Samaritans.

Held at the Norden Farm Centre for the Arts in Maidenhead, the three-hour-plus concert was a feast of music and entertainment featuring the legendary Laurie Holloway and a talented line-up of singers and musicians, many of them graduates of the Montgomery Holloway Music Trust founded by Laurie and his late wife, Marion Montgomery.

Laurie performed a couple of solo items - a superb Sinatra medley and a wickedly clever Beatles medley that managed to incorporate references to Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and other classical composers along the way - as well as accompanying several of the other artistes including the amazing soprano, Shola Hector, here seen singing 'Cabanera' from Bizet's Carmen.


The wizard Mr Weeks performed two magic sets: one with his usual line of patter, the other featuring his less frequently seen silent act. Here's part of the latter for your enjoyment...

SAMARITANS is a remarkable organisation offering confidential non-judgemental emotional support, twenty-four hours a day for people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those which could lead to suicide.

If you know anyone whose worried about something, feeling upset or confused, or just in need of talking to someone, make sure they know about Samaritans. Whatever a person's going through, whether it's big or small, Samaritans are there for them on the end of a telephone 24/7.

DA-DE-DA-DA, DA-DAAAA...

True, it may be my
BIRTHDAY
but that's no excuse for...

SYRUPY SENTIMENTS!!

Anyway, here I am entering - with some considerable trepidation - the last year of my fifties...

I'm now one year nearer the bus pass and a myriad of things which I really do not wish to even contemplate!

Whatever became of that sunny little fellow (left) beaming at the camera in his first school cap and tie?

Of course, I remember being him, but what I now realise is that when you are really young - before the onset of teen-angst, I mean - you hardly ever think about what it was like when you were younger and never about what it would be like to be any older...

Funny that...

Nowadays, I think about both quite a lot!

I cheer myself up by recalling a quip of the great VICTOR BORGE (self-styled 'Clown Prince of Denmark') who once remarked:

"I don't mind growing old. I'm just not used to it."

Borge's love of music and his sense of fun was utterly infectious. We twice saw this brilliant Danish musician and humorist live in concert and on both occasions were reduced to helpless, tear-shedding laughter. I remember him watching a pair of latecomers finding their way to their seats - in the middle of a row - and commenting: "Good evening! I managed to get here on time and I came from Denmark!"

Here are a few of his other best-loved witticisms...

I'd like to thank my parents for making this night possible. And my children for making it necessary.

I love this piano... I get about four sonata's to a gallon of red wine on it...

[Inspecting the piano] Hmmm… Steinway & Sons. Didn't even know he was married.

[Referring to the piano's natural shape] Isn't it a shame when those big fat opera singers lean against the pianos and bend them?

I normally don't do requests. Unless, of course, I have been asked to do so.

I only know two pieces, one is 'Clair de Lune', the other one isn't.

The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.

Ignaz Friedman's dead now—I sincerely hope, because they buried him about 28 years ago.

I'm going to play it with both hands so it will end faster.

There will be no dancing during this number... unless you absolutely have to!

And whenever he made a seeming linguistic faux pas:

It's your language, I'm just trying to use it...

Anyway, I'm going to celebrate being almost-nearly-sixty with this rendition of that little song customarily played on this day, as rendered - after a few amusing preliminaries and with a little help from one or two other musical 'greats' - by this adorable, incomparable man who used to say - and proved - that "laughter is the shortest distance between two people."

Don't Forget...

I make a guest appearance on tomorrow's BBC Radio 4 programme, BEFORE YOUR VERY EARS, an investigation by Grant Gordon into the tricky business of making magic on Radio. The programme goes on air at 11.30 am and can be heard for the following seven days via 'Listen Again' on the BBC website.

RADIO MAGIC

Those 'abnormal dreams' promised by the new medication have certainly started!

The other night I dreamed that I was helping with a magic act at The Magic Circle where a magician in white tie and tails was a trying to do a dove act --- using TURKEYS!

And on the subject of magic: anyone who enjoys the puzzlements of the conjuror will be intrigued by a programme to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 15 July at 11.30 am.

In Before Your Very Ears, Grant Gordon explores the rich history of magic on radio.

Archive features includes the legendary mind-reading act of The Piddingtons, the great Sidani confounding Kenneth Horne, Uri Geller bending keys, John Wade sawing Barry Wordsworth in half, David Berglas' magical carpentry and Jack Delvin escaping from a lift in Bush House reprised from a radio series on magic that I made, many years ago, for the BBC World Service.

Contributors include magicians Paul Zenon, Ali Bongo, Derren Brown and Darryl Rose who performs a new radio trick for listeners involving the R4 website.

And, apparently, there will also be one or two comments from Yours Truly...

MAKING THE BREAK

It's just a little short of two years since I broke a bone in My Left Foot and now I've gone and done it again! Still, at least I'm consistent! Oh, well, better foot forward...

ENTICEMINTS

As you can see, I'm still in Wonderland...


These 'Eat-Mes' are from the same people responsible for those Freudian Slippers I recently posted about.

Even if you're not easily enchanted, you may find some other mints to suit your political or religious persuasions...

HOT TIP

A little learning really can be a dangerous thing --- especially (judging from this warning sign) if you happen to be an ADULT or even an ANIMAL!

So, kids, make sure you keep those dangerous matches away from all grown-ups, cats, dogs, hamsters, gerbils and budgies!

LOVE ALL

Today is, apparently, National Kissing Day - possibly International Kissing Day

Woa, there! Hang on a minute! Before you go rushing off to get started, here are a few interesting facts about the Brits as kissers...

A survey reveals that a staggering 95% of young women believe they aren't getting enough when it comes to kissing.

