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Television / Radio

Saluting a classic

They say that simple things please simple minds and here I declare my devotion to the American television animation series The Simpsons which, at times when I am bored or otherwise waiting for something, I occasionally seek out either on Channel Four or on Sky. Decades ago I worked in television [...]

May 23, 2015 // 0 Comments

The special relationship : is it?

A radio programme I always enjoy is Great Lives presented by Matthew Parris. The format is someone advocates a person as a great life and an expert adds to the background. This week the great  life was the US war time ambassador Gil Winant. He is less remembered than his predecessor Joe Kennedy [...]

May 21, 2015 // 0 Comments

Right up themselves

Actors and performers generally are a bit like normal people only not quite. Back in the day – and maybe this remains true today for all I know – it used to be said that, at any given moment, 90% of actors were out of work. Equity (the actors’ union) is in a not-dissimilar position to the [...]

May 11, 2015 // 0 Comments

For conspicuous bravery

[Above: the action of the night of 20th/21st April 1915 which led to the award of the VC to 2nd Lieutenant Geoffrey Woolley] The extraordinary thing about indulging in a hobby passion such as WW1 research is how often another piece of the jigsaw falls at your feet. Last night I arrived on the south [...]

April 24, 2015 // 0 Comments

It’s just the way it is

    ‘No one in this world, so far as I know … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people’ (H.L. Mencken – journalist/social commentator). ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’ (P.T. Barnum – showman/promoter). The above [...]

April 20, 2015 // 0 Comments

Keeping ahead of the game

I believe it was Churchill who once said “If you’re not a liberal when you’re twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain”, but one of the genuinely worrying aspects of growing older is the constant need to avoid disconnecting from the modern world [...]

April 1, 2015 // 0 Comments

The Voice

I was speaking to Daphne Colthard the other day on how critics tend to avoid the lowbrow. She said she went to Jimmy’s an all-you-can-eat-buffet of Chinese, Japanese ,Mexican and Italian dishes for under £10 but as a freelancer it was unlikely that any magazine or paper would be  interested [...]

March 22, 2015 // 0 Comments

Viewed from the sofa

Given that I’m retired, I’m probably happier than most hombres to admit that I watch far more television than is good for me. I once read somewhere that if kids spend more than four hours per day in front of the box they are likely to turn into brain-damaged dysfunctional adults with minimal [...]

February 21, 2015 // 0 Comments

Face to Face

Last week I observed that Jeremy Paxman’s complaint that Winston Churchill was a giant compared to today’s miniatures applies just as well to broadcasters. Perhaps mindful of this a friend kindly sent me a dvd compilation of the 39 interviews presented by John Freeman in the famous Face [...]

February 10, 2015 // 0 Comments

Foyle’s War

The  weekend before last I had an actresss friend to stay. On the Sunday evening she recommended for watching Foyle’s War. She said the period just after World War Two had been successfully recreated. I was hooked. The following  Sunday I watched the two hour final programme in the series [...]

January 23, 2015 // 0 Comments

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