Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
Just how bright are the voting public? Well the answer is not very many if the following survey, out today, is anything to go by...
Twenty per cent of Britons believe the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Blackadder are based on real historical personalities, others believe there was a real Captain Mainwaring leading the nation's home defence during the war and that Dad's Army was based on him while some people think Clark Kent aka Superman and Indiana Jones were genuine people too, according to Ask Jeeves.
The confusion between fact and fiction goes both ways, it has emerged, with other respondents to the survey believing Che Guevara, Florence Nightingale and outlaw Jesse James were fictional, not real.
Ask Jeeves commissioned the survey after noticing a rise in the number of queries it receives asking for biographies and other personal details such as a family tree, for fictional characters.
And a poll of 1,000 adults found a fifth of people struggled to tell the difference between onscreen characters and true-life figures.
Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous literary creation Sherlock Holmes has been most recently seen in a Guy Ritchie blockbuster and a hit BBC series yet 21 per cent of people surveyed thought the detective was a real person
So this beggars the question is Vic a real person or just a fictional character we keep reading about? All comments about a cardboard cut will be deleted...
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
Guest 643- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 1,321
Yes Vic but you do live in a fictional world where you think everyone worships you
There's always a little truth behind every "Just kidding", a little emotion behind every "I don't care" and a little pain behind every "I'm ok".
Guest 703- Registered: 30 Jul 2010
- Posts: 2,096
I've just heard of a student doing a Masters of Business Administration course who thought Sweden was in Ikea.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
a bit like when mrs beckham was asked whether she was interested in conservation, her reply came back "me? i'll talk to anyone".
Guest 677- Registered: 8 Jul 2008
- Posts: 150
Let's give credit to Sir Arthur for creating such a believable figure.
Any time I got upset over a television programme/film (some really are good enough to shed a tear over) my dad always said to buck up cos it's only tele/a film and therefore not real... Really dad so the Titanic didn't really sink?
It's not the man in my life, its the life in my man!!
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
That is the last thing I think Jacqui,
Guest 644- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 1,214
Interesting to read that so many people think Capt. Mainwaring existed...by a weird coincidence this week I discovered that Dover's own Home Guard unit in WW1 had a Sgt. Wilson. Really, truly!
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
I wonder that if an announcement had to be made before each programme as to whether what was to be shown/broadcast is fictional how many programmes would not carry such an announcement.
Meerkat Manor?
Party political broadcasts?
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
wasn't there a radio programme years ago based on a h.g. wells book that had people going into a panic over an alien invasion?
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Ah, yes Howard, "The War of the World" (Orson) Wells on Wells.
It was advertised in the normal way yet the broadcast led to panic and a suicide or two.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
Yes there was Howard,at that time I was very young and in the Army,we was all siting in the TV room when it came on that the world was being fired on from Alien space ships and there was landing,s in London,we all rushed out to see what we could do.
Ps It was on the TV not the radio
Guest 644- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 1,214
Vic,
Tom is referring to Orson Welles 1938 Mercury Theatre production of 'War of the Worlds' that went out on the radio in America. Unless you were born in 1920 or earlier I don't think that would be it.
I wonder what you could be referring to?
Guest 703- Registered: 30 Jul 2010
- Posts: 2,096
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
There was a TV Drama in the late 1950s and it started at 9.00pm which was the news time. and the newscaster of the day came out with what I said above,because it was news time and the news caster reading it,we all took it as the real thing and so did most of the public they were all coming out in the streets at Canterbury.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Yes indeed Phil. It was rebroadcast twenty or so years ago on the BBC. It did have the effect that Vic reproduced and by much the same method. That of replicating 'normal' broadcasts. "Now we must leave the concert from the lobby of the **** hotel and go over to the news room..."
Some New Yorker called the power company to suggest they cut the power do creating a black-out so the Martians might miss NY and walk on past.
Television has educated the masses as Reith had hoped.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,895
Phil and Ray, I doubt if that was the film Vic was only 11 in 1953.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Yes JH, but the film was on the TV. Probably some years after it hit the cinema screens.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
tom
i remember being terrified by "micky the martian".
to be fair to the educational aspect of television at that time they screened a series of documentaries on a talking horse.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Strange as it might sound I too have a memory of being frightened of Martians and invasion. Something to do with chewing-gum cards with ray guns that would show-up the skeleton at the moment of death. I don't think about this now...much.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
