I read an article on the BBC News website today that made me smile despite the sad news about the death of Sir Terry Wogan.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-35411078

Action Man is 50 years old!

There is no toy that takes me back to my childhood more instantly than Action Man.

My Action Men figures were the most important toys I owned (more so than my bucket of cars or even my Hornby train set). In the seventies there was one Christmas when I asked for a "Talking Commander" - my parents never worked so hard to find me a present. They left it too late to shop that year but in the end they managed to get hold of a figure, minus its box, because they saw a pair of legs poking out from a shelf-stacker’s trolley (in Boots of all places I think). I don’t think the shop assistant expected to sell the doll without its packaging but my folks weren’t about to take “no” for an answer. I have this picture in my head of my old man behaving a bit like Arnie in “Jingle All The Way”.

When I got the commander, I was delighted, I couldn’t have cared less about the box anyway.

On one memorable occasion, my dad came home from work with a box of second hand Action Man gear that he’d purchased from a colleague at the office. That was another happy day for me.

I had around half a dozen figures in all and had a variety of different outfits, kit and weapons. My friends had Action Men too and we would get together and have battles with them. A big shout out here goes to one such friend - Andrew Cursley if you read this post, I hope you remember these good times as well.

It is interesting to read the BBC piece about Star Wars figures contributing to the demise of Action Man. When I was a kid, despite loving the film (and being a lifelong fan of the franchise since), I never had any interest in Star Wars figures. At less than six inches tall, with no changeable outfits, no gripping hands, no movable knee/elbow joints, I just thought they were a bit boring in comparison to my 12-inch fully poseable Action Men.

When I was a teenager, I got rid of my Action Men, along with most of my childhood toys. When I was in my twenties/thirties though, I went about buying some more. And I still have them too, though they are not featured in my gallery (I really should do something about that).

The article details Hasbro’s plans to relaunch some anniversary orientated Action Man but aimed at nostalgic adults instead. I am without doubt in the target market for these figures – I’ll admit it, I already want some. I just hope that Hasbro doesn’t price them in such a way that they feel like a rip off.

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​It was a real shame to wake up this morning to the news that Sir Terry Wogan had succumb to cancer. The original TOG has popped his clogs and another entertainment industry icon is gone. The last couple of months have been really costly to us in terms of celebrity losses and Sir Terry is the latest casualty.

Terry Wogan was the only DJ that I could name in my childhood, my parents always had their radios tuned to him and I got used to his dulcet Irish tones from a young age.   

Whilst I have written about Lemmy and David Bowie in recent death related posts, they were probably most adored by those of us from a certain generation (or two). Terry Wogan on the other hand was more universal in his appeal.

I know that today, my parents will be feeling a sense of loss and even my Nan, who is 92, will be upset by his passing. Tributes will be pouring in from the rich, the famous and people that actually knew Sir Terry; they will be read by many more people than my little post...

…but I write it nonetheless because Sir Terry was a family man and one family orientated thought pinged into my head when I heard the sad news.

In the late seventies/early eighties, I remember being at my Nan’s house with my sister and dancing around her living room to the “Floral Dance”. My Nan had the seven inch single and played it upon her portable, red, plastic record player. Happy days!

Who would have thought that I’d later develop into a head banging, Motorhead fan? Still I bet even Lemmy would have smiled when the Floral Dance came on the radio.

My thoughts are with the Wogan family.

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At the end of December I wrote a post about Lemmy’s death and the sense of loss I felt. I subsequently watched his funeral service, it was filmed and the coverage was streamed for the fans. An emotional couple of hours for me but I am glad I watched it. You can find the material on YouTube if you want to experience it too.

The death of David Bowie was another blow that left me feeling melancholic. Whilst I am an unapologetic head-banger and Bowie’s music doesn’t get much of an airing in my world - even I own and rate “Changesbowie”.  Another British legend gone and the world is a lesser place.

The deaths of our stars, brings me, by way of a word play, on to something lighter. One thing that had me thinking/feeling other worldly (and for a positive reason) was the latest Star Wars film. I went to the cinema on January 2nd and can report that I just loved the “Force Awakens”. Beforehand it felt a bit ridiculous to me that at my age, I was so excited about seeing the movie.

​My expectations were high and I was concerned it would be a let-down…

…but it wasn’t - in fact it was brilliant and I want to see it again.

There’s more uplifting stuff too. Space hasn’t just been top of mind because of Star Wars; Tim Peake and his exploits on the International Space Station have made space exploration cool all over again and, unlike Star Wars, this is happening in the real world. Peake has recently been on a space walk with his colleague (bizarrely also called Tim; who would have thought that the space station with so few people in it, and so far away from earth, would have two people on a mission with the same name) and I have to admit that watching it was awe inspiring.  

