Detterling I won't be tempted into negativity...

Detterling I won't be tempted into negativity in this blessed season...

Detterling I won't be tempted into negativity in this blessed season. I hear what you say but I did send you, Delia and Sebastian warmest Christmas greeting and I won't be taking that back.

What I would like to discuss with you is the plight nationally of the local newspapers. Local newspapers are closing down all over the land and it's a crying shame. I know this issue is also close to your heart as you had for two years your own column in your local newspaper.

(Would it be possible Detters that you could provide for me an  archive of these collected columns?)

The Uxbridge Gazette was so wonderful over the years - now it's swallowed up in something called  Get West London rubbish. I remember when it was a broadsheet back in the Sixties and Seventies and how eagerly it was awaited. It appeared on the news stands on Wednesdays. I featured in it several times over the years. I suppose the best occasion was when in September 1975 it featured a piece entitled:

'Uxbridge student heads off to Oxford University'

How proud my mother, father and Great Uncle Claude were. Great Uncle Claude sent me a present of a Remington manual typewriter. I guess he knew that even back then I had a hankering to be a writer.

My late brother Paul also featured several times - my mother always kept those clippings with the photos of Paul with his Billy Fury good looks. I was never blessed with such good looks but I did have something  else; that Padre Pio-like mixture of manliness and spirituality in my countenance. 

Billy Fury

The Uxbridge Gazette had back in the day a very perceptive film and TV critic. He could sometimes be quite acerbic and I remember him giving Kate O'Mara's Triangle a good seeing to.

Kate O'Mara

Now Detters, in this season of goodwill lets me reiterate my offer to act as a broker of peace between you and your estranged gay nephew. You are not getting any younger and you don't want to pass to Valhalla without a reconciliation. (By the way, I have always imagined your nephew as outrageously camp - something like Sean in Coronation Street. Am I right?)

Well, my offer stands Detters. If you accept it great. And if you don't? Well, in that case Detters, Pog ma Thoin.

GENE