BBC ‘100% fake news’, says Donald Trump’s press secretary

Explains why they keep telling me that the Arsenal are at the top of the table ⚽

I looked up Dead Christ in the Tomb, and I’m entirely with Anna

In 1867 the novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky and his second wife. Anna, honeymooned in Basel. There, in the city’s Kunstmuseum, the newlyweds saw a painting that made a big impression on them both. Anna, who was pregnant, could hardly bear to look at it. But Fyodor was so transfixed that his wife, observing that “his agitated face had a kind of dread in it”, eventually led him away.

The painting that had such a “crushing impact” on Dostoevsky (who went on to write about it in his novel The Idiot) was Hans Holbein’s Dead Christ in the Tomb a lifesize depiction of Christ’s battered

By Katherine Harvey in last Saturday’s Times

These were the Crucial Tracks that I dug out from my mental record boxes over the last few days.

Describe music that reminds you of a specific place you've traveled.

"Are You Being Served?" by Matt Berry

I've been to a few places as more-or-less a 'music tourist' - I've been to Memphis, and Liverpool, and bits of Ireland. I think you could argue that that was more the place reminding me of the music rather than vice versa.

So there are two choices where it’s very much the other way round.

I worked for a few years for Sony and we had some sort of conference in Dublin. From memory I think around half the presentations started with a video soundtracked by either ‘Beautiful Day’ or ‘Vertigo’. I like U2…but it got rather wearing.

Anyway, the song for today is the theme to a 1970s slightly naff, and very, very English BBC sitcom.

I was stuck in a hospital in New Orleans for a few days in the early 1990s and I had nothing to read apart from the Times-Picayune. The paper had a three-page spread about Are You Being Served?

Reading about the show wasn’t how I was expecting to be spending my time in New Orleans

Apple doesn’t seem to have the original theme, but it’s a good song (better and more amusing than the show tbh) and Matt Berry does a good version.

Let the good times roll!

"Are You Being Served?" by Matt Berry on Apple music

What song do you associate with your biggest accomplishment?

"Mas Que Nada" by Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66

This makes me think of Kid #2

"Mas Que Nada" by Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 on Apple music

What song makes you feel understood when no one else does?

"Ain't Goin' to Goa" by A3

This is off-prompt...but the prompt set off a train of thought that led me to this song.

"Ain't Goin' to Goa" by A3 on Apple music

What's a song you initially disliked but now love?

"World Is Africa" by Black Uhuru

This isn't a song I disliked, but it's from a genre I initially disliked

As a teenage punk rocker I thought of Jamaican music as songs for drippy hippies, but then I saw a couple of local-ish reggae bands, and then 2 Tone happened and I changed my mind

I think this was on the first reggae record I bought

"World Is Africa" by Black Uhuru on Apple music

What song feels like a secret between you and the artist?

"Lost Platoon (Live at Cheltenham College 1981)" by The Dancing Did

This song reminds me a bit of the Pogues. It seems to be reaching back in time to fuse some older music with a sort of punk rock, without really having that tradition to fall back on

It was a great single, but it’s so secret that it’s only available on Apple music in a live version

"Lost Platoon (Live at Cheltenham College 1981)" by The Dancing Did on Apple music

What song makes you think of your childhood home?

"Working Class Hero" by John Lennon

A strong memory of my first home was coming downstairs to hear the news that John Lennon had been murdered

This is maybe my favourite of his solo songs…and it fits a bit with where we lived

"Working Class Hero" by John Lennon on Apple music

What's your favorite track one on a debut album?

"Just Like Honey" by The Jesus and Mary Chain

A difficult one for me because I've always tended to listen to singles, or to cherry-pick from LPs

I liked this one though

"Just Like Honey" by The Jesus and Mary Chain on Apple music

What's a hidden gem you wish more people knew about?

