General
Clarkson - overhyped, overblown and overbudget
Yesterday’s Vietnam edition of Top Gear on BBC2 was one of the least entertaining, least informative travel programs I’ve ever seen. The idea that the chaps might have to ride into North Vietnam on a bike painted with stars-and-stripes to remind the people there of having the shit bombed out of them 40 years ago was so pathetically feeble and plain ill-mannered, I don’t imagine it raised a titter anywhere in the land. But poor old Clarkson (who, I know, is a nice guy from his choices on Desert Island Discs) has created a persona for himself of such dimensions his studied un-PC-ness has got way out of hand. Now Top Gear’s producer is grumbling that the BBC will have to cut his budget. May I suggest that the easiest way to cut costs at Top Gear would be to axe the two puerile tossers with whom Clarkson is forced to work. May is a bumbling oaf and Hammond is the most witless little git on telly. Are there really people out there that love them? Je ne croix pas.
Oxford University Press rubs out Sin.
When the Oxford University Press brings out a new edition of one of its dictionaries, the publishers often choose to issue provocative press releases announcing scurrilous new words they have included, which usually guarantees them a crop of useful headlines and a few harrumphs from J Humphreys on the Today Programme.
Recently, though, publicity has been generated for the academic publishers by a mother from Northern Ireland. Lisa Saunders was helping her son with his homework (what?) and found the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary did not contain the words ‘moss’ or ‘fern’ (You might enquire why the child couldn’t spell these simple words, or why he didn’t know what they were, with such a diligent mother to advise him). This prompted her to review earlier editions of the dictionary – aimed at 7-8 year olds – from the past 30 years right up to the latest, published in November 2007.
BBC mood control
When a Daily Mail-reading friend (yes, I do know people who read the Mail) told me Ed Stourton was being axed from BBC Radio’s Today Programme, I pooh-poohed it.
“That story’s a hardy annual in the Mail,” I scathed. “Whenever there’s a lull in media news they run a piece about Ed Stourton being sacked by the Beeb for being too posh.”
Bit of an exaggeration, of course, but broadly speaking true. While in the great tradition of Mail volte-face, last year they ran a story about 5Live’s Peter Allen not getting a job on Today because he wasn’t posh enough.
PCC demands apology from News of The World
On July 7th I blogged about the absurdity of a classic Screws front page fantasy headed ‘BURRELL: I HAD SEX WITH DIANA’, with a photo of the Princess filling the page.
At the time it was clear to anyone with any perception of the Screws version of the truth that the whole story was nonsense. They’d paid Burrell’s brother-in-law, a shifty little chancer called Ron Cosgrove to tell them that Burrell had told him (back in 1993) that he’d had sex with Princess Diana.
Uncle Freddie, Aunt Fannie, Uncle Sam and the American Dream
During last night’s third face-to-face bout in the McCain/Obama contest, Senator McCain referred more than once to that Unicorn concept, the ‘American Dream’, and it occurred to me that he had unwittingly identified one of the culprits behind the mighty melt-down of the US (and everyone else’s) economy.
For sure, the more obvious human perpetrators were the hard-nosed realtors and unscrupulous operators selling impossible mortgages on behalf of the avaricious sub-prime loan sharks, named with deceptive cosiness, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
But they have been aided and abetted in their crimes by the fraudulent fantasy of the ‘American Dream’, as embodied by the cheaply constructed, tawdry-trimmed vaguely colonial, part-clapboard dwelling, complete with basket ball hoop over the garage door and token swimming pool squeezed to fit on a basic plot.
Thank God for JS Bach and Glenn Gould
Thank God for JS Bach and Glenn Gould, who sometimes, between them, seem to make more sense of the World than anyone – especially perhaps during the metamorphoses from ‘surgical patient’ to ‘well man’ in which I’m now listening to them.
Like many who have lain in a hospital bed for a few weeks, anticipating then recovering from the incision of a surgeon’s knife, I have found the sojourn rich in reflective material.
But relax; this is not a preamble to a self-indulgent exposé of those personal and abstract thoughts that appear so much richer in semi-delirium than they ever do on the page.
More immediate and practical topics also arose.
A replacement post…
Before I start I’d better make it clear that it is actually Peter’s daughter, Alice, posting here. I apologise profusely to those of you who have been refreshing this page for the past week or so, confused and impatient, waiting eagerly for the gems usually posted by my wise father, but I’m afraid you may have to wait a little bit longer. Dad is currently very busy boring the nurses in Stoke on Trent hospital with the same kind of story, I imagine, that he normally bores you with on this site! I am joking of course, about the boring bit, not about the hospital bit.
Give up the Fags and take the money to Waitrose.
That life expectancy, even in 21st century Britain, can vary by as much as 30 years in adjacent areas is alarming, but not, on closer inspection, surprising. It isn’t, of course, a matter of where a person lives, so much as how they live.
With full respect to the mourners, would they disagree that in many cases, if these sadly early departees had kicked the tobacco habit early enough, and spent the money they saved (£50 a week for a 30-a-day habit) and spent it on a tasty, well-balanced and nutritious diet, then backed it up with a good long hike along Clydebank once a week, a lot of them would easily have extended their innings by 30 years.
It’s not a complex sociological conundrum; it’s about choice.
I hope those they leave behind decide to make the right choice.
News Management in Georgia
The President of the Republic of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili is a savvy fellow, and he looks it. He’s young (still 40), well-groomed and suited and wouldn’t seem out of place in the swishest of Manhattan offices. He laughs a lot; he speaks fluent, idiomatic American (and half a dozen other useful tongues) and he knows the terms of reference to use. These are all characteristics guaranteed to endear him to large sections of the American administration. Add to that a passion to join the EU and NATO, and there is the basis for a love feast with all the big boys of the Western World. George W is standing right by him (for all the good it will do him), the French have Sarkhozied up to him and even Young Cameron has shot over to see him (for all the good it will do YC).
PRESS GAZETTE – Journos’ trade paper unsupported by Bosses
Like all mortals, newspaper editors are corrupted by power – in some cases by the quite considerable power of a strong national title.
A symptom of that corruption, also common among long-serving UK Prime Ministers and African dictators, is a reluctance to accept criticism.
When a responsible trade journal, seeking balance and fairness, suggests that there may be flaws within an editor’s own organ, the editor will get very moist about the collar, demand interviews with the editor of the Press Gazette and withdraw their paper’s sits vac advertising, which is the lifeblood of the only Newspaper Trade journal.
My first response to our vegan's colleague's 'reply to all' email, was not one of shame that I, like the ...
Ed Sturton not sexy?! You've got to be kidding! 
My mother used to tell me that I'd be known by the company I keep. I wonder what David Cameron's ...
You pose an interesting question; here are some more questions for you, at random....... is Mandelson, like the Rothschilds, Jewish? ...
Glad to see the bile level are back to normal.