Month: December 2006

  • Gambling Sponsors on Football Shirts

    I see that I’m not alone in thinking that perhaps putting gambling sponsors on football shirts mightn’t be the smartest idea. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Aston Villa, Blackburn, Middlesborough and Spurs all feature gambling advertisers on their shirts. I’m not the only person to notice that gambling appeals enormously to kids, and…

  • Offensive Advertising

    I saw the most offensive advertisement I’ve ever seen on TV last night. There was no nudity in it, there was no “clever” reordering of swearwords, there was no hidden racial slurs buried within the copy, there was no mockery of the practices of any given religion or minority group. No. The ad was for…

  • Messy Eating

    So, on the way home this evening, I’m sitting across the seat from a smart looking gentleman. Except he’s munching on a pastie and isn’t bothered about getting crumbs all over his black suit. When he does notice them he just brushes them off in any direction – including mine! He’s also reading a copy…

  • Script Books

    Who, precisely, is it that decides buying a book of scripts is a good idea? Let me explain myself a little. Obviously aspiring scriptwriters can learn an awful lot from reading previously made scripts. Similarly, film or television students probably find scripts to be enormously helpful to study their arts – perhaps noting the differences…

  • Apocalypto

    Apocalypto is the latest effort from Mel Gibson, someone who’s had, er, a difficult time of late. It’s set in ancient Maya and the film is made in the local dialogue. We meet a group of villagers who seem to live a fairly idyllic life on the edge of a forest capturing wild boar and…

  • BBC Sports Personality of the Year

    The shortlist for this year’s Sports Personality of the Year is in, with the winner to be decided by a phone and text vote on Sunday night, live during the programme. First things first: David Walliams isn’t on the list. It was thought that he might make it for his charity swim across the English…

  • Trevor and Simon at the Bull & Gate

    Remember Trevor & Simon from Going Live and Live & Kicking? Well if you’d wondered what they were up to these days, I can tell you that Trevor is in a band called Sucker who were playing at the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town on Friday night before a friend’s band came on. This…

  • C4 on a Friday Night

    Interesting to read the responses on Mediaguardian’s Organ Grinder blog to the question “Will you be watching Channel 4 tonight?” Obviously, for me the answer is a resounding no. I’d post my response there, but the commenting system seems to be down at the moment. So let me write here instead. We’re at the start…

  • Words and Phrases I’m Really Fed Up With

    It’s not that there aren’t some fine sites that utilise some of the following; but the words and phrases themselves are so over-used that tedium sets in when I read them. To put this in context I read a trade story about the Costa Book Awards (formerly the Whitbread Book Awards). It explained that as…