A glittering prize for the person who, on being asked to select his channel’s best 10 programmes for veteran news broadcaster John Humphrys, “sent him tapes of programmes such as Banzai, Breasts Uncupped and Nip/Tuck.” There is, however, a glaring inconsistency in his criticism of reality telly and defence of news journalism: on the one…
There is no sound quite as revolting as an ex-street cat on heat and with ferocious nasal congestion licking its posterior end, and the smell is not exactly Scandinavian pine either. Jimmy Rushing on his 1944 recording of Harvard blues sings I don’t keep dogs or women in my room but omits mention of pussy,…
The news (via Normblog) that the Iranian justice system has strung up a mentally incapable and unrepresented 16-year old girl for getting to know a boy shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to anyone who has heard the stories of those who escaped the revolution or the various officially sanctioned torture and murder…
There’s a brief reference this morning in the Guardian to how, back in 1964, Stuart Christie tried to blow up Franco. Christie, after three years in prison here, went on to become mates with the terrorists who attempted to do the same to the Heath government, the BBC and various other symbols of fascist oppression…
When the inspector calls, the chief weapon of fundamentalist fishermen–particularly those with long white beards–is Genesis 1:26-28: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all…
I reckon Gayle Tomlinson has let herself be suckered for the purposes of this story in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, passed along the counter by that notorious pie-lady, Margaret Marks: Belgians are turning their backs on the traditional buns and taking the Geordie stottie to their hearts. Greggs [a] has launched its fourth shop in…
When the Maoists take Kathmandu, what do you think they will say to the entrepreneurs who sell Che Guevara t-shirts to Westerners looking for an alternative? “Hey, no sweat, Che was one of ours.” “Who? See that wall?” Elsewhere on the Nepali Times site there’s a review by Kunda Dixit of an interesting new book…
Burglar and ex-Libertines singer Pete Doherty was caught in June carrying a flick knife. “If the law was to send me to prison it wouldn’t be able to look itself in the eye,” he commented after yesterday’s hearing, in what critics are taking as a clear rejection of the post-Surrealist aesthetic currently sweeping East London…
I’m intrigued by this excerpt from a discussion of The Arab-Israeli Cookbook, a new play by Robin Soans (who apparently also once wrote for The Two Ronnies): A professional hommos maker who lives close to the border of the West Bank reveals that he is losing customers from villages in the West Bank because they…