Sandy and his Evil Hair

Brilliant episode, where do I start?

Well, I have to start by saying I saw the actor who plays Sandy (Robert Kavanagh) in the Edinburgh Canonmills branch of Tesco on Monday attending to a lady who had fallen over, which he did admirably. This compassionate display (which I observed from behind a newspaper I was pretending to read ) made me wonder if the BBC, or perhaps his agent, had arranged for all his current appearances in public to be similar ones of selfless heroism, to counteract the possibility of some sad, delusional member of the public (not me, obviously) berating him for being so nasty to Annie and Eileen. On a more disappointing note, his hair is nowhere near as magnificent in real life as it is on screen.



Sadly, we will never know how accurate Adeeb's voicemail impersonation of Mr Ryan was because we never got to hear from the man himself, which is a shame. Assuming Mr Ryan is the toffee-nosed Englishman he appears to be, then there is no question that Adeeb's effort was far superior to Michael's mocking imitation which may have drawn a laugh from Leyla but certainly not from yours truly.



At a time when there is much public discussion about proportionate punishment, I also thought it was a bit of harsh of Michael to punish Adeeb and Conor for this mischievous, but ultimately harmless, prank with a sentence of "grounded for the foreseeable future." In a way, he shot himself in the foot because it is difficult to see how much further he could reasonably go in punishing the two boys for the much more serious offence of getting hammered on cheap vodka. As a mitigating plea, they could point out that evil Zinnie forced them to watch a chick flick which they could not have been expected to get through without some kind of medication. Or they could just blame pill-popping Leo who, let's face it, has form in this area.



Speaking of Leo, was it really wise to plough all his compensation money into a dodgy amusement arcade whose highest daily number of patrons was on its opening day and included those well know puggie addict Malcolm and Liz? OK, they serve pretzels and occasionally Joanne dresses up like a Sheildinch Geisha girl to entice in bewitched punters , but it doesn't look like a winner to me. Even Gabriel's new look (fancy hairdo and interesting short-sleeved rugby leisure top) is unlikely to turn things around. And can he please stop addressing Leo as "bro?"

Keep up the good work, RC!

River City Episode 13th Sept 2011



The sketch where Father and daughter discuss MS was disappointing. The daughter sees her Fathers hand tremble and the immediate response is the usual assumption - it's either Parkinson's, dementia or MS. Of course it could be, but then again a tremor could just be what many, many people suffer from - Familial tremor. A condition inherited through families which causes little or no physical problem but can cause psychological ones, given the public's reaction to it. A reaction fed by ignorance.

The script gave the daughter the immediate response that a hand tremor signals something serious when in fact it may be meaningless. Please do a little more research when covering this subject so that the viewing public may at least learn some truths.

Medical science knows not what causes it and the sufferers usually end up being wrongly 'assessed' by the public as having something terribly wrong with them. Ah, the dangers of assumption being portrayed badly in a film script.