If you haven't got round to checking out Rob Baker's Nickel in the Machine blog yet, you are missing out - it's a fascinating trip around the murkier side of the celebrities and demi monde that inhabited twentieth century London. In his day job Rob is a TV producer, but ... Read More...
Month: October 2012
Well-loved DJ and fundraiser Kenny Bovril passed away peacefully in his sleep last year. However, a private document, discovered only after his death, has fallen into the hands of Noseybonk. It reveals a dark secret hidden for decades… Pamela Smethwick, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my ... Read More...
The Dabbler Book Club currently has approximately 1000 members, who receive a monthly email newsletter and are entered into regular free draws to win new books, along with various other goodies and freebies. Now we’re looking for someone to take the Club to the next level and become Dabbler Book Club ... Read More...
Nige discovers an overlooked gem - the poet William Matthews, who wrote sonnets about basketball, getting old and office life... Opening Don Paterson's anthology 101 Sonnets at random, I came across this beauty, by William Matthews, an American poet I had never encountered before (he died in his 50s in 1997, having never ... Read More...
Is serious music a man's game? Not necessarily, says Mahlerman... Back in 2006 Nicholas Kenyon, then Controller BBC Proms, received an unmerciful kicking in the press and elsewhere for not including a single work by a woman in that season's programmes. And even when the compositions of women do appear, they ... Read More...
Alcatraz Island emerged from a bank of fog and I suddenly realized why it’s known as The Rock. Stories of ancient curses, military fortresses and its designation as a National Park are not why visitors flock by the ferry-load to this tourist attraction in the Bay of San Francisco. The ... Read More...
The BBC's Savile-Newsnight dégringolade, as horrible as it is, offers up an interesting case study to students of management. Is there a symptom of bureaucratic degradation that the corporation is not exhibiting? We have: the proliferation of managers but a lack of management; the presence of people whose job title begins ... Read More...
This week, Frank pays tribute to an old colleague... For the best part of twenty years, I worked in an office. I don’t know if local government has changed since the turn of the century, but in my time it seemed to be a haven for the most bewildering collection of ... Read More...
The poor, as we know, are always with us - and consequently slang is rich indeed when it comes to poverty... Slang, as we should expect, is democratic. It fears not neither does it favour. An equal opportunity employer with the unalloyed fervour of a local council job ad it extends ... Read More...
The Pledge of Allegiance, penned by a socialist who wished it to be accompanied with a Nazi-style salute? Surely not! Rita investigates... I pledge allegiance to the Flag, of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, One Nation under God Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice ... Read More...