PeterRS

Thinking back, the golden age of British television sitcoms seems to have all but disappeared many decades ago. Shows like Blackadder, Yes Minister, Are You Being Served?, Dad's Army, Porridge (with Ronnie Barker and the very talented Richard Beckinsale, father of actress Kate, who died tragically young) Steptoe and Son, Rising Damp, Till Death Us Do Part . . .and that's before all the comedy shows with such talented actors as Tony Hancock, Morecambe and Wise, Eric Sykes, Arthur Askey, Frankie Howerd, Spike Milligan . . . so many and so many now forgotten. And that's before considering at all the radio sitcoms and great comedians, not to forget the many great writers without whom most of the shows would never have got off the ground.

Fabulous reviews @NoNameFanBoy . Many thanks. You deserve five hearts! And totally agree about Japanese lube. Tried it in the years I worked there and quickly abandoned it in favour of lubes I picked up in Hong Kong.

In this forum there are some fascinating insights into the start and development of Patpong. I wonder if anyone has a history of Soi Twilight from its very beginnings. Perhaps even adding in those gay venues which started up in Silom Soi 4 and Patpong 2.

In the years when I was doing reguar ultra-long distance travel, I always took wax earplugs with me to ensure noise did not bother me. I found in cities like New York the sound of traffic and emergency vehicles generally found their way in to most rooms. But if I am with company overnight, even the lovely sound of breathing next to me won't keep me awake. On the other hand, I cannot handle anyone who snores!

Not sure where I heard/read it but I thought Sauna Mania did have an age policy. If that is not the case, does it come into force on certain nights/holidays?

The sound insulation of rooms is also important to me. I have stayed in many hotels in Taipei. One relatively inexpensive one just 30 meters from a subway station and overlooking Da an Park had a fabulous location. My room also had a really nice view of the park but it was just across from the single lift. I was driven crazy by the noise of people chatting quite loudly during their long waits to get the lift. I asked the management if on another visit I could select a room at the end of the corridor even if I paid a little more. Nope. Only available if free at check in. Never stayed again, unfortunately.

Suely PrEP or whatever medication one takes as precaution against HIV will not stop one becoming infected with other STIs. I get an HIV test once each year and the staff at the well-known clinic told me they have seen a very significant rise in syphilis and gonorrhea infections in just the last two years.

The reviews for premium economy seating seem to vary quite a bit. Those Emirates ultra long range A380s presently retrofitted with Premium Economy get very good praise with that cabin being located at the front of the lower deck. The retrofitted 777s seem a bit more cramped.

It has been announced that the King will subsidise him from his private funds. No suggestion yet where his avaricious ex-wife will live. I can't imagine anyone in those cities is too concerned! There is already a wealth of persons with titles in the UK but who these days wants another Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquess or Duke? Besides, the awards every half year given out to prominent persons are also out of date. The British Empire all but died in the mid-20th century but people are still awarded as either Members, Orders or Commanders of the British Empire!

So the King has finally acted. Andrew has been formally stripped of his titles and forced to move out of his 30 room mansion. In future he will simply be called Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. This may not be the end, though. Several Parliamentarians are calling for a debate. There are no modern precedents for such a colossal loss of royal status . . . The sliver of dignity given to him, that he was voluntarily choosing not to use his titles, has been taken away . . . Titles such as Duke of York, the Earl of Inverness and Baron Killyleagh will be forcibly removed . . . All that remains is his place in the line of succession, and new guidance from the House of Commons Library has shown that too could be removed by Parliament, if Commonwealth realms give their consent. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62elnjnqqxo Parliament may well now act because even without his titles, as the son of a Queen, Andrew still remains eighth in line of the throne. That is almost certain to be stripped from him.

No need to be sorry! Mistakes happen.

I am thinking of trying Oman Air for my next trip. The full fare is little different from other airlines, but perhaps they may have a miles seat. In any event I want to visit Oman for a few days if possible. The airline joined One World in the summer and its biz class gets very good reviews. I always used to find London/Bangkok nearly impssible for mileage tickets, even when i once tried 51 weeks in advance - partly I suspect because the flight used to carry on to Sydney. Then it dropped Sydney but put ancient 777s on the route and I personally loathe long daytime flights.

Masive flooding has hit the centre of Vietnam with Hue and the small city of Hoi An particularly badly hit by the rains. Hoi An is one of the most picturesque cities in the whole of Vietnam. This is what it looked like two days ago. News reports say about 40,000 tourists have been relocated. According to https://news.tuoitre.vn/ these are the worst floods to hit the area since 1964. Photos: Nhac Nyuyen/AFP/Getty Images And this is what it usually looks like -

There is a rlatively new Marriott near the foot of Suriwong. The view from a high floor ought be to impressive. You could book in there for just one night and still have your Meridien adventures on the others.

