#0000ff; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> An Advent Calendar of My 2020 Photographs
Advent Calendar 1
Monthly Links
Yet again we get to the end of a month (how?) and it’s time for the usual collection of links to items you may have missed earlier. There seems to be a lot in this month so let’s not waste time …
Science, Technology, Natural World
Science doesn’t always get things right. Here are arguably science’s top 10 erroneous results. [LONG READ]
Believe it or not there are unaccompanied planets wandering the cosmos; they’re mystery worlds and hard to find.
There is now DNA evidence that dogs and ancient humans migrated together.
One of the scientists responsible for destroying the nest of so-called murder hornets in USA talks about the experience.
Once feared to be extinct in the UK, the great fox-spider has been rediscovered on MoD land in Surrey.
The platypus is a mysterious creature, the more so because its fur is bioluminescent.
Still in the animal kingdom, the Popa Langur is a lithe tree-dweller living primate with a mask-like face and a shock of unruly grey hair which lives in Myanmar – and it is new to science.
And not quite so animal, there is a fleet of small green robots driving around Hounslow in west London.
Health, Medicine
As in previous months I’m leaving all things Covid out of these posts, but there are a number of items elsewhere on my blog, mostly about vaccine development and logistics.
MPs have criticised NHS England’s IT plan, saying it is expensive and risky. And no wonder; government (and especially the NHS) know nothing about IT, won’t take advice from people who do know, don’t learn from past mistakes, always choose the cheapest supplier, and then keep changing the requirements.
Sexuality
The clitoris has but one function: female orgasm. Which is probably why medical science ignores it: it isn’t an essential medical feature or problem. [LONG READ]
An archive of two centuries of handmade erotic objects is witness to overlooked and hidden desire.
Environment
Why the wolf should be an essential part of our landscape and not an object of fear and loathing. [LONG READ]
I’m always amazed at how long seeds can remain viable. A scientist has discovered the grass-poly a rare plant which has reappeared from buried seed after conservationists restored an almost disappeared pond in Norfolk.
Social Sciences, Business, Law
No, you can’t use Magna Carta to avoid Covid lockdown restrictions, and here’s why. [LONG READ]
Which takes us nicely on to …
History, Archaeology, Anthropology
Experimental archaeologists are making craft beer from yeast recovered from ancient artefacts.
Meanwhile British archaeologists are investigating a huge “mega henge” in Dorset.
Beds have a bizarre social history and are older than we might think.
In fourteenth-century England, one of the only ways a woman could get a divorce was if her husband was impotent. But first, she had to prove it in court. That’s a job for the medieval penis investigators. [LONG READ]
Food, Drink
So tell me about the difference between cognac and armagnac. [LONG READ]
Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs
And finally …
What was invented by American, John J Loud and changed a lot about writing? Yes, the humble ballpoint pen.
Jelly up the Nose
Now this is potentially very interesting, and if it holds up could be hugely important.
Last week scientists at University of Birmingham reported developing a nasal spray which could provide protection against Covid-19 – although the work has not yet been peer-reviewed and published in the scientific literature.
Yes, OK, you may say; so what? Well the interesting – and potentially important – part is that it is based on two naturally occurring polysaccharide (polymerised sugar) gelling agents, carrageenan (E407/E407a) and gellan (E418), which already have worldwide approval for use in the food industry – so they’re already safety tested and widely available. This means, if the results hold up in vivo, a nasal spray could be developed and manufactured quite quickly and presumably cheaply.
The other interesting part is that the nasal spray uses the gelling properties of the two agents to encapsulate the virus particles (thus neutralising them), rather than any form of biochemical/medical destruction.
The spray could be especially useful in situations where it is difficult to provide normal “barrier” methods to inhibit transmission – although it is unlikely to be a replacement for such measures.
It seems to me the importance goes even wider than this. Surely such a method should be useable as a protective against many other air-borne viruses (like colds and flu) and possibly even bacteria.
This seems so simple, one has to wonder why we’ve never thought of it before!
More on Covid Vaccines etc.
[Warning: LONG READ]
Last week’s New Scientist carried several good articles on Covid-19 vaccines etc. If you have access to New Scientist or their website (which is paywalled) they’re worth reading. As usual, as they’re paywalled I’m going to be a little naughty and give you a key extracts from three of the articles. (Links to the articles are at the foot of the page.)
