Welcome you very much are, dear blog reader, to the latest From The North bloggersationisms update in the area. It's bona t'vada yer dolly-old eek and all that.[*] And, it's also nice to see some new faces in church this evening. Pull up a pew. 
[*] Ceefax subtitling is available on Page 888 for those of a nervous disposition.
And on that bombshell, dear blog reader ...
Infamous. This blogger is with From The North favourite Mark Kermode on the subject of Toby Jones's performance in this movie. Infamous may not be a better movie, per se, than Capote, that's an entirely legitimate argument. But Jones's Truman is - fractionally - more Truman-like than the late Philip Seymour Hoffman's extraordinary Oscar-winning turn in the latter. And, Sandra Bullock's a far more Harper Lee-like Harper Lee than Catherine Keener's Harper Lee as well. So there. 
Callan. One of the finer TV-big screen transfers.
In The Heat Of The Night. Stumbled across, late one night, on the - rather obscure - Sony Movies Channel (immediately after Callan as it happens). A broadcast which kept this blogger awake till gone 1am and, in doing so, reminded this blogger what an utterly superb film In The Heat Of The Night is. Great Quincy Jones soundtrack too. 
The Man Who Fell To Earth. And, speaking of great soundtracks ... 
Star Trek. Which never seems to be off TV these days but it is always a olly welcome distraction, nonetheless. 
To Kill A Mockingbird. Because, a week simply isn't a week without watching To Kill A Mockingbird at least once if one gets the opportunity. Plus, it's the rat-faced loathsome wretched odious nasty slavver-merchant, George Formby lookalike (and tit) Gove's favourite movie, allegedly.
Double Indemnity. Still a twenty four carat masterpiece. 
The Be-Atles (A Popular Beat Combo Of The 1960s, You Might've Heard Of Them): Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years. Cos everybody needs a good, hard scream every now and then.
The Blacklist. This blogger watched the latest three episodes of The Blacklist back-to-back upon their arrival at the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House over the weekend when he was almost, once again, on the verge of giving up on the series. As he has been on the verge of so many times over the last eight series. And, just as he has done on so many occasions over the last eight series, something always seems to come along in the nick of time to stop him from doing so and pulling the actual plug. Which can be bloody annoying at times. Nevertheless, this blogger particularly enjoyed the episode with (a News-less) Huey Lewis in it. That's the power of love. 
NCIS. On a similar theme, this blogger tends to have something of an off-on relationship with NCIS with periods of considerable binge followed by lengthy spells of aridity. Having spent much of the last year knee deep in the latter, Keith Telly Topping ended up watching about a dozen episodes from the last two series over recent days and, to quote Al Pacino in The Godfather Part III, 'just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!' It's all that there Emily Wickersham's fault, obviously. 
American Gods. There was a really nice use of Siouxsie & The Banshees''Hong Kong Garden' in the latest episode. That's one reassuring thing about American Gods, no matter how bonkers it gets, the soundtrack is always impressive.
Raiders Of The Lost Past. It's never-less-than-great to see From The North favourite Doctor Janina Ramirez back on the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House widescreen tellybox doing her 'effortlessly enthusiastic and learned' thing all over us viewers. Dangerous stuff, this, dear blog reader - you might just learn something from it.
I Care A Lot. Released this very week this may well be From The North favourite Rosemund Pike's finest one hundred and eighteen minutes.
Rush.
Manchester By The Sea.
Repulsion.
Two Mules For Sister Sara. Sunday afternoon at the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House, a big filling roast dinner and a Clint Eastwood movie on telly. Sorry, when exactly did this blogger step into the TARDIS and travel back to 1976?
Things this blogger really should have known but didn't and discovered, last week, completely by accident: The minor planet 7345 Happer (which is in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter just in case you didn't know) was named by NASA after the character of Felix Happer (played by the late Burt Lancaster) in From The North favourite Local Hero; he was the oil executive in Bill Forsyth's movie who was also an amateur astronomer and wanted to have a comet named after him. Why did this blogger not know this fascinating factoid until recently? 
And, speaking of From The North's favourite movies, the greatest film ever made, bar none, A Matter Of Life & Death was on BBC2 last weekend. Presumably because someone perceptive in the scheduling department at Auntie felt that what everyone in Britain really needed in a country suffering from The Plague, lockdown, Brexit, freezing weather and the continued existence of Piers Morgan was a damned good cheering up. Good call, mate.
Watching the end of an episode of Whitehouse & Mortimer: Gone Fishing on Dave, recently, this blogger was wholly unprepared for the sudden and unwelcome appearance across the credits of the voice of That There Mel Giedroyc. She was plugging a forthcoming episode of her turgid and appallingly rotten new format, Unforgivable. The inequities of which his blogger has already mercilessly (and with great vengeance and righteous anger) slagged off on From The North. 'Join me on Tuesday where my guest will be Tom Allen, Gemma Collins and Darren Harriott ...' begged Mel in her perky - not entirely unappealing - 'will you come and get it like a big funky sex machine'-style voice that we all know so well from Bake Off. This blogger merely has time to bellow at the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House widescreen tellybox 'no thanks, Mel, I'd sooner stab me own eyes out with two toasting forks and bleed to death instead of watching that tripe' before he found the remote control. And thence, changed channel to something less effing worthless. Which, trust yer actual Keith Telly Topping dear blogger, was every bit as much of a relief to this blogger as a nice healthy dose of Bicarbonate of Soda when he needs a short-term cure for severe indigestion.
Social media posts by Gina Carano, who used to play Cara Dune on The Mandalorian, have been described as 'abhorrent and unacceptable' by Lucasfilm shortly after they sacked her ass. In a statement, a spokesperson said: 'Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future.' The hashtag 'Fire Gina Carano' had trended on Twitter for hours following a story shared on her Instagram page, that many people considered to be anti-Semitic. The post has since been deleted. But, not before it was screengrabbed and widely seen - another classic example of people who use the Interweb, seemingly, not actually understanding that once you've said something you can't simply wish it out of existence. In the post, the former MMA fighter compared 'hating someone for their political views' in the US to the treatment of Jewish people during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. A spectacularly crass and ill-considered example of hyperbole to which more than one person replied, wearily, that if you see one political group being murdered in their millions by another the two situations might, just, be analogous but, till then, it really might be an idea to keep such disgraceful overstatements to oneself. Just, you know, this blogger's view concerning a far more complex and nuanced world than can be reduced to simplistic and, frankly unhelpful, examples of rhetoric. Something which, one imagines, Gina Carano her very self will have much time to reflect upon as she signs on for her unemployment benefit in the coming days, weeks months and years.
Now, dear blog reader, can anyone answer this blogger a simple question? Why is it that Facebook - which this blogger does like far more than most of the other social media he's had (brief) interactions with - nevertheless contains, seemingly, just as many twenty four carat Duck Eggs as the rest of the Interweb? Case in point: This blogger happened to be scrolling through his home page last week and he came across a post from someone whom he only knows vaguely but she seems like a very nice lady; she was mentioning, in passing, that she had been feeling a bit run-down recently. No specifics, no other symptoms mentioned, just 'a bit under the weather.' Within seconds - and this blogger means about as quickly as it takes to type these very words - she'd had a reply from one of her own Facebook fiends (not this blogger hastens to add, anyone who frequents Keith Telly Topping's Facebook page ... and, believe me, dear blog reader, this blogger has checked) with the following pearl of wisdom: 'Ooo, you want to be careful with that' [no shit, dear? One is sure she'd never have thought of that if you hadn't mentioned it]. Followed by: 'Someone I know had the same symptoms' [what symptoms? She didn't mention any] 'and it turned out to be Covid.' Well, great, one is sure that the original poster now feels absolutely brilliant having had a worst-case-scenario crowbarred into her skull without her wanting it there in the first place. This blogger has seen this sort of thing so many times over the years and he's even had a few examples of it in the past directed towards his very self. 'I've just stubbed my toe,' this blogger may have said. To which some well-meaning-but-clueless glake will invariably reply 'ooo, you wanna be careful with that, my auntie's fifth cousin's brother-in-law's nephew's girlfriend had the same thing and it turned out to be cancer of the arsehole.' Maybe it's just the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House cabin fever talking but this sort of thing really grates this blogger's effing cheese. If people are in need of a medical diagnosis for some real - or imagined - ill, then they should visit a medical professional and seek their advice; not listen to 'some plank on the Interweb.'
So, dear bog reader, on a related note yer actual Keith Telly Topping was awakened from his peaceful kip one morning pure dead early due to a nasty stabby Ronnie Lane in his Gulliver (the second such occurrence in about five days as it happens). 'Oh no,' thinks this blogger, 'I was supposed to be doing the weekly shop this morning - highlight of the week, that, since it's about this blogger's only interaction with anyone else that isn't a TV or a computer screen. Guess I'd better go back to my stinkin' pit and watch half-a-dozen more episodes of NCIS on FOX.' However, there was a need to transfer some money from one Stately Telly Toing Manor bank account to another (and, also, for the purchase of necessary supplies - bread, milk, eggs, hot dogs, Turkish Delight, et cetera) so yer actual was forced to get the Twelve up to Lloyds in Byker and then, have a nice, leisurely walk down Shields Road to the supermarket to buy something for Us Tea at the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House. And, it was whilst yer actual Keith Telly Topping was idly browsing in the Spices and Condiments aisle that the pain suddenly - and without warning - disappeared as quickly as it had first come. This blogger has no idea what Morrisons pump into the air which has such healing qualities but, whatever it is, they really ought to mention it in those adverts they do featuring Ant and/or Dec. 'Morrisons Makes It ... and we heal the sick, too!' As marketing slogans go, it has some potential.
Some sage word from the pages of Viz, now, dear blog reader.
'Cor! Sid The Sexist just said "tits"! Fnaar Fnaar ...'
This blogger is also grateful to his old mucka Ben Adams for alerting him to yet another comic first, Valkyrie's Mister Horse telling Marvel readers'Never trust a Tory.'Wise advice.
More than twenty six thousand people have, reportedly, signed a petition protesting at a Cadbury's Creme Egg advert, which features two men kissing. The petition's creator has claimed - not particularly persuasively - that the advert's 'sexualised content' was 'offensive' to Christians and that casting two men in the advert was a way of evading criticism by hiding 'under cover of LGBT rights.' All of which proves but two things, dear blog reader. Firstly, that many Christians have, seemingly not bothered to read Matthew 7:1 ('judge not, lest ye be judged') or, if they have, are too much of a bone-shit thick bigot to actually understand it. And, secondly, that there are - at least - twenty six thousand ignorant homophobic louse scum walking the streets in the UK. Truth be told there are probably far more, but it's good to at least have a number in ones head when one ventures out-and-about so one can avoid ... people, basically. When contacted by the Independent, a spokesperson for Cadbury said that it was proud of the advert and its message of inclusion. Good for them. 
This blogger has already spoken in past, at some length, of his long-standing love affair with the band The Go-Go's - whom he first saw supporting Madness and The Specials in Sunderland forty years ago. So, he would like to draw all dear blog reader's attention to a piece the divine Goddess that is Belinda Carlisle recently did for the Gruniad Morning Star in their Teenage Kicks strand. Check out Belinda Carlisle's Teenage Obsessions: 'I Was Going To Be Anita Ekberg In Rome, But Ended Up In A Band' dear blog reader, you will not regret it.
The Masked Singer's second series finale was watched by an average audience of 8.6 million overnight viewers. That was the largest live TV audience for any programme so far in 2021, outside of news and sport and is final and conclusive proof, dear blog reader, that there is no God. The series culminated last Saturday with a pregnant Joss Stone, who had been cunningly disguised as a sausage - yes, dear blog reader, a sausage - revealed as this year's competition winner. The final attracted two million more gullible punters than the overnight viewing figures for last year's final, which saw Nicola Roberts emerge victorious. And, which won the coveted runner's-up slot in From The North's Worst TV Shows Of 2020 list. Well-deserved it was, an'all.
The German woman who posed as a billionaire heiress in New York has been released from prison. Anna Sorokin, who pretended to be a wealthy socialite Anna Delvey, was released from The Joint last week, according to media reports. She was found extremely guilty in 2019 of theft of services, grand larceny and other assorted general naughtiness, having scammed more than two hundred thousand bucks from banks and luxury hotels. It is thought that Sorokin could now face deportation. Although the fact that there is, reportedly, a major Netflix movie in production telling her 'you couldn't make it up' story - and starring Julia Garner - might soften the blow of getting kicked out of the gaff somewhat. Sorokin's release comes months after she reportedly grovellingly apologised at a parole hearing for her bad, thieving ways. 'I just want to say that I'm really ashamed and I'm really sorry for what I did,' the New York Post, who obtained a transcript, quoted Sorokin as saying. 'I completely understand that a lot of people suffered when I thought I was not doing anything wrong.' A lawyer for Sorokin previously told Insider that she was trying to appeal against her conviction, despite her planned parole release. When Netflix first got in contact with Sorokin, she had not, at that stage, been convicted, but once she was, there were rules which needed to be followed. New York's 'Son of Sam' law kicked into play. The law's origins stem back to 1970s serial killer David Berkowitz amid concerns that he would profit from his notoriety by selling his story of his serial-killing malarkey. In response, New York state passed a law to prevent profiting from such fame and multiple states followed suit. However, publishers fought back. In the late 1980s, Simon & Schuster was working on a book in collaboration with the ex-mobster-turned-super-snitch Henry Hill, when the authorities came knocking over a ninety thousand dollars payment. The resulting dispute went as high as the Supreme Court, which ultimately struck the law down, saying it was in conflict with the first amendment right to free speech. The book, Wiseguy, went ahead, as did the royalty payments and it inspired the Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas, from which Hill reportedly earned a further four hundred and eighty thousand dollars. A reworked Son of Sam law was introduced in 2001. Today, a company is required to notify the Office of Victims Services if they are paying a convicted felon more than ten grand. The office will not seize that money, but it will freeze the bank account and notify the victims of the crime, who can then file their own lawsuits to make claims if they so wish.
This blogger thinks that one of his favourite lines concerning American politics of late came from the excellent Jon Sopel on the BBC's - always superb - Americast podcast on Friday (one of four rapid-fire episodes posted online covering Donald and the Giant Impeach II) quoting a joke which was, apparently, much told when the subject was running for President five years ago. 'Why do so many people instantly take a dislike to Ted Cruz?''Because it saves time!' Something which events of the following week in Texas proved to be remarkably prescient. As, indeed, a subsequent episode of the podcast was more than happy to highlight.
USA Today's article They Rioted At The Capitol For Trump. Now, Many Of Those Arrested Say It's His Fault - by Rachel Axos and Josh Salman - is worthy of a few moments of your time, dear blog reader. 'As the cases against nearly two hundred of the Capitol rioters begin to wind through federal court, many of the defendants blame the commander in chief they followed for the violence that left five dead during the insurrection [of] 6 January. In court documents, media interviews and through official attorney statements, staunch supporters of former President Donald Rump who carried out the attempted coup argue they were merely doing what they thought the nation's leader had asked, some citing a cult-like loyalty.' Presumably, in the hope that singing like a canary with save them from their own date up a'fore The Beak. Gotta level with you guys, this blogger believes that ship's already sailed. You may also like to have a good old butchers at NPR's piece, The Capitol Siege: The Arrested & Their Stories for further comedy genius. 'A group this large defies generalisation. The defendants are predominantly white and male, though there were exceptions. Federal prosecutors say a former member of The Latin Kings gang joined the mob, as did two Virginia police officers. A man in a 'Camp Auschwitz' sweatshirt took part, as did a Messianic Rabbi. Far-right militia members decked out in tactical gear rioted next to a county commissioner, a New York City sanitation worker and a two-time Olympic gold medallist.'Dagblog's 'exclusive'A Majority Of The People Arrested For Capitol Riot Had A History Of Finanical Trouble also spends time looking into the backgrounds of the conspiring insurgents, domestic terrorists and treasonous pond-scum. 'The financial problems are revealing because they offer potential clues for understanding why so many Rump supporters - many with professional careers and few with violent criminal histories - were willing to participate in an attack egged on by the President's rhetoric painting him and his supporters as undeserving victims. While no single factor explains why someone decided to join in, experts say, Donald Rump and his brand of "grievance politics" tapped into something that resonated with the hundreds of people who descended on the Capitol in a historic burst of violence.' In one specific case, highlighted by the Chicago Tribune, a man will serve four years in prison on a drug charge, but his alleged participation in the Capitol insurrection weighed heavily on the judge's and prosecutor's minds during his sentencing. Kash Lee Kelly was sentenced to four years in The Slammer and three years supervised release on conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and marijuana during his time as a Latin King gang member. He was first indicted on the charge in 2015. Kelly has also been extremely charged for knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority after authorities saw photos of him inside the Capitol during the insurrection on his Facebook page. But, during the hearing, Judge Philip Simon and Assistant US attorney David Nozick weighed Kelly's co-operation throughout the drug case and seeing photos of him inside the Capitol during the insurrection. Nozick said Kelly' choice to go to Washington, made the drug case 'extremely prickly now. I really wish he didn't get wrapped up in Washington,' Nozick said. 'Today would've been much easier.' During a debate on whether or not Kelly had 'accepted responsibility' in the drug case, Nozick said that by committing another crime Kelly had, clearly, not accepted responsibility. 'It's immaterial whether the new criminal conduct is related to this case or not,' Nozick said. 'He was part of a violent insurrection on our nation's Capitol.' Other recent arrests in relation to the seditious shenanigans having included a mother and son from Iowa, several Oathkeepers, two men from Missouri, a UCLA student who, reportedly, described fascism as 'epic', a man with a stick (and a cowboy hat) and a North Cornwall Township police officer. The majority of those arrested and charged thus far - who haven't either copped a plea and thrown themselves upon the mercy of the court or tried to blame their sorry position on the urgings of now extremely former President Mister Rump - deny any wrongdoing. One or two people even believed them.
Still on the subject of naughty recidivists, Alison Durkee's article Dominion Had To Use 'Extraordinary Measures' To Serve Sidney Powell In Defamation Lawsuit for Forbes magazine is in a class of its own in terms of thigh-slapping hilarity. 'Ms Powell had no reason to evade service as she looks forward to defending herself in court, her attorney Howard Kleinhendler told Forbes. Once again, one or two people even believed that. On a somewhat related note, the Independent's Rump Can't Hang On To Lawyers After False Erection Claims should carry a government health warning over its comedy quota. 'Since losing the November erection to President Joe Biden, Rump has been haemorrhaging attorneys. Established firms backed away from his baseless claims of election fraud. Those he did retain made elementary errors in cases that were quickly rejected as meritless. His personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani was ridiculed for his performance before a federal judge during one erection-related case.' But, by far the funniest story about the fall-out from discredited claims of erection fraud The Washington Post's A GOP Donor Gave 2.5 Million Dollars For A Voter Fraud Investigation. Now He Wants His Money Back takes the biscuit. Good luck with that, mate. Seriously.
Johnny Rogan, the London-Irish music journalist best known for his biographies of The Byrds, Neil Young, The Smiths, Van Morrison and Ray Davies, has died at his London home. He was sixty seven. The author of more than twenty five books on music, by far his most successful was Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance, a book about The Smiths first published in 1992 five years after the band's break-up which prompted Morrissey (already, at that stage, turning into a mental bloke) to say: 'I hope Johnny Rogan ends his days very soon in an M3 pile-up.' Thankfully, he didn't. Rogan, whose parents emigrated from Waterford to Pimlico in the 1940s, divided his time between London and his second home in Tramore, Coty Waterford and his interest in music and second-generation Irish identity fused in a lengthy series he wrote for the Irish Post in the 1990s, Dislocation & Celebration, which explored the influence of their Irish roots on the likes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Morrissey, Oasis's Liam and Noel Gallagher, John Lydon, Kate Bush, Kevin Rowland and Shane MacGowan. Rogan revisited the subject in an essay for the Irish Times in 2016, Rebel Yell: How The Irish Dominated British Rock Music, which began: 'British pop music has been celebrated around the world for decades and rightly so. Rather less attention has been paid to an almost invisible strain of Irishness manifested in the work and characters of several of its leading proponents.' Ironically, although he lived close to the Kings Road in Chelsea, his childhood tenement home had no inside toilet or electricity so he first heard the music which would become his life's passion while on holiday in Waterford with relatives basking in the glow of rural electrification. 'I think 1965 was maybe the greatest year in music that there's been,' he told John Meagher in an Irish Independent interview in 2017. 'Virtually every week, one great song after the next was released. They're songs from The Beatles and The Stones and The Kinks that are revered today and it was the year that 'Eight Miles High' was released, too.' His early life was marked as much by tragedy as poverty. His father died of a heart attack, his brother drowned, and his sister died of a brain haemorrhage. In his introduction to Requiem For The Timeless, he wrote of 'what was left of my death-ravaged family.' His writing career was bookended by a passion for The Byrds. While still at university in 1980 he published Timeless Flight: The Definitive Biography Of The Byrds, which Record Collector named the rock and/or roll biography of the year, calling it: 'One of the best biographies ever written ... Expansive enough to rival War & Peace, Johnny Rogan's definitive Byrds biography comes close to matching the emotional, if not geographical, range of Tolstoy's epic novel.' His last published book was Byrds: Requiem For The Timeless, Volume 2 in 2017, the afterlife of six Byrds after the band split - Gene Clark, Michael Clarke, Kevin Kelley, Gram Parsons, Clarence White and Skip Battin. It was a follow-up to 2011's Requiem For The Timeless, which Time Out said 'may yet prove to be one of the key works of rock journalism - it's certainly set to be the definitive book on The Byrds.' His book Starmakers & Svengalis: The History Of British Pop Management (1988) was adapted for a BBC radio series presented by Alan Freeman. He was also a rigorous and talented book reviewer, not least for the Irish Times. Rogan was famous for his forensic attention to detail and dogged approach to researching his subject, often over many years. For some, such as David Sinclair reviewing his deeply unflattering Van Morrison biography No Surrender in the Gruniad Morning Star in 2005, you could have too much of a good thing: '[while] the all-encompassing rigour of the approach is impressive, the narrative in the early stages tends to be swamped by an almost neurotic attention to detail.' Rogan was 'the Rottweiler of the music biography,' wrote Brian Boyd, who would 'hunt down his quarry with, as one reviewer put it, the relentlessness of a marching army of termites. Pedantic and painstaking in his research methods, he consistently provides incisive and illuminating accounts of his subjects. This is a man who, when working on The Smiths biography (the superlative Severed Alliance), found out that there were eighteen students in Morrissey's secondary school class - he interviewed all eighteen.' For Rogan, Kevin Courtney observed in an Irish Times interview with the author in 2011, being someone's biographer is 'a lifetime commitment' and he felt compelled to keep up to date with his subject long after the last chapter had been written. Rogan attended the 1996 court case when Smiths drummer Mike Joyce sued Morrissey and Marr over unpaid recording and performance royalties. 'I was the only person who went for the whole two weeks. The guy from the Manchester Evening News was there, but that was it. No fans, nothing. It was a very odd experience, because I knew most of the characters who were under oath, since I'd interviewed them.' Ironically, Morrissey referenced Rogan's book in court to help bolster his case, but it didn't do him any good. Ruling in Joyce's favour, the judge described Morrissey as a 'devious, truculent and unreliable' witness. 'Most biographers, when they've finished, they leave it behind and move on, Rogan said 'I keep boxes of material at home and they keep getting filled up with stuff. I might wake up in the middle of the night and write an essay about, say, is Jarvis Cocker the new Morrissey?''There's a lack of investigative journalism, it only seems to be done in the financial areas now,' Rogan noted. 'But nobody in the music press does it. You're more likely to see it in Vanity Fair or The Economist. The music-press tradition that I grew up with, they would, on strange occasions, go off and do these incredibly investigative pieces, simply for the reason that they liked this singer, this act, this phenomenon and wanted to know more about it. And some of my favourite pieces of writing have come from that. It's no use making a thesis about a particular artist or group or whatever, based on press cuttings or your assumption of what they're trying to do in the work. It's looking at sources, getting back to the sources and then applying your critical tools to them. When I write a book, I'm trying to bring all those different skills into it and get better at each of them.' As well as music, Rogan had a great love of literature and was very knowledgeable about Irish writing. His first degree was in English language & literature at Newcastle University and his MA was on Spenser's The Faerie Queene. He is survived by his partner, Jackie Taylor.
A 'highly significant' - and rare - carved Roman phallus has been discovered by archaeologists working on finds unearthed during a major road upgrade. The massive dong was found on a broken millstone by experts along the route of the A14 in Cambridgeshire between 2017 and 2018. However, it has only just been put back together, revealing the wanger. Archaeologists said the massive throbbing member was one of only four known examples of Romano-British millstones decorated this way, with an 'uge power tool. During work on Highways England's one-and-a-half billion knicker upgrade of the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon, more than three hundred quern and millstones were recovered by archaeologists MOLA Headland Infrastructure, working with partners Oxford Archaeology. The stone which recently revealed its genital markings had been preserved by being reversed and adapted for use as a bedstone, after being initially broken. Decorated querns and millstones of any date are extremely rare, with only four such Roman millstones discovered from around a total of twenty thousand nationwide, said Steve Sherlock, Highways England's archaeology lead for the A14. He said the groinal images were 'seen as an important image of strength and virility in the Roman world, with it being common practice for legionaries to wear a phallus amulet, which would give them good luck before battle.' This cock-carved millstone is 'important as it adds to the evidence for such images from Roman Britain.' Plus it's a right good laugh, too. There were, already, known associations between images of the plonker and milling, 'such as those found above the bakeries of Pompeii, one inscribed with "Hic habitat felicitas" - "You will find happiness here"' he added. Doctor Ruth Shaffrey, from Oxford Archaeology, said: 'As one of only four known examples of Romano-British millstones decorated this way, the A14 millstone is a highly significant find. It offers insights into the importance of the mill to the local community and to the protective properties bestowed upon the millstone and its produce - the flour - by the depiction of a phallus on its upper surface. In the Roman world the phallic image was found all over the place. It was associated with good luck.' The cock-decorated millstone is the latest in a list of finds on the route of the upgrade to be made public by Highways England. They include the earliest evidence of beer-brewing in Britain, dating back to as early as 400 BC, only the second gold coin to be found in the country depicting Roman emperor Laelianus, who reigned for about two months in 269 AD before he was killed and woolly mammoth tusks and woolly rhino skulls.
From The North's latest Headline of The Week award goes to the BBC News website for Alaska Woman Attacked By Bear While Using Toilet. There's an 'Oh, I say, a bear behind' joke in there somewhere, dear blog reader. Shannon Stevens reportedly 'sustained a puncture wound while using a remote outhouse toilet at Chilkat Lake last weekend.' After hearing her scream, Ms Stevens' brother went to see what had caused the kerfuffle, only to find a bear's head in the hole of the toilet. Ms Stevens said that the wound was caused 'by either a bite or a swipe from the animal's claw.' She was spending the weekend in a yurt with her brother, Erik and his girlfriend when the incident occurred. Earlier in the evening they had cooked sausages on an open firepit. 'I got out there and sat down on the toilet and immediately something bit my butt as I sat down,' she told the Associated Press news agency. Ms Stevens told the Anchorage Daily News that she will practice a 'look before you sit' policy in the future.
Walkers were, reportedly, found 'wearing trainers and flimsy clothing' during 'blizzard-like conditions' and sub-zero temperatures in rural Northumberland recently. Rescuers on a training exercise came across a group of five people atop The Cheviot, which is over two thousand six hundred high, amid fading light two weeks ago. Rescue teams have warned people not to put themselves and others 'at risk' by indulging in numbskull glakery. This incident came shortly after a man suffered 'life-changing injuries' after a fall while helping a camper in the Lake District. Volunteers from the Northumberland National Park and North of Tyne Mountain Rescue teams have reported a number of people wearing 'unsuitable clothing for walking,' such as lightweight jackets, cotton jogging bottoms and wellies. People have been seen in the Simonside Hills near Rothbury and at Hedgehope Hill in The Cheviots dressed like they were out on a summer stroll in the meadows. The group of 'young adults' discovered at summit of The Cheviot at the end of January managed to get back to safety after rescuers, wearing helmets and crampons, spoke with them. Harshly, one imagines. 'Thankfully they got down safely, they lived to tell the tale,' said Iain Nixon, from Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue Team. 'They were younger individuals, probably new to the outdoors. There was half an hour's light and they had to get down from the highest hill down to their car. Even a reasonably fit walker, if you really pushed it, would take an hour and a quarter. We are training for these harsh conditions and we wouldn't want people to put themselves at risk. If something happened it puts our members at risk but that's what we train for. These are conditions which you would normally find on top of the Scottish mountains in the middle of the winter. You have whiteouts where you can't see where you are going, there is no distinction between the sky and the land.' Nixon said that there had been 'a significant increase' in people coming out into the hills since the first lockdown eased in 2020, many of whom are new to hill walking. Northumbria Police said it was 'extremely disappointing and concerning' to see people putting themselves and rescue teams at unnecessary risk.
And, finally dear blog reader, on Monday this blogger drew a phone call from a delightful young lady at the local medical centre to arrange yer actual Keith Telly Topping getting his first pandemic inoculation. Which will be on Wednesday afternoon. Thus, by the time you read this here bloggerisationism update, it is perfectly possible that this blogger will already have been well and truly pricked. This is, admittedly, the first time that this blogger has actually been looking forward to having a sharp piece of metal forced into his body. Normally, of course, you have to pay good money for that sort of thing.

