Of course having gone to McDonalds’ I could hardly pass up the opportunity to sample the BIG TASTY, a.k.a. the McBritish – the megaburger available exclusively to UK residents. It’s an interesting choice for a Brit-branded burger si[…]

Pi is the ratio between the radius of a circular object and its circumference. It is notable for being a irrational number, impossible to display exactly as a fraction and in decimal terms it goies on forever without notably repeating itself. The onl[…]

Deception by Philip Roth
There’s something impressive yet still insubstantial in Roth’s work that is at its peak in this very slight book. I’ve read just about everything he wrote, and enjoyed them, but I’ve never been quite c[…]

NATION UNITES IN FAINTLY DUTIFUL REJOICING!: Good work our boys etc. etc., and it was all very exciting, but I have to say I can’t detect as yet the mass uplifting of the national spirit that some might have expected. Isabel and I went shopping[…]

The least welcoming, most alienating place I have ever eaten in London is the top floor of the Oxford Street MacDonald’s (the branch near Borders). I missed lunch on Friday because of a meeting and didn’t get a chance to eat until 4PM, at[…]

Bring on the Branston, bring on the Branston, bring on the Branston tang! Featuring excited pickles on forks and sandwiches singing along with Harry Hill, this must be the best TV advert of the year.
And is it just me or is Harry Hill’s TV Bur[…]

Gonza The Spearman
There’s some first-rate discussion of two approaches to acting on this ILE thread (before it zeroed in on Brecht), but there is another approach to the art that isn’t the default modern western style, the psychological […]

Borderliners by Peter Hoeg
I hope any Hoeg fans of my acquaintance who are writing books about school rebellions have read this, as that’s what it’s about. Specifically, three odd kids in an experimental school in 1969, trying to understa[…]

The film is called Noi Albinoi. Really before I went in I though Noi Albinoi had a proper, deep meaning, rather than – hey look at Noi, he’s and albino. The film is a bit like this. For eighty minutes of its ninety run time its pretty muc[…]

It’s rare, disappointingly so, to find a poet who loves language, not in a fetishistic or clever or simply musical way, but robustly, lip-smackingly, instinctually. I saw Keith Bennett read last night, and he struck me as one of the few. Readin[…]