"Emerald City" by Bethany Eve

I have to pick a song by Child #1

It’s a feature of being a parent that eventually your kids get better at some things than you are. In my case the kids are massively better than me at two things I’d really like to be good at - music and sport, respectively

"Emerald City" by Bethany Eve on Apple music

🚌 #TodayILearned that Ctrl-Shift-G, G (the ctrl and shift and G keys all together, then G on its own) lands you in the Commit message box in VS Code

Tend to agree

What makes these unit tests so bad ? Two things: 1) LLMs write way too many unit tests and 2) the tests are extremely frequently just verifying what the code does, not validating what the code should do.

Stop vibe coding your unit tests — Andy Gallagher

John Cleese on the telly just now said that another prominent actress, who had been starring in an Ayckbourn play, was offered the role of Sybil but turned it down because she didn’t think it was funny. I wonder who it was?

[When he settled in London, Voltaire’s] only major problem seems to have been getting used to the local sense of humour. Instead of being subtly witty, Londoners talked surreal nonsense.

Plus ça change!

Currently reading: 1000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke 📚

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 | mattypenny

Dan Snow’s History Hit - The Tower of London - the three lions of the the England shirt are probably based on three leopards that were in tthe Tower. Also….it does seem like the Krays might have been the last people imprisoned in the Tower, before they were (in)famous

The Louis Theroux Podcast: S3 EP3: Trevor Noah on growing up during Apartheid, landing ‘The Daily Show’, and being friends with Bill Gates - Trevor Noah speaks highly of the 1970s UK comedy ‘Mind Your Language’

Little Atoms 873 - Rob Drummond’s You’re All Talk - there is very little regionality to Australian-English accents, probably because English is relatively recent there, and had little time to develop before the spread of TV and radio. My accent is unusual in English-English because of its ‘roticity’ - I pronounce the ‘r’s in arm and car

McCartney: A Life in Lyrics Too Many People - McCartney says that there was some discussion of the band carrying on as the Three-tles immediately after Lennon left. I think i remember they referred to themselves as the Three-tles at the time of the Anthology series

How tickled am I? - Harry Worth - Harry was advised to ditch his ventriloquist act and concentrate on stand-up by Laurel and Hardy

After dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Mother Shipton: Tudor Prophetess of England’s Doom - Mother Shipton is like a Yorkshire Nostradamus, although the history is sketchy. The first written record of her existence is from 100 years after her death

Did Michael Keogh Save Hitler? - it seems that he did…. although one of the contributors says that an Irishman wouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. In any case he had an interesting life

George H.W. Bush and broccoli: The president’s war against a vegetable. - George Bush Senior didn’t like broccoli. He said that it probably killed the dinosaurs.

A Very Australian Scandal - Sir Eugene Goosens was the inspiration behind the Sydney Opera House but he was forced to leave Australia after a scandal involving importing pornography and occult material. The architect of the building, Jørn Utzon, didn’t attend the opening ceremony as he had fallen out with the politicians involved. BBC reporter Trevor Philpott said “It was a score of towering shells. It was a cluster of seagulls spreading concrete wings. It was a huddle of sailing boats with billowing concrete sails. And it was an unmitigated bitch to build.”

The rest is entertainment - Do actors really lose the weight and are you paid for playing dead? - to earn the UK minimum wage from Spotify you need to have 567,000 monthly streams. The closest to that figure that the podcast guys could find was Alison Moyet

BBC Media Show - Steve Rosenberg, Zanny Minton Beddoes, new Victoria Beckham documentary and the ethics of secret filming - BBC Russia correspondent says Russian newspapers are a lot more free to discuss problems in Russia than the TV is. Putin doesn’t really care about the newspapers

The Louis Theroux Podcast: S6 EP1: Steve Coogan on falling out of love with Alan Partridge, playing Jimmy Savile, and sobriety - the weirdness of playing Jimmy Savile was increased by Coogan having a flat in the old TV Centre, and then travelling to act on a set which was a replica of the old TV Centre

BBC How tickled am I - Norman Evans - Norman Evans earned £1,500 per week as a pantomime dame in the 1940s or 1950s…..mind you a good pantomime dame would be well worth it

A drink to Shane MacGowan, Spinal Tap rebooted and lunch with Randy Newman …Word Podcast 287 - “Pop music occasionally throws up someone of outrageous intelligence. Shane MacGowan was one of them”

