I caught the tail end tonight of the latest episode of Stephen Fry’s coast to coast travels across America and have to say it was hilarious.
The comedian and all round brainiac arrived at the Old Tucson Studios to take in the spirit of the True West and ended up in a mock show down with the local Marshals.
Fry managed to out monologue your average Bond villain and distract the deputies long enough to take out two of the lawmen. But when it came to fastest on the draw he failed and took a slug to the chest.
What followed was one of the most underplayed death scenes I’ve ever witnessed, but a career in westerns surely beckons. In fact, if Alan Rickman isn’t reprising his uber villain role for Die Hard 5 then I’d suggest Fry audition for the next stereotypical Hollywood Brit baddie.
I’m going to watch the first half now on the marvellous BBCiPlayer - it’s free to watch the 5th episode online until 23 November which includes New Mexico, Los Alamos, staying with the Navajo in Monument Valley and visiting the Tucson plane boneyard.
You can buy the book Stephen Fry in America at Amazon.co.uk where it’s currently number 25 in the Christmas shopping charts and read an excerpt on his website which is impressively Web 2.0 with podcasts and Twitterings too!
My post about modern day wagons yesterday led me last night to hunt down my copy of a recent book on the great migration west by covered wagon: Wagons West: The Epic Story of America’s Overland Trails
Frank McLynn’s story of the quarter of a million American pioneers who trekked from Missouri to the American West between 1840 and 1849 is simply fantastic to read and makes you realise that modern day adventurers have it easy with their back-up crews, GPS navigation, satellite phones and modern day medical kits!
The story of pioneer life was celebrated in the 1950s and 60s on the classic Western television series ‘Wagon Train‘ which starred Ward Bond and Robert Horton.
It proved so popular - #1 in the Nielsen Ratings for the 1961-1962 television season according to Wikipedia - that it’s said Gene Roddenberry sold his Star Trek TV show to the American networks as “a Wagon Train to the stars.”
I picked up a 1961-issue Daily Mirror kids comic-style album last year in a junk shop that idolises the show. It’s a fab read and I want to share the artwork so am going to post the cartoons for the ‘Wagon Train’ story over the next week or two. The first one is below - the caption reads:
“Gold! Gold for the picking up!” The thrilling message came winging its way out of the West, and the forty-niners, the 25,000 men, women and children who travelled clear across a continent to search for untold wealth in the earth, joined the hundres of thousands of others who had already crossed from east to west by covered wagon drawn by teams of oxen or horses.
If only there was gold in them there hills today, now that the US national debt is running at more than $10 trillion!. If you want to take your mind off the state of the stockmarket you can buy a few episodes of the Wagon Train TV show on Amazon.co.uk
