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Sadly not of Hugh... but happily of Hugh's father, WRGM "Ran" Laurie, one of Britain's greatest rowers. A triple Cambridge Blue in the 1930s, Laurie went on to win a Gold medal in the 1948 Olympics in the coxless pairs event, rowing with JHT Wilson, who rows here with him in the Cambridge boat in 1935 and 1936.

Cambridge Crew at Mortlake, 1935

1935 Boat Race

1936 Cambridge Boat Race Crew in Training

Last-minute Practice, 1936

You can see from the first item where Hugh inherited his dimples from :)
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After having my account for a couple of years without uploading anything, it finally occurred to me to upload this for everyone's viewing pleasure:



It's got Hugh Laurie as a tag, so it will come up in search results when you search for Hugh's stuff. I was playing around on YouTube last night, downloading some really old adverts Hugh was in when he was a babyfaced twentysomething, I also found that he'd been the guest on a show called God Almighty, which seems to be of a similar format to Room 101, hosted by Clive Anderson and it's about what you would do if you were God. From 2003 apparently but I've never heard of it before.

Into the archives

Saturday, October 25th, 2008 08:39 pm
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I signed up to a three-day pass to the Guardian & Observer archives - £15. So far lots of the same about Ran Laurie, words like "brilliant" and "perfect" used frequently. Hope to have something more to share next week. And I should finally have my mission patches by then! Had a customs charge to pay, which I did today, so they should be with me in plenty of time for the next shuttle mission.

And I have a Halloween theme on Firefox! And it's not too strange, it's actually rather good. I have the ColourfulTabs plugin and it looks good with dark-coloured tabs.
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I'm sure you're aware of the fact that Hugh Laurie's father, Dr WRGM "Ran" Laurie, was an Olympic champion oarsman (if you're not, read his Wikipedia entry - and while you're at it, read the entry for Jack Wilson, his rowing partner - yes, I'm plugging them because I initiated them both). I found a few interesting items about Ran Laurie in The Times archives to share.

Words and pictures under the cut )