[James2001]

On another forum, I said that Gordon Collins feels like a smug posh kid you'd like to slap, which seems to have offended and rubbed a couple of people up the wrong way as if I really was advocating violence against people. Because commenting on how a fictional character on a 40 year old TV show comes across really is the sort of thing to get angry at someone over.

[WillPS]

I particularly enjoyed the comedy of Roger mouthing off about his theory regarding Damon as you can see Sheila storming across the road in the background. The sort of thing you could only ever do with a real street.

[interestednovice]

Same with football, as their team's in the Scottish league rather than the English one, I believe.

Don't RBS still have branches in England though? Or is that something that's changed recently? A quick google shows there's still RBS branded cashpoints around, or there were at least last summer when the most recent google streetview pictures were taken.

The last RBS branded branch in England is Berwick. There is also Holt's in Farnborough and Drummonds in London, which are both technically branches of RBS but are not branded as such.

There might be a few 'Cashline' ATMs but even those are mostly changing to being Natwest branded now, notably the Tesco ones.

I believe Bank of Scotland, unlike Royal Bank of Scotland, never actually had any English branches aside from Halifax ones anyway?

Berwick-upon-Tweed, as the most northerly town in England, is treated as a special case by both Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Scotland. Both still have branches there but, aside from commercial and specialist private banking activity, have no other business in England. You can still open accounts with them though, they just don't actively advertise or have branches there.

Bank of Scotland had a fair number of branches south of the border before the HBOS takeover/merger.

Sorry, that was before my time and I wasn’t sure!

RBS is, as you say, now just three English branches as NatWest is now the primary brand for England and Wales. Personally, I believe that by allowing cross-brand switches (but inter-group) to qualify for switching incentives, managers are subtly encouraging customers to align themselves with the “correct” geographic brand. So they’d like all RBS customers in England to eventually leave the bank and preferably go to NatWest.

You can conduct your business in any of the group brands though, so English RBS customers can just use NatWest branches if they want to. This has been the case for about 5 years.

RBS in England has been in the process of being phased out since around 2016, and the final branches (aside from these three, with arguably special status) closed last year. Similarly, NatWest has been phased out in Scotland in favour of Royal Bank (as RBS now refers to itself) as of the end of this January. So it is quite a recent thing.

Anyway, sorry for going off topic - now back to soaps!

[Brekkie]

I particularly enjoyed the comedy of Roger mouthing off about his theory regarding Damon as you can see Sheila storming across the road in the background. The sort of thing you could only ever do with a real street.

Roger is a brilliant comic character without being an out and out comedy character.


Anyone else finding on Firestick the latest episodes are in the wrong ratio - they've been stretched to 16:9 then cropped to 4:3.

[James2001]

This week's episodes are still the proper aspect ratio watching through Roku and Virgin and through a web browser.

Someone who emailed STV said they'd be implementing a change where the "end point" of the episode is changed so that the auto countdown doesn't appear until the credits are finished as well as rolling out the "watch credits" option to more platforms- something they clearly haven't done yet as the countdown's still starting half way through the credits, and no sign of the "watch credits" button on any of the platforms I use. I did read as well someone claim that at least one platform (can't remember which, might have been Freesat) streams it at 50fps, again not any of the ones I have access to sadly- another change it would be good to see rolled out wider if that is the case (possible whoever said it was watching on a TV with motionflow enabled though).

Being able to watch the credits in full without a convoluted series of button presses (that still leave banners over half the screen) and 50fps are the two things which would make streaming the show pretty much perfect.

[interestednovice]

I particularly enjoyed the comedy of Roger mouthing off about his theory regarding Damon as you can see Sheila storming across the road in the background. The sort of thing you could only ever do with a real street.

Roger is a brilliant comic character without being an out and out comedy character.


Anyone else finding on Firestick the latest episodes are in the wrong ratio - they've been stretched to 16:9 then cropped to 4:3.

Every good comedy has that sort of character!

Bryn in Gavin & Stacey was another one.

[Larry the Loafer]

I particularly enjoyed the comedy of Roger mouthing off about his theory regarding Damon as you can see Sheila storming across the road in the background. The sort of thing you could only ever do with a real street.

Roger is a brilliant comic character without being an out and out comedy character.


Anyone else finding on Firestick the latest episodes are in the wrong ratio - they've been stretched to 16:9 then cropped to 4:3.

I brought this up earlier in the thread but nobody replied, so I figured it was just a me issue. I've only had one episode display properly, and then it went back to being stretched and cropped when I played it again.

[WillPS]

Roger is a brilliant comic character without being an out and out comedy character.


Anyone else finding on Firestick the latest episodes are in the wrong ratio - they've been stretched to 16:9 then cropped to 4:3.

I brought this up earlier in the thread but nobody replied, so I figured it was just a me issue. I've only had one episode display properly, and then it went back to being stretched and cropped when I played it again.

I only have a Fire TV in the bedroom (rarely used) but the two episodes I watched on there were indeed shatliffed and cropped.

@James2001 what's the convoluted series of buttons to allow you to watch the credits in full? I can't see an option at all.

[James2001]

Possibly a bug on the Fire TV version of the app, then.

[WillPS]

I haven't seen a skip button on Android TV or Roku either.