The crowd reaction is done afterwards. When the competition's over for the evening the TV director comes out and says "I need you to all lean forward on your seats, concentrating on the board, and when I move my arm, jump up and punch the air." or "This time, but your hands on your head and shout Nooooo!" or "Now wave your pint of John Smith's about, with the logo towards the camera."

Of course he gets heckled mercilessly while he's doing this, so after ten minutes he's sighing "oh, all right then! SIMON SAYS clap your hands above your heads..."

That should have read "Live" not "Love"!

The original Batmobile in the US TV series had a top speed of only 40mph

He wants it to be Just So. It's why loads of records aren't announced.

WHOLE thing pre-recorded. Fact.

When waiting staff ask if 'everything is alright' it's not because they are keen for you to enjoy your food (though they probably are); it's so that you can't compain about it later when you get the bill.

Too true. All encompassing returns deals ensure that very little stock has to be cleared out. Record companies often supply discounted stock to repromote an album. Recently, the shop with a dog were doing GaGa for £4 pushing it back up to number one. This also boosted sales of the expanded version of the album, which oddly are counted together for chart listings. The vast majority of items in Next sales have only been on sale in a couple of branches previous to discounting. It's hardly some huge con though, just a subtle exploitation of Trading Standards laws to boost footfall at traditionally quiet times of the year. Ultimately, it is up to the consumer to decide if the price is right.

where not only did the audience applause seem to be added on top, but he also turned to acknowledge different sections of said 'audience' ("Thank you! Oh, thank you!")

Also when you call someone from your mobile, the first 'brr, brr' you hear isn't the sound of their phone ringing. For the first couple of seconds you haven't even connected yet, but the sound plays anyway to make you think you have.

The crispy seaweed is usually deep fried cabbage.

and they're revolting.

served in Japan will previously have been deep-frozen to have killed off the various forms of parasites and suchlike at various forms of their lifecycle that all truly wild creatures harbour.

I was surprised to see a certain well-known TV chef in this country using freshly-caught mackerel for sushi served up on the boat from which they had just been caught. While not necessarily dangerous I probably wouldn't do it myself, from experience of preparing fish for table that I've caught myself.

it's a very cold macaroon bar without the coconut-choc covering?

Which are predominantly made from Potato Starch-I believe they are actually vegan. Which is also why they are called "Shakes" and not "Milkshakes"

Venerable Scottish comedian Stanley Baxter is involved in a similar story. His mother was very Kelvinside, and in the days after the war, with rationing still in full effect, her tea parties would always be enlivened by the extremely scarce food - mashed bananas in little triangular sandwiches.

Not actual banana, though : boiled turnip with a generous dosage of banana essence.

Mr Gladwell talks, in his book "Blink", about the Pepsi vs Coke Taste Challenges and how Coke consistently loses them.

Pepsi is sweeter than Coke. So, for someone taking a quick swig of Pepsi and a comparison swig of Coke, the sip of Pepsi might seem to taste better (because it's sweeter) than a sip of Coke.

Further tests show that blind-test consumers actually find a full glass of Coke more palatable than a full glass of Pepsi, but of course the taste challenge, neatly and misleadingly, doesn't account for that.

you sure about that? It's true that the margin on confectionery is much better than on petrol, but at the volume they sell I imagine their profit mostly come from fuel.

as in UK & US mulitplexes are harder to sustain. One idea chains had was "croutons" as a replacement for corn as a cheap , easy to make and sell food to bulk out their profit margins, don't think it caught on.

The Vue in Leeds centre helpfully has a Sainsbury's nearby.

Or go to Hyde Park Picture House, where you can get a normal-sized cup of filter coffee (with complimentary biscuit) and a little tub of dairy ice cream (with spoon in the lid), for less than the cost of even the cheapest options at the multiplex.

than there was on the Apollo Lunar Landing Module.

Back in the mid-Noughties I appeared on a couple of said night-time radio shows, since a band I was in at the time attained a modicum of cult interest for a short while. One such show, mentioning no names, was recorded on a Tuesday afternoon for later tx on Saturday morning, on one of the big national networks. It was, though, done in one take, as live, with studio clocks changed and everything, thus giving the impression of a live event. I believe that the same show, which still goes out every Sat morning, is now pre-recorded in sections (presenter - trailer - band bit - trailer - presenter etc). Like it matters anyway. When J.Peel took a rare holiday from his Radio 1 job, back in the day, ISTR he would pre-record his shows and then give away the plot in suitably droll style: "I'm not here tonight and this is a tape, thus illustrating the magic of radio".

