Most people around the world will know Ronnie Barker from his big hit shows, The Two Ronnies and Porridge, and maybe Open All Hours.
Mr Barker started as a stage actor, then moved into radio with a part on The Navy Lark for something like eight years. As well as playing “Fatso” Johnson, he also played other random voices, as did all the cast.
He moved onto tv in The Frost Report, and this lead to the shows mentioned above.
He is something I think is very unfair.
In the days when we were allowed to travel, I went to the USA a lot. A convenient thing to get was an annual travel insurance policy. For more than two trips, especially to the USA, it was easy and good value.
But, I have an existing medical condition, as, I suppose, do many older people. It is not something that might cause me issues on a trip, but I do take medication. I go to the doctor’s once a year for the usual tests, to see how it is going.So I declare it.
Immediately, most companies won”t even contemplate selling me a policy. Some do, at inflated costs. But you have no real choice.
And yet, others who don’t go to the docs and yet may well have an existing condition can get insurance very easily. To me it should be the other way round. If you have a condition and get medical advice for it, your insurance should be less, because you are aware of it and doing things to keep it under control. Just because you don’t know you have it, doesn’t mean you don’t have it. People who don’t keep a track of their health should not get preferential treatment by these insurance companies.
It struck me the other day that it must be exactly 50 years since I did my O Levels, age 16.
It’s so long ago I am not sure I remember what I did. Let me think: French, German, English Language and Literature, Geography, History, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. That makes nine, which sounds correct. I passed them all. I tell you that not to boast, and I certainly only scraped History which has always seemed a pointless thing to me, but to highlight that, in those days, we all did ‘traditional’ subjects. No Japanese, DT, Philosophy, Domestic Science. I think the grades were numbers. I am pretty sure my only ‘1’ was Maths, but there would be many threes. Middling. I probably have my certificate somewhere.
I was always reasonable at Maths. We didn’t have calculators, nor slide rules, but we did have books of log tables and trigonometric functions. I imagine that of all those subjects, it would be the only one I could tackle sensibly now.
Coursework was just not a thing. I have a vague recollection that multiple choice exams were just coming in.
We did something called the General Paper. And a University Entrance Test in English. And for my A Levels, Maths, Physics and Chemistry.
