CARIAD LLOYD and JUSTIN EDWARDS – Big Enough to Satisfy Your Beer Buds
Joining Tom Jackson to discuss the postcards from their pasts are actor and comedian and award-winning host of Griefcast, CARIAD LLOYD (Have I Got News For You, QI, Would I Lie to You?, Austentatious, Peep Show, 8 Out of Ten Cats Does Countdown, Murder in Successville) and actor and comedian JUSTIN EDWARDS (The Thick of It, In and Out of The Kitchen, Black Mirror, The Death of Stalin). In this series 3 launch episode we explore the plain weirdness of saucy seaside postcards, revisit some call-centre memories, uncover the extent of Justin’s beermat problem, and learn about Cariad’s undying devotion to David Bowie. Along the way we discover how Worzel Gummidge altered a Hampshire village for ever, what you call a hole in a mountain, and why you should always plan your exit from a pub on a hill. Wish you were here?
The Marble Church, Bodelwyddan, 1970 “Weather perfect. Daddy had sunstroke.”Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens, London, 1981. “Had a meal in a Wimpy bar. Had slight problems with the tube.”The beermat as postcard (or the postcard as beermat.) Selected from Justin’s huge collection of beermats, a latterday comic postcard in the traditional style. The drinkers look ill – not much of an advert for beer… Who came up with the “beer buds” slogan?Another beermat that doubles as a postcard, this one from the Welsh brewer, Buckley. It seems to be one of a series of Welsh castles. Drink Buckleys and collect them all!Justin’s postcard written (but never sent) when he was a drama student in Manchester. A pub in Kirkstone Pass in the Lake District. The lady in the shadows with the chandelier poses a great many questions.Cariad’s traditional comic postcard, a reproduction of a Donald McGill, sent to her by her mother. The sleeper awakes to discover his nightmare was a reality.Another Donald McGill reproduction sent to Cariad. McGill’s typically mismatched couple appear to have fallen out over the wife’s forlorn desire to look like the slim young woman in the bikini.A multiview from Derbyshire, 1978.”Been trying to ring you but keep getting engaged signal. Maybe something wrong with the phone – or it could be that dad did not put it back quite in place after speaking to me on Friday – can you check.”The Falls, Watersmeet, Lynmouth, Devon, 1985. “I’m so sorry our phone call last night was so unsatisfactory.”A Women’s Institute postcard bought by Justin as a nostalgic exercise in trying to find an image of the village he grew up in. The cottage in Braishfield is pictured mid-thatch.Cariad’s David Bowie postcard, which sits above her desk. Bought at the V & A Bowie exhibition, the photograph -The Archer – is by John Rowlands and was taken in 1976 on the Station To Station tour. Is this Bowie as cupid – “throwing darts in lovers’ eyes”?Ai Wei Wei’s “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn” 1995. Cariad keeps this postcard over her desk. The insignificance of art? Escaping the tyranny of the past? The power of creative transformation? (And was it really a Han Dynasty urn at all?)Highland Cattle at Invercault, Deeside, Aberdeenshire, 1962. “Our house was burgled a little while ago, but the XXXXX are still intact.” What is the unreadable word – cassocks? cupcakes? oatmeal?The illegible message – Cossacks? Cabbage? Hassocks? Cabals? A musical postcard of Sustenpass in the Swiss Alps. Some scratchy yodelling at thirty-three and a third.
