Month: December 2009

  • Happy New Year Boo

    I tend to loathe New Year. Forced jolity really isn’t my thing. Nonetheless – if only to force myself to use the nice H2 Zoom audiorecorder I bought a while back – here’s a Boo I made earlier: Listen!

  • A Night With ITV(1)

    Here’s a strange thing: I just spent this evening watching ITV. At least, I spent 9pm to 11.45pm watching the channel. And it’s not even a Champions’ League Night. Now you do need to understand that I don’t watch any of the soaps – especially not Coronation Street. I gave up on The Bill when…

  • Radio Times 25 December 2009

    Happy Christmas everyone! My Christmas gift to you (Spotify) is some top hints on what to watch on the TV today: As ever, it’s best viewed large (otherwise you simply won’t be able to read it). And if you want my radio recommendations, they’re here.

  • My Christmas Radio 4

    I’ve put together more than a few annotated pages of the Radio Times in the past, and of course I have the new Christmas issue by my side at all times for the next fortnight. So I was pleased to see Steve Bowbrick at Radio 4 collecting together the highlights of some its presenters over…

  • How Many Listened?

    According to a story in Media Guardian, “an estimated 5 million” people tuned in to hear who would be the Christmas number one yesterday during the various chart shows. There are two main chart shows these days: the Radio 1 version which is considered the official chart, and the Big Top 40 chart which runs…

  • The Listener

    This is a very nice little video made by Radio 1 using photos of their listeners sent in the other day (via Brainpicker on Twitter)

  • Hunting In Packs

    In today’s Standard (I managed to get a copy at Kings Cross – they’re never available much beyond 5.30pm at Oxford Circus or Piccadilly Circus), David Sexton pontificates over two pages about why “bloggers” are so hostile towards Ian McEwan. This is the piece that Sexton is talking about. Following a series of Guardian Book…

  • Photographers Not Terrorists

    Last night I was out trying to take photos of the Geminid meteor shower. It was a bit cloudy as you can see from the above photo which shows precisely no meteors. But as I set out on foot to a nearby field a bit away from the city lights, wrapped up warm with a…

  • Terry Wogan in the Radio Academy Hall of Fame

    This afternoon in London, Terry Wogan was inducted into the Radio Academy Hall of Fame. This comes as Wogan gives up his breakfast show at the end of next week. The great and the good (and the rest of us) were out in force to pay their respects, and all in all it was actually…

  • Cinema Piracy with Laptops

    Have you got a laptop? Or perhaps a netbook? Does it have a webcam? Seemingly it’s Cineworld policy not to allow customers to bring laptops into their cinemas. This is to curtail piracy. This follows a story from a couple of months ago about someone turned away from a Cineworld. You see that 1.3 megapixel…

  • Christmas Repeats

    On the way home last night I found a discarded copy the Daily Telegraph that contained this utterly pointless article about the upcoming Christmas television schedule. The early schedules are out now, and that means that some of the tabloids will be rushing out early versions of their Christmas TV guides before we head off…

  • Bookshopping

    Sadly one of the few remaining book chains in the UK has gone into receivership, and it seems we’ll shortly be seeing the end of Borders. I’m immensely saddened by this. Few things make me as happy as wandering into a bookshop for a bit of a mooch around. I’m lucky. I work in the…