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The Mandela Effect: False Memory

rpkemp said:
My sister and I share a Mandela episode dating back to about the 1990s. We both watched the Will Hay film Oh Mr Porter at least once in the 1970s or 80s (it was on TV a few times). In one scene, a gentleman walks up to the ticket office window where Harbottle (Moore Marriott) is officiating. There is a fair amount of abrupt opening and closing of shutters, which is unimportant. The dialogue goes something like this though:

"Excuse me my good man, what time is the next train to Belfast?"
"Next train's gone."
"Oh dear. What about the train after that?"
"Just gone two."
"Oh, so I've got time to get a cup of tea then."
"No. That one's just gone too."

Anyway that's how we both confidently remembered it. But when my sister watched it again some time in the 90s, she found that the exchange ends with "Next train's gone." The bloke just walks away, I think. Nothing of the remaining dialogue above is in the film.

I scoured the film backwards and forwards after she told me this but I couldn't find the extra dialogue. We were both so sure. But I think the second part of the joke is better than the first. What a cruel multiverse.
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Is this the scene?
 
Vardoger said:
Is this the scene?
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I don't think it is - I think it happens later in the film, with someone other than Will Hay as the victim. But perhaps that too is a Mandela effect problem. Unfortunately I've just gone on holiday to somewhere with awful internet so I can't scan through to try to find the scene in question. Perhaps it's not there anyway ...
 
Richard Briars in a rail ticket office in an episode of the BBC series One-upmanship.
Tap on the window: (Shutter goes up)
Two to Looe

Pip pip
(Shutter goes down)

I'm sure I remembered it OK from 1976 - but only understood the pun last month.
 
rpkemp said:
My sister and I share a Mandela episode dating back to about the 1990s. We both watched the Will Hay film Oh Mr Porter at least once in the 1970s or 80s (it was on TV a few times). In one scene, a gentleman walks up to the ticket office window where Harbottle (Moore Marriott) is officiating. There is a fair amount of abrupt opening and closing of shutters, which is unimportant. The dialogue goes something like this though:

"Excuse me my good man, what time is the next train to Belfast?"
"Next train's gone."
"Oh dear. What about the train after that?"
"Just gone two."
"Oh, so I've got time to get a cup of tea then."
"No. That one's just gone too."

Anyway that's how we both confidently remembered it. But when my sister watched it again some time in the 90s, she found that the exchange ends with "Next train's gone." The bloke just walks away, I think. Nothing of the remaining dialogue above is in the film.

I scoured the film backwards and forwards after she told me this but I couldn't find the extra dialogue. We were both so sure. But I think the second part of the joke is better than the first. What a cruel multiverse.
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That was one of the myriad adaptations of the Arnold Ridley play "The Ghost Train".
Coincidentally, I've watched two versions of that on YouTube in the last week - the 1941 Arthur Askey one and a recent stage play. I can see how this story could be very fertile ground for the Mandela effect, as each adaptation not only changed the location and the verbal and visual gags, but also tweaked the denouement to suit the times. Ridley's original version featured weapons smuggling by Communist sympathisers, the Arthur Askey version changed it to Nazi Fifth Columnists, the Will Hay version had IRA gun-runners and the stage production changed it once more to narcotics smugglers.
Obviously that doesn't account for specific dialogue apparently changing, but if ever a production was a prime candidate for Mandela effects, it's The Ghost Train.
 
Bad Bungle said:
Richard Briars in a rail ticket office in an episode of the BBC series One-upmanship.
Tap on the window: (Shutter goes up)
Two to Looe

Pip pip
(Shutter goes down)

I'm sure I remembered it OK from 1976 - but only understood the pun last month.
Click to expand...

My troubling Richard Briars memory is of his The Good Life character Tom being told by his wife Barbara that she is pregnant. This was at the end of a series and I expected there to be a child in the next, but it was never mentioned again.
 
escargot said:
My troubling Richard Briars memory is of his The Good Life character Tom being told by his wife Barbara that she is pregnant. This was at the end of a series and I expected there to be a child in the next, but it was never mentioned again.
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That's really weird, as I thought I could recall Barbara looking coyly at Tom and hinting that there would be a new arrival. Possibly it turned out that she was referring to the pig instead.
I just checked out the Good Life wiki talk page and under the "No kids?" heading, someone asked "didn't Barbara get pregnant?". Apparently she didn't though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Good_Life_(1975_TV_series)
 
escargot said:
My troubling Richard Briars memory is of his The Good Life character Tom being told by his wife Barbara that she is pregnant. This was at the end of a series and I expected there to be a child in the next, but it was never mentioned again.
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In the last episode of Ever Decreasing Circles, Anne announces she is pregnant.
 
escargot said:
My troubling Richard Briars memory is of his The Good Life character Tom being told by his wife Barbara that she is pregnant. This was at the end of a series and I expected there to be a child in the next, but it was never mentioned again.
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I have all the series on DVD and I don't remember this scene. I did see something from one of the writers that they didn't want either of the couples to have children as it would complicate things and so it was just never mentioned.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
That's really weird, as I thought I could recall Barbara looking coyly at Tom and hinting that there would be a new arrival. Possibly it turned out that she was referring to the pig instead.
I just checked out the Good Life wiki talk page and under the "No kids?" heading, someone asked "didn't Barbara get pregnant?". Apparently she didn't though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Good_Life_(1975_TV_series)
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Haha, I checked that page too! I remember the scene exactly as you describe it.