Fascinating vdo @vinapu - thanks for posting. There have been threads here that have included the history of Patpong and in particular it being the centre of CIA and Air America activity in the USA's illegal and horrific wars in the South East Asia. But seeing the vdo makes it all much more clear.

In my experience, the number of award seats has also been reduced. For years I have returned for an annual visit to the UK using Qatar biz class - sometimes paid, sometimes award seats. I have never before had any problem with award seats. For this year's trip I checked award availability in early October last year for any two-week period in March. Given QR have five daily flights from BKK with one or two being A380s, I was sure there would be no problem. Nothing. So I expanded the period and asked about any two week period in the four months from 1 March to 31 July. Only one one-way flight allegedly was available.

How funny that @Department_Of_Agriculture downvotes the post that is 100% true! Takes all sorts!

Clearly his life was very far from the proverbial "bowl of cherries." I wonder how much his experience in playing Tadzio in the movie really did affect his life thereafter, and how much his family circumstances of, for example, losing both parents before he was ten (it was only later he learned that his mother had committed suicide) have to be factored in. Since he wanted to become a musician, he cannot have been the withdrawn, introspective type. Clearly, though, he absolutely hated all the hoopla surrounding him and the movie around the world, especially in Japan where for several years he was treated like a pop star. As he relates in a Guardian article four years ago, for him it was "a living nightmare." “I don’t think it’s ethically defensible to let a 16-year-old bear the burden of advertising the damn film,” he says. “Especially not when you come back to school and you hear, ‘Hi there, angel lips.’ A guy who’s in the middle of his own teenage hormone tempest doesn’t want to be called ‘beautiful’.” He thinks the adoration inhibited his development. “When you snap your fingers and you’ve got 10 chicks running after you, there’s no need to learn any social skills for dealing with the opposite sex.” He says it took him until 1992 to finally rid himself of all the demons, horror and memories that had plagued him since Death in Venice. The memories naturally remain, but he is no longer frightened by them. As the directors of the documentary claim in their film, "He had the feeling of being used. He was packaged as an object." He allowed the directors of that documentary to follow him for six years and he is happy with the result. It made him feel that finally Tadzio was dead. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jul/15/death-in-venice-screwed-my-life-tragic-visconti-beautiful-boy-bjorn-andresen

Just remember some rooms have no window - mostly the cheaper ones I guess.

Many airlines abandoned loyalty decades ago. At the start of the 1990s, Cathay Pacific, my home airline in those days, offered lifetime Marco Polo Club membership with access to first class lounges whichever class being flown to those who reached 2 million miles within the decade. As a constant traveller, getting the miles was not very difficult. By mid-1998 I was up to around 1.7 million miles and confident I would reach that 2 million miles mark. Then in early 1999 CX cancelled the scheme with no perks even for those who had almost reached 2 million. That was when I switched my airline loyalty scheme for more than a dozen years. As for the horrendous price hikes mentioned by @unicorn, I fear more airlines will jump on the same bandwagon. As the seats in business class are upgraded virtually to individual suites, so the total humber of seats in that cabin decline. And since it is the seats in the front of the plane that make a route profitable, the cheaper business class seats that many have got used to will disappear from many of the airlines. Another reason for price hikes is less popular routes. I have no idea how popular or otherwise LAX to VIE might be, but I suspect not especially popular. Although a one-stop flight is boring, I wonder if LAX to MUC might be a good deal cheaper. If so, a second MUC to VIE flight might make the trip cheaper. On the other hand, I thoroughly recommend picking up a car and driving to Vienna, perhaps with an overnight stop en route. It is a beautiful drive.

While we focus in The Beer Bar on the death of the Swedish actor from Death in Venice, another popular actor has passed away, one who excelled in a totally dfferent genre. Asked to name the most famous TV comedy series of the 1970s, most will probably name Fawlty Towers with the dithering, accident-prone John Cleese trying to manage a small hotel. Partnering him was Prunella Scales as his much more practical wife, Sybil. A consummate actress, she was 93 and had been suffering from dementia for many years. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the airing of the first Fawlty Towers series. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjd0yn5gyndo