And on the subject of inspiring, this time much closer to home but still involving a pilot - Prince William was in the news this week for landing his air ambulance in the playing fields of John Henry Newman School in Stevenage.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-35307332

Whilst the medics were off doing their jobs, the prince queued up for lunch in the school’s canteen and then ate his food with the kids. That’s as brilliant as the spacewalk as far as I am concerned. As for Prince William – there’s no doubting his star quality.

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On Sunday 27th December I went to a fantastic gig at Club 85 in Hitchin with my sister and best pal, Mike. Regular readers will know that I tend to write about the gigs I go to and that typically they will end up reading about bands that play heavy metal or punk music.  For this outing though the musical genre was very different. The band was The Floyd Effect, a Pink Floyd tribute band.

Before I get into the review, a quick digression if I may. Over the last two to three decades, I have been to hundreds of gigs and whilst I have seen the vast majority of my favourite bands live (and some lots of times), one or two acts evaded me. My biggest gig related regrets are that I never saw Queen (though I made it to the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert) and, you probably guessed it, Pink Floyd (PF) – in reality there weren’t too many opportunities post 1987.

Given Rick Wright’s death, the likelihood of Pink Floyd ever performing another concert is negligible, and that’s probably an over optimistic assessment.

Now I don’t normally bother much with tribute bands because experience has proved that most of the time they are a bit sad/naff; and why would you bother when you can see the real thing? Before 27/12/15, the only tribute band I had seen that was genuinely worth raving about was “Bjorn Again”.

But with the surviving members of PF doing their own things, the only way to experience anything live and vaguely Floydian is to take a punt on a tribute act (and there are number of them).

Before buying the tickets, I did some research and couldn’t find a bad word written about The Floyd Effect – tickets were duly purchased via Farley’s in Hitchin.

On the night itself, Club 85 was packed; I had never seen it so busy and it came as no surprise to me to hear that the event was a sell-out.

The audience was largely made up of grey hairs, or those rapidly approaching middle age status. My little party of forty somethings was at the younger end of the attendee age spectrum and that was reassuring. My thought process being that many of these guys and girls would have had much more opportunity than me to see PF live and, if those that had experienced the real deal were present, that would equate to a significant endorsement.  

The band took to the stage at 8:30pm, five key fellas supported periodically by two female backing singers and a male saxophonist. The chaps, all middle aged or thereabouts (appropriate for the audience), looked relatively normal, well aside from the dodgy Christmas head wear.

From the get go it was clear that the band was tight and all the musicians were very capable. When the lead vocalist (also the lead guitarist) got to sing, for me, it was like Dave Gilmour was on the microphone – seriously he was that good.

The set list follows:

Set One:

• Shine On You Crazy Diamond
• Welcome To The Machine
• High Hopes
• Sorrow
• Dogs Of War
• Dogs
• In The Flesh
• Another Brick in the Wall pt2

Set Two:

• Careful With That Axe Eugene
• One Of These Days
• Echoes

Set Three:

• Dark Side Of The Moon
• Wish You Were Here
• Comfortably Numb
• Run Like Hell     

​Worthy of note from the above is that “Dark Side of the Moon” refers to the entire album, all nine songs and 43 minutes! It was introduced in a cool way too, the keyboard player said “we have played a few things from The Wall, Meddle, Wish You Were Here, now we are going to play Dark Side of the Moon…

…all of it.”

Once you appreciate that last point, you might begin to realise that the gig went on for quite a while. In fact I walked out of Club 85 at around 12:15, the band had performed for more than three hours with just a 15 minute interval.

During “The Great Gig in the Sky” (from Dark Side of the Moon) – the wailing parts were performed by the backing singers and they did such a good job that the whole place erupted with applause when the track was done.

​In terms of a light show, and in keeping with PF, The Floyd Effect made use of lights and video throughout the gig.

Towards the end of the set, the band announced its last track, played it and then left the stage. But even after three hours, there was an encore.   

I/we had a brilliant night out; when the three of us left the gig, we all expressed our determination to see the band again. You too can track down a gig via www.thefloydeffect.com or via Facebook.

As far as I am concerned The Floyd Effect has rewritten my rule book on tribute acts – the band is as worth seeing as any “original” outfit, in fact it’s far better than many. For £15 a ticket, the experience was superb value for money.

There were a handful of occasions when I shut my eyes and just let the music wash over me. In these moments, I swear I could have been listening to Gilmour, Waters, Wright & Mason - in a linguistic twist, The Floyd Effect was effectively Pink Floyd. And I don’t think I can recommend this band more than that.

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