My 5 Repeatable Comedy Box Set Favourites

Who doesn't love a good comedy box set?  Something that you can relax, kick back and have a good giggle with at the end of yet another long day?

It's very hard to find the perfect comedy - it has to be something funny with a touch of human emotion, not too serious but with a grain of realistic amounts of crazy and let's face it, full of truth.  A lot of stuff is funny because it's true.

A difficult concoction to master.

So here's 5 of my absolute favourites, which I think stand the test of time and true comedy.

1. Everybody Loves Raymond.

This one is the top of my list.  Why?  It's a sure-fire way to get me giggling from my belly.  It's warm, honest, funny and totally typifies marriage and the familial relationships that so often come with it.

I love it because it's side-splitting hilarious , yet has moments where it tugs at the heart-strings and lifts you right back up again.

I remember watching Raymond through my first pregnancy - there was nothing like catching it first thing in the morning after yet another uncomfortable sleepless night.

I watched it when my eldest son was admitted to hospital when he was 3 years old with a bad bout of tonsillitis - it lightened the mood considerably after being stuck in a side-room with  a cranky, ill toddler.

And now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can watch it on YouTube any time I want!

From Debra's never-ending despair at living in such close proximity to her calamitous in-laws, to poor Robert always trying to get one over on his younger, more successful brother with a multitude of practised, pained expressions, Everybody Loves Raymond is perfect viewing for anyone who has had to weave their way through the complicated craziness of family life

It's hard to choose a favourite, as I'm lucky enough to still be finding ones I haven't seen yet, but one that sticks out is the one where Marie makes a sculpture that looks like a vagina after discovering that she has a talent for art.  Hilariously, it takes a visit from a nun before Marie realises what she has created, while the whole family look on in horror and embarrassment.



I think Everybody really does Love Raymond - it's impossible not to!

2. Still Game

A very close second favourite of mine is Still Game.  True, honest, Scottish humour - no-nonsense and completely realistic of the way Scottish people can use terrible insults as terms of endearment with their closest friends.  Anyone who has lived in a scheme, or who has elderly relatives or has experienced first hand, the sharp, wry Scottish banter can relate to the escapades of Jack, Victor, Winston et al.

One of the saddest days of my life was when Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill fell out and stopped making Still Game.  Maybe that's part of the magic - there's not enough to get fed up of them or to wear down the humour, but I've watched every episode so often, my box set is starting to wear out!

Thankfully rumour has it that they are going to be/have started making some stuff again - including taking Still Game live on stage!  I'm hoping they will be on T.V soon!

Best enjoyed with a pint of beer, at any time of year, but particularly around Christmas time for some reason.

Favourite Episode?

So, so, soooo SO hard to choose, but I think it has to be the one where Tam has a baby.  Or the one where Jack and Victor go to Canada.  Or the one where they sail down the Clyde for Victor's birthday...or the one where Winston moves to Finport....don't make me choose!

3. Frasier

Ah, it's so clever isn't it?  Nothing makes me feel more intellectual than when I am guffawing at a clever pun or laughing at yet another intricate and completely perfect plot-line that results in a series of beautifully orchestrated mishaps involving Frasier and his family.

Despite all the practice at upper-class lifestyles and 'fame', the crux of the matter is, that Frasier is really just a down-to-earth guy with some good values and some good morals.

The reason that this show got so many seasons is due to the hard work of some pretty super-talented writers and some very talented actors, who hit the comedy nail on the head every single time.
The plot lines never got old either - rather than perpetuate Niles's lust for Daphne, we got to see progress in them finally getting together and having a baby.  We see Martin move on from his accident and grief over the loss of his wife, and into a new relationship that provides him with vim and vigour, and Frasier?

Well, by the end of the last season it's as if Frasier has never really changed - he's still single and desperately seeking love.  As he reflects at the end of his time in Seattle, we could argue that although nothing has changed for him, his experiences have changed him immensely, which is one of the best bits about the series - there's always a deeper, emotional meaning.

Favourite episode? - This is tough.  I've seen them all so many times (we have most of the box sets!) but my favourite one has to be the episode where Patrick Stewart plays a man who really fancies Frasier, wooing him with gifts, and inviting him to a super-posh party, where he discovers that Sir Patrick's character isn't just being a good friend.

Once again it's comedy at it's finest - like a fine-tuned slapstick.



Watch it, you will cry with laughter! An amazing piece of writing, perfectly acted out.

4. Archer

"Lana...? Lana...?

LAAAAAAANAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

"WHAT?"

"Danger zone..."

If you've never seen Archer, you are seriously missing out.  Animated, yes it is, but it's a classy kind of animated.

Oddly un-cartoony (yep, that's a word) for a cartoon, Archer is the awesome spy series you've been waiting for.

Archer is a horrible person with a penchant for cute animals and a soft spot for babies.  His mother is the head of Isis, the espionage company he works for.

How do I explain the brilliance of Archer?  I can't.  It's a mish-mash of crazy characters, hilarious antics, clones, robots, space-pirates and various cocktails.