Word In Your Ear - Pauline Murray’s kids have finally found out what Mum did in the Punk Wars Ep. 584 - Murray says that if you asked people to stop spitting, then the spitting typically increased. I tend to forget about the spitting of those days, and the violence

Word In Your Ear - Glen Matlock and the ‘Sliding Doors moment’ that sparked the punk rock fuse Ep. 583 - the Sex Pistols got banned from most of the venues on, I thin, the No Future tour. They still had to traipse across the country and turn up at each venue to stand any chance of getting paid

Origin Story: Karl Marx – Part One – The Fighter - In the Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote that “Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives. Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common”. He did talk rubbish, sometimes.

A Short History of ….Apollo 13 - I confess i use the Short History podcasts to get to sleep. The production is mellow, but they are all interesting enough that if i dont drift off I enjoy learning something. This episode however kept me wide awake. It was far too exciting

The Hated and the Dead - Hun Sen - Cambodia was one of the greatest victims of the Cold War [between the Soviet Union and the West] and it could be one of the greatest victims of a second Cold War [between China and the West]

Angela Barnes Cold War Secrets - Barnes interviews Anna Funder, author of ‘Stasiland’, who says that 1 in 7 East Germans was a Stasi informant

I liked Carry-On. A couple of years back I sat down to watch Die Hard with Kid #2….and we were both a bit disappointed to be honest. It wasn’t as good as I remembered it. In a way this is more like the Die Hard that I remembered than the actual Die Hard was.

Watched: Carry-On 🍿

There’s a nice bit about Brief Encounter in the Grauniad today

Brief Encounter at 80: why we’re still falling for David Lean’s 1945 romance

I didn’t know that the Kardomah cafés were a real thing Wikipedia

When someone on the telly says “You do NOT want to miss it”, I nearly always do

There’s a bit in Spinal Tap where they are accused of being sexist, and the band are confused and bewildered because surely it’s good to be sexy.

I have the same feeling of bewilderment and confusion when people use ‘antifa’ as if it’s a bad thing. Surely it can only be good to be anti-fascist?

I haven’t seen this before…the White Hart is still a hotel in Salisbury. It’s titled “The departure from the ' White Hart', Salisbury, attended by Landlord, waiters, Postboys, Hostlers etc etc”

I don’t know if the statue of the hart would be the same one that’s now on top of the Hotel

Yasuji Ariga, a Japanese prison guard, on Paul McCartney

(Extracted in the Times from the new book about Wings )

I enjoyed Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere 🍿.

I enjoyed the music performances, and the Americana of it. Also it’s fun to be a fly on the wall when the music biz guy (Jimmy Iovine?) first the hears Nebraska LP.

It’s an odd film though - I guess the process of writing music isn’t easy to film.

I sometimes wonder who I like best, out of Hyde, Lewis and Moran

This is Caitlin Moran in Saturday’s Times. You miss the context about brews and golden owls, but I didn’t feel I could post the whole article

This is still a fine, fine country. These 24 hours of travelling across it are like collecting unexpected joy. Heading back to London, at Wakefield station - Wakefield! the sexy future has arrived: the departures board is a full-colour screen with a BSL interpreter in the corner, casually signing “Doncaster” and “12.42”. The poisonous chimneys of the industrial north have been replaced by wind turbines and solar farms. The tribes we superseded would be astonished by how clever we became. How the smogs and the soot seem as ancient as Permian rock now.

Back at King’s Cross, and a teenage girl sings Back to Black with a Jamaican twang, at the piano, next to M&S - and there’s England, right there. Patois, Winehouse, custard; golden owls, brews and gurdwaras, and Betjeman keeping watch over the whole thing. JD Vance would be bewildered by these things. Or, crucially, blind to them.

He does not know what these things are when he sees them. How this is England.

England is still here. Of course it is.■

Got kicked out of the queue for Chelsea tickets for no discernible reason….I think the new system is worse than the old one 😡😡

I might have to go and support Frank Lampard and Coventry instead

⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc

As Harold Wilson almost said, a week is a long time in football, and in Strictly Come Dancing

At least you can depend on Liverpool

⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc 🕺

These are my Crucial Tracks for the last few days.

