A pair of glasses and a smile

Readers of a certain age will fondly remember the 6pm slot on BBC2 which for a time during the late seventies and early eighties was the best place to catch Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes as well as Charlie Chan and old Republic serials such as King of the Rocket Men and Buster Crabbe in Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. It was also the home to The Water Margin and Monkey and old black n white shorts from Laurel & Hardy and Harold Lloyd.

Today if you turn the channel on at 6pm you'll be treated to something called Eggheads - a quiz hosted by someone called Dermot Murnaghan in which the winners of other quiz shows team up to win a quiz show. This is better than The Great Sage Equal to Heaven hitting demons on the head with a big stick how exactly?

What the hell has any of this got to do with the capital you ask. Nothing really... just a trip down memory lane brought on by the fact that Harold Lloyd is coming to London for Christmas.

Not literally - he died in 1971, but the Proud Gallery in Camden will be exhibiting his photography in a collection entitled Silent Pictures. Even if the only memory you have of Lloyd is him hanging off a clock face it should be an interesting show. He only turned to photography after he retired, giving him the chance to capture the likes of Bettie Page, Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield behind the scenes on Hollywood sets.

The exhibition runs from the 6th of December until the 29th of January.