https://www.creativereview.co.uk/wetherspoons-carpets-an-appreciation/

BOOK 138: CHARLOTTE STREET: DANNY WALLACE

Danny Wallace is a Sunday Times-bestselling author who lives in London. His first book, Join Me, was described as a 'word-of-mouth phenomenon' by The Bookseller and 'one of the funniest stories you will ever read' by the Daily Mail. His second book, Yes Man - in which he decided to say 'Yes' to everything - became a hugely successful film with Jim Carrey in the lead role.

His column in ShortList magazine reaches more than 1.3 million readers weekly. He was the PPA Columnist of the Year 2011 and the Arqiva Radio Presenter of the Year 2012 for his work as the host of the triple Sony Award-winning Xfm Breakfast Show with Danny Wallace. GQ magazine has called him: 'One of Britain's great writing talents'.

It all starts with a girl…

(because yes, there’s always a girl…)

Jason Priestley (not that one) has just seen her. They shared an incredible, brief, fleeting moment of deep possibility, somewhere halfway down Charlotte Street.

And then, just like that, she was gone – accidentally leaving him holding her old-fashioned, disposable camera, chock full of undeveloped photos...

And now Jason – ex-teacher, ex-boyfriend, part-time writer and reluctant hero – faces a dilemma. Should he try and track The Girl down? What if she’s The One? But that would mean using the only clues he has, which lie untouched in this tatty disposable...

It’s funny how things can develop...

MY VERDICT: I wasn’t sure what to expect from Danny Wallace having never read anything by him before so I’m not sure why I was disappointed, but I was.  This book was written by a comedian but I didn’t find it very funny.  I think the main character was a little too pathetic and grumpy to be sympathetic to or to enjoy.

It wasn’t a terrible book but it didn’t race through it like I thought I would and it was a little predictable so it didn’t keep me hooked. Such a shame as I was looking forward to enjoying it.

FILM 1349: OVERNIGHT

TRIVIA: Troy Duffy has disavowed this documentary, stating that directors Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith left many things out and "Their anger at me overrode their judgment as filmmakers. That's the tragedy of it. And they stabbed everybody who ever helped them in the back."

According to a RUSiriusRadio.com pod-cast interview, Director Terry Zwigoff based his direction for Ethan Suplee in Art School Confidential (2006) on the way Troy Duffy acts as a director in this documentary.

FILM 1343: BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING

TRIVIA: A remake was planned during the period of 2007-2009. Reese Witherspoon was attached to the project which was ultimately shelved.

Columbia Pictures wanted Otto Preminger to cast Jane Fonda as Ann Lake, who was eager to play the role, but Preminger insisted upon using Carol Lynley.

Average Shot Length (ASL) = 21 seconds (very high by the standards of "popular" 1960s cinema).

While being questioned in the pub you can see a television high on the back wall of the bar. The newscaster is just about to describe what Bunny Lake was wearing before she was reported missing when the channel is suddenly switched to a young British group (The Zombies) playing a very catchy song with lyrics that actually relate to the plot of the movie. Much later in the storyline Ann Lake escapes her hospital room through a basement level maintenance room where she runs past an old janitor sitting at a workbench listening to a transistor radio and the same exact catchy song is being broadcast again.

Film 963: The World’s End

Trivia: This film completes what Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright refer to as "The Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy" consisting of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and 'The World's End'.

The pubs used in the film were renamed. In Welwyn Garden City, The Cork was temporarily The Famous Cock. The Parkway Bar was renamed The Cross Hands. The Doctors Tonic became The Old Familiar and The Peartree was transformed into The First Post.

Nick Frost's character works for the Beckingham Davies Knightley LLB law firm. Beckingham is Simon Pegg's real surname.

In the scene where he beats up the Blank of the school bully, Pete (Eddie Marsan) grabs a branch off a tree and starts repeatedly smacking him on the back, almost identically to a famous scene performed by John Cleese in Fawlty Towers. Darren Boyd, who plays the school bully, has previously played Cleese in the BBC comedy Holy Flying Circus