GOSH

The blog has a new title.
It's been bothering me (in the style of Columbo) that I was unable to remember this man's name:

You may recall, he was responsible for the continuity in between TVS programmes in the early 80s, later his disembodied voice would tell you it was time for Worzel Gummidge or whatever else was on.

The other thing that bothered me this week was that I had lost a comic shop.

GOSH is/was a comic shop that used to be on Great Russell Street opposite the British Museum.  It always suffered a bit from being 'Not Forbidden Planet' but it was good enough that you'd go out of your way to visit both if you were in the area.
And it's not there anymore.
I hope it's just moved, I really do. It started in my lifetime, not long after Forbidden Planet had moved out of Denmark Street and was trying to look like a business rather than a place where 14 year old boys went to buy magazines under plain covers or you'd gone in there by mistake thinking it was a guitar shop.  It sold comics but things you couldn't get elsewhere and the owners took a wider view of what was a comic rather than the Beano at one end of the spectrum and American imports at the other.
Its disappearance wasn't helped by what they'd replaced it with:
'Excuse me, but didn't this used to be GOSH comics.'
'Yes but now it is Sass-Bell.'
I know this, because, well, I can read but it doesn't really help me much.  Not unless I want to buy a paper butterfly or a ceramic owl which to be fair, they have a lot of.
So it's a slightly sadder me that heads towards the big Waterstones, and there I do a bad thing.
I'm not going to say I wasn't thinking because I was.

I'm in the bookshop browsing away quite happily.  I've read the first few pages of the latest book from the ginger Scotsman with a big beard, his name will come to me, Mock the Week - I was enjoying the first few pages - it's a heartwarming story about a boy and former slave in the Deep South, they're producing a botany encyclopaedia or something, there's aliens in it.
I decided to buy it.
On Kindle.
Now I couldn't in all conscience buy it on Kindle in the bookshop, so I just popped outside to download it.  And that's the death of bookshops right there.  Just like Gosh, and just like continuity presenter whose name I can't remember.
You can browse in a bookshop, in a way you can't on Kindle, but Kindle weighs less and cheaper and just easier.  I'm not sure I am not the only one - it makes sense - look in the bookshop and then buy it on Kindle, but that's the death knell for bookshops.  Unless of course the bookshops pursue some sort of luddite anti-technological warfare.  Wireless deadzones around every bookshop so you have to walk for miles to download what you've just looked at.

Though if bookshops close, how long 'til Amazon hikes the prices of e-books ? Then all you'll be able to buy in shops is strong drink and ceramic owls and no one wants that, do they ?

The Box of Delights - Closed.

POSTSCRIPT

Turned out GOSH hadn't closed - just moved to Berwick Street in Soho - because the area around the British Museum had lost its bohemian, literary quality - all the bookshops were being replaced with tourist tat and the British Library had left the building.  It moved nearly a year ago, I just hadn't noticed.

Still the continuity presenter's name is Brian Nissen.  He retired in 1987 and died in 2001.
The Scottish author was Frank Boyle.