We can’t be certain the coronavirus vaccines will stop the pandemic
So things look good. But we are still a long, long way from a vaccine that will get us back to life as normal. That is in no small part due to the huge challenge of manufacturing, distributing and administering one … plus the reluctance of a significant minority of people to get vaccinated.
How long will immunity last? … We simply don’t know yet how long protection from any vaccine will last.
Vaccine efficacy does not always predict vaccine effectiveness … various reasons …a major one is that the deployment of a vaccine on the ground, to millions or billions of people, is much more challenging than administering it within a tightly regimented clinical trial. That is especially true of a two-shot vaccine that relies on people showing up to two appointments, often weeks apart.
The trials aren’t going to tell us what, if any, effect a vaccine has on severe illness … unless urgent changes are made to the way the trials are designed and evaluated, we could end up with approved vaccines that reduce the risk of a mild infection but do not decrease the risk of hospitalisation, [ICU] use or death. This seems outlandish, but … it comes down to the trials’ end point. In all the phase III trials, this is defined as the prevention of mild covid-19 symptoms … such a result tells us next to nothing about whether the vaccine is stopping infected people from getting really sick.
The trials appear designed to answer the easiest questions in the least amount of time, not the most clinically important ones … It is possible to do a Covid-19 clinical trial with severe disease as an end point … but it would be a major undertaking because that outcome is still quite rare. The studies do not have adequate numbers of patients to be able to reliably tell us if they prevent severe disease.
We don’t know how people who have had the virus and recovered will respond to any of the vaccines … We also don’t know whether the vaccines will put pressure on the virus to mutate.
The seemingly simple question “does this Covid-19 vaccine work?” is surprisingly hard to answer.
The Biggest Logistics Challenge in History: What will it take to get a covid-19 vaccine to the world?
Vaccines don’t save lives … Vaccination does.
When a Covid-19 vaccine is approved, it will trigger a staggeringly complex chain of events. These events must occur in perfect lockstep using a global supply chain that needs to reach even the planet’s most remote areas – the same supply chain that left parts of the world in desperate need of things like disposable gloves and protective equipment just months ago. The scale and magnitude of what we’re talking about doing is just unparalleled.
The key to overcoming complexity is planning and planning early.
How many people need to be vaccinated to end the pandemic depends on how effective the vaccine is, and how long the immunity it provides lasts … that figure [may be] 60 per cent. Given we now number 7.7 billion, and most of the vaccine candidates in late-stage trials require at least one booster, that is a staggering 9 billion or so doses.
Pfizer and BioNTech plan to make enough doses to vaccinate 25 million people by the end of 2020, and 630 million people in 2021 … Making all this vaccine requires a lot of upfront cash.
The US government has invested $6.5 billion in Covid-19 therapeutics and vaccines … [and] … will own more than 700 million doses from at least six different companies. The UK government has signed [deals] agreeing to buy a total of 340 million doses at set prices from at least six firms.
Once vaccines have been approved and manufactured … the challenge remains to package, ship and administer them to more people and in a shorter … time than ever before. While supplies like alcohol swabs, gloves, bins for used needles, pallets, plastic wrap and syringes can all be made by a wide array of manufacturers, the scale of the demand may be hard to cope with.
One of the challenges … is that vaccines are shipped by air and can arrive almost anywhere on the planet in one to three days. Syringes, being bulkier and with a shelf life of around five years, are typically sent by boat and truck. They can take two to four months to reach their destination.
Covid-19 vaccines will be stored and shipped in special glass vials. These are resistant to shattering at temperature extremes and less chemically reactive than standard glass … almost exclusively made from borosilicate glass. The main worry is that this glass requires special sand … and a breakdown at any point in the chain could bring vaccination efforts to a halt.
Once the vials are filled, they will need to be distributed – and quickly. The … airline industry … has estimated that providing a single dose to everyone on the planet would require enough vaccine to fill 8000 Boeing 747 cargo planes.
