Month: August 2005

  • Commercial Competitor to Radio 4

    Lord Birt, the former Director General of the BBC, and now a “blue skies thinker” for the government has been reported as saying that Radio 4 is a “national treasure”, “but would benefit from the challenge of a strong rival”. I have a couple of problems with this. First, I can’t find the exact quote…

  • PSP Movies

    Sony finally launches the PSP in the UK this week, and that’s good news for me, because it finally means that I might be able to get a cheap memory stick for my US import. But there are plenty of stories floating around about the so called success of UMD format films. They’re selling plenty…

  • The Daily Show – Coming Soon To The UK

    While Mediaguardian gets excited about the fact that the impending October 10 launch of More4 – the new digital channel from Channel 4 – is going to feature Boris Johnson’s dad on a regular basis, I’m far more excited about the fact that someone’s finally signed up The Daily Show. It’ll be interesting to see…

  • I Predict A Riot

    This year was V Festival’s 10th anniversary, and I think that one way or another I’ve been to the last nine of them, starting with V97 and Blur (featuring Phil Daniels doing his Parklife stuff). This year was inevitably our biggest ever effort with some fabulous music in the Virgin Radio tent making it harder…

  • Copenhagen library

    Copenhagen library, originally uploaded by adambowie.

  • Family Guy: Stewie Griffin, The Untold Story

    First some honesty – I’ve come very very late to the whole Family Guy thing. I’d been told how good it is, and like The Simpsons, I knew it to be well written. But also like The Simpsons, I’d not really cared that much. I don’t what it is in my bones that makes me…

  • Home Is The Sailor

    Another Hard Case Crime series novel, and it’s a brash and trashy as the rest of them. Swede is big and big-hearted sailor, fresh off the boat with a pocket full of cash after three years at sea. He’s planning on finding himself a wife and setting up a farm in the mid-west where he…

  • Case Histories

    I’d not read any of Kate Atkinson’s books before, although I’ve seen them riding high in the bestsellers for a while. So I didn’t really know what to expect when I started Case Histories. What we have is something akin to one of those Barbara Vine or Minnette Walters crime things you see on TV…

  • Celebrity Spot of the Day

    Former MI5 officer, David Shayler, in Old Street tube station. I assume that this isn’t top secret, and no lives are at risk by revealing this information…

  • Who’s The Daddy

    Who’s the Daddy is a new play by Toby Young and Lloyd Evans, The Spectator’s theatre critics, that presents an ever-so-slightly fictionlised version of the goings on at The Spectator last summer. So we have Boris Johnson and Petronella Wyatt, Rod Liddle and “Tiffany”, and most famously Kimberly Quinn and David Blunkett. Add into the…

  • Cycle To Work

    I’d love to cycle to work, but given that it’s a long way, and we have neither a shower, nor the facility to store bikes, it’s a bit of a problem. But quite a few people have gone out and bought bikes recently due to fears of bombers on the tube. Obviously, this is completely…

  • A Perfect Fever Pitch Catch

    Anyone else noticed how Fever Pitch has been renamed A Perfect Catch for the UK. Of course it’s an Americanisation of the Nick Hornby novel, and has already been made into a film starring Colin Firth (is it me, or is the US DVD cover of the Firth version a little misleading?).