I feel like a guinea pig when I’m excited

damn, cavies are the cutest.

i’ve been happy since you decided to go

That guy in the Miracles?  See that guy second from the left?  Is that Romesh Ranganathan in a former life or what?

Ah, I love Romesh.  The surliest, dourest, most hilarious swine on the face of the earth.

Oh, and of course all other music in the galaxy might perish and wither to dust, we still wouldn’t be too badly off as long as we had the recorded output of Smokey Robinson.

Damsel In Distress (1937) – Fred Astaire Film Review

You like Fred?  Or Wodehouse?  Totally worth checking out.  This old chestnut was aired on UK terrestrial telly recently.  I was still waking up on the sofa on Sunday morning, with Beeb 2 airing randomly. blinking and sipping coffee, before I really knew what I was watching.

And what I was mostly thinking, as I became aware that I was watching telly at all, was, “Hello!  This jolly old thing has a bit of a Wodehouse-y feel, what-ho!”

It did.  It really did!  Stray butlers, foppish bemused young chaps, determined foxy females packed with moxie, unlikely plots, millions of bucks and tap-dancing…. It had Peregrine Granville stamped all over it.

Then I remembered Wodehouse had a lost weekend, or decade or something, in Hollywood.  Checked out IMDB and Uncle Bob’s yer Uncle Fred, there it was.

And tbh, a lot of this particular effort is almost directly filched from his books and stories.  In particular it’s a xerox of a lot of the Blandings stories, plus added fancy footwork.  But so what.  All to the good, right?  Astaire is fantastic, a man almost made to be a Wodehouse hero, and could have played Wooster quite credibly I reckon.

If you’re a big fan of Astaire, Wodehouse, vintage b&w films or vintage hoofing, this is the one for you.  Unmissable.