Jolly Old England

"Hello, is that Double Take lookalike agency? Do you have someone who looks like Liam Neeson's gay, dance instructor brother? You do!? Then you've just saved my stag do!"

 

"Hello, is that lookalike agency Double Impact? Do you have someone who does former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev's wife Raisa? You do?! You've just saved my life..."

And here she is. Shovel some US dollars and an Absolut miniature into her fake Gucci handbag and she'll be happy to bring a touch of Glasnost-era glamour to any event.

 
Not bad, and you can probably negotiate a decent rate given that her real-life counterpart went to the big Kremlin in the sky in 1999.

Paranormal Activity: you'll sleep with the light on for the rest of your life

Okay, it's not quite as bad as that but I just wanted to write one of those tabloidy quotes once in my life. If I had about 150,000 more readers it might even have got my name on the poster. But in any case, there's no doubting this film's major scary credentials - it really is twice as scary as the terrifying Blair Witch Project, with which it's always being compared due to their mutual camcorder format.

But while Blair had some very spooky woods to play with, Paranormal merely has an unremarkable "starter" home in San Diego, California. So what the hell does the new film do that's so awesome?

Seven pics off my phone: aka the ten o'clock news from Jolly Old England...

BONG!!!...

"Banned meat" on sale in Sainsbury's...

 

Police Academy Day. Police Academy 3: Back In Training (1986) EXPERIMENT FAILED!

Ooh only 80 minutes this one. The producers really understood how their audiences felt; they were making them shorter.

Police Academy Day. Police Academy 2 (1985)

0mins. Laptop doesn't like the PCA2 disc so am watching on normal telly. That means no screenshots for you. What's that, you'll live without them?!

Police Academy Day. Film no.1: Police Academy (1984).

Opening credits. Kim Cattrall's in it. My God, was she in EVERYTHING in the 80s? Look how young she looked.

How Much Fun Can You Have... Watching All 7 Police Academy Films In One Sitting? LIVE FROM WALTHAMSTOW. Pt.1

Ah, the Police Academy films... they were rubbish, weren't they? Just how rubbish they were really hit home a few months ago when I caught the end of the first one and found it too fascinatingly bad to switch off. What would it be like, I wondered, to watch all of them? Well, the time for "wondering" is over. The time for watching is here. Stay tuned as I attempt the impossible, think the unthinkable and watch the unwatchable in one titanic sitting. How, er, bad can it be... right? The highlights-only package is available on Twitter @jollyoldengland. Let's go!

It starts here.

Local Pub That You're Scared To Go To But We're Not: no.9, The Duke of Sussex, 23 Bayliss Road, London SE1

“I’m in the Duke of Sussex,” I text to my friend Mark, who had nominated this place as a possible Scary Pub for me to investigate. His reply is immediate: “Get out.”

How Bad Really is the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special of 1978? Part two

50mins. I spoke too soon about the unlikeliness of things getting more dismal. We’ve now cut to a cartoon. It’s actually a hell of a lot better than the live action stuff though.

55mins. Hey, weird – Boba Fett has turned up.

 
I wondered why Luke wasn’t scared of him, and then I realised that Fett didn’t show up until The Empire Strikes Back the following year. So this was cleverly introducing us to him. Apparently this was the most highly regarded part of the programme. Ah, Boba’s bad guy credentials have been revealed. “I’ll see you again, friend,” he says, and makes a getaway at the end.