A song from college or early adulthood.

"Dark Streets of London (feat. Spider Stacy)" by Stick in the Wheel

I'm tempted to pick Bowie mentioning the London School of Eco-gnomics, but I've had that before....so instead this is a song of the time, and also a song of London

I remember in “Fresher’s Week” discussing whether the college’s Irish Society could book the Pogues (who were probably still Pogue Mahone at that stage). They couldn’t , but I got to see the band at the end of my first year, at a free open-air show in Battersea Park.

This is a cover by a band that supported the Pogues this year, at the Brixton Academy. It was an emotional night

"Dark Streets of London (feat. Spider Stacy)" by Stick in the Wheel on Apple music

A song from your teenage years.

"Way Down" by Elvis Presley

Sadly, both Elvis and Marc Bolan died within a couple of months of me becoming a teenager.

This was the Elvis song that posthumously charted in the UK. In my memory, it was number one for ages.

Great song, in any case.

"Way Down" by Elvis Presley on Apple music

If you were a professional athlete, what is your walk up or intro song?

"A Pistol for Paddy Garcia" by The Pogues

This used to be the Pogues' walk on music. While none of the Pogues are professional athletes, this was always quite dramatic so I will use it too, when the need arises

"A Pistol for Paddy Garcia" by The Pogues on Apple music

What's a song that you like but most of your friends don't.

"Tara Hill" by The Fureys And Davey Arthur

My partner likes this but I don't think any of my other friends have heard this, or would much like it if they did.

"Tara Hill" by The Fureys And Davey Arthur on Apple music

What is a song that makes you think of your first job?

"Hitsville U.K. (Remastered)" by The Clash

My first job was in a posh proto-Waitrose supermarket called the Country Market

I earned a whole pound an hour. I mainly spent that on Guinness, and on going up to London to see bands. At that time a pound an hour could cover that. This lot were the most famous of the bands I saw at that time. I think they cost £3.50

"Hitsville U.K. (Remastered)" by The Clash on Apple music

What's a song that instantly makes you smile?

"Joxer Goes to Stuttgart" by Christy Moore

This makes me smile because it's a funny song, and because Damien Duff picked it for a CD compilation of the Chelsea teams favourite songs.

The Duffer made me smile as a footballer, and putting this song in amongst the rest of the songs - Spandau, Bryan' Adams, Europe - on the CD makes me smile too..

"Joxer Goes to Stuttgart" by Christy Moore on Apple music

Daisy May Cooper and Charlie Cooper were on This Morning with Josie Lawrence today. I’ve never heard so many west country accents on TV at the same time

There are the ravens leaving the Tower of London, and then we have Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman leaving Strictly.

Rylan, Alison Hammond … Bill Bailey? Who could possibly replace Claudia and Tess on Strictly?

Exactly what I thought

Marina Hyde quotes Diego Torres' description of Jose Mourinho’s footballing philosophy

1. The game is won by the team who commit fewer errors.

2. Football favours whoever provokes more errors in the opposition.

3. Away from home, instead of trying to be superior to the opposition, it’s better to encourage their mistakes.

4. Whoever has the ball is more likely to make a mistake.

5. Whoever renounces possession reduces the possibility of making a mistake.

6. Whoever has the ball has fear.

7. Whoever does not have it is thereby stronger.

The Rest Is Entertainment - Can The Rock Win An Oscar?

Also here: José Mourinho, the anti-Barcelona, stands alone in modern football

Chelsea won. Liverpool lost. Tottenham lost. And Jimmy Floyd is still in Strictly.

😀

⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc

Child #1 said she’s going to a thing celebrating Samuel Coleridge Taylor this weekend

Me: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, surely?

Nope.

London Mozart Players: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor at 150

If I automated this a bit better then I wouldn’t need to worry about mis-spelling ‘Crucial’ every week.

Anyway, these are my Crucail Tracks for the last few days.

A song that reminds you of somewhere you lived.

"London You're a Lady" by The Pogues

Having lived in London there are lots of songs, both generic London ones and more local ones.

