Cafe Freddo, Marks & Spencer's Meal Deal and Special Branch First Series DVDs

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PARSLEY'S COMMLOCK
Eating Out #1: Cafe Freddo On The Green, Ealing Broadway (www.cafefreddo.com)
My European friends talk of the cooked English breakfast fondly. The all-day breakfast is the tempter that brings people into cafes. Normally such cafes are characterised as 'greasy spoons' i.e. where the aim is a filling meal at a reasonable price, rather than the highest restaurant standards or the healthiest content.

At Freddo's in Ealing Broadway you can get the best of both worlds, as the breakfast is filling, very reasonably priced at £3.45, and also fresh and clean tasting, with good bread and fresh tomatoes. They also put amazing patterns in the froth on top of your hot chocolate or coffee!

Eating Out #2 : Marks & Spencer's Meal Deal
Marks & Spencer have a £2 meal deal (sandwich + crisps + drink) to match the £1.99 sub of the day at Subway, snack box at KFC. I love them dearly, but can't help wondering at their definition of the word 'handy'. Their sandwich packaging invites you to pull the tab to open the pack up into a 'handy' tray. Unless I am doing it wrong I have to say that I'm not sure how 'handy' it is to have a tray that doesn't lie flat and is trying to drop half my sandwich onto whatever surface I put it on.

I was also a little disappointed that their botanical strawberry & aloe vera drink didn't state on the front that it had a diet style sweetener in it. Still, £2 was a decent price for a 'quality' lunch at a major train terminus like Waterloo, particularly when that station now charges you 30p to use the toilet. So much for spending a penny...

DVD Review : Special Branch, The Complete First Series (Network DVD)
I've been thoroughly enjoying the early seventies studio-based Special Branch series from Network DVD. This was all the more surprising as my friend Tony Reeve - my expert barometer of all things good in Cult TV - had expressed a lack of enthusiasm about keeping it in his collection.
Star Derren Nesbitt once sat opposite me on the Victoria line on my way home from ArtRocker Club. He's changed quite a lot from the blonde haired dandy star of this show, as he now has a fulsome beard. It was unusual for him to get a 'good guy' role as he often appears in ITC shows as a bit of a bastard and thug.

Series editor on the show was spy writer George Markstein, the bald head that Patrick McGoohan hands his resignation to in the opening sequence of The Prisoner (which he was also a major contributor to). Markstein allegedly rejected the bizarre surrealism of parts of The Prisoner for a more faithful representation of the spy and his lot, and here some of his self-penned episodes are rather dry in that John le Carré way.

So why am I enjoying it so much? Well, I have several reasons. First off is a kind of 'antique finders' pleasure of a whole world of a decently written show that I am completely unfamiliar with. I did know the later filmed version of the show starring George Sewell and Patrick Mower, but this was before all that, with many episodes in black & white.

Second is the bizarre yet familiar world it portrays, with student activists organising marches sprouting 'political' dialogue that makes them sound like they've swallowed a politics text book. Sometimes it's a very thinly disguised critique of politics of the day e.g. when a march organiser states that the problem with 'the left' is that it is always fighting amongst itself.

Thirdly are the characters. Derren Nesbitt plays DI Jordan. My friend Tony is appalled by the way he doesn't seem to know his lines, but I love the way the show makes him a deliciously cool arrogant anachronism. He sometimes has a sharp 3-piece suit with Jason King handkerchief sticking out of his top pocket. Other times he might be in a tight white roll neck. He appears ridiculously ambitious without a hope of impressing anyone with either results or his rub-you-up-the-wrong-way style.

Another great character is Constable Morrissey played by Keith Washington. He's the fresh-faced boy of Special Branch, although he stays more calm than his blustering seniors. In a great episode he ends up using his discretion to show a Rhodesian girl of British parents around London before she is sent home. The episode makes some interesting points about nationality, and has some great sequences around London, including a hippy club sequence. Morris Perry plays Charles Moxon, the scheming security man who's not quite as sinister as he should be. I think he later found the perfect role as a slightly weary sounding big boss in The Sweeney.

Fourthly is the comment on Special Branch itself. Caught between the 'security' services and the ordinary police, they get despised and ignored and sometimes have little idea of what's going on. This makes the flow of the episodes very difficult to predict and adds to the interest. I enjoyed it so much that I've had to order the second series from those nice people at networkdvd.

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]