The old Grandstand theme tune has a weird middle bit featuring guitar histrionics.
It is also physically impossible to listen to without being seized by an urge to play "air kettle drum".
A "light orch" classic.

They used to use those opening bars at the end of an episode when something particularly serious had happened. It was colloquially known as the "doom music". I thought it had gone missing when they switched to digital because it wan't recorded and nobody had the sheet music anymore (I may have misremembered this!).

If the paint is all the same, how can the sprayer tell it apart by smell?

Only if Wendy Smith tells it to me

It would have been good for the Digital Switchover people to have advised us of that prior to our August switchover last year.

And it would be even better if someone told them now, so that when you phone up to ask why no-one you know has had a decent signal for 9 months, they don't respond by suggesting that we all get a Sky dish.

that has been launched with the sills and various cavities filled with "No More Gaps" or some such gloop to prevent any chance of rattling and to reduce road noise when the journalists take it out.

If an interview is going badly and he is struggling, the cue to his team to find an an edit point and wind it up is when he says 'you are a good lookin fella/woman'.

watch out for it.

is CGI'd. It's a studio set and there's no tram line up there.

This could probably be a completely new spin off thread called "What bands are otherwise known by" but your 'Shelflife' comment reminds me of when I worked with part of Jamie Cullum's record company where he was often referred to as Jamie Gollum.

to be disloyal to my favourite band, but that's not the only reason Marillion don't play arenas, is it?

Does the Albert Hall not count? Serious query. 'Cos I saw Runrig - on more than one occasion - at the RAH

I was once told by a lawyer that this Act applies to public servants whether they sign it or not, as it is a law. In the same way that, say, the law on burglary applies to everyone- you don't have to sign a piece of paper to acknowledge it.

She said that civil servants are made to sign it as a reminder that it exists (or a gentle threat).

but, unbeknown to him, has been overtaken by technology?

could afford an Audi Quattro in 1981.

The list price was approx 4 times the cost of a Ford Escort - that equates to about £75,000 today.

however it's certainly true about US chocolate, which is one reason why the likes of Hershey bars taste vile to the European palate. It (propionic acid, I think) also used to be added to Mars' M&Ms in order to give them that authentic sour milk taste - not sure if that is still done.

Makes me want to do teacher training.

where Kurt and Brian played 'paper war' whilst invigilating - who could hand out their pile of extra paper first...

Fill in the last six appointments on Parents Evening, with favourite footballing surnames.

I thought space was only visible from The Great Wall of China.

who has a famous french half brother Renault McGann

I've just been listening to a Radio 4 programme about Islam, Christianity and Secularism, but I read that as

"Recommended for Beginners" next to the Koran

... that many different brands of baked beans are made from the same beans with the same sauce, but diluted according to the price of the brand, e.g. Heinz = lots of beans, 100% sauce, next down the line = slightly less beans per can, slightly-watered down sauce, and so on.

In a reverse scenario, the reason you can't buy Wall's beefburgers (as opposed to every other kind of meat product) is because they are exclusive suppliers to Wimpy and have been for decades.

Johnny M wasn't even a zoo keeper

should apologise for this gross deception. I feel my entire life has been built on a lie and I am now unable to trust anything broadcast... (cont'd page 94).

The same kind of tricks have happened in the computer industry.

Back in the 1990s I worked for a place that resold expensive computer systems. There were two models of the basic server, the only real difference was that one ran at a slightly faster speed than the other.

The really expensive components were the memory boards, which had to bought from the manufacturer. The ones for the faster system cost around four times that of the slower one, and yet they looked identical. Indeed they were - the only difference was that an undocumented small switch on the board switched a board from one type to the other.

The same system would also only work with the manufacturer's own hard drives, which again cost about 4 times the price of normal ones. These were actually just standard off-the shelf drives; the manufacturer just charged for formatting them!

From the B3ta.com Question Of The Week, on the subject of "Cheap Tat":

"Years ago I bought an Amstrad Stacking Hi-Fi system. . And as is my wont, I stripped it down because I was fascinated with the "Noise Reduction" button. If you pressed it, a wee red light came on. But to my untrained ear, I couldn't make out the slightest change in the sound. So I had a look.

