Happy Valentine!

Bail Bailey is not only a succesful British comedian (I refer you to what I told you about Black Books, but also a gifted singer. Listen to his love song:



Ok, the end is not so happy, but I like the tune, though. Here's my favourite love music, namely Across the Stars, the love theme written by John Williams for Star Wars Episode II and Episode III.



The following video is dedicated to all the Germanists from Namur who had to study some fragments from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, for Bill Bailey is going to tell a joke in Middle English style, the "Pubbe Gagge":



That's a pretty good imitation of Chaucer's style and prosody, I think! If you want to watch a version in which he declaims much quicker, please click here — there's just a slight sound problem.

Manny's great deeds

Remember I told you once about that wonderful series called Black Books, starring Bill Bailey? I found a really good fragment from season 1. In this one, Manny is stuck in the book shop…



And this one when he finds out he can play the piano…



I can play!!

Black Books

Professor Vandelanotte posted today (at 11:38, but it's not a reference to George Lucas' 1138, I'm afraid) on germ@namur a blog entry about the return of Never Mind the Buzzcocks on BBC. The name of Bill Bailey was of course mentioned, for he is one of the guest presentors. In fact, I knew Bill Bailey already because he played the part of Manny in this tremendously brilliant series called Black Books (three seasons of six episodes were made between 2000-2004).

Basically, the action is set around three characters: Bernard Black (Dylan Moran), Manny Bianco (Bill Bailey) and Fran Katzenjammer (Tamsin Greig, whom we have also seen as Dr. Caroline Todd in Green Wing, another Britcom). All of them are completely crazy, but in their own way.

There's a YouTuber who actually put some episodes online. To give you a kind of Hors d'œuvre, here's the first episode of the first series (in three parts), called "Cooking the book".

Part 1

Part 2



Part 3



Note that Manny was given many nicknames throughout the whole series, e.g. Gandalf, Thor or Bigfoot, but my favourite was Gengis Khan.

I wish I had the DVDs so that I could watch all the episodes. But what am I saying? I don't have the time!!! I'm already looking forward to being on holiday in July…