How they are transported is another challenge: all 12 of the leading vaccine candidates will need to be kept cold to stabilise the sensitive ingredients. Moderna’s [vaccine] will need to be stored at -20°C, a temperature that can be reached by most household freezers. [Pfizer’s] vaccine will need to be far colder: -70°C. That requires special freezers that can reach -80°C, the kind used to store things like bacterial cells in labs or sperm in fertility clinics. Pfizer has designed new insulated, suitcase-sized containers that will be packed with dry ice to maintain temperatures below -70°C and can keep the vaccine stable for up to 15 days. Each container can hold up to 4875 doses and will need to be refilled with 23 kilograms of dry ice every five days.
At some air hubs in the US and Europe, UPS is building freezer farms. Each of the 600 freezers in one of its farms will be able to hold 48,000 doses of vaccine.
Things get trickier when products are on the road … it gets most difficult in the “last mile” … In low and middle-income countries, drivers on motorbikes typically deliver vaccines and other medical products to villages in remote areas.
More worrisome are unanticipated shortages … there are a lot of hypotheticals and you have to plan and prepare for all of them … you need to have the right infrastructure and capacity in place to handle what’s going to be a relatively short, sharp shock to the supply system … coordinating the administration of a vaccine and booster on a global scale isn’t something the world has experience with … at [the scale] needed to open up society.
Political challenges to overcome, not least the willingness of people to actually get vaccinated.
In the UK … there are concerns that changing trade agreements under Brexit could delay the transit of vaccines or even leave them stranded at the border.
As long as we leave a region or country without access, the virus will come back
Heidi Larson interview: How to stop covid-19 vaccine hesitancy
One of the reasons rumours and misinformation are getting more traction now is because we have a lot of uncertainty. Things are changing every day, and people are anxious and want an answer. We have a perfect storm for rumour spread.
In the UK, the US and other countries, in May only 5 per cent said they would definitely not take a vaccine. Now, that’s up to more like 15 per cent.
Across the UK and US is if you are lower income … you are non-white and female, you are more likely to refuse a Covid vaccine … These communities could benefit the most but they are the least trusting of government.
We don’t have a misinformation problem as much as we have a relationship problem [between the public and health systems].
What reasons do people give for not wanting to use the vaccine?
Safety … It’s “too new” … Could we get long covid from the vaccine?
We have to do a better job of explaining why things are moving faster. We are not short-cutting old processes. It’s because we have brand new [vaccine] platforms, new technology.
On the health authority side you get more formalistic “everybody do this” messages, it’s almost monotone. The public has a lot of different questions. So when they hear the same message they think we [public health officials] really don’t hear them, that’s not answering their questions.
The Covid response is a real opportunity to change [health authorities’] relationship with the public. If we rebuild our relationship with the public so they feel we are a caring, listening health authority or government, that will make a huge difference.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24833093-100-we-cant-be-certain-the-coronavirus-vaccines-will-stop-the-pandemic/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24833093-800-what-will-it-take-to-get-a-covid-19-vaccine-to-the-world/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2259876-heidi-larson-interview-how-to-stop-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy/
Monthly Quotes
And lo, they said it is time for our monthly round-up of quotes, interesting and amusing.
In February 1881 William Cox was charged with bigamy, having married Caroline in 1875 and Rosina in 1880. In his defence, evidence was given that Caroline had married George in 1873, which would have made her marriage to William void and his marriage to Rosina valid. But it was then proved that George had also been married before, which would have made his marriage to Caroline void, her marriage to William valid, and William’s marriage to Rosina void! At this point the magistrates seem to given up, and simply discharged William, who was to be found living with Rosina at the time of the subsequent census.
[Rebecca Probert; Divorced, Bigamist, Bereaved? The Family Historian’s Guide to Marital Breakdown, Separation, Widowhood, and Remarriage: from 1600 to the 1970s]
If you can imagine something, then someone in history has carved, drawn, painted, etched, handwritten, collaged and sewn it into pornography.
[Hannah Rose Woods; https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/poking-fun]
If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you. If you really make them think, they’ll hate you.
[Donald Robert Perry Marquis, American Journalist (1878-1937)] (h/t John Monaghan)
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease; or was it made to preserve all her children?
[Gerrard Winstanley; 1619; Founder of The True Levellers]
If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter.