Jepra Peld said:
In the last episode of Ever Decreasing Circles, Anne announces she is pregnant.
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That wasn't Felicity Kendall though!
 
escargot said:
Haha, I checked that page too! I remember the scene exactly as you describe it.


That wasn't Felicity Kendall though!
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All these exchanges illustrate perfectly how our imperfect memories are the root cause of the Mandela Effect.
Which is pretty well the conclusion that last month's Fortean Times came to!
 
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So... either Barbara is announcing the imminent arrival of a pig, which blessmycottonsocks and I misinterpreted as a baby, OR the baby-announcement did take place but was made by a different actress in a different sitcom with the same male lead.
blessmycottonsocks and I may have conflated these two scenes.
 
escargot said:
Haha, I checked that page too! I remember the scene exactly as you describe it.



That wasn't Felicity Kendall though!
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No, but it was Richard Briers. Funnily enough I always thought there was a scene where Margo and Jerry mention having a child who is away at boarding school, but I must be getting confused with something else as well.
 
Jepra Peld said:
No, but it was Richard Briers. Funnily enough I always thought there was a scene where Margo and Jerry mention having a child who is away at boarding school, but I must be getting confused with something else as well.
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*nods* That was Ripping Yarns.
 
Back in the early 90s, back when I was at school, I had a friend, B, who was into sci fi and fantasy books/TV/Film in a big way. I was a fan of the fantasy genre in books, and we spent many a free period discussing. Around the same time Start Wars: A New Hope was re-released in the cinemas. I went to see it with a friend, and was confused about the episode 4 part. I asked B about this, and she told me that Star Wars was based on a longer series of books, but that George Lucas had decided to start with the middle trilogy, and that the first 3 and last 3 books would be made into films at a later stage. I spent some time looking for the books in second hand book shops but never found them, and generally forgot about them. Years later, when the first 3 films came out, I wasn't surprised.

Anyway, fast forward to last weekend when talking to my mum about the films/books. She got into the whole Star Wars genre quite a lot, and has been to see all the films (whereas I gave up on the whole thing a while ago). I was talking about B and the books and what she told me all those years ago, and my mum said that couldn't be true. According to her, the films came out first, and episode 4 was always the first film, there was never anything prior to it until much more recently, when they did the films and the tie in books.

A look on Wikipedia says that the first books were novelisations of the films, rather than the other way around and the earliest books, outside of the ones covering the first 3 released films, say they were written in 1999 - definitely several years later than the conversations with B.

The nearest to an explanation might be that B meant the books would be written, that maybe she'd read in a fan magazine or something, (internet not being around in those days) but I am sure I remember her saying the books had been written as I'm sure she said she'd read them.
It is also possible she was lying to make herself sound more knowledgeable. Generally in my dealings with her, I never got that impression, and can't think of any other occasions when I knew her to be lying.

I'm also now suffering deja vu because I feel like I've written this before = although searching my messages doesn't bring anything up. So apologies if I have.
 
Hi,
No books until the film tie ins and various spin offs. But it was always conceived of as a trilogy of trilogies and it was originally (in an early version of a script / treament) given an overall title of The Journal of the Whills perhaps this was what your friend was referring to?
 
Jepra Peld said:
No, but it was Richard Briers. Funnily enough I always thought there was a scene where Margo and Jerry mention having a child who is away at boarding school, but I must be getting confused with something else as well.
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Reminds me that Hyacinth Bucket had a son who was never seen. She was proud of him.

There were hints in the dialogue that he was gay, which back then might have been a disappointment to his mother and was perhaps the reason he stayed away. I must have been thick because I didn't get the gay thing at all.
 
My recollection is that George Lucas always planned to make nine movies and had sketched out the plots, but the studio would only finance one - and Episode 4 was the best standalone story.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
That's really weird, as I thought I could recall Barbara looking coyly at Tom and hinting that there would be a new arrival. Possibly it turned out that she was referring to the pig instead.
I just checked out the Good Life wiki talk page and under the "No kids?" heading, someone asked "didn't Barbara get pregnant?". Apparently she didn't though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Good_Life_(1975_TV_series)
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I seem to recall Barbera talking about the patter of tiny feet or similar and Tom stares in frozen shock until she tells him the sow is pregnant. I'm sure that is probably not totally right but it is what I have in my head.
 
Roland Deschain said:
I seem to recall Barbera talking about the patter of tiny feet or similar and Tom stares in frozen shock until she tells him the sow is pregnant. I'm sure that is probably not totally right but it is what I have in my head.
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Ah now that might be it!
 
