Television ate itself a long time ago now. Monty Python were already monkeying around with accepted formats at the end of the 1960s: inserting phony voice-over links, rolling the end credits immediately after the opening ones, writing sketches that satirised sketches. Forty years of 'progress' later and we have Charlie Brooker: the TV obsessive who ... Read More...
Month: January 2011
In our occasional feature we invite guests to select the six cultural links that might sustain them if, by some mischance, they were forced to spend eternity in a succession of airport departure lounges with only an iPad or similar device for company. Today's voyager is Daniel Kalder. He was born ... Read More...
This week, some melodies in the key of blue.... I assume you all own Kind of Blue, yes? Surely the biggest jazz album ever, and perhaps the sound most people would immediately associate with the word ‘jazz’? Here’s Miles Davis, John Coltrane et al with a 1959 live version of So What. So ... Read More...
The way we’re bombarded with images of how we should look drives me crazy. In 2011 we’re supposed to be ‘warrior women’ - toned, firm, curvaceous in all the right places and glowing with year-round health. The hitherto sought after slimline alternative is now the ‘skinny bitch’ look, epitomised by ... Read More...
For years hence there will be gnarled Geordies huddled over schooners of broon and Red Bull, claiming they were there in the auditorium when Sid Waddell uttered the immortal phrase: His eyes are bulging like the belly of a hungry chaffinch.* And their wide-eyed children’s children will be perched on their ... Read More...
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As a scribbler, I am occasionally asked the question “Where do you get your ideas from?” Until recently, I would respond with some boilerplate drivel – you know the kind of thing: a newspaper clipping, or an overheard snippet of conversation between a pair of ingrates in a bus queue, ... Read More...
Across the towns, beaches and countryside of West Sussex are placed the Cardboard Reality Interventions of the indefatigable artist, ukulele-virtuoso and friend of The Dabbler, Outa_Spaceman. We approve. Marine Gardens, Aldwick: Clyming Beach: Bognor Regis: 8424 ... Read More...
Jonathon Green - visit his website here - is the English language's leading lexicographer of slang. His Green's Dictionary of Slang is quite simply the most comprehensive and authorative work on slang ever published. Today, Jonathon looks at death... ’E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He ... Read More...
Congratulations to Steve Buckley, Jonathon Law, Mahlerman and Adelephant, who all twigged the answer pretty early on, I suspect. Click continue for the full answer... 8264 ... Read More...