Somebody's not asleep....

What is The Ninky Nonk? Indeed what the dickens is the Pinky Ponk? How does it fly and who’s piloting it? Why is the Tombliboos’ skin stripy but their trousers spotty? And why are they so keen on pulling them down? What does Makka Pakka get out of washing the Tombliboos’ faces so often? And how does Upsy Daisy communicate so well considering her only vocabulary is various intonations of her own name? 

Welcome to the wonderful world of In The Night Garden, the daily slice of surreal, cartoony and baffling nonsense put out by the BBC to round off the programming on Cbeebies every day. BBC1 used to finish the day’s output with a stirring rendition of God Save The Queen, Cbeebies has plumped for tales such as Igglepiggle’s fruitless attempts at finding a quiet spot amongst the trees to get some rest. Spoiler alert; once he finds such a haven he finds he misses his noisy friends too much and, lo and behold, they turn up out of the blue to comfort him. Then he waves his blanket and falls over with excitement. It’s a fitting denouement to another classic episode.

Igglepiggle ponders life's mysteries.

Are the trees in the background real? How do any of the characters fit inside the Ninky Nonk when most shots imply it’s only as high as Upsy Daisy’s skirt. When she’s not hiking it up with her drawstring that is. Why are the Pontipines so prevalent but their blue themed mirror image neighbours, The Wottingers, so rarely seen? Are they off robbing Makka Pakka’s rock collection? Sneakily deflating the Harboos? What do the Harboos do anyway?

Why is Igglepiggle and Tombliboo one word and yet Makka Pakka and Upsy Daisy two? How much LSD was Derek Jacobi forced to imbibe before narrating and singing the gibberish that passes as a script?

All of these questions hang stranded in the air like when the Pinky Ponk farted and parped around the trees and got stuck amongst the foliage. But the biggest and most puzzling question of them all remains: How does all this madness blend together to form the kind of black magic that bewitches little children into sitting transfixed night after night in front of it?

Austria Oh 14, Cuan goes to Embach

The nights are starting to draw in, the evenings are becoming cooler and you find yourself picking lines down that field of cows, if you could only blanket it in six feet of powder. And so with childlike enthusiasm one starts to look forward to the upcoming winter and, like skiing switch, what better way to look forward than to look back, back to that last amazing holiday that provides the inspiration for the next amazing holiday.

The recently expanded Austria Oh Crew have got so excited about next year's proposed Austria Oh 15 trip that they've released a short but oh so sweet taster of their last epic outing, Austria Oh 14. With their eyes firmly on the future this short film documents new arrival Cuantum Leap's debut on the Austria Oh scene.

Five months into his first year, Cuan discovered the Sochi Winter Olympics on the magic telly box and the seed was firmly planted. One month, one car journey, one plane trip, two snoozes on the train and multiple feeds later we find the little boy setting up camp in The Irminator and The L-Man's alpine lair a.k.a. Austria Oh HQ.

With typical panache, invention and insane action, the Austria Oh Crew have created a 110 second masterpiece and a new star is born.

Watch this space.....

March 17th in Embach

March 17th. It's a day of celebration the world over. Everyone becomes Irish for the day and contributes to the widespread paddywhackery, all fuelled by the local offering of stout, no matter how badly it travels. Except in one little corner of Austria. Hidden away amongst towering peaks blanketed in stubbornly white snow, not a dyed green pint in sight, lies a sleepy alpine village whose population have for centuries stuck to their own local traditions.

Until now.........

2014 Main G Published from mrmichaelwarren on Vimeo.

Austria Oh 13 'Midwinter Marauders'

The waiting is finally over, the most eagerly awaited home ski movie since Austria Oh 12 is here at last. Midwinter Marauders is showing in a lounge near you and just to whet your appetite here is a little taster to give you an idea of the mind blowing adventures these crazy folk get up to....

Darts, what's the point?

Darts on the telly, what's the appeal?

