OT - A Piece of Cake

S

Slaine

Get the kettle on, time for a brew.
Crikey, just realised that I haven't posted a thing since the last forum posts were lost, anyway.....

After searching for many, many months I finally managed to find a region 2 DVD of the television series shown in the 80's called A Piece of Cake that didn't cost the earth. For those who don't know it is about a fictional Spitfire squadron (Hornet Squadron) and is set around the begining of the war through to the end of the Battle of Britain. It follows the members of the squadron and how eveyone deals with the day to day pressure of living, fighting and dying. If you look through the few mistakes it makes and take it at face value it was, IMHO, fantastic. Well, it had to be. Even the missus was glued to the set and..... ahem.... made me watch four episodes in a row !! It was worth the money just to watch the flying sequences of the Spits flown by the late and great Ray and Mark Hanna. Some of the flybys were so low that the prop was barely 5 foot off the floor :applause:

If you get a chance, snap it up. The acting won't win any awards and the special effects are dodgy but they do portray the psychology of losing friends and new pilots VERY well. Heck, it even made me shocked when a certain person bought it. Here is a taster to wet your appetite....

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf3UtmHLKUU&feature=related
 
:wave:Hi Slaime, nice to see you again

Yep, it's a cracking series once you see past the (few) inaccuracies. I got my copy from the states and had to mod the DvD player to watch it.

Flash & Moggie are great characters!
 
Got it on VHS somewhere. I don't think much of the visual accuracy of the actors - they don't look or sound at all right. No Brylcreem, just for starters, and their accents are a little democratic to say the least. Hardly the stuff of a pre-War regular squadron, if you want my opinion. It's all very well having lots of chaps from the ranks later on, but this is supposed to be before all the regulars got the chop.

Having said that, it's a first-rate story. Get the book, by Derek Robinson (Cassell, ISBN 0-304-36312-X) instead. But Slaine is right about the flying sequences - they are really very good.
 
NDicki, does the book vary much from the televison adaption and go into greater depth of the characters ?

Couldn't help but like Moggy. Great character once you understood him.
 
It was very good. Moggie was funny but I'm afraid I didnt' really like him in the series. Maybe it's my military training but he was a real morale killer. Sure you got very dark about losing friends and trying not to get too close only to loose another. I just couldn't help thinking how much better off they would have been in the fight, if they pulled together more and the commanders put Moggie in his place. Ah well, it had to be 'realistic' and life is full of @$$holes. ;)
 
Slaine said:
NDicki, does the book vary much from the televison adaption and go into greater depth of the characters ?

Couldn't help but like Moggy. Great character once you understood him.
Click to expand...


Good grief, yes. The books about 700 pages long - bags of space for things.

Moggie's an arse. I met enough Moggies when I was at school. In fact, Hornet Squadron's much the same as school, plus killing and getting killed. The only one who's anywhere near normal is Fanny, and he's a colonial.

Squiffy, being an American, won't be able to understand that the Armed Forces are merely an extension of Good Schools, and that therefore the same criteria apply. First XV and so on. Having said that, the RAF being the junior service, is not a home for gentlemen. Which rather explains people like Moggie, who should never have got a commission in the first place.

I remember hitting a Moggie so hard in the face it lifted him up into the air and dropped him on the deck about four feet away. He didn't need it a second time.
 
Good show nDicki! I kept thinking during the series, "save it for the enemy you knitwit!" My niece and 2 nephews are in "good schools" now in Blighty. The 2 older kids in the Taunton School and the younger in Queens School, Taunton. My brother described them to me as New Money and Old Money. ;) Kristen is blathering on about studying at Harvard. We got her a pair of sweatpants for Christmas that she totally died for. Christchurch Oxford just didn't register with her! We have a guest author giving a talk next month here in Boston. I plan to attend:

http://www.bpl.org/korda.pdf
 
Squiffy, you are forgiven, if only temporarily. Harvard is utterly non-U, and you must do everything in your power to prevent anyone in your family from going there. All the Harvard graduates I've met have been gay lefties who've preferred to leave America, and who have become ineffectual, pseudo-academics instead. I've been trying to have one I work with fired for ages, but as this is France and he's joined the union, we can't.

Korda could be interesting...
 
Ha-ha! Or tax-dodging, now Fed Chairman politicoes! "Oh man, I didnt' write that last bit. Please strike it from the record your honor." Or misogynistic pseudoscience presidents, really was an economist all along guys too! "Argh! I'm loosing my mind. Boss, I'd like to request a medical leave." Granted.

:rapture:
 
Funny you should say that. Our pet Harvard "boy" has been off ill for about six months. He's just come back now, at the end of the semester.
 
ndicki said:
Good grief, yes. The books about 700 pages long - bags of space for things.

Moggie's an arse. I met enough Moggies when I was at school. In fact, Hornet Squadron's much the same as school, plus killing and getting killed. The only one who's anywhere near normal is Fanny, and he's a colonial.

Squiffy, being an American, won't be able to understand that the Armed Forces are merely an extension of Good Schools, and that therefore the same criteria apply. First XV and so on. Having said that, the RAF being the junior service, is not a home for gentlemen. Which rather explains people like Moggie, who should never have got a commission in the first place.

I remember hitting a Moggie so hard in the face it lifted him up into the air and dropped him on the deck about four feet away. He didn't need it a second time.
Click to expand...

My father (same Public School as I) found the RAF full of Moggies, incompetents, and insufferable snobs (since they in fact had the least reason to be so.) Since he was demoted from his pilot's course in Oklahoma for marrying my American mother when they were confined to barracks, he had to work as a bomb loader (as a corporal). There he was really on the thick end of that attitude. At least it proably saved his life as many if not most of his class mates didn't survive.
 
Lucky bugger! My father survived, and ended up married to an American, too. Didn't last long, though, thank goodness, or I'd have ended up half-Colonial, perish the very thought!

The Army was predictably full of similar types even in my day. I was probably one of them. :friday:I seem to be one of the few who isn't at all shocked by Prince Harry's antics... Did most of them myself, including dressing up as a Hun!
 
Ha-ha, great stories guys. Sure, most cadets and junior officers are still just kids. Got to goof off and howl at the moon some. :caked: Who knows, if I was more grown up in college, I may have just taken the commission and stayed in?! Of course, it would have just been in the "colonial reserve" and not the "Queen's own."

:engel016:
 
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