[Blaise Pascal; mathematician; Lettres Provinciales; 1657]
In some sense, the problems of the world are me. The world I live in is a reflection of me. If the world is in a state of panic, it must be because that state of panic exists within me. Therefore, I attend closely to the state of panic I feel in myself. I don’t try to force it to stop … knowing that it has always been futile …
[Brad Warner, “Responding to Fear” at http://hardcorezen.info/responding-to-fear/6862]
I also believe in karma. I know it’s somewhat controversial. But I believe that things will turn out for me precisely as they are meant to. There is only one thing I can do to avoid whatever pain or difficulty is in store for me, and that is to do as much good as I can whenever I have an opportunity. That is the only sort of activity that might change the course of my own life . In that sense, I have nothing at all to fear. Fear is just something extra that gets in the way of my being able to offer help when help is needed.
[Brad Warner, “Responding to Fear” at http://hardcorezen.info/responding-to-fear/6862]
The idea of two people spending their lives together was invented by people who were lucky to make it to thirty without being eaten by dinosaurs.
[Kevin Dolenz, St Elmo’s Fire; 1985]
5.5 million is an decent estimate of the number of insect species (8mil+ not unrealistic according to some). There are around 6500 species of mammal. So, for every mammal species there are likely ca.1000 insect species. Worth thinking about next time you watch a nature documentary.
[Prof. Adam Hart; @AdamHartScience on Twitter]
If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need.
[Cicero]
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
[George Orwell]
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
[Borges]
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
[Stephen Hawking]
Or in the words of George Bernard Shaw:
Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
Horrible Times 15: Day 250
So we’re now at day 250 of Covid isolation, and things are going downhill.
Here are a few things that have happened since my last report on day 200.
| Good | Not So Good |
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So WTF happens next? Fates permitting another update on day 300.
Covid #3
Let’s have another catch-up on some of the Covid-19 news (as of yesterday).
[References at the bottom of the page.]
Vaccination Programmes
There have been a number of news reports recently about how the NHS is going to meet the challenge of a mass vaccination against Covid-19 – when we do eventually get a vaccine.
As already hinted, this no trivial task.
- There is the question of space – real estate – to do the work. Space which is secure, safe and can be easily disinfected; and available for an extended period.
- Then, as we’ve discussed before, a large number of heavyweight freezers may be required to store the Pfizer vaccine at around -75°C ±15°C. Your domestic freezer can’t get near that! And of course the cold supply chain.
Even if vaccines are stable long-term at domestic fridge temperatures (2-8°C) large numbers of commercial-grade fridges will be needed. - And not least there is the question of manpower. Pulling doctors and nurses away from their day-to-day work will be essential, but will have a knock-on effect on “normal” healthcare:
Health leaders warned that surgeries will not be able to offer their full range of care for patients from next month as doctors and nurses will be immersed in administering jabs at more than 1,200 mass vaccination centres across England, potentially including sports halls, conference centres and open air venues.
- All of which assumes there is enough vaccine, in the right places, at the right time, every time, with no supply issues.
The availability of manpower is why the programme will take the length of time (up to 18 months) that’s being discussed. Here’s my very rough demonstration of why (in very crude figures and assumptions; but it is a demonstration):
- The UK population is around 70 million and every one will need two doses of vaccine.
- Assume we have 7000 FTE** clinicians sticking needles in people.
- And assume each of those can give 70 injections (1 every 5 minutes) in a single shift. (That’s 6 productive hours in an 8 hour day, which is fairly standard productivity.)
- That means we need (70 million x 2) / (7000 x 70) or roughly 300 days to complete the work.
- No-one can work flat out, every day, for the duration (a year plus). They need time out, rest days etc. Add 20% (ie. let them have “weekends” off).
- Then there is sickness and other absences. Add another 15%.
- And you’ll never achieve 100% occupancy; there will always be gaps in the schedule where people don’t turn up, the appointment can’t be filled, people decline, etc. Add another 20%.
- That means we need to increase the time by 55%, which gives us 465 days.
Or 67 weeks (15-16 months) if working 7 days a week.
Or 93 weeks (21-22 months) if working 5 days a week
[** FTE = Full Time Equivalent. 1 person working 5 days a week is 1 FTE. 5 part-timers each working 1 day a week is also 1 FTE.]