The sixth series of From The North favourite Line Of Duty will begin on 21 March, the BBC has confirmed. Martin Compston, Vicky McClure and Adrian Dunbar will reprise their roles in the Jed Mercurio drama about corruption inside the police force. They will be joined by Kelly Macdonald, who will play a Detective Chief Inspector who comes under suspicion of nefarious skulduggery and that. The latest series of the popular crime drama will have seven episodes, making it the longest to date. The exploits of the fictional AC-12 unit have gripped audiences ever since the BBC drama first hit screens in 2012. More than nine million viewers tuned in to see the final episode of Line Of Duty's fifth series when it was broadcast in May 2019. This blogger thought it was great. Filming on the sixth series was temporarily halted in Northern Ireland last year due to on-going pandemic-type malarkey. Shalom Brune-Franklin, seen last year in BBC's political thriller Roadkill, will play Chloe Bishop, a new addition to the AC-12 team. Mercurio also wrote the hit drama Bodyguard and is an executive producer on Bloodlands, the Northern Ireland-set thriller starring James Nesbitt which is currently being shown on BBC1.
Left unemployed by lockdown, Poldark and Hinterland actor Richard Harrington got on his bike and took a job as a takeaway delivery rider. The forty five-year-old said that he took the work in London last year having done 'nothing between March and September at all' during the pandemic. 'I got a job with Deliveroo, going around on my bike and delivering takeaways to people,' he said. The actor, who also featured in The Crown and Gangs Of London said he was 'grateful' to ride his bike every day. 'I'm normally quite a fit person,' he said. 'But the lockdown had turned me into a lock-in, so I was thankful I was able to go on my bike every day because of the job.' Harrington and his partner, the actress Hannah Daniel, are expecting their second child together later this year and he is currently starring in a drama on Welsh language television station S4C. Fflam is about a widow, Noni and her attempts to move on from the death of her husband. It is a subject close to Harrington's heart. 'I lost my mum in 2014 so I'm a little obsessed with grief,' the actor from Merthyr Tydfil told BBC Wales'Cymru Fyw. 'She had cancer, and it was a big shock when she had the prognosis, but we had nine months to deal with it. Life is a lot easier now but it took me a long time to deal with it. Grief can creep in you when you least expect it. Having said that, you don't really deal with anything for a couple years after.' Harrington admitted he was more affected by his mother's death than he realised at the time. 'I looked back and saw that I was acting strange,' he said. About a year-and-a-half after her death, Harrington said he had 'a complete breakdown. I threw myself into work, I threw myself into running, I threw myself into the well-being of my children,' he said. 'But looking back I wasn't very kind to myself, I didn't give myself much room to think properly.'
Taylor Swift (she is a popular beat combo, yer honour) has accused a Netflix comedy of 'degrading' women after it featured a joke which she considered 'deeply sexist.' The pop star-type individual tweeted to criticise the joke, which was in the series finale of the comedy-drama Ginny & Georgia. In one scene, main characters Ginny Miller and her mother, Georgia, argued about relationships. Asked whether she had broken up with her boyfriend, Ginny said: 'What do you care? You go through men faster than Taylor Swift.' The line swiftly incurred the considerable wrath of Swift's army of fans, prompting criticism of the show and its cast members on social media. Some Swift fans even called for a boycott of the series. On Monday, Swift herself addressed the controversy in a tweet, writing: 'Hey Ginny & Georgia, 2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back.' This blogger did briefly consider whether to editorialise this story with the observation that he, personally, does not consider that the joke is degrading to all women, merely to one - Taylor Swift her very self. But then he thought, 'nah, life's too short to go there ...'
Channel Four has said that it will not work not no more with Ant Middleton due to his 'personal conduct.' Last year, the SAS: Who Dares Wins-type person faced criticism over comments he had made about the Black Lives Matter protests and coronavirus. In a statement, the channel said: 'It has become clear that our views and values are not aligned.' Middleton has also posted, saying that he is 'really excited about the future and what's coming this year.'SAS: Who Dares Wins sees civilians put through gruelling military training exercises to test their physical and mental strength. Why, is a question perhaps best left for another day.
And, on that bombshell, dear blog reader, it's time for ...
This week has seen the arrival on incoming episodes at the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House; new segments of three particular From The North US favourites, Prodigal Son, NCIS and American Gods. All of them really rather decent episodes, too. The former featured the series debut of From The North favourite Alan Cumming in a completely brilliant one-scene cameo which total stole the show. It's going to be so much fun having him and Michael Sheen battling for who can go so far over the top they're down the other side in the coming weeks.
NCIS meanwhile, featured a rather contrived, but still emotionally satisfying, exit for Jack Sloane (Mari Bello) in a story that meandered all over the place and threatened to - but never quite did - disappear up its own arse. After being on the popular crime drama for over three years, it appears as though the actress was ready to move on to other projects. According to her IMDB profile, Maria will be a producer and writer on the upcoming drama The Woman King starring Viola Davis.
And, we also had the best episode of American Gods of the current (third) series - Fire & Ice - with lots of plotlines getting a good, hard kick up the rectum and propelled forwards. As usual, the best thing about the episode was the soundtrack, especially the use of Leonard Cohen's 'You Want It Darker' over the closing scenes. Magical. Also as usual Ian McShane gets all the best lines (well, those that another From The North favourite, the wonderful Danny Trejo wasn't given, anyway). For example, Wednesday's list of reasons why Johan may have started slaughtering Odin's followers was delivered to Shadow Moon in a vintage McShane rant: 'Psychedelics, brain fever, the curse of Fu Manchu, who knows?' The episode also featured the final appearance of Johan as Marilyn Manson was recently dropped from the production after various and assorted abuse claims against women.
This blogger highly recommends Luke McGee's admirably balanced piece on the CNN website Boris Johnson's Vaccine Strategy Gets Another Boost, While Europe Confronts Fresh Problems. Which makes a really refreshing change from the polarised rhetoric coming from the two extremes of the British media over the current vaccine rollout (either blind, sycophantic ringiece-licking from the Daily Scum Express and the Daily Scum Mail or sneering 'oh God, I could do better than that' nonsense from some Middle Class hippy Communists at the Gruniad Morning Star and the Independent). 'Boris Johnson didn't have a very good start to the pandemic,' notes McGee, entirely accurately. 'The United Kingdom still has one of the world's worst coronavirus mortality rates, and is near the top of the table in total infections and deaths - truly the Covid capital of Europe. Critics have blamed this on several errors made early on, from going into lockdown too late and making a mess of testing to poor government communications. However, of late, Johnson's fortunes appear to have turned. On Monday, the Prime Minister was able to reveal a roadmap that would take England out of lockdown before the end of June. Johnson would not have been able to deliver this good news had the UK's vaccine rollout not gone so remarkably well to date. As things stand, the UK has administered more than 18.5 million doses, or twenty seven per one hundred people. Compare this to other European giants like France and Germany, who have each managed only six per hundred.' Not everything in the piece is something you may necessarily agree with, dear blog reader, but it's useful to see an outsiders perspective on an issue which has become such a red hot potato in British political circles.
And, speaking of vaccinations, dear blog reader, as mentioned in the last From The Northbloggerisationisms update, this blogger was up for his own appointment with The Needle last week: 'Just a small prick,' the nurse said. 'Not the first time I've had that said to me,' this blogger replied, wearily. Oh, yes. It's also worth noting, of course, that Keith Telly Topping was given not a dose of AstraZeneca vaccine but, rather, an armful of AstraZenica (at least, according to his vaccine card he did). This, presumably, being a bit like when you buy a knock-off Guccci®™ down the market.
Of course, if the government promised everybody one of these, for free, after moments of significant prickage the vaccine take-up would be one hundred and one per cent (if not higher). This blogger really should suggest such a course of action to Bashing Boris, he might even get an OBE out of it. Which, incidentally, he would really deserve.
The morning after the prickage before; this blogger was suffering from a bit of a sore arm (which was to be expected as it did have a sharp piece of metal jabbed, savagely, into it). But, otherwise, there were no headaches, no fatigue, no obvious other symptoms of vaccine-reaction. Which suggested that the medicinal King Prawn curry with boiled rice yer actual Keith Telly Topping had immediately after getting well-pricked did its job. Correlation is not causation, of course dear blog reader but, one has to ask, have the government actually looked into this? And, if not, why not? Of course, inevitably, this blogger spoke a fraction too soon - by late afternoon, the arm pain has increased significantly and this blogger soon developed aches, pains, shivers and a stotting headache. Nowt serious (indeed, cautiously welcome since feeling temporarily grotty is usually a good sign because it means the anti-bodies are kicking-in and the vaccine is starting to do its job) but, enough that it was noticeable. So, this blogger went to bed early with a couple of painkillers. And that, mercifully, got it sorted by Friday morning. It was, nevertheless, atypical of the vaccine to wait until this blogger had been bragging to all and sundry about how unaffected he'd been before, ahem, affecting him.
Indeed, by the following day, this blogger was feeling well enough to ask his dear Facebook fiends: 'Is it just me or does anyone else fancy a cream slice right about now?' Stupid question, of course, since the answer was bound to be in the affirmative.
This year's Download Festival has been extremely cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, organisers have confirmed. The hairy hard rock and heavy metal event had been due to take place from 4 to 6 June, headlined by Kiss, Iron Maiden, Biffy Clyro and System Of A Down. So, it seems that every cloud does, indeed, have a silver lining. Who knew?
Two of Lady Gaga's French bulldogs were reportedly stolen last Wednesday, after a gunman shot her dog-walker in Hollywood. A male suspect fired a semi-automatic handgun at the dog-walker, named in US media reports as Ryan Fischer, before making off with the dogs. The victim was transported to hospital. Lady Gaga (she is, also, a popular beat combo, yer honour) offered a half-a-million dollar reward for the return of her dogs, Koji and Gustav. Whether she was particularly bothered about the fate of the guy who got shot was not, immediately, clear. A third bulldog, named Miss Asia, ran away and was later recovered by police. Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, is currently in Rome working on a new Ridley Scott film, Gucci. Subsequently it was confirmed that the two missing dogs had also been recovered, after a woman brought the dogs - unharmed - to a Los Angeles police station. Authorities said that the woman allegedly 'found' the dogs and was uninvolved in the shooting incident. Police have yet to identify any suspects. It is not known if Lady Gaga will hand the woman the half-a-million bucks reward she initially offered for the safe return of the dogs. Though, it'd be nice if she did. It'd also be nice if she showed a bit of concern about Fischer who remains wounded in hospital.
Investigators reportedly raided thirteen properties in Germany and Liechtenstein linked to a member of German parliament over allegations of corruption, prosecutors in München confirmed on Thursday. Georg Nüßlein, from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative alliance, is facing accusations of bribery from a coronavirus medical masks supplier. The Bundestag, the lower house of Germany's parliament, voted unanimously to lift his immunity earlier that day. 'In the Nüßlein case, the judiciary must now do its job,' a member of the Bundestag's immunity committee, Marco Buschmann, said on Twitter. Nüßlein allegedly lobbied the government to contract a medical masks supplier last year. Media reports suggest that he received six hundred and sixty thousand Euros in return. The funds were transferred to a company that Nüßlein manages, which did not declare taxes on the revenues, according to the German broadcaster RTL. 'If there is even the suspicion that a member of the German Bundestag personally benefited from the coronavirus crisis, then this is a very serious, grave accusation that must be comprehensively clarified,' Social Democrat Katja Mast. Lawmakers piled with criticism on Nüßlein, a member of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister-party to Merkel's Christian Democrats. Nüßlein has been a member of parliament since 2002 and has served as the deputy head of the conservatives parliamentary group since 2014. Germany's Social Democrats called for 'stricter measures' to 'maintain transparency and prevent corruption' by lawmakers. The SPD demanded mandatory disclosure of MPs investments, annual income and lobby registers for the Bundestag and the federal government. The parliamentary manager of the Left Party, Jan Korte, also called for prohibiting MPs from becoming paid lobbyists. Last year, another MP from Merkel's party came under fire for lobbying for a US start-up, as the topic became increasingly controversial in the Bundestag.
Speaking of politicians currently in a bit of bother with The Law, French ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to three years in The Slammer, two of them suspended, for corruption. He was extremely convicted of trying to bribe a judge in 2014 - after he had left office - by suggesting that he could secure a prestigious job for the judge in return for information about a separate case. Sarkozy is the first former French president to get a custodial sentence. His lawyer says that he will appeal. Sarkozy will remain free during that process which could take years. In the ruling, Judge Christine Mée said the conservative politician was a very naughty man and 'knew what [he] was doing was wrong,' adding that his actions and those of his lawyer had given the public 'a very bad image of justice.' The crimes were specified as influence-peddling and violation of professional secrecy. It is a legal landmark for post-war France. The only precedent was the trial of Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac, who got a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for having arranged bogus jobs at Paris City Hall for allies when he was Paris mayor. If Sarkozy's appeal is unsuccessful, he could serve a year at home with an electronic tag, rather than go to The Joint. His wife, the supermodel and singer Carla Bruni, reacted by describing the case as 'senseless persecution,' adding that 'the fight continued, and truth would come out.'
Meanwhile, the round-up of conspiring insurgents in the US continues if not apace then, at least, with the slow, methodical, yet dogged determination with FBI usually demonstrates when, for instance, taking down John Dillinger. Or aliens in the case of Mulder and Scully. Among the latest recidivists to get pinched by The Fuzz is, according to reports, one Suzanne Kaye, who calls herself 'The Angry Patriot Hippie' on social media. After agents phoned Kaye in late January to ask what she thought she'd been laying at u in Washington earlier in the month, she posted a video to her Facebook, Instagram and TikTok accounts. 'Just got a call from the FBI,' Kaye said, after taking a swig from a fifth of cinnamon-flavoured Jack Daniel's Tennessee Fire whiskey bottle. 'You think I’m going to ... let you come talk to me?' she said. 'I'm an American. I know my rights. My First Amendment right to free speech, my Second Amendment right to carry a gun to shoot your fucking ass if you come to my house.' Actually, that's not a second Amendment right, Suze m'love, that's called 'assault with a deadly weapon.' And, you get banged up in The Slammer for that shit. The FBI took her comments seriously and charged Kaye with 'making a communication in interstate commerce that threatened to kill agents from the FBI.' Which is, probably, not the sort of thing one wants to be doing if one wishes to retain the liberty which those who quote their rights under the constitution tend to take so seriously. Two other individuals up their collective necks in it are Lori Ann Vinson, a nurse and her husband Thomas Ray Vinson who were arrested by federal agents in Owensboro. Their charges include knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct which impedes the conduct of government business, disruptive conduct in the Capitol buildings and parading, demonstrating or picketing the Capitol buildings. Lori Vinson previously made headlines shortly after the insurrection when she spoke to multiple media outlets about entering the Capitol and said that she had been fired for it by her employers. Vinson nevertheless added she 'would do it again tomorrow.' Not that she'll have the chance to, of course, if she's banged up in The Joint for her assorted crimes. A Republican district leader from Queens was arrested and charged with various offences related to storming the US Capitol building. FBI agents arrested Philip Grillo, a former candidate in the special erection for Queens Council at his girlfriend's home in Glen Oaks after identifying him by a Knights of Columbus jacket he was wearing inside the Capitol, federal prosecutors said. Grillo is charged with obstructing an official proceeding, trespassing and other offences for his alleged role in the Capitol insurrection. Grillo goes by 'The Republican Messiah' on Facebook. Though whether he actually is The Messiah or, merely, a very naughty boy is another matter entirely. Nearing two months after the siege, the FBI continues to make arrests throughout the country. Since the violent riot, a number of tri-state residents have reportedly been arrested and charged with crimes in connection to the deadly event, including a New York City sanitation worker, the brother of a retired NYPD officer, an MTA worker and an Upper West Side community leader. A spokesperson for the New York FBI office said that one Thomas Webster surrendered on Monday at the FBI's Hudson Valley office on charges filed in federal court in Washington. A former Florida police officer has also been arrested after he entered the US Capitol and posted a live video to Facebook from inside the building. The Miami Heraldreports that former North Miami Beach police officer Nicholes Lentz was arrested on Friday. He has been charged with entering a restricted building and disorderly conduct, the same charges that have been levied against the majority of those arrested for their involvement in the Capitol breach. Lentz, a former Marine, left the North Miami Beach police department in August of 2020, the Herald reports. There's also the curious case of the close ally of Georgia Republican Congresswoman That Awful Greene Woman who took part in the 6 January mob at the Capitol and claimed that he was among those who eventually made their way into the building. That Awful Greene Woman, a freshman congresswoman with a history of promoting dangerous and violent conspiracies, encouraged The Big Lie that the Presidential erection was stolen from now extremely former President Mister Rump by voting to object to the erection certification and fanned the flames of the insidious insurrection by telling her supporters to 'fight' for Rump. In tweets after the Capitol insurrection, That Awful Greene Woman falsely suggested that those who had broken into the Capitol were not Republicans at all and, instead, falsely implied 'Antifa' - dressed as Rump supporters - were to blame for all the kerfuffle. In fact, Anthony Aguero, a conservative livestreamer, activist and - according to CNN - close associate of Greene, said on video following the January assault on the Capitol that he had been among those who entered and attacked those who falsely claimed it was done by Antifa. 'We were all there. It was not Antifa and it was not BLM. It was Trump supporters that did that yesterday. I'm the first to admit it, being one myself,' claimed Aguero in a video posted on 7 January. 'I walked amongst all those people,' he added. The FBI declined to comment on whether it was investigating Aguero. So, that'd be a 'yes', then. 
The number of US homegrown terror cases has risen sharply, the FBI boss has said, as he warned that the deadly January Capitol insurrection may serve as 'inspiration' for extremists. Some two thousand FBI domestic terror probes are open, up from fourteen hundred at the end of 2020, Director Christopher Wray said. Arrests of 'racially motivated violent extremists,' including white supremacists, have tripled since 2017. For the first time, Wray called the Capitol insurrection 'domestic terrorism.' The attack could be 'inspiration to a number of terrorist extremists,' he told a Senate hearing on Tuesday. He noted extremists and 'bad actors' were mobilising online, using encrypted messaging platforms to evade authorities. Wray also firmly denied a revisionist conspiracy theory floated by some supporters of now extremely former President Mister Rump (including at least one senator and several congresspersons) that the Capitol attack was, in fact, carried out by left-wing agitators in disguise. FBI investigations to date revealed 'quite a number' of the extremists participating in the riot belonged to far-right anti-government militias, he said. 'Foreign adversaries' were also taking advantage of the 6 January malarkey to 'amplify their own narratives,' he added.
A cockerel that had been fitted with a knife for an illegal cockfight has reportedly killed its owner in Southern India. Clearly, the chap had never watched Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid or, if he had, hadn't taken the advise to 'never bring a knife to a cockfight.' Probably. The bird's owner was 'impaled in the groin by the knife as the animal tried to escape.' It's hard to work out who is the biggest cock between them, frankly. The man died on the way to hospital from a loss of blood. Police are now searching for fifteen more people involved in the event, which took place in the village of Lothunur in Telangana state earlier this week. The animal was held at a police station before being transferred to a farm. A nice farm where it can run around a lot and eat its fill of ... whatever it is that cockerels eat. Police said the animal was being readied to take part in a fight when it tried to escape. Its owner attempted to catch it but was struck by the seven centimetre-long knife on the bird's leg during the struggle. Those involved in the event face charges of manslaughter, illegal betting and hosting a cockfight, the AFP news agency reports. Local police officer B Jeevan said the animal would be taken to court as evidence at a later date, according to the New Indian Express. A spokesperson for the cockerel said 'it's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.'
The former Newcastle United, West Hamsters United, Watford and Norwich City manager Glenn Roeder has died aged sixty five after a long illness, the League Managers Association hve announced. Glenn, who was a classy central defender who won seven England B caps during his playing days, began his managerial career with a spell at Gillingham. He was also a coach in the England set-up when Glenn Hoddle was manager. The LMA said it was 'very deeply saddened' at Roeder's death 'after a long battle with a brain tumour.' Glenn began his playing career in Arsenal's youth team and then at Leyton Orient (reaching the FA Cup Semi-Final in 1978) before going on to represent Queens Park Rangers for five years. He captained QPR in the 1982 FA Cup Final, which his side lost to Tottenham Hotshots in a replay and to the Second Division title in 1983. Glenn arrived on Tyneside later that year during this blogger's beloved Newcastle's successful 1983-84 promotion season, the final piece in the jigsaw of Arthur Cox's free-scoring squad. Roeder was one of the first players famed for using the step-over - 'The Roeder shuffle' - a technique which Roeder claimed his father taught him as a child. Back in the First Division, Glenn became United's club captain, making two hundred and nineteen appearances for The Magpies before leaving for Watford in 1989. He ended his career with Gillingham in 1993. Later embarking on a coaching and managerial career, Roeder returned to The Magpies as Academy Director during June 2005. By the following February however, he was caretaker boss at St James' Park following the departure of Graeme Souness. Persuaded to take the post permanently despite not holding the required UEFA Pro Licence, Roeder steered the club to a seventh place finish in the Premier League in his first season, an Intertoto Cup win in 2006 (the last trophy the club won to date) and then into the UEFA Cup, giving youngsters like Andy Carroll and Tim Krul their senior debuts. 'A cultured defender as a player, he managed with a studious style and was always generous with his time and ideas,' said LMA chairman Howard Wilkinson. 'Glenn was such an unassuming, kind gentleman who demonstrated lifelong dedication to the game. Not one to court headlines, his commitment and application to his work at all levels warrants special mention. Football has lost a great servant today and our sincere condolences go to Glenn's family and friends.' Roeder led The Hamsters to a seventh-place finish in the Premiership in 2002 before he was diagnosed with a brain tumour in April 2003. He had to have surgery and a period of recovery before returning to the dugout in July the same year. The club said: 'We are both deeply saddened by the passing of Glenn, who was hugely respected and liked by everyone in the game. As a player, Glenn enjoyed success with QPR and Newcastle, among others, before establishing himself as one of the country's top coaches, with a well-earned reputation for developing young players, including the likes of Michael Carrick, Joe Cole, Glen Johnson and Jermain Defoe during his time with West Ham United. Off the pitch, he was a loving family man and our sincere condolences go to Glenn's loved ones.' Roeder's last role in the game was as a managerial advisor at Stevenage in 2016. Former England international Chris Waddle, who played with Roeder at Newcastle, said 'Glenn was a top lad who loved football and was very much a family man.' Waddle told BBC 5Live: 'You can see by the reaction, what everybody thought about him. He was very professional but he had a good sense of humour. All the jobs he's been involved in, football was his life, as was his family. He was one of the first footballing centre-halves. Now we talk about Rio Ferdinand, players who are comfortable on the ball. But he didn't just stand in defence heading it away and kicking it away, he wanted to play. He had this stepover. Everyone knew he was going to do the stepover, but you still couldn't stop him. If he was around today he would definitely be playing at a top club.' Glenn is survived by his wife, Faith and their children Holly, Joe and Will.
The former Liverpool and Scotland centre forward Ian St John has also died at the age of eighty two after a long illness. St John joined Liverpool from his hometown club, Motherwell, in 1961 for a club record thirty seven grand and played four hundred and twenty five games for the Anfield side, scoring one hundred and eighteen goals, during a decade of service. He won two top-flight titles and scored the decisive goal as Liverpool lifted their first FA Cup in 1965. St John also earned twenty one Scotland caps and managed Motherwell and Portsmouth. He latterly enjoyed a successful career as a TV pundit, teaming up with former England striker Jimmy Greaves to front the bafflingly popular Saint & Greavsie which ran until 1992. St John's finishing prowess was evident from his early days at Motherwell, the club he had watched as a supporter lifting the Scottish Cup for the first time in 1952 before joining five years later. His prolific scoring record at Fir Park earned him international recognition and a move to Liverpool under fellow Scot Bill Shankly where he soon became a fans' favourite. It has gone down in Liverpool mythology that when the board were reluctant to spend a record fee on the player, Shankly's reply was: 'We can't afford not to buy him.' There's also the much told joke of the time Shankley was approached by a Christian preacher in the street and asked 'what would you do if Jesus came to Liverpool?''Move St John to inside-right' was Shanks's reported reply. Shankly described St John's signing, along with the arrival of fellow Scot Ron Yeats from Dundee United in the same year, as 'the turning point' as Liverpool came out of the Second Division to emerge as a dominant force in British football. St John quickly began to prove his worth, scoring a hat-trick on his debut, a four-three defeat to Everton in the Liverpool Senior Cup. Within twelve months his twenty two league goals had helped Liverpool secure the Second Division title. He matched that total in season 1963-64 as the Anfield side won their first top-flight crown in seventeen years, with a second title following two years later. St John formed a formidable partnership with England World Cup winner Roger Hunt, served by two outstanding wingers in Ian Callaghan and Peter Thompson while the likes of Yeats and 'Anfield Iron' Tommy Smith provided Shankly's steel core. Perhaps his most iconic moment in the red shirt came at Wembley in 1965 when his headed winner in extra time overcame Leeds United two-one to give Liverpool their first FA Cup. St John and Liverpool suffered disappointments, losing the 1966 European Cup Winners' Cup final to Borussia Dortmund at Hampden Park - but arguably bigger heartbreak came in the European Cup. Shankly was convinced Liverpool were, at that time, the best team in Europe. They were on course to prove it in 1965 but lost in controversial fashion to eventual winners Inter Milan. St John scored the crucial final goal in Liverpool's three-one first-leg win at Anfield just days after their FA Cup final triumph. It made them favourites in Italy but they were on the end of a series of questionable decisions as they lost three-nil in the San Siro, Shankly going to his grave harbouring suspicions about how the game unfolded. Liverpool were often at or near the top of the table in the years after their 1966 title but it was a barren period when measured in trophies and after a humiliating FA Cup quarter-final loss to Second Division strugglers Watford in February 1970 St John was one of several great players, including the likes of Yeats and goalkeeper Tommy Lawrence, who were moving towards the exit. The performance persuaded Shankly it was time to dismantle one great side and build another, with younger stars such as Ray Clemence being promoted to the first team and new signings like Larry Lloyd, Steve Heighway, John Toshack and Kevin Keegan coming in. After leaving Liverpool St John had shorts spells with South African sides Hellenic and Cape Town City either side of a season with Coventry City, before ending his playing days at Tranmere Rovers. He returned to Motherwell as manager in 1973, then moved on to Portsmouth before embarking on a career in broadcasting. St John always had broadcasting aspiration and ability, narrowly losing a competition to become a BBC commentator at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. The biggest fame and acclaim came later at ITV when he was not only a shrewd analyst and co-commentator but established the partnership on Saint & Greavsie that became an essential part of Saturday lunchtime viewing for many football fans. Though, this blogger must be honest and confess he always found it rather self-congratulatory and a bit naff and always preferred Football Focus on the other side.
Ronald Pickup, the highly respected stage and screen actor best known for his roles in The Crown and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movies, has died at the age of eighty. His agent said that he 'passed away peacefully after a long illness surrounded by his wife and family.' Pickup played the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 2016 series of The Crown and Neville Chamberlain in 2017 film Darkest Hour. But he became internationally recognised after playing an ageing lothario in 2011's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its 2015 sequel. The actor had performed extensively on stage, TV and radio before his big-screen success. After graduating from RADA, Pickup worked at The National Theatre, then run by Laurence Olivier, with acclaimed roles in Three Sisters and Long Day's Journey into Night. He was also Rosalind in The Old Vic's 1967 production of As You Like It, which also featured Anthony Hopkins. In 2009, he was Lucky in Sean Mathias's production of Waiting For Godot, opposite Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. Pickup was born in Chester in June 1940. His father, Eric, worked as a lecturer. He attended The King's School, Chester and went on to study English at Leeds University, graduating in 1962. He then trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, receiving the annual Bancroft Medal on graduation in 1964. It was at RADA that he met his wife, Lans Traverse. His TV break came in 1964 with a role as a physician in the Doctor Who story The Reign Of Terror. Pickup played a formidable roll-call of real life geniuses on the small screen, including Verdi, Nietzsche and Einstein, as well as voicing Aslan in the BBC adaptations of The Chronicles Of Narnia. He went on to star in the The Dragon's Opponent in 1973, playing Charles Howard, the Earl of Suffolk, a World War II bomb disposal expert. In 1976, he appeared on the mini-series Jennie playing Winston Churchill's father, Randolph, opposite Lee Remick. Pickup appeared alongside Penelope Keith in Moving and also played George Orwell in Crystal Spirit: Orwell On Jura; he later revealed in an interview in 2012 that this was his favourite role. He went on to play Prince Yakimov, a hapless, down-at-heel Russo-British aristocrat, opposite Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh in Fortunes Of War (1987), based on the novel cycle by Olivia Manning. Pickup starred in the short lived sitcom Not With A Bang in 1990 and appeared opposite Michael Caine in Jekyll & Hyde the same year. In 1992 he appeared with Dervla Kirwan in the adaptation of Melvyn Bragg's book A Time To Dance, considered to be one of his best performances. Other TV work included Hornblower, Young Dracula, The Riff Raff Element, Behaving Badly, Play For Today, The Fight Against Slavery (as William Pitt), Tropic, Bergerac, The Silver Chair, Black Hearts In Battersea, Hustle, Foyle's War, New Tricks, Lovejoy, Waking The Dead, The Bill, Silent Witness, Lewis, Cambridge Spies, Lark Rise To Candleford, Sherlock Holmes, Doc Martin, Inspector Morse, Rector's Wife, Holby City, Vera, Summer Of Spies, the 1991 adaptation of John Le Carré's A Murder Of Quality and the BBC's 2004 children's drama, Feather Boy. He also appeared in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries series, playing Chief Inspector Moore in A Case Of Coincidence. Pickup was a regular in the sitcom The Worst Week Of My Life. In November 2014 he appeared in Coronation Street as an OAP arranging a birthday party with Michelle Connor in The Rovers. Pickup was also a staple of Radio 4 drama, beginning his audio work with a BBC recording of Franco Zeffirelli's production of Much Ado About Nothing. His film work included appearances in Never Say Never Again (1983), The Mission (1986) and The Adventures Of Greyfriars Bobby (2005). He played a forger in The Day Of The Jackal (1973), the following year he was in Ken Russell's Mahler and also appeared in Joseph Andrews (1977). Pickup played one of the Prussian agents conspiring to blow up the Houses of Parliament in The Thirty Nine Steps (1978), was Harford in Zulu Dawn (1979), Igor Stravinsky in Nijinsky (1980) and Prince John in Ivanhoe (1982). Last year, Pickup starred in the horror film End Of Term, alongside Peter Davison. He is survived by his wife, Lans and their two children Rachel Pickup and Simon Pickup. Ronald and Rachel appeared together in two productions: the Midsomer Murders episode The Magician's Nephew (2008) and the movie Schadenfreude (2020).
Actor Johnny Briggs, who played Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street for thirty years, has died aged eighty five. His family said he died peacefully after 'a long illness' and asked for privacy to 'remember the wonderful times we had.' Briggs was made an MBE in the New Year's Honours in 2007, the year after his character left the ITV soap. Born in September 1935 in Battersea, Briggs was evacuated to the country during World War II before embarking on an acting career back in London at the age of twelve when he landed a place at the prestigious Italia Conti Stage Academy, among classmates that included Nanette Newman, Jill Gascoigne and Anthony Newley. After a break for two years of National Service in Germany with the Royal Tank Regiment starting in 1953, he resumed his acting career with roles in several Carry On films and the ITV police drama No Hiding Place. It was not until 1976 that he landed his defining role as Mike Baldwin. As the uncompromising Cockney businessman in the Manchester soap he constantly feuded with Ken Barlow and was caught up in a love triangle with with his wife, Deirdre, played by Anne Kirkbride. Later, Baldwin would die in his rival's arms after suffering a heart attack, finally killing off the character after three decades. Briggs won the British Soap Award for lifetime achievement in 2006. In 1995 Briggs had a UK chart hit, alongside Coronation Street co-star Amanda Barrie, with a - properly appalling - karaoke-style version of 'Something Stupid'. He also appeared on stage and in films alongside the likes of Norman Wisdom, Dirk Bogarde and Tommy Steele. He appeared in the 1948 movie Quartet, with George Cole and Joan Collins, making his TV debut in The Younger Generation, a series of plays which also starred John Thaw. He also had roles in The Odd Man, The Plane Makers, First Night, Thirty Minutes Theatre, The Troubleshooters, Department S, Wreckers At Dead Eye, Menace, Crossroads, The Saint, The Persuaders!, Softly Softly Task Force, Bright's Boffins, The Brothers, No Honestly, Z Cars, Yus My Dear, So It Goes and Thick As Thieves. Despite suggesting he was to retire after leaving Coronation Street, Briggs subsequently made appearances in both Agatha Christie's Marple and Holby City in 2007, as well as the short-lived ITV soap opera Echo Beach in 2008. In 2009, Briggs appeared in long running daytime soap Doctors. His movies included an uncredited role in The Lavender Hill Mob, Cosh Boy, The Diplomatic Corpse, Sink The Bismarck!, The Bulldog Breed, Doctor In Distress, The Leather Boys, The Devil-Ship Pirates, 633 Squadron, The Intelligence Men, HMS Defiant, Carry On Up The Khyber, Some Girls Do, Au Pair Girls, Go For A Take, Secrets Of A Door-to-Door Salesman, Bedtime With Rosie and two of this blogger's favourite movies, Perfect Friday (1970) and Quest For Love (1971). He married Caroline Sinclair in 1961 and had two children, Mark and Karen before the couple divorced in 1975. The same year he married Christine Allsop, a marriage which produced four children, Jennifer, Michael, Stephanie, and Anthony.
One of reggae's most important voices, Bunny Wailer, has died at the age of seventy three. The musician, from Kingston, Jamaica, was a founding member of The Wailers alongside his childhood friends, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. Together, they achieved international fame with reggae classics like 'Simmer Down' and 'Stir It Up', before Wailer left to go solo in 1974. He went on to win three Grammys and was given Jamaica's Order Of Merit in 2017. His death was confirmed by manager Maxine Stowe, and Jamaica's Culture Minister, Olivia Grange. He had been in hospital since having a stroke in July 2020. Bunny, whose real name was Neville O'Riley Livingston, had been the last surviving member of The Wailers, following Marley's death from cancer in 1981 and Tosh's murder during a robbery in 1987. Born in April 1947, Livingston spent his earliest years in the village of Nine Miles, where he was raised by his father, Thaddeus, who ran a grocery store. That was where he first met Marley and the boys soon became friends, making their first music together at Stepney Primary and Junior High School. Following the death of Marley's father in 1955, his mother, Cedella, moved in with Livingstone's father. The boys were essentially raised as step-brothers, especially after Cedella and Thaddeus had a daughter, Pearl, together. After moving to Trenchtown in Kingston, they met Peter Tosh and formed a vocal group initially called The Wailing Wailers - because, Marley said: 'We started out crying.' The area was poor and afflicted by violence. Livingstone later remembered building his first guitar from 'a bamboo staff, the fine wires from an electric cable and a large sardine can.' But singer Joe Higgs lived nearby and took the boys under his wing. Under his tutelage, they refined their sound, adding another vocalist Junior Braithwaite and backing singers Beverly Kelso and Cherry Green before shortening their name to The Wailers. In December 1963, the group entered Coxsone Dodd's famous Studio One to record 'Simmer Down', a song Marley had written calling for peace in the ghettos of Kingston. Faster and harder than the music The Wailers later became known for, the song was an immediate hit in Jamaica, reaching number one. They followed it up with the original version of 'Duppy Conqueror', before releasing their debut LP The Wailing Wailers, in 1965. Soon after, the band went on hiatus as Marley got married and moved to the USA and Livingstone served a year in jail for marijuana possession. But they still managed to release twenty eight singles between 1966 and 1970, before releasing their second LP, Soul Rebels. Their international breakthrough came two years later with Catch A Fire - the first record they made for Chris Blackwell's Island Records. The collaboration came about almost by accident. The Wailers had been touring the UK with Johnny Nash - who'd had a hit with a cover of 'Stir It Up' - but found themselves unable to pay for their trip home. Blackwell offered to sign the band to Island, paying them an advance to cover their air fares and the cost of recording an LP in Jamaica. Much to Bunny's initial displeasure, some of the songs were subsequently overdubbed to make them more palatable to an international audience, most notably Wayne Perkins' guitar work on 'Concrete Jungle'. 'I felt the way to break the Wailers was as a black rock act; I wanted some rock elements in there,' Blackwell later told Rolling Stone. 'Bunny and Peter didn't want to leave Jamaica, so Bob came to England when we did the overdubs.' Tensions began to arise within the band, exacerbated by Island marketing their LP under the name Bob Marley & The Wailers and a touring schedule that kept Livingstone away from his family. Livingstone left in late 1973 after the recording for the follow up to Catch A Fire, Burnin' and The Wailers'memorable UK TV debut, saying that the touring lifestyle clashed with his Rastafarian beliefs - citing the pressure to eat processed foods and play 'freak clubs.' Free from the band, he began to work on his solo LP Blackheart Man, which included classic songs like 'Dreamland' and 'Burning Down Sentence', which was inspired by his stint in prison. He went on to release several acclaimed LPs, including 1981's Rock 'n' Groove and 1980s's Bunny Wailer Sings The Wailers, which saw him revisit some of the band's classic material. In the 1990s, he won the Grammy award for best reggae LP three times - with each of those records extending and preserving the legacy of Marley and The Wailers: 1991's Time Will Tell: A Tribute To Bob Marley, 1995's Crucial! Roots Classics and the 1997's all-star Hall Of Fame: A Tribute To Bob Marley's Fiftieth Anniversary. 'I'm satisfied with knowing that I'm serving the purpose of getting reggae music to be where it's at,' he told the Washington Post in 2006. 'I'm proud to be part of that.'
Boris Johnson says it is 'the right time' for the UK and Republic of Ireland to launch a joint bid to host the 2030 World Cup. The UK government will reportedly pledge 2.8 million knicker to kick-start the process in Wednesday's Budget. The Football Associations of England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland say they are 'delighted' with the government's commitment. 'We are very, very keen to bring football home in 2030,' Johnson said. In an interview with the Sun, he added: 'I do think it's the right place. It's the home of football. It will be an absolutely wonderful thing for the country. We want to see a bonanza of football in the years ahead.' A feasibility study will continue before the formal World Cup bidding process begins in 2022. A joint-statement from the Football Associations of England, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland read: 'The Football Associations and government partners of the UK and Ireland are delighted that the UK government has committed to support a prospective five-association bid for the 2030 World Cup. The FAs will continue to undertake feasibility work to assess the viability of a bid before FIFA formally opens the process in 2022. Staging a World Cup would provide an incredible opportunity to deliver tangible benefits for our nations. If a decision is made to bid for the event, we look forward to presenting our hosting proposals to FIFA and the wider global football community.' Johnson also told the newspaper the UK was prepared to host additional Euro 2020 games, after the government last week unveiled plans to end all restrictions on social contact in England by 21 June. The Euros were postponed by a year because of the coronavirus pandemic and are now set to take place across twelve host cities this summer. It is understood that UEFA still intends the tournament to go ahead in this way. Wembley will host seven games - including the final and semi-finals - of Euro 2020, while Glasgow and Dublin will also host games. England is also hosting the postponed Women's European Championship in 2022. The last major men's football tournament played in the UK was the 1996 European Championship, which England hosted thirty years after staging its only World Cup. England spectacularly failed with a bid - fronted by David Beckham, Prince William and then Prime Minister Oily David Cameron - to host the 2018 World Cup, which went to Russia amid much alleged dodgy back-stage doings at FIFA. World Cups from 2026 onwards will be contested by forty eight teams, beginning when the US, Canada and Mexico host the tournament. A joint bid from Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay is expected for the 2030 competition, while Spain, Morocco and Portugal are also considering a joint bid. Government support for the idea of a UK and Ireland bid for the 2030 World Cup is nothing new. Another former Prime Minister That Useless May Woman said in 2018 that she would back an effort to stage the tournament. The following year, on the eve of the general erection, her successor Boris Johnson said he would put his 'heart and soul' behind such a bid. Ministers are known to be keen to host as many major sports events as possible to help promote Britain in the post-Brexit era and with London, Glasgow and Dublin set to stage Euros matches this summer, a World Cup bid will enjoy support. But others will wonder if it is wise use of public money after England's last bid for the 2018 World Cup ended in such humiliation, securing just two votes, despite spending twenty one million notes. In the wake of its great corruption scandal, FIFA has reformed the way in which it decides hosts, with more transparency and each national association given a vote, not just its executive committee. But even if this appears to boost UK/Irish chances, there are other hurdles to overcome. Backing from UEFA is deemed essential. But its president, Aleksander Ceferin, has said he favours just one bid from Europe, and a joint effort from Spain and Portugal is already being prepared. The FA has been on a charm offensive in recent years in an attempt to tackle perceptions of English arrogance and Johnson's latest reference to football 'coming home' may not have helped build bridges. But regardless of which bid UEFA supports, it would face stiff competition from an expected joint South American effort. With 2030 marking the centenary of the first World Cup held in Uruguay, many believe it would be an appropriate choice, although there are concerns over infrastructure and stadia. China would also provide formidable opposition if FIFA changed its host rotation policy and allowed another Asian World Cup so soon after Qatar stages next year's tournament.
NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars on 18 February after almost seven months travelling from Earth. Since then, it has sent back some amazing images from around its landing site, Jezero Crater, a thirty mile wide impact depression just North of the Red Planet's equator.
And finally, dear blog reader, Molly-Mae Hague (no, me neither) has reportedly fallen foul of the UK's advertising watchdog for a second time. The Love Island-type individual has been reprimanded for running an eight thousand smackers online prize draw which failed to follow the rules for such competitions. The watchdog said that Hague had been 'unable to provide evidence the winners had been randomly and fairly picked.' One lawyer said this suggests the authority is now 'pursuing a wider range of cases against influencers.' Until recently, its focus has been on those who simply failed to flag paid-for posts as being averts. Hague previously had a complaint upheld against her for failing to make clear one of her posts was an advert for an online clothing retailer. The twenty one-year-old appeared on ITV2's risible dating reality show Love Island in 2019, when she was one of the runners-up. She has more than five million followers on Instagram and close to one-and-a-half million on YouTube. No one has a decent explanation as to why.

Truth be told, dear blog reader, yer actual Keith Telly Topping is an - impotently - vexed and utterly sickened author, journalist and broadcaster right about now. What a hugely depressing week this has been. A week in which the biggest - for which read only - story that the world's media seems to want to cover involves a bunch of self-entitled multi-millionaires being, allegedly, beastly and (allegedly) racist towards a couple of other self-entitled multi-millionaires. A story which has, seemingly, fascinated to the point of obsession, America. A country which, let's remember, once fought a sodding revolution to get rid of the concept of royalty. A story which has reportedly led to a family feud involving a family which, the last time it had a feud like this (well, not the last time per se, but one of the last times) ended up with The First World War kicking-off big-style. Mind you, it was also a story which got that odious oily twat Piers Morgan's arse kicked into the gutter along with all the other turds by ITV. It was jolly hard not to roll around on the floor laughing and kicking ones legs in the air like one of the robots from the 1970s For Mash Get S.M.A.S.H adverts by the comments attributed to an ITV spokesperson concerning all this malarkey: 'Following discussions with ITV, Piers Morgan has decided now is the time to leave Good Morning Britain. ITV has accepted this decision and has nothing further to add.' And, if you Google the phrase '... don't let the door hit your arse on the way out' you'll find that very statement right at the top of the list. Meanwhile, in the country in which this bunch of self-entitled multi-millionaire clowns are - nominally - supposed to be role models, over one hundred and twenty thousand people have died from The Plague. Whilst the nobility bicker amongst themselves. In so many ways, dear blog reader, we really haven't progressed very much since the Fourteenth Century. Our priorities as a society - as a species - are shot to Hell; the world is sick and worthless and it could probably use a sodding great bomb being placed underneath it to put us all out of our misery. So, to sum up, just an average week at the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House, then.
This week also saw the first anniversary of the date on which the Covid-19 outbreak was, officially, declared a pandemic and, shortly afterwards, Britain entered into its initial lockdown (sequel lockdowns were, subsequently, available).
Of course, as previously noted on several occasions, the one major bonus about so many people being stuck in their collective gaffs with little to do except watch the telly and surf the Interweb for much of the last year has been the significant regular increases in the traffic involving this very blog. It's an ill-wind, dear blog reader, which blows no one any good. Allegedly.
The US Supreme Court has disposed - dismissively - with the last of now extremely former President Mister Rump's challenges to state erection procedures on Monday, utterly rejecting his appeal of lower court rulings which upheld Wisconsin's handling of mail-in ballots. Which, to be fair, was funny. The court announced the rejection without comment in a one-line order, which is its normal practice. For context, the second word in the statement was 'off'. Probably. Rump and his sordid allies have a uniformly unsuccessful record before the Supreme Court in their effort to overturn the presidential erection results in states won by President Joe Biden. In December of last year, the justices refused to take up a lawsuit filed by Texas against the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The court said that Texas had demonstrated 'no legal interest' in how other states conduct their erections. The Supreme Court last month rejected two other Rump challenges to vote counting procedures in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. And, while the vote counting was still underway in November, the court declined to stop Pennsylvania from counting ballots received after erection day. Monday's action was no surprise, because if the court had intended to take any of the Rump challenges, it would have done so before Congress formally counted the Electoral College vote on 6 January, a process which was delayed by several hours by an attempted insurrection at the Capitol. You might have noticed, dear blog reader, it was on telly, in the papers and everything.
Speaking of the events of 6 January, the story of some of the more notably daft conspiring insurgents involved in the disgraceful attempts to overturn democracy continues to amuse and astonish in equal measure. This week, for example, we hsve seen the latest bleatings from Jake The Horny Shaman (who used to live with his mom ... and now lives in jail) about how he was, you know, led astray by older boys and please, judge, don't cane him. Another of those who made a big name for themselves was Richard Bigo Barnett, the Arkansas plank who gained notoriety after being pictured with his feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk during the insurrection. Recently, Barnett reportedly yelled in court during a virtual hearing about the manifest unfairness of life in general and his own incarceration in particular. During the hearing, Judge Christopher Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington suggested the next court date for Bigo's case would be held on 4 May. This caused Barnett to completely lose his shit and erupt over proceedings being extended whilst he remained banged up in The Joint. 'I've been here a long time, another month? It's not fair,' Bigo was heard to wail concerning the new court date, according to NBC4. 'You're letting everyone else out ... I need help,' he squealed. Well, maybe you should've thought about that before you were pictured, grinning like a Cheshire Cat with your feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk, matey? Just a suggestion. Following the outburst, the judge called for a five-minute recess so Barnett could cool his jets. Barnett has been charged with a variety of charges including aiding and abetting, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, parading or demonstrating in a Capitol building and theft of government property.
The Washington Post's Katie Shepherd has detailed the story of one William Robert Norwood III. According to a criminal complaint, Norwood texted a group of friends and family that he was going to attend the 6 January punch-up and 'fool police' by dressing in all black. 'I'll look just like ANTIFA,' he claimed. 'I'll get away with anything.' He allegedly followed this up with a subsequent photo showing himself holding a police vest, apparently 'acquired' during the insurrection. 'It worked,' Norwood sneered. 'I got away with things that others were shot or arrested for.' Norwood was extremely arrested last week and charged with his naughty insurrectionist ways. His story was the leading item in Aaron Blake's properly thigh-slapping Post article Thirteen Not-So-Greatest Hits From The Capitol Riot Arrest Records. Another story revealed in recent days deals with Richard Michetti, a Pennsylvania man who - allegedly - texted with his former-girlfriend about being him in the Capitol. At one point, he told that her she was 'a moron' if she didn't understand that the erection was stolen. The ex, who is identified in a ten-page Statement of Facts merely as W1, went straight to The Feds on 7 Jan and grassed Michetti up like a good'un, suggesting that he 'sent several text messages and two videos' to her whilst participating in his alleged illegal activities. The pace of arrests stemming from the Capitol insurrection has slowed in recent weeks. That's both to be expected and also a reflection of how many people made it so utterly easy to identify themselves - in many cases taking selfies or appearing in videos of the siege helpfully captured by themselves or others. The Post's Travis Andrews, for example, wrote in mid-January about some of the most brazen and ultimately foolhardy participants identified at that point. Now that the number of arrests has grown to around three hundred, the examples of rank stupidity has also grown. Amongst those that the Post's most recent expose highlighted are Kevin Loftus who, allegedly, posted a selfie from the Capitol with the caption: 'One of seven hundred inside' adding: 'That's right folks some of us are in it to win it.' He later posted to Facebook, upon seeing himself pictured among the suspects: 'I am wanted by the FBI for illegal entry' and pointing to his photo. Troy Faulkner allegedly wore a jacket from his painting company which included a phone number. Joshua Lollar allegedly posted to Facebook saying: 'Just got gassed and fought with cops. That I never thought would happen.' Within minutes, someone believed to be his sister replied: 'We cleaned off the post of you going into and inside the Capital [sic] since they plan to prosecute everyone that was in there.' A minute later, she added: 'You need to clean off your page.' He didn't and now, he hs to face the consequences. Kevin Lyons allegedly posted an Instagram photo of himself in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office saying: 'WHOSE HOUSE?!?!? OUR HOUSE!!' He later told the FBI that he had a dream about being in the Capitol that day, before they showed him the Instagram post. 'Wow, you're pretty good. That was only up for an hour,' he said, according to court documents. He later e-mailed video of the incident, saying: 'Hello Nice FBI Lady. Here are the links to the videos.' Justin Stoll allegedly responded to someone who criticised his videos from inside the Capitol a day afterward by issuing threats, including: 'If you ever in your existence did something to jeopardize [sic] taking me away from my family, you will absolutely meet your maker. You can play that for the [prosecutor] in court, I don't care.' He is now extremely charged with making threats and witness tampering and, one suspects, very much does care about his upcoming day in court to face the music. Thomas Fee allegedly sent a selfie from the Capitol to his girlfriend's brother, who had asked if he was in Washington after seeing one of Fee's social media posts. The brother, of course, was a federal agent.
Other simple recidivists who have recently had their collars felt by Plod include Federico Klein, a former State Department aide, arrested on charges related to the storming of the Capitol and marking the first known instance of an appointee of now extremely former President Mister Rump facing criminal prosecution. Also, Isaac Sturgeon of Dillon, Montana, who was arrested by the FBI on arrival at JFK airport over the weekend after being extremely deported from Kenya where he had rushed off to following the events of 6 January. He is charged with seven counts including shoving a metal barricade into police officers.
If you're looking for some further, in depth, hilarity related to the madness of the far-right in American politics dear blog reader, Shayan Sardarizadeh's piece Why Are QAnon Believers Obsessed With 4 March? is well-worth a few moments of your time. Although, since 4 March came and went without anything even remotely interesting happening, you should probably also check out an article from Newsweek's Emily Czachor, QAnon Theorists Switch Date To 20 March After No Trump Inauguration, Call The 4th 'False Flag' for a supplementary dose of twenty-four carat comedy genius.
Still on the subject of those banged-up in The Slammer for their - alleged - naughty doings, the way in which British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell is being treated in a New York jail is 'degrading' and 'amounts to torture,' her brother has claimed. Which, if you look up 'ludicrous examples of crass, unconvincing hyperbole' on Google ... Ian Maxwell alleged that his sister was being held under 'constant surveillance' in a six by nine feet cell with no natural light and the food was 'basically inedible.' Maxwell is accused of helping the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein groom young girls, allegations which she denies. She is currently seeking bail, ahead of her trial which is due to kick-off in July. Prison officials have not commented on the conditions under which she is being held ... except to roll their eyes and mutter 'has everyone taken The Stupid Pill, or what?' Maxwell, who also has US and French citizenship, has been in jail in Brooklyn since she was arrested last July at her secluded mansion in New Hampshire. Maxwell, the daughter of the late media mogul - and crook - Robert Maxwell, was in a relationship with financier Epstein in the 1990s. She, allegedly, introduced Epstein to wealthy and powerful figures including Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew.
Images of what appears to be a hovering ship have been captured as the result of a rare optical illusion. David Morris took a photo of the ship near Falmouth in Cornwall. The BBC meteorologist David Braine said that the 'superior mirage' occurred because of 'special atmospheric conditions that bend light.' He added that the illusion is common in the Arctic, but can appear 'very rarely' in the UK during winter. Morris said he was 'stunned' after capturing the picture while looking out to sea from the hamlet of Gillan. Braine said: 'Superior mirages occur because of the weather condition known as a temperature inversion, where cold air lies close to the sea with warmer air above it. Since cold air is denser than warm air, it bends light towards the eyes of someone standing on the ground or on the coast, changing how a distant object appears. Superior mirages can produce a few different types of images - here a distant ship appears to float high above its actual position, but sometimes an object below the horizon can become visible.'
National treasure Stephen Fry has backed a campaign to transform a building in Portsmouth into a Sherlock Holmes museum. The actor, writer and presenter said that an old records office set for demolition was an 'ideal location.' But the city council's culture chief Councillor Steve Pitt said the office was 'completely unsuitable.' Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a Portsmouth resident and some of his archives are already on display in the nearby Portsmouth Museum. About one thousand residents have signed a petition opposing plans to replace the records office with council homes, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service. Campaigners want to put the Lancelyn Green collection, which contains about fourteen thousand pieces related to Conan Doyle and is mostly in storage, on display in the Edwardian building. Fry has narrated Sherlock Holmes audio books and appeared as Mycroft in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. He urged Portsmouth City Council to 'seize the moment' to 'create something that will contribute hugely to the city's reputation.' He said Holmes had been a hero for 'each new generation. No-one who has studied the phenomenon would disagree when I say that this worldwide fascination, admiration and need for Sherlock will only continue to grow and grow and grow,' he added. He said 'legions of fans around the globe' would be attracted to the 'most magnificent archive of Holmesiana ever assembled.' However, Councillor Steve Pitt, cabinet member for culture, claimed the building was 'dilapidated' with a collapsing floor. 'A Conan Doyle museum is something that would be great for the city, but we need to find the right location,' he said. Councillors will debate the issue at a full council meeting next week.
Some Britons like to think they have a 'special relationship' with the US - particularly when it comes to the Royal Family (see above) - based on a common language and cultural, historical and political ties. But, according to one of the UK's most respected polling companies, there is one chasm which the English language can't always bridge and it's not The Atlantic Ocean - the British love of passive-aggressive sarcasm. In the words of YouGov, 'half of Americans would not be able to tell that a Briton is calling them an idiot.'YouGov showed a number of common British phrases, including 'with the greatest respect,''I'll bear it in mind' and 'you must come for dinner,' to Britons and Americans. 'While not all the phrases show a difference in transatlantic understanding, there are some statements where many Yanks are in danger of missing the serious passive aggression we Brits employ,'YouGov said. The starkest difference was in the phrase 'with the greatest respect' - which most Britons took to mean 'I think you are an idiot,' but nearly half of Americans interpreted as 'I am listening to you.'
Lou Ottens, the Dutch engineer credited with inventing the audio cassette tape, has died aged ninety four. An estimated one hundred billion cassette tapes have been sold around the world since they were introduced in the 1960s. Ottens' invention transformed the way people listened to music and there has even been a resurgence of the cassette in recent years. The engineer died in his hometown of Duizel last weekend, his family announced on Tuesday. Ottens became head of Philips' product development department in 1960, where he and his team developed the cassette tape. In 1963, it was presented at the Berlin Radio electronics fair and soon became a worldwide success. Ottens struck a deal with Philips and Sony that saw his model confirmed as the patented cassette, after a number of Japanese companies reproduced similar tapes in a number of sizes. On the fiftieth anniversary of its creation, he told Time magazine that it was a 'sensation' from day one. Ottens was also involved in the development of the compact disc and more than two hundred billion of those have been sold worldwide to date. In 1982, when Philips showed off a production CD player, Ottens said: 'From now on, the conventional record player is obsolete.' He retired four years later. When asked about his career, he said his biggest regret was that Sony and not Philips had created the cassette tape player, the Walkman. Cassette tapes have experienced an unlikely surge in popularity in recent years. A number of artists including Lady Gaga and The Killers have released their music on them.
Nicola Pagett, who died suddenly his week of a brain tumour aged sevety five, will not be forgotten by anyone who saw her on stage or screen over a career of thirty years. She was a glacial, beautiful presence in plays from Shaw to Pinter and she illuminated Upstairs, Downstairs on television in the early 1970s. She played Elizabeth Bellamy, the spoilt and self-absorbed daughter of the upscale Belgravia household in Eaton Square, who made the mistake of marrying a poet with no interest in the physical side of love. She had an affair with his publisher and conceived a child. Other amorous adventures followed before she left for New York. Other starring roles soon followed: Elizabeth Fanshawe in Frankenstein: The True Story (1973), widely considered one of the best Frankenstein adaptations; the title role in Anna Karenina, a 1977 BBC epic co-starring Eric Porter as Karenin and Stuart Wilson as Vronsky and Liz Rodenhurst in A Bit Of A Do (1989) adapted from the Yorkshire novels of David Nobbs, with David Jason and Gwen Taylor. Liz was the promiscuous, middle-class mother of the bride who started an affair with Jason's working-class Ted Simcock, father of the groom. However, her career was overshadowed by a long period of mental illness, which she wrote about in a book, Diamonds Behind My Eyes, published in 1997. Her behaviour became increasingly erratic and she developed an obsession with Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's spokesperson, whom she bombarded with love letters. Her final stage appearance was at the National Theatre in 1995 in a revival of Joe Orton's black comedy What The Butler Saw with Richard Wilson and a young newcomer, David Tennant. Her book suggested a recovery of sorts. But it was only partial. Some days were better than others but she was nothing if not resilient. Nicola was born in Cairo, where her father, Herbert Scott, was a peripatetic Shell Oil executive who had met her mother, Barbara, in Egypt where she had been stationed with the Women's Royal Naval Service. The family travelled around - Nicola had a younger sister, Angela - and it was in the Yokohama convent school of Saint Maur in Tokyo that a seven-year-old Nicola stood on a desktop and declared she was going to be an actress. After another business posting of her father to Hong Kong, she was sent, aged twelve, to the Beehive boarding school in Bexhill-on-Sea, where her godmother, Anne Maxwell, served in loco parentis. She was just seventeen when she went to RADA in 1962. On graduating she changed her surname to Pagett, then spent several years in repertory theatres, including The Glasgow Citizens and The Connaught, Worthing, before making a London debut in A Boston Story (1968) at The Duchess Theatre, adapted by Ronald Gow from Henry James and starring Tony Britton and Dinah Sheridan. She immediately became a West End regular, employed by the producer Michael Codron in no less than three important roles opposite Alec Guinness: in John Mortimer's A Voyage Round My Father (1971) at The Haymarket; in Julian Mitchell's adaptation of Ivy Compton-Burnett's A Family & A Fortune (1975) at The Apollo - in which she met the actor/writer Graham Swannell, whom she married in 1975 - and as Jonathan Swift's muse, Stella, in Alan Strachan's 'entertainment'Yahoo, based on the life and work of the mordant Irish satirist. In all three roles her beauty was tempered with a fascinating mixture of steeliness and reserve. In 1974, she joined a remarkable season directed at The Greenwich Theatre by Jonathan Miller, in which a nucleus of four lead actors - Pagett, Irene Worth, Peter Eyre and Robert Stephens - examined the Freudian themes and links between three great classics - Hamlet, Ibsen's Ghosts and Chekhov's The Seagull. She was perfect as Ophelia, Regina the maid and the lovelorn Masha, trapped in a romantic triangle. This quality of mystery and an inner, secret life is a rare one in an actor and it really counted in the plays of Harold Pinter, most notably in a 1985 revival of Old Times, in which she played the wife of Michael Gambon's film-maker visited by their mutual friend of twenty years ago, played by Liv Ullmann. Pagett stood out, too, in Pinter's Party Time on a double bill with Mountain Language at The Almeida in 1991. Pinter directed her at The National in 1983 as Helen, a stunning and slyly provocative enchantress in The Trojan War Will Not Take Place, translated from Jean Giraudoux by Christopher Fry, so it was no surprise that she occupied the Vivien Leigh role of a not-so-kittenish Lady Teazle in John Barton's production of The School For Scandal at The Duke Of York's later that year. She was wonderful, too, as a seductive Countess in Jean Anouilh's The Rehearsal, translated by Jeremy Sams, in 1990 and offered what Michael Billington described as 'a highly intelligent study in devouring sensual rage' in David Hare's The Rules Of The Game, adapted from Pirandello and directed by Jonathan Kent in 1992. Her TV work had not dried up but was more sporadic. In Scoop (1987), a two-hour movie scripted by William Boyd, based on Evelyn Waugh's 1938 novel, she was Julia Stitch alongside Michael Maloney as the hapless war reporter William Boot and Denholm Elliott as the chaotic newspaper editor. And she starred with Peter Davison as Sonia Drysdale in Ain't Misbehavin' (1994), an under-rated comedy series of marital mishaps and alleged adultery written by Roy Clarke. A film career which began with the small role of Princess Mary in Anne Of A Thousand Days (1969), starring Richard Burton and Geneviḕve Bujold, included Roy Boulting's There's A Girl In My Soup (1970) with Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn, Michael Blakemore's Privates On Parade (1983) with John Cleese and Denis Quilley and Mike Newell's An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), adapted by Charles Wood from Beryl Bainbridge's novel and starring Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. After divorcing Graham in 1997, she lived alone in East Sheen - with her Persian cats - stoically dealing with her illness, making a domestic agenda of cooking and gardening and going for walks whenever she could. She is survived by her daughter, Eve, from her marriage and by her sister, Angela.
David Bailie, the South African actor known for his performances on stage, television and film has died aged eighty three. Bailie was born in Springs, South Africa in December 1937 and went to boarding school in Swaziland, before emigrating to Rhodesia with his family in 1952. His first acting experience soon after school in 1955 was an amateur production of Doctor In The House, which persuaded him he wanted to be an actor. After leaving school he worked in a bank and then for Central African Airlines. In 1960 he moved to Britain and landed his first small role in the film Flame In The Streets (1961) and then played one of the bell boys in Arthur Kopit's Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You In The Closet & I'm Feelin' So Sad (1961) with Stella Adler. He then bluffed his way into weekly repertory in Barrow-in-Furness as juvenile lead - terrified that he would be exposed as totally inexperienced. Recognising the need for training, he auditioned three times for a bursary to RADA - each time being accepted only as a fee-paying student, which he couldn't afford. He finally sent for the last of his stand-by money (two hundred smackers) he had left in Rhodesia and paid for the first term (1963). At the end of term he persuaded John Fernald to allow him free tuition for the next two years. Terry Hands was also a student at the same time, but had left a little earlier than Bailie and formed the Everyman Theatre with Peter James in Liverpool. On leaving RADA Bailie was invited to join The Everyman in 1964. Amongst other roles he played Tolen in The Knack ... And How To Get It, Becket in Murder In The Cathedral, Dion in The Great God Brown, MacDuff in Macbeth and Lucky in Waiting For Godot. After a year, he came back to London and auditioned for and was accepted by Sir Laurence Olivier joining The National Theatre. He played minor roles and also understudied Olivier in Love For Love. Hands, who had by now joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford (and later became its artistic director), invited Bailie to join them as an Associate Artist in 1965. There he portrayed Florizel opposite Judi Dench's Perdita in The Winter's Tale, Valentine in The Two Gentlemen Of Verona, The Bastard in King John, Kozanka in The Plebeians Rehearse The Uprising and Leslie in The Madness Of Lady Bright. During the early 1970s he worked with Stomu Yamashta at his Red Buddha Theatre. He was cast as the lead in Raindog, requiring him to do everything from singing and dancing, to performing Martial Arts and gymnastics - which he admitted was a demand too far. He was then cast by director Michael E Briant in 1976 to play the villainous Dask in the memorable Doctor Who serial The Robots Of Death. For personal reasons Bailie then had a long recess in his acting career. Between 1980 and 1989 he ran a furniture-making business. In 1990 he returned to acting, but soon afterwards had to have a cancer removed from his lip, which required learning to speak again. Whilst awaiting work in the acting field he busied himself with CAD design, self-training and writing computer programs and also doing health and safety work in the building industry. In the mid-1990s after playing alongside Brian Glover in The Canterbury Tales he made a comeback in the film business as Skewer in Cutthroat Island (1995), then played an English Judge in The Messenger: The Story Of Joan Of Arc (1999) and also appeared in Gladiator (2000). Bailie's best-known work in film is the role of Cotton, the mute pirate who has his tongue cut out, so he trained his parrot to speak on his behalf in the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies. His CV also included appearances in Ransom For A Pretty Girl, The Fenn Street Gang, Adam Smith, The Regiment, The Creeping Flesh, Son Of Dracula, Play For Today, Softly Softly: Task Force, Blake's Seven, The Onedin Line and The House That Jack Built. Bailie was also a professional photographer, specialising in portrait photography from his studio in West Kensington. David had two children from his first marriage. He married his second wife, Egidija, in 2002.
The Vicar Of Dibley actor Trevor Peacock has died aged eighty nine, his agent has confirmed. The actor played the bumbling Jim Trott in the comedy series alongside Dawn French. His family said in statement: 'Trevor Peacock, actor, writer and song-writer, died aged eighty nine on the morning of 8 March from a dementia-related illness.' Peacock appeared in every episode of the BBC sitcom from 1994 to 2015, although he missed the recent Christmas special. Although most famous for the long-running sitcom, Peacock was also an accomplished Shakespearean actor, starring in a number of BBC productions including Titus Andronicus, Twelfth Night and Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part II. The actor also appeared in the 1990 movie version of Hamlet and a 2000 production of Don Quixote. And he was a successful musician and songwriter. He appeared with The Be-Atles (a popular beat combo of the 1960s, you might've heard of them) in the 1964 TV special Around The Be-Atles and wrote a number of pop hits. Peacock wrote songs including 'Mrs Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter' by Herman's Hermits, 'Made You' by Adam Faith and Billy Fury's 'Stick Around'. His lyrics were also used by The Vernons Girls, with Peacock writing their hits 'You Know What I Mean' and 'Funny All Over'. Other hit songs to his credit include 'Mystery Girl' (recorded by Jess Conrad), 'Gossip Calypso' (Bernard Cribbins), and 'That's What Love Will Do' and 'Nature's Time For Love' (both recorded by Joe Brown & The Bruvvers). He contributed the lyrics for the musical show Passion Flower Hotel (music by John Barry) and for a musical based on the newspaper cartoon strip, Andy Capp (with music by Alan Price). Before his acting career took off, Peacock compered the pop show Drumbeat for the BBC, also writing scripts for Oh Boy! and The Six-Five Special. Born in Edmonton, Trevor was a fine footballer in his teenage years, having a trial for Tottenham Hotspur when he was eighteen and he also briefly worked as a teacher in North London. He started his TV career in the 1960s in ITV Television Playhouse, Comedy Playhouse and The Wednesday Play. He later played Rouault in Madame Bovary and Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop. Peacock also made appearances in EastEnders, Man In A Suitcase, Jonathan Creek, Between The Lines, Neverwhere, Albert!, Thick As Thieves, Edward The Seventh, The Borgias, C.A.T.S Eyes, The Riff Raff Element, The Thin Blue Line, The Smell Of Reeves & Mortimer and My Family and in 2007 appeared in the film Fred Claus, opposite Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti, playing the father of Father Christmas. He had a long relationship with the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester and performed in several productions there. He also wrote a number of musicals, including Leaping Ginger (1977), Cinderella (1979), Class K (1985) and Jack & The Giant (1986). Peacock was married twice. His first marriage was to Iris Jones, from whom he was divorced. His second wife was actress Tilly Tremayne. Peacock had two sons, the actors Daniel Peacock and Harry Peacock (with whom Trevor appeared in an episode of Kingdom in 2007) and two daughters, Sally and Maudie. He lived in the village of East Coker in Somerset and was an active supporter of Yeovil Town FC. He was diagnosed with dementia in 2009 and it was reported in 2018 that he was in the advanced stages of the disease, had retired from acting and was living in a nursing home in Yeovil.

Welcome you are, dear blog reader, to the latest From The North bloggerisationisms update from the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House. Where, due to his long-standing - and much whinged-about - underlying health issues, this blogger remains (despite having had his first vaccination) currently still in 'shielding' mode. And, he will continue to be for another three weeks or so. There may be, as some people who - allegedly - know about such things have claimed, 'light at the end of the tunnel.' But, at the moment it still feels, as Half Man Half Biscuit once, wisely, noted like the light on an oncoming train.
Indeed, at times it seems as though the tunnel with the light at the end of it in question is, in fact, the Book of Revelation's Bottomless Pit. But, hey, what can you do except surrender to the inevitable and contemplate upon the inherently ludicrous nature of humanity, dear blog reader? It's a living, isn't it? 
At least these last few weeks of full-on and proper lockdownerisation and virtually nil human contact - unless one counts the occasional arrivals of the postman and the regular deliveries of takeaways at the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House - has given this blogger the chance to catch up on more than a few movies and TV series. Ones which he's either had for a while but hadn't got around to watching yet or, several that he hadn't visited in a while. A pure-dead excellent 'Mike-Nesmith-Being-Happy-on-The-Monkees-title-sequence type situation' if ever there was one.
Thus, dear blog reader, without any further faffing about, here's ...
All Is True. The best thing that Ben Elton has written since around 1989. By a distance. Though, Brannagh's massive fake-konk is, admittedly, a talking-point all of its own.
The Aeronauts. Purchased on download a few months ago almost entirely on the recommendation of From The North favourite Mark Kermode's 5Live review but not, actually, visited in full until last week. Why hadn't this blogger investigated this smashing little movie sooner, dear blog reader? It was this blogger's own fault, clearly, because he'd had the damn thing all along. A smashing Jack Thorne script and beautifully acted by Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne.
Bridge Of Spies. Another one this blogger had owned for ages but had never found the excuse to actually sit down and watch properly. Why? God only knows; it is, after all Spielberg, Hanks, Rylance and Alan Alda amongst others, what's not to love? Minor trivia point: Rylance's character, Rudolf Abel, was a real-life type individual based on a man whose birth-name was William August Fisher and who was born in 1903 in the Benwell area in the West End of Newcastle. About but three miles away from the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House and, just a few streets away from where this blogger's own maternal grandfather, Andrew Lamb, was growing up at the same time in Elswick. Just thought this blogger would mention it.
T2: Trainspotting. 'You ruined my fuckin' life, Mark. You ruined it! Now you're ruining my fuckin'death, too! Thanks a lot, amigo.' Ah, it's always good to catch up with old fiends.
Heaven's Gate. A movie so good, so utterly perfect, that it sank the studio which made it! That takes some doing. Michael Cimino's masterpiece - despite many critics trying to convince you to the contrary.
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. 'An epic film that's part literary treatise, part mournful ballad and completely a portrait of our world, as seen in a distant mirror,' as one critic described it. A movie of terrifying beauty which convinced me Brad Pitt actually was a proper actor.
London Boulevard. A strangely affecting (if, occasionally affected) movie featuring a great performance by From The North favourite Keira Knightley and a great supporting cast of superb British character actors giving it The Works.
How To Build A Girl. Another one that was bought almost entirely on the recommendation of From The North favourite yer man Kermode despite this blogger's long-standing love of the work of author Caitlin Moran and director Coky Giedroyc. A really lovely little movie in spite of Beanie Feldstein's somewhat 'approximate' Wolverhampton accent. And, any movie featuring Paddy Considine is worth a few moments of everyone's time. Except for Funny Cow, which should've been good given the cast it had but, oddly, wasn't.
Little Joe. And, yet another one stumbled across almost by accident due to yer man Kermode giving it a big thumbs up and viewed for the first time over last weekend. An odd, disquieting, tensely sinister little piece with great acting, particularly Emily Beecham who is properly great in this.
Låt Den Rätte Komma In. Reviewed for BBC local radio by this blogger back in 2009 (this blogger's first such gig). And, indeed, on this very blog (for a couple of years it was constantly referred to by many folks around the station as 'that scary Swedish film Keith Telly Topping liked so much'). 'It's more in the Near Dark or Leptirica school of bloodsucking despite its Byronesque central theme of doomed passion,' this blogger concluded more than a decade ago. Which has the bonus of still being true. 'Let's just hope the Americans don't screw this one up as badly as they did Ju-on: The Grudge.' Of course, the Americans did with the piss-poor and pointless Matt Reeves remake Let Me In. That's Americans for you, dear blog reader, always screwing things up and making a total mess of everything they get grubby their hands on. 
Scanners. Cronenberg's finest one hundred and nineteen minutes. Bar none.
Theatre Of Blood. 'Only Lionheart would have the temerity to rewrite Shakespeare!'
Pan's Labyrinth. 'A long time ago, in the Underground Realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of The Human World ...' Watched for the first time in about five years last Friday. Still a wonderful experience. Though still weird-as-a-plate-of-jelly too, let it be noted. But, nevertheless, this blogger thought in 2007 and still thinks now it was/is great. 'I am Princess Moanna, And I am not afraid of you.'
Six Minutes To Midnight. Because it's Eddie and Eddie is The Bollocks.
The Sopranos. The perfect box-set to sit down with over three or four days if you're feeling stressed. Because nothing takes you away from the misery of shielding than massive violence on a grand scale.
Game Of Thrones. The perfect box-set to sit down with over three or four days if you're feeling stressed, part the second. Because nothing takes you away from the misery of shielding than massive violence on a grand - almost Shakespearian - scale. And with dragons, obviously.
The Likely Lads. As necessary, at the back end of a week like last week, as a warm mug of cocoa, a chocolate biscuit and a hug on a cold, miserable and depressingly awful day like what this blogger has experienced more than a few of lately. 'In the chocolate box of life,the top layer's already gone. And someone's pinched the Orange Crème from the bottom!'
American Gods. The most recent episode, The Rapture Of Burning felt like a significant changing of gears on several plot fronts but was, ultimately, most notable for one reason. The best example of good, hard, old-fashioned, eye-watering, bigot-baiting sodomy seen on prime time telly since, ooh, the last time America Gods indulged in this sort of thing a couple of series back. Good for them. 
The BBC unveiled a new image of Doctor Who leads - and From The North favourites - Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill to mark International Women’s Day on 8 March. The photo was released to 'celebrate the creative and talented women on and off-screen who are inspiring the next generation of fans.' And, cos it was a really nice thing to do. Following the departure of That There Bradley Walsh and Tosin Cole in the acclaimed New Year's Day special Revolution Of The Daleks, The Doctor and Yaz will be joined by big-toothed Scouse-type individual John Bishop as new companion, Dan, when Doctor Who returns for its thirteenth series later this year. The series is now filming in Cardiff, but will span eight episodes - three less than usual - in a move which allows the show to stick to its usual production cycle despite complicated new health and safety guidelines, new 'normals', locerdownerisations and all that malarkey.
The BBC's Irish-noir crime drama Bloodlands, which stars James Nesbitt, is to return for a second series. The first series concluded on Sunday night after launching last month with an average of 8.2 million viewers. The BBC said that the audience share of the premiere episode in Northern Ireland made it the broadcaster's biggest ever drama launch locally. Nesbitt said that he was 'thrilled' to be returning for a second series, so he was. 'I'm always happy to be back in Northern Ireland and to reveal even more about Tom Brannick,' said Nesbitt. It will again be filmed in Belfast and surrounding areas, including Strangford Lough in County Down. Chris Brandon, who wrote the drama, said he was 'absolutely delighted that Tom Brannick's story will continue.' Richard Williams, the chief executive of Northern Ireland Screen, added: 'It gives us a great sense of pride to see millions of viewers across the UK tune into a drama not just made, but set in Northern Ireland.'
From The North favourite Doom Patrol has found its Madame Rouge in good old mad-as-toast Missy her very self, Michelle Gomez. The actress, who also appeared as Madame Satan in Netflix's Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, will join Doom Patrol for its forthcoming third series. She will appear as the DC Universe's complicated and electrifying eccentric, who arrives at Doom Manor with a very specific mission ... if only she could remember what it is. Keith Telly Topping likes this news. Muchly.
Principal photography has begun on the much-anticipated premiere series of the latest part of the Star Trek franchise, Strange New Worlds, according to Variety. This latest spin-off will follow the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Mister Spock (Ethan Peck) and Number One (Rebecca Romijn) on board the USS Enterprise and is set, in essence, as a direct prequel to the original 1960s Star Trek series, the characters having been a major part of the - much loved - second series of Star Trek: Discovery.
A major star - and From The North favourite - has joined the cast of Netflix's forthcoming Sandman series. During a recent interview, national treasure Stephen Fry appeared to suggest he has been cast as Fiddler's Green in the upcoming drama. The actor was interviewed during a break in the test cricket coverage on Channel Four. During the interview, he revealed that he is set to play 'an Edwardian writer figure called Gilbert.' As fans of Neil Gaiman's ground-breaking comic series will know, this is an alternate name of Fiddler's Green, a sentient part of The Dreaming. Created by Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg and Malcolm Jones, Fiddler's Green first appeared in 1989's Sandman issue ten. The character is actually an area of The Dreaming with its own consciousness that likes to take on human form and go wandering. Gilbert played a major role in the series most well-remembered plotline, The Doll's House (issues nine to sixteen and a particular favourite of this blogger) serving as an ally to Morpheus and Rose Walker. As previous announced, The Sandman was given an eleven episode order from Warner Bros and Netflix in 2019. Gaiman is set to executive produce with David S Goyer and writer/showrunner Allan Heinberg. Production on the series was delayed due to this bloody pandemic, though this gave the creative team time to refine the scripts. Thankfully, production on the highly anticipated series is now finally underway. The series will also feature Tom Sturridge as Morpheus, Charles Dance as Roderick Burgess, Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer Morningstar, Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne The Librarian, Boyd Holbrook as The Corinthian, Asim Chaudhry as Abel and Sanjeev Bhaskar as Cain. There remains no word as yet on who will be playing Morpheus's sister, Death.
The From The North headline of the week award goes to the Gruniad Morning Star and their reporting on the aftermath of what shall from now on be known as The Disgrace Of Clapham Common and the pressure currently being - rightly - heaped on the less-than-broad shoulders of Met Commissioner and walking catastrophic disaster area, Cressida Dick. Defiant Met Chief Refuses To Quit & Hits Out At 'Armchair' Critics. This, of course, being the self-same Cressida Dick who was, longer-term dear blog readers may remember, so keen to cast herself in the role of 'armchair TV critic' when expressing her considerable ire upon the acclaimed BBC police drama Line Of Duty. Which, of course, brought a particularly brilliant response from the drama's author, Jed Mercurio: 'My inspiration for writing Line Of Duty was The Met Police shooting an innocent man and their dishonesty in the aftermath. So thanks to Cressida Dick for reminding me of our [previous] connection.' Dick by name, dear blog reader. And Dick by nature.
A close runner-up in the From The North headline of the week award goes to the Daily Lies from their tremendous Tik Tok Star Admits To Spanking Eighty-Year-Old 'Sugar Daddy' To Get Free Boob Job, an 'exclusive' story about 'busty blonde' Hannah Loran who 'shared secrets of her life as a self-confessed bimbo' to her Tik Tok account (it's a thing, apparently) where she 'boasts over one hundred thousand followers' encouraging them to 'scam sugar daddies.' One suspects that the main reason the Lies'exclusive'is an exclusive is no other newspapers was desperate enough to publish such diarrhoea.
'Legend' - like 'genius' - is a word thrown around all too often these days to describe the merely popular. But it is a completely appropriate description of the late Murray Walker. The Formula 1 broadcaster, who died on Saturday at the age of ninety seven, was genuinely loved by millions across the world for his high-energy motorsport commentary style, peppered with amusing mistakes and malapropisms ('there's nothing wrong with the car ... except it's on fire!'et al). The errors were what made him famous, but it was his natural warmth and effervescent enthusiasm for his sport that led the audience to find charming what in almost any other broadcaster might have been an annoying trait. In describing Walker's commentary style, the late smug git Clive James hit the nail on the head: 'In his quieter moments, he sounds like his trousers are on fire.' Murray was one of the very few public figures who was taken to heart to the extent that he was nearly always referred to by his first name, rather than his second. And it was always spoken with affection. Malapropisms and mis-speaking notwithstanding, Walker was a quite brilliant practitioner of his craft. He might, as he put it himself, have 'come over as a slightly over-the-top enthusiast - it is a very exciting sport after all.' But, in fact the impression that he was making things up as he went along could not have been further from the truth. He worked hard at his preparation and was a commentator of consummate skill - perfectly able to judge what was required in the moments of extreme emotion that peppered his time in F1. His mouth may well have tended to be a couple of steps ahead of his brain in times of extreme excitement, but when it really mattered he could be relied upon to come up with the perfect response to a situation unfolding in front of his eyes, whether by instinct or good judgement. So his high-pitched waterfall of words in Adelaide in 1986 - 'And look at that ... That's Mansell!' - exquisitely expressed the shock being simultaneously experienced by millions of TV viewers back in the UK as they watched the Williams driver's world title hopes explode along with his punctured tyre. But, so also was Walker able to expertly shift tone upon swiftly recognising the seriousness of the horrific crash which killed Ayrton Senna at Imola in 1994. Walker's working life wasn't restricted to only broadcasting; after leaving school he fought in World War II and had a successful career in advertising alongside his commentary with the BBC. He was a modest man, but at times his natural gift and instinct persuaded him, correctly, that he should bring himself into the equation. This he did, wonderfully, in Japan in 1996, when Damon Hill crossed the line finally to win his world championship after three drama-filled years of trying and Murray said: 'I've got to stop because I've got a lump in my throat.' Murray's secret was that he was genuinely in love with the sport - and those in it - and he never lost the child-like joy he felt at being able to commentate on it. 

    Born Graeme Murray Walker in October 1923, after leaving Highgate School he fought in World War II as a ary Captain and tank commander, a role which saw him take part in the brutal Battle of the Reichswald in 1945. He initially developed a love for motorsport through his father Graham, who was a world-class motorcycle racer in the Twenties and Thirties and whose successes included winning the Isle of Man TT. Murray briefly raced motorbikes himself before recognising that his talents lay elsewhere and, instead, followed his father into commentary too, initially alongside him at the TT. He commentated on his first Grand Prix for the BBC at Silverstone in 1949 and continued to work on all forms of motorsport for both the BBC and ITV over the next three decades while pursuing a full-time and highly successful career in advertising. His company invented the famous slogan, 'A Mars a day helps you work rest and play,' although Murray insisted that he has been wrongly credited with coming up with the line himself. He did however admit to creating with an equally famous jingle: 'Opal Fruits - made to make your mouth water' - among others. He did not become a full-time F1 commentator until 1978 - and even then, he initially dove-tailed it with his advertising career - but over the next twenty three years he was to make the role his own in a way perhaps no other commentator on any other sport has. Through the 1980s and into the early 1990s, Walker struck up a popular and extremely effective double-act with the former Grand Prix world champion the late James Hunt. They were very different characters and initially Walker disapproved of both Hunt's approach to broadcasting and his lifestyle. He once famously told viewers that Hunt had 'popped out of the commentary box to have a look at the back of the circuit,' when in fact James was outside smoking a joint, a practice of which Walker most definitely did not approve. And, Walker once told a journalist that he resolutely refused to let Hunt see his laboriously researched commentary notes because he did not see why 'the lazy bugger should benefit from all my hard work.' But whether through the difficult early days of their relationship or later, when they developed a huge mutual respect and became close friends, their partnership was always a brilliantly successful mix of Walker's wide-eyed enthusiasm and Hunt's languid and eloquent determination to say exactly what he thought. Walker's public persona was part of his charm. He came across as someone who refused to see any negatives about the sport he loved and who certainly would not voice them professionally. In private, he was equally charming and likeable - but unsurprisingly different. An intelligent and perceptive man and far more cerebral and considered than his public suggested, he was well aware of some of the darker sides of the sport. He also had a well developed and dry sense of humour. On one particularly dreary, damp and cold afternoon at Germany's Nurburgring, gazing out of the window at the blanket of grey covering the Eifel forests he told a colleague: 'I can remember driving across there in a tank!' 

    As well as F1, Murray also regularly commentated on other motorsport for the BBC, most notably his beloved motor biking; his most memorable moment coming at the 1979 Silverstone 500CC Grand Prix as his friend Barry Sheene took the lead from Kenny Roberts and casually turned around and flicked the V's at his American rival. Murray's 'And, look at that! Barry Sheene with absolute effrontery not only looks over his shoulder but takes his left clutch hand off the handlebar and waves to Kenny Roberts!' has, rightly, gone down in history as one of the great moments of commentary. In fact, as Murray memorably confessed during an interview on Jeremy Clarkson's short-lived BBC chat show in 2000, he's always rather fancied commentating on something more sedate, like snooker! Murray carried on commentating with the BBC until 1996, alongside Jonathan Palmer following Hunt's untimely death in 1993 and then, when the corporation lost the rights, on ITV alongside Martin Brundle, until finally calling it at a day in 2001, just short of his seventy eighth birthday. To the end, his commentaries were as strong as ever and the F1 world - even those from outside the UK who had rarely heard his work - was sorry to see him go, while accepting that it was better to do it before the quality tailed off. On his retirement, Walker and his doting and doted-upon wife, Elizabeth - whom he had married in 1959 - moved from North London to a thirteen-acre patch of the New Forest, deer, ponies and tinkling trout stream included. Among the mementoes and trophies that littered his office den and alongside fondly displayed pictures of his late father in his champion's leathers, was a striking, specially commissioned oil painting of a vintage thirties car at top lick, his hero Tazio Nuvolari in action. 'Tazio Nuvolari was the very best of all,' he once said. 'I was fourteen when dad took me to see him at Donington in 1938. He drove an Auto Union. It changed my life, I think, to watch as he smilingly slalomed into and out of every corner, all arms and elbows and hair-raising four-wheel drifts, all opposite-lock and showers of shale and cinders. Tazio was the man a whole generation queued up all night to watch, unquestionably the greatest driver of them all for me.' After he ended his regular Formula One commentaries, Walker continued to appear on television for a number of years afterwards, mainly on magazine programmes but occasionally commentating on less high-profile motorsport events. Acknowledging the partial deafness he had developed over the years, in 2006 he became an ambassador for the David Ormerod Hearing Centres and campaigned to help people understand the importance of frequent hearing tests. Murray was a hugely popular character within F1 and even after his retirement was greeted with respect and reverence by current stars such as Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso, whose careers in some cases he had not even covered. His inherent modesty, though, meant that he was always surprised and genuinely touched by any recognition afforded him - never more so than at the 1996 British Grand Prix, when he was persuaded to go on the pre-race drivers' parade around the track and was celebrated with more cheers from the crowd than any of the drivers, to whom Walker looked up to with admiration. Even into his eighties, he was making occasional appearances in BBC F1 programmes, in Monaco or at Silverstone and in a brief spell in the commentary box at the 2011 British Grand Prix, he proved that the ability to find a choice phrase had not deserted him. Sports commentary has moved on to the point where the mistakes which made Murray famous would probably not be tolerated any longer. Equally, it's hard to imagine any commentator who, while making them, could fill his audience with such joy and pass on so effectively his own consuming passion for what he was talking about.
It is hard to over-estimate the impact of Marvellous Marvin Hagler in boxing history. When Halger became world middleweight champion in September 1980, the career of Muhammad Ali was fizzling out and concerns were widespread as to who would replace The Greatest as boxing's flag bearer in terms of global appeal. Enter the Four Kings. Hagler was joined by Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns and Roberto Duran in creating a decade of memories, with no need to listen to ballads about the best never fighting the best. The first of the quartet to die, Hagler was revered as a blue-collar champion, a working class hero and the fighters' fighter. From the greats to the ordinary, the reaction online to his death has amounted to a tidal wave of shock and respect. He was unconventional as a right-handed southpaw. Generally, but not always, fighters lead with their weaker hand, allowing for an increase in power driven through the body from the feet up into the (usually stronger) back-hand. He would switch freely from southpaw to orthodox, seemingly carrying equal power in each hand; he was effective in attacking to the body as well as the head, blessed with sweet timing and a rock-hard chin. At times, even against the very best, he seemed to own more of the ring than his opponent. Alan Minter, the man Hagler dethroned to take the undisputed middleweight crown on a volatile night at Wembley Arena four decades ago, once said that he had watched Hagler hitting a punchbag in training and noticed how the American turned his fist at the point of contact, generating a sound close to a screech which stood out from the clanging of the chains. On the night, Minter succumbed in three rounds, his face bloodied as though Hagler's gloves were adorned with razor blades. Another Briton, Leicester's Tony Sibson, suffered a similar defeat in Hagler's sixth title defence three years later. Sibson lasted six rounds but caught Hagler on a night when the champion chose to display the bulk of his repertoire, the accuracy and delivery of the punches all part of a masterclass. Of Hagler's thirteen world title defences, only two went the distance. His three-round explosion against Tommy The Hit Man Hearns in April 1985 takes some shifting as the choice of a fight to take on DVD to a desert island. The first round might never be equalled for sheer ferocity. The points reverse against Sugar Ray Leonard at the same Caesars Palace Arena in Vegas two years later ranks as one of the most hotly-contested decisions of all time. Hagler finished two rounds up on one card, Leonard the winner by two rounds and eight rounds on the others. Those who disagreed would fill many a stadium. In Leonard's camp, the great trainer Angelo Dundee had noticed 'a Hagler flaw' and revealed the thinking in his autobiography I Only Talk Winning: '[Hagler] needed two steps to get off with his punches.' Leonard read so much of what Hagler intended to throw. Some argue that Leonard created an illusion of control based on dancing, others that Hagler did not deserve reward for often connecting only with thin air. The nights weren't always so glossy for Hagler. He engaged in scraps at The Spectrum in Philadelphia which became known as 'The Philly Wars', losing on points to Bobby Boogaloo Watts and Willie The Worm Monroe in 1976. He would avenge the setbacks before lifting the world title and the value of those experiences proved to be important blocks in the building of the colossus. In his inestimable chronicle Four Kings, boxing writer George Kimball recounted the story of why Hagler chose to turn professional after winning the national amateur championship in Boston, rather than wait for a tilt at Olympics glory in Montreal three years later. 'You can't take a trophy and turn it into a bag of groceries,' was Hagler's philosophy. Kimball noted how Hagler earned forty dollars for his professional debut. The everyman story endeared him to many. 

    Hagler was born in the poorest area of Newark, New Jersey, where he lived with his brother, Robbie, who also became a professional boxer and four sisters. His father, Robert Sims, had walked out on the family, leaving his mother, Ida Mae Hagler, to raise the children. Caught up in the terrifying race riots that left twenty six dead in Newark in 1967 and their tenement home all but destroyed, the Haglers relocated to Brockton, Massachusetts, where Marvin soon developed a love for boxing. He told how he had walked into a gym run by Pat and Goody Petronelli in 1969, after being roughed up on the street by a local tough. His mission was to learn to fight and soon his aptitude was clear as he won the amateur national title in 1973. Learning the hard way, taking fights against tough opponents for small financial reward, Hagler became something of an avoided man. As a southpaw he had an awkward style as well as a freakish ability to take punches without them having any discernible effect. Hagler started winning after those early setbacks, two victories over the highly-rated Kevin Finnegan and another over the big punching Philadelphia favourite Bad Bennie Briscoe, earned him a contract with Bob Arum, the top Vegas-based promoter. His first challenge for a world title was in 1979 against the New York-based Italian Vito Antuofermo, which he believed he won but was given a divided decision draw. His next chance came the following year against Minter. A hostile atmosphere had been stoked by Minter, by then the champion, saying that he would never lose his title to a black man. He was wrong. Minter was given a savage beating. The referee Carlos Berrocal halted the contest in the third round with Minter horribly cut around both eyes. Fleeing the ring, Hagler had to be shielded by his corner team from a hail of bottles and glasses on one of British boxing's most shameful nights. He went on to successfully defend the title twelve times through one of the great eras for boxing and, more especially, the middleweight division. Among the defences were epic wins against the Panamanian Roberto Durán, the feared Ugandan puncher John Mugabi and Sibson. But his run of success came to an end in 1987, against Leonard. Hagler never accepted that he had lost the fight and he never returned to the ring. His first marriage, to Bertha, with whom he had five children - Charelle, Celeste, James, Marvin Junior and Gentry - ended in 1990. He married again in 2000, to Kay Guarrera and they kept homes in Milan, where he had some success working in Italian films and in New Hampshire. Hagler had become irritated that ring announcers were not introducing him to the crowd using his nickname, so he officially changed his name in 1982. Although the Marvellous one was asked to return to the ring, amid much speculation that there would be a money-spinning rematch with Leonard, his retirement proved to be permanent. Not given to colourful pre-fight hyperbole, he preferred to speak though his performances. Perhaps, to quote another of his famous observations about earning millions of dollars after being born into abject poverty, life had become 'too comfortable. It's difficult to get up to do roadwork at five in the morning when you are sleeping in silk pyjamas.'
The horror filmmaker Norman J Warren has been remembered as a 'ground-breaking director' and a 'gentle, kind, sweet chap' after his recent death at the age of seventy eight. The director was best known for 1970s horror movies such as Satan's Slave, Prey and Terror, as well as the 1980s works Inseminoid and Bloody New Year. Along with the films of Pete Walker, Warren's movies are sometimes dubbed 'the New Wave of British horror', on the basis that they upped the ante in terms of sexual explicitness and gore from that of the Hammer, Amicus and Tigon productions which dominated the genre in UK cinema up to the early 1970s. Warren's manager Thomas Bowington told the Press Association that Norman died in the early hours of Thursday morning from natural causes, after a year of ill-health. Bowington said: 'He was a ground-breaking director in the seventies and eighties, after so many films had been in a period setting, he put horror in a more modern setting. He was the biggest film lover I ever met, he loved films and was so helpful to young filmmakers. He was always happy, always laughing, always kind. Considering some of his films were quite savage, a gentler, kinder, sweet chap you couldn't find. He was like everyone's best friend.' Warren stopped making feature films in the 1980s and turned his attention to documentaries and educational films, including some for the BBC. Bowington said that Warren was popular with children because of his 'lovely, easy-going nature.' He also made short films, including the silent Fragment, with his frequent collaborator, the composer John Scott and worked frequently with the screenwriter David McGillivray, who said: 'Norman Warren was my best friend in the entertainment business. We met in 1967 when he was making his first feature My Private Hell. He was the youngest director of "sexploitation" films in the sixties and went on to try other genres. Subsequently his early films have become cult successes. He liked nothing more than to attend festivals and conventions and talk to fans and young filmmakers.' An avid film fan from childhood, Warren entered the industry as a runner on Anthony Asquith's The Millionairess (1960) and as an assistant director (on, for example, 1962's The Dock Brief) before directing Fragment in 1965. Calcutta-born Bachoo Sen, the owner of the Astral Cinema in Brewer Street saw Fragment and subsequently hired Warren to direct two feature-length sex movies, Her Private Hell (1968) and Loving Feeling (1969). Both were financial successes, but Warren saw little of the profits. Not wanting to be typecast as a director purely of sex films, Warren turned down a third offer from Sen (for 1970's Love Is A Splendid Illusion) and had to wait several years to raise the money required to make Satan's Slave (1976), the first of a series of impressively visceral horror films that he directed. Warren's final two movies, Bloody New Year and Gunpowder (both 1987), were hampered by low budgets imposed by their producer, Maxine Julius. Although Warren did not release a feature between 1987 and 2016, he continued to work, directing music videos and educational shorts such as Person To Person, a BBC production designed for students of English. His horror films developed a cult following, culminating in the making of Evil Heritage, a 1999 documentary about his work and the release of a highly-regarded DVD box-set in 2004. In 2007, Warren worked on the supplementary features for the DVD releases of Corridors Of Blood (1958), The Haunted Strangler (1958) and First Man Into Space (1959). He was a regular guest at Manchester's Festival of Fantastic Films. In 2016, Warren announced that he was in post-production on a new feature film, a thriller set in London's Chinatown. The completion of Susu was confirmed at Birmingham FearFest in May 2017, at which Warren was a guest of honour. 'Filmmaking for me is like a powerful drug, for no matter how difficult a production is, when it's over I can't wait to start the process all over again,' Norman once noted. 'The horror genre allows you to explore situations and emotions which would not be possible with a drama set in the world of reality.'
Yaphet Kotto, best known for playing the villainous villain Doctor Kananga (and his alter-ego Mister Big) in the 1973 James Bond movie and From The North favourite Live & Let Die, has died at the age of eighty one. The deliverer of one of this blogger's favourite ever pieces of movie dialogue ('Names is for tombstones, baby. Y'all take this honky out an' waste him!') the actor also played a crew member in Ridley Scott's 1979 SF classic Alien. Kotto's other film credits included the action thriller The Running Man, alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger. He received an EMMY nomination for playing former Ugandan President Idi Amin in the 1977 TV movie Raid On Entebbe. His TV career included roles in The A-Team and Law & Order and one of Kotto's best-known roles, as Lieutenant Al Giardello in seven series of Homicide: Life On The Street on which he also worked as a scriptwriter. He died on Monday in the Philippines, his wife Sinahon Thessa said on Facebook. 'You played a villain on some of your movies but, for me, you're a real hero and to a lot of people also,' she wrote. 'A good man, a good father, a good husband and a decent human being, very rare to find. One of the best actors in Hollywood, a Legend.' 

     Kotto was born in New York to a Cameroonian immigrant father and a US Army nurse and began to study acting at the age of sixteen. Kotto said that he was inspired to go into acting by watching Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront and, later, by Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones: 'Standing right there on the screen was this tall black man and I said to myself, "I could be like him."' At nineteen, he made his professional theatre debut in Othello and, later, performed on Broadway in The Great White Hope taking over the lead role of the boxer Jack Jefferson from James Earl Jones. His first film projects included Nothing But A Man in 1964 and a small role as one of the bank robbers in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). Having proved his ability, Kotto was then handed his first lead role in the home invasion satire-thriller Bone by Larry Cohen. Kotto played a robber who was mistaken for a handyman by a married couple and who was then enlisted by the wife to kill her husband. Kotto drew plaudits for his role as the first black Bond villain, Kananga - an evil Caribbean diplomat masquerading as a New York drug lord - in Live & Let Die, starring Roger Moore and featuring one of the best scripts of the series, by the late Tom Mankiewicz. Kotto then had parts in 1974's Truck Turner opposite Isaac Hayes and 1978's Blue Collar. In Alien, he took the role of the space ship's engineer Dennis Parker. Following that film's success, Kotto reportedly turned down the role of Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back because he was wary of becoming typecast. 'I wanted to get back down on Earth,' he said in an interview. 'I was afraid that if I did another space film after having done Alien, then I'd be typed. Once you get one of those big blockbuster hits, you better have some other big blockbuster hits to go with it too and be Harrison Ford, because if you don't you place yourself right out of the business.' He also claimed that he turned down the role of Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. 'I should have done that, but I walked away,' he admitted in 2015. 'When you're making movies, you'd tend to say "no" to TV. It's like when you're in college and someone asks you to the high school dance. You say no.' Kotto went on to play a supporting role as Richard Dickie Coombes in Brubaker in 1980. His other film credits included William Wyler's The Liberation of LB Jones (1970), Bill Cosby's Man & Boy (1971), Across One Hundred & Tenth Street (1972; reportedly the role which won him the Bond gig), Report To The Commissioner (1975), The Star Chamber (1983), Warning Sign (1985), Eye Of The Tiger (1986) and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991). Kotto's TV roles included appearances in For Love & Honor [sic], Murder She Wrote and Death Valley Days. Most recently, he reprised his role as Giardello in Homicide: The Movie in 2000 and voiced his Alien character in the Alien: Isolation video game. In 1999, he published his autobiography The Royalty: A Spiritual Awakening, in which he claimed that his father, Avraham, was descended from a Cameroonian royal clan and, also, from Edward VII. Kotto is survived by six children and had been married three times, to Rita Dittman, Toni Pettyjohn and Sinahon, who he married in 1998.
Henry Darrow, the prolific TV actor from the 1950s through the early 2000s who found his breakthrough success as the larconic Manolito Montoya, son of a wealthy Mexican ranch owner on NBC's Western The High Chaparral, on died Sunday at his home in Wilmington. He was eighty seven. His death was announced on Facebook by his former publicist Michael Druxman. In addition to The High Chaparral, Darrow is best remembered by daytime viewers for his EMMY-winning role in NBC's sopa Santa Barbara. Already a familiar presence on television by the mid-1960s through appearances on series including Wagon Train, Stoney Burke, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and The Wild Wild West, Darrow scored his signature role on The High Chaparral opposite Leif Erickson, who played a wealthy Arizona ranch owner Big John Cannon in the 1870s married to the Mexican daughter of a rival rancher. Darrow played the bride's brother who joins his sister (the late Linda Cristal) on The High Chaparral ranch. The regular cast of the popular series also included Cameron Mitchell as Cannon's brother, Buck and Mark Slade as Blue. Making its debut on American television in September 1967, it lasted four series (ninety eight episodes) and was screened around the world - it was particularly popular in the UK where it was a BBC2 staple for several years. 

     Born Enrique Tomás Delgado Jr in New York, Darrow returned with his family to Puerto Rico in his teens, later moving to California to study acting at The Pasadena Playhouse. Despite his numerous appearances on television in the early 1960s, Darrow's role on The High Chaparral was prompted by the actor's stage role in Ray Bradbury's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, co-starring F Murray Abraham. Bonanza producer David Dortort watched a performance of the play and cast Darrow in his new project, The High Chaparral on the strength of this. After Chaparral, Darrow went on to roles in The New Dick Van Dyke Show and Harry O, on which he played detective Manny Quinlan in the first series. He appeared regularly on episodic TV throughout the next several decades, including primetime appearances on the likes of Mission: Impossible, Hawaii Five-O, The Mod Squad, Kung Fu, Kojak, The Invisible Man, McMillan & Wife, The Streets Of San Francisco, The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, Centennial, The Waltons, The Incredible Hulk, Quincy, Benson, Hart To Hart, TJ Hooker, Dallas, The Golden Girls, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager and One Tree Hill, among many others. Darrow began a long association with the character Zorro in 1981, voicing the title role in the CBS animated series The New Adventures Of Zorro. Darrow published his memoir, Henry Darrow: Lightning In The Bottle, in 2012, the same year he received a Lifetime Achievement recognition at the American Latino Media Arts Awards. Making his big-screen debut in the 1959 comedy Holiday For Lovers, Darrow appeared in films such as The Hitcher, Summer & Smoke, The Glass Cage, St Helens, Runaway Jury, Walk Proud and Soda Springs. Darrow co-founded the Screen Actors Guild Ethnic Minority Committee in 1972 alongside Ricardo Montalbán, Edith Diaz and Carmen Zapata and was a founder of Nosostros. Darrow married his first wife, Louise DePuy, in 1956 when they were both working at The Pasadena Playhouse. They had two children, Denise and Tom who survive him along with is second wife, Lauren whom he married in 1992.
Cabinet ministers and senior officials have snitched to the BBC that the government should have brought in tougher restrictions in the early autumn to tackle the "inevitable" second wave of coronavirus. As, indeed, anyone with half a brain in their skull could have told them at the time and, indeed, many did. In the run up to the anniversary of the lockdown, BBC News has spoken, off the record, to more than twenty senior politicians, officials and former officials about the key moments of the last twelve months. The investigation reportedly revealed 'significant frustration' in government about Boris Johnson's unwillingness to tighten restrictions in September, as pandemic cases again began to rise. One senior minister grassed that the government 'should have locked down more severely in the autumn,' while another alleged that it had been 'totally ridiculous' to be arguing about whether people should return to the office when there was inevitably going to be a second wave. And, one allegedly 'senior figure' alleged snitched like a filthy stinkin' Copper's Nark: 'The biggest mistake was the rush of blood of to the head in the summer ... There was a sense of denial about the second wave.' A - tragically nameless - former official added: 'We kept repeating the same mistakes over and over again, despite the masses of evidence that kept coming up. We lost an awful lot of time and that led to more cases and more deaths.' No shit? What a pity these individuals didn't have enough courage to actually come out and say all this publicly and without promises of anonymity. Cowards. The Health Secretary, odious oily twonk Matt Hancock defended the decisions taken - and, to paraphrase Mandy Rice Davies, 'well, he would, wouldn't he?' - claiming that the government had 'listened to all the evidence all the way through.' One or two people even believed him. But, he added: 'You have to balance all the different considerations. It's only at the prime minister's desk that all these different considerations come together. I'm responsible for the health aspects and then the huge economic response the chancellor is responsible for.' The BBC also revealed that Boris Johnson had been briefed by officials ahead of a press conference on 3 March 2020 - right at the beginning of the pandemic - to discourage people from shaking hands with each other. Instead, when he took to the lectern, the PM boasted he 'shook hands with everybody' during recent a hospital visit. A spokesman for Downing Street claimed: 'The Prime Minister was very clear at the time he was taking a number of precautionary steps, including frequently washing his hands. Once the social distancing advice changed, the Prime Minister's approach changed.' Johnson reportedly 'realised the gravity of the situation' at a meeting of Downing Street staff on 14 March 2020. Data experts told the Prime Minister that the government's forecasts of how the disease was spreading were wrong and that without an acceleration of the plans to control the pandemic, the NHS would be overwhelmed. He was also warned that restrictions could be needed for as long as eighteen months.
In some really sad news, the chocolate maker Thorntons has said that none of its stores will reopen after coronavirus lockdowns are lifted. The decision to close its sixty one shops - including a couple regularly frequented by this blogger - will put more than six hundred jobs at risk. The company said it had been badly hit by the pandemic, which forced its stores to shut their doors during the crucial Christmas and Easter holidays. 'The obstacles we have faced and will continue to face on the High Street are too severe,' said Thorntons retail director Adam Goddard. 'Despite our best efforts we have taken the difficult decision to permanently close our retail store estate.' Thorntons said that it had spent forty five million knicker transforming the business with changes to the way stores operate and the introduction of new cafes but its plans had been thrown off course by the pandemic. The company, which was founded in Sheffield in 1911, said it would continue to sell its chocolate online and try to sell more through supermarkets. Since the beginning of the crisis, sales through its website have increased by more than seventy per cent compared to the previous year, it said. It will also try to expand the range of products made at its factory in Alfreton, Derbyshire and increase international sales.
Key city centre streets could be pedestrianised and a major shopping mall overhauled as part of a fifty million smackers plan to 'remodel' Newcastle. Grey Street and Blackett Street would see traffic banned as part of the city council's proposals. The authority will also conduct an 'urgent' review of Eldon Square shopping centre to tackle an increase in the number of empty properties therein (and, given that Thornton's aren't reopening, there are now going to be two more empty gaffs therein). It said the city must 'adapt' to a rise in online shopping and climate worries. Paving and seating would see Grey Street become a 'hub for cultural events' (which it is anyway since it's got the Theatre Royal on it) and the 'primary pedestrian route between the city centre and Quayside' the council said. Plans to remove vehicles from Blackett Street have previously been opposed by transport firms as it is used by a number of bus services. Including all of the ones used by this blogger. Under the plans empty shops in Eldon Square would be available for 'cultural activities and exhibitions.' Council leader Nick Forbes said that city centres were 'changing' and 'must adapt.' He described the proposals as becoming 'even more important' as the city looked to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic. 'Getting the right mix of housing, culture and experiences for our residents will be what sets Newcastle apart,' he said. Meanwhile Old Eldon Square could see its layout changed with the aim of becoming a location for 'major civic and cultural events.' Ridley Place and Saville Row, both off Northumberland Street, are envisaged as areas for independent businesses and 'pop-up' food stalls. The council said that twenty million notes was 'in place' to begin the first phase of the work in summer, with the remaining thirty million knicker to be raised through grants and private funding. Residents and businesses will be be asked for their views on the proposals.
A haul of really nasty weaponry - including swords and crossbows - has been seized by The Fuzz. Officers found the stash at a home in Gatesheed whilst investigating who had ordered a package of cannabis from the USA which was intercepted by Border Force. Northumbria Police said the weapons would be 'deadly in the hands of the wrong person.' Or, indeed, the right person, for that matter. A fifty one-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of importing Class B drugs and released pending inquiries. The weapons haul also included some serious shit - air rifles, stun guns, knives and samurai swords. Mind you, dear blog reader, this is Gatesheed we're talking about.
And finally, would you like to see a stunning picture of the Northern Lights and the Milky Way over Lindisfarne, dear blog reader? Of course you would, you're only human after all.

The start of 2021 has brought a sudden (and entirely unexpected) surge of new From The North bloggerisationism updates, dear blog reader. You may have even noticed. We're not out of March yet and, already, this is the fourteenth such vomit-forth of random malarkey from yer actual Keith Telly Topping's brain (size of an Adidas Telstar). The main reason for this, obviously, is that this blogger remains currently banged-up in his drum, the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House, shielding from the horrors of The Red Death and the outside world and trying to find something, anything, to take his mind off the impending demise of civilisation as we know it. Or something. We're, clearly, still a long way short of 2011's - almost certainly never to be broken - record of four hundred and forty seven From The North updates in a calendar year. But, nevertheless, considering that this blogger spent the majority of 2020 stuck in his gaff too and he still only managed to get his shit together to update this blog a mere thirty four times in twelve bloody months, the seeming verbosity of the beginning of 2021 here at From The North is, trust me, as much of a surprise to Keith Telly Topping as he is sure it is to you lot. Frankly, the sooner this crap is all over and this blogger can go back to doing sod-all to justify his existence will be not a moment too soon.
Mind you, dear blog reader, one notable thing about all this lockdownisation is this blogger suddenly finding himself in both a mental and physical state where he can quote, out loud, one of his favourite ever movie dialogue exchanges and have it be an accurate summation of the current state of affairs in the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House. 'He had one thing you don't have.''What's that?''A great big bushy beard!' Horrifying, yes? 
So, let's kick off this latest boggerisationism update with something that this blog has had remarkably little over over the last few months, some actual, proper, 'you might not know this but ...' top telly news type malarkey in the area.
Ralph Fiennes has been widely praised for his performance in The Dig as the archaeologist who uncovered the Sutton Hoo burials on the eve of the Second World War (not least on this very blog). Now his cousin Martin could be at the centre of a momentous modern-day discovery. An 'enormous' Roman villa on the family's Broughton Castle estate in Oxfordshire will be the first site excavated by Time Team when the cult TV series and From The North favouritereturns on digital platforms later this year. Following the successful launch of a fan-led Patreon campaign in December, Time Team has now confirmed what could be the first of many digs and its first since the original series ended in 2014. Series Producer and creator of Time Team, Tim Taylor said: 'We're back thanks to the overwhelming support of our fans!' Created by Taylor and presented by the actor Tony Robinson, each episode featured a team of specialists carrying out an archaeological dig over a period of three days, with Robinson explaining the process in lay terms. The specialists changed throughout the programme's run, although it consistently included professional archaeologists such as Mick Aston, Carenza Lewis, Francis Pryor and Phil Harding. The sites excavated ranged in date from the Palaeolithic to the Second World War. First broadcast in 1994, the series ran for twenty years on Channel Four before it was cancelled in 2014 after two hundred and eighty episodes (including numerous specials). With 1.5 million views a month on the Time Team ClassicsYouTube channel in forty one countries worldwide, the new programmes will premiere on YouTube, with additional behind-the-scenes content on the virtual platform, Patreon. This will give viewers the chance to engage as the shows are researched and developed, see live blogs during filming, watch virtual reality landscape data at home and join in Q&As with the team. Carenza, Stewart Ainsworth, Helen Geake and permanently put-upon geophys guru John Gater will all be returning and are excited about the new sites. Many of the original team are already involved, both on and off screen. They will be joined by new faces representing the breadth of experts practising archaeology today. Yer actual Sir Tony Robinson, who is an honorary patron, said: 'I was delighted to hear about the plans for the next chapter in Time Team's story. It's an opportunity to find new voices and should help launch a new generation of archaeologists, under the guidance and watchful eye of Mister Taylor. While I won't be involved in the new sites, I was delighted to accept the role of honorary patron of the Time Team project. It makes me chief superfan and supporter - all armoury in our shared desire to inspire and stimulate interest in archaeology at all levels.' So, dear blog reader, no Tony - and no Phil either seemingly. And, obviously, the late Mick Aston won't be involved - nevertheless, the news that they have managed to get the majority of the band back together is a cause for considerable celebration at From The North. It is, frankly, glorious in this here blogger's sight, so it is. The villa itself is a tantalising prospect - a grand building almost as big as Buckingham Palace. It is located on the Broughton Estate in Oxfordshire, belonging to the Fiennes family. The site, discovered by historian and metal detectorist Keith Westcott after years of research, could be one of the biggest villas uncovered in recent times. 'As our first dig back, we were keen on a site that would produce amazing evidence, showcase the very best that Time Team can offer and allows us to demonstrate to the full the latest technology like LiDAR and GPR,' said Taylor. 'With a fantastic team backed by Keith Westcott and Martin Fiennes, local community support, the possibility of an ongoing legacy, and the guarantee of great archaeology, Broughton Castle ticks all the boxes.'
Yer actual Benedict Cumberbatch has 'teased the possibility of a Sherlock revival.' At least, Benny has according to  piece of twenty four carat clickbait at the Digital Spy website. In reality, Benny didn't do that or anything even remotely like it, he simply repeated what he and most of the other important players in the From The North favourite franchise have been saying ever since the last episode was broadcast in 2017. 'I'm the worst person to ask on this because I never say never, obviously,' the actor recently told Collider. 'But I don't know. And I'm the worst person to ask because my slate's pretty full at the moment, as is Martin and all the other key players involved. So, who knows? Maybe one day, if the script's right. And I say "the script," maybe it could be a film rather than the series. Who knows? But anyway, not for now.' Yet, somehow, those utter planks at Digital Spy have managed to turn the latest in a lengthy series of 'uh, yeah, maybe, possibly one day. But, hey, don't hold your breath' comments from Benny, Marty, Steven and Mark into a - pretty standard for Digital Spy - clickbait non-story. So, well done them. There must be a 'y' in the day for that to happen.
The BBC has announced production on the fourth series of From The North favourite Killing Eve will begin in early summer and confirmed that it will be the show's finale. The upcoming series, starring Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer, will consist of eight episodes and is expected to be broadcast on BBC1 and BBC iPlayer next year. Speaking about the drama's conclusion, Sandra Oh said: 'Killing Eve has been one of my greatest experiences and I look forward to diving back into Eve's remarkable mind soon. I'm so grateful for all cast and crew who have brought our story to life and to the fans who have joined us and will be back for our exciting and unpredictable fourth and final season.' Jodie Comer added: 'Killing Eve has been the most extraordinary journey and one that I will be forever grateful for. Thank you to all the fans who've supported us throughout and come along for the ride. Although all good things come to an end, it’s not over yet. We aim to make this one to remember.'
One would think that any actor would jump at the chance to appear in From The North favourite Line Of Duty. The series - which makes a welcome, and long-anticipated return to BBC1 this weekend - is, after all, one of the most popular and anticipated shows on the tellybox. But Kelly Macdonald, who stars opposite Vicky McClure, Adrian Dunbar and Martin Compston as this year's antagonist Joanne Davidson, says that she 'had second thoughts' about taking the role. It was, actually, From The North favourite Keeley Hawes, who won plaudits for her portrayal of Lindsay Denton in series two and three of the acclaimed police corruption drama, who convinced Macdonald to stick with the series. Macdonald explains to Radio Times: 'The real issue was the sheer number of words I had to learn. When I saw the script, my first instinct was to run a mile. It's all addresses and dates and police jargon, especially when I was interviewing suspects. Keeley was brilliant; she talked me down from the ledge. She said it might look as though you are being asked to do something completely impossible, but it's not.' Macdonald, who also admits that she had never seen the show before she was cast in it, added that hers co-star and fellow Scot, Compston helped to reassure her when she saw him at an awards event. 'He was so excited. He said, "Hey! You've got to do it!" It got to the point where I didn't feel I could run away from it. I thought it might actually be a good challenge and it really was. Although I still can't believe I got through some of it.'
Another From The North favourite, Peaky Blinders series six will not see the return of Charlie Murphy, who played the union leader and Tommy Shelby's occasionally love-interest Jessie Eden. The actress has since worked on gritty Irish thriller The Winter Lake as well as a TV show based on the Xbox gaming franchise, Halo. Murphy said about her off-screen exit from Peaky Blinders: 'It was a lot of fun when we shot it. And that feels like an age ago as well. It was about three years ago.' Despite the character seemingly leaving the show, Jessie Eden featured quite prominently in the Peaky Blinders series five finale, with Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) saving her from being arrested while protesting at that naughty old scallywag and right rotten rotter Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley's British Union of Fascists rally. She was also one of the few characters who was, briefly, tipped off to Tommy's plan to 'do a good thing,' by which he meant staging an assassination attempt on Oswald, which ended up failing. Badly. Murphy confirmed that she didn't film anything which was cut from the popular period drama, meaning she is unlikely to have been in any of the scenes that director Anthony Byrne previously explained had been cut from the final episode, to make Tommy's betrayer 'more oblique.'
In a recent - large and very thorough - interview with Radio Times, From The North favourite Mark Gatiss his very self has spoken, lovingly, of his memories of Target Books'Doctor Who novelisations. For all non-fans of the BBC's popular long-running family SF drama - where've you been for the last fifty eight years?  - this enthusiasm may be difficult to comprehend. But, for a certain generation of fans - this blogger very much included - the book range published between 1973 and 1994 (novel adaptations of Doctor Who TV episodes, many written by the show's former script editor the late Terrance Dicks) was a gateway into the series. 'They were a huge part of not just growing up and learning to read, but very much part of Doctor Who when you couldn't see the old [episodes],' Mark noted. 'And, as we've opined over the years, to actually see the real ones having expected them to be like the books, it's quite disappointing sometimes. They were a magic thing in so many ways - particularly Terrance's wonderfully economical and terse style, but they're also beautiful and full of sort of wonderful pop poetry. "Through the ruins of a city stalked the ruins of a man" [the opening line in Dicks' 1977 adaptation of Doctor Who & The Dalek Invasion Of Earth] and things like that.' Twenty-four years after the last Target Doctor Who novel was released, the brand was revived in 2018 with new novelisations of several stories from both the pre-1989 and the post-2005 series, including Russell Davies beautifully revisiting his relaunch episode Rose and The Lord Thy God Steven Moffat (Thou Shalt Worship No Other Gods Before He) adapting his own - magnificent - fiftieth anniversary special The Day Of The Doctor. Both of which this blogger brought just pre-lockdown last year and, very welcome they proved to be in helping to keep him vaguely sane during those dark days of late March 2020. A second batch of new Targets were released in March this year, including the first to feature Jodie Whittaker's Doctor - based on 2018's The Witchfinders, by episode's scriptwriter Joy Wilkinson. As part of this new set, Gatiss was asked to translate his 2013 story The Crimson Horror into prose and, for all his affection for the original Target novels, he was determined that his book be more than just 'an exercise in nostalgia. They're deliberately retro, the Chris Achilleos style and everything [the books' cover artwork by Anthony Dry apes the style of original Target cover artist Achilleos] but equally, as with the series itself, it's good to try and keep it going forward. So it's not entirely a pastiche of the Target style, because obviously it's a modern story. I didn't want to lose the speed of the TV story, because that's one of my favourite things about it. It's like a comic strip really, it just happens really economically and I didn't want to slow that down by massively adding to it. So I've sort of written a prequel [detailing the character Jenny Flint's first meeting with The Doctor] and then the story happens as breathlessly as it does on TV.' In preparing to write the book, Gatiss not only rewatched the TV episode for 'the first time in donkey's' but also 'dug out a few earlier drafts' of his script, rediscovering story concepts along the way that didn't make it to the final story as broadcast. 'The original pitch was going to have Conan Doyle in it,' he reveals. 'I'd written Cold War and then I got a text from Steven asking if I’d do another one. He wanted an episode that was almost a Paternoster Gang spin-off, with Conan Doyle and of course I said "yes." And then, I tried - I had all kinds of things buzzing around in my head - but it was just too hard. If it was The Doctor and Conan Doyle and Mrs Gillyflower ... but with the gang as well, there's not enough for [Conan Doyle] to do. But it left this legacy - that's why there's the optigram at the beginning, because Doyle was an eye surgeon and that's where all that was going to come from.' The idea to include the creator of Sherlock Holmes didn't make it past the plotting stage, Gatiss says. 'There certainly wasn't a first draft with Doyle - but he does deserve his own story, so maybe one day.' The episode's monster, too, was originally supposed to take a different form, with its writer originally drawing inspiration from the real-life Matchgirls' strike of 1888, which saw women and teenage girls who worked at the Bryant & May match factory in Bow protest against unsafe working conditions, with exposure to white phosphorus leading to some workers developing phosphorus necrosis of the jaw. 'I had this idea for the monsters - they were going to be all in black, sort of like Scottish Widows. And there's this horrible condition called Phossy jaw, where their jaws would literally drop off from the contamination of the phosphor ... and they would glow. I thought this is ideal. They were going to be the sort of "mummies," as it were.' Gatiss' ideas eventually evolved into what viewers saw on-screen, with the chief villain role being played by the late Dame Diana Rigg - appearing opposite her daughter, Rachael Stirling, for the first time on-screen. 'I was doing [George Farquhar's play] The Recruiting Officer with Rachael at the time and I remember just thinking, "Hello! here's an idea." Rachel had mentioned that she and her mum had never actually worked together, so I said, "If I wrote a Doctor Who for you, d'you think you'd do it?" and they leapt at it, so it was genuinely written for the pair of them.' He adds: 'Steven maintains that my Mrs Gillyflower at the read-through was better than Diana was in the show, but I'm not sure it was.' Gatiss had contacted Stirling shortly before Rigg died in September 2020 with the suggestion of getting together for a book signing but it was, sadly, not to be. Instead, the novel version of The Crimson Horror is dedicated to Sane Diana's memory. 'She was brilliant, so much fun,' Gatiss recalls. 'That was the least I could do.' Check out the full interview, dear blog reader, it's an enjoyably fascinating read.
On a somewhat related note, there is also a Radio Timesinterview this week with another From The North favourite, the very smashing Ingrid Oliver. This one, however, is far less interesting since its primary focus is in promoting some type of mobile phone game which this blogger has less than zero interest in. And, this blogger suspects, so have the majority of any potential readers. So, instead, to try and generate some interest the interviewer, Huw Fullerton (whose frequent nonsense masquerading as journalism this blogger has previously whinged about in the past), has inserted one question about whether Ingrid would be averse to appearing in a Doctor Who episode with Jodie Whittaker (to which the obvious answer is, basically, 'yes, if offered'). And then they've used that as the, entirely clickbait, headline for this 'exclusive' (Doctor Who's Osgood Is Back For A New Game - And Next, Ingrid Oliver Wants Her To Team Up With Jodie Whittaker). Once again, this blogger is forced to ask does anyone else remember when the Radio Times used to be written by grown-ups? Happy days, seemingly, never to return.
According to yet another Radio Times'exclusive' ninety four per cent of Torchwood fans 'want the show to return with BBC3.' Though, this breathtakingly banal piece of - alleged - journalism doesn't explain why six per cent of Torchwood fans who expressed a preference, seemingly, do not'want the show to return with BBC3.' One imagines Barrowman will be organising an Interweb petition to have every single one of the six per cent of non-conformists fed a lethal dose of the 456 virus from Children Of Earth as we speak. It's your own fault, six per center's, you had the opportunity to be like everyone else and you didn't take it. 
The year's BBC Comic Relief telethon - broadcast on Friday evening - featured a sketch with Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor. It came in the trailer for a fake film titled 2020: The Movie, which starred a number of big-name-type people as 'ordinary citizens dealing with the pandemic,' including Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan as a mother struggling to control her three unruly children. But it was Wor Geet Canny Jodie and co-star Mandip Gill's brief skit which stole the show - with the duo in a hospital ward in full PPE's garb discussing Bake Off. Elsewhere in the trailer, From The North favourite Keira Knightley made a cameo as The Woman Who Can't Take It Anymore. This blogger knows exactly how she feels. 
Other 'highlights' of the telethon included a quite amusing Staged sketch featuring national heartthrob David Tennant, Michael Sheen and Lenny Henry (last, briefly, funny for a short time in 1983) and a Catherine Tate/Daniel Craig James Bond parody. Most of the rest of the ninety seven hours of televised wackiness could, comfortably, be filed it the 'hey, it's a jolly good cause and we're all really glad their raised so much money for - genuinely - worthy charities but, please, don't make me actually watch too much of it' column.
There is a splendid interview with From The North favourite Steady Eddie Izzard in the Gruniad Morning Star this week covering all manner of subject which this blogger urges dear blog readers to check out: 'I've had boob envy since my teens. Just when teenage girls of my age were going "I want boobs", I was thinking "yeah, me too." But I couldn't say it. They talk about penis envy and I believe some women suffer penis envy. I cannot for the life of me get my head around this. But yes, I've always had breasts envy!'
Filming on a 'high-profile' TV production is reported to be currently taking place in Guildford. This is rumoured to be for the upcoming - and much anticipated - Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.
Sky comedy and From The North favourite I Hate Suzie is officially returning for a second series, after it was renewed in early 2021. The show, co-created by Billie Piper and Lucy Prebble, was broadcast last year in August to great acclaimed and the coveted runners-up slot in From The North's Best TV Shows 2020 list. Filming for series two will, reportedly, begin early next year.
From The North favourite Danny Boyle is currently filming six-part biopic of the life and times of from The North favourites The Sex Pistols for FX. The Queen's Gambit's Thomas Brodie-Sangster will portray Malcolm McLaren and Westworld's Talulah Riley will play Vivienne Westwood in Pistol. The latest cast additions also include Christian Lees - who previously played Jerry Lee Lewis in Sun Records - in the role of Glen Matlock and Iris Law, in her screen debut, as Soo Catwoman. With the series now in production, Rolling Stain recently presented the first look at the limited series with a photo of The Faux Pistols - Toby Wallace as Steve Jones, Anson Boon as Johnny Rotten, Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious and Jacob Slater as Paul Cook - recreating Julien Temple's 1977 video performance of 'Pretty Vacant' for Top Of The Pops.
Pistol is based on Steve Jones' highly-amusing 2018 memoir Lonely Boy: Tales From A Sex Pistol. Craig Pearce serves as co-writer and executive producer on the series, with the Oscar-winning Boyle as executive producer and director. Pistol also stars From The North favourite Maisie Williams as Jordan, Dylan Llewellyn as Wally Nightingale, Sydney Chandler as Chrissie Hynde and Emma Appleton as Nancy Spungen. And, this week, the Sun managed to get an on-location 'exclusive' photo of the latter.
TV review show Gogglebox is returning with its 'showbiz' edition, Celebrity Gogglebox, in aid of the Stand Up to Cancer campaign this week. This year's stars on the sofa include Line Of Duty actors Adrian Dunbar, Vicky McClure and Martin Compston and From The North favourites Victoria Coren Mitchell and David Mitchell. Who can be seen assessing the horror classic Scream in this clip. In Victoria's case, warm and logical in a cheerily-amusing way, in her husband's as coldly cynical as a hard slap in the mush with a wet haddock. So, no change there, then. Chez Mitchell looks very nice, though. Celebrity Gogglebox will also include appearances from The Who's Roger Daltrey alongside large-toothed Scouse comedian and forthcoming Doctor Who regular John Bishop.
From The North favourite Unforgotten is, of course, currently in the middle of its - rightly acclaimed - fourth series dear blog reader. You might have noticed. But, after the most recent episode was broadcast, fans were reportedly'delighted' when the writer and creator of the ITV drama, Chris Lang, shared some exciting news. Writing on Twitter on Tuesday morning, Lang retweeted a post about the overnight ratings showing that the drama had reached number one thanks to its highly-anticipated return this month. Chris wrote: 'What's this? Unforgotten NUMBER ONE!' before tagging several members of the cast. Sanjeev Bhaskar was clearly thrilled with the news, writing: 'This hasn't happened to me since Spirit In The Sky, seventeen years ago!'
From The North favourite American Gods' Ricky Whittle has suggested the drama's upcoming series three finale, admitting it will make fans 'angry.' Which is so surprising, dear blog reader, since TV fans are usually very thoughtful and open to new ideas and not the sort of people to fly off the handle and whinge, loudly, to anyone that will listen - and, indeed, anyone that won't - about what a right shite state of affairs their favourite show has turned into. The Starz series is due to wrap its third series on Sunday and, while he didn't give anything specific away, Ricky told the Digital Spy website that the concluding episode will be 'nuts.''For me, it really does culminate in the most epic season finale,' he said. 'It's just going to leave fans wanting more because we want more. When I read the season finale, I just texted Chic [Eglee] and the writers. It blew my mind. 'I can't spoil it,' Whittle added. 'It's nuts. But I think fans will be angry because it's so great and it's that cliché of: it's just going to leave them wanting more, because it's such an upsetting way to end a story, when you can't turn that page. You get to the end of the book and you're like, "Oh, come on!" It's Empire Strikes Back when it's like, "You can't! When is Return Of The Jedi?' In other American Gods news, Ian McShane has reacted to the show's latest shocking twist in the most recent episode.
Michael Sheen has revealed that he is currently recovering from Covid. From The North favourite Sheen shared the news on Twitter earlier this week, saying that he had been battling the virus for the last few weeks. 'It's been very difficult and quite scary,' he wrote. He also gave an International Women's Day shout-out to 'all the incredible women' in his life who helped him through it. His partner, Anna Lundberg, confirmed she and their baby Lyra had the virus as well. 'It's been very challenging for all of us but luckily we're all much better now than we were.' She added that she was 'fortunate' to have relatively mild symptoms, 'which meant that I could keep focusing on Lyra and Michael.' Sheen stars in FOX's serial murderer thriller Prodigal Son. He was conspicuously missing from the show's TCA virtual panel last week, which featured the cast video conferencing from their homes.
Meanwhile, the final six episodes of Prodigal Son's - much shortened - second series will kick off in the US on FOX from 18 April. A new trailer has recently been released highlighting the latest two, high-profile, additions to the main cast, From The North favourite Alan Cumming and yer actual Catherine Zeta Jones.
That risible, diseased oily twat Piers Morgan's comments about The Duchess Of Sussex on Good Morning Britain which saw the odious piece of yellow phlegm having his arse kicked, hard, into the gutter by ITV have, reportedly, attracted a record number of complaints to the TV regulator Ofcom. Some fifty seven thousand whinges have been made about the show's coverage of the Oprah Winfrey interview broadcast on 8 March. The following day, Morgan claimed he 'didn't believe a word' Meghan had said. He left the ITV programme later that day, ne'er to return. Which was funny, let it be noted. The total of fifty seven thousand one hundred and twenty complaints made at the time of writing is over twelve thousand more than those made to Ofcom over a race row on Z-List Celebrity Big Brother in 2007 involving comments made by that cackling trio of worthless scum Jade Goody, Jo O'Meara and Danielle Lloyd. The Duchess herself is reported to be among those who have complained to the watchdog by Morgan. The odious oily gammon-faced potato Morgan responded on Twitter with some sneering comments: 'Only fifty seven thousand? I've had more people than that come up and congratulate me in the street for what I said.' Christ, he really is an utterly worthless puddle of diarrhoea, is he not, dear blog reader? Ofcom - a politically-appointed quango, elected by no one, which has regulated British TV since 2003 - has already launched an investigation into Good Morning Britain. A further four thousand three hundred and ninety eight complaints have, reportedly, been made about various aspects of the Oprah interview itself, which was broadcast on ITV. Some reportedly objected to the Duke and Duchess' claims about the Royal Family, some about the timing of the broadcast given the Duke of Edinburgh's on-going health issues and some about the use of allegedly misleading press headlines in the programme. This blogger's own view on all of this malarkey - for what it's worth (which is less than not much in the great scheme of things) - remains pretty much exactly as he described them in a recent From The North bloggerisationism update: That he, frankly, has somewhat more important things in his own life to worry about than a bunch of apparently self-entitled multi-millionaires being, allegedly, beastly and (allegedly) racist towards a couple of other apparently self-entitled multi-millionaires. And, that this blogger's main fascinating with - and disgust over - this story continues to be that it has, seemingly, obsessed America. A country which, let us remember, once fought a sodding revolution to get rid of the concept of royalty. Still, Piers Morgan getting flushed into the gutter along with all the other turds was, admittedly, a worthwhile and amusing sidebar to this tale of woe.
And, on that bombshell dear blog reader, we come to ...
The World's End. Admittedly, it may be the, shall we say 'least best' of The Cornetto Trilogy. But, sod it, any movie in which Primal Scream save the world from aliens is worth a couple of hours of everyone's time.
A Field In England. Ben Wheatley's bowel-shatteringly scary minimalist nightmare is just about the most disturbing and horrific ninety minutes ever committed to film. Reece Shearsmith and Michael Smiley at their outstanding best and a soundtrack of quite startling tension and menace. A twenty four carat masterpiece.
Twenty Eight Days Later. Danny Boyle, Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, John Murphy's glacial soundtrack, shitloads of zombies. What's not to love?
Pierrepoint. From The North favourite Tim Spall giving one of the most affecting and nuanced cinematic performances imaginable.
The Personal History of David Copperfield. In which Iannuci takes Mister Dickens out for a Saturday night piss-up on the town followed by a curry then back to his flat to spend the night listening to all his Bowie LPs! In other words, bloody brilliant.
Baby Driver. Edgar Wright's finest movie that doesn't include Pegg and Frost.
High Plains Drifter. Because, you can't beat a bit of Clint. Well you can if you're Stacey Bridges and the Carlin brothers but it's a really unwise thing to do.
Richard III. Richard Loncraine and Ian McKllan proving that Shakespeare could've written one Hell of a Hollywood shoot-'em-up-and-then-blow-'em-up action movie with tanks and guns and grenades and shit if only he'd been given the chance - and a multi-million dollar budget. Unfortunately, he died in 1616. That, as they say, was an opportunity missed.
The Eagle Has Landed. In March 1976, The New York Times announced that David Bowie would play a Nazi in the film if his schedule could be worked out. But, it couldn't so Sven-Bertil Taube got the gig and Bowie made The Man Who Fell To Earth instead. True story. Tom Mankiewicz thought the script was the best that he had ever written - this blogger begs to differ, it's no Live & Let Die - but felt John Sturges, 'for some reason, had given up,' did a poor job and that editor Anne Coates was the one who saved the movie and made it watchable. This blogger, for what it's worth, thought it was great.
The Conversation. The meat in Coppola's Godfather sandwich.
Gimme Shelter. 'Just be cool down in the front there, don't push around.' The Sixties died here.
UFO. This blogger has always had this thing about purple hair and very tight silver pants. Just sayin'.
The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash. 'In those early days, there was a fifth Rutle: Leppo. A friend of Nasty's from art college, who mainly used to stand at the back. He couldn't play the guitar, but he knew how to have a good time and in Hamburg, that was more important!'
Bill Bailey: Limboland . The story about the disastrous Bailey family trip to see The Northern Lights in Norway continues to be final, positive affirmation of national treasure Bill's comedy genius.
It hasn't all been watching films and TV shows on the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House tellybox over the last week, of course. This blogger has also been listening to some wireless programmes on his - co-incidentally, wireless - laptop. A stray - and somewhat inaccurate - reference to the curious phenomena of Numbers Stations in an online article which this blogger was reading recently caused this blogger to hunt out his copy of Simon Fanshaw's acclaimed, fascinating 2007 BBC Radio documentary on the phenomena, Tracking The Lincolnshire Poacher. Which you can check out on YouTubehere, dear blog reader (and, highly recommeded - if somewhat disturbing, it is too). Whilst he had that particular computer file of audio recordings open, it prompted him to also revisit a few other radio recordings of a similar vintage. Like, for instance, From The North favourite Bill Bailey's The Hunt For The Hum. And, Martin Shankleman's profile of Alan Blumlein The Man Who Invented Stereo in the Archive Hour strand. And, Ray Snoddy's very funny The Riot That Never Was. This blogger really should listen to a lot more radio than he currently does, dear blog reader. Although Keith Radio Topping doesn't have, quite, the same ring to it.
Indeed, given his former life as a regular broadcaster, this blogger listens to shocking little radio on a regular basis, dear blog reader. Apart from occasionally checking out the smooth early morning stylings of his ex-Afternoon Show partner, the legend that is Alfie Joey on BBC Newcastle, the only regular radio output this blogger consumes is Kermode & Mayo's Film Review each Friday on 5Live. (Unless, as with this particular week, there's some sporting event which takes precedent in which case it goes out as a podcast instead.) The latest episode, incidentally, is thoroughly recommended for Mark's thoughtful - if still unimpressed - review of the recently-released Zack Snyder director's cut of Justice League.
The other podcast which this blogger downloads on a regular basis, as previously mentioned, is the BBC's weekly Americast, the latest episode of which focuses on the Irish influence on American politics. In a suitably Saint Paddy's Day, 'begorrah, bejesus, where's me shillelagh'-type way.
Some very sad news, now, dear blog reader. The former Top Gear presenter Sabine Schmitz - famous for being the only woman to win the Nurburgring Twenty Four Hours - has died aged fifty one. Schmitz said last year that she had been diagnosed with cancer in 2017. Schmitz had become synonymous with the Nurburgring Nordschleife, the fourteen-mile circuit in Germany which is renowned as the toughest in the world. She won the twenty four-hour touring car race at the track twice, in 1996 and 1997, driving a BMW M3. She became known as The Queen of the Nurburgring' and estimated she had driven around the track more than twenty thousand times. Schmitz later gained acclaim for an appearance on Top Gear in 2004 in which she drove a van around the track and, subsequently, became a presenter on the show alongside Chris Evans in 2016. Sunday's episode of Top Gear will be dedicated to Schmitz, with Clare Pizey, the executive producer, saying: 'Sabine was a beloved member of the Top Gear family and presenting team and everyone who had the pleasure of working with her on the team is in shock at this news. Sabine radiated positivity, always wore her cheeky smile no matter how hard things got - and was a force of nature for women drivers in the motoring world. Like everyone else who knew her, we will truly miss her - Sabine really was one of a kind. Our thoughts are with her partner Klaus, who was always by her side and who we welcomed to Dunsfold many times and her family in Germany.' Former presenter Jeremy Clarkson paid tribute by tweeting that Sabine was 'such a sunny person and so full of beans.' Formula 1 said that Schmitz was 'a force of nature' who inspired 'a new generation of motorsport enthusiasts.'
Leeds United's all-time record goalscorer Peter Lorimer has died aged seventy four, the club have announced. The former Scotland international scored two hundred and thirty eight goals in seven hundred and five appearances for Leeds in all competitions over two spells spanning twenty three years. He won two football league titles, the FA Cup and League Cup with Leeds under manager Don Revie. Leeds announced 'with great sadness' that Lorimer had died on Saturday morning 'following a long-term illness. Peter's contribution to Leeds United will never be forgotten and his passing leaves another huge hole in the Leeds United family,' read a statement. 'He will always remain a club icon and his legacy at Elland Road will live on.' Lorimer was not simply a key figure as Leeds enjoyed huge success in the 1960s and 1970s but a spectacular symbol of a golden era at Elland Road which saw their ruthless, physical approach often overshadow the natural brilliance of one of the outstanding British post-war teams. Under the leadership of Revie, Leeds enjoyed great highs and bitter lows, big successes and heartbreaking disappointments, with Lorimer a pivotal character in all the twists in the plotlines. Lorimer became Leeds' youngest ever player when he made his first team debut against Southampton in September 1962 at the age of fifteen years, two hundred and eighty nine days. As an attacking midfielder, he would go on to become a key member of Revie's team that became a dominant force in English football, winning the League Cup in 1968, the First Division titles in 1969 and 1974, the Charity Shield in 1969 and the FA Cup in 1972. They also tasted European success with victory in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1968 and 1971, as well as reaching the 1973 European Cup Winners' Cup final and the 1975 European Cup final - losing both in controversial circumstances. Lormier thought he had scored with an edge-of-the-box volley in the latter, but his goal was disallowed and Leeds lost to Bayern München amid a riot with kids getting sparked and aal sorts. Lorimer also won twenty one caps for Scotland and played in all three of their matches at the 1974 World Cup, scoring in the win against Zaire. Lorimer's shooting from any range makes him a standout in any showreel of Leeds' glory era. It earned him nicknames such as 'Lash' and 'Hotshot' and the power and pace of his shots inspired a chant of 'ninety miles an hour' from the home support whenever he lined up to take a free-kick. Leeds endured a rollercoaster of emotions during the Revie era; those who acknowledged the class and ability of the team assembled by this most complex of personalities justifiably questioning how and why they did not win more. And, in a reflection of the ill-fortune Leeds often felt followed them around during their greatest days, two of Lorimer's greatest strikes rank among the most infamous goals they never scored. In an FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea at Villa Park in April 1967, as Leeds chased an equaliser in the dying seconds, Johnny Giles turned a short free-kick to substitute Lorimer, who sent a rising right-foot thunderbolt past a helpless Peter Bonetti from twenty five yards. The referee Ken Burns ruled the goal out, the explanation apparently being that the wall was not back the required ten yards, causing scenes of chaos and confusion. It was regarded by Leeds fans as one of many injustices their club suffered, before even more acute pain came in the European Cup final. That was the last hurrah for a magnificent side but Lorimer stayed on and remained one of the most important influences at Elland Road. Two years before that European Cup controversy, Lorimer was thwarted by one of the greatest saves in FA Cup final and Wembley history, when Sunderland keeper Jimmy Montgomery made a miraculous stop to turn Lorimer's shot onto the bar from five yards as the Second Division side stunned the overwhelming favourites by winning. These were disappointments, but Leeds and Lorimer enjoyed huge successes during the Revie era as he took them out of the Second Division to claim a collection of the game's biggest honours with the Dundee-born forward an essential ingredient in their recipe for success. Lorimer came to prominence in the 1965-66 season and won a reputation as a player of creativity and menace, topped off with his ability to score goals, often of the thrilling and theatrical kind. Leeds finally claimed silverware winning the 1968 League Cup Final against Arsenal at Wembley as well as the Inter Cities Fairs Cup, the forerunner of the UEFA Cup, in the same year with a two-legged victory over Hungarians Ferencváros. It was the league title Leeds and Revie believed would cement their status as one of the great sides and it duly arrived in 1968-69, the title clinched with a goalless draw at Liverpool. Lorimer patrolled the right side with his gifted fellow Scot Eddie Gray on the left. Revie also establishing the deadly front-line of Mick Jones and Allan Clarke, all fuelled by the hugely talented and fiercely competitive midfield duo of Giles and Billy Bremner. Leeds were in the running for three major trophies towards the conclusion of the 1969-70 season but ended empty-handed as the schedule caught up with them, Everton winning the title, Glasgow Celtic sending them out in 'The Battle Of Britain' European Cup Semi-Final and Chelsea victorious after a - spectacularly vicious - FA Cup Final replay. Throughout it all, Lorimer was the model of consistency and reliability, claiming more honours when the Inter Cities Fairs Cup was won against Juventus in 1971 along with the FA Cup against Arsenal the following year, Leeds failing to land the double by losing their last game at Wolverhampton Wanderers to give the title to Brian Clough's Derby. Leeds and Lorimer suffered further disappointment the following year when the shock loss to The Mackem Filth was compounded by a hugely controversial defeat to AC Milan in the European Cup Winners' Cup Final in Athens eleven days later. Milan won one-nil but Leeds were infuriated, as were the neutral Greek fans, at a series of highly-debatable decisions by local referee Christos Michas. He was later banned for life for match-fixing. Lorimer collected another title-winners medal in 1973-74 but with Revie gone, the Brian Clough experiment cut short after forty four days and the great side suffering the ageing process, the club was about to leave its greatest era behind. As the club went into transition under a succession of managers, Lorimer tailored his game to become the experienced elder statesman of the side, a guiding hand to his younger colleagues. Lorimer eventually left Leeds in 1979, having two spells at Toronto Blizzard, a short stint at York City and also for Vancouver Whitecaps before making an emotional return to Elland Road in 1983 to play under the management of his old wing partner Eddie Gray. Leeds were in the former Second Division by this time. Lorimer became the club's greatest goalscorer before retiring in 1986. Lorimer won twenty one caps for Scotland, scoring four goals, making his debut in Austria in 1969 and playing his final game against Romania at Hampden Park in December 1975. He was a key part of Willie Ormond's Scotland squad at the 1974 World Cup in Germany, scoring a typical volley in a two-nil win against Zaire in their opening group game. It was a relatively narrow victory margin Scotland would later regret as they performed creditably to remain unbeaten against holders Brazil and Yugoslavia only to go out on goal difference. Even after retiring, Lorimer was a permanent fixture at Elland Road and Leeds United games around the country as a pundit for BBC Radio Leeds. He also had a column in the Yorkshire Evening Post and the club's match day programme as well as running a public house in the area. Lorimer was also appointed as a Leeds United director under the boardroom leadership of Gerald Krasner and was the only one to continue in the role when Ken Bates assumed ownership in January 2005. He acted as a fans' representative, although he was questioned by some supporters because of his public backing for chairman Bates during troubled times at Elland Road and was announced as the club's first Football Ambassador in April 2013. Lorimer, however, is one of the club's iconic figures and his death is another very sad day for Leeds United after the loss of his team-mates Norman Hunter, Trevor Cherry and Big Jack Charlton in recent months.

A wax museum in Texas has, reportedly, removed its statue of the now extremely former US President Mister Rump from display after it was repeatedly punched by visitors. Louis Tussaud's Waxworks in San Antonio had to move the statue into a storage room because some museum visitors kept on attacking it. They punched and scratched the figure, inflicting so much damage that it had to be pulled from public view, Clay Stewart, regional manager for Ripley Entertainment, which owns the museum, told the San Antonio Express-News. 'When it's a highly political figure, attacks can be a problem.' Ahead of the US presidential erection last year, Madame Tussaud's in Berlin put its own wax statue of Mister Rump in a dumpster. It was, reportedly, intended to reflect its expectations for the November polls. In 2006, a worker at Madame Tussaud's Museum in London learned the hard way that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, when his former girlfriend leaked images of him kissing Kylie Minogue's waxwork's bottom online. A shot showed Bryan Boniface pulling down Kylie's gold hotpants and kissing her bum. In other photos, taken during night shifts, he was seen fondling waxwork figures of Penelope Cruz and J-Lo. He was also seen beating up Sven Goran Eriksson, throttling then London mayor Ken Livingstone and grabbing disabled Professor Stephen Hawking about the person. Boniface's ex, Sofia, reportedly leaked the pictures when their romance ended.
This week police in Paris announced'a fruitful investigation' and a raid netting MDMA and ecstasy with a street value of over a million Euros. But it has turned out to be fruitful in a different way. Alleged 'sources' allegedly close to the investigation now say that the pink powder nabbed by The Fuzz was, in fact, ground up sweeties. More specifically, they were 'crushed Tagada strawberry' made by Haribo, AFP reports. A suspect still faces prosecution as Plod also found stolen mobile phones, as well as a machine used to manufacture ecstasy tablets, Le Parisien reports. But, it is not clear why the original haul was reported to be illegal drugs, nor why seemingly large amounts of an innocuous sweet had been ground into powder. Mind you, there are some decidedly odd people in the world. Drug seizures can be misidentified - last year what was initially claimed as Thailand's largest ketamine bust was found to be a type of cleaning agent. Meaning that anyone who took it would not end up stoned but would, instead, be very clean.
Bill Nelson, a former astronaut and US senator, has been nominated to be the next head of NASA. The seventy eight-year-old is seen as a moderate Democrat, and his nomination by President Joe Biden on Friday drew bipartisan praise. He will need to be confirmed in the Senate before he can take up the role. Nelson said he was 'honoured' to be picked to lead the US space agency, adding that he would 'help lead NASA into an exciting future.' In a statement, The White House said he was 'known as the go-to senator for our nation's space programme' for many years. 'Almost every piece of space and science law has had his imprint,' it said. The Republican Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, said: 'I cannot think of anyone better to lead NASA.' Nelson was a driving force behind NASA's Space Launch System rocket, which was conceived in the wake of an Obama-era overhaul of the US space programme. He will succeed Jim Bridenstine, who led the agency for two years under the Trump administration. Bridenstine earned widespread praise for his efforts to promote NASA programmes - in particular, its Artemis venture, which will see astronauts return to the Moon in the 2020s before mounting a mission to Mars. Born in 1942, Nelson served in Florida's state legislature during the 1970s, representing the district that Is home to NASA's Kennedy Space Centre. After his erection to the House of Representatives in 1978, he became the second sitting member of Congress to travel into space when he flew as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1986. After he won erection to the Senate in Florida in 2000, Nelson continued to be closely involved in formulating space policy. In 2010, he said he believed President Barack Obama had 'made a mistake' by cancelling the Constellation programme. That programme was former President George W Bush's effort to return astronauts to The Moon. Along with a Republican Senator for Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Nelson insisted that NASA be mandated to build a new heavy-lift rocket in the agency's 2010 Authorization Act. The SLS gave NASA the capability to launch its Orion crew vehicle to The Moon and other deep space destinations, while securing a base of engineering expertise across the South. Nelson lost his last re-erection bid and his Senate term ended in 2019.
A Russian woman has, reportedly, been detained on suspicion of killing and dismembering her toyboy lover after removal men discovered body parts in her fridge. Mind you, this was reported by the Daily Lies so, you know, no so much a pinch of salt is needed but more, a cellar full. Anna Vinokurova is alleged to have lived with the gruesome remains of her dead boyfriend, Evgeny, for eight days before moving the fridge to another area of her home city, Krasnoyarsk. Staff from the removal company made the grisly discovery after noticed a pool of blood in the back of their truck, which they realised had been seeping from the fridge. After questioning the woman, they alerted the police. A local press report quotes a police affidavit as saying: 'The fridge began to bleed on the way and she admitted the killing.'

Netflix's latest BBC drama cooperation has been announced, taking the international rights to The Lord Thy God Steven Moffat's series Inside Man, which has assembled a stellar cast ahead of production taking place later this year. Deadline has revealed that Stanley Tucci has been cast in the title role and will be joined by national heartthrob David Tennant and Dolly Wells. Rounding out the main cast is Lydia West, who featured in the acclaimed Channel 4/HBO Max series It's A Sin. The Moff (Thou Shalt Worship No Other Gods Before He) is keeping all plot details firmly under wraps to the extent that, according to the article, even Netflix and the BBC themselves are in the dark about how Inside Man will end. The four-part Hartswood Films series centres on a prisoner on death row in the US, a vicar in a quiet English town and a maths teacher trapped in a cellar, 'as they cross paths in the most unexpected way.'Sherlock director Paul McGuigan will be behind the camera on the series, with Alex Mercer producing. Executive producers are Steven's missus, Sue Vertue for Hartswood Films and Ben Irving for the BBC. Inside Man was first commissioned in 2019 by BBC drama director Piers Wenger and Charlotte Moore, the BBC's chief content officer. Steven and Sue said they can't wait to 'crawl out of our lockdown bunker' and get to work on the series, which Netflix have described as 'fiendishly clever.' BBC Studios brokered the deal with Netflix, which will stream the show outside of the UK and Ireland. It is another example of the BBC and Netflix partnering on a major drama, with other recent examples including The Serpent and the upcoming supernatural horror series Red Rose. Inside Man has echoes of Moffat and Mark Gatiss' 2020 series Dracula, which was also a co-production between the BBC and Netflix. The three-part series also starred Wells and West in the retelling of Bram Stoker's legendary story.
John Bishop 'cut a pensive figure as he resumed filming for Doctor Who in the middle of Liverpool on Wednesday night,' according to a piece with not very much substance but tonnes of speculation published in the Daily Scum Mail. So, no change there, then. The large-toothed cheeky-chappie Scouse actor, who has joined the cast as The Doctor's new companion, Dan, filmed a scene which saw his character realise he was conversing with his ex-girlfriend Nadia after being placed in a time loop. Jodie Whittaker was also reportedly spotted during location filming. John has joined the cast as one of The Doctor's new companions, following the departure of Ryan (played by Tosin Cole) and Graham (That There Bradley Walsh) during the New Year's special Revolution Of The Daleks. You knew that, right?
Sunday's return of From The North favourite Line Of Duty attracted the largest overnight audience in the BBC police drama's history. The opening episode of series six was watched by 9.6 million overnight viewers. That surpassed the show's previous record of 9.1 million for the finale of series five in 2019. Critics largely praised the first episode, with the Gruniad Morning Star's hideous Lucy Mangan describing it as 'just as good, if not better, than ever. If it can hold to its successful formula without tipping into parody, if it can find its way back from the H debacle and if it can weave its customarily masterful narrative spell without tying itself or us in knots - well, then we'll all be sucking diesel.' The Torygraph's usually scowling waste-of-space arse, Anita Singh concurred. 'On this early evidence, this year's offering has more in common with the show's early years,' she wrote. 'The opening scenes were reminiscent of series two (the Keeley Hawes season, possibly the best of them all) as a call came into the station with some urgent information.' Singh continued: 'Much of its success hangs on the performances of its guest stars like ... Hawes and [Stephen] Graham and the superb Lennie James in series one. It's too early to say if Kelly Macdonald will be among the greats; she has clearly been told to play Davidson as enigmatic. Mercurio ... looks to have given Macdonald an intriguing backstory.' Another From The North ... whatever the opposite of favourite is, that bloke Cumming, writing in the Independent, said: 'The question is whether the show's any good. On the evidence of this frenetic, nerve-jangling opener: yes. After the more outlandish conspiratorial shenanigans of series five, the first episode of series six returns to what Line Of Duty does best: dodgy coppers, tense action and characters who communicate almost exclusively in acronyms.' He also welcomed the arrival of Macdonald. 'With her signature mix of sweetness and guile, Macdonald is smart casting for a role that will no doubt toy with our sympathies.' But, Carol Midgley, writing in The Times, which proves she doesn't know what the fek she's taking about. 'As a fan girl, it grieves me to sound like a disappointed bride on her wedding night,' she began, before sounding like a disappointed bride on her wedding night. The Evening Standard's Katie Rosseinsky was more keen. She wrote: 'Opening with a nerve-shredding set piece, an enigmatic central character and a fusillade of acronyms and police-speak (who or what is a chis? What's the PNC? Is 1A on the matrix good or bad? I have precisely no idea and that's part of the fun), this had all the hallmarks of a classic Line Of Duty opener, but never felt like a case of bent coppers-by-numbers. In the best way, it recalled the first episode of the show's superlative second series: could Macdonald's intriguing, softly-spoken Davidson become an anti-hero to rival Keeley Hawes' Lindsay Denton?' This blogger, for what it's worth, thought it was great.

BBC journalist and From The North favourite Clive Myrie has been named the new host of quiz show Mastermind, replacing John Humphrys, who has stepped down after eighteen years. Myrie will be the fifth host of the BBC quiz, which marks its fiftieth anniversary next year. 'They are big shoes to fill but all I can do is bring a little bit of my own personality to what is a grounded format,' he said. He will continue to present programmes like the BBC's News At Six. 'That side of me is still very much there, but it's good to be able to be liberated every now and again when I do Mastermind,' he added. Myrie recently won two Royal Television Society journalism awards - for network presenter of the year and television journalist of the year. As well as being a newsreader, he is known for his work as a foreign correspondent and recently fronted a series of acclaimed reports from hospitals dealing with the Covid pandemic.
The Court of Appeal has overturned the shamefully politically-motivated convictions of fourteen men sentenced for their involvement in pickets in 1972. Trade unionists who picketed during the national builders' strike were charged with offences including unlawful assembly and conspiracy to intimidate. Lawyers for the so-called Shrewsbury Twenty Four had argued the destruction of witness statements made their convictions unsafe. Lord Justice Fulford said 'what occurred was unfair.' The actor Ricky Tomlinson was among those convicted. He was jailed for two years. Speaking after the verdict, he said: 'It is only right that these convictions are overturned.' Six of the fourteen who brought the action have since died, including Dennis Warren, who was jailed for three years. Tomlinson added: 'My thoughts today are with my friend and comrade Des Warren. I'm just sorry he is not here today so we can celebrate, but I'm sure he's with us in spirit.' Speaking at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Lord Justice Fulford said: 'These fourteen appeals against conviction are allowed across the three trials and on every extant count which the fourteen appellants faced.' But he added: 'It would not be in the public interest to order a retrial.' In its written ruling, the Court of Appeal allowed the fourteen appellants' appeals on the grounds that original witness statements had been destroyed. In June 1972, trade unionists called the UK's first-ever national builders' strike in protest against pay, unjust employment practices and dangerous conditions on sites. Trade unionists travelled to demonstrate from one site to another and in September six coach-loads of strikers demonstrated in Shrewsbury and Telford. Police arrested none of the demonstrators that day but five months later the picketers were charged and subsequently convicted. Lord Justice Fulford wrote: 'If the destruction of the handwritten statements had been revealed to the appellants at the time of the trial, this issue could have been comprehensively investigated with the witnesses when they gave evidence, and the judge would have been able to give appropriate directions. We have no doubt that if that had happened, the trial process would have ensured fairness to the accused. Self-evidently, that is not what occurred. By the standards of today, what occurred was unfair to the extent that the verdicts cannot be upheld.' Lawyers had argued the broadcast of a documentary about Communism during the trials was 'deeply prejudicial', but the Court of Appeal dismissed the claim that the 1973 ITV Red Under The Bed documentary - hosted by the late Richard Whiteley - might have made the verdicts unsafe. Arthur Murray, who was convicted of affray and unlawful assembly and sentenced to six months, said: 'We were innocent all along, yet it has taken us nearly fifty years to clear our names. Sadly my mother and four of my siblings have passed away without knowing that we were innocent. Serious questions need to be asked about the role of the building industry bosses in our convictions and the highest offices of government who all had a hand in our trial and conviction. Make no mistake, our convictions were a political witch-hunt.' Tomlinson echoed his remarks, saying: 'We were brought to trial at the apparent behest of the building industry bosses, the Conservative government and ably supported by the secret state. This was a political trial not just of me and the Shrewsbury pickets - but was a trial of the trade union movement.' Terry Renshaw, a former Flintshire mayor, who was convicted of unlawful assembly, paid tribute to the campaign's researcher, Eileen Turnbull, who worked 'tirelessly' to obtain 'crucial evidence.' She uncovered a document in the National Archives which were part of the prosecution papers and revealed for the first time police had destroyed some of the original witness statements. Renshaw added: 'It's been forty seven years. I'm just so emotional. I didn't think it would hit me like this. I am no longer a criminal.'
And now, dear blog reader ...
Tommy. Good old Mad Ken Russell being as mad as Mad Jack McMad.
Sylvia. Not the classic it should have been (Daniel Craig as Ted Hughes, what's not to love) mainly due to the woeful miscasting of Gwyneth Paltroon in the title role ...
The Warriors. Can? You? Dig? It?
Pitch Perfect. Avoided up until now by this blogger for God only knows what reason; it's actually really good, surprisingly funny little feel-good movie. Should've checked it out sooner (though the two sequels are, it would seem, a case of diminishing returns).
Prevenge. From The North favourite Alice Lowe as the world's scariest mummy!
Seventy One.
Go Tell The Spartans. 'Never in the US have we asked for anything back. It would screw up the bookkeeping.'
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Perfection in seven, slow-moving, grandiloquent episodes. And with one of the finest casts ever assembled on British telly. Not a bad way to spend a long, languid Sunday afternoon in March.
The Thing. 'You gotta be fuckin' kidding!'
Take The Money & Run. 'All I know is my heart was really pounding and I felt a funny tingling all over, you know? I was either in love or I had smallpox!'
Night Of The Generals.
Ashes To Ashes. 'Now then, Bollingerknickers, you gonna kiss me or punch me?'
An 'extremely rare' meteor known as a daytime fireball has been blamed for a sonic boom-type noise heard across parts of England. People in Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Jersey reported hearing a loud bang and seeing a streak of light in the sky on Saturday afternoon. After analysing pictures and videos, experts confirmed they showed a meteor. They have urged people to keep an eye out and report any fallen fragments of the space rock. Simon Proud, a specialist in aviation meteorology at the University of Oxford, captured the meteor - which appeared as a bright flash - flying over the UK on a weather satellite. Richard Kacerek, from the UK Meteor Observation Network of amateur astronomers, said only the brightest 'bolide class' meteor could produce a rare 'daytime fireball.' He added that the one seen on Saturday would have needed to be 'very large' to be visible during day. Doctor Ashley King from the UK Fireball Alliance - a group of experts and enthusiasts who hunt for freshly-fallen meteorites - said the fireball 'would have been going faster than the speed of sound. Normally when you hear that it's a good sign that you have got rocks that have made it to the surface. It's incredibly exciting and I'm a bit stunned,' he said. The group has asked people in the Devon, Dorset or Somerset areas to report finds of any fragments - believed to be small blackish stones, or a mound of dark dust. Data from cameras is also being analysed to give details of the meteor's journey. Speaking to BBC Radio Somerset, astronomer and science journalist Will Gater, who was among the first to link the sonic boom to a meteor, said: 'If somehow the location can be pieced together who knows - the thought that something could be recovered is quite exciting.' Following the 'huge bang,' which people said shook their homes and windows, an earthquake was ruled out by The British Geological Survey. The Ministry of Defence also said the 'massive bang' was not linked to any RAF aircraft. A campsite near Weymouth captured the loud noise on a security camera.
Earthlings can, however, breathe a sigh of relief after NASA confirmed that the planet was 'safe' from a once-feared asteroid for the next one hundred years at least. By which time, this blogger and - likely - most of you lot will all have shuffled off this mortal coil so it'll be someone else's problem. Good to know. NASA had deemed Apophis to be one of the most dangerous asteroids to Earth after its discovery in 2004. Close calls in 2029 and 2036 were predicted before they were later ruled out. A 'slight threat' from this Big Hard Rock still remained for 2068 but now NASA has dismissed that threat based on new analysis of the asteroid. 'A 2068 impact is not in the realm of possibility any more and our calculations don't show any impact risk for at least the next hundred years,' Davide Farnocchia, a scientist who studies near-Earth objects for NASA, said in a statement on Friday. So, if they're wrong and we all end up getting wiped out, remember, it's all Davide's fault. Named for the ancient Egyptian God of chaos and darkness, Apophis is estimated to measure three hundred and forty metres across - about the length of three football pitches. Or, the three hundred and forty metre long asteroid if you don't need a comparator to know what a bloody big rock looks like. The asteroid recently made a distant flyby of Earth on 5 March, passing within seventeen million kilometres of the planet. Astronomers were able to use radar observations to refine their estimate of the asteroid's orbit around the Sun, allowing them to confidently rule out any impact risk in 2068 and long after. 'When I started working with asteroids after college, Apophis was the poster child for hazardous asteroids,' said Farnocchia. 'There's a certain sense of satisfaction to see it removed from the risk list.' He said NASA was 'looking forward to the science we might uncover during its close approach in 2029.' This close approach will occur on 13 April, 2029. On that date, the asteroid is expected to pass within thirty two thousand kilometres of the Earth's surface. During that 2029 approach, Apophis will be visible to observers on the ground in the Eastern Hemisphere of Earth, including Asia, Africa and parts of Europe. No telescope or binoculars will be required. 'If we had binoculars as powerful as this radar, we would be able to sit in Los Angeles and read a dinner menu at a restaurant in New York,' NASA scientist Marina Brozovic said. NASA keeps track of asteroids which could one day make threatening close approaches to Earth, or hit and wipe out all traces of living things, designating them as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. Or 'fekking scary things.' Asteroid 1950 DA was discovered in February 1950, before fading from view. It was eventually rediscovered half-a-century later, allowing scientists to make new calculations about the 1.3 kilometre asteroid. A potentially close Earth approach in March, 2880 was identified but the odds of a direct hit are long. 2010 RF12 tops NASA's watch-list in terms of the probability of Earth impact; There is a 4.7 per cent chance of a hit by the asteroid, which is estimated to measure seven metres in diameter. NASA predicts that the first potential impact could happen in September, 2095. That sounds more terrifying than it is, though. Because the asteroid is relatively small, it would not pose a major threat to Earth, scientists claim. One or two people even believe them. Another asteroid's first potential Earth impact could happen in February, 2052. Measuring about fourteen metres in diameter, 2012 HG2 has the highest number of potential Earth impacts on NASA's watch-list Again, because the asteroid is relatively small, it would probably burn up in Earth's atmosphere. Although 'probably' is a fantastically unscientific word, don't you think dear blog reader?
If you would like a textbook demonstration of some of the many, many, many reasons why this blogger so loathes the Gruniad Morning Star and every single piece of Middle Class hippy Communist bollocks it stands for, have a butchers at Zoe Williams' classic Gruniad Morning Star whinge For Divorced Atheist Remainers Like Me, This Census Was A Minefield. 'Filling in the form should have been a piece of cake. But domestic, cultural and political quandaries sent me into a tailspin,' whinges Williams whose absolutely perfect Middle Class hippy Communist existence has, it would seem, been pure dead messed up by having to do a once-a-decade 'justify your existence' thing just like the rest of the population. Christ, dear blog reader, if it wasn't possible to hate the Gruniad and everything it stands for enough already ...
Right-wing lawyer and certified loon-ball Sidney Powell is claiming in a new court filing that 'reasonable people' (by which she, presumably, means anyone other than her) wouldn't have believed as a fact her bonkers assertions of fraud at the 2020 presidential erection. The erection infrastructure company Dominion Voting Systems is currently suing Powell's sorry ass for defamation after she pushed lawsuits and made appearances on conservative media on behalf of now extremely-former President Mister Rump in an effort to sow doubts about the 2020 erection results. Dominion claims that Powell knew her election fraud accusations were false and hurtful to the company. In a new court filing, Powell's attorneys write that she was 'sharing her opinion' and that the public could reach 'their own conclusions' about whether votes were changed by erection machines. 'Given the highly charged and political context of the statements, it is clear that Powell was describing the facts on which she based the lawsuits she filed in support of President Trump,' Powell's defence lawyers wrote in a court filing on Monday. 'Indeed, Plaintiffs themselves characterise the statements at issue as "wild accusations" and "outlandish claims." They are repeatedly labelled "inherently improbable" and even "impossible." Such characterisations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support Defendants' position that "reasonable people" would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process.' Erection authorities and Dominion have resoundingly called Rump's loss in the erection as accurate and untainted by any possible major security risks. Rump's lawyers and his allies quickly lost or dropped all but one minor case out of nearly sixty following the erection, as the then-President sought to overturn Joe Biden's win in multiple key states. And lost. Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan, one of the Republicans who voted to impeach Rump in January after the 6 January Capitol insurrection, tweeted that Powell's argument is 'pathetic. Absolutely infuriating. GOP lost the Senate and five people died in [the] attack on the Capitol, in part because Sidney Powell misled millions claiming stolen elections. Now Powell backtracks saying "no reasonable person" would believe what she alleged in court were "statements of fact."' It could also put her in legal jeopardy as she fights the defamation suit as well as a motion for sanctions in Michigan as a part of a case she brought there alleging erection fraud. First Amendment expert Ted Boutrous of Gibson Dunn said that the legal implications for Powell could be dire. 'The First Amendment provides strong protections for statements of opinion,' he said. 'But what Dominion is pointing to is the fact that Ms Powell was declaring that she had evidence of this fraud and this election malfeasance and she was declaring that as a matter of fact. The First Amendment doesn't protect knowingly false statements of fact,' Boutrous added. In the two cases, both still pending, her lawyers appear to contradict each other. In the defamation case filed by Dominion, her lawyers claim in a motion to dismiss that what Powell said about voting issues 'could not reasonably be established as fact' at the time she said it. In the Michigan case her lawyer calls allegations that she lied 'outrageous' and 'entirely unacceptable.' Powell's attorney, Howard Kleinhendler, issued a further comment about the Dominion lawsuit. 'First, let me be clear: any suggestion that "no reasonable person" would believe Ms Powell or her comments on the election is false,' he said. 'The language these reports referred to is a legal standard adopted by the courts to determine whether statements qualify as opinions which are exempt from defamation liability.' The company points to claims made by Powell that Dominion manipulated votes, that the company and its software were created in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chavez and that Dominion bribed Georgia's governor and secretary of state for a no-bid contract in Georgia. 'As a result of the defamatory falsehoods peddled by Powell - in concert with like-minded allies and media outlets who were determined to promote a false preconceived narrative - Dominion's founder, Dominion's employees, Georgia's governor and Georgia's secretary of state have been harassed and have received death threats and Dominion has suffered enormous harm,' the lawyers wrote in the case filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. 'Dominion brings this action to set the record straight, to vindicate the company's rights under civil law, to recover compensatory damages, to seek a narrowly tailored injunction and to stand up for itself and its employees,' the company said. In response, Powell's lawyers claimed statements she made at a Georgia political rally were an example of hyperbole. 'She claimed that she had evidence that the election result was the "greatest crime of the century if not the life of the world,"' they wrote. 'It is a likewise well-recognised principle that political statements are inherently prone to exaggeration and hyperbole,' the filing states. The judge overseeing Dominion's defamation suit in Washington is still looking at early questions about whether the lawsuit should continue in his court and whether Powell can be sued and isn't yet considering the legitimacy of Dominion's allegations that Powell knowingly spread falsehoods about the company. Dominion has also sued, separately, Rump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell with similar claims about their public assertions of erection fraud. Giuliani and Lindell are set to given their initial responses in court next month. The initial court filing statement shocked (and stunned) David Fink, a lawyer who is asking a federal judge in Michigan on behalf of the city of Detroit to sanction Powell and others for 'not telling the truth.' Fink wants to 'deter future misconduct' and bar Powell from practicing law in the state. He pointed to a federal rule that allows courts to impose sanctions on attorneys who make representations to the court that lack evidentiary support. 'When I read the brief in that case I was shocked that Sidney Powell's lawyers would admit that no reasonable person would believe the very allegations that she asserted in federal court,' Fink said. 'Those misrepresentations are the reason we are asking the federal court to sanction her,' Fink added. 'Powell shows a startling contempt for the basic ethical obligations of our profession, a lawyer incapable of speaking the truth in court filings should surrender her bar card.' Fink is not sure if he needs to - or will - bring the defamation filing to the attention of Michigan's judge who serves on the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Already he had argued that if sanctions against Powell are not deserved in his case 'it is hard to imagine a case where they would be.' Powell's co-counsel in the Michigan case, Stefanie Lambert Junttila, called the request for sanctions 'baseless' in court papers. Rule eleven, the federal rule at issue, 'is not intended to chill an attorney's enthusiasm or creativity in pursuing factual or legal theories' she wrote and urged the court to 'avoid using the wisdom of hindsight.' Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at NYU Law, said that Powell is now 'in a difficult position. Even opinions can be defamatory if they imply facts that are false and Powell knew it or recklessly disregarded the truth or falsity of the implied facts,' he said. 'Her problem is that her defence in the defamation case is going to sink her in the Michigan case,' he said. Dana Nessel, Michigan's attorney general told CNN on Tuesday that Powell's statements and the lawsuits she filed were meant to undermine the erection. 'The damage that this individual, this woman had done and her cohorts who filed these cases along with her,' she said, 'is untold. And who knows how or when this damage can possibly be undone.'
Yer actual Keith Telly Topping was taking some time on Saturday morning to burn yet more or the massive Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House CD collection onto the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House laptop (for ease of playing if nothing else). This is a periodic task which this blogger does in small batches since, if he tried to do them all at once, it would take years. This blogger decided to compile a file featuring a complete discography of Keith Telly Topping's dear fiend and American cousin, the Godlike Genius of Jefferson Hart. So, this blogger found all of the CDs (including the fantastically rare Panther Beach Boys Sessions and the Ghosts Of The Old North State Bonus CD - this blogger having number eight of a limited edition of fifty, fact fans). However then, bugger me if this blogger could find not a trace of the Brown Mountain Lights'Late Show At The Cave CD. It took this blogger a little shy of four bloody hours of increasingly short tempered and stroppy outbursts of 'Where the blightering fek did I put it?" before he finally located it at the bottom of an 'uge and teetering pile of CDs in the corner of the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House bedroom (and this blogger mean, at the very bottom). Jeff, me auld mate, this blogger sincerely apologises for treating a work of twangy, honky-tonk beauty in such an appallingly disingenuous fashion. It shall not happen again. Anyway, now that's completed if this blogger is going in, roughly, alphabetical order, it'll be Half Man Half Biscuit next ... Which this blogger intends to save for another day as, at the going rate, tracking down the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House copy of Trouble Over Bridgewater should only take, ooo, eight hours. And Nigel Blackwell's ears would be burning bright red.
And now, dear blog reader, in celebration of World Puppetry Day (which occurred earlier this week on 21 March) ... No strings attached.
And, in celebration of International Mime Day (which was the following day, 22 March). I won't say it if you won't say it ...
Just occasionally, dear blog reader, one finds something on the Interweb which, genuinely, shocks (and stuns) you. This for instance. It seems that yer actual Keith Telly Topping is, in fact, loaded. Who knew? (Certainly not yer actual Keith Telly Topping, before you ask.)
Former Huddersfield Town, Leicester City and Bolton Wanderers striker Franky Worthington - a particular favourite of this blogger - was one of English football's fabled mavericks. With his collar-length hair, Zapata moustache, red Ford Mustang and man-about-town dress sense, Worthington who died earlier this week, was a ball-juggling entertainer who lived life in the fast lane during a colourful Football League career which spanned three decades until 1988. 'I admit that I used to get about a bit, but I am quieter these days,' he boasted, proudly, to the Gruniad in 1978. 'Instead of going out seven nights a week I keep it to six.' His daughter, Kim, announced on Facebook in 2016 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, but Worthington issued a statement the following day denying that he had the condition. Showman, playboy, Elvis wannabe (he was a massive fan of The King) and dedicated follower of fashion, Worthington was unashamedly non-establishment and hit the headlines as much for his off-field exploits as he did for his rarefied talents on it. Eight England caps were scant reward for a player once described by his former Huddersfield and Bolton manager Ian Greaves as 'the working man's George Best.' Actually, that was nonsense, George Best was the working man's George Best. Frank Worthington was the working man's Frank Worthington, there was no one else even remotely like him. At all eleven of his Football League clubs, starting with Huddersfield, then Leicester, Bolton, Birmingham City, Leeds United, Sunderland, Southampton, Brighton & Hove Albion, Tranmere Rovers, Preston North End and Stockport, Worthington became a cult hero. Major honours eluded him, but despite a rock-and-roll lifestyle which cost him his dream move to Bill Shankly's Liverpool in 1972, he played in twenty two consecutive Football League seasons from 1967, scoring two hundred and sixty six goals in eight hundred and eighty two appearances in all competitions. In fourteen of those seasons he played in the top flight, notching up one hundred and fifty goals in four hundred and sixty six matches and won the Golden Boot Award ahead of Kenny Dalglish and Frank Stapleton in 1979. Worthington won promotion to the old First Division three times with different clubs - Huddersfield, Bolton and Birmingham - and helped Preston secure promotion to the old Third Division in the twilight of his career. He scored a career-defining goal for Bolton against Ipswich Town in 1979 when, with his back to goal on the edge of the penalty area, he flicked the ball up over his head to evade a clutch of defenders and swivelled to plant a volley into the bottom corner. It was a magical effort, replayed regularly for years after, while Worthington typically insisted he had scored plenty of better goals which had not been captured by the television cameras. Frank was born in the West Yorkshire village of Shelf, halfway between Bradford and Halifax, in November 1948 and seemed destined to become a professional footballer. His father, Eric, was released by Manchester United before World War Two and went on to play for Halifax Town as an inside forward and his mother, Alice, turned out as a centre-forward for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Elder brothers Dave and Bob, both defenders, had long and successful Football League careers themselves, most notably with Grimsby Town and Notts County respectively. Worthington also had a sister, Julie. Frank started out at Halifax like his brothers, but bigger local rivals Huddersfield enticed him to sign schoolboy forms with them instead. He made his league debut aged eighteen in 1967 and scored nineteen goals for The Terriers during the 1969-70 season to help them win promotion to the First Division. Former Liverpool boss Shankly was ready to break his club's record transfer fee to sign Worthington for one hundred and fifty thousand knicker, but Frank failed a medical due to high blood pressure which scuppered the deal. Still determined to get his man, Shankly reportedly sent Worthington to Majorca for a relaxing holiday with the aim of trying again, but the twenty three-year-old succumbed to temptation on the island resort and continued to party instead. After reported encounters with five separate women, including a former Miss Great Britain, he failed a second medical on his return and later admitted in his aptly titled autobiography, One Hump Or Two?, that missing out on a move to Anfield was the only regret of his career. When Worthington received a late call-up by Sir Alf Ramsey for the England Under-Twenty Three squad in 1972 he greeted the World Cup-winning manager for the first time at Warsaw airport dressed in a green velvet jacket, floral shirt, leather trousers and cowboy boots. That was Worthington's style. Leicester City snapped him up after his Liverpool setback and, while the partying was never curtailed, he went on to make all eight of his senior England appearances during his time at Filbert Street. He made his international debut in May 1974 against Northern Ireland, coming on as a substitute for another one-of-a-kind wayward spirit, Stan Bowles, in a one-nil victory at Wembley. He scored two goals in his eight appearances, against Argentina and Bulgaria. Joe Mercer - Ramsey's temporary replacement - was England's manager for six of Worthington's international games and once described him as 'one of the best centre-forwards of all time.' Don Revie, who followed Mercer as national coach, played Frank for just eighty minutes across his first two matches before giving up on him. 'He got rid of the skill and went for the workers,' Worthington said, ruefully. Frank also had spells as a player in the United States, with Philadelphia Furies in 1979 and Tampa Bay Rowdies two years later, plus a later stint in South Africa for Cape Town Spurs. He had periods of some success, playing in a Southampton team that qualified for Europe, for example. Though, his season with The Mackem Filth is probably one that he, himself, chose to try and forget about. His time at Tranmere Rovers was as player-manager and he continued to play the game after he left his last Football League club, Stockport County, in 1988. He turned out for Chorley, Galway United, Weymouth and Guiseley among other lower tier clubs before finally hanging up his boots to focus on after-dinner speaking and doing some scouting for several clubs. 'Sometimes my life's been so full that it's left me physically and emotionally exhausted,' Worthington told the Daily Mirra in 1978. 'But if I should drop down dead this minute no one could say I haven't squeezed the maximum from my life. I've got no regrets about anything. After all, we’re only on this Earth for a while.' Frank married first wife Birgitta, from Sweden, in 1973 soon after the birth of their son, Frank Jr. Their daughter, Kim Malou, was born in 1974. He is also survived by second wife Carol, daughter of the former Republic of Ireland goalkeeper Noel Dwyer, whom he married in 1986 following a long friendship.

It's that old bloggerisationisms time again, dearest blog reader. Therefore, welcome you are to From The North's latest update and settle ye back for another session in the company of yer actual Keith Telly Topping, brain the size of an Adidas Testar and all that ...
We begin with this week's almost-certainly wholly bollocks made-up Doctor Who story, from that ever reliable bastion of accurate and truthful reportage, the Daily Scum Mail: 'Jodie Whittaker looked in good spirits as she filmed scenes for Doctor Who alongside her co-star John Bishop in Liverpool on Monday,' the Scum Mail reports. That much, as Spandau Ballet once noted, is true. 'The actress, was seen laughing and joking with members of the crew as she stood alongside the TARDIS while filming an evening scene.'Then, it all got a bit ludicrous: 'Fans of the programme were sent wild when passers-by in Liverpool claimed they saw former star Catherine Tate in the city, prompting speculation [that] she could be returning to the series.' The piece then, helpfully, added: 'Other users insisted the comedian would not be returning to the series. One said: "Catherine Tate is in Liverpool to film a new comedy series for Channel Four and just happens to be good friends with fellow comic John Bishop. She isn't filming Doctor Who."' Which will, no doubt, come as a surprise to exactly no one.
A sequel to the American procedural forensics crime drama series and From The North favourite Crime Scene Investigation, called CSI: Vegas is, officially, making a return for the 2021-22 season, CBS has announced. It has been twenty one years since the first episode of CSI debuted and William Petersen and Jorga Fox are returning to the show as Gil Grissom and Sara Sidle. The last time Grissom and Sidle were on the screen on the show, the married couple was driving their boat into the dusk. 'Twenty-one years ago, we launched CSI and watched in awe as this new cinematic series launched an entire genre and became a ground-breaking juggernaut that still has global resonance today,' said CBS Entertainment president Kelly Kahl in a statement. Along with Peterson and Fox, the new series will star Paula Newsome, Matt Lauria, Mel Rodriguez and British actress Mandeep Dhillon. 'We are thrilled to welcome the next generation of forensic criminalists to the CSI brand and unite them with the legendary characters from the past who we still love, including the extraordinary Billy Petersen and Jorja Fox,' Kahl added. 'Crimefighting technology has advanced dramatically over the last several years and combined with classic CSI storytelling, we can't wait to watch this new CSI team do what they do best: follow the evidence,' concluded Kahl. The original CSI ran for fifteen series, launching three spin-offs (one of which was quite good, the other two, not so much) prior to wrapping with a two-hour film finale in 2015. It was the most-watched drama on the planet for seven consecutive years before being overtaken by NCIS. 'I'm excited to be bringing back the CSI franchise to all our fans who have been so loyal to us for all these years,' said executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer. 'CSI: Vegas opens a brand-new chapter in Las Vegas, the city where it all began. Facing an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab, a brilliant new team of forensic investigators must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to preserve and serve justice in Sin City,' says the official synopsis of the new show. Also returning will be Wallace Langham, who played lab tech David Hodges.
Great uses of popular music on the soundtracks of recent TV episodes, part the first. The latest episode of The Blacklist - Captain Kidd - and its superb incorporation on Anne Clark's 1984 techno trance epic 'Our Darkness' into the action.
Great uses of popular music on the soundtrack of recent TV episodes, part the second. The series' finale of the now extremely cancelledAmerican Gods using 'Life Song' by The Black Angels.
The stars of the BBC's Line Of Duty have taken time out from their duties tackling police corruption to help a Belfast football club go undercover. Three of the actors in the drama series have come together to buy new kits for two of the girls' teams at Belfast Celtic, as reported by the BBC News website.
Meanwhile the second episode of the current Line Of Duty series brought a predictably enthusiastic response from the Gruniad Morning Star. And, a predictably sneering and offensive one from some shit of no importance at the Torygraph. Or, two, in fact.
From The North favourite, Peaky Blinders has reportedly concluded three days of filming in Bolton town centre for the sixth series earlier this week.
From The North favourite Game Of Thrones is coming to the stage, with a theatre adaptation likely to be a major attraction in the West End and on Broadway. The show will open in 2023 and depict a pivotal gathering more than a decade before the events in George RR Martin's novels and the hit TV series. Some of the best-known characters from the epic story will be involved. The show will be brought to life by the British pair of playwright Duncan MacMillan and director Dominic Cooke. 'The production will boast a story centred around love, vengeance, madness and the dangers of dealing in prophecy, in the process revealing secrets and lies that have only been hinted at until now,' a statement said. The stage show, set during a grand jousting tournament that helped set in motion the subsequent events, 'ought to be spectacular,' Martin said. 'The seeds of war are often planted in times of peace,' he said. 'Few in Westeros knew the carnage to come when highborn and smallfolk alike gathered at Harrenhal to watch the finest knights of the realm compete in a great tourney, during the Year of the False Spring. It is a tourney oft referred during HBO's Game Of Thrones and in my novels, A Song Of Ice & Fire. And now at last, we can tell the whole story on the stage.' Characters who were present and went on to be major figures in the books and TV show include Robert Baratheon and Jaime Lannister. The author said that starting work with MacMillan and Cooke before the pandemic had been 'a treat - and I am eager for our collaboration to resume. Our dream is to bring Westeros to Broadway, to the West End, to Australia and, eventually, to a stage near you,' he added. MacMillan, whose plays include Lungs, People, Places & Things and 1984, said: 'I have such admiration for George's world and his characters. His generosity and trust during this process has been incredible. Working on this play during lockdown has felt like a real privilege. I can't wait until we can be back in a theatre to experience this together.' Cooke was artistic director of London's Royal Court Theatre from 2007 to 2013 and directed The Hollow Crown: The Wars Of The Roses, the TV adaptation of Shakespeare's plays. 'One of George's inspirations for the original books was Shakespeare's history plays, so the material lends itself naturally to the theatre,' the director said. 'Duncan MacMillan and I are having a great time digging into the dynastic power struggles at the heart of George's extraordinary imaginative world - and he has been hugely generous and supportive towards both of us.' The announcement came after the news Martin has signed a five-year deal to develop more TV shows for HBO. A prequel series, House Of The Dragon, set three hundred years before the events of Game Of Thrones, is expected to be broadcast next year, while several other TV spin-offs are also already in the works.
It seems that Netflix's forthcoming adaptation of The Sandman is continuing to grow its already impressive cast. According to DCTV.News, Cassie Clare has been cast as Mazikeen. Created by Neil Gaiman and artists Kelley Jones in 1990, the character debuted in Sandman issue twenty two (Seasons Of Mist, Part One). A devoted ally of Lucifer, she serves as a servant to The Lord Of Hell, even leaving with him for Earth when he retired. Clare is not the first actress to play the character of Mazikeen. Lesley-Ann Brandt has portrayed her in the Netflix series Lucifer opposite Tom Ellis. It is not known how significant Clare's role will be in the series, given the character played a relatively small role in The Sandman. The series was given an eleven episode order from Warner Brothers and Netflix. Gaiman is set to executive produce with David Goyer and showrunner Allan Heinberg. Production on the series was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which luckily gave the creative team time to perfect the scripts. Thankfully though, production on the highly anticipated series is finally underway - as detailed recently on this very blog. The series features Tom Sturridge as the title character, Charles Dance as Roderick Burgess, Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer, Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne, Boyd Holbrook as The Corinthian, Stephen Fry as Fiddler's Green, Asim Chaudhry as Abel and Sanjeev Bhaskar as Cain.
The Applause Store website has confirmed this week that filming on the S series of From The North favourite Qi will begin 'soon' (presumably, next month once lockdown has ended and they can actually get some sort of an audience into The London Studios.
From The North favourite The Brokenwood Mysteries has recently returned to TV screens in its native New Zealand for its seventh series as this - rather spoilerific - article confirms. There's still no news as to when the six new episodes will be turning up in the UK on the Drama Channel. But, hopefully, it shouldn't be too long.
Bridgerton fans will not be getting more Regency-era romance just yet. It seems that we can only trust news straight from Lady Whistledown her very self, because fans of hit Netflix series have been the target of an April Fools' trick. Excitement generated after The Tab (no, me neither) revealed that the second series of Bridgerton would have a surprise premiere next week. But it turns out, 'the announcement was merely a practical joke.' Although production on the second series isn't set to begin until this spring, the news source pretended this was a ploy to 'shock viewers.' How desperately adult of them. April Fools? Are you twelve?
Christopher Eccleston has explained why he reprised his role as The Doctor in a Big Finish audio drama, saying that now was 'the right time' to return to the character. Or, in other words, it's the only work he can get at the moment and he needs the bread. Big Ecc, who played The Doctor in the popular long-running BBC family SF drama in 2005 (you knew that, right?), told Doctor Who Magazine that he had been asked to return before - notably for the 2013 fiftieth anniversary episode - but that it hadn't worked out. 'I'd been asked on a few occasions, but it wasn't the right time because of various things about where I was in my personal and professional life. And then, it became the right time. We talked about it at the convention [2019's GallifreyOne in Los Angeles] and then they contacted Sara Elman, who's my VoiceOver agent. I had a look at the scripts and I was really encouraged by the quality of them. And here we are.' On why he wanted to revisit The Doctor character, he added: 'What convinces a bricklayer to build a wall? What convinces a plumber to plumb? What convinces you to do your job? First of all, it's not a fashionable thing to say - and because we're all English, we don't talk about these things - but I'm an actor and the way I pay my mortgage and support my children in by acting. So it's paid work. Secondly, as I've always said, I have a great love for the character. I've always said that.'
If you're looking for something well-fascinating to read over the Easter weekend, dear blog reader, allow Keith Telly Topping to point your web browser in the general direction of Shaun Curran's superb investigative think-piece The Mystery Of 'Lost' Rock Genius Lee Mavers on the BBC Culture website.
Or, on a somewhat more contemporary note, Sirin Kale of the Vice website's in-depth piece Insiders On What Happened in the Days Before Britain's First Lockdown is, also, worthy of a few moments of your time.
Or, if you're looking for something with far more potential comedy value than either of those, ABC News's Some Capitol Riot Suspects Apologise As Consequences Sink In by Jacques Billeaud and Michael Tarm may well be right up your collective straße, dear blog reader. Containing, as it does, the following gem: 'Confronted with compelling video and photographic evidence in court, dozens of rioters have apologised and expressed regret as the consequences of their actions have started to sink in. The ramifications include potential job losses, financial ruin and possible time behind bars.' Which, this blogger is sure you'll agree, is effing hilarious.
And now, dear blog reader ...
Serenity. For some reason, The Horror Channel was playing Joss Whedon's flop Firefly movie spin-off last weekend - work that one out if you can? First time this blogger had watched it in several years, as it happens. And, it actually stood up pretty well though it retained that vague air of being, perhaps, a little bit too clever for its own good which so harmed its box office receipts back in 2005.
Berbarian Sound Studio. Peter Strickland's suitably twisted, creepy little tribute to the Italian Giallo horror movie genre of the 1970s which benefited from a strong and impressive central performance by - the always great - Toby Jones
Moon. Duncan Jones's compelling 2009 debut, with Sam Rockwell giving two of his best performances. With it's sparse narrative and minimalist, low-budget design it was (and remains) a suitably strange and moving experience.
The Hippopotamus. John Jencks' fine adaptation of the Stephen Fry novel, with a great central turn by Roger Allam as the jaded, aging alcoholic poet-turned-theatre critic-turned-detective.
Mississippi Grind. 'It's Machu Picchu time!'
Contact. Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe and a Carl Sagan source text ... What's not to love?
Motherless Brooklyn. Edward Norton's excellent adaptation of the Jonathan Lethem novel. This blogger has always been a bit of a sucker for the look of 1950s New York, if it's done well. And this is done really well.
Eye In The Sky. Worth it for several reasons but, mostly, for Alan Rickman in his final film role being as deliciously world-weary and cynical as ever.
No Country For Old Men. One of the Coen Brothers' most extreme movies, yet it shares the jet-black humour of Fargo, Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, Barton Finket al.
You Were Never Really Here. 'Joe, wake up. It's a beautiful day!'
Colette. From The North favourite Keira's finest one hundred and twelve minutes.
Absence Of Malice. That Paul Newman didn't win an Oscar for this but did for The Colour Of Money is shameful. Then again you, could say the same about a dozen other, previous, movies featuring him.
High Rise. Proof that the works of JG Ballard are pretty much unfilmable. Unless you're Ben Wheatley, obviously.
The Hole. A reminder that before he went mad-as-a-mad-bastard, Laurence Fox occasionally used to be an actor. Keira Knightley, on the other hand, there's never been any doubt that she's an actress.
The Quiet Ones. A definitive example of the Mark Kermode-described strain of 'quiet, quiet, quiet, bang!' school of psychological horror. Pretty good, in patches, though it would've been nice if Hammer had spent a bit more money on it ...
The Awakening. 'Boys believe in Santa Claus and The Tooth Fairy. I'm sure some of them even believe in God.'
The Young Ones. 'Do you dig graves?''Yeah, they're all right!'
Japan: Earth's Enchanted Islands. Because Michelle Dockery's husky-voiced narration on this charming and handsome natural history series is always guaranteed to give this blogger The Horn.
A letter from the future Sir Paul McCartney (MBE) settling a 'debt' for a missing holiday blanket is going up for auction. The singer allegedly 'made off' with the alleged bedding after staying at a farmhouse with fellow Quarrymen bandmate George Harrison in North Wales. Decades later, he was reminded by owner Irene Brierley that she was o Allegedly. ne blanket short. He responded with a cheque for thirty smackers and his accompanying letter to her is now being sold off. Sir Paul and Harrison became friendly with the Brierley family after taking a hitchhiking holiday in 1958. The pair had knocked at the door of their farmhouse in Harlech, Gwynedd, asking to pitch their tent in a field. But after a downpour on their first night, they sought refuge inside and ended up staying the week. They became friendly with the young John Brierley, a musician himself and, later, sat in with his local skiffle group The Vikings during a performance at The Queen's Hotel pub in the nearby town. Brierley also recalled several days of playing snooker and listening to Elvis Presley's first LP, as well as Sir Paul banging away on the family piano trying to work out the solo in the middle of the Buddy Holly song, 'Think It Over'. The following year the pair returned to Harlech, which is when the alleged blanket was allegedly taken. The alleged bedding incident stayed with Brierley's mother long after Beatlemania swept the globe and, in the 1980s, she wrote to Sir Paul to remind him. He responded to her letter writing: 'Dear Mrs Brierley (Irene), Your letter reached me eventually and I was sorry to hear about my "debt." I remember well the fun we had in Harlech and hope the enclosed cheque will settle our differences. Excuse the scrawl as I'm trying to write this on a bouncing express train! I was very sorry to hear about your hubby - he was a very nice man. Please give my best to your boys. Kindest regards, Paul (McCartney).' The letter has now been put up for sale through the Beatles memorabilia specialists Tracks, with a starting price of three thousand knicker. The alleged current location of the alleged blanket has not been revealed. Allegedly.
G Gordon Liddy, the notorious, convicted Watergate burglar who subsequently became a controversial radio talk-show host, actor and best-selling author after his release from The Slammer, has died at the age of ninety. Liddy remained unapologetic for his part in the hair-brained scheme to bug the Democrats' HQ at the Watergate complex during the Republicans' 1972 erection campaign. The scandal led to a - magnificently botched - White House cover-up and, eventually, to the resignation of then President Nixon. Born George Gordon Battle Liddy in New Jersey in 1930, Liddy claimed to have been a frail boy who was inspired by the radio speeches of Adolf Hitler (who only had one) which residents in his German-American neighbourhood were listening to at the time. 'If an entire nation could be changed, lifted out of weakness to extraordinary strength, so could one person,' he wrote in his - completely mad-as-toast - autobiography, recalling how he also roasted and ate a rat at the age of eleven to overcome his fear of rodents. Having served in the army and graduated from law school, Liddy joined the FBI. At the age of twenty nine, Liddy became the youngest Bureau Supervisor in Washington. A protégé of deputy director Cartha DeLoach, Liddy became part of J Edgar Hoover's personal staff and one of his ghostwriters. Amongst his fellow agents, however, he had a reputation for recklessness - if not complete barking madness - and was known primarily for two outrageous incidents. The first was an arrest in Kansas during 'a black bag job'; he was released after the personal intervention of Clarence Kelley, former FBI agent and chief of the Kansas City Police. The second was Liddy running an FBI background check on his future wife before their marriage in 1957, which Liddy later referred to as 'purely a routine precautionary measure.' Liddy resigned from The Feds in 1962, worked with his father as a patent attorney in New York until 1966 and, eventually, moved to the White House. Beginning in 1970, he served with Gordon Strachan and David Young as an aide to Domestic Affairs Advisor John Ehrlichman at the behest of Bud Krogh, who had previously worked with Liddy at the Treasury Department. Liddy nominally served as General Counsel to the finance committee of the Committee to Re-erect the President from 1971 to 1972. Subsequently, Krogh, Liddy, Young and Erlichman were all indicted for conspiracy to commit burglary in September 1973. At CRP, Liddy concocted several plots in early 1972, collectively under the title Operation Gemstone. Some of the extreme ideas that Liddy and his 'Plumbers' colleague, the equally fruitcake Howard Hunt a former CIA officer, came up with included kidnapping anti-war protest organisers and transporting them to Mexico during the Republican National Convention, luring mid-level Democratic campaign officials to a house boat in Miami, where they would be secretly photographed in compromising positions with prostitutes, plotting to kill Nixon critics and firebombing the office building of political opponents. Most of their ideas were rejected by Attorney General John Mitchell (who became CRP manager in March 1972), but a few were given the go-ahead by Nixon administration officials, including the 1971 break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in Los Angeles. Ellsberg had leaked The Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. At some point, Liddy was also instructed to break into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate. At least, that was their story and they stuck to it (or, variations on it) throughout the decades. However, the botched burglary, cover-up and subsequent investigation snowballed into one of America's biggest political scandals. Liddy, Hunt and five others were arrested and faced charges of conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping. Liddy was the only one who refused to cooperate with the prosecution. He was sentenced to twenty years in The Joint and served nearly five years before his sentence was commuted in 1977 by Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Years later, Liddy said: 'I'd do it again for my President.' In 1980, once the Watergate offences statute of limitations had expired, Liddy published his autobiography, Will, which sold more than a million copies and was made into a television movie. In it, he claimed that he once planned, with Hunt, to kill the journalist Jack Anderson, based on a literal interpretation of a Nixon White House statement, 'we need to get rid of this Anderson guy.' He started a security firm and wrote several other best-selling books. He later joined with Timothy Leary for a series of debates on multiple college campuses and, similarly, worked with Al Franken in the late 1990s. Liddy served as a radio host from 1992 until his retirement in 2012. In 1994 the British documentary company Brian Lapping Associates sent producers Norma Percy and Paul Mitchell to interview many of the conspirators for its series five-part Watergate - subsequently, the basis for Fred Emery's best-selling book on the scandal - in which an unrepentant Liddy talked, frankly - admittedly, sometimes amusingly - about his role in the whole malarkey. He was filmed at home while sitting in front of his sizeable collection of firearms. Liddy appeared in the 1993 straight-to-video Encyclopedia Brown: The Case Of The Burgled Baseball Cards as Corky Lodato. In Miami Vice, he acted with John Diehl, who would later go on to portray Liddy himself in Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995). Liddy's other television acting credits included appearances in Airwolf, MacGyver and The Highwayman. He also acted in several movies including Street Asylum, Feds, Adventures In Spying, Camp Cucamonga and Rules Of Engagement. In 1986 he appeared at WrestleMania II as a guest judge for a boxing match between Mister T versus Rowdy Roddy Piper. Liddy was also an interviewee in the documentary The US Versus John Lennon. Comic book author Alan Moore has stated that the character of The Comedian from Watchmen was based, in a large part, on Liddy. In the 1979 TV adaptation of John Dean's Watergate book Blind Ambition, Liddy was played by William Daniels. In the SF series Stargate SG-1, the character of the (somewhat incompetent) air force spy Harold Maybourne (played by Tom McBeath) was given the nickname 'G Gordon' by Jack O'Neill. Liddy was married to Frances Purcell-Liddy for fifty three years until her death. The couple had five children: Thomas, Alexandra, Grace, James and Raymond.
Yeovil Town's captain Lee Collins has died at the age of thirty two. Collins began his career at Wolverhampton Wanderers and spent time at Port Vale, Barnsley, Northampton Town, Mansfield Town and Forest Green Rovers before joining Yeovil in 2019. He played his last game for the club in February against Stockport. A spokesperson for Avon and Somerset Police said Collins''sudden' death was not being treated as suspicious and had been referred to the coroner. Yeovil were due to play Altrincham in the National League on Friday but the game was postponed. 'All at Yeovil Town Football Club are mourning the loss of club captain Lee Collins,' a club statement read. 'Lee sadly passed away yesterday and our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends. We ask everyone to respect the family's privacy at this time.' BBC Radio Somerset's Yeovil commentator Sheridan Robins told BBC Sport: 'The main thing that everyone will be feeling is a deep sense of shock. He was a real winner. I remember when he first joined the club we were at rock bottom having been relegated to the National League. In his interview he was said he wasn't there to make friends, he wanted to win. He wore his heart on his sleeve on the pitch and was known for his leadership, he was the epitome of a captain, he did everything he could in that ninety minutes to win the three points.' Collins had been out of the side with injury for large parts of the current season, but returned to the bench last week in the three-one win over Barnet. 'After the game I spoke to Yeovil manager Darren Sarll and he told me how pleased he was to have Lee back,' added Robins. 'He was an old fashioned centre-half and we've not seen him play a lot this season because of injury.' Mansfield Town owner John Radford - for whom Collins played from 2015 to 2017 - tweeted he was 'shocked and saddened' to learn of Collins' death. Barnsley said they would pay tribute to Collins at Friday's home Championship game against Reading. Collins was part of the Wolves side, which included Wales keeper Wayne Hennessey and former Bolton midfielder Mark Davies, that reached the semi-finals of the FA Youth Cup in 2005, losing on penalties to a Southampton team featuring Theo Walcott.

From The North's currently regular weekly bloggerisationisms update continues, dear blog reader.
The third episode of From The North favourite Line Of Duty was, certainly, a rip-roaring rollercoaster of a ride and got the usual tongue-lapping fannish response from the Gruniad Morning Star. And, the usual cry-baby whinging shat from That Awful Singh Woman at the Torygraph.
The Torygraph, meanwhile, were busy having their own brown-tongued love affair with another From The North favourite, Unforgotten. Which concluded its fourth series last week with the 'brace-for-impact' exit of the best reason for watching the drama, From The North favourite Nicola Walker's Cassie Stuart. To be fair, the Gruniadloved that, too.
The early trailers for the forthcoming fourth series of From The North favourite Star Trek: Discovery and the second series of From The North favourite Star Trek: Picard have both been released this week. And, jolly fine both of them look, too.
Which brings us to ...
Videodrome. 'Long live the new flesh!'
Inherent Vice. Great performances from an impressive cast, particularly Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin and Katherine Waterston.
The Love Witch. Wow! What a total and utter trip. Had this one on digi-download for a year at least and yet he never got around to watching it until this very week. Yes, dear blog reader, yer actual Keith Telly Topping is, indeed, sometimes a right idiot!
Dulcima. A welcome re-acquaintance with an old favourite on Talking Pictures on Bank Holiday Monday. First encountered on the BBC back in the 1970s, this blogger had quite forgotten what a thoroughly fine - and very dark - movie Dulcima was (and, still is).
Doctor Terror's House Of Horrors. Another Friday night Talking Pictures special and, still to this day, one of this blogger's favourite movies. Ever. Bar none. 'Aw man, you don't wanna play around with voodoo!'
Mortimer & Whitehouse Gone Fishing. The series has received widespread praise for its warmth, charm and gentle poignancy and that is entirely justified. It's like watching a couple of old friends messing about and being very silly on a riverbank (via UKTVPlay). Basically, because that's exactly what it is. And, no fish were harmed during the making of this programme. Except for the ones that were cooked and eaten, obviously. But they deserved it. Because they were bad fish. Probably.
Dave Gorman's Modern Life Is Goodish. Always a good way of cheering yourself up on a cold, wet, Tuesday afternoon in April when you can't go out because you're still shielding from the dreaded lurgy.
That'll Be The Day. 'Good game, golf. Teaches you how to put things in holes.'
The 1980 Shoestring Christmas episode. Masterpiece.
Zodiac. 'I can tell you that he was not into people. The party that Darlene threw, people were just supposed to show up, drink beer, help paint, but this guy showed up in a suit and just sat in a chair all by himself all night long and didn't talk to anyone. Darlene told me to stay away from him. She was scared of him. Couple weeks later she was dead.'
Forty Four Inch Chest. 'I want you dead. I think you owe me that. I do. Because that's what you've done to me. You've fuckin' killed me.' Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson ... what's not to love?
The Fear Of God: Twenty Five Years Of The Exorcist. The 'festival cut' of Mark Kermode and Nick Freand-Jones's astonishing 1998 documentary on the making of the scariest movie ever. It's still available on iPlayer and is eighty minutes of the most fascinating discussions on the nature of evil imaginable.
[spooks}: The Greater Good. 'Anything?''Not a sausage. The self-perpetuating algorithm I wrote last night is constantly updating, revising all potential vantage points.''Sudoku not cutting it, then?' The history of big-screen spin-offs from cancelled TV shows is not a particularly inspiring one. Producers seem to blandly assume that because they've made a once-popular success on telly, audiences will be hay to pay to go and watch something at a cinema which they once got for free. Many such big-screen spin-offs are announced or speculated about and then end up failing to secure the necessary funding (the proposed 24 movie, for example, or the regular attempts by Idris Elba and Neil Cross to get a Luther film off the ground - announced, seemingly, every couple of years followed by a period of no news and then, surprise surprise, a new TV series! Is the recently announced Peaky Blinders movie-in-place-of-a-seventh-series going to suffer the same fate?) Those that do get made tend to either be financial flops - Serenity, the second X-Files movie - or critical and financial flops - ala Keith Lemon: The Movie. Taking From The North favourite [spooks] onto the big-screen shortly after it had been cancelled by the BBC after ten series seemed like a similarly woolly conceit. On purely financial grounds, however, it actually worked on a small scale (the movie only cost a million quid to make and made back about five million in receipts). Artistically, it's not bad - a good cast and a decent (if more than a bit bonkers) script. Nevertheless, there was a feeling watching The Greater Good that it would've made a really good two-part TV story. Check it out on iPlayer if you haven't already seen it dear blog reader and see if you agree with this blogger.
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. 'Never, never criticise Muslims; only Christians. And Jews a little bit.' The history of big-screen spin-offs from cancelled TV shows is not a particularly inspiring one. Part the second. However, there are afew exceptions. And, this is one of them. 'Get rid of her, Lynn, she's a drunk and a racist! I'll tolerate one, but not both.'
When We Were Kings. 'Come get me, sucker, I'm dancing!'
Storyville: The Hijacker Who Vanished - The Mystery Of DB Cooper. Another 'iPlayer saves the afternoon' type scenario for those long, lonely, lockdown days.
The character actor Paul Ritter, who has died of a brain tumour aged fifty four, came to the notice of wide audiences only later in his career - as the long-haired wizard and would-be biographer Eldred Worple in the sixth of the Harry Potter film series, The Half-Blood Prince (2009); as the power plant worker Anatoly Dyatlov in the HBO/Sky miniseries Chernobyl (2019) and, from 2011 onwards, as the inexplicably shirtless Martin Goodman in Channel Four's Friday Night Dinner with Tamsin Greig. In all three roles he was never recognisable as whoever he really was. Because Ritter was an actor who disappeared inside his characters. He always seemed to be patiently volcanic and, on the other hand, anonymously scrofulous. When he was on stage - he appeared often with the RSC and the National Theatre, especially - audiences tried (and usually failed) to pin down his identity. He took the role of Shakespeare's great orator Ulysses in Troilus & Cressida in his underpants (Old Vic, 2000), a mysterious postman in Christmas (Bush Theatre, 2003) by Simon Stephens with, said Gruniad Morning Star critic Michael Billington, 'wheedling aggression [and a] cawing, nasal voice that mixes Manchester with Mile End' and John Major in Peter Morgan's The Audience (Gielgud Theatre, 2013), attending his weekly meeting with Helen Mirren's Her Maj, as a fidgeter with a sly flirtatiousness and the guilty secret of only having three O-levels to his name. The more Ritter showed himself, the more he remained hidden, a definition, one could suggest, of all great acting. Ritter was not exactly secretive, but he let the acting do the talking. He was born Simon Paul Adams in Kent, though both his parents came from Oldham. His father, Kenneth, who had relocated the family to Gravesend, was a fitter and turner in power stations for the Central Electricity Generating Board - he had attended the same Ward Street Central school in Oldham as Eric Sykes, whom Paul played with uncanny accuracy in a 2014 TV movie about Tommy Cooper. His mother, Joan, was a school secretary who had been a classmate of Bernard Cribbins. Paul had four older sisters. As a child, young Paul enjoyed watching television documentaries, including Michael Apted's Seven Up! Musically he was drawn to Motörhead, explaining inscrutably that the rock band 'got me through some very tough times as a teenager.' He was educated at Gravesend Grammar School For Boys and St John's College, Cambridge, where he took a degree in German and French. In a year abroad as part of his studies at Cambridge - where his friends and contemporaries included Stephen Mangan and Paul Chahidi, the television writer Sarah Phelps, the journalist James Harding and the playwright Jez Butterworth - he walked on at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. After graduating, he went back to Germany for a year and, on returning to Britain, changed his name to Paul Ritter as there was already a Simon Adams on Equity's books; he took the stage-name from a German actor whom he admired. He then went straight into regional rep and fringe theatre in London, appearing in plays at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill and the Bush, including Snoo Wilson's Darwin's Flood (1994), alongside James Nesbitt as an Ulster Jesus. He was soon on the radar of the RSC and the Royal Court, appearing with the former in their 1996 Stratford-upon-Avon season of Troilus & Cressida and Webster's The White Devil and the latter in a 1998 Young Writers' season and, in 2002, in Butterworth's second play, The Night Heron, in which he played an intimidated policeman caught up in a farrago of sacked Cambridge college gardeners trying to take revenge on their former employers by fixing a poetry competition. The National Theatre first came calling in 2000, when he appeared in Howard Davies's revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Di Trevis's staging of Pinter's unfilmed 1978 screenplay of Proust's Remembrance Of Things Past. Subsequent NT productions included Patrick Marber's Howard Katz and Tom Stoppard's The Coast Of Utopia, in which Ritter played Karl Marx. Later in that decade at the National in 2007 he was a brilliantly funny Robin Day (cruel wit and even more cruel glasses) in Nicholas Wright's The Reporter, directed by Richard Eyre, a hilarious, floppy-haired employee in a revival of The Hothouse, Pinter's black satire and, in 2010, a creepy government policy wonk in Tamsin Oglesby's Really Old, Like Forty Five, devising two-speed pavement strategies and euthanasia directives for the elderly. His notable television appearances included an effete, sinister intelligence officer in The Game (2014), the wrong Dave Stewart in Bob Dylan: Knockin' On Dave's Door (2017, with his friend Eddie Marsan as Dylan in Sky's Urban Myths strand) and a plausibly smooth Jeremy Hutchinson QC in The Trial Of Christine Keeler (2019). His CV also included appearances in On A Clear Day, Son Of Rambow, Hannibal Rising, Waking The Dead, Land Girls, Vera, The Hollow Crown, The Bletchley Circle, No Offence, as Jimmy Perry in We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story, Their Finest, Neil Gaiman's Likely Stories, Cold Feet, The Capture and Belgravia. He reportedly loved working at the Old Vic with Matthew Warchus on that theatre's community work in homeless shelters. He had appeared there not only as that early Ulysses but also as a safari-suited Reg - trapped in adolescent hobby-filled dreams - in a 2008 revival of Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests (with his old mate Mangan as the libertine librarian), which won Ritter a TONY award nomination when it transferred to New York. Apart from Harry Potter, he also appeared in the Bond movie Quantum Of Solace (2008), as a brutally discouraging school teacher in Sam Taylor-Wood's John Lennon biopic, Nowhere Boy (2009) and in Juan Carlos Medina's horror story of Victorian murders, The Limehouse Golem (2016). He last appeared on stage in a 2016 Warchus revival of his great hit, Art, by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton, a comedy about modernism, masculinity and friendship. Ritter, a fan of Liverpool FC, said that he always enjoyed football commentary on the radio, recalling that as a child he was not allowed to stay up late for big events. As a result he 'became obsessed with having my ear pressed to a tinny transistor. That thrill has never left me.' Ritter is survived his wife, Polly Radcliffe, a senior research fellow at the national addiction centre in King's College London, whom he married in 1996, their sons, Frank and Noah and his four sisters.
'News' of the actor Tom Baker's death spread quickly across social media early this week causing 'concern' among fans across the world who were shocked (and stunned) by this revelation. However, the report was quickly confirmed as a complete - and, rather sick - hoax and merely the latest in a string of fake celebrity death reports. Thankfully, the popular actor and national treasure is alive and well. Whereas some fans believed the initial claims, others were immediately sceptical, perhaps learning their lesson from the previous fake death reports emerging about celebrities over recent months. Some pointed out that the news had not been carried on any British news network. On 8 April the actor's representatives officially confirmed that Tom is most definitely not dead. 'He joins the long list of celebrities who have been victimised by this hoax. He's still alive and well, stop believing what you see on the Internet,' they said. Fans have expressed anger at the fake report saying it was 'reckless, distressing and hurtful' to fans of the much loved actor. Although, one could suggest it was more 'reckless, distressing and hurtful' to Mad Tom himself. A recent poll conducted for the Celebrity Post website reportedly showed that a large majority (seventy nine per cent) of respondents think those Tom Baker death rumours are 'not funny anymore.' Which is very shocking as it appears to suggest that twenty one per cent of respondents think that they are funny - a, frankly, quite shocking (and stunning) right shite state of affairs. This is the Twenty First Century, dear blog reader. It's horrifying, isn't it?
Prince Philip, of course, also died this week, aged ninety nine. This blogger has never, particularly, been a fan of the Royal Family as an institution but he quite likes some of them as people and Phil The Greek, for all of his faults, was always one of those. It seems difficult to comprehend these days but, once upon a time - back in the 1950s - he was seen as something of a moderniser in a very old fashioned establishment and wasn't that well-liked because of this - as detailed, quite beautifully, in Richard Samders' 2015 Secret History documentary, Prince Philip - The Plot To Make A King. He was, for instance, vocally supportive of the BBC's right to screen their notorious 1954 adaptation of Nineteen Eighty Four, famously announcing that he and the Queen had 'thoroughly enjoyed' the broadcast - at a time when angry questions were being asked about the production in parliament and the tabloids. He could also be amusingly self-deprecating. In an address to the General Dental Council in 1960, for example, he coined a new word to describe his occasional public blunders: '"Dontopedalogy" is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, a science which I have practised for a good many years! Later in life, he suggested that his comments may have contributed to the perception that he was 'a cantankerous old sod' (quoted in Gyles Brandreth's 2004 book Philip & Elizabeth: Portrait Of A Marriage. He did have an unfortunate habit of saying some very unfortunate things over the years, of course let it be noted. So, a complex figure - a man with flaws but with some appealing qualities too. He was a passionate advocate for wildlife and the environment, although his decision to shoot a tiger while on a trip to India in 1961 caused a righteous furore. Portrayed, variously over the years, by Stewart Granger (The Royal Romance Of Charles & Diana), Christopher Lee (Charles & Diana: A Royal Love Story), David Threlfall (The Queen's Sister), James Cromwell (The Queen) and Finn Elliot, Matt Smith, Tobias Menzies, and Jonathan Pryce (The Crown), he is survived by Elizabeth his wife of seventy three years, four children (Charles, Anne and the other two) and numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren. At least a couple of whom may, one day, be kings. Just, you know, for some context.
Isn't that always how things work out, dear blog reader? You're just settling down with your honey on a patch of damp grass on the floodplain next to the river to listen to your one hundred bestest favourite tunes (volume five) when an interfering 'orse turns up to spoil the party? One glances, nervously, over ones shoulder at the beast, appealing to its best instincts not to rabidly attack ones girlfriend and turn her into a crazed, axe-wielding homicidal maniac. That's three times this week, alone ...
On Wednesday, this blogger managed to leave the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House and go into town to do the weekly shopping for the first time since he started his government-advised shielding in early February. First time to Marks & Spankers since January. First time in McDonalds for ... God only knows how long. Exhausting but, surprisingly 'normal' (ish). And the McNuggets were delicious. 
Also this week the Wizzard reunion tour, it would seem, did not go as well as had been hoped ... 'Mummy, what's a Werewolf?''Shut up, kid, and comb your face.'
And finally, dear blog reader, here's one of the odder prog-rock power trios of the 1970s. Get yer 'air cut, hippies and get a bath, y'stink. And Oddie, have a shave an'all, you'll never get on Top Of The Pops looking like that. Nice threads on the lead singer, though.
It was pointed out to this blogger that this might be considered to be 'the most Seventies thing ever.' This blogger noted that, indeed, the only way it could possibly be any more Seventies would be if Roy Wood rocked up. Oh, hang on ...

Another week, another bloggerisationisms update here at yer actual From The North, dear blog reader. Containing, as it does, all of the usual rubbish for your consideration. But, plus point, at least it's free. Or, if not free, then at least extremely cheap. Onward, ever onward .... 
The BBC has confirmed that it received one hundred and nine thousand, seven hundred and forty one whinges from members the public over its coverage of the Duke of Edinburgh's death. All of whom, seemingly, having nothing better to do with their time or energy. The corporation cleared its schedules to cover the news when Prince Philip died last Friday, at the age of ninety nine. That night's episode of EastEnders and the MasterChef final were replaced by news programmes broadcast simultaneously on both BBC1 and BBC2, while BBC4 was taken off-air completely. For what it's worth, this blogger had no problem whatsoever with the BBC1 coverage - it was a major news event and it needed to be covered, only a brain-damaged moron or the victim of some cruel medical experiments would fail to acknowledge that; and, although he would have preferred BBC2 to have been left to carry any non-royal-death-related programming available, this blogger fully understood the horns of the dilemma the Beeb faced knowing that, whatever they did some abject smears of no importance at the Daily Scum Mail, the Daily Scum Express and the Torygraph were going to criticise them anyway. The one thing he did have a problem with was the closing down of BBC4's schedule for the night and replacing it with a caption informing potential viewers that they should retune to BBC1, immediately. What, exactly, was achieved by that decision is entirely beyond this blogger's comprehension. The BBC said, rightly, that the Duke's death was 'a significant event which generated a lot of interest both nationally and internationally.' It added: 'We acknowledge some viewers were unhappy with the level of coverage given and impact this had on the billed TV and Radio schedules.' Which is putting it mildly; some viewers (just over one hundred thousand, seemingly) weren't merely upset, they were bleeding apoplectic. 'We do not make such changes without careful consideration and the decisions made reflect the role the BBC plays as the national broadcaster, during moments of national significance,' the BBC continued. 'We are grateful for all feedback and we always listen to the response from our audiences.' One or two people even believed them. The corporation's fortnightly complaints report was published on Thursday. The figure makes the coverage of Prince Philip's death the most whinged-about piece of programming in BBC history. BBC1 moved the MasterChef final to 14 April, so viewers were - eventually - able to find out who had won the popular amateur cookery series (see below). The BBC was, of course, not alone in adjusting its schedule to reflect Prince Philip's death, with ITV and Channel Four both also broadcasting extended news coverage. However, many viewers turned away from such programming as the day wore on, with ITV's Friday night audience declining by a whopping sixty per cent in comparison to the previous week, according to overnight figures. BBC1's audience also dropped by seven per cent week-on-week during the coverage about Prince Philip, while BBC2, unsurprisingly, lost two-thirds of its audience. The most-watched programme on a single channel that evening was Channel Four's Gogglebox, with 4.2 million overnight viewers. At least a portion of whom, one suspects, were not regular viewers but were, simply, relieved to have something - anything - to watch that wasn't about the death of the Duke of Edinburgh. The BBC put a dedicated form on its website later that evening to allow viewers to whinge about the extent of the TV coverage, in recognition of the volume of complaints which it had already received up to that point. The form was subsequently removed the following afternoon, after the number of whinges began to fall, the corporation claimed. For a not insignificant number of viewers, replacing the final of MasterChef with programming celebrating the life of Prince Philip was the wrong decision. Although, quite how many more would have complained if the BBC had done the opposite is the unanswered question (but, we can probably have a decent guess at the manifest shitstorm that would have caused). What is interesting is how many older viewers were amongst those who complained. Proving that not everyone in this country over the age of fifty has, like the Daily Scum Mail and the Daily Scum Express, their collective tongue rammed so far up royalty's collective chuff that there's no room for anyone else to get in there for a right good lick. And this blogger says that, as previously discussed, as someone with no great love but a reasonable amount of (sometimes grudging) respect for at least some of the royal family (Prince Philip included). Traditional 'linear' TV has been a reliable friend to many during months of lockdown and, whilst younger viewers have embraced streaming services and video on demand around twenty million of us are still watching freeview TV at peak-time each evening. Schedules, even in an age of YouTube, iPlayer and Netflix, still matter to many. It is also worth reflecting that, in these days of online complaints forms, it is easier to register a whinge than it ever was in the era of trying to get through to the BBC switchboard or writing a stern letter of dischuffment over some nonsense or other. Indeed, in a sign that the BBC is destined to be criticised by all sides no matter how hard it tries, one hundred and sixteen people - with, definitely, nothing better to do with their time - reportedly whinged to the corporation that the BBC was making it too easy for whingers to whinge. Not all the whinges were about the extent of the BBC's coverage, let it be noted. Almost four hundred people whinged that Prince Andrew had been featured in programmes surrounding his father's death despite his close association with the late financier - and convicted sex-offender - Jeffrey Epstein and the Prince's stubborn refusal to answer questions posed to him by the FBI about what he may or may not have got up to with underage girls. A further two hundred and thirty three people whinged - ludicrously - that BBC presenters were not wearing 'sufficiently respectful clothes,' with complaints that not all newsreaders were wearing black - an echo of the (wholly media-manufactured) controversy over the burgundy tie worn by Peter Sissons when he announced the death of the Queen Mother in 2002. Plus ça change, dear blog reader, plus c'est la même chose.
A former Nando's worker has become the latest winner of the BBC's popular cookery series MasterChef. Tom Rhodes was crowned champion after cooking a five-course lunch for lockdown heroes and serving up a dish at renowned restaurant Le Gavroche. The thirty one-year-old from Newcastle saw off competition from fellow finalists Mike Tomkins and Alexina Anatole. The final had, as previously noted, been extremely postponed following the death of the Duke of Edinburgh on Friday. The rescheduled show, broadcast on Wednesday evening, saw the final trio fight to impress hosts Gregg Wallace and John Torode with three signature dishes. But it was Rhodes' Japanese-infused starter, main and dessert which proved victorious, making him the long-running programme's seventeenth winner. Complimented for 'a style bordering on minimalism' by Wallace, Rhodes served a trio of oysters for the starter, including a beer-battered oyster with a Japanese sour plum mayonnaise. For Torode, it was Rhodes' main of reverse-seared ribeye steak topped with beetroot pickled in a Japanese seaweed and a wasabi leaf that was 'modern' and 'really very clever indeed.' His dessert of a lemon tart topped with black olive meringue also received universal praise from the hosts. Cos, let's face it, who doesn't love a nice bit of tart? 'What he's absolutely brilliant at is European-style of cookery, with Japanese flavourings,' Wallace said. Before adding 'cooking doesn't come any tougher than this.' Probably. Speaking after filming ended, Rhodes said that he would one day 'love to write a cookbook and have a cookery school. During the competition, I have realised my love for developing recipes and cooking for other people outside of my friends and family, so would love to do more of this after the show,' he said. First broadcast in 1990, MasterChef is one of the BBC's longest-running factual series and has inspired the popular spin-off MasterChef: The Professionals (and, the somewhat embarrassingly wretched Celebrity MasterChef too). The latest series was produced under coronavirus restrictions, with many of the series' traditional assignments adjusted to allow for social distancing. While viewers found out who won this week, Rhodes himself has had to keep his victory a secret since the end of last year, when filming concluded. He told BBC Breakfast on Thursday that the only other people who knew the result were his parents who were both sworn to secrecy. 'You've seen the clip last night where I rang my mum on screen,' he said. 'They've found it more difficult to keep secret than I have.' Rhodes said taking the trophy (which, presumably, he's also had to hide for the last four months) was 'a dream come true' and confirmed his further ambitions to become a food writer and maybe even open his own restaurant one day. This blogger, who lives in the same city as the winner, would like to see this happenstance if only because he once ate in, he presumes, the same Nandos in which Tom used to work and found the gaff a bit bland. Let's face it, Th' Toon needs all the good restuarants it can lay its hands on right about now. Tom said that he was able to practise his winning dish two or three times before the final, but has not cooked it again at home since. 'I'm waiting until I can cook it for somebody and I've got a lot of requests for that so far,' he said. When possible though, he plans to celebrate with 'a really good pizza' and 'maybe a bottle of red.' 
Large-toothed Scouse funster John Bishop allegedly 'got told off' by 'BBC bosses' (that's 'executives' only with less syllables for those who are hard of thinking) after revealing details about his Doctor Who role. Mind you, this breathlessly exciting 'news'was, admittedly, brought to us by that bastion of truthful, accurate and vitally important reportage Bang Showbiz. So, it's probably an idea to take it with not so much a pinch as a cellar-full of salt. The Liverpudlian actor had taken part in an online workshop for drama students and revealed that his upcoming character was also from the city. Which was so surprisingly, as most viewers probably imagined he was going to be playing a Martian, didn't they? This, the bullshit gossip website claims, 'was enough for producers to call him up.' Appearing on The Graham Norton Show this weekend, John further revealed: 'I'm the new companion to The Doctor. I'm allowed to say that, but that's about it. I did a thing for some drama students in Liverpool, a big Zoom thing and it was a Q&A just talking about acting, how you get into it, how you get into stand-up comedy. One of the questions was, "Can you tell us anything about your character in Doctor Who? Where does he come from?" I went, "Well where do you think he comes from? Have a guess!" I'm not Tom Cruise, I can act as long as the character happens to look and sound a lot like me. So, I just mentioned that the character was from Liverpool which then, somewhere on a Doctor Who website, someone picked it up - "There's a new character and he's from Liverpool, the story's based in Liverpool." Then the BBC phoned me up and said, "You've broken the cardinal sin, you've told them something about Doctor Who." And I went, "I haven't told them anything! Anybody who looks at me knows he's from Liverpool, let's be honest!"' During the same Zoom event An Evening With John Bishop, the actor also revealed that he had to turn down the role originally 'due to scheduling issues,' before the pandemic changed things and he was able to film alongside Jodie Whittaker. He explained: 'I met Chris Chibnall and he had this idea and this character. He'd seen me in a few things and he wanted to know if I'd be interested in Doctor Who. I was flattered but the problem was I was on tour when they were meant to be filming. So although I fancied it, I had to say no. And then the whole COVID thing happened. Lockdown arrived so I made a phone call and fortunately they had moved their filming dates. It now fits in perfectly - I'm doing Doctor Who up until July and then I go on the road again in September.' So, there you go, dear blog reader, John Bishop has also revealed that production on the next series of Doctor Who will be concluding until July. Let's see if he gets into any further bother with 'BBC bosses' over that. Over you, Bang Showbiz.
And, now, dear blog reader ...
Washes Whiter. Nicholas Baker's tremendous 1990 history of advertising on British TV is now available for viewing on both iPlayer (first episode only) and YouTube (episodes two to five). A superb collection of nostalgia (from its delicious pop-art titles to the vintage adverts themselves) and social history (notably its discussion of feminism in advertising which takes up two entire episodes). If you've never seen it before, you should have. Put that right, forthwith, you've no longer go any excuses not to. 
MacBeth (1971). 'Things without all remedy should be without regard. What's done is done.' Roman Polanski's blood-soaked horrorshow has aged remarkably well as an example of how to do Shakespeare as a gore-fest and Ken Tynan's script is genuinely politically subversive. Includes full-frontal nudity too (Hell, it was the Seventies) so, you know, double-delight. A plank of wood in the shape of Jon Finch as the titular character is about as interesting as a geet hard eye-watering smack in the knackers with a wet plimsoll but the rest of the cast (Francesca Annis and Martin Shaw most notably) are great. Even the late Keith Chegwin's Fleance is watchable. The Third Ear Band's score is suitably eerie and the location filming, including much use of Lindisfarne, Bamburgh, St Aidan's Church and North Charlton Moors near Alnwick, has never made Northumberland look ... well, wetter, actually. And bleaker. Polanski, famously, blamed production difficulties and going over budget on the 'lous weather.' You chose to film in the North East, pal, whose fault was that?
MacBeth (2006). 'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.' Geoffrey Wright's Australian adaptation of the same text avoids many of the traditional pitfalls of modernist Shakespeare adaptations as, although it uses a modern-day Melbourne gangster setting it largely maintains the gorgeous language of the original play. And, the casting of The We'yrd sisters as a trio of feral Goth schoolgirls (Miranda Nation, Chloe Armstrong and Kate Bell) is properly strange.
Bad Samaritan. Probably not a line on national heartthrob David Tennant's CV that he brags about over-much. Christ, it's a bad movie.
Prodigal Son. 'I'm going to be killed by a millennial. What a twist!' Back after two months in limbo and with excellent use of 'Ça Plane Pour Moi' in the opening scene. Plus, From The North favourite Alan Cumming going almost as deliciously-over-the-top-and-down-the-other-side as Michael Sheen does on a regular basis in the show. What's not to love?
The Big Short. 'Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry.'
Watergate. Paul Mitchell and Norma Percy's superb, enthralling, ground-breaking 1994 five-part BBC series, narrated by Fred Emery and featuring exclusive interviews with many of the key participants including Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Dean and Jeb Magruder as well as former President Gerald Ford is currently being repeated on BBC4 (and available on iPlayer). Still the most magnetic thing about the documentary remains that crazed loonthe late Gordon Liddy, sitting in front of his massive gun collection (reportedly, registered in his wife's name since, as a former felon, he wasn't eligible for a licence) talking with pride and not a small amount of glee about his nefarious skulduggery. All in the name of Richard Nixon, the only bloke involved in the whole malarkey not to end up with a criminal record. As Variety's Jeff Silverman wrote on first broadcast, the mini-series 'brilliantly chronicles the events - and their inevitability - that led to the national nightmare [of] Watergate. Funny, tragic, pathetic and probing, docu-dramatically stares down Watergate's smoking gun and makes its ultimate conclusion perfectly clear: Nixon's the one. Still. Now more than ever.'
Stan & Ollie. 'I'm never getting married again. I'm just going to find a woman I don't like and buy her a house.' A poignant, sweet, respectful and wholly good-hearted biopic of the beloved comedy duo. Great performances from Coogan and John C Reilly and a handsome recreation of 1950s Britain (both the best and the worst, thereof).
The Favourite. 'Must you rub it in? A man's dignity is the one thing that holds him back from running amok.''Sometimes, a lady likes to have some fun!'
Tom & Jerry: The Movie. As several movie critics have seemingly taken great delight in sneering to anyone that will listen, no it's not as good as the Fred Quimby/Hanna/Barbera 1950s shorts (nor, indeed, the Chuck Jones animations from a decade later). But it's still got Tom getting hit in the face with a steam iron, when is that ever not funny?
Picnic At Hanging Rock. 'Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place.'Still one of this blogger's desert island DVD choices. And it always will be.
Some desperately sad news, now, the actress Helen McCrory has died at the appallingly young age of fifty two. From The North favourite McCrory was best known for her roles in the films The Queen, The Special Relationship and the Harry Potter franchise and TV series including Peaky Blinders. Her husband, Damian Lewis, confirmed her death via Twitter, saying that McCrory had died 'peacefully at home.' Lewis said: 'I'm heartbroken to announce that after an heroic battle with cancer, the beautiful and mighty woman that is Helen McCrory has died surrounded by a wave of love from friends and family.' He added that his wife had 'died as she lived. Fearlessly. God we love her and know how lucky we are to have had her in our lives. She blazed so brightly.'
Born in London to a Welsh mother and Scottish father, McCrory spent a year in Italy before studying acting at The Drama Centre. Her film roles included portraying Cherie Blair in Peter Morgan's The Queen and The Special Relationship in 2006 and 2010 respectively. She also played Narcissa Malfoy in the final three films of the Harry Potter franchise and appeared in the James Bond movie Skyfall. On television, she had a leading role as the Shelby matriarch Polly Gray in the BBC's popular period crime drama Peaky Blinders and appeared in series including Doctor Who (magnificent as the villainous Rosanna Calvierri opposite Matt Smith in The Vampires Of Venice), Inside Number Nine, Fearless, MotherFatherSon and His Dark Materials. Her CV also included appearanced in Interview With The Vampire (her screen debut), The James Gang, Charlotte Gray, Does God Play Football, Normal For Norfolk, Fantastic Mister Fox, The Woman In Black: Angel Of Death, Their Finest, The Fragile Heart, Witness Against Hitler, Spoonface, Anna Karenina, In A Land Of Plenty, The Jury, Dickens, Lucky Jim, Life, Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This, Penny Dreadful and Have I Got News For You.
Last year, she appeared in two of From The North's fifty favourite TV productions of the year, the BBC's Hugh Laurie-fronted political drama Roadkill and ITV's Quiz. McCrory was also an accomplished stage actress and was nominated for an Olivier for her stage role as Rosalind in As You Like It at Wyndham's Theatre in 2006. McCrory and Lewis led fundraising efforts to provide hot meals for NHS staff during the Covid pandemic. Their work saw almost one million knicker in donations to the Feed NHS scheme and partnerships with chains including Leon and Wasabi. McCrory served as an honorary patron of the London children's charity Scene & Heard. She was appointed an OBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for her services to drama. McCrory is survived by Lewis, whom she married in 2007 and their two children Manon and Gulliver.
In 1967 the National Youth Theatre in London performed the first new play it had ever commissioned, with eighty performers arranged on a set depicting a football stand. The play would be revived with new casts eight times over the next twenty years and, again, at Wilton's Music Hall in London in 2017. It was televised twice - in 1967 and 1975 - and entered many a school curriculum. The play was Zigger Zagger and its writer was Peter Terson, who has died aged eighty nine. The story of teenager Harry Philton and his friend the titular character, who draws Harry into a band of rioting football fans, has as its timeless theme the poverty of choices faced by a young, working-class male. Terson continued his exploration of this subject the following year with his next National Youth Theatre play, The Apprentices (starring Barrie Rutter), in which exploited young men turn cruelly and violently on each other. Possibly no writer has done more to democratise drama in Britain. Earlier in his career, as a young resident playwright at the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, brought in by its director, Peter Cheeseman, Terson plunged into the theatre's dedication to regionalism, supported by post-war civic investment. Faithful to Cheeseman's commitment to local documentaries about his audiences' working lives, Terson's scripts included The 1861 Whitby Lifeboat Disaster (1970). After the success of Zigger Zagger, he struck a wonderfully rich seam with three plays about a trio of Yorkshire miners at leisure, played by Brian Glover, Ray Mort and Douglas Livingstone. The first of these, commissioned by BBC Radio, was The Fishing Party (1971), in which the trio are bullied and exploited by a ruthless Whitby landlady who assures them they will have 'contact with a lavatory on all floors' at their lodgings. It won a Writers Guild award and was subsequently televised - as were the following two - as part of the BBC's Play For Today strand. The second, Shakespeare Or Bust (1973), centred around a canal trip to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Antony & Cleopatra which ended up with Antony (Richard Johnson) and Cleopatra (Janet Suzman) coming to their narrowboat to put on a performance after the three are unable to get tickets for the theatre. The third, Three For The Fancy, set at a country livestock fair, followed in 1974 and the trilogy was at the heart of a celebratory retrospective at the British Film Institute in 2012. Peter was born in Walker, Newcastle upon Tyne - just a few streets away from the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House as it happens - to Peter Patterson, a joiner and his wife, Jane. He left school at fifteen, worked in a drawing office and briefly attended the city's technical college. After national service with the RAF he trained as a teacher at Redland College in Bristol (1952 to 1954) and there met a fellow student Sheila Bailey, whom he married in 1955. He later changed his name, after becoming a professional writer, because he thought Peter Patterson was 'a bit of a mouthful.' Ten years teaching PE and history followed; he later admitted that 'I wasn't very good and the boys saw through me, but were very supportive.' Already writing, he had 'enough rejection slips to paper the walls' until in 1964 Cheeseman read, liked and produced A Night To Make The Angels Weep at the Victoria. Set in the Vale of Evesham, where Terson then lived, the play told dark stories of rustic people whose lives are disoriented by the relentless tide of progress. Unschooled in stagecraft but with a flair for dialogue that combined naturalism with unforced poetry, Terson relished the Vic's theatre-in-the-round set-up, which dispensed with the need for sets to negotiate. His next play, now as resident playwright at the Vic, The Mighty Reservoy (1964), was about a new reservoir built threateningly close to a village, whose keeper believes that an act of sacrifice is necessary to avert a tragedy. In 1965 he adapted the story Jock-At-A-Venture, by Arnold Bennett, into a play, Jock On The Go, which was seen by Michael Croft, founder-director of the National Youth Theatre and that led to Zigger Zagger. Terson continued to write through the 1970s and 1980s and his play Strippers was produced in his home city, Newcastle and in the West End, making the connection between asset-stripping of old industries and the housewives who bared all to make up for the pay packets their men had lost. Always committed to work that was accessible to non-traditional theatre-going audiences, in the 1990s he turned to writing large-scale community plays, working regularly with the director Jon Oram of Claque Theatre, formerly The Colway Theatre Trust and attracted by the instinct that many people with stories to tell had no way of telling them. His plays, of which more than eighty were performed in his lifetime, were, according to Oram, always works in progress right up to opening night and Terson recognised that amateurs took decisions differently from professionals. 'If they said the sense of a line in their words rather than his, then he would shout out "that's better" and keep the words in,' said Oram. 'He'd see something in someone and develop it in the script.' Terson also made sure he knew of what he was writing, on one occasion buying an authentic caravan, learning to harness a horse and setting out on the road, as he prepared to write about Romany life. When a genuine Romany challenged him to a fight, he accepted and reportedly lost two front teeth. The resulting 'documentary play' for BBC Radio, The Romany Trip, was broadcast in 1983. On another occasion he went to Butlin's at Minehead to do karaoke before writing about a holiday camp in Sailor's Horse (1999), a community play involving a cast of hundreds. His final produced play was Campers (2001), written for Edensor School in Stoke, about racist attitudes and two very different campsites - one a luxury French holiday site and the other a refugee camp in the Balkans. His TV work included a couple of Armchair Theatre plays (The Ballad Of The Artificial Mash and The Heroism Of Thomas Chadwick), The Last Train Through Harecastle Tunnel, Mooney & His Caravans and an adaptation of The Apprentices for The Wednesday Play and But Fred, Freud Is Dead for ITV's Sunday Night Theatre. There were also contributions to Sextet (The Gregorian Chant), Full House (The Dividing Fence), Scene (The Ballad Of Ben Bagot), episodes of Village Hall, Crown Court and Sally Ann and the TV movie Atlantis. In Belgium a Flemish adaptation his play The Mighty Reservoir reached more than five hundred performances by the MMT, a theatre in Mechelen and was subject of an adaption by Belgian Television. Terson continued writing until the onset of Parkinson's disease forced him to stop. He is survived by Sheila and their children, Neil and Janie, five grandchildren and a great-grand-daughter.
And finally, dear blog reader, the From The North headline of the week award goes to the BBC News website's 'World's Biggest Rabbit' Stolen From Owner's Garden. Police are reported to be looking for a very strong man dressed as a carrot ...

Big Finish, the company behind the official licenced Doctor Who audio dramas, recently managed a feat which once seemed impossible: convincing Christopher Eccleston to return to Doctor Who following his acrimonious exit in 2005. Big Ecc reprised his role as The Doctor for a new set of stories, to be released in May. Which means that Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi are now the only living former Doctors not to have had their Big Finish debut. To mark the company's Monthly Adventures range earning a Guinness World Record, Big Finish chair Jason Haigh-Ellery and creative director Nicholas Briggs were guests on the Radio TimesDoctor Who podcast, where Haigh-Ellery revealed that he had asked 'other Doctors' to come onboard. 'I got [Eccleston] at the right time,' Jason explained. 'He'd just come off stage and he was pumped up and obviously he was open to the idea whereas previously he hadn't been. We had asked before. And we continue to ask [other] Doctors.' When asked specifically about Peter Capaldi and Matt Smith, Haigh Ellery did offer some hope for fans: 'We would love to have Peter and Matt come and join us. We shall see what the future holds.' Other Doctors who have been involved in the long-running series of audio dramas have included Tom Baker, Peter Davison, The Crap One, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, John Hurt, David Tennant and most recently Eccleston. 'It's such an iconic role - it's a part that you never want to leave. And the advantage of audio is that you can grow older and still play the same part,' Haigh-Ellery added. 'It's a part that you will love for the rest of your life and you get that. There's moments when you're talking to the actors and you can see the Doctorishness within them and what they brought to the show. It's fantastic that they've all continued to want to come back and play the part. And it's a delight to work with all of them.'
John Wyndham's acclaimed 1957 SF novel - a particular favourite of this blogger - is getting the small screen treatment. The Midwich Cuckoos will be turned into an eight-part series starring From The North favourite Keeley Hawes and Max Beesley. It was, previously, subject to a, quite superb, 1960 movie adaptation, Village Of The Damned, directed by Wolf Rillaand starring George Sanders and Barbara Shelley. The series will introduce viewers a modern-day version of Midwich, an English commuter town 'populated by nuclear families and affluent high streets,' according Sky's synopsis. The sleepy town is jerked awake, however, when one of its corners experiences a strange incident which sees its inhabitants pass out without warning. When the blackout lifts, every woman of child-bearing age inside the blackout zone finds themselves inexplicably pregnant, leaving psychotherapist Doctor Susannah Zellaby (Hawes) and officer Paul Kirby (Beesley) to solve the mystery behind the phenomenon. Speaking of the casting, Hawes said in one of those statements which sound exactly the way that real people don't talk: 'I'm absolutely delighted to be working with Sky and the brilliant Ruth Kenley-Letts on David Farr's superb adaptation of The Midwich Cuckoos. I'm very much looking forward to working with the hugely talented Max Beesley and the amazing cast and I can't wait to enter the strange and unsettling world of Midwich!' Yeah. That was definitely written by a PR-type individual. Writer and creator David Farr added: 'I first read The Midwich Cuckoos when I was twelve. I was living in a small town in 1980s Britain. Everything about the book rang true to me and terrified me. An invasion of a small community by a hostile and ruthless force. Apparently innocent children as a force of huge malevolent power. It got under my skin. As I've grown older, the story has never ceased to exert a grip. The idea that we may birth our own destruction is so simple and frightening. That as a mother or a father, the being we love most in the world may turn on us. It's the stuff of nightmares.' Set to broadcast on Sky 'sometime in 2022' the series will also feature Aisling Loftus, Ukweli Roach, Synnøve Karlsen, Lara Rossi, Lewis Reeves, Rebekah Staton and Anneika Rose.
The penultimate episode of From The North favourite Line Of Duty was the series most-watched instalment to date, with an average of eleven million overnight viewers tuning in on Sunday. The record overnight ratings came as BBC1 unveiled a trailer for this weekend's series finale which suggested it may be the police drama's last ever episode. 'Every investigation has led to this,' the promo declared. A lingering H in the caption hinted that the mysterious criminal mastermind would be unveiled at last. Line Of Duty returned to TV screens in March with 9.6 million overnight viewers watching the series' first episode - up on the 9.07 million who tuned into the previous series' finale. The opening series six episode's seven day consolidated ratings figures across all devices was thirteen million, three hundred and fifty five thousand two hundred and ninety eight punters whilst the twenty eight day consolidated audience was fifteen million, two hundred and one thousand, seven hundred and forty six according to BARB. Sunday's episode saw Kelly Macdonald's character, Joanne Davidson, subjected to a mammoth grilling which led to numerous secrets about her background being revealed. It commanded over fifty per cent of the UK's live TV audience, according to overnight figures. It was the highest overnight audience for a TV drama since Doctor Who's Christmas Day special in 2008, which was watched by 11.7 million viewers. Macdonald was tight-lipped about the series finale when she appeared on BBC Breakfast on Monday, giving a terse 'no comment' to presenter Dan Walker's demands for plot information. Much as her character did to just about every question put to her, under caution, by Ted Hastings and Steve Arnott. She did reveal, however, that filming one dramatic scene had descended into laughter when one of the cast mispronounced 'racist thugs' and said 'racist slugs' instead. As usual, the Middle Class hippy Communists at the Gruniad Morning Star (and this blogger) thought it was great whilst that Awful, Odious Singh woman at the Torygraphwhinged about it to anyone that would listen (and, indeed, anyone that didn't want to). It really is about time that Awful Odious Singh Woman at the Torygraph fekked off and found something else to do to justify her existence because, as TV reviewer, she's just not cuttin' it. Because she is really starting to grate this blogger's cheese something fierce.
The Game Of Thrones prequel series House Of The Dragon (provisional title) has started production, HBO has confirmed. The network marked the occasion by sharing a photo from a socially-distanced table read, including Paddy Considine and Matt Smith. House Of The Dragon is set three hundred years before the events of From The North favourite Game Of Thrones and will tell the story of the Targaryen family. It is based on author George R R Martin's 2018 novel Fire & Blood. The show, created by Martin along with showrunners Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan J Condal, is scheduled for release in 2022 on the HBO Max streaming service. Considine will star as the 'warm, kind and decent' King Viserys Targaryen in the TV adaptation. Smudger, known previously for his lead role in Doctor Who and portrayal of the late Duke of Edinburgh in The Crown (you all knew that, right?), is to play Prince Daemon Targaryen. Emma D'Arcy (Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen), Steve Toussaint (The Sea Snake), Rhys Ifans (Otto Hightower) and Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower) were among the other cast members present at the table read. Fans of the original series, adapted from Martin's A Song Of Ice & Fire fantasy books, will know the Targaryen family are destined to become embroiled in a bitter civil war. One of their descendants, Daenerys Targaryen, played by Emilia Clarke, was a major character in the main series that ran for eight seasons from 2011 to 2019. Though she ended up going mad and getting extremely killed. The show was something of a phenomenon, earning fifty nine EMMY Awards across its eight series to become one of the most successful dramas in television history. Although, as just about every journalist who ever writes about the show seems keen to point out (seemingly thinking they're being terrifically original), its final series, written beyond Martin's published source material by David Benioff and DB Weiss, 'divided fans and critics.' Albeit, nobody that actually matters gave then, or gives now a big steaming shat about what those wankers thought about it. This blogger thought it was great.
Sir Steve McQueen's Small Axe leads the field at this year's BAFTA Television Awards, with fifteen nominations. The director's five-film BBC series tells stories about the lives of the West Indian community in London from the 1960s to the 1980s. Netflix's drama The Crown is also one of the leading shows, with ten nomination. From The North favourite I May Destroy You, about a woman coming to terms with an assault, is nominated eight times, including best actress, writer and director for Michaela Coel. 'I am overwhelmed with joy to see so many people and teams that made I May Destroy You nominated this year,' Coel said in a statement. 'I am equally thrilled to see Small Axe, one of my favourite shows of last year, deservedly honoured.' There are five nominations apiece for Channel Four's Adult Material, a drama set in the porn industry and Sky Atlantic's I Hate Suzie, whose star Billie Piper is up for best actress. Like I May Destroy You, the latter featured strongly in From The North's 2020 best of list. BBC3 alleged comedy This Country - which this blogger, frankly, though was a right load of old over-rated toot - is nominated four times, as are Strictly Come Dancing and the acclaimed documentary series Once Upon A Time In Iraq. In the individual categories, John Boyega's performance as police officer Leroy Logan in one of the Small Axe films - Red, White & Blue - sees him up for best actor alongside Shaun Parkes, who was in the Mangrove episode of the same series. Josh O'Connor, who plays the young Prince Charles in The Crown, makes the same list, alongside Paapa Essiedu from I May Destroy You, Waleed Zuaiter from Baghdad Central and Normal People's Paul Mescal. Mescal's co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones is nominated for best actress, next to Piper, Coel and another Small Axe star, Letitia Wright. Killing Eve's Jodie Comer and Adult Material's Hayley Squires also make the shortlist. Friday Night Dinner's Paul Ritter, who died earlier this month, is nominated for best male performance in a comedy. Notably, The Crown's Emma Corrin and From The North favourite yer actual Gillian Anderson, who both won Golden Globe awards in February for playing Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher respectively, have been overlooked by BAFTA. whichhas, obviously, nothing whatsoever to do with a bunch of Tory politicians and right-wing scum newspapers getting their knickers in a twist over The Crown. Oh no, very hot water. There is also no room for Olivia Colman, who plays The Queen, but Tobias Menzies has been nominated for playing the late Duke of Edinburgh. Des, a three-part ITV drama starring national heartthrob David Tennant as the serial killer Dennis Nilsen (another From The North favourite), was left out, as was another ITV true crime drama, White House Farm and BBC lockdown sitcom Staged (also featuring Tennant). In the international category, Netflix hits The Queen's Gambit and Tiger King failed to make the list. 'All those nominations are basically last year in review and BAFTA applauding all the things that we've binge watched - that is everything we did last year apart from one hour of walking a day,' one of the judges, the author, journalist and From The North favourite Caitlin Moran, told BBC Breakfast. 'When I first saw the nominations, I was like, "Where's Tiger King? That was pretty big in my life." But on reflection, that was just a show about a man being horrible to tigers and probably best that it's not been nominated for a BAFTA.' No shit, Cait? Nominees for the BAFTA 'Must-See Moment' Award were announced on Tuesday and included Diversity's dance routine on Britain's Got Talent, which provoked thousands of complaints. From racist scum. Comedian Richard Ayoade will to host the ceremony for the second year in a row. Typically an extravagant event at London's Royal Festival Hall, festivities will be more restrained due to the safeguards in place due to Covid-19 and will take place in a closed studio. The winners of BAFTA's TV Craft Awards, meanwhile, which celebrate behind-the-scenes achievements, will be announced by Famalam actress Gbemisola Ikumelo on 24 May.
The Premier League has held talks with broadcasters about scrapping its next domestic media rights auction. The government is now considering whether to approve a rollover of the current 4.7 billion knicker deal. Secured in 2018, that sale represented a ten per cent drop in value. Clubs are reported to be 'concerned' there could be another fall if the usual open-market auction begins as planned next month for the three-year cycle between 2022 and 2025. Well, of course they are, having got their greed right-on of late and creaming in their own pants over the prospect of European Super-Dupa League and all that. The value of rights for domestic leagues in Europe also appears to have peaked. Which is really bad news for Super-Dupa League instigators Real Madrid and Barcelona and their efforts to wipe out their massive debt by getting their greed spectacularly right-on. So, that's funny. Talks have been held with the existing live rights holders Sky, BT and Amazon about extending their current deals on similar terms. Neither they, nor the Premier League, have commented. But a rollover is now being considered on the basis that it would provide all parties with 'stability amid uncertainties' - and the loss of match day revenue - caused by the pandemic. And, their own greed. However, rival broadcasters may object to being denied the right to bid and such a move would require government approval, given concerns over competition law. Amid continuing anger within football at the failed recent attempt by the so-called 'big six' Premier League clubs to launch the Super-Dupa League and a fan-led review of the sport, ministers (which will, of course, come to absolutely nothing) are understood to 'want assurances' about the redistribution of money throughout the game, if they allow a private sale of media rights. For almost thirty years, the huge increase in the value of its broadcast rights has driven the transfer fees and player wages that have made the Premier League so popular. And, so greedy. But the league has come under mounting pressure from the Football League to redistribute more of its media revenue throughout the pyramid. Last year the Premier League ditched a controversial pay-per-view system for matches amid another fan backlash, reinforcing concerns over viewers' appetite for more live action and for being pissed about and taken for granted by people to whom they pay their season ticket money.
Billionaire tyrant Rupert Murdoch has, reportedly, 'drastically scaled backed' plans for a new 'opinionated' television service in the UK, after concluding that it is 'not financially viable' to launch a fully fledged rolling news channel in the style of FAUX News. Well-known Crystal Tipps lookalike (and drag) Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of billionaire tyrant Murdoch's News UK company, told staff the enormous cost of getting a television news channel on-air meant it 'did not make business sense' to push ahead. She said that the company would, instead, focus on 'reaching news audiences' via shows on streaming platforms, adding: 'While there is consumer demand for alternative news provision, the costs of running a rolling news channel are considerable and it is our assessment that the payback for our shareholders wouldn't be sufficient. We need to launch the right products for the digital age.' The News UK TV boss, David Rhodes, an American television news executive who moved to London last summer to run the project, will be extremely leaving in June. He will be, in the interim, advising the wider global billionaire tyrant Murdoch business on streaming news media, where he has repeatedly been tipped by insiders for promotion or a possible return to FAUX News. Well-known Crystal Tipps lookalike (and drag) Brooks' declaration that it would not be possible to make a healthy profit from traditional television news will increase attention on the finances of the forthcoming Andrew Neil-fronted GB News channel. It has raised sixty million smackers from the likes of the US media company Discovery, Dubai investment company Legatum and the Brexit-backing hedge fund boss Paul Marshall to secure slots on traditional television distribution platforms such as Freeview. GB News is building a new right-of-centre twenty four-hour television channel from scratch centred on presenter-led shows. It is hiring dozens of journalists and has signed up presenters such as Sky's Colin Brazier, the BBC's Simon McCoy (whom this blogger actually used to have a bit of respect for) and former ITV presenter Alastair Stewart to host programmes. Well-known Crystal Tipps lookalike (and drag) Brooks claimed that News UK would still invest in television-style content, with increasingly professional video output produced by its radio stations such as TalkRadio, where presenters have regularly gone viral with clips berating coronavirus lockdowns. The News UK radio boss, Scott Taunton, will take over responsibility for its television output. The decision also leaves a large number of established television producers who were hired by Rhodes asking questions about their future at the company if its focus switches to a handful of streaming shows. Which is, obviously, very sad. Or, perhaps, not. Studios had been built and rehearsals for some programmes were under way. Last year the intention was for News UK TV to launch with about five hours of output every night, including an early-evening politics show, a daily political debate programme and an evening news bulletin. Billionaire tyrant Murdoch has increasingly looked towards charging people to watch opinionated TV news streaming services, launching the likes of FAUX Nation in the US and FAUX News International for global consumers. Well-known Crystal Tipps lookalike (and drag) Brooks claimed that News UK would still produce standalone shows, with the intention of making money via personalised adverts on smart televisions, adding: 'We have already announced News To Me, an entertainment news show hosted by Gordon Smart, which will drop a new episode each weeknight and will be viewable live or on-demand via streaming. Other shows are planned.'
Channel Five has stopped streaming an episode of its z-list celebrity plastic surgery series after condemnation from one of its subjects, Charlotte Crosby. Last Thursday's episode of Z-List Celebrities: What Happened To Your Face? analysed Crosby's changing appearance. The reality TV-type individual called the show 'immoral', claiming that it had been shown despite her 'team' warning Channel Five of its detrimental mental health implications. In a statement, the broadcaster snivellingly apologised for 'any upset caused.' It added that both the channel and the programme's producers, Crackit Productions, 'take duty of care very seriously.' One or two people even believed them. 'While we acknowledge that the programme was Ofcom compliant, we have taken on board Charlotte's feedback and removed the episode from our streaming platform My5.' Crosby, who rose from obscurity to whatever it is that reality TV-type individuals consider 'fame' on MTV's scripted - and utterly worthless - reality show Geordie Shore and now hosts her own self-titled series, is yet to comment on the removal of the documentary. However, in her original statement, she claimed that it was 'unbelievable' the programme had been made amid an increased focus on mental health within the entertainment industry. 'At a time when the broadcast and media world were backing a policy of "be kind", Channel Five and Crackit decided to commission this one-hour special on "rubber lip Charlotte" (their words not mine),' Crosby wrote, while referring to the kindness campaign that was prompted by the suicide of Love Island presenter Caroline Flack. 'Their "experts" dissected my "plastic face" with disgust, discussing my fluctuating weight (with images) and then decided to flash up the worst troll comments from the past five years.' Crosby's public criticism followed a similar statement from her Geordie Shore-type person, Holly Hagan who, on Thursday evening, urged her Instagram followers to report Channel Five's programme to Ofcom. Crosby, to be fair, has been open about her cosmetic procedures and body image struggles - undergoing her first nose surgery in 2016 after becoming self-conscious over her appearances on TV and later using lip-fillers. She previously told that bastion of kind and considerate reportage Heat magazine: 'It's not like I can hide it. If I'd not been on TV, I'd never have got it done. I do think [my nose] caused a lack of confidence and you always compare yourself to other people who are on TV as well.' Crosby's statement continued: 'Dealing with trolls is one thing, you ignore, you block but where are we as a society, when the trolls are the mainstream TV channels? Will they now take responsibility for my dip in mental health and plummeted self-esteem? Do they take responsibility for the resulting press from the show, again discussing how "shocking" my face is?' she asked.
Former From The North favourite (before he went, you know, mad) Morrissey appears to have taken considerable umbrage at The Simpsons after being sent up right good and proper in the popular US animation's latest episode. In Panic On The Streets Of Springfield, Lisa becomes obsessed with a militantly vegan singer of an obscure 1980s British indie band. But, her dreams are shattered to fragments when it transpires that her idol, voiced by From The North favourite Benedict Cumberbatch, has in fact become a bitter, overweight, anti-immigrant meat-eater. No relation. A statement on Morrissey's Facebook page called the show 'hurtful and racist.' Is anyone else thinking this is the latest episode of Qi's semi-regular slot How Ironic Is That?
'Surprising what a "turn for the worst" the writing for The Simpsons TV show has taken in recent years,' said the whinging statement, which was posted by Mozza's manager, Peter Katsis. 'Poking fun at subjects is one thing,' it continued, 'but when a show stoops so low to use harshly hateful tactics like showing the Morrissey character with his belly hanging out of his shirt (when he has never looked like that at any point in his career) makes you wonder who the real hurtful, racist group is here. Even worse - calling the Morrissey character out for being a racist, without pointing out any specific instances, offers nothing. It only serves to insult the artist.' Yeah, pretty much. To quote one of the major characters in The Simpsons in one of this blogger's favourite moments from the show's history, 'Your point being ...?' The statement went on to accuse The Simpsons of 'hypocrisy', noting that white actor Hank Azaria had recently bowed to criticism and agreed to stop voicing the Indian character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. 'Hank Azaria's recent apology to the whole country of India for his role in upholding "structural racism" says it all,' the message claimed. Prior to the episode being broadcast, Morrissey's official Facebook page had promoted the show by posting an image from the animation. The show said it would not be commenting on Mozza's latest statement. However, the episode's writer previously insisted that the character was not'solely' based on Morrissey. One or two people even believed him. 'I'm sticking by that,' Tim Long told Variety magazine, adding: 'The character is definitely Morrissey-esque, with maybe a small dash of Robert Smith from The Cure, Ian Curtis from Joy Division and a bunch of other people.' But he looks, most, like Morrissey. And, as far as this blogger is aware, neither Robert Smith nor the late Ian Curits have ever advocated various scummish far-right politicians. Unlike ... some people. Just sayin'. Called Quilloughby, the character was said to be the lead singer of a band called The Snuffs. Again, no relation.
The episode also featured music by Flight Of The Conchords and The Muppets' songwriter, Bret McKenzie and included parodies of The Smiths song titles, such as 'How Late Is Then?', 'Hamburger Is Homicide' and 'Everyone Is Horrid Except Me (And Possibly You)'. Long said that the episode had been 'inspired' by his 'love' of British indie bands during the 1980s, recalling how seeing The Smiths on their The Queen Is Dead tour had 'changed my life. I've seen Moz many times since then, most recently at The Hollywood Bowl in 2018,' he explained to Variety. 'Executive producer Matt Selman was also at that show and we got to talking about how much music meant to us as weird, alienated teenagers - and also how being a big fan of someone is like having a lifelong relationship with them, with all the ups and down that implies. This show grew out of that discussion.' In recent years, Morrissey has been widely criticised for his outspoken and controversial views. He has called halal meat 'evil', accused London Mayor Sadiq Khan of being 'unable to talk properly' and appeared to defend the actor Kevin Spacey over allegations of sexual abuse. The singer has also expressed support for the far-right For Britain party, wearing a badge with its logo on during a US TV performance. He has, however, consistently denied being a racist. Though, to paraphrase the late Mandy Rice-Davies, 'well, he would, wouldn't he?'Panic On The Streets Of Springfield has yet to be broadcast in the UK, but is expected to premiere on Sky next month. And, one imagines, all of the pre-publicity caused by this story is likely to make it the most-watched first-run Simpsons on UK TV in years.
A twenty four-year-old student from Glasgow has been crowned the youngest ever champion of the BBC's Mastermind. And, almost instantly, became subject to the kind of sick Interweb trolling from guffawing, bullying numbskulls who considered he has committed the same dreadful crime of 'being clever in public' that poor Gail Trimble received after her impressive knowledge displays on University Challenge a decade ago. Of course, this kind of horrific, sneering, obnoxious behaviour is nothing new with regard to someone having the nerve to 'show some intelligence on the telly' but when it happened to Gail back in 2009 one could, perhaps, have put it down to the then-prevalent leery laddish culture of Loaded and Nuts magazines. The fact that, in the post me-too world of 2021 this sort of loutish online nonsense is still goes on is genuinely depressing. Sometimes, dear blog reader, this blogger hates this sick, worthless world and everyone in it. Jonathan Gibson won the final by four points - scoring a perfect eleven out of eleven in his specialist subject, the comedy songwriting duo Flanders and Swann. He had specialised in Agatha Christie's Poirot in the heat and William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806) in the semi-final. The new champion said that he was 'overwhelmed' at the response since the programme was broadcast on Monday. The PhD student in Modern History at the University of St Andrews told the BBC radio's Good Morning Scotland how he had to keep the result a secret between filming and broadcast. He said: 'The last four months since filming have just felt like a dream, so it's good to have visual evidence on TV that it actually happened. I told my parents and my sister and that's basically it.' Jonathan said the key to his victory was choosing specialist subjects which he was passionate about. 'They were all things I have really loved since I was young,' he said. 'The heat subject was the TV show Poirot, which I was introduced to by my mum and my grandma so that was really lovely to revisit. For the semi-final I did William Pitt the Younger, the late Eighteenth Century Prime Minister. That was inspired by a book my history teacher gave me in school and was one of the main reasons I decided to be a history student. And for the final I did Flanders and Swann which was a favourite of my dad's. I've known the lyrics of every single song since I was seven or eight so it has been lovely revisiting these things.' Jonathan, who had previously appeared on University Challenge, is now focussing on finishing his PhD studies. And, good on him for that. Heaven forbid that anyone should actually want to learn stuff when they could be doing something else like studying their own lack of a brain. Jonathan said that he only realised he was in the running to be Mastermind's youngest ever winner as the final approached. 'I didn't think about it as a possibility when I applied,' he said. 'Or until after I won the semi-final when the producers told me I would be marginally younger than Gavin Fuller was when he won. It's really incredible to make history in that way and it is beyond anything I could have imagined.'Mastermind has been running on the BBC since 1972. Monday night's final was John Humphrys' last episode after eighteen years as host. The broadcaster has presented seven hundred and thirty five episodes of the quiz show and asked more than eighty thousand questions during that time. The new series, hosted by newsreader Clive Myrie, will be shown later this year.
Steve Coogan has assured fans that he isn't planning to retire Alan Partridge, who return to the BBC One weekend for a second series of This Time. This summer marks thirty years since the character made his debut on BBC Radio 4's satirical news programme On The Hour and in that time some viewers have worried that Coogan could decide to leave the role behind. However, at a virtual event to mark the launch of This Time series two, the star credited his other projects - such as BAFTA nominated film Stan & Ollie - for taking the curse off Alan and reigniting his enthusiasm for the hapless broadcaster. 'If it was all I was doing, I would regard it as an albatross,' he said. 'But because I'm able to do these other things, that has sort of taken the curse off Alan for me. So that means that now I do Alan Partridge because I want to, not because I have to, and that's really important for me.' Coogan had previously taken an extended break from his comedy creation between the second series of acclaimed sitcom I'm Alan Partridge and the launch of Mid-Morning Matters, which saw him team up with writers Neil and Rob Gibbons. Since that collaboration was forged, fans have seen a wealth of Partridge content ranging from 2013's -really rather good - feature film Alpha Papa to Audible podcast From The Oasthouse. 'People used to say, "When are you going to kill off Alan Partridge?" They've just stopped asking that now,' Coogan continued. 'He's sort of like an old friend. I wouldn't like to never do it again because it's enjoyable as part of everything else I do. I love working with Rob and Neil and Susannah [Fielding] and Felicity [Montagu] and Tim [Key] and I wouldn't want to not work with them so that's another important part of it.' This will be music to the ears of Patridge fans, as Coogan revealed there's much more life in his famous alter-ego: 'I would like to keep coming back as long as I think it's funny. The thing about Alan is the world changes and then Alan is a reflection of that changing world, so it can keep going. And you can keep sort of tightening the nut with Alan. It might be that one day he oversteps the mark and implodes, but part of it is finding out – just keep pushing him until he falls off a cliff or something.'
A Russian man who joined a boyband competition show on Chinese TV 'on a whim' but quickly regretted his decision has finally been released from his ordeal after making it all the way to the final. Vladislav Ivanov, a twenty seven-year-old part-time model from Vladivostok, was working on the show Produce Camp 2021 as a translator when producers reportedly'noticed his good looks' and asked him to sign up as a contestant. Because, previously, he'd been invisible to them, clearly. Ivanov told the programme that he had been asked 'if I'd like to try a new life' and agreed, but he came to regret the decision. Unable to leave on his own without breaching his contract and paying a - presumably eye-wateringly massive - fine he, instead, begged viewers to send him home on a regular basis and deliberately performed poorly in the hope of being voted off. No such luck. The programme concept, which originated in Korea, pits young performers against each other to train and eventually form an eleven-member international boyband, chosen by a voting public. Ivanov and his fellow contestants were sequestered in dorm rooms on Hainan island and had their phones confiscated. Using the stage name Lelush, Ivanov told viewers 'don't love me, you'll get no results' and repeatedly pleaded with people not to vote for him. His first song was a half-hearted Russian rap, in stark contrast to the high-pop of his competitors. 'Please don't make me go to the finals, I'm tired,' he whinged in a later episode. 'I hope the judges won't support me. While the others want to get an A, I want to get an F as it stands for freedom,' the South China Morning Post reported him as saying. The judges - and viewers - clearly though it'd be a right good laugh to keep him there. His, increasingly desperate, pleas went unanswered and he was propelled through three months of competition and ten episodes, plus supplemental digital content. A fanbase which had taken to his grumpy, anti-celebrity persona, or were perhaps driven by schadenfreude, urged each other to vote for him and 'let him nine-nine-six!' in reference to China's digital industry culture of chronic overwork - 9am to 9pm, six days a week. Others called him 'the most miserable wage slave' and celebrated him as an icon of 'Sang culture', a Chinese millennial concept of having a defeatist attitude toward life in general. After making it to the final, Ivanov grumpily ate a lemon on camera and said he hoped people would not support him again. 'I'm not kidding,' he said, deadpan. He was eventually voted out in the final episode, which was broadcast on Saturday. 'I'm finally getting off work,' he posted on his Weibo account the next day his phone having, by now seemingly, been returned to him. A Weibo hashtag related to his departure was viewed more than one hundred and eighty million times, including by the Russian embassy. 'Congrats, have a good rest,' the embassy replied. Russian media reported that Ivanov had been 'mobbed' at Beijing airport as he left the country, defying rumours that he would stay to build a modelling career. Reports of a captive Russian from Vladivostok being held prisoner on a Chinese reality show had led to an online campaign at home for Ivanov to be released from his contract, which bloggers coined 'Free Lelush' or СвободуЛелушу. State media began reporting on Ivanov's sorry predicament about a week ago after popular Russian bloggers posted about the interpreter's unlikely run. 'It's not funny any more, let Vlad go home!' wrote one. 'I am very sad and disturbed. It might have been amusing for some time, but the situation is becoming absurd.' Popular blogger Ruslan Usachev said that Ivanov's high profile, if reticent, participation had boosted Produce Camp's 'aura of an international competition'– no doubt pleasing Tencent, the Chinese tech giant which runs it. 'Suddenly a real live person appeared on this show and people started to vote for him,' Usachev said. 'Partially because he stands out [from the other contestants]. But mainly because it's just kek' - a term, adopted by gamers, which refers to an amusing incident that becomes more and more thigh-slappingly hilarious the longer it goes on. Ivanov's story, which has gained him millions of viewers and fans on social media, has drawn accusations of being a publicity stunt, but his friend, the agency executive Ivan Wang, who had hired him to chaperone and translate for his two Japanese clients on the show, said he 'really disliked' being in front of the camera. 'One time, I got him a modelling job in Hong Kong, he sent me a SOS message saying he couldn't stand it five minutes after arriving on set,' Wang told a Chinese entertainment blog. 'He declined repeated participation requests by the director of Produce Camp 2021. He just said yes after getting bored on the island. He thought joining the show might help his introverted personality.'
An arrest warrant, felony embezzlement charge and twenty years of turned-down jobs - all over a Sabrina the Teenage Witch videotape. Allegedly. The criminal history was slapped on Texas resident, Caron McBride, after she failed to return the VHS copy of the Nineties teen sitcom in 1999. She only found out the truth when she tried to change her name on a driving licence after getting married. She said that she had not watched the tape and it must have been rented in her name. 'Just not my cup of tea,' McBride, claimed to local media. Her name was used to rent the VHS - a black plastic box with spooling magnetic tape in it containing movies or TV programmes for those who are too young to remember them - in a store called Movie Place in Norman, Oklahoma, on Valentine's Day in 1999. It was not returned after the agreed ten-day period. The prosecution in the case said McBride had 'wilfully, unlawfully and feloniously embezzled' a tape, which it valued at $58.59. The store subsequently closed in 2008, part of the countrywide disappearance of the rental video industry which was wiped out by streaming services. McBride's criminal record, however, remained. It was the Texas driving licensing team that told her of the felony embezzlement charge after a recent background check. McBride said she called the Cleveland County District Attorney's office in Oklahoma, where an official told her the charge 'was over the VHS tape. I had to make her repeat it because I thought, this is insane,' she said. 'This girl is kidding me, right? She wasn't kidding.' McBride said she suspects the words 'felony embezzlement' had led to her rejection from at least five jobs without explanation over the past twenty years. 'It's a serious issue. It's caused me and my family a lot of heartache financially because of the positions I've lost because of those two words. Something's got to give,' she told KFOR. The case has now been dropped, but McBride still needs to get the record expunged. She believes a man she was living with at the time may have rented the tape for his young daughters and then neglected to return it. Even the Sabrina team were moved by McBride's plight. Melissa Joan Hart posted a shrugging emoji and another of the show's cast, Caroline Rhea, said: 'Seriously let's all sign a script for her to help her out.' Salem the Cat, on the other hand, did not comment on the matter. Which was odd because he was always so chatty in the show.
The BBC has responded to whinges over its coverage of Prince Philip's funeral by insisting its editorial choices 'reflected the role the BBC plays as the national broadcaster in a moment of national significance.' BBC1 devoted nearly four hours to the event on 17 April. Its programming, led by Huw Edwards, was watched by an average of almost seven million people. David Attenborough, Gyles Brandreth and Alan Titchmarsh also shared memories of the Queen's late husband, who died on 9 April at the age of ninety nine. Responding to whinges about the coverage, the BBC said on its website: 'The funeral of HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh was a significant event which generated a lot of interest both nationally and internationally. We acknowledge some viewers were unhappy with the level of coverage given and impact this had on the billed BBC1 schedule. We do not make such changes without careful consideration and the decisions made reflect the role the BBC plays as the national broadcaster, during moments of national significance. We are grateful for all feedback and we always listen to the response from our audiences.' One or two people even believed them. The BBC's latest statement came after its wall-to-wall coverage of the duke's death became the most complained-about moment in British television history. Nearly one hundred and eleven thousand punters contacted the BBC in the following days to whinge about its decision to turn most of its TV channels and radio stations over to rolling tributes. The unprecedented number of complaints led the BBC to set up a dedicated online form for angry viewers within hours of Philip's death in an attempt to streamline the process. The corporation acknowledged the complaints, but in a statement similar to that circulated about the funeral coverage, said that clearing the schedules reflected its role as the nation's main broadcaster. The BBC also broadcast scenes from the funeral service on its news channel, but BBC2 did not broadcast coverage, instead showing the World Snooker Championship. Given the choice between the two, most people with half-a-brain in their head went for the funeral even if they had little or no time for the Royal Family since, you know, snooker fer Christ' sake. ITV gave the event three hours' coverage, anchored by Tom Bradby and Julie Etchingham and featuring guests including the duke's goddaughter, India Hicks. Channel Four showed episodes of the reality show Four In A Bed and Channel Five broadcast the film A Knight's Tale, starring Heath Ledger.
A radio station that played a song containing 'prolonged sounds of sexual moaning' at breakfast time breached the broadcasting code, a watchdog ruled. Caroline Community Radio played 'French Kiss by' Lil Louis on 17 December at a 'time when children were particularly likely to be listening,' Ofcom said. Which does, indeed, contain lots of moaning about The Sex. Shocking. And, indeed, stunning. Let us, once again, stand up and salute the Utter Shite that some people chose to care about.
The communications regulator said that the song was 'not appropriately scheduled.' Ofcom's report said the Essex-based station's licensee confirmed it was 'undertaking a review of its database.' To make sure they haven't got any Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, Donna Summer or, indeed, Extreme Noise Terror on their playlist. The regulator said the song, which reached number two in the UK charts in 1989, contained no lyrics but included 'prolonged sounds of sexual moaning lasting two minutes and twenty seconds.' If you're curious, dear blog reader, it starts about five minutes and twenty seconds into the nine minute instrumental. And, quite an earful it is, too. Caroline Community Radio broadcasts on FM to the Maldon area of Essex from studios in Burnham-on-Crouch and is also available online. To an audience of about six. The report said that 'given the radio station's target audience, the likelihood of children listening was low.' No shit? The licensee said it had been in the process of transferring its music library from one computer system to another. They added that 'some scheduling restrictions that it had applied to songs had not been carried across to the new system.' A report claimed the licensee 'did not wish to offend its listeners and confirmed that it was undertaking a review of its database to ensure all song information is correct.' Ofcom - a politically appointed quango, elected by no one - ruled that the broadcast was in breach of rule 1.3 of the Broadcasting Code, which states that 'children must ... be protected by appropriate scheduling from material that is unsuitable for them.' And, anything related to The Sex. Caroline Community Radio is an independent organisation, but its website said it 'had connections' to the famous pirate station of the 1960s Radio Caroline, including use of its name.
At least ten thousand UK nationals have reportedly been approached by fake profiles linked to hostile states, on the professional social network LinkedIn, over the past five years, according to MI5. It warned users who had accepted such connection requests might have then been lured into sharing secrets. That's, obviously, if they have any secrets to share. This blogger, for instance, has only but one secret. Albeit, it involves, a golf course, ten thousand pounds and at least two late night attempts to move a body. But, perhaps he's said too much. 'Malicious profiles' are being used on 'an industrial scale,' the security agency's chief, Ken McCallum, claimed. A campaign has been launched to 'educate' government workers about the threat. Because, let's face it, government workers can always do with all the education they can lay their hands on. The effort - Think Before You Link - warns foreign spies are targeting those with access to sensitive information. One concern is the victims' colleagues, in turn, become more willing to accept follow-up requests - because it looks as if they share a mutual acquaintance. MI5 did not specifically name LinkedIn but BBC News claims to have 'learned' the Microsoft-owned service is, indeed, the platform involved. So that information, seemingly, is not a secret. Or, if it is, you know, schtum. The ten thousand-plus figure includes staff in virtually every government departments as well as key industries, who might be offered speaking or business and travel opportunities that could lead to attempts to recruit them to provide confidential information. And, it is thought a large number of those approached engaged initially with the profiles that contacted them online. 'No-one is immune to being socially manipulated into wrongdoing through these approaches,' the guidance given to government staff says. LinkedIn has said it 'welcomes the initiative.' The campaign, run by the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, which reports to MI5, asks government staff to focus on 'the four Rs'; recognising malicious profiles, realising the potential threat, reporting suspicious profiles to a security manager and removing the profiles. 'Since the start of the pandemic, many of us have been working remotely and having to spend more time at home on our personal devices,' government chief security officer Dominic Fortescue said. 'As a result, staff have become more vulnerable to malicious approaches from hostile security services and criminal organisations on social media.' The US and other countries have launched similar campaigns. Former CIA officer Kevin Mallory was sentenced to twenty years in The Joint, after being extremely convicted of giving secrets to China following an approach on LinkedIn. And the UK's move is also being backed by the other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. That, seemingly, is also not a secret. Although it probably should be.
A hospital employee in Italy has been accused of skipping work on full pay for fifteen years. Nice lack-of-work if you can ... not get it. The man is alleged to have stopped turning up to work at the Ciaccio hospital in the Southern city of Catanzaro in 2005. He is now being investigated for fraud, extortion and abuse of office, Italian news agency Ansa reports. He was reportedly paid five hundred and thirty eight thousand Euros in total over the years that he is thought not to have been working. Six managers at the hospital are also being investigated in connection with the alleged absenteeism. The arrests are the result of a lengthy police investigation into absenteeism and suspected fraud in the Italian public sector. The employee was a civil servant and was assigned to a job in the hospital in 2005. It was at this point he stopped going into work, the police said. The police have also accused him of threatening his manager to stop her from filing a disciplinary report against him. That manager later retired, police added and his ongoing absence was 'never noticed' by her successor or human resources.
Rolling Stones guitarist Rockin' Ronnie Wood says that he has been given the all-clear after being diagnosed with cancer during the lockdown. The seventy three-year-old had small-cell cancer, which typically affects the lungs. It follows a successful fight against his first lung cancer diagnosis in 2017. Rockin' Ronnie told the Sun: 'I've had cancer two different ways now" and credited a "higher power" for the positive outcome. All I can do is stay positive in my attitude, be strong and fight it and the rest is up to my higher power,' he said. 'I came through with the all-clear.' Rockin' Ronnie's spiritual outlook reflects a concept of control and acceptance encouraged by Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. Wood, a founding member of The Faces and The Jeff Beck Group, became known for his heavy partying and substance abuse, particularly after joining The Stones in 1975 and becoming Keef Richards wing-man in more senses than one. But, he said that the lessons learned during numerous stints in rehab equipped him to fight the disease. 'I'm going through a lot of problems now, but throughout my recovery, you have to let it go. And when you hand the outcome over to your higher power, that is a magic thing,' the guitarist told the alleged paper. 'That brings you back to the [AA and NA's] Serenity Prayer: "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change." That's incredible. What will be will be, it's nothing to do with me.' The musician and broadcaster, a keen painter, said that working on paintings of his wife Sally Humphries and looking after their four-year-old twin daughters Gracie Jane and Alice Rose, also helped to keep him strong. Discussing his 2017 lung cancer diagnosis, Wood previously told the Daily Scum Mail that he had wondered whether it was 'time to say goodbye' to his family. The Rockin' Rocker underwent a week of tests and said if the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes 'it would have been all over for me.' Instead, he needed a five-hour operation to have part of his lung removed before first confirming he was cancer-free in 2018. The small-cell cancer Rockin' Ronnie faced in lockdown commonly forms in the lung and can quickly spread to other areas. But after being given the all-clear once again, he said he feels he's been given 'a second chance' and is now focused on returning to the stage with The Stones. He said: 'I am grateful every day for the continuance of this positive attitude. Everybody gets to fight in their own way, live their lives and survive.'
And from that, dear blog reader, to this ...
First Man.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.
Magic.
The Sopranos.
The Last Movie Star.
The BBC presenter Reeta Chakrabarti has said that presenting a news bulletin is a skilled job, after Jeremy Paxman claimed that 'any fool' could do it. Grumpy old sod Paxo has made a series of criticisms of the BBC and television news since stepping down from Newsnight almost seven years ago, culminating in his recent assertion that 'newsreading is an occupation for an articulated suit.' And, given that he did it himself for so long, one could opine that it takes a fool to know a fool. Chakrabarti, who regularly presents BBC news bulletins, said that she disagreed with this assessment. 'It's his opinion, but I wonder why he says it when he spent quite a few years himself reading an Autocue,' she said. 'And if I'm presenting the One O'Clock News, I've written a lot of what I'm reading out. Those aren't someone else's words.' She told the Radio Times: 'I'm a journalist, I know what the stories are, I discuss them with the editor and the correspondent and I pride myself on being able to write with simplicity and clarity. Maybe "any fool"can do this, but I think it's a skill.'
In what is becoming an annual happenstance, yer actual Keith Telly Topping hopes that all of his dear blog readers enjoyed a happy St George's Day on 23 April. And, also, a happy St Ringo's Day on 24 April.
Last Sunday was the eighth anniversary of this blogger's mother's death. The following day was the thirty first anniversary of this blogger's dad's demise. This blogger wishes it to be known that he still miss both of them every single day.
Yer actual Keith Telly Topping has been making a - very Asperger's-style - list of all of the things that he hasn't done for months (in some cases, for more than a year) which he hope to be doing in a month's time once he has had his second prickage and places are open again. It goes something like this.
1. Getting the Metro down to the coast and having a walk along Tynemouth Long Sands.
2. Going to the cinema and watch a movie on a big screen instead of on the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House tellybox.
3. Visiting a restaurant in Stowell Street and having a meal and a couple of glasses of wine and some civilised conversation with a fiend.
4. Going shopping to buy some new dead choice gear.
5. Sitting in Leazes Park (on a sunny day) with a good book, watching the wildlife.
6. Visiting someone else's gaff for a change instead of just looking at the four walls of the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House.
7. Going to the library.
8. Having a swim in the pool and a half-hour in the steam room.
9. Getting a haircut so that this blogger no longer looks like a member of some filthy, disgusting, earache-inducing Prog Rock combo of the 1970s.
10. Having a coffee with another fiend (this blogger does have more than one).
Ticking all of these off Yer Actual Keith Telly Topping's Stuff He Intends To Do When He Can Without Facng The Probability Of Dying As A Result list is likely to be ... far harder than it may look right about now, dear blog reader. Nevertheless, he's going to have a right good go. Dreaming, as Blondie once noted, is free.
Michael Collins, one of the three crew members of the first manned mission to The Moon, Apollo 11 in 1969, has died aged ninety, his family say. He died on Wednesday after 'a valiant battle with cancer. He spent his final days peacefully, with his family by his side,' they added. Collins had stayed in lunar orbit as his colleagues Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on The Moon. Aldrin is now the only surviving member of the mission. In a statement, the Collins family said that 'Mike always faced the challenges of life with grace and humility and faced this, his final challenge, the same way. We will miss him terribly. Yet we also know how lucky Mike felt to have lived the life he did. We will honour his wish for us to celebrate, not mourn, that life.' The family also asked for privacy 'during this difficult time.'

In much the same way as the more entitled and mouthy Game Of Thrones fans appeared to believe that their own fan-fiction vision of how the series would end (written in crayon) was better than the one the professional producers and writers of the popular adult fantasy drama actually delivered (a view not shared by everyone, this blogger very much included), so series six of Line Of Duty, broadcast on Sunday evening, seems to have, shall we say 'divided opinion'? Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Wee Donkey, but some people got their shit in a right old twist over it. As this handy summation proves. Expect an online petition demanding the BBC go back and make it all over again but, this time, make Kate Fleming the puppet-mistress to be up and running very soon, dear blog reader. 

'Series six still reliably delivered the thrills, but with plot holes, agitprop and moments that came close to self-parody, Line of Duty is not quite what it was,'whinged one of the series' most regular supporters, that ginger lass from the Gruniad Morning Star. 'The sixth season of Jed Mercurio’s hit BBC1 drama came to an unexpectedly restrained end tonight,'added another Middle Class hippy Communist at the Independent. But, some people seemingly liked it, including the Daily Scum Mail ('Criminal 'mastermind made Inspector Clouseau look like Sherlock') and, even more curiously, That Awful Scowling Faceache Woman at the Torygraph: 'Jed Mercurio has done the impossible and tied up six series of loose ends, but this truly should be the end of AC-12.' Perhaps it was the fact that, seemingly, some bent filth got away with their institutional naughty crimes that was what the right-wingers admired so much. For what it's worth, this blogger thought Line Of Duty was great, as he has done since episode one of series one. The resolution might not have been the 'wham, bam, thank you H' ending that some whinging whingers had dreamed up in the darker corners of their damaged collective brain but it made perfect sense and left just enough wiggle room for further adventures if the BBC can persuade Mercurio to write some (news is still out on that score). And, it even managed to tie up most of the unanswered questions which the BBC News website had demanded (demanded, please note) answers to in the run up to the finale. The identity of 'H'? Check (although in their list of potential suspects they did not, it would appear, see that particular shoe being, as it were, buckled). The mystery of the Corbett money? Check. And, that was an entirely plausible moment demonstrating Ted Hastings basic humanity. Marcus Thurwell - alive and hiding in plain sight? Nope. And, by the way, huge congratulations to the BBC for managing to hire Jimmy Nesbitt for a cameo of ... a couple of blurry photographs. Steve's forever-delayed drugs test? Check. And, the long-speculated over 'Definately' [sic] guilty? Yes. And it did, indeed, turn out to be a major plot point in the finale and a key piece of evidence in catching H out in his bad, corrupt ways.
The series of Line Of Duty was watched by an average overnight audience of 12.8 million punters, a record for the show. The BBC said it was the largest overnight audience for an episode of any non-soap drama since modern records began in 2002. The finale commanded 56.2 per cent of the UK's TV audience, according to overnight figures. The five-minute peak audience was 13.1 million, between 21:45 and 21:50. The last time a TV drama got higher overnight viewing figures was an episode of ITV's long-running police drama Heartbeat in February 2001, which had an overnight audience of 13.2 million. It is the highest overnight figure for a BBC drama since the 2007 Doctor Who Cristmas episode Voyage Of The Damned which was watched by an initial live audience of 12.2 million. The seven day consolidated viewing figure for Line Of Duty will be available from early next week.

And so, as BBC drama-lovers - of whom this blogger is very much one - recover from the trauma of the ending (possibly for good) of one major part of their lives, trailers for three of your potential future fixes, have been released in the last week. The much-anticipated HMS Vigil ('from the makers of Line Of Duty, Bodyguard and The Pembrokeshire Murders,' and starring From The North favourites Suranne Jones and Martin Compston), Danny Boy (featuring the great Toby Jones) and The Pursuit Of Love (with Lily James, Dominic West and Andrew Scott). HMS Vigil will start, the BBC promises, 'later in the year.' How much later in the year, we just don't know yet. But, we will eventually. Good things come to those who wait. 
The one-off Gulf War aftermath drama Danny Boy, written by Robert Jones, directed by Sam Miller and also featuring Anthony Boyle, will go out on BBC2 on 12 May. It looks terrific.
And The Pursuit Of Love, an adaptation of Nancy Mitford's 1945 novel of extremely naughty behaviour amongst The Bright Young Things, takes Line Of Duty's Sunday night BBC1 slot from 9 May.
From The North favourite David Bradley has praised the original Doctor Who lead William Hartnell as he returns to the role of the First Doctor in the 'much anticipated' (it says here) live event Time Fracture. The actor played Hartnell in 2013's An Adventure In Space & Time, which explored the creation of the BBC's popular long-running family SF drama. Yer man Bradley made such a strong impression on fans that he was invited back by then-showrunner The Lord Thy God Steven Moffat (OBE) to play the First Doctor in two episodes of Doctor Who, both of which were broadcast as part of Peter Capaldi's stint on the show - The Doctor Falls and Twice Upon A Time. And, a very good job he did, too - in fact, this blogger thought he was great. As he prepares to return to the role once more for Time Fracture, Bradley has lauded Hartnell's 'total dedication' to Doctor Who in an interview on the show's YouTube channel. 'He laid the template,' Bradley said of his predecessor. 'All of the other subsequent Doctors, they all owe a lot to William Hartnell. As it was, it started this phenomenon.' Bradley went on to reveal that he never expected to return to Doctor Who after his first appearance, which saw him play an entirely unrelated - villainous - character, Solomon in the 2012 episode Dinosaurs On A Spaceship with Matt Smith. He continued: 'When that finished, I thought "well that's my Doctor Who experience, you only do it once." Little did I know that Mark Gatiss had me in my mind for Adventure In Space & Time. It was a gift, I just said yes.' Bradley will co-star opposite yer actual John Barrowman in upcoming Time Fracture, billed as 'an immersive experience.' A curious pairing, on might observe. 'I could just see it taking off and being something special,' Bradley claimed. 'It may attract people who may not be Doctor Who fans, but if they are not Doctor Who fans when they go in, they certainly will be when they come out. I just think it's going to be quite an amazing experience.' 
Doctor Who could well have had a very different trajectory, following the news that the Eighth Doctor was almost played by a different actor. Almost, but not quite. Paul McGann played The Doctor in the 1996 TV movie - and, although the production itself wasn't really very good, yer man McGann was. Indeed, this blogger thought he was great. However, the role was reportedly first offered to Harry Van Gorkum. In an interview with Doctor Who Magazine, the actor recounted how his life very nearly changed overnight. Very nearly, but not quite. 'There are only two roles in the world where, if the phone goes and you've got it, overnight your life has changed,' he said. 'There's James Bond and Doctor Who.' His audition for the TV movie allegedly went well and as he recalled: 'An hour later the phone goes. My agent says, "Harry, I've got some news for you. You've gotDoctor Who. Everyone loved you. Everyone said: "This is fantastic - we've found him." I couldn't believe it. I remember I fell to my knees in my trailer and kind of collapsed. I had a bit of an emotional moment. It was the turning point in my career. I thought, "My God, I'm going to play Doctor Who in America.' However, as Van Gorkum put it, 'then, the nightmare started.' Co-producers Universal and FOX had already signed off on his casting, but they had yet to convince the BBC about the unknown actor. 'Geoffrey Sax and Philip Segal said, "Now we've got to sell you to the BBC." I said, "What do you mean?" They said, "We called up the BBC and said, We've finally found Doctor Who." And Alan Yentob [the then controller of BBC1] said, "Who is it?" They said, "Harry Van Gorkum." And he said, "Harry who? Never heard of him!" So I had to put myself on tape for the BBC, so they could agree that I was the right person for it. I was ready to fly from England straight to Vancouver,' he claimed. 'Then around two days before Christmas I got a call from Philip Segal. He said, "This is the worst phone call I've had to make. This is going to happen a few times in your career, because you are very good but you haven't got the name behind you. You haven't had your big break yet."' The BBC instead opted for Paul McGann, who by then had already starred in The Monocled Mutineer, Catherine The Great, The Hanging Gale and the movie Withnail & I. 'So that was it. I was absolutely crushed. I flew back to America and not to Vancouver,' Van Gorkum told Doctor Who Magazine. 'I'm not bitter about it at all,' he claimed. 'I was mortified at the time, but that's the career I've picked. You get close to parts. Until you get that big break, until you get on that A-List, it doesn't matter how good you are, it's a case of "Do the people want to come and see you or not?"' Van Gorkum's subsequent career has included appearances in series like Friends, 24, NCIS and Will & Grace and the movies Gone In Sixty Seconds, Batman & Robin and The Last Legion.
Noel Clarke has said that he is 'deeply sorry' for some of his actions and will 'seek professional help,' but he has again 'vehemently' denied serious sexual misconduct allegations made against him. His statement came after twenty women had reportedly accused him of harassment, bullying and other assorted malarkey. ITV and Sky have both dropped shows which Clarke was involved in. He said: 'I vehemently deny any sexual misconduct or criminal wrongdoing. Recent reports however have made it clear to me that some of my actions have affected people in ways I did not intend or realise.' He added: 'To those individuals, I am deeply sorry. I will be seeking professional help to educate myself and change for the better.' The statement follows ITV's decision not to broadcast the final episode of the police drama Viewpoint, featuring Clarke, on Friday. Which, with horribly unfortunate timing, the Lad Bible website and 'some people on Twitter' had been busy slurping up as the finest thing since sliced bread just a day or two earlier. Clarke's Viewpoint co-stars Bronagh Waugh and Alexandra Roach tweeted their support for the women who made the allegations.
Sky has also halted its work with Clarke, including on the fourth series of the crime drama Bulletproof which was, currently, in pre-production. And, Clarke has been extremely suspended by BAFTA, almost three weeks after the British film and television academy gave him an award for his 'outstanding contribution' to the industry. Clarke is best known for playing Wyman in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Mickey in Doctor Who from 2005 to 2010 and for his acclaimed film trilogy Kidulthood, Adulthood and Brotherhood. He is also a writer, director and producer. He played a surveillance detective in Viewpoint, which had been strip-scheduled across the week on ITV. The penultimate episode was watched by 3.5 million overnight viewers on Thursday. But on Friday, the broadcaster said it was 'no longer appropriate to broadcast the final episode as planned' in light of the emerging allegations. The finale was available on the streaming service ITV Hub from Friday night until Sunday 'for any viewers who wish to seek it out and watch its conclusion.' Few bothered in light of the emerging allegations. Clarke had previously starred in three series of Sky's Bulletproof, which had a fourth commissioned in January. The broadcaster said on Friday: 'Effective immediately, we have halted Noel Clarke's involvement in any future Sky productions.' If you're looking for a dictionary definition of '... and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out,' dear blog reader, that statement comes pretty close to the top of any potential Google list. BAFTA has been criticised by some - most notably the Gruniad Morning Star who really threw BAFTA under the bus - for honouring Clarke on 10 April. It had, it is claimed, received reports of - anonymous - allegations made against Clarke in the twelve days between announcing him as an award recipient and the ceremony itself. According to the Gruniad Morning Star BAFTA's chairman Krishnendu Majumdar said he had heard that as many as twelve women 'could' be making allegations. In a letter to members in which it defended its response, BAFTA said that the e-mails it received 'were either anonymous or second or third-hand accounts via intermediaries. No first-hand allegations were sent to us,' it added. 'No names, times, dates, productions or other details were ever provided. Had the victims gone on record as they have with the Guardian, the award would have been suspended immediately. Noel Clarke's counsel received a legal notice to this effect. It was always very clear what our intentions would be.' BAFTA added that it was 'an arts charity' which 'is not in a position to properly investigate such matters.' The Charity Commission said BAFTA had 'submitted a serious incident report,' which the regulator is now assessing. Paul Fleming, general secretary of arts union Equity, said it had been 'a difficult day for those who run the industry. It's a phenomenally embarrassing and traumatic twenty four hours if you're a gatekeeper and in charge of what goes on in our members' workplace,' he told Radio 4's PM. 'It really does take something to be here, [the] best part of four years on from Me Too and still be asking these questions. And, for big bosses, big producers to have not put in place the polices practises and cultures in workplaces that allow these things to be considered credible. This is a really, really damning indictment of how intimidating some workplaces and some producers are for our members to raise concerns.' Police have confirmed they have received a third party report relating to allegations of sexual offences by a man, following recent claims against Clarke. A third party report is anonymous so the allegation cannot be investigated by the police. However, it can be used as intelligence, for example to see if it matches with other reports against the same person.
Meanwhile, a video of Clarke on-stage at a Doctor Who convention, in which he accused John Barrowman of inappropriate behaviour, has 'surfaced online' according to the Independent. Clarke was, as previously noted, the subject of a Gruniad Morning Star investigation in which 'twenty women came forward with accusations of sexual harassment, unwanted touching, groping, sexually inappropriate behaviour, bullying and unprofessional misconduct' between 2004 and 2019. 'Following the report, people have been sharing old articles about Clarke as well as videos of the actor from interviews and press conferences,' the newspaper notes. 'One such clip gained traction on Twitter due to comments made by Clarke about the alleged behaviour of his co-star, John Barrowman, on the set of Doctor Who.' The video shows Clarke on the panel of Chicago TARDIS alongside former co-stars Camille Coduri and Annette Badland in 2015. During the panel, they appear to be discussing their time working on the episode Boom Town, which was filmed in February 2005 and broadcast in June that year. (Before anyone else points this out, Coduri did not, actually, appear in Boom Town although she was a semi-regular on that series of Doctor Who and featured in several episodes with Clarke and Barrowman, notably Bad Wolf and The Parting Of The Ways.) Clarke, who has been accused of - amongst other things - sending unsolicited nude photos to women, reflected upon his time filming the episode, saying: 'Barrowman is there, taking his dick out every five minutes.' Using his microphone, he then proceeded to imitate Barrowman allegedly tapping his penis on both Coduri and Badland, who were seated next to him. He talked about the alleged incidents for more than two minutes. At one stage, Clarke asked Coduri: 'Do you remember that time he put it on your shoulder in the make-up truck?' to which she responded: 'Yes, I do.' As the crowd laughed, Clarke stood and recreated this alleged, moment, using his microphone. Coduri then stated: 'I didn't want to say. I was being really polite.' Clarke added: 'For the record [to] any men out there, do not try that at work. You will be fired and possibly go to jail.' Well, indeed. When the moderator asked how Barrowman was able to 'get away' with such (alleged) behaviour, the trio are shown jumping to his defence by calling him 'adorable,''light-hearted' and 'non-threatening.' Clarke then said that he believed Barrowman's on-set actions evaded a backlash 'because he's a gay man.' This blogger did, briefly, consider editorialising this story at this point but, frankly, he's not touching John Barrowman' (alleged) penis with an (alleged) bargepole. Anyway, 'many viewers of the video are pointing out the possible hypocrisy in the wake of the recent allegations against Clarke, which were made by several women who have worked with him behind-the-scenes as well as in front of the camera,' the Indi states. Barrowman has previous been accused of indecently exposing himself, in a 2008 incident which led to him issuing a grovelling apology. During a interview with Nick Grimshaw and Annie Mac, Barrowman undid his trousers after being goaded into it by the Radio 1 presenters. The BBC also issued an official apology. Though only one complaint was received about the incident, a BBC spokeswoman said the show had 'overstepped the mark.'
Now, dear blog reader, here's a John Barrowman story which does not involve any part of his groinal area. Well, not directly, anyway. Barrowman has said that returning to the role of Captain Jack Harkness is always a 'no-brainer,' just days after a leaked book synopsis hinted he could appear in the next Doctor Who series. The actor recently joined the cast of Time Fracture, the 'immersive theatrical experience' taking place this summer, which follows UNIT as they attempt to close a rift in space and time in the 1940s. In the run-up to the event, Barrowman was interviewed and was asked what keeps him coming back to Cap'n Jack. 'I never thought as a young boy, when I watched Doctor Who in Glasgow on the sofa on a Saturday evening, that I would ever be part of the TARDIS team,' he said. 'And, then when I got the opportunity by Russell Davies, he rang me up, I went to the audition and lo and behold they called me twenty minutes after and said: "You're Captain Jack Harkness."' Barrowman continued: 'Captain Jack changed my life. It was also a character who changed the face of television because we'd never seen anybody like him before, who was unapologetic about who he was and who he loved. It literally was groundbreaking. So, for me, Jack has not only been life-changing but Jack has opened up other doors for me. So that's why, at the drop of a hat, if someone says to me: "We want you to come back and play Jack." Absolutely. It's a no-brainer.' After an extended absence from the show, Barrowman returned in Doctor Who in 2019 and, most recently appeared in this January's episode Revolution Of The Daleks. This blogger thought he was great. Rumours are, apparently, now circulating that he could be due for another reprisal of the role in series thirteen, which is currently filming, following a leaked synopsis for an upcoming Doctor Who graphic novel featuring the character of Captain Jack. The blurb claimed that this story 'ties in directly' with the second episode of series thirteen, but the BBC has declined to comment on the matter when contacted by the Radio Times.
This blogger - and he means this most sincerely - wishes to apologise to all blog readers for including the words 'John Barrowman's penis' and 'leaks' in the previous paragraph. Moving on - swiftly - to another former Doctor Who companion, Blankety Blank is set to return to BBC1 with a new Saturday night series, hosted by That There Bradley Walsh. Because, seemingly, no one working in television these days has any original ideas. The return of the popular TV game show follows the success of a festive special with Walsh last Christmas. The programme sees celebrities help contestants to fill in the missing words of a sentence, often 'with humorous consequences.' Though, sometimes, not. It ran from 1979 to 1990 and was presented firstly by the late Sir Terry Wogan and then the late Les Dawson. A - very poorly received - revival was fronted by Paul O'Grady's Lily Savage in the late 1990s. It was shit. David Walliams also appeared as the host of a one-off Christmas Special for ITV in 2016. That was also shit. 'I struggle to remember the last time I laughed as much as when I was filming Blankety Blank,' said Walsh in a statement. 'So when they asked if I'd be up for doing a series, I jumped at the chance, I'm just so pleased I get to be a part of it. I stand on the shoulders of giants like Les Dawson and Sir Terry Wogan but I'm hoping to put my own stamp on the fantastically nostalgic show.'Blankety Blank was based on US show Match Game - which has also more recently inspired Snatch Game, a challenge on RuPaul's Drag Race. Kate Phillips, director of entertainment at the BBC, added: 'Blankety Blank has it all - ridiculous questions, unpredictable celebrities, bizarre prizes and, in Bradley a very funny and much loved host. I can't wait for everyone to watch and start filling in those blanks!' By which, of course, she meant 'no one in television these days has any original ideas.' After injury put paid to the former Brentford player's budding football career in the early 1980s, Bradley moved into stand-up comedy. He was later acquired by ITV to present the game show Midas Touch and then replaced Nicky Campbell on Wheel Of Fortune from 1997. An appearance on Lily Savage's Blankety Blank followed, before he focused his attentions on acting - enjoying serious drama roles in Coronation Street, Law & Order: UK and Doctor Who amongst others in the decades that followed. As well as donning his football boots again, regularly, at Soccer Aid - including going up against the late Argentina legend Diego Maradona - he also appeared as the England assistant coach in the 2001 (alleged) comedy movie Mike Bassett. The all-round entertainer has appeared on-stage in theatre productions and pantomimes too and enjoyed two top twenty hit CDs as a singer of swing classics. And Walsh and his son, Barney, have appeared in several TV travelogue shows together, including the recent Bradley & Barney: Breaking Dad - which saw the pair travelling around Europe. But the sixty-year-old remains best known to many as the presenter of another game show, ITV's popular The Chase. Earlier this week he was was nominated by the BAFTA TV Awards for best entertainment performance, for the first time in twelve years as that show's host.
The Game Of Thrones prequel series House Of The Dragon is reported to have started filming in Cornwall. Producer HBO confirmed last week that production was under way with tweets of members of the cast reading scripts. Photos then emerged of film crews and costumed actors, thought to be yer actual Matt Smith and Emma D'Arcy, at Holywell Bay near Newquay. The new series is set three hundred years before the events of Game Of Thrones and will tell the story of the Targaryen family. It is scheduled for release in 2022 on the HBO Max streaming service in the US. The network marked the start of production by sharing photos from the socially-distanced table read. They featured the cast, including Paddy Considine, going over the script while seated at separate tables to ensure coronavirus social distancing. Smudger is to play Prince Daemon Targaryen. Last week, film crews and medieval-style sets believed to be part of the production were spotted at St Michael's Mount, near Penzance. From The North favourite Game Of Thrones was a pop culture phenomenon during its eight-series run from 2011 to 2019, which was filmed mainly in Northern Ireland. House Of The Dragon is one of several Game Of Thrones-related TV projects HBO reportedly has in the works, while a stage show for London's West End is also in production.
Jon Snow (no, the other one), one of the UK's longest-serving TV news presenters, has announced he is to leave Channel Four News after thirty two years. Which will, of course, be terrible news for Middle Class hippy Communists everywhere (but, particularly, at the Gruniad Morning Star). The seventy three-year-old, who has been the programme's main anchor since 1989, said it was 'time to move on' after 'three incredible decades.' He said that he was 'looking forward to new adventures and new challenges.' Snow will now 'front longer-form projects and represent the channel in other matters,' Channel Four said. In a statement, Snow added: 'I am excited by the many things I want to accomplish but I have to say I have enjoyed every minute of my time with the programme. It has brought me adventure, as well as sorrow in some of the stories that I have had to report and also joy in reporting others, but above all, it has brought me community in working with the most fantastic group of people who are bound in intellect, humour and understanding. Together, we have forged a wonderful service. I feel proud to have contributed to Channel Four News let alone to have anchored the programme for the last thirty two years.' Snow joined Channel Four News after serving as ITN's Washington correspondent and diplomatic editor in the 1980s. As well as being a fixture in the nightly programme's London studio, the job has taken him around the world to report on stories including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the release of Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama's inauguration. Channel Four News editor Ben de Pear described Snow as 'a wonderful man' who has been 'the driving force behind Channel Four News for the last thirty years. His fearless journalism, inherent compassion, a nose for a good story as well as sympathy for the underdog have been powered by relentless energy, charm and a mischievous sense of fun,' he said. Snow will now 'focus on his charities and some of his many passions in life, people's stories, inequality, Africa, Iran and the arts,' according to Channel Four.
Ronan Keating and Jermaine Jenas have been given permanent spots on The ONE Show sofa, officially being named Alex Jones's co-hosts on the BBC magazine programme. Boyzone singer Keating and ex-footballer Jenas have been among the stand-in hosts since Matt Baker left a year ago. From 10 May, they will be at her side for part of the week each - Jenas from Mondays to Wednesdays and Keating on Thursdays and Fridays. Others like Alex Scott and Amol Rajan will also still fill in when required. The BBC said they and other members of the programme's 'extended family of presenters' would 'continue to co-host episodes across the year.' Last month, Jones revealed that she is expecting her third child. The BBC said 'no decision has been made on the cover for her maternity leave.' Jenas, a former midfielder with Nottingham forest, this blogger's beloved (though unsellable) Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur and England who, following his retirement turned into an - actually rather decent - Match Of The Day and 5Live pundit, said that he was 'really looking forward to joining as a full time host alongside Ronan.' Jenas is one of a growing number of sports stars who have made the move into hosting TV entertainment shows in recent years. Some with far more success than others. 
Game Of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco has sued the singer Marilyn Manson, alleging sexual assault and battery. The lawsuit claims Manson coerced the actress with 'drugs, force and threats of force.' The plaintiff also alleges the singer and his manager broke trafficking laws by luring her from London to the US with 'empty promises of work.' The artist has rejected multiple allegations of abuse against him as 'horrible distortions of reality.' He has been dropped by his record label and booking agent since the claims surfaced. In February, Westworld actress Evan Rachel Wood publicly accused Manson of domestic abuse. More than a dozen other women have since come forward with similar allegations. In an Instagram post on 1 February, Manson wrote: 'Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality. My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners.' Bianco, who played Ros on the HBO drama, was among a handful of women who spoke out against Manson earlier this year. Her court filing on Friday marks the first legal action over such allegations against Manson, who is referred to in the lawsuit by his real name, Brian Warner. Bianco says that she met the singer in 2005. The lawsuit says that in February 2009, he invited her to Los Angeles to 'film a music video.' But when Bianco arrived she says that she found she was expected to stay at his home and there was no film crew. The plaintiff alleges she was deprived of food and sleep and given drugs and alcohol during her four-day stay. 'Perhaps most horrifyingly,' the lawsuit continues, Warner 'locked Ms Bianco in the bedroom, tied her to a prayer kneeler and beat her with a whip that Mister Warner said was utilised by the Nazis. He also electrocuted her.' The legal action says they began a consensual sexual relationship in May 2009 and maintained a long-distance relationship until 2011. In her complaint, Bianco claims Manson coerced her into sexual intercourse that was often violent and degrading, sometimes even when she was unconscious or otherwise unable to consent. The plaintiff alleges Manson committed multiple acts of sexual battery against her in 2011 and raped her in May of that year. The suit also accuses Tony Ciulla, who managed Manson for more than twenty five years before dropping him this February, of 'supporting [Manson's] violent tendencies' and allegedly violating US human trafficking laws. It alleges the duo coaxed Bianco to the US with 'job opportunities that never materialised,' made her perform 'unpaid labour' on several occasions and 'interfered with her visa process. Warner implied that because he had brought Ms Bianco to the United States and provided housing, she owed him labour and sexual intimacy,' notes the lawsuit. It adds: 'My hope is that by raising [my voice], I will help to stop Brian Warner from shattering any more lives and empower other victims to seek their own small measure of justice.'
A man has been ordered to pay twelve million dollars for his role in setting a Minneapolis police station on fire during rioting last May. The fine for Dylan Shakespeare Robinson who pleaded extremely guilty to an arson charge in December, will follow a four year prison sentence. According to the US Attorney's office, which prosecuted the case, the restitution will be collected 'in a variety of ways,' including wages, bank accounts, retirement garnishments and a monthly pay plan typically set by a judge. If, for example, he pays it off at fifty dollars a week, it should only take Robinson around four thousand six hundred years to fully settle his debts. Three other men who also pleaded guilty will be sentenced at a later date. According to prosecutors, Robinson lit a Molotov cocktail which another person then threw at the Minneapolis Third Precinct headquarters - setting the building ablaze. Surveillance video at the precinct shows Robinson lighting an 'incendiary device' held by another person and later setting a fire inside the station near a first floor stairwell, officials said. Robinson 'chose to depart from lawful protest and instead engaged in violence and destruction,' said acting US Attorney Anders Folk in a statement. The arson 'put lives at risk and contributed to widespread lawlessness in Minneapolis.' Robinson pleaded very guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit arson. Three other men - Bryce Michael Williams, Davon De-Andre Turner and Branden Michael Wolfe - pleaded guilty to the same charge as part of a plea agreement. They have yet to be sentenced. Robinson's lawyer, who is representing all four men, said that Robinson had been 'unfairly singled out' among thousands of others involved in the riots last year.
Five people have been extremely arrested over the violent theft of two French bulldogs belonging to Lady Gaga. In February attackers shot dog walker Ryan Fischer in the chest and took Lady Gaga's dogs, Koji and Gustav. Though whether Lady Gaga was more bothered about the dogs or the bloke who got shot is unknown. Fischer had to have part of his lung removed but survived the attack and has since left the hospital. On Thursday Los Angeles police announced they had charged three suspects for the incident itself as well as two others as accomplices. James Jackson, Jaylin White and Lafayette Whaley have been busted and charged with attempted murder and robbery. Officers also charged Harold White - Jaylin White's father - and Jennifer McBride, with accessory to attempted murder. McBride returned the dogs to the police two days after the theft, after Lady Gaga had offered a five hundred thousand dollar reward for their return. Which presumably means that the half-a-million bucks will not be leaving Lady Gaga's bank account. 'Detectives were able to establish McBride had a relationship [with] Harold White,' a Los Angeles police press release said. All four men charged were 'documented gang members,' the release added, without giving details. Police said that they did not think the attackers were aware Fischer worked for Lady Gaga when they attacked him. But, evidence suggested they knew 'the great value of the breed of dogs,' which was 'the motivation for the robbery.' Fischer was walking the three dogs in a residential area of Hollywood at night when the attackers pulled up in a car. He was shot in the chest with a semi-automatic handgun and two of the dogs were taken. Another of Lady Gaga's bulldogs, Asia, was unharmed in the incident. Fischer was not so lucky. He later described Asia as his 'guardian angel' who gave him the determination to survive. 'My panicked screams calmed as I looked at her, even though it registered that the blood pooling around her tiny body was my own,' he wrote on Instagram in March.
A US judge has extremely refused to dismiss Amazon's allegations that political interference cost the company a ten billion dollars Pentagon contract. The ten-year JEDI contract is aimed at making the US defence department more technologically agile. Amazon had been considered the favourite to win. However, the contract was eventually awarded to Microsoft. The tech giant alleges now extremely former President Mister Rump's dislike of its founder, Jeff Bezos, influenced the final decision. The ruling on Wednesday means that Rump could be among those Amazon asks to appear in court as part of any future proceedings. 'The record of improper influence by former President Trump is disturbing and we are pleased the Court will review the remarkable impact it had on the JEDI contract award,' an Amazon spokesman said in a statement. 'AWS continues to be the superior technical choice, the less expensive choice and would provide the best value to the DOD and the American taxpayer.' However, a spokesman for Microsoft insisted that the new ruling 'changes little. Not once, but twice, professional procurement staff at the DoD chose Microsoft after a thorough review. Many other large and sophisticated customers make the same choice every week. We've continued for more than a year to do the internal work necessary to move forward on JEDI quickly and we continue to work with DoD, as we have for more than 40 years, on mission-critical initiatives.' Four companies had initially been in the running for the deal when the process was launched in 2017. IBM was eliminated, as was Oracle, which lodged an unsuccessful legal challenge alleging conflict of interest stemming from Amazon's hiring of two former defence department employees. Both were said to have been involved in the JEDI selection process.
Over one hundred days since the 6 January insurrection that saw a pro-Rump mob storm the US Capitol, prosecutors have their first guilty plea. Jon Schaffer, a member of the Oath Keepers militia group, pleaded very guilty to two charges - obstruction of an official proceeding and entering a restricted building with a dangerous weapon. Schaffer, who is also a heavy metal guitarist in the band Iced Earth (who are really earache inducing if this is anything to go by - get yer hair cut, hippies), had originally faced six charges including using a chemical irritant designed for grizzly bears on police officers during clashes. He turned himself to FBI agents in Indiana two weeks following the riot after a photo of him inside the Capitol wearing a hat reading 'Oath Keepers Lifetime Member' appeared on the front pages of US newspapers. He is facing up to thirty years in The Joint and is expected to co-operate with investigators. In the hope of getting a nice cell with a view. Probably. The suspects in the Capitol insurrection are a varied group - with only one thing in common, they're all scum: they include an ousted West Virginia lawmaker, several police officers and a left-wing activist from Utah. Most of the rioters were allowed to leave the crime scene, forcing investigators to conduct a national manhunt for the pro-Trump crowd that stormed the halls of Congress. Investigators for the District of Columbia says they have identified over five hundred and forty suspects and have charged some four hundred people in connection with the Capitol siege thus far. The Department of Justice said more than four hundred and ten defendants have been arrested since the attack and the government wrote in a court filing that in addition to those who have already been charged, it expects to charge 'at least' one hundred more. More than twenty five defendants have been charged under a destruction of government property statute. During proceedings for three of those defendants, the government said their crimes amounted to 'terrorism' - an allegation that is not, itself, a charge but could influence prison sentences if they are found extremely guilty. Just weeks after the insurrection in January, FBI officials said they had already been inundated with one hundred and forty thousand videos and photos from members of the public snitching up those whom they believed to have been involved in the naughty insurrectionist malarkey. Officials say they are considering filing 'serious charges' of seditious activity against some individuals who were involved in the insurrection. According to federal criminal code, seditious conspiracy means 'an effort to conspire to overthrow the US government.' The punishment is severe: up to twenty years in The Slammer. The rioters facing federal charges hail from forty two out of the fifty US states and the District of Columbia, according to the George Washington University extremism tracker. Only a few came from pro-Rump strongholds. Most came from districts which voted for Joe Biden in the November presidential erection. In March, the FBI made its first arrest of a Rump appointee, former State Department aide Federico Guillermo Klein. He is accused of multiple naughty felonies related to the riot, including beating police with a stolen riot shield. He was still employed by the State Department as a staff assistant when he joined the mob. He is also a former Rump campaign employee accoring to US media reports. Five of those arrested were police officers. Nearly thirty were active-duty or retired members of the military. About ninety per cent of those arrested have been white, according to an analysis by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats. Most have been over the age of forty, surprising given that the average age for those involved in political violence around the world is late twenties to early thirties. The youngest-known alleged rioter is eighteen-year-old Bruno Joseph Cua, who prosecutors accused of assaulting an officer after he posted online, 'President Trump is calling us to FIGHT!' The oldest alleged insurrectionists were two seventy-year-olds: Bennie Parker, an alleged Oath Keeper and Lonnie Coffman, an Alabama man who authorities say brought a car full of weapons and explosives to Washington. Many of those arrested were employed, or even wealthy, including Doctor Simone Gold from Beverly Hills. She was among a group of doctors that last year spread misleading claims about the coronavirus, including that hydroxychloroquine - a drug touted relentlessly by now extremely former President Miser Rump - was an effective treatment. Jenna Ryan - a real estate broker from Dallas, Texas - garnered much attention on social media after she flew to DC by private jet to join the insurrection the Capitol. Federal cases are on-going across the country and could lead to significant and eye-wateringly long prison sentences for those involved. Acting US Attorney Michael Sherwin said in February: 'The scope and scale of this investigation in these cases are really unprecedented, not only in FBI history but probably [Department of Justice] history.' Dozens of suspects have requested public defenders leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for millions of dollars in defendants' legal bills. The cases have also flooded the Washington DC legal system, where semi-returned judges have been called upon to hear the influx of cases. At least one defendant has argued that their case should be heard out of Washington because they would be unable to get a fair trial there. At least seven of the key suspects have told investigators that they travelled to the Capitol after now extremely former President Mister Rump 'told them' to go in a speech that preceded the insurrection. The so-called Q Shaman (who lived with his mom) requested a pardon from now extremely former President Mister Rump before he left office, citing 'the peaceful and compliant fashion in which Mister Chansley comported himself' during the insurrection. He didn't get one, however. Riley June Williams, the woman accused of stealing a congressional laptop, was ordered to stay off the Internet after she allegedly attempted to delete her information and encouraged others to do the same. Laura Steele, a member of the Oath Keepers militia indicted for conspiracy, worked for the High Point Police Department in North Carolina for twelve years before she was terminated for conduct toward superior personnel, absence from duty and violating a communications policy, a spokesperson for High Point Police said. Authorities have connected at least fifty seven alleged conspiring insurgent rioters to extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Per Centers, Texas Freedom Force and the conspiracy ideology QAnon.
After a one-week trial that featured testimony from a Capitol police officer and a staffer for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Rump supporter was found very guilty of threatening to assault and murder members of US Congress in online statements he made before and after the 6 January Capitol insurrection. Brendan Hunt is scheduled to be sentenced on 22 June and faces a maximum of ten years in The Joint, the Justice Department said. Hunt's was believed to be the first criminal trial in a case connected to the Capitol insurrection, though he did not ctually participate in the siege in DC. He was charged, instead, for statements he made online. A video that prosecutors said he posted two days after events on the video-sharing site Bitchute was titled KILL YOUR SENATORS and urged viewers to return to the Capitol with guns to 'slaughter' members of Congress. Hunt was convicted for that eighty eight-second video, according to the jury verdict. The jury did not find that his other comments - a series of posts on social media websites between 6 December 2020 and 21 January 2021 - were illegal threats. In those posts, which prosecutors highlighted during the trial, Hunt said that he would not vote in 'another rigged' erection and advocated violence, including calls to murder Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Four astronauts have returned to Earth from the International Space Station, in what was NASA's first night-time landing in fifty three years. The crew - three NASA astronauts and one from Japan's space agency JAXA - spent almost six months in space. They flew back in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Resilience and splash-landed off Panama City, Florida. They were supposed to leave the ISS earlier, but their departure was delayed due to bad weather in Florida. NASA said that the crew were 'in good spirits' after successfully landing in the Gulf of Mexico. Speaking at a press conference after the landing, a SpaceX crew operations and resources engineer told the astronauts: 'Dragon, on behalf of NASA and SpaceX teams, we welcome you back to planet Earth and thanks for flying SpaceX. For those of you enrolled in our frequent flier programme, you've earned sixty eight million miles on this voyage.' NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins, commander of the Crew-1 mission, replied: 'It is good to be back on planet Earth. We'll take those miles. Are they transferable?' Confirming the safe landing on Sunday morning, NASA said that the crew were given medical checks before being flown from Pensacola to Houston. The last NASA crew to land back on Earth at night-time was Apollo-8 - the first manned mission to the moon, which returned on 27 December 1968. This latest mission was a collaboration between NASA and SpaceX, as part of the former's Commercial Crew programme. SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, has become NASA's favoured commercial space flight partner. There are still seven astronauts on the ISS, including a new crew of four people who arrived on a different SpaceX craft last week on a mission called Crew-2. As the capsule moved off, Hopkins said: 'Thanks for your hospitality. We'll see you back on Earth.' The astronauts - Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi - travelled into space last November on the first fully operational mission to the ISS by a vehicle made by SpaceX. Glover also made history with this mission, by becoming the first person of colour to hold a long-duration crew assignment on the ISS. Speaking at a remote press conference before the crew's return to Earth, he said: 'One thing that did really profoundly impact me was the very first time I got out of the seat after [the spacecraft] was safely in orbit, and I looked out the window and saw the earth from two hundred and fifty miles up. I will never forget that moment. It wasn't about the view. It was how the view made me feel.' In May 2020, two US astronauts made a test mission to the ISS and stayed until July. This mission, Demo-2, was SpaceX's first astronaut mission. That was also the first launch to the ISS from US soil since the end of the Space Shuttle programme in 2011. Since then, the US had relied the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to send astronauts to the space station. It was also the first crewed mission run by a private company and not NASA.
Respect is considerably due to From The North favourites 5Live's Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode for the best 'so bad, it's brilliant'movie-related joke this blogger has heard in positives ages as part of the latest episode of their Film Review podcast.
'I've just been to a Bill & Ted convention in Oslo.'
'Norway?'
'Yes way, dude ...'
And finally, dear blog reader, please do give a nice warm From The North welcome to the latest inhabitant of yer actual Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House. Shaun.

Another week, dear blog reader, another bloggerisationisms update here at From The North. Which is nice.
The BBC is reported to be 'shocked' - and stunned - to hear allegations by several women that the actor Noel Clarke sexually harassed them on the set of Doctor Who. Clarke played Mickey Smith in the BBC drama from 2005 to 2006 and then in a couple of further episodes in 2008 and 2010. You knew that, right? The Gruniad Morning Star has quoted five women, including an unnamed actress, who it says have claimed that he touched them inappropriately or made sexual remarks. He has denied all of these claims. He has previously'vehemently' denied any sexual misconduct or criminal wrongdoing. Before apologising. The latest reports come a week after twenty women told the Gruniad that Clarke had harassed or bullied them during his career as a TV and film actor, writer, director and producer. Last week, he said he understood that 'some of my actions have affected people in ways I did not intend or realise' and said he was 'deeply sorry' to those people. But he denied that his actions constituted sexual misconduct or criminal wrongdoing. He told the Gruniad Morning Star that he strongly denied the latest allegations. A BBC spokesman said: 'The BBC is against all forms of inappropriate behaviour and we're shocked to hear of these allegations. To be absolutely clear, we will investigate any specific allegations made by individuals to the BBC - and if anyone has been subjected to or witnessed inappropriate behaviour of any kind we would encourage them to raise it with us directly. We have a zero tolerance approach and robust processes are in place - which are regularly reviewed and updated to reflect best practice - to ensure any complaints or concerns are handled with the utmost seriousness and care.' Last week, Sky halted its work with Clarke, including on the fourth series of the crime drama Bulletproof, while ITV dropped the final episode of his drama Viewpoint from its broadcast schedules. The BBC said that it would 'not be progressing any projects with Noel Clarke at this time.' BAFTA has suspended his membership, weeks after giving him an outstanding contribution award and the Metropolitan Police said they have received allegations of sexual offences from a third party. Meanwhile on Friday, Doctor Who and Torchwood actor John Barrowman was said by the Gruniad to have 'repeatedly exposed himself' on set. Although, the Gruniad added, 'numerous witnesses described the incidents as inappropriate pranks rather than anything amounting to sexually predatory behaviour.' So, there you have it, dear blog reader, the Gruniad considers that John Barrowman's is a 'non-threatening penis' it would seem. Which is jolly good news for anyone who has ever been menaced by it