Famous Five Grow Up

Which kid would not have read Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series and imagined similar adventures? They do seem to belong in the distant past but surprise, surprise, as recently as 2008, a survey by Costa Book Awards found Blyton voted ‘most loved author’ beating Roald Dahl, JK Rowling and Jane Austen. The original 21 Famous Five books featured George, Julian, Dick, Anne and their dog Timmy. The books wove through adult-free outdoor holidays where the five solved mysteries. Now a spoof series of four books called Enid Blyton for Grown-Ups, which reimagines the Famous Five will be published in November. Subjects will include everything right from going gluten-free to preparing for parenthood.  The books include Five Give Up the Booze, Five Go On A Strategy Away Day, Five Go Gluten Free, and Five Go Parenting. The writer of this new series, Bruno Vincent will imagine what happened to the characters as adults. Says Anne McNeil, of Enid Blyton Entertainment: “Enid Blyton would have been delighted in the gentle parody of her characters.”

Blyton had produced more than 700 books, writing one a week at her most prolific. She died in 1968 by which time she had sold more than 600 million books, and was translated in 90 languages. What would she make of her literary resurrection?

Getting Mixed Signals

With increasing evidence that gluten-free diets are not as cool as people think, it appears that the healthy eating fad may have overcooked itself. The Channel 4 series Eating Well with Hemsley + Hemsley is losing audiences in huge numbers. In just three episodes since the show was unveiled, viewership has plummeted from 926,000 to 342,000 and the channel has decided to move the series, which has final two episodes remaining, from its primetime Monday slot to a less prestigious Friday, when audiences are expected to be out and not watching the telly. A source close to the show has admitted to the media: “It seems Britons are finally fed up with being patronized by clueless skinny cooks telling us to spiralise courgettes.” That is a harsh indictment for the show presenters Jasmine and Melissa who have catered for the likes of Vivienne Westwood and heiress Millie Mackintosh.

So, for regular Joe, if the diets are not really the thing any longer, the other option is exercise, to stay fit. And every second person can be seen donning a fitness tracker these days. But guess what? Fitness trackers are so inaccurate with calorie counting that the readings are wrong by 40 per cent. Researchers have found fitness trackers made by Fitbit and Jawbone underestimated the calorie burn for household chores and notably overestimated it during vigorous exercise. Fitbit One, Fitbit Flex, it was found, overestimated calorie burn during vigorous exercise by up to 40 per cent. Three lawsuits have been filed against Fitbit claiming its heart trackers are ‘inaccurate’. PurePulse monitor was found to be off by up to 20 beats per minutes after comparing results with a Zephyr Bioharness. Fitbit maintains that the study is flawed. The only consolation, I guess, it at least inspires people to go for a run!

Plastic Pounds

Very soon Brits will be carrying plastic fivers in their pockets! So if you forget to check your pockets before putting in your clothes into a washing machine, don’t worry, these plastic banknotes are impossible to tear and can withstand a 90C washing machine cycle.

The new £5, featuring Sir Winston Churchill, which will be unveiled this week at Blenheim Palace, will be printed on polymer. This durable note will be about 15 per cent smaller (like the euro notes) than the current one and the new material is capable of repelling dirt and moisture. If a drink is spilled on it, the note can be wiped clean. Around 440 million of these will come into circulation from this autumn with other notes set to follow. Novelist Jane Austen will be the face of the new £10 note from 2017. Artist JMW Turner will appear on the next £20 banknote due to be issued by 2020. The Bank of England is yet to decide whether or not it will print £50 polymer notes. The new £5 note is estimated to last for about five years, compared to the current cotton paper one which has a life expectancy of 18 months to two years. But a word of caution, these polymers have a habit of getting stuck to each other. With the arrival of plastic banknotes Britain will join a list of more than 30 countries which already use them. Australia was the first to launch them in 1988.

Ospreys in the air

There was great excitement last week, with the social media abuzz with pictures and comments after Londoners spotted heavy duty Osprey helicopters above major landmarks, like the Shard, Big Ben, London Eye and Buckingham Palace. One of the spotters tweeted: “Saw the V22 Ospreys over Chiswick today they are quite a sight!” Another wrote: “Those Osprey helicopters looked like something from Avatar!” But it wasn’t a friendly airshow for Londoners who were clearly impressed, instead, the £43 million V22 Osprey chopper nicknamed Transformer, is used by SAS troops should a terror attack similar to Paris were to happen in UK. It was a practice drill, the British Army’s elite show of strength that came a day after ISIS widow Sally Jones threatened London with a summer bombing campaign on the Underground.

This ISIS recruiter, now called Mrs Terror concluded her tweet with: “But b4 I go, I just wanna say... have a nice summer,” and added: “To be honest I wouldn't go into Central London through June... or even July. Well to be honest I wouldn't go there at all especially by Tube.” Should an attack happen, the Osprey, equipped with machine guns and almost twice as fast as the SAS’s current fleet of transport helicopters can carry at least 24 fully equipped personnel, and can deploy soldiers from Hereford to London in 30 minutes and to Manchester in about the same time. The practice run fits in with the high alert issued by the police before Euro 2016 and for music festivals like Glastonbury.