Turns out that the noise reduction button had one function and one function only. It turned on the LED. It wasn't connected to anything else - just a simple on/off switch for the LED."

(http://www.b3ta.com/questions/cheaptat/post113004)

in the 1980s and their graduate trainees spent some time at their development centre during which time they were presented with the company's products at dinner.

"Rough!"

Is he one of those dentists that asks you if you want the more expensive procedure while he's poking around in your gobhole? As you are unable to speak he takes the nargh argh sound to mean a yes.

are for wimps. Let the dentist drill.

I had a conversation about how there was a dentist who appears to spend a lot of time in this here blog and I wondered if he had a waiting room full of extremely pissed off toothache sufferers. Now I know. This is just the kind of thing that is sending this once great nation to hell in a handcart. Oh well, back to work. Now, where was I?

Used by estate agents, car salesmen etc.

You want to pay X amount.
They want you to pay X + 20%

After a brief silence, they may say - "tell you what, I'm prepared to split the difference to X + 10%, fair enough?" (gestures to shake hands).

That is a reasonable-sounding way to agree a price and many people will do so because disagreeing makes them appear to be unreasonable.

However, they have framed the perameters of reasonableness, not you.

Was supposedly used at skinflick shoots, in pre-Viagra days, in order to stop loss of (shall we say) erectile splendour at crucial moments. No information is available as to choice of flavour but one would imagine probably not menthol.

quiffs, too

as a displaced Northerner living in London for almost 20 years I'm still amused by the natives local football rivalries as they are all clearly rubbish. But I've never seen Palace as a "comedy" team just your average run of the mill team with the odd glory year in the past. A comedy team would be Spurs possibly for pretending to be contenders every season or Chelsea just in general. Of course real comedy teams are the likes of Leeds and any team from Sheffield.

that it's not a real bear.

'Please turn off your mobile phone' signs which say they will interfere with sensitive equipment are not true. I have worked for various equipment manufacturers for years and can report that all their engineers leave their phones on, as indeed do doctors (who, incidentally, have probably not read your notes).

...thing applies to the ban on using mobile phones in petrol stations.

Many years ago, when mobile phones had enormous batteries, it might just have been possible for them to create enough of a spark to ignite petrol vapour. Now the risk is non-existent, but they've kept the ban because they don't want dickheads yammering away on their mobiles while messing around with highly flammable liquids.

Apparently, much the most common cause of fires in petrol stations is motorists driving onto the forecourt with their car already on fire.

...and found that it actually does work:-

MythBusters Episode 33: Killer Brace Position

Video here: Mythbusters - S03e10 - Killer Brace Position

it's delicious.

on an airplane that drop down when there's cabin depressurization? they only last for 10 minutes. If the pilot can't get you down below 8000 feet in 5 minutes you're fucked. Mind you, the pilot's got about an hours worth. Me brother told me that, and he's a pilot. or maybe he was trying to screw me up. as usual.

... and speaking as an ex rubbish intra-mural footballer at uni then a casual footballer until i was around 30 or so, the writhing depends on the injury

slide in for a tackle, miss, then have the left back's knee connect with your head and you just lie inert in frosty grass thinking "ow ow ow ow ow" ... charge along the wing, then try and turn inside the defender, catch your studs on the grass, twist your knee and come very close to snapping your anterior cruciate (the Gazza injury) and you roll around screaming thinking that you're about to spew because of the pain ...

if John Terry catches you late, twice, and he gets sent off, you just giggle of course

Dover sole is so popular in the restaurant trade because it is one of the few fish which improves with age (up to a point..)

Spanking-fresh dover sole is pretty tasteless. Keep it for a few days and the flavour delvelops. Unlike most other fish which goes off very rapidly.

... they all have small but deliberate mistakes in them, so they can tell (and prove) if anyone copies them without permission.

It's not just because of the anagram!

need another clue....how many words

Made the point about restaurant food tasting better because of the hellacious amounts of butter, cream and salt they add during cooking. One of the reasons restaurant steaks taste nicer relates to Archie's comments above.

Basically, they're pretty much going off when cooked. When I worked in a butchery as a Saturday job, the butchers would only take home a steak for their own consumption when it was very dark, had a greenish sheen on the surface and smelled a bit funny. They would trim off the obvious manky bits on the exterior and have it screamingly rare. The ageing tenderises the beef and adds flavour. Don't try this with mince, though, or if you do, cook it very well.