Pat Pocock recalls England's tour of India in 1984/5

This was David Gower's first tour as England captain, and he hit upon the novel idea of taking the two best spinners available to him. The selectors took some convincing - Edmonds was too bolshie, Pocock too old - but he got his way and won the series.

As we're told at the start of the interview, Pocock had long gaps between his clumps of test appearances. I once heard him say that, over their long careers, he and John Emburey had very similar figures for runs conceded and wickets taken. But Pocock had achieved those figures in significantly fewer overs.

In other words, he was a little bit more attacking than Emburey and a little bit more expensive. It will come as no surprise to followers of English cricket that the selectors always went for Emburey.

Finally, let's remember the great Peter Tinniswood and his suggestion that the Irish dramatist Seán O'Casey wrote Juno and the Pocock.

Leslie Sarony: Ain't it Grand to be Blooming Well Dead

There's a programme about Les Dawson that used to be shown regularly on high-numbered TV channels. One of the people who pays tribute to Dawson is John Cleese, who was a regular in two series of Sez Les.

Cleese describes Dawson as "an autodidact, a very smart guy who was fascinated by words " and mentions in passing that something the Monty Python team had in common was an interest in and affection for music hall.

And that interest in music hall may explain why Leslie Sarony is in the cast of The Crimson Permanent Assurance, the short that begins Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

As I blogged last month, Sarony was the composer of Jollity Farm, a song from 1929 that the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band recorded in the 1960s, and also played Uncle Staveley in the final series of Peter Tinniswood's I Didn't Know You Cared in 1979. The Crimson Permanent Assurance was made in 1983.

So here's another of Sarony's songs. One of my pet theories is that the Victorians were less Victorian than we imagine and that much of that awful English mania for respectability actually dates from the early decades of the 20th century.

But Ain't It Grand to Be Bloomin' Well Dead! reminds us that there was a great appetite in popular culture for laughing at respectability then too.

I remember it 1971, when it served as the theme song for That's Your Funeral, a BBC sitcom starring Bill Fraser that was cancelled after one series but was still turned into a feature film, as many sitcoms were in those days, by Hammer.

One final discovery: it turns out that Jollity Farm was a riposte to a song from the previous year called Misery Farm.

The man who wrote Jollity Farm later played Uncle Staveley in I Didn't Know You Cared

On Twitter today Wayne Cowling provided one of the greatest trivial facts ever. Let's award it Trivial Fact of the Month for starters.

As a reader of this blog, you will, of course, be familiar with the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band track Jollity Farm.

You will also have fond memories of the BBC sitcom I Didn't Know You Cared, which was written by the incomparable Peter Tinniswood.

But did you know that Leslie Sarony, who wrote Jollity Farm in 1929, played Uncle Staveley ("I heard that, pardon?") in the fourth and final series of I Didn't Know You Cared in 1979?

I may have to go and lie down.