Toil and rubble

While wondering recently whatever happened to Blaster Bates ( think Roy Chubby Brown with a crate of gelignite, if the name doesn't ring a bell), I found myself recalling the only time I've ever caused a newspaper to shell out compensation.

It was while working for the long-defunct Sunday Correspondent that I erroneously (and I stress erroneously) repeated a myth I'd heard about the names of the characters in Captain Pugwash, which were allegedly not quite as innocent as they first appeared.

In all good faith (but alas inaccurately), I wrote that the dramatis personae included such nautical naughties as Master Bates, Seaman Stains, and Roger the Cabin Boy, while "Pugwash" was Australian slang for a form of oral sex, only for John Ryan (the show's creator) to brusquely inform us that the characters were really called Master Mate and Tom the Cabin Boy, and to demand a tidy sum in damages.

That was all many years ago, but I'd like to take this opportunity to confirm that the story has no basis whatsoever in truth, and I sincerely hope that it won't be repeated tonight with great hilarity in pubs across the capital, thereby causing Mr Ryan any further annoyance.

My recollections about the explosive Blaster Bates and my modest part in the demise of " Correspondent House" came to me while watching last night's edition of Demolition Squad on Five. In a bid to get more bangs for its bucks, Five has commissioned this six-part series about the work of the Controlled Demolition Group, whose speciality is blowing up large, unwanted buildings in massive detonations that even Hollywood can seldom match for sheer scale and spectacle.

While other channels bring us makeover shows, Five is giving us more of a done-over show, which should appeal to its predominantly laddish audience, although I've never quite understood why the fall of an enormous building should be considered arousing and exciting to watch. After all, the crumbling of a mighty tower block is surely symbolic of detumescence, and this must be the only occasion when the sudden and total collapse of a onceproud erection causes not gasps of dismay or disapproval, but only cries of pleasure and amazement.

Talking of which, last night's programme saw Dick Green and his team at work in Chingford, plotting the demise of a 60-storey tower block named after St Fabian. I've always felt a little sorry for Fabian, because he isn't the patron saint of anything (unlike St Dominic Savio, for example, who appropriately gets to handle both choirboys and the falsely accused), but having seen his tower, I wasn't surprised that nobody seeks his protection, because this Sixties monstrosity was the very quiddity of squalidity.

"There's 9,000 tons of rubble that's going to flat-pack big time," said explosives engineer Mick Williams, who was anxious to ensure that the debris didn't land on nearby rows of houses (inhabited by the tower's former residents), or the adjacent Paradox Community Centre. Well, it would be deeply ironic if the residents saw their current homes demolished by their previous one, and if there was no longer anyone living there, then the Community Centre would indeed be a Paradox.

Watching the team planting explosives inside gigantic 80-metre urinals (or lift shafts, to give them their technical name) rapidly became less than thrilling, so the producers wisely included archive footage of other (less successful) demolitions, while St Fabian was prepared for his supremely professional blow job.

So it was that we saw the incompetent destruction of an unidentified hospital, with stray bricks plummeting horrifically into the crowd of spectators, who tragically now no longer had a nearby hospital to which they could be rushed for emergency treatment.