When is a group no longer worthy of their name?

The Temptations - original 60s line-upI watched Jonathan Ross on Friday night with some mild bemusement.

No, I wasn’t weirded out by his lame attempts at humour, but the adulation given to The Temptations.

Or rather 5 people singing together claiming to be The Temptations.

As the show wore on, it transpired (not that you had to be a genius to work it out) that only one of the line-up was in the original group.

All credit to the one who’d been going for 47 years (bottom right in the above pic, in case you’re interested), but what about the rest?

One had been there for 25 years, while the others had been with the line-up for 11, 5 and 1 – yup, you read that right – one year respectively.

They sounded great, but clearly this wasn’t the Temptations.. more like the Temps.

I find it hard to believe that people are that excited by a group when they’re only 20% genuine.

Much as I hate to bring them into this thread, the Sugababes are another example. Only 1 of the original 3 is now in the line-up. Does this mean they’re not the true group any more?

Surely I can’t be the only person who thinks this?

Cheat – that’s 30 on a triple word score

Scrabble boardThe perils of Scrabulous on Facebook were highlighted to me recently by a former work colleague.

“I’m taking a break,” he said when I challenged him to a game, “since someone pointed out how a lot of people are cheating.”

Chastened, even though we’d never played and he wasn’t accusing me, I replied, “Well we’ve all tried out combinations we weren’t sure about and pressed ‘Submit’, only to be told it’s an invalid word.”

My challengee kindly pointed out that this wasn’t what he meant and indicated that people have been using certain anagram-style sites to find good words from the combination of letters on the rack.

My best mate and I talked about this recently on a night out in the pub. He brought up a great Woody Allen piece of writing called The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers where two people spar during a game of postal chess.

Their game ends when one suggests playing ‘postal Scrabble’ instead. The exchange ends brilliantly with this:

I shall make the first play. The seven letters I have just turned up are O, A, E, J, N, R, and Z—an unpromising jumble that should guarantee, even to the most suspicious, the integrity of my draw.

Fortunately, however, an extensive vocabulary coupled with a penchant for esoterica, has enabled me to bring etymological order out of what, to one less literate, might seem a mishmash.

My first word is “ZANJERO.” Look it up. Now lay it out, horizontally, the E resting on the center square. Count carefully, not overlooking the double word score for an opening move and the fifty-point bonus for my use of all seven letters.

The score is now 116—0.

Genius!

Currently reading meme

Dark Star Safari by Paul TherouxDale tagged me with this and I’ve been really crap and taken ages to take up the baton, as it were.

So the rules are that I have to open the book at page 123, skip five sentences then share the next three sentences with you all. With that done, I have to tag three of you to do the same on your blogs. I think I see how this works.

I’m actually reading about four books at the moment (scatterbrain mind, I’m sorry), so the one I’ve picked is Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari, which a kind of travelogue across Africa, done in his own inimitable style. So um, the sentences.

“Hararis claim not to be frightened of hyenas, and many qat-chewers sat out a night, stuffing their mouths, diverted by the sight of hyenas coming and going and in their foraging similarly chewing.
One day talking to Abdul Hakim Mohammed, who was a prince (his daughters were gisti, princesses, and he was a direct descendant of the Emir of Harar), he mentioned the hyenas and the hyena men. ‘We had saints – walia, holy men.'”

I pick Clair, Tamzen and Cliff