FIRST CATCH YR LARD
i wz txted a question at the weekend by Her Eminence Trig Sistah Starry, in ref: missus beeton and deep frying in the days of yore (plus also what it used to be done in)
well MS, while beyond grebt on stuff like “giblet pie[…]

Ig Nobel awards
This year’s Ig Nobel prizes have been announced (Guardian article). The economics award goes to the man who invented karaoke, the medicine one to someone who claims a link between country music and suicide, but the best is the e[…]

FT TOP 100 FILMS
21: BABE
I’m back again.
So Superman: The Movie had the tagline “You’ll believe a man can fly”. Babe should have had “you’ll believe a pig can talk”, because you do. Anthropomorphic fables th[…]

Dead Man’s Shoes is made by Warp films. It shows from the soundtrack. It is quite possible that the company also imparted a touch of a minimalist attitude to this stripped down production too. Shane Meadows had vanished into an almost twee paro[…]

THE FREAKY TRIGGER TOP 25 SCARIEST THINGS
No.23: Floating Alone In Space
(Note to readers: A technical hitch has arisen with this list, which was lovingly compiled in the pub by a team of FT operatives. My wife Isabel threw the list in the bin, assum[…]

SENSES OF SHAME
People often ask me if I would be happier deaf. That is the kind of sensitive talk that passes as conversations in the gin-haunts of Bloomsbury and Finsbury, and yes I suppose if music and banal conversation is all I get then deafness[…]

The Closed Circle by Jonathon Coe
Jonathon Coe’s The Rotter’s Club (published 2001) was always intended to be Book 1 of a larger story, and Book 2, The Closed Circle has only recently come out. It is a page-turner no doubt (I read it ver[…]

Inhabitants fled in panic.: “We were so happy when we heard we had escaped an alien invasion.”[…]

LIES AND THE LYING LIARS ETC.
NEWS FEED: Bono says U2 have deal with fans. Two crap albums and they are out.
Surely they have reneged on this deal then. Back in 1981 when they released October. Take this to the High Courts now, a deal is a deal.
In o[…]

Its hard to do a picture thread without a picture, but as my Bread and Butter pudding was a companion to Chris’s squirrel I feel I need to post it. But a picture would say everything, when I turned up after a gnarly and damp journey I presented[…]