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Impartiality and The Vicar of Dibley
There’s an interesting report in today’s Observer which says that The Vicar of Dibley is likely to be accused of breaking BBC guidelines. The episode in question is the one I questioned at the time back on New Year’s Day 2005. Towards the end of the episode, viewers were shown a video supporting the Make…
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If You’re Making An Authored Documentary – Be Sure to Wear Pink
Both David Dimbleby and Andrew Marr have major documentaries on our screens at the moment. Dimbleby is presenting How We Built Britain, in which he travels the country in his trusty Land Rover visiting buildings that help explain the story of our nation. He does so wearing a pink shirt. Meanwhile Marr is presenting his…
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Lynx Cans Revisited
Back in February, I posted a piece about the new style Lynx deodorant cans and said that I thought the design was faulty. Well, as the comments to that post seem to confirm, I’m not the only person who’s noticed the fault. OK – four other people isn’t a great deal, but these are people…
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The Sheer Randomness of Email
I really did get my Google Talk application letting me know that these two emails arrived in fast succession.
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Stoppard on the Radio
The BBC finally announced today what The Stage had already told us – there is to be a Stoppard season on BBC Radio this summer. The headline piece is the radio debut of Stoppard’s most recent work, Rock ‘n’ Roll, which is shortly to transfer to Broadway. I was hoping for a repeat of Radio…
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Squashed Credits
And so it has come to pass… The BBC has adopted its new “squashed into the corner” credit policy with quite dire results. You can no longer hear the programme’s closing theme music, since audio from the top video preview plays over the top. You sometimes can’t read the credits because they’re too small. I…
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Virgin 1
Is everyone looking forward to mooted new TV channel “Virgin 1“? It’s said to include programmes currently on other Virgin Media channels like Bravo, Challenge, Trouble and Living. And the channel will be available on Freeview too. For Virgin Media customers there’ll be on-demand functionality. “It will be a creative tour de force and a…
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The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril
You can’t fail to want to read a book called The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril can you? And just look at that cover! This is pulp book set in a pulp era. I should explain a bit more. The novel has two protagonists, Walter Gibson who used to write The Shadow, and Lester Dent who…
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The Undercover Economist
The success of Freakonomics was almost certainly the reason that this book got the green light from the publishers. That’s not to say that it’s bad, because it’s not. Seemingly based on a column from the Financial Times, the author attempts to use economic theory to explain day to day things that we experience. For…
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Tescopoly
Ah. The new evil empire. This book probably isn’t available for £3.73 in your local branch of Tesco (and what is it about that .73 price point?), but you should seek it out in your local bookshop – assuming you still have one. We’ve all heard many of the stories about Tesco, and I’m not…
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Murder in Samarkand
This is the book that the British Government really didn’t like being published. Indeed I’ve even heard stories of people being stopped from taking it on the plane with them! Nobody stopped me at Stansted with it when I went away with it recently. Murray was the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan where he was something…
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IoS
I didn’t pick up a copy, but it seems that The Independent on Sunday’s readers aren’t overjoyed at the changes that were made over the weekend…
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Yellowface/All The Lovers In The Night
Yellowface by R F Kuang I first came across R F Kuang with last year’s very enjoyable Babel, an alternate history of the British Empire told in a world where magic exists and is controlled by an elite group of individuals. Yellowface is very different, but no less enjoyable. It’s a book about books, and…
Hadrian’s Wall
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