I’ve already posted Hilly Fields. There are a bunch of songs about Camberwell (Basement Jaxx, Dub Pistols). The Barron Knights were ‘from Catford, ain’t we eh?.’ The Kinks had a song about a road we once lived in - Lavender Hill - and Squeeze’s Up The Junction was about the local railway station.

I’ve picked one of the generic London songs though, by ‘the dear old towns favourite bard '

It’s got a lyric I really like -

“Your eyes are full of sadness

Red buses skirt your hem

Your head-dress is a ring of lights

But I would not follow them

Your architects were madmen

And your builders sane but drunk

But amidst your fading jewels

Shine acid house and punk”

"London You're a Lady" by The Pogues on Apple music

What is the oldest song you like?

"London Pride" by Noël Coward

Some of the folk songs I like go back hundreds of years, but I'm interpreting this as the oldest recording I like

There are a few candidates from Hank Williams, from Louis Armstrong and from Louis Jordan, but I’ve picked this song as I know I listen to it most frequently

I lived in London for just short of twenty years…and the song provokes nostalgia both for London and for the wartime generation that I grew up with - grannies and grandad, aunts and uncles, and blokes in pubs….I miss them all.

"London Pride" by Noël Coward on Apple music

A song off the last album you paid money for.

"Blackbird (Esher Demo)" by The Beatles

I've only started listening to this up-and-coming band fairly recently, and I bought the Esher Sessions version of the White Album from a stall on Salisbury Market

"Blackbird (Esher Demo)" by The Beatles on Apple music

A song from the 2010s that you like or means something to you.

"Fester Skank (feat. Diztortion)" by Lethal Bizzle

I found it relatively difficult to place songs as being from the 2010s

I’m not sure why.

It could be old age. Or it could be because it’s when I stopped buying so much physical product. Or it might be that there hasn’t been enough time for a 2010s nostalgia wave to get going, so the 2010’s hasn’t got a fixed musical identity.

I think old age is the most likely, really.

Anyway, this was one of the last CD’s I bought before switching to streaming

"Fester Skank (feat. Diztortion)" by Lethal Bizzle on Apple music

A song from the 2000s that you like or means something to you.

"I Dreamed a Dream" by Susan Boyle

At the end of the 2000s we went to see the Britain's Got Talent live show

I was and am dubious about most ot the output from those shows, but that year was a high point. There were two street dance acts, Flawless and Diversity, a couple of funny novelty acts, and there was Susan

She had health issues at the time, and missed some of the shows. No-one was sure whether she was going to be there the night we went, but in the end she was brilliant, the crowd was brilliant and it was one of the most memorable shows I’ve seen.

"I Dreamed a Dream" by Susan Boyle on Apple music

A song from the 1990s that you like or means something to you.

"Mulder and Scully" by Catatonia

Catatonia were on a re-run of an old Top of the Pops last week.

There was some good indie music in the 1990s beyond the Britpop heavyweights.

It was a shame Catatonia didn’t go on a bit longer

"Mulder and Scully" by Catatonia on Apple music

A song from the 1980s that you like or means something to you.

"Street Tuff (feat. Rebel MC)" by Double Trouble

According to a reviewer quoted on Wikipedia this "mixes the rhythms of Jamaican reggae with a house music beat."...which seems about right.

At the start, it quotes the "You can’t play bass" bit from my Crucial Track from yesterday.

"Street Tuff (feat. Rebel MC)" by Double Trouble on Apple music

A song from the 1970s that you like or means something to you.

"Bed Skank" by Scotty

This is Scotty toasting (rapping) over Lorna Bennett's reggae version of my Crucial Track yesterday.

"Bed Skank" by Scotty on Apple music

A song from the 1960s that you like or means something to you.

"Breakfast In Bed" by Dusty Springfield

This song has a couple of reggae versions. The first was Lorna Bennett, which links to my 1970s choice. The second was

a UK number one for UB40 and Chrissie Hynde. I saw the Pretenders support UB40 a few years later and was miffed that they didn’t do the song

"Breakfast In Bed" by Dusty Springfield on Apple music