Kenny Loggins, Burt Reynolds, Seth Rogen and Patrick Stewart have all lent their voices to some pretty brilliant cameos too.



It's completely my sense of humour, it hits way below the belt a lot of the time, but it will always be on my hit list.  It definitely has the re-watchability factor too, and has added a lot of new phrases and referencing to my repertoire.

5.The Inbetweeners

The show that I can totally relate to, even though I am no longer 17 years old.  We all remember being there - on the verge of adulthood, a whole world of responsibility before us, yet not quite within our grasp.  The whole yearning to be all grown-up and sensible, while completely mis-interpreting what it actually means to be old and sensible.

The Inbetweeners only ran for three oh-so-short seasons, but it was so popular that it merited not one, but two films.

There's something about this whole coming-of-age scenario that proves to be successful - this particular stage of life, perched on the cusp of adulthood yields a dearth of embarrassing moments, humiliating scenes and comedic errors - as proved by other similar franchises, such our friends in the American Pie movies.

Favourite Episode? - It has to be the one where they go to Thorpe Park, mainly because Will is as big a geek about rollercoasters as I am.



Banter.  Pure banter.


What's your favourite comedy series?  Do you like to watch over and over, or are you always seeking something new?


Think these are funny? Read about that time my husband spewed on my face here!

The Price Of A Stamp

Do you know how much it is for a book of 12 stamps these days?

Letters Live was a rather interesting event held on 23rd April this year where various famous writers and faces read letters from themselves to other famous people, or even family members in order to show 'the enduring power of literary correspondence'.



In a digital world, it is rare for me to receive mail these days.  The last letter I received through my letterbox, the last real hand-written, letter that contained proper real-life information and feelings and wasn't just from the bank telling me I'd gone into my overdraft yet again, was from my auntie, on the birth of Ethan.

In it was a small note of how she was doing, what her family have been up to and expression of interest in me and mine.

Her handwriting was neat and joined-up, with personal touches and couple of ad-lib sentences added last-minute to the paragraphs to imbibe more meaning, in order to carry feeling and emotion.  It's a real joy to read because it's personal and warm, with a real sense of link between family.

We used to correspond often in this way - I'd write a letter to her, she'd respond with a letter or a card back.

The feeling of receiving a letter through the post is great.  A personal thing which has winged it's way to you and only you, written by someone you love from somewhere far away.

A postcard from a relative on holiday.
A get well card.
A note of sympathy from a friend on the death of a loved one.
A quirky note left by a flatmate on the kitchen table.
Notes passed in class between giddy teenagers.

All of this has been nearly wiped out completely by smartphones, Facebook, Twitter and Instant Messaging.  There's no more hanging around or waiting weeks on end for a reply to a question about family life.  Everyone and their grandmother is online now, and with that comes the fact that we can be contacted anywhere, any time, day or night.

If you can't message someone on Facebook, you can send them a quick text message.  You can give them a call, or send them an intimate photo of daily life on Snapchat.  You can Skype with or without cameras. Google has made sure that photographs are available to view by millions of people all over the world at the click of a button.

We are sharing information at a phenomenal rate; our everyday emotions from one minute to the next can be documented if we so wish.  Emoticons for sadness, happiness, loneliness, drunkenness, shyness, rage, fear, empathy, love, laughing and fear can be found and we can create emotions as we see fit.

You can speak to anyone on any subject, anywhere, any time.

And in a way that's completely awesome.  It's certainly connected me to a wider number of folk whom I would never have even known existed before now.  I can talk to people instantly about problems I'm having with my children, queries I have about school places and dog food and what everyone thinks about poverty.  I can lend my voice to petitions for causes I may or may not care deeply about and I can comment on current news and media as soon as it is published, in a public sphere.  I can make my own voice heard.

Literary correspondence has evolved at an amazing rate.

My fear is, however, that the art of handwriting will be lost.  The ability to spell without autocorrect will disappear.  Emails get discarded in bulk deletion folders and auto-dumps and we will lose a sense of history and time as correspondence has become, like so many things in our age, disposable.

Have we lost meaning?  Are we doomed to lose a whole literary medium which dates back through time?

Letters Live highlighted intimate details and moments about people's lives which could not be replicated in the same way via Facebook or email.

With pen in hand and a blank piece of paper, away from the glare of the screen, the author is forced to draw inspiration from within.  The great letter-writers of the past looked to the moon in her starlit sky for deep inspiration.  They raked their souls, searching for seeds to plant in imaginary soils, to grow and flourish in the light of another mind.  They sought out details from their day, hand-picked to have just the right impact and dug deep into feeling and temper.  They spoke not to a huge audience of strangers, or someone who was going to read the message in five minutes and dismiss it, but to someone who would, in turn, sit down and read and absorb what they had taken the time to write.

Letter writing is so much more than bashing out an email on computer keys.  Your handwriting changes depending on your mood and who you are writing to.  The small notes you make in the margins annotate and shed light on your quirks and phrasing.  The doodles which accompany comedic stories are rare and personal and unique to you.