But it isn’t that simple because:
You see why this is such a huge logistical challenge. As one of the Guardian articles linked below says:
[There is] concern that the NHS does not have enough staff or infrastructure, such as freezers to store vaccines and lorries to transport them, and could become embroiled in the sort of “desperate scramble” for kit seen in the spring with personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators.
This is very complex stuff. Two jabs, three weeks apart, with people having to recover somewhere for 15 minutes after they have it – that is far more complex than administering the winter flu jab.
That’s before one even starts thinking about the priorities – and you’d better have some bloody good reasons why the priorities are what they are, because whatever they are they’ll be challenged.
Herd Immunity
Looking at the other side of the coin, there is a long article by Dr Tara C Smith, an academic epidemiologist and infectious disease researcher, discussing why The Concept of Coronavirus Herd Immunity is Deadly and Dangerous. This looks at, inter alia, issues with the Great Barrington Declaration.
[T]he actual implementation of this strategy would fail for a number of reasons … First, “vulnerable people” is not limited to just the elderly … There are no details to how we would protect these people other than requiring them to stay in lockdown indefinitely … separating the “vulnerable” from the rest of society is, essentially, impossible. Both our lived experiences and data say that we cannot separate the vulnerable from others. We share homes and workplaces with them … We need to consider whether asking these people to isolate from society will compound the disadvantages many already experience in society.
Add to that … We don’t yet have a vaccine to help speed up any herd immunity. We don’t have a firm handle on how long any immunity might last; so there is no guarantee that herd immunity is even possible for Covid-19. There’s a significant minority of people who have “Long Covid” – is it fair to knowingly inflict this on more people, or indeed to knowingly increase the number of deaths? How and where do you draw an ethical line?
Basically the idea of herd immunity without a vaccine is a non-starter.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/11/thousands-of-hospital-staff-to-be-deployed-in-covid-vaccine-rollout
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/10/gps-in-england-will-scale-back-care-to-deliver-covid-vaccines
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54902909
https://www.self.com/story/coronavirus-herd-immunity
Covid & Others News Update
For those that have missed it, a quick update of yesterday’s news on the Covid-19 vaccine, as a follow-up to my post of yesterday.
First of all the Guardian expands on the huge logistical problems distributing a vaccine: Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine poses global logistics challenge. The scale of the operations required is just mind-boggling.
Secondly the Guardian also reports that GP clinics are expected to administer 975 injections a week in 12-hour days, 7 days a week – roughly one every 5 minutes. (That’s 975 per clinic, there will be one clinic per area.)
The same Guardian piece reports Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, sounding some good words of caution in the House of Commons:
[T]he best way to liberate and to get life closer to normal is a vaccine … [but] … We do not have a vaccine yet but we are one step closer … There are many steps still to take. The full safety data is not yet available and our strong and independent regulator, the MHRA, will not approve a vaccine until it is clinically safe. And until it’s rolled out we won’t know how long the effect lasts for or its impact, not just on keeping people safe, but also on reducing transmission.
(One fly in that ointment is that the MHRA is not entirely independent, as it’s a government funded body.)
In other news former Prime Minister, Sir John Major, that as a result of the stupidity and ineptitude of the current government, the outlook for next year is bleak:
It now seems that on 1 January next year, Brexit may be even more brutal than anyone expected.
Covid-19 Vaccine
I didn’t blog this yesterday as I wanted to catch up on all the news reports …
Pfizer/BioNTech have announced that their vaccine against Covid-19 is 90% effective. So of course everyone is jumping about in delight and expecting that everything is going to be fixed by next week (slight, but only slight, exaggeration).
[T]he results are preliminary, have been shared only by press release, and the trials are not yet complete.
Frankly I consider this scientifically and medically irresponsible as it will get many people demanding the vaccine now, create disenchantment when they can’t, and undermine the current lockdown. The trials are continuing, the final data has not been analysed, nor peer-reviewed, nor published, nor submitted to the regulators. Press release is not the way to publish scientific research; it is purely a mechanism for bumping up a company’s share price.
So for once I was pleased to see Boris Johnson adding a touch of realism to the proceedings. Here are some more of the key snippets from the news items which show why this is not a magic bullet (references at the bottom).
