Contestant on The Chase says his favourite actor is Rafe Feinnes, then gets The Beast as the Chaser. No mention that they went to the same school. Feinnes was the year above me and the Beast was the year below
Poor result, really.
But I am enjoying the fact that I have to wait for the slow motion replay to be able to see what Estavoa is actually doing….he’s too quick for the naked eye
⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc
This was de Gaulle’s big day, and he engraved it indelibly on the public memory when sniper shots rang out as he crossed Concorde and, later, when he was walking towards Notre-Dame Cathedral. On both occasions, practically everyone, soldiers and civilians alike, dived for cover except de Gaulle. Cynics have suggested that the shots were pre-arranged, but it is far more likely that de Gaulle simply felt totally invulnerable.
This rings true, from what little I know of French history
Currently reading: 1000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke 📚
Podcast episodes I enjoyed this month - the etiquette of revolving doors, Kim Yo Jong, Chuck Berry, the Labour Party, Dr No as a monkey, 'civilizational erasure', the New York Shakespeare riots, Mary Beard, and Tom Hanks on the moon-walkers
These are the podcast episodes that I particularly enjoyed last month.
Episodes I’ve enjoyed previously are on the podcast pages for this year, for 2024, 2023, and for 2022
Word in your ear - Al Stewart - Al Stewart was rooming next to Paul Simon, and was the first to hear many of Simon’s songs. Simon played him Richard Cory and Homeward Bound on the same day. Stewart said Richard Cory would be a massive hit, but didn’t think much of Homeward Bound
The Penguin Podcast Episode 8: Christmas gifting with William Hanson - etiquette advisor William Hanson says that in Victorian times if a lady and a gentleman had to go through a revolving door then the etiquette was that the gent would go round twice so the lady would not have to push the door at all
The Hated and the Dead - Kim Yo Jong - South Korean scholar Sung-Yoon Lee refers to the Kim dynasty as a “royal family”. He says that the one thing he wishes people knew more about was the starvation in North Korea
McCartney: A Life in Lyrics - Back In the U.S.S.R - Chuck Berry’s original song was inspired by a visit to Australia, especially by seeing how poorly the indigenous population had been treated
Talk ’90s to me: Thelma & Louise – The ’90s most important chick flick - a suggested ending of the film was that Thelma pushes Louise out of the car (or vice versa), just before it goes over the cliff
Origin Story - Labour Party part 3 - there are some great ‘factoids’ for political geeks here. An effort to rid the party of the Trotskyist Militant Tendency was known as Operation Ice-Pick. Tony Blair told Michael Foot that ‘he came to socialism through Marxism’
Documentary On One: Harwood, Johanna Harwood..Meet the Irishwoman who wrote the first James Bond movie. - Johanna Harwood wrote the first draft, and most or all of the final draft of Dr No. In between, at one stage some more established screen writers had decided ‘Dr No’ himself should be a monkey. She was responsible for ‘the Goya joke’
Full Disclosure - Alistair McGowan: My friends laughed when I said I was doing comedy - MacGowan says that impressionists' shows don’t get repeated because they are seen as too ‘of their time’. This is a shame - I really enjoyed listening to old Dead Ringers episodes
Strong Message Here - Civilizational Erasure - according to Reuters, a new executive order requires enhanced vetting of Visa applicants “to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety"
Origin Story: The Labour Party – Part Two – War and Peace - Harold Macmillan said that “it wasn’t Churchill that lost the election [in 1945] but the ghost of Chamberlain "
Inheritance Tracks - Sandi Toksvig - Toksvig says that her father, Claus Toksvig, arranged for Tom Lehrer to play an anti-nuclear protest song before the UN Security Council
Where There’s a Will: Finding Shakespeare - Episode 1: Is Shakespeare American? - a dispute about Shakespeare sparked the 1849 Astor Park riot in New York. Over 20 people were killed.
The Rest is History - Classics - Mary Beard says that the inscription on the statue of Boudicca, on the Embankment, says something like ‘Your descendants’ empire will be bigger than the Roman empire '
The Moonwalkers, with Tom Hanks - The Rest is History - Hanks says something like Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the Moon” is “about as bold a statement as was ever to be made, I think, by any politician. "
About the Warminster Thing
BBC News - The Warminster Thing: 60 years since town’s UFO fascination began - BBC News
Paul McCartney on a Beatles work-in-progress “It’s complicated now. If we can get it simpler, and then complicate it where it needs to be complicated.”
64 Reasons To Celebrate Paul McCartney - by Ian Leslie
This is reminiscient of the quote attributed to Einstein - Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler – Quote Investigator®
Because of what I’d have to say was a disappointing service by Wiltshire Reds buses, this was as close as we got to Stonehenge for Winter solstice this morning.
We were there for an hour and there was one bus.
Felt sorry for the people who’d travelled to get here
Retirement project number 7
Rewrite the words of Ken Dodd’s ‘Happiness’ on the theme of ‘Spursy-ness’
:)
⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc à
Pantomime at Salisbury Playhouse was, again, terrific
My favourite line, excluding the filthy ones
Swindon? It’s practically the Cotswolds
I don’t know if I’ve read something about Hawksmoor in the past that’s been filed in my subconscious somewhere, but there’s something about his churches that I find a bit disconcerting. Beautiful, but disconcerting.
Donald Trumps administration says that we in Europe are facing “civilisational erasure”.
I went to London today and to be honest I couldn’t see any sign of it
#TodayILearned that “role [of Mary Poppins] had been earmarked for Bette Davies, with Cary Grant in the running for Bert”. Also, the Sherman brothers said that they thought a nanny must be a goat.
Making Mary Poppins by Todd James Pierce review – the musical brothers behind the movie magic
The Spire is supposed to be Salisbury Cathedral
Till Faber lit on Lord of the Flies, Golding gave it the tedious title Strangers from Within and for what became The Spire he half-jokingly suggested An Erection at Barchester. William Golding: The Faber Letters review – the making of a masterpiece
The Guardian Long Read - Pretty birds and silly moos’: the women behind the Sex Discrimination Act
An interesting read. It’s jarring how recent much of this is. I met one of the women mentioned, v briefly, and it’s weird to think she was involved in this stuff that feels like it’s way in the past
Nick Cave on a Fairy Tale of New York
One of the many reasons this song is so loved is that, beyond almost any other song I can think of, it speaks with such profound compassion to the marginalised and the dispossessed. With one of the greatest opening lines ever written, the lyrics and the vocal performance emanate from deep inside the lived experience itself, existing within the very bones of the song. It never looks down on its protagonists. It does not patronise, but speaks its truth, clear and unadorned. It is a magnificent gift to the outcast, the unlucky and the broken-hearted. We empathise with the plight of the two fractious characters, who live their lonely, desperate lives against all that Christmas promises — home and hearth, cheer, bounty and goodwill. It is as real a piece of lyric writing as I have ever heard, and I have always felt it a great privilege to be close friends with its creator, Shane MacGowan.