I keep all of my letters in a box.  I have not added to their number in some time.  I failed to write back to my auntie 3 years ago.  After the birth of a new baby, looking after two babies under 2 years old, moving house and going back to work, I not only fell out of the habit, but we both moved into the realm of the internet and social media.

I'm going to make a concerted effort to do more handwriting, and importantly, letter writing.  Even if it's just notes around the house.  Handwriting was always something I took pride in, and I'd like it to stay a common thing in our family.

I love how the internet has connected us, but I do feel we are in danger of losing our intimate moments to it.

When was the last time you hand-wrote a letter and who was it to?  Do any of you still write letters now, or is it better to write electronically?

Maybe I should get a pen-friend!

Date Night

My husband and I have been married now for 5 years and together for nearly 11.

We've known each other since we were about 13, and pretty much grew up together.

Our relationship is a very deep and special one - we are very lucky.  But like all couples, we still need some special time alone to catch up and re-invigorate.

We might spend a lot of time together day-to-day; we are very lucky in that neither of us works away and both of us spend a lot of time with our kids...but that's the thing.  Spending time with the kids as a family and spending time as US are two very different things.

It is possible, as I have discovered, to really miss your husband when you get caught up in the mundane everyday, and although we spend a concerted amount of time as a family, we never really spend time gazing into each other's eyes over candlelight.  Which is important.  Candlelight is very flattering.

Hence, I poked and prodded him, and bribed my mother with the promise of dinner if she would babysit for us, and lo and behold!  He took me out!

As our lives are both quite hectic, we ended up doing what we usually do when presented with a night to ourselves; we winged it like a bastard.

Me: 'What do you wanna do tonight then? (hopeful gleam in my eyes.  I'm imagining a meal, the theatre and getting very drunk on champagne.  It's been a wee while since we went out)

Him: 'Err, I dunno.  Fancy the cinema or something?'

Me:'Err...(getting annoyed because this means I have to drive and if I have to drive there's no champagne. Or meal)...yeah, sounds good'

Him: 'Are you getting ready then?'

Me: Yeah!  In a minute!

Three hours later.  Dinner is over.  Kids are still running riot.  I'm still in work clothes, hair mussed from where Ethan has had me pretending I'm a scary monster by wrapping my head in my scarf and I've wrestled him off)

Him: 'Errr, suppose we'd better go soon then?'

We never go out.  We certainly don't go out often enough.

We are not used to this.

Dave took the initiative in the end and we plumped for the fabulous Hardeep Singh Kohli, who was doing a gig at our local theatre.  

Hardeep is a Scottish, Sikh comedian, and one we have seen a couple of times before.  The last gig of his was Chat Masala, a show where Hardeep cooked while being very funny (I'm sure this was after he'd won Celebrity Masterchef).

And last time, being one of the only vegetarians in the audience, I scored a bowl of his delicious vegetable daal.  I was certainly keen to see him again - even if there was no daal this time (which by the way was the most delicious daal I've ever had!)

I love Hardeep - he always comes across as warm and honest, and his comical stories about growing up in a Sikh household in Glasgow are very funny indeed.  

People from Glasgow always have that kind of edge to them that only comes from having to grow up and survive in such a schizophrenic place, and 'weegie' comedians in particular always have a place in my heart. Dave's family are from Glasgow and so are half of mine, so I think we can both relate to a 'tough but fair' Scottish childhood, which is best observed with a comedic air.

I think we can safely say he's on our level.

So when we bought the tickets at the desk, having made our last-minute decision, we were delighted to find that the topic of his tour focuses on Love.

Comically entitled, 'Hardeep is Your Love', we had a great laugh at Hardeep's tales of love lost and found, stories of sexual encounters and the very intimate audience, which allowed for a few belly laughs.  A man in the front row (Dave - not our Dave though!) was picked on and dug himself a wee pit of despair as he pretty much outed himself as a bit of a ladies' man.  Another,  a poor 17-year-old-girl, Rebecca, was harangued throughout the show and embarrassed wholly in front of her parents who sat either side of her. Poor girl.  Wrong show for her!

All in all, it was a great show.  Thankfully, we did not get picked on, although I would have loved to have challenged Hardeep's claims that he knew how long folk had been together for based on their body language.  People never believe that Dave or I are as old as we are and are usually almost disbelieving when we say how long we have been together.  We like to shock. 

We certainly are hoping to catch Hardeep again in the future.

Afterwards, we traveled home, although it was still slightly early.

We live across the road from a wee pub called The Milton Inn though, and so I parked the car around the side and we headed in for drinks.  It was the first time that we'd been in since we moved to the area and we were pleasantly surprised by the table service and warm atmosphere.  It's nice to know that date night could just happen straight across the road if needs be!

We put the world to rights, hashed out old wrongs and spoke about what we wanted for the future.  It was great just to reconnect a bit.  Just what we needed.  There was no meal, no champagne.  Just a couple of beers too many, a wee candle (see, I got my candle!), a lot of laughs and some proper talk.  Which is all we need after all this time.  We left the inn, hand in hand, a wee bit tipsy and very happy.

And we always say this, but now it's in writing in public:

We should do this more often.