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The Burger Restaurant At The End Of The Universe
"Aye, but are ye a Catholic robot or a Protestant robot, wee man?"
Regular listeners to the podcast may remember we talked a wee bit back about the legendary Buck Rogers Burger Station.
For those who missed it, or who haven’t heard of this minor miracle of culinary marvel, it was a burger bar in Glasgow back in the days when burger bars were a rarity. The pilot for a franchise of restaurants, it opened on Queen Street in late 1982 and closed in fairly short order after being damaged by a fire in the building next door.
Name changes did little to rescue it and eventually it became the Archaos nightclub.
A unique place – the only real competition the town had at that point was a Wimpy – with videos of the first two episodes from the Gil Gerard series running on screens, along with new films made in a studio on the premises featuring Scots acting legend Russell Hunter, and with Kevin Devine – who would go on to find fame as one of Esther’s Boys on That’s Life – as a dancer entertaining diners.
For years the restaurant’s taken on a sort of urban myth status here – not least because of the lack of decent photographs which can be found to confirm the place’s existence.
But some deep hunting online has uncovered something truly beautiful. A scan of a page from Look In! magazine when the restaurant opened. Now, we don’t know whose scan this is – it came up on Google Images without any links to the original uploader – although we can probably take an educated guess. And if it’s yours, please get in touch so we can credit/venerate you appropriately.
But in the meantime, click to expand, sit back, and enjoy the delights of a menu where you have to pay for everything in dribbles and get offered a ‘Happy Landings’ by a dwarf in a robot costume.
Any old fucker with an Equity card
"Now then now then..."
Interesting news this morning after Mark Gatiss let slip (sort of) on Graham Norton’s radio show that he was working on a drama about the origins of Doctor Who.
Now this shouldn’t necessarily come as a shock in itself. After all, it’s not that long ago that the BBC screened the magnificent Road to Coronation St docudrama on BBC4, recounting Tony Warren’s efforts to write and cast Corrie, to mark the soap’s 50th year.
And with next year marking the golden anniversary of An Unearthly Child airing to a country still shocked at the news of President Kennedy’s death, it’d be an obvious route for them to go down. In fact, the only surprise would be if BBC4 DIDN’T have some kind of drama looking at the early years of the show – from Verity Lambert landing the producer’s gig to Ray Cusick’s famous designs for the show’s most iconic monsters.
Gatiss is an obvious choice for it – a noted lover of period television and of Doctor Who, with experience of writing for BBC4 (among other channels). And, interestingly, he had a somewhat controversial crack at the secret origins of Doctor Who before…
Space 1999 reboot is in safe hands…
From the people that brought you the remake of The Prisoner, and the reboot of V, comes a new reimagining of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s Space: 1999.
We can’t wait…
Bernard Quatermass’ Wonders of the Universe
Quatermass reboot? It'll be the pits...
Nigel Kneale’s iconic 50/60s/70s scientist has been given a fresh lick of paint before, of course, when BBC Four aired a live adaptation of The Quatermass Experiment starring Jason Flemyng, David Tennant and Mark Gatiss – one which was entertaining but somewhat overshadowed by the Pope dying at the same time.
Now Hammer are eyeing a TV return for the character, after their own film adaptations of the first three TV stories back in the day, with president Simon Oakes telling This is Fake DIY:
“We are looking at rebooting Quatermass at the moment. It’s very early stages – we have a fantastic writer, but sadly we can’t announce it yet, as we’re still in the negotiation stage.”
“I’m actually interested in Quatermass for television at the moment. It’s about rebooting his character, with certain characteristics that remain the DNA of Quatermass… What we’re saying is, what would Bernard Quatermass be today?”
What would Quatermass be today? Unemployed, probably, thanks to cutbacks in space race funding.
But assuming he’s not, what’s the betting he’s a young, sexy, northern scientist type whose background is more likely to have been a pop group than the British Rocket Group….
You can just see it, can’t you? Hip fashionable young space scientist saves the world in a show which mixes Professor Brian Cox with Doctor Who? Certainly seems more likely he’ll be based on Cox than Dr Sideburns Pillinger at any rate…
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