Richard Osman also tried to pretend that the last series of White Lotus didn’t suck because the podcast was, I think, sponsored by Now TV at the time. He also had to mask what must have been the crushing d […]

I didn’t watch the ‘civilian’ versions but might tune in for this. From my so-scant-it-barely-exists understanding of the format, surely Nick Mohamed has to be favourite due to his skills in cold reading and misdirection?

I gave up after the one in which some chalk symbols scrawled around a university campus are revealed to be crucial to the plot, and Robert Langdon, university cryptographer and a man who’s ability to read s […]

I never met her in my bookselling days, but the Transworld reps all seemed to adore her. Possibly because she never forgot to send them a Valentine’s card. Ian Rankin has named Rivals as his favourite book, and […]

That’s the one. She had sold the last hardback book set the night before, but apparently the CD has a QR code to access pdfs of the stories and illustrations.

All Seen Two gigs this month. First was Louis Brennan and Friends at the Betsey Trotwood in Farringdon playing a variety of Louis’ originals and covers. Among the ‘friends’ special praise goes to Hannah Nicho […]

I’d rather see DAve Lee Travis play MacBeth. The week after next I’m going to see a production of Hamlet in which Suzy Eddie Izzard plays, well, everyone as I understand it. Which should be interesting.

A bad week for poets, with Tony Harrison dying too. He was 88 and in poor health though, and as he observed himself in A Kumquat for John Keats, ‘life has a skin of death that keeps its zest’. That’s a long poem, […]

I’m on a first, and quite possibly only, listen now. I assume ‘Geese getting killed’ was the note given to the engineer who recorded the vocals?

Thanks for the hamper. What’s that? In order to send it you need my mother’s maiden name, the name of my first pet and my PIN? Well, if that’s what you need …

I’ve found the furore around the last couple of days gripping without watching feeling any desire to watch a single stroke (hit? club? whatever it’s called when a golfer hits a ball) of the competition.

In between the Aldi and Tesco there are a Waitrose and Lidl across the road from each other. We’re spoilt for choice, except that same road is closed after 8pm (which limits us as The Light commutes and I d […]

As it happens, this week we decided to stop at the Aldi en route to the Tesco Big Shop. The idea was to get what we could cheaper there and the rest of the shop, we assumed the majority of it, at the Tesco […]

I’m with him. I’m not great with supposed authority figures. One of my few pleasant memories of school is when a teacher tried to rebuke me by saying, ‘You have no respect for authority!’ and I politely thanked […]

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The last UK laws were introduced during WW2 and not abolished until 1952. The last prosecution, in 1950, is worth reading about.

It’s surprising that Reform oppose the idea, unless it’s just a knee jerk. If Farage is serious about deporting 600000 people, including many who are in the UK legally, I would have thought a simple way of ide […]

The Northern Irish example is another reason why BritCard, as it is called in the Labour Together paper linked by Hubes above, is another example of shocking comms from the Starmer team.

I vaguely remember that the Blair era attempt was to be called an ‘entitlement card’.