Grand Cafe Royal Exchange
The return of Primeval
Velociraptor in John Lewis china department!
Agent Triple P enjoys spotting the local locations which are used for the series: Surrey University in Guildford, Thorpe Park and, most entertainingly, the Bentall Centre and John Lewes in Kingston; Agent Triple P's local department store, where a velociraptor caused havoc in the china department. The producers paid John Lewis £5,000 to film there and the store donated the money to the local Princess Alice Hospice just up the road from Triple P in Esher.
We had actually not watched the last episode of series 3 because we knew about the cliffhanger ending but now we can watch it happy in the knowledge that that particular scene will be resolved when series four shows in January. Hooray!
Hannah looking like a threepenny chew
Dodgy Classical LP covers from the 1970s
Playboy rhinemaidens!
The Planets meets Buck Rogers in the 25th Century!
Sandy Warner: the face of Exotica
Tiki heaven!
Sadly, most of Agent Triple P' friends fail to appreciate exotica and only B will listen to it but the Germans have always had a penchant for "easy listening" music!
Sandy on Exotica Vol III (1959)
Sandy on The Enchanted Sea (1960)
Now, at last, Sandra emerges as a vocalist. When I was asked if I would write these liner notes for her album I thought it was a fitting switch. In this album Miss "EXOTICA" herself emerges as a talented performer whose voice and personality merit the attention her lovely face has attracted heretofore.
Settle back, relax and listen to the "EXOTIC" Sandy Warner
Sandy for Artur Romero from the same shoot as her Primitiva cover
Sandy for Lord Russell's Bongo Percussionists
Sandy for Ethel Azama from the same shoot as Hypnotique
Arthur Lyman and his group
Whilst working as a clerk at the Halekulani hotel in 1954 he met Martin Denny who, after hearing him play, offered him a job in his band. It was Lyman, he claimed, who started the bird calls at the Shell bar which started the whole craze. Lyman left Denny's group and formed his own, going on to record 30 albums. His most successful album was Taboo (1958)which sold over 2 million copies. Most of Lyman's recordings (and some of Denny's) were recorded in the Kaiser Hawaiian Village's geodesic dome.
The Kaiser geodesic dome at Hawaiian Village. It was demolished in 1999
Sandy on Romantica (1961)
So of the three who should you sample? Baxter's orchestra is larger giving it a big-band sound the others don't have. Despite the charms of Miss Warner Denny's music often strays over into the oriental and can be a little too wacky with its exotic bird calls and what have you. For sheer quality of recording and perfomance it is Arthur Lyman that Triple P prefers but a mixture of all three makes for a very satisfying 143 track playlist on our iPod.
Sandy on Exotic Sounds Visit Broadway (1960)
So, mix a Mai-Tai put on some music by Baxter, Lyman or Denny and gaze at the lovely face of Sandy Warner because truly you are in paradise!
Sandy on Exotic Sounds from the Silver Screen (1960)
New British stealth plane
Interestingly, the plane's development only started in 2006 which just shows that it is a lot quicker for a country to produce something on it's own than go into some horrible joint Euro project (c.f. the Eurofighter Typhoon which took twenty years to develop so that many new technologies came along after development began and couldn't be incorporated in the design). Agent Triple P knows someone who was recruited to work on the UK's stealth programme some years ago and he was amazed to find that they were litereally working in some old shed at the back of an airfield somewhere. Not quite all Barnes Wallis type boffins with sliderules but close, apparently.
The £143 million test vehicle will explore the technologies needed for high speed reconnaissance and survellance. It will also have the ability to deliver both bombs and missiles to our enemies (various dodgy ragheads, the French and the Icelanders).
What isn't clear from the picture is how big it is. It would be very disappointing to find that it is eight feet across, for example. Anyway, it's real battle will be to survive the Strategic Defence and Security Review in October. £142 million on the prototype would equate to what exactly for a production vehicle?
Calendar Girl July: Beatrice Rosen
She first came to Agent Triple P's notice when she played a French officer's wife in Sharpe's Peril (2008) looking very effective in her Empire line dress.
Recently she has appeared in blockbusters The Dark Knight (2009) and 2012 (2008). Sadly for Beatrice, at 32 she is probably now too old, given the age of Hollywood leading ladies these days, to hit the big time.
A willowy 5'7" shw has done many fashion shoots for magazines, not surprisingly.
Perhaps, almost inevitably, she is also a singer and is working on her first album having recorded a duet with Gallic singer Stanislas last year.
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