With the two competing bodies of world darts staging their world championships over the festive season this is a question many darts fans find themselves facing yet again. A question asked either by a long suffering other half on the neighbouring couch or by disbelieving mates down the pub aghast at the prospect of watching overweight, sweaty men with enough bling weighing down the non-throwing hand to sink a small battleship, throw three small darts at the treble twenty over and over and over again.

Wunnnhunnndddreedd!

Yet this simple concept is enough to keep the baying crowd of thousands in the Alexandra Palace or The Lakeside hanging on every throw of every dart, admittedly a crowd that is fuelled by the free flowing fluids from the bar and pumped up by the cheerleaders, the excitable MC and the boxing style entrances of the players with theme music, nicknames and enough flashing lights to rival an illegal rave in a drugs factory. These truly are gladiators of their own arenas, heroes with physiques seemingly unsuitable for anything other than throwing the tiny tungsten arrows with incredible precision over a distance of 236.86cm. As the late, great commentator Sid Waddell said of the current PDC world champion, 

"If we'd had Phil Taylor at Hastings against the Normans, they'd have gone home."

And what of their oft mocked physical profiles? Well after multiple world champion Martin Adams’ defeat to teenager Jimmy Hendriks (‘there’s only two Jimmy Hendriks,’ roared the crowd), pundit and ex-player Bobby George – who has so much jewellery on that he has to make an appointment in advance with airport security before he can fly – put Adams’ run of poor form down to his recent weight loss and subsequent reduced stability at the oche.

This argument seems to hold sway with the case of Andy ‘The Viking’ Fordham who won the 2004 world championship at an impressive 31 stone. With a warm up regime definitely not recommended by sports scientists, Fordham would forego limbering up and instead stretch for 25 lagers. He claims not to remember that 2004 final and eventually after a stern warning from doctors (liver 75% dead, other 25% in bad nick) he managed to lose 16 stone. In his own words,

“I won’t be able to stop the drinking just like that but I’ve hopefully cut it in half and if you cut what I drink in half that is a hell of a lot.”

 This is also the man, though, who claims he is an athlete because he’s been on Grandstand and wears trainers, and defends his sport by highlighting that,

 “Shooting is in the Olympics and they lie on the floor.”

And yet after he shed the pounds he sunk down the rankings to the fringes of the sport, never to reach anything like the dizzying heights of his previous, weighty achievements.

They may not have the chiselled bodies of Olympic athletes (although it has been rumoured to be put forward as a possible discipline) but add in the pressures of a rowdy crowd, the stakes at risk, and the fine wire between double sixteen and failure being literally a millimetre wide, to succeed they really do need Olympian-like concentration and good old fashioned bottle, although these days 'that' type of bottle is not allowed to be drunk on stage in an exercise in image management from the governing bodies.

Evidence of pure drama in black and white

This all adds up to a thrilling spectacle as each throw can produce the sheer drama of a penalty shootout, tiny mistakes in the release of a dart making the difference between success and failure. Even external factors such as ‘phantom draughts’ on stage causing mayhem such as in the 2012 Championships when James Wade and Adrian Lewis stormed off the stage for 30 minutes complaining about ‘rubbish conditions.’ 

Momentum can shift like a pendulum as players collapse under the pressure only to stage miraculous comebacks as they find their mojo and confidence surges back through the veins. No better man to sum up such a moment, Waddell said during one engrossing and well attended match,

"There was less noise when Pompeii was swamped in lava! Absolute pandemonium here! Barmaids are frozen like Greek statues watching! No beer's been served! Everybody's eyes are absolutely hooked on that board."

So do yourself a favour, buy a board, find a wall owned by someone who doesn't mind it being pockmarked by wayward targeting and to see how it should be done flick on the telly to witness not only a huge, extravagant example of showmanship, but also a genuine nail biting sporting contest going on in the middle of it all.