I remember reading a couple of the Star Wars books just after I saw Star Wars. I think they were written by Alan Dean Foster.
One of them was called 'Splinter of the Mind's Eye', which never seemed to have been made into a film.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I remember reading a couple of the Star Wars books just after I saw Star Wars. I think they were written by Alan Dean Foster.
One of them was called 'Splinter of the Mind's Eye', which never seemed to have been made into a film.
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Yeah they were just officially licenced spin off books, never intended to be movies. But they were agreed to by Lucas and his people - which raises all sorts of issues as Luke and Leia get jiggy in Splinter of the Minds Eye! Is this evidnce there was no master plan and Lucas was just making it up as he went along rather than having it sketched out? Or were they just in to cashing in big time? Or were these books rubber stamped without coming anywhere near Lucas?
 
gordonrutter said:
Yeah they were just officially licenced spin off books, never intended to be movies. But they were agreed to by Lucas and his people - which raises all sorts of issues as Luke and Leia get jiggy in Splinter of the Minds Eye!
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Splinter of the Minds Eye was intended as a cheap movie sequel, if Star Wars didn't make sufficient money for 20th Century Fox to bankroll the next epic. Needless to say, that didn't happen, so it became a book instead- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splinter_of_the_Mind's_Eye
 
escargot said:
Reminds me that Hyacinth Bucket had a son who was never seen. She was proud of him.

There were hints in the dialogue that he was gay, which back then might have been a disappointment to his mother and was perhaps the reason he stayed away. I must have been thick because I didn't get the gay thing at all.
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The mysterious Sheridan and his close friend Tarquin! I believe he was at uni studying needlecraft. I don't think she was disappointed by him, more he was embarrassed by her. I didnt sense any malice on Hyacinth's part, as she loved her son, but I was young when watching it so I could be wrong.

Edit: I seem to remember that Richard was always a bit more realistic about Sheridan and his prospects.
 
ravensocks said:
The mysterious Sheridan and his close friend Tarquin! I believe he was at uni studying needlecraft. I don't think she was disappointed by him, more he was embarrassed by her. I didnt sense any malice on Hyacinth's part, as she loved her son, but I was young when watching it so I could be wrong.
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Yes, I seem to remember he only ever spoke to her by phone and always had a reason why he couldn't visit. And why he needed money! (You need how much? :bored: )

As to why he stayed away, well, you would wouldn't you? :rollingw:
 
Min Bannister said:
Yes, I seem to remember he only ever spoke to her by phone and always had a reason why he couldn't visit. And why he needed money! (You need how much? :bored: )

As to why he stayed away, well, you would wouldn't you? :rollingw:
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Yep! The joke being that Hyacinth would be the only one who wouldn't get it :)
 
gordonrutter said:
Hi,
No books until the film tie ins and various spin offs. But it was always conceived of as a trilogy of trilogies and it was originally (in an early version of a script / treament) given an overall title of The Journal of the Whills perhaps this was what your friend was referring to?
Click to expand...

I definitely remember her mentioning the trilogy of trilogies, so yes, that would probably be what she meant. It's possible I added the books part myself later.
 
Min Bannister said:
Yes, I seem to remember he only ever spoke to her by phone and always had a reason why he couldn't visit. And why he needed money! (You need how much? :bored: )

As to why he stayed away, well, you would wouldn't you? :rollingw:
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Didn't he have a special friend he was always doing things with? Watching it as an adult it's obviously coded as gay, but like escargot I didn't get the hints when I was younger.

Just found this quote from an episode
In The Candlelight Supper, Sheridan rings, and after asking for seventy pounds, the following is heard:

Hyacinth (to Sheridan): "Now you're not spending it on girls, are you, dear? You promised Mummy. We agreed not until after you've finished your education. [she listens] Oh, you and Tarquin aren't interested in girls. What a comfort that is to a mother's heart, dear."
 
ravensocks said:
The mysterious Sheridan and his close friend Tarquin! I believe he was at uni studying needlecraft. I don't think she was disappointed by him, more he was embarrassed by her. I didnt sense any malice on Hyacinth's part, as she loved her son, but I was young when watching it so I could be wrong.

Edit: I seem to remember that Richard was always a bit more realistic about Sheridan and his prospects.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean that Hyacinth was disappointed by Sheridan. She was obviously proud. The joke was that she didn't know he was gay. Or that anyone was. She'd still have loved him.

Remember that at the time, state-enforced homophobia was rampant. Section 28 of the Local Government Act was in force. It stated that local authorities and schools 'shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality.'
Disgracefully, if a child in school asked their teacher why Hyacinth's son had a friend called Tarquin and didn't like girls, the teacher could be sacked for giving the 'wrong' reply. There were supposed to be no gay role models.

Of course, Hyacinth herself was a gay stereotype; appearances, interior design, stylish entertaining - it's all there. ;)
 
I have a strange false memory from the mid 1990s.

I used to listen to the BBC World Service on the radio in the morning while getting ready for work and having breakfast etc... mainly for the in depth coverage of the overnight news.

I absolutely recall an announcement that John Major had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to resolve the Irish/Northern Irish troubles. I can remember hearing it as clear as day.

I even mentioned it at work to my colleagues later that day.

John Major was never awarded a Nobel Prize.

So this is clearly a false memory either that or I have moved to an alternative timeline where it didn't happen.
 
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