I was surprised to hear my name on the Radio 4 Obituary show this afternoon. It turned out that it was Ian Robertson Gray, who worked for DC Thompson on the Beano and invented Dennis the Menace’s dog Gnasher.

P.S. You can buy the figurine (and many others) here.

Our school (nearly) did a production of Jesus Christ Superstar back in 1974. We were on a run- Joseph, Rock Nativity, Godspell. At the full dress rehearsal, as Jesus stood dying on the symbolic cross, I lit the theatrical smoke pellets to show up the light beams for the resurrection.

One would have been more than enough. Two was way too much and the rehearsal quickly ground to a halt as the musicians couldn’t see their music. They then couldn’t see the exit as everyone coughed their way out of the hall!

Then the bombshell- we didn’t have musical clearance, wouldn’t be able to get it and were told we couldn’t perform it. (If we had gone ahead we would have been prosecuted).

The music teacher was gutted. So was I- I had a tube of pellets left & now knew they were far too smoky! I stuck to flashes and dry ice after that.

It wasn’t immaturity-just lack of experience. (H/T James)

Ian Appleby over at Imagined Community will be hosting a round-up of the pick of September’s posts by Blogpower members. If you’ve enjoyed a post on a Blogpower blog, why not send the URL to Ian at blogpowerroundup@googlemail.com? Nominations need to be received by 5pm on Sunday 30th September and you don’t have to be a Blogpower member to put a blog forward.

Modesty* prevents me from suggesting one of my posts, although there are nearly fifty of them to choose from!

(* OK so I lied.)

As a kid, I wrote to a few businesses over the years and was bowled over by their going the extra mile. Three examples stick in my mind:

-I was given a board game by a friend called Scoop! that had a major piece missing (a sort of cardboard telephone/randomiser device). It was a great game but not the same playing it without the random factor. I dropped a line to the John Waddingtons Head Office and got a nice letter back saying that sadly, it was no longer in production but that they would have a rummage round and see what they could come up with. A week or so later, a parcel arrived with the piece enclosed.

-I discovered that venerated lighting Company Rank Strand Electric had a free quarterly house magazine called Tabs!, available on request. The first or second one I received was their hundredth issue and I dropped them a line asking if they had any back issues for sale. Again, a week or so later, a large jiffy bag arrived with about forty issues enclosed, some going back fifteen or twenty years. They had rummaged around their oddments and effectively given me one of each of all their spare copies.

-On knowing that I was going down to London with my Dad for something, I wrote to the Manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, asking if it was possible to visit backstage. I got a lovely letter back telling me that whilst they didn’t normally organise visits for individuals, if I went to the Stage Door at 10am and asked for someone by name (I think it was the Master Carpenter), they would give me a quick look. He also apologised that he wouldn’t be able to meet me that day as he was elsewhere and finished off the letter with a P.S. paraphrasing my own- “Stage struck for thirty lovely years!” (I think I had claimed three…)

Today, this sort of thing is called giving excellent customer service , but it isn’t quite the same thing when you are disputing your gas bill. On these occasions, I would have come across as young, naive, polite but somewhat ignorant of business. However, I also would have conveyed buckets of youthful enthusiasm for the subject and someone else being genuinely interested in what you do has a great feelgood factor.

I also had this effect on adults in the flesh as well. My Mum had an Offy (Off License, a beer & Wine Store) for a couple of years and I would help out at weekends and holidays. The Tudor Crisps man once gave me a number of free bags for helping him carry the boxes in, checking the reject stock and being interested in how crisps were made (and why they didn’t always get packed correctly). They were all plain though, as they only carried a surplus of plain bags for shortfalls & faults. He told me to swap them for my favourite flavours from the shop stock!

On that trip to Drury Lane, the Master Carpenter wasn’t actually in so I was reluctantly taken onstage by the Stage Manager, for a “quick look”. I ended up staying a couple of hours and being taken up onto the Grid by the Flyman as well as being shown all the mind boggling stage machinery.

Tim Ireland’s response to the UK media.

(He’s back on a temporary blog)