® Andy’s blog of blogs

The other evening I caught the last 10 minutes of Tommy showing late night on TV. I’ve seen it various times when I was younger, but not since I’ve been quite so “attuned” to my environment courtesy of my exploring. Hence, the thing I immediately noticed was that Tommy’s holiday camp was at one of the Portsdown forts, and a quick Google turned up this interesting site. As it turns out the vast majority of the film was shot around Pompey!

So interesting fact #1 - I was right, and it was Fort Purbrook.

Interesting fact #2 - at the end of the film there is a short bit of footage of a pier really on fire. I’d assumed it was some stock footage of perhaps one of the Brighton piers. However it was in fact South Parade Pier in Southsea! It turns out the the pier that we’ve regularly walked down is very different now to how it used to be courtesy of a couple of fires around the era of Tommy. The first destroyed the theatre, and the second was actually the result of an accident whilst filming Tommy which did for the rest of the pier. So the footage is real, and the pier now is a much less grand version rebuilt after the Tommy accident.

And interesting fact #3 - the end of the film with lots of large silver balls was filmed at the (infamous) Pounds Scrapyard. Ironically I was talking about Pounds just last night. Over the years the amount of cool things you could see at Pounds as you head across the M275 into Pompey have reduced, but it’s still an interesting target for exploration. However, the owners have a reputation for not “welcoming” visitors, though activity on the site has now greatly reduced ahead of (very lucrative) redevelopment.

Anyhow, time for me to get a copy of Tommy, and watch it with renewed interest!

… that having parties behind your parents’ backing leading to mass destruction is cool mkay, but how totally laid back and not bothered is this guy? To be honest, given the uptight interviewer determined to get him to say sorry, I don’t blame him ;-).

Renault have a long history of doing low volume mid-engined rear-wheel drive fast small cars. I absolutely adore my Vee … every journey however long or short is always an event! Tracing the Renault family tree back from the Vee takes you to the Renault 5 Turbo (the proper one … not the 5 GT Turbo). The pattern with the Renault 5 Turbo is identical to the Vee - take a small cheap hatchback and stick a powerful engine where the rear seats should be, necessitating an appropriate broadening of the arse-end, and then take it racing/rallying.

Here is a nice set on Flickr that puts an Illiad Blue Vee, just like mine, alongside a rather gorgeous Renault 5 Turbo II! If I had the money, I’d love to have a Renault 5 Turbo to complete the “set”, but sadly a good one still costs serious money!

Well I would have done in the past! However then I discovered this!

So of course I’ve seen driving that I’ve considered bad, and heck I’m sure people have seen my car zipping through the traffic and considered me irresponsible. But come on … is there anything more desperate that a web-site to allow you to “report” the driving you’ve seen!?

Read it and weep at BetterDrivingPlease.

So what’s Basingstoke got going for it?

Well there are lots of roundabouts to drive fast around!

And it used to have two cool places to explore - the ex-IBM tower block, and Park Prewett asylum - but they’ve pretty much gone now.

Oh and it’s now a place of religious significant.