Month: May 2009

  • The Book of Murder

    Back in 2005 I read a book called The Oxford Murders which was a perfectly enjoyable thriller set in Oxford around mathematics and murders by Argentinian author Guillermo Martinez. In the meantime, it’s been made into a film which I’ve not seen, and wasn’t exactly well reviewed. Now comes The Book of Murder, which is…

  • The Housekeeper and the Professor

    I picked this interesting little title up after reading a review of it in The Guardian a week or so ago. The story involves an unnamed housekeeper who is assigned by her agency to look after the professor. He had an accident years earlier, and now his memory only lasts 80 minutes. That means he…

  • Sony’s…

    …or rather the Sony Radio Academy Awards as they should be known, but aren’t really. The radio “Oscars” were held last night in London. Quite why every award ceremony has to be compared to the awfulness of the Oscars is a good question. And they were held at the Grosvenor House Hotel ballroom, a room…

  • Danny Baker and Christian O’Connell Return to Five Live

    Interesting news from Five Live. Danny Baker’s going to be doing the Saturday morning show, replacing Eamonn Holmes. Meanwhile Absolute Radio’s own Christian O’Connell is returning to Five Live to present an as yet un-named topical news comedy programme. I’m glad that Danny Baker’s 606 has been acknowledged for the triumph that it is, and…

  • Child 44 and The Secret Speech

    If you just went by this blog, you might think that I’ve stopped reading books. Well that’s not true. I just stopped writing about them here. Quite why, I couldn’t really say, but I intend to right that wrong. So let’s start with a book I read a few months ago, and its sequel that…

  • Coraline 3D

    Last night the NFT BFI Southbank had a showing of Coraline, the new stop motion film from Henry Selick (the director of “Tim Burton’s” The Nightmare Before Christmas) and based on the book by Neil Gaiman. Now I’ve not read the book, although I believe many have – and some of them were in the…

  • RAJAR Q1 2009

    7am this morning saw the first RAJAR release of 2009, and with it came a pleasant surprise: overall radio listening is up. Indeed, since the current methodology was introduced, radio listening is at an all time high reaching 45.8m listeners a week with 251,000 additional listeners this quarter. And even better news is that listening…

  • Newspapers and the Internet

    There are two interesting developments in the world of newspapers and digital today. First up is Rupert Murdoch who’s reported to be introducing a charge for reading currently free newspapers on the internet. He’s looked at the model operated by the Wall Street Journal and wants to roll out some kind of system to his…

  • The Oxygen of Publicity

    The Home Office has been having a hard time recently – and the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, especially so. Yesterday, they came out all guns a blazing, with a list of people “named and shamed” who are to be excluded from entering Britain. Obviously this is by no means a list of the only people…

  • London Papers

    Newspapers haven’t been having the greatest time recently. Circulations continue to fall, and there’s a generation growing up who gets its news from the web, perhaps with the odd bit of a 24-hour news channel thrown in. But that’s really paid-for newspapers. We also now have the free titles. Starting with Metro, and added to,…

  • Webby Awards

    I see that the Webby Awards have been announced, and thank goodness, because I’m bored to tears with them. The problem is that they still have this daft “People’s Voice Winner,” voted for by the public, in every category alongside the “Webby Award Winner” which is voted for by the illustrious sounding “The International Academy…

  • TV Sponsorship

    A very strange story is in today’s Times. The presenter of ITV1’s Tonight programme, Jonathan Maitland, writes about product placement and sponsorship on TV. First of all, Maitland seems to confuse product placement and sponsorship. As he says, Andy Burnham seems to have ruled out product placement, although I’m not sure that any shift in…