Andrésen came to hate having been part of Death in Venice. Not gay himself, he was surrounded in that movie by gay men, principally the director Lucino Visconti and the lead actor Dirk Bogarde. Visconti's production team was also mostly gay but Visconti had warned everyone not to put a finger on his young star. As Andrésen himself said, once shooting was complete, Visconti took everyone to a gay bar in Venice. He was just 16. Andrésen hated it, thinking everyone was looking at him like their next "meaty dish". He felt Visconti "didn't gave a fuck" to what he himself might be feeling. After the movie Visconti never spoke to him again. Unlike many young aspiring actors, Andrésen had never wanted to be on the stage or in film. An accomplished pianist and musician, he loved music and wanted that to be his life. It was his grandmother (his parents had died when he was young) who pushed him to audition for the role. What he thought might be "a cool summer job" ruined his life. He hated the title accorded him "The Most Beautiful Boy In The World" and all the worldwide publicity and particularly gay attention that was focussed on him after the movie. In 2003 the Australian feminist author Germaine Greer wrote a book titled The Boy that featured the 15-year old Andrésen on the cover without his permission. He was furious. Yet by this time he had accepted that this would be the title of a documentary about his life made in 2001. This shows much of the tragedy he endured. His marriage and subsequent divorce, lying quite drunk next to his beloved 9-month old son only to wake and discover he had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He entered a period of major depression and became an alcoholic. Yet he told the directors of the documentary that he regretted little in his life apart from a year in Paris in his early 20s. Promised a role in a film which was never in fact made, he was installed in an apartment by an older man and paid a generous stipend. I read somewhere that he did have one gay experience which he did not enjoy. I suspect this probably happened during that Paris sojourn. He continued to make music and the occasional movie, The last was in 2019 of him as an old man who tries to commit suicide. It is tempting to think that this photo below was taken during the filming of that role. But it was actually taken two years later. I wonder what other readers thought of Death in Venice. I loved it when I first saw it in the cinema. Visconti had an eye for capturing the beauty of the Venice of that period and those who visited it. And that long, long opening shot of the steamer gradually appearing out of the dark morning mist sets the tone perfectly. Bogarde also gives a masterful performance as Aschenbach and the use of the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony with its underlying emotional intensity was perfect. But in watching the DVD a few times with friends, I am struck by what appears to me a sense of artificiality in Andrésen's performance. I feel that too often Tadzio gives Aschenbach a sort of "come hither" look which is not in Thomas Mann's novella. Sometimes its just a gaze - as on the beach; at others a hand resting on the hip when on the hotel terrace. It may be that Visconti intends this to be only in Aschenbach's mind. Whatever the reason, to me it goes just a shade too far in making Aschenbach realise the essence of beauty and perfection that his music has lost. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT/Shutterstock https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oct/28/bjorn-andresen-obituary https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/bjorn-andresen-dead-death-in-venice-most-beautiful-boy-1236410476/

Apologies - this was duplicated in a slightly later post.

A photo has appeared on the BBC website showing Harvey Weinstein with Epstein and Maxwell at Andrew's home, Royal Lodge. When his daughter Beatrice held a masked ball in Windsor Castle to celebrate her 18th birthday in 2006, it was known that all three were on the guest list. Not known was that all three had earlier visited Prince Andrew's home at Royal Lodge during that visit to London. Now the information and a photo have been leaked. The date of the birthday was two months after the warrant for Weinstein's arrest had been issued in the USA. Echoing his comments on the now infamous BBC Emily Maitlin interview, Prince Andrew said he "wasn't aware of it." Maxwell was a relatively frequent visitor to royal residences. The BBC has also re-published this photo of her and actor Kevin Spacey sitting on the Queen's thrones in the Buckingham Palace thone room. The photo was discovered by The Daily Telegraph newspaper in the early 2020s. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g7d39n6vgo Meantime, the King was yesterday heckled after an engagement in the Midlands. During a walkabout, one man shouted, "How long have you known about Andrew and Epstein?" He then twice asks, "Have you asked the police to cover up for Andrew?" The King must surely realise that the 'Andrew' issue has to be resolved faster than perhaps he would have wished.

In Kuala Lumpur this week, Trump co-signed what he termed "another peace deal", this time to solve the Thailand Cambodia border hostilities. Naturally Trump called it "a momemtous occasion" and claimed credit for having stopped the hostillities. Only, as the BBC correspondent notes, the deal does not solve the root of the century-old problem. It merely pushes a solution further down the road. As Thailand's Foreign Minister told the BBC, it is not a peace deal but "a pathway for peace." What the deal states is that both parties will withdraw their heavy armaments and permit an ASEAN observer team at the border. As importantly they agreed to coordinate in removing land mines from the vicinity. At least the Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahmin, in the late 1990s the chosen successor to then PM Dr. Mahathir Mohamad before Mahathir turned on him and had him sent for a lengthy jail term for sodomy - charges most Malaysians believe were totally trumped up due to Mahathr's anger with the way Anwar was dealing with the effects of the Asian Economic Crisis. Anwar's wife and six children finally succeeded in their effort to mobilise the government and the country for his release. As Anwar's reputation increased, he was sen to jail for a further 5-year jail term in 2015. Both convictions were finally overturned. When meeting Trump with cameras rolling, Anwar joked with his visitor, "I was in prison but you amost got there!" https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cy40n3ykx93o