John J. Hoare

I have seen 250 full-length films so far this year, with 80% of them being first time watches. Although the most I have learnt from this experience is that Count Yorga and its sequel are middling and you probably shouldn’t bother.

the figurehead was very nice indeed and all the crew were very nice too

I know Geoff Atkinson wrote Clean Rugby Songs, but I always think you can hear Grant Naylor's voice as clear as a bell in sketches like that, and that voice continued well after they departed.

I do not have many strong opinions about music, but I have just watched the execrable Bread (1971), and Juicy Lucy are the most boring band who have ever existed.

Bread looks like it’s going somewhere, as a group of teenagers who want to put on a festival start shooting a porn film to fund it. Then, they… immediately fail, and spend the rest of the running time being immensely tedious. You had your good plot! Why not actually do it?

Question for Red Dwarf idiots. SOMEWHERE out there is a quote (from Rob or Doug?) about the making of the US pilot, which says that the production team was so wary of "crossing the split" during the split screen sequences that they ended up with actors on opposite sides of the set. Ring any bells?

Points of order: a) You are all entirely wrong about the BBC. b) The BBC is also entirely wrong about the BBC. c) If you put me in charge, you'd see that I alone am correct when it comes to the BBC, and I am best.

Sometimes I wish I worked in an industry which nobody talked about, like radiator valves.

Underrated stupid Red Dwarf jokes: RIMMER: 6:47. Not a bad little time for the mile. Pity I was only doing the 300 metres.

I really wish I had a custom iPlayer film page with all the categories I want to see. British Grot Golden Age Hollywood Raquel Welch British Grot with Continental Inserts Women In Prison Carry On Adjacent French Grot Fellini

Continental inserts. under-the-counter.com/2026/04/27/t...

I really wish I had a custom iPlayer film page with all the categories I want to see. British Grot Golden Age Hollywood Raquel Welch British Grot with Continental Inserts Women In Prison Carry On Adjacent French Grot Fellini

Pondering films that I've given up on halfway through, and suddenly remembered The Outlaw, which tried my fucking patience something rotten. Full of people who don't act like people.

Off the point, but I sometimes wonder why it is that I'm turned off my most short-form video online. I find it really difficult to be bothered, while others - including others my own age, in their mid-40s - can find it almost or actually addicting.

Reading that Guardian article on soaring cocaine use, and I don’t even know where to get weed, let alone Coke. Maybe ripping Blu-rays is enough to out me on the criminal fringes of society.

I do own Network’s release of Baby Love, and that feels faintly illegal.

I don’t know what magic Norman Lear and the technicians were weaving while making All in the Family/Maude, but the studio audience sounds so beautifully distinctive, and can seemingly pick up individual reactions from members.

Very specific, this one, but: remember, a decade or so now, BBC channels used to frame hop every time an end credit squeeze came in? You ain't seen that for a very long time now.

More generally: TV has generally got infinitely worse due to budget problems, but a combination of The Masked Singer and Gladiators means that Saturday nights on January are better than we had for years and years.