It's all relative if you Google it

While thinking today about my speech for Number One Daughter's wedding on Saturday, and in between times when I should have been working on my freelance stuff and a 4,000-word critical analysis on soap operas, I've been looking out the window at the mobile library. I though our publicans were in for some luck after seeing the end of the rainbow going down their chimney.

And then I started playing around with Google. Bloody fatal.

Far From The Madding Crowd was on my mind, because as you know, the rumour is that it is about to be remade in these parts. From there, I got to Jonathan Firth, who starred in a TV remake of the 1967 John Schlesinger film classic.

Jonathan is Colin's brother.

(I know which one I prefer).

Then I wondered if Peter Firth was their cousin. I say cousin because to look at him he could never be their brother. Oh all right, maybe the wrong side of the blanket then.

Peter Firth played Scooper in the 1970s television series Here Comes the Double Deckers. Were the three Firths related? Google said 'no' but threw up some obscene comparison about the length of Peter Firth's acting career and Colin Firth's penis.

From there I got to the Double Deckers' cast list and wondered what those child actors were doing now. So I went to Wikipedia and clicked through them one by one. I knew about Firth and Brinsley Forde's later careers (the latter was a founder member of Aswad) but I was astonished by the subsequent career of Doughnut, the stereotyped fat boy played by Douglas Simmonds:

Douglas Simmonds (born 18 February 1958 in England), is a British child actor who played the part of Doughnut in the UK television show Here Come the Double Deckers.

Douglas left acting to work in science and medicine, training as a medical student before becoming a theoretical physicist and researcher. Whilst working on string theory, he later expanded this theory to include toroidal hyperspaces. After working for several years for the Department of Health as an expert in Medical Computing he retired and is now a researcher in ancient glyptic art.

Someone must have made that up. Doughnut? String theory?

As comedian Dave Gorman said on Radio 4's Chain Reaction last night, if you want to be a writer, don't be connected to the internet. It gets in the way of disciplined, constructive thought and the storywriting process. I've just googled Dave Gorman to see what he looked like. I recognised his voice but up until that point, I thought he was John Gorman from The Scaffold. Maybe they're father and son.

I know, let's Google it.

That's about it

Love Maddie x