This isn't surprising considering that nearly a third (29%) of women polled claim that they don't even manage to pucker up once on an average day. Today's the day for Brits to join the lucky lot who claim they kiss up to ten times a day (19%).

What's more nearly a quarter of women (24%) have experienced a kissing drought and gone for over a year without so much as a hint of a kiss. The average period of non-lip action is three to six months for nearly a third (30%) of women. The forecast is not so bad for a fifth (21%) of women who don't go any longer than a month without a kiss.

But clearly we're not kissing enough and nowhere near as much as our European counterparts. Three quarters (75%) of women believe that the Brits should let go of the stiff upper lip and follow the example of Europeans by kissing more openly in public.

The good news is, what we lack in quantity, we definitely make up in quality. In the league of best and worst kissers, the Brits sweep the board with nearly half (42%) of the vote for great kissing. The Italians - the Casanovas of Europe - come in second with 15%, closely followed by the French with 13%.

And you'll find more lip-smacking statistics such as these here.

So, armed with those warnings and encouragements, off you go and enjoy yourselves unless, that is, you're sitting at home watching the Men's Finals in the 2008 Wimbledon Tennis Championship, in which case you may care to ponder my latest...

CAPTION COMPETITION

No one we know, I think; certainly not Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal, but what is he saying or thinking...?

Closing date for submissions: Saturday 12 July

Images: (Top) Klimt's 'The Kiss'; (Bottom) Er... somebody's bottom!

WEIGHTING GAME

Still puzzling over that monkey puzzle?

Probably not, since no one other than Good Dog (see the comments to yesterday's post) gave - if you'll pardon the phrase - a monkeys!

But that isn't going to deter me!

You will recall that I asked for your solutions to Lewis Carroll's puzzle about the Monkey and the Weight:

A weightless and perfectly flexible rope is hung over a weightless, frictionless pulley attached to the roof of a building.

At one end is a weight which exactly counterbalances a monkey at the other end.

If the monkey begins to climb, what will happen to the weight?

Good Dog decided that first the monkey would 'sink' (go down) but then amended this to a belief that the weight and the monkey would both rise up towards the pulley...

GD's bafflement is not surprising, many mathematical minds have been tested by this puzzle: in his diary entry for December 21 1893, Lewis Carroll's alter ego, C L Dodgson, wrote with evident delight:

Got Prof Clifton's answer to the 'Monkey and Weight' problem. It is very curious, the different views taken by good mathematicians. Price says the weight goes up, increasing velocity. Clifton (and Harcourt) that it goes up, at the same rate as the monkey, while Samson says that it goes down!

In the posthumously-compiled Lewis Carroll Picture Book, the Reverend Arthur Brook was quoted as saying that "the weight remains stationary".

Then, in 1914, Sam Lloyd included the puzzle in his Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks and Conundrums erroneously concluding that as the monkey climbs the rope he will fall with increasing speed.

The American mathematician writing in 1956 in Scientific American complained about the wording of the puzzle: "One of the difficulties in this tricky problem is that it is not well defined. For example, does the monkey jerk the rope? Or does he begin pulling on it very gently, and if so, how does he maintain the pull?"

You read the whole of Warren Weaver's fascinating article on Carroll the mathematician here, but his questions about the 'Monkey and the Weight' puzzle are in fact, irrelevant.

The correct solution is as follows...

Regardless of how the monkey climbs the rope, the monkey and the weight always remain opposite one another. There is nothing the monkey can do to get above or below it at any time, whether climbing ever so slowly or with frenetic leaps and jerks.

So, now you know! And well done Good Dog -- I think...

MONKEY-PUZZLE

Today is, of course, Independence Day (appropriate greetings to all our American readers), but it is also the anniversary of that "golden afternoon" in 1862 on which the Reverend Charles Dodgson - better known as Lewis Carroll - took Alice, Lorina and Edith Liddell, the three daughters of the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, on a boating trip up the Isis.

It was on that expedition that Mr Dodgson spun the yarn of Alice's Adventures Underground - later published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: that treasure trove of incomparable nonsense...

"Your hair wants cutting," said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.

"You should learn not to make personal remarks," Alice said with some severity; "it's very rude."

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"


"Come, we shall have some fun now!" thought Alice. "I'm glad they've begun asking riddles. -- I believe I can guess that," she added aloud.

"Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?" said the March Hare.

"Exactly so," said Alice.

"Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.

"I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least -- at least I mean what I say -- that's the same thing, you know."

"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "You might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"

"You might just as well say," added the March Hare, "that 'I like what I get' is the same thing as 'I get what I like'!"

"You might just as well say," added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe'!"

"It is the same thing with you," said the Hatter...

Lewis Carroll was, of course, an inveterate divisor of games and puzzles and here's one of his most notorious teasers...

A weightless and perfectly flexible rope is hung over a weightless, frictionless pulley attached to the roof of a building. At one end is a weight which exactly counterbalances a monkey at the other end.


If the monkey begins to climb, what will happen to the weight?

What do YOU think? Let me know...

Finally, here's a visual tribute to Lewis Carroll's immortal dream child set to the Cocteau Twin's 'Alice'. Dream on...

Image: Illustration of the Monkey puzzle from Sam Lloyd's Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks and Conundrums New York, 1914. Unfortunately, Mr Lloyd obviously didn't know how to spell Lewis Carroll.

BECKS UNVEILED!

Oh... Alright then!

Here you are...



An, in case you missed the story, apparently Beck's Mum was not amused at her son posing in his skivvies and rang him up in order - if you'll pardon the pun - to tear a strip off him!


By the way, I saw this somewhere on the web the other day --- do you think it's the Beckhams' doormat...?


I mean, it can't be Signor Armani's or it would say something like:

BELLO
BIANCHERIA