An Important Announcement From The Ministry Of Truth

"Too often the News is all about whose not happy, whose got ripped-off, who feels hard done by, what's not fair, what's not right, whose protesting, whose complaining, whose bitching, whose been forgotten about..and this survey shows that that aspect of life, well it's the plight of very very very few, while most of us see life for what it is; it's a joy, it's a opportunity, it's a blessing. 

We know who we are, we know what we're about and we like it.  That's the news I want to see and hear more of - because that's the story, as the results show, of the vast majority of us."

The legendary and long lost paragraph of George Orwell's '1984',   as channelled from beyond the grave to our very own Mike Hosking on Seven Sharp, first week of May sometime.

Terry Nation without a Dalek in sight...

April 2015, probably the most important date in my calendar as it is the Fortieth Anniversary of the first episode of BBCs post apocalyptic masterpiece - "Survivors".

The original broadcast of “The Fourth Horseman” (the opening episode of the first series of Survivors ) was shown at 20:10 on Wednesday 16 April 1975 on BBC 1, and was seen by just over 7m viewers*. I'm not sure when exactly it made it onto NZ screens.  But I do know I was there, glued to the screen. Of course in the UK some people would have had colour TV while we were still in the age of black and white, but for us antipodeans it didn't matter one jot. Infact my memory of the show is in colour, so go figure, maybe it was just the effect of endless shots of dreary English countryside.

Given that this is a book blog I should add that both Survivors books are well worth reading. First there is Terry Nations book.  My own copy is the classic Futura paperback edition, with poor Abbey looking like she's just suffered an explosion of cocaine all over her face. And then there is  Survivors: Genesis of a Hero, published in the UK in 1977, authored under the pen name of John Eyers — the identity of the real author has never been disclosed.

No spoilers here, so I won't critique them, and 'only for fans' of course...no one would exactly describe them as literary classics.

*Mad Dog Blog

Now THAT'S a title shot if ever I saw one!