[T]the announcement is just the first hurdle of many … regulatory hurdles will have to be overcome – and that is before we even think about manufacture and distribution.
Nothing in medicine is 100% safe – even something we take without thinking, like paracetamol, poses risks.
We also don’t [yet!] know how protective the vaccine is in different age groups.
[I]t must be approved by licensing authorities.
The prime minister said “if and when” the vaccine was approved for use, the UK “will be ready to use it”.
[W]hen scientists succeed in making a coronavirus vaccine, there won’t be enough to go around.
[A] huge level of production will be required, and then there is the matter of who gets the vaccine first and how mass vaccination would be rolled out.
Each … country will have to determine who it immunises first and how it does that.
[S]hould the Pfizer vaccine pass all the vigorous safety checks … older people would be first in line for the vaccination.
As the initial supply will be limited, reducing deaths and protecting health care systems are likely to be prioritised.
In the UK, older care home residents and care home staff are top of the preliminary priority list. They are followed by health workers such as hospital staff and the over 80s.
There are also logistical challenges, not least as the vaccine needs to be stored at -80°C, meaning that even in developed countries there could be difficulties in distributing the jab.
The Pfizer/BioNTech candidate … needs -80°C storage, and that is not available down at your local pharmacy [or GP]. Pfizer has been rounding up as many ultracold freezers (and as much dry ice production) as they can, but … this is going to be a tough one … the press release talks about getting 1.3 billion doses of this vaccine during 2021, but actually getting 1.3 billion doses out there is going to take an extraordinary effort, because you’re getting into some regions where such relatively high-tech storage and handling becomes far more difficult … With demanding storage requirements, the more people that are within a short distance of a Big Really Cold Freezer, the better. And the more trucks (etc.) that you have to send down isolated roads to find the spread-out patients, the worse.
Given that this vaccine needs two shots to be effective 1.3 billion doses is a nowhere near what is needed; it would provide enough to fully vaccinate only about half of India and nowhere else!
Maintaining vaccines under cold chain is already one of the biggest challenges countries face and this will be exacerbated with the introduction of a new vaccine … You will need to add more cold chain equipment, make sure you always have fuel (to run freezer and refrigerators in absence of electricity) and repair/replace them when they break and transport them wherever you need them.
Frankly, we’re in the middle of the second wave, and I [Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer] don’t see the vaccine making any difference for the wave we are now in. I’m hopeful that it may prevent future waves, but this one we have to battle through to the end without vaccine.
WHO has said it does not expect to see widespread vaccinations against Covid-19 until the middle of 2021.
[Boris Johnson] added it was “very, very early days”. He warned people not to “rely on this news as a solution” to the pandemic. “The biggest mistake we could make now would be to slacken our resolve at a critical moment,” he said.
So yes, this is good news and there is light at the end of the tunnel, but it is a very long tunnel! We will get out of the tunnel, but meanwhile stay safe!
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/11/09/vaccine-efficacy-data
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/09/uk-rollout-of-covid-vaccine-could-start-before-christmas
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/09/what-has-pfizers-covid-vaccine-trial-found-and-is-this-a-breakthrough
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54879676
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-54880084
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54027269
Ten Things: November
This year our Ten Things series, on the tenth of each month, is concentrating on things which are wackier than usual, if not by much. From odd road names to Christmas carols by way of saints and scientists. So here goes with November …
Ten Comedy Catchphrases
- “You dirty old man”
Harold Steptoe; Steptoe and Son (right) - “Silly Old Moo!”
Alf Garnett; Till Death Us Do Part - “Don’t panic!”
Lance-Corporal Jones; Dad’s Army - “You stupid boy”
Captain George Mainwaring; Dad’s Army - “It’s good night from me…”
“…and it’s good night from him”
Ronnie Corbett & Ronnie Barker; The Two Ronnies - “I’m Free”
Mr Humphries; Are You Being Served? - “Listen Very Carefully, I Shall Say This Only Once”
Michelle Dubois; ‘Allo ‘Allo! - “I have a cunning plan”
Baldrick; Blackadder - “May your god go with you”
Dave Allen - “Just like that”
Tommy Cooper