Fine and Dandy
The Today programme, yesterday. John Humphries intriduces a story about the new, glossy, relaunched Dandy.
He begins by fulminating that it’s on glossy paper, has new stories, and Desperate Dan has got rid of his gun. Isn’t[…]

Toe curling moments in political television (apologies for inaccurate transcription from memory but this is broadly correct):
Question Time, BBC1, 7 October 2004. Dimbleby declares that only 60 seconds remain of the programme. Nation thanks its lucky[…]

New Guidelines for Kids TV: a little strict, say industry types. The thing about kids watching TV is that generally they will actually turn over or off if they see genuinely disturbing (as opposed to scary or ‘ewwww’) stuff. Also the enti[…]

One of my local pubs is being refurbed. I am rather nervous about it. Whilst not a regular haunt, I rather liked thShaftesbury, its cheap beer, lovely Sunday lunches and the like. What it will become I am not sure, there is genuine gutting going on t[…]

FT TOP 100 FILMS
20: ELECTION
Martin Skidmore says:
I’m astonished that director Alexander Payne has attracted quite a lot of criticism from some quarters for picking on particular targets and being cruel about them – Kathy Bates’s […]

A List Of Films from 2003
How to write about what I thought were the best forty films of last year. No, scratch that, why am I writing about the forty best films of last year? The simplest answer of course would be that I did it last year and am a co[…]

Graffiti Criticism: it’s pretty common to see scrawls on Tube posters – someone putting “SLAPER” on an advert for Christina, a casual “Bollox” appended to a Dido picture, the face of Robbie Williams acquiring two b[…]

u = win cz ur stranger
1337-h4x0R and tw33n3r (= txt in the uk) and AIMchat going clear as near-mainstream humour
wonkette channels Blah, Blah Black Sheep‘s joke (w.add-ons) on the DC Emergency text alert system: “OMG WMD WTF!”
p[…]

I thought I’d break the NYLPM mould a bit and talk about some records I’m enjoying. First up is the non-religious half of this new R Kelly album, Happy People. Some critics have suggested that this record is just a CD’s worth of &#8[…]

Secrets of the Doomsday Clock!: i.e. who at the Atomic Energy Bulletin gets to move it forward and back. Sadly it seems that an editor cannot move the clock to ONE TO MIDNIGHT just because they thought it would be a funny idea in the pub. The clock &[…]