Videos Of The Week #22: Haunted Fish Storm

BALLSTAMPS.

A little later than usual, it's time to lie back, close one eye and open your mouth as I force some videos into your mouth tunnel.

CHOO CHOO.

Stiff westerly winds

Earlier this week, the 30th anniversary of the Great Storm of 1987 was marked here in the UK with another massive bastard storm, only this one wasn't quite as massive or bastardy as the former. Aside from the coincidental weather, there was a smattering of features on news programmes to mark that fateful night, most of which wheeled out that clip of Michael Fish "getting the forecast wrong" for the 3249876598762nd time. 

Given that we only ever see that bit and it appears to have been taken from an iffy off-air recording, you may well have assumed all these years it's all that exists of that notorious broadcast. Well although it seems that it does only exist as an off-air, the entire 2 minutes and 30 seconds of it is there and as you can probably see with our first video, there's a reason why you don't usually see more than the first 7 seconds...

Basically, after his infamous opening line, Fish then goes on to forecast the storm. The only difference being that the only information he could feed from suggested the worst of it would actually miss the country and skip through the Channel and up the North Sea. Naturally, this takes the fire out of the "HAHA, HE'S MEANT TO BE FORECASTING THE WEATHER AND HE GOT IT WRONG" angle, so we hardly ever see the actual sodding forecast. Alright, so the forecast predicts the storm happening in a slightly different place, but as they didn't have as much technology back then to provide better accuracy, I think you can forgive Michael and his colleagues for not getting such an event 100% right.

The bottom dropped out

Staying with the Great Storm of 1987 and the complications of predicting its path, here is a programme ITV made about the storm, the causes, effects and aftermath of it for the 20th anniversary, which includes rarely seen footage from the event together with reconstructions and interviews with people who were caught in the middle of it.

I will be back

We end this week with an intriguing and chilling short film about the haunting of a well-known London Underground station that is possibly linked to a horrific murder way back in 1897, before the station had been constructed...

True or false? I'll leave you to decide. That's all for this week. Sleep tight...