Don Woods

When I worked on Radio Merseyside with Monty Lister there was a local travel company who organised DAY trips to various destinations abroad....where the plane would take off from Speke Airport in Liverpool at about 6 or 7 in the morning and get back about 10 at night.....Monty would arrange a free ticket for both of us in exchange for a half hour travelogue which he broadcast on his Sunday Morning programme....he would describe the tour as we did it and I was his soundman.........one of our many excursions was to Marrakech....yes there and back in a day....when we arrived there it was pouring with rain and cold with the locals gratefully thanking us for the welcome weather.....which the day trippers in their flowery shirts and shorts didn't go along with....we did a tour of the "Sooks" which is a massive market place with thousands of market stalls selling all sorts from pots and pans to shoes and fezzes....with characters walking alongside of you trying to sell you all sorts....not to mention the occasional

Firstly I would like to discuss the postage system in this country...which is a joke...a second class letter now costs 65p to post (which in old money is 13 shillings)....BUT what a lot of people don't realise is there are TWO types of second class letters which go by size........ O.K. I feel better now.......the song this week is from an album I composed called DooWop Days and is available from my website...the tracks take you back to the golden days of doowop music ....this track is a tribute to Ricky Nelson who was one of my favourite stars of the 50s and early 60s.....his guitarist was a guy called James Burton who also backed Elvis through the Vegas years....I had the privilege of doing eight concerts with him singing Ricky Nelson classics backed by my favourite guitarist....which for me gets no better than that.....so here it is my "Tribute To Ricky Nelson"

The song this week is from one of my albums entitled "DooWop Days" which can be obtained from my website and can be streamed from the internet.....the song is a tribute to a pop star who is sadly no longer with us....Bobby Vee........I had the pleasure of opening his show on two occasions and he was the nicest guy you could possibly meet....we hit it off straight away and he was a delight....so here it is "The Bobby Vee Song" ............Strawberry Field in Liverpool where...and I quote..."John Lennon used to climb over the wall and play as a child and eventually wrote his famous song about it"......well now you can obtain a limited edition BRICK from the building for....wait for it....75 pounds......is it me or is the world going nuts.....it will be interesting to see how many customers they get from America and how they intend to post it.....I have recently posted some orders for my DVDs.....postage 4 pounds EACH.....so how much a house brick will cost doesn't bear thinking about. As I have said before th

Forget the success of the vaccine rollout which has put this country ahead of everywhere else...there is obviously a far worse crisis....Boris is being accused of decorating his flat and NOT PAYING FOR IT...and he is being accused of making a hurtful statement about the economy....which nobody seems to have actually heard....this is the level the opposition party have to resort to in order to look like they are actually doing SOMETHING....what a bunch of no marks.....still I suppose it gives the TV news programmes something to prattle on about which saves them having to search for news that actually matters. .....the sad thing is these publicity seeking prats who are not capable of anything other than making pathetic comments about trivia are the alternative to the present government........

The BBC are still getting slated over the blanket coverage of the royal funeral....and Nicholas Witchell is taking a lot of stick with his reading of the "body language" between William and Harry in an attempt to invent news... I always watch a bit of TV before I go to sleep as I find it helps me nod off......especially "Match of The Day" on Saturday nights with the recorded crowds....by the time we get to the pundits I am away.....but last Friday there was nothing worth watching so I thought I would try Graham Norton to see if had improved.....it hadn't.... The song this week is about this wonderful part of the world and was the follow up to my now famous "How To Say Llanfairpwll etc"....it is called The Magic of Wales and is again sung by my pal Paul Damian.....my tribute to the Land of Song.

The song this week has a story to it....I was asked to write it for a bloke in Birmingham who was going to put a huge country and western show show on and bring stars over from the States and have rodeos etc etc.....his name was Brian "Sundance" Brooks and he had a shop which sold cowboy gear called "Urban Cowboy"....as the cowboy thing was big in the midlands....I was commissioned to write and record the song and put it on vinyl with his name as the singer (as he couldn't sing).....I went down to Birmingham to a big meeting about this huge happening with all these high flyers from London talking about their planes and boats and getting involved in this amazing event.....one look at "Sundance" told me he was a conman.....so I said I would make the record and sort out the vinyls but I wanted paying up front....despite the gasps of disbelief I got the money and did the record.....before I actually delivered it Mr."Sundance" Brooks had vanished with all the investment money and hasn't been seen since....that's s

On the subject of TV sports coverage ... I am still recovering from the excitement of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race....I don't think...I'm afraid I fail to see the point of this so called sporting event which is broadcast for a whole afternoon ....who cares?....it has to be the most boring event in sport....closely followed by horse racing....I'm sure lots of people watch it - but I don't know ANYONE that does...it's purely for those who wander into the bookies and lose their cash as they have nothing better to do....not to mention the occasional marathon where the camera follows some individual for 26 miles where the only excitement is when they grab a paper cup full of water,drink it and throw it away....IT'S BORING!!....let's stick to giving us sport that is worth watching...I would rather go to the park and watch a sunday league football match than be subjected to a race between a couple of universities......having said all this I have played a lot of sport over the years and have always been a part

The standard of TV is becoming a joke......there are some decent programmes but you behave to search for them by skilfully trying to dodge the cookery programmes or Ant and Dec.....and the talentless Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton with their selection of stars of stage screen and scrapheap....who they "chat" to about their latest book,play or comeback and have to roar laughing at nothing....then we have multi millionaire Gary Linacre sitting with a couple of football "pundits"discussing a football match we have just watched.....yes old Gary gets millions for his weekly 90 minutes....well worth my licence fee.

