BBC Sport - Football blog (Free subscription) | yesterday
There's been a lot of talk about how Mickey Mouse the Carling Cup has become, but I think it gets more fascinating by the year. First of all, the Wenger-inspired notion of playing an under-23 side has caught on with other big clubs, and far from devaluing it you get to see some right talented lads coming through. Of course, Wenger plays his B-team and responds to defeat with an A-star display of gracelessness...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/26/2009
So, Robin Wales thinks that tackling poverty is a top priority ( Letters , 24 November). Is this the same Robin Wales, New Labour mayor of Newham, where £3.896m has been spent on advertising its own schemes, recruitment and producing its own glossy monthly magazine – more than any other London borough? Still, the magazine, with lots of photos of Sir Robin, is free to Newham residents,...
The Independent (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
Red faces at The Guardian, where a moderator of the Comment is Free website has been reprimanded for likening Melanie Phillips to a character from Little Britain.
'Do You Write Under Your Own Name?' (Free subscription) | 11/07/2009
ITV 3 repeated a documentary from 2005 the other day, which took us ‘behind the scenes’ with a year of Poirot stories for the small screen. I found it interesting, and a reminder of what a fine actor David Suchet is, and of how completely he has made the role of the Belgiam supersleuth his own. There were clips from four episodes. One ( The Mystery of the Blue Train ) was based on a mediocre...
Christian Today (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
Tutu Dolly Parton Sheila Hancock and Tony Blair are all featured in the BBCs programming this Christmas
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/04/2009
Sheila Hancock will also feature in interviews with Fern Britton Even though his modus operandi is acknowledged to be fairly unfathomable at the best of times, few could have predicted that the Almighty would recruit a trio as unlikely as Tony Blair, Dolly Parton and Archbishop Desmond Tutu to explain the importance of faith. The former prime minister, country music legend and Nobel peace laureate...
Books, Inq. (Free subscription) | 10/18/2009
... at Petrona . Just scroll and enjoy. If I were an author of a series, I'd find it hard to continue once actors were firmly established as my characters. As a reader, it is bad enough - can one read a Henning Mankell now without visualising Ken Branagh as Wallander? Whatever one may think of Ken Branagh in that part, he is not the books' Wallander. Everyone liked John Thaw as Morse - I was already...
Retro To Go (Free subscription) | 10/15/2009
Barry Murphy returns once more to trawl the TV and radio guides (so you don't have to), finding anything worth tuning into this week. All listings are for UK terrestrial TV, Freeview and national radio, with the shows running from...
PETRONA (Free subscription) | 10/13/2009
I am sure many other people will have read the article in today's (13 October) Times, in which P. D. James and Ruth Rendell (who also writes under the name of Barbara Vine) discuss their lack of regard for the TV adaptations of their novels. They weren't too keen on their respective leading detectives - Baroness James says that Dalgliesh does not have a moustache (you never see a senior detective with...
Daily Express (Free subscription) | 10/08/2009
FOR most people the name summons up memories of Detectives Regan and Carter (alias the late John Thaw and Dennis Waterman) taking on London's gangland crooks in the celebrated Seventies TV series. But The Sweeney goes back much further than that.
PC Plus (Free subscription) | 10/07/2009
Networks are one of the most explored structures in computer science because they have applicability in many different scenarios. A number of algorithms have been devised for these structures; one of the most entertaining results is the so-called Bacon number: a measure of how close a particular actor is to Kevin Bacon in the world of film. This comes from the popular trivia game that has long been...
'Do You Write Under Your Own Name?' (Free subscription) | 09/30/2009
I enjoyed the recently screened ITV3 documentary about Colin Dexter, which featured interviews with plenty of contemporary writers who expressed their enthusiasm for Colin’s work – enthusiasm which I’ve shared since the early days of his career. I remember his first Morse novel coming out while I was a student. If I’d stumped up for a hardback copy, it would have been far better...
ALTERNATIVE PRESTON (Free subscription) | 09/29/2009
It's true: you don't have to go to meditation guru's in India to receive spiritual inspiration or advice for living, often the person sat next to you on the bus will be just as inspiring. And such was the case last night when I was sat on a train to Chorley. The lady sat opposite told me she wakes up at 4am every morning and goes downstairs to be greeted by hundreds of pairs of pleading eyes belonging...
Joe's Blog (Free subscription) | 09/21/2009
Let’s face it, most of us at one time or another have wanted to smash Dennis Waterman’s face in. Whether it be not being as good as John Thaw in The Sweeney, not looking at all comfortable ‘having a ruck’ or ‘pulling the birds’ in Minder, or lisping his way through another tedious 55 minutes [...]
Artmanjosephgrech (Free subscription) | 09/17/2009
A whole week has passed since that wonderful first day at the cricket and my mood, created to a great extent by the weather and because of age is that the party is well and truly over. Fortunately I have the internal resources to overcome these feelings although it is always sensible to balance moments of euphoria with the reality of the commonplace. My work, looking back, not just on the previous...
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