Brief Encounters

There comes a time in every man's life when the mounting evidence becomes too much to ignore, you can't keep deluding yourself and hoping the problem will magically disappear. Yes, unfortunately, those underpants need changing. The little holes start joining up to make larger holes and it comes to the point where they are no longer performing the functions they were designed for. Long ago they were fresh out of the box but over the years they have slowly worn away, started to resemble a cotton colander and now look more like a funny little cotton skirt as the seat of the pants has gradually eroded and finally given up the ghost. They may be your favourite pair but your partner is probably sick of seeing a faded Mickey Mouse on your butt cheeks anyway so something needs to be done.

This dilemma will no longer fix itself like when you were a kid and your mum would throw such offending garments out as they went through the washing cycle and replace them when she went shopping. You need to get up and sort this out, it's time for the changing of the guard, the fleet need replacing.

The next question is where to start. Well some people may be swayed by such celebrity endorsements as David Beckham's partnership with high street chain H&M, flagship chain store for the handiwork of Bangladesh's most talented six year old tailors. Don't be fooled though, Becks had no greater input into the design of these pants than putting his name on the box and even then it needed spell checking. And what kind of man wants his undies designed by an over-hyped, over dim, footballing husband of a spice girl who may be able to draw a tackle on the pitch but surely not on a piece of paper.

Every self-respecting Briton knows the only place to safely shop for his new range of kecks is good old Marks & Spencers. The dazzling array of produce on offer can be slightly overwhelming; trunks, boxers, y-fronts, cotton, polyester, acrylic, microskin sporty fibre thingummy stuff. There’s a lot of information to take in and as trying them on is not really cricket and asking the assistant is obviously completely taboo, the only clues to work off are the little photo on the pack.

Want to look like this guy?

Now comes the slightly awkward pause as you consider if you want to look like the little cut off picture of a torso in underpants. Deciding if you’d like your package to look like the model’s package is not a decision one likes to dwell on too long so the panic sets in, the vital final judgment can become rushed and the next few years of undercarriage comfort rest on it. Hmm maybe a recommendation from Britain’s favourite footballer could be useful after all. If he can sell fizzy cola drinks in them then surely you can go about your daily business in them too right?

Smart phones, dumb people?

At the risk of ranting away and sounding like a Daily Mail opinion piece or a cranky Granddad or possibly a cranky Granddad who likes nothing better than reading and, crucially, agreeing with the opinion pieces in the Daily Mail, Go Bananas is going to put it right out there and declare its disapproval of smart phones. Woah woah simmer down, quiet in the back there! Yes this blogger is getting increasingly frustrated with talking to the tops of heads of people bent over their phones, who aren't really listening at all and who then pop up and either say, "hmm?" or, "sorry what was that?"

Smart phone, dumb person?

After lengthy scientific studies conducted in the laboratories of The University of Belgooly, 31% of questions or enquiries directed at a smart phone user were left completely unanswered. 23% were replied to after a time delay of 15 seconds, 18% required the question to be asked again and sometimes for a third time.

For devices supposedly invented to bring people together and increase dialogue, they really are killing off the art of conversation and the spontaneity of meeting new people. Who hasn't been in the pub or cafe with a group of friends only to have their conversations regularly punctuated with referral to smart phones, the latest app or facebook updates? Any natural break in a chat will immediately be seized upon as a chance to slyly check emails and texts. Next time you arrange to meet a friend in the pub, make sure to arrive a bit late and you can be guaranteed they will be face down engrossed with their phone when you arrive, if they are on time that is.

In the cinema as soon as the end credits start rolling the theatre will be bathed in the glow of phones and increasingly, smart phones, powering up or, more frequently, switched off silent mode as one could never manage 2 hours without it completely turned off. Not a second is to be lost in catching up with the world and seeing which South American winger Liverpool have been linked with by some bloke in a studio who has 24 hours to fill with sports news but who also ran out of creditable items 3 hours beforehand.

You may even be reading this in a public place on your smart phone and if so have a look up, someone may be trying to talk to you. Go Bananas urges you to put your smart phones away, catch the eye of the barman/waitress/person next to you and start a conversation. You never know who you might meet. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution rests its case.