As Don and his English buddies prepare to knock out a few divots on their favourite fairways Welsh beauty spots were rammed with visitors this weekend as the country lead the UK out of lockdown in Wales when the 'stay local' requirement was dropped on Saturday.    Unrestricted travel within Welsh borders is now permitted, self-contained holiday accommodation spots - including several hotels, cottages and B&Bs - can reopen their doors and groups of six from two different households can meet up outside.  

This week we had a few technological problems so we worked differently. We discussed the violent protest in Britain against the right to protest non-violently. You couldn't write the script. We developed ideas of what's really behind such nonsense before moving to mums waitingoutside schools in the morning-some of them in curlers and nightwear! What an example for their offspring. We then discussed GOATS and Elephant's trunks before looking back at Don's song .Roll us yer hat Uncle Stan.

The pandemic has revealed a lot about the human race....it has illustrated how kind and caring some people can be and how stupid and selfish others can be.......it is assumed we are all intellectually the same but as I have always said we are still evolving...some a lot slower than others.....Christmas was the perfect example where the population are "allowed" to have family gatherings if they are sensible...so they do because they are told they can....and what do we get - another serious outbreak resulting in another lockdown which was obviously going to happen....but a large selection of the population don't get it....because they lack simple intelligence.....the result being unnecessary deaths and suffering.

.....and still they pull down statues and meet up for rave parties and charge around with their stupid pointless protests....which does make you wonder about university education....seems to me it makes these students THINK they are clever....the only purpose these idiots are achieving is to spread this virus and prolong the epidemic but they don't seem to see that.....and amongst all this nonsense we have some piece of manure walking into a park and stabbing people....which we now know was a linked to terrorism.....and apparently the police knew about him....he's been arrested and no doubt will go to prison but that doesn't help the victim

.....and we have gained some new expressions each day....the latest is Priti Patel has been accused on "gas lighting"...whatever that means but it fits in nicely with "pandemic"...."Spike"...."Social distancing"...."2 metre rule"....I wonder who has the job of thinking these words up "Hey George...we need another saying for today"...."Yeah O.K.....how about SELF ISOLATION?"

Needless to say the news is swamped with the police brutal killing of George Floyd in America....which has created an excuse for protesters around the world to rise up and scream racism.....as an ordinary bloke who is not racist in any way and who has respected the law all my life,I watch the proceedings with sheer disbelief..

Piers Morgan is back in the morning after a welcome break...welcome for us that is.......and just when we have had enough of Dominic Cummings off goes Piers ranting on about him which serves no purpose except to get everyone's back up again...MOVE ON PLEASE!!....we heard all this last week and we have had enough....the bottom line is we are a nation of followers as I have said for years and as such we need to be led and sadly we don't seem to have anyone capable of leading...

The media plus the general public have reached a new low....Dominic Cummings who is our P.M.s right hand man has disgraced himself...at least he has according to the papers and the TV news who have created an uproar in our population of sheep....he travelled 250 miles from London to Durham because he was worried about the health of his four year old kiddie which has caused over the top outrage....because he was supposedly disobeying the lockdown situation....so out come the journalists from under their stones and crawl along the gutter to stand outside Dominic's house in their droves (ignoring social distancing) yelling abuse to be followed by endless TV news coverage using the same piece of film of him trying to get to his car through the mass of witch hunters....with interviews with brainless members of the public who come out with the highly original "It's one law for them and another for us".

There were protests planned around the country by The Freedom Party who are a bunch of boneheads who regard the lockdown as "illegal"....fortunately common sense prevailed and the police sorted it....one of the venues was supposed to be at Birkenhead Park which is local to me....it didn't happen but there was a gathering in Hyde Park in London where arrests were made....one culprit was Jeremy Corbyn's brother....so idiots must run in that family.........it's hard to understand what goes on in the heads of these morons....probably nothing as there is nothing there in the first place.

Boris Johnson's wonderful speech to the country has not gone down too well....personally it made no sense to me at all....it is total confusion....I fail to see the difference between going into a supermarket and keeping away from other people or going for a walk in a park and keeping away from other people....the key is KEEPING AWAY FROM OTHER PEOPLE.....not that difficult to comprehend....we seem to be so far behind everyone else....so now they are going to ease up on the lockdown so idiots will all pile out and start it all off again...

Still wondering what's going on regarding our lockdown situation.....they talk about the over 70s as if we were a bunch of old doderies....welcome to the scrapheap.....we have been fortunate in as much as we can go out for daily exercise which does make a difference and the delivery firms do a fantastic job saving us having to go to the shops....it must be hard for those who are not on the internet and can't order stuff.....I believe you can now go out for a bit of exercise?..

The virus situation is getting pretty desperate....and we have politicians prattling on about what might "possibly" happen....I know it's a new situation we are in but they don't seem to have a clue.....we can only go out to exercise or get food or medicine yet planes are landing at airports with passengers from countries where the virus is rife...and they just swarm off and into the country....not to mention the arguments as to whether we should wear masks.....apparently this country's self isolation is a lot less harsh than elsewhere which is obviously why people are still dying.....you can cram on the tube yet you can't have a game of golf on your own.....in years to come someone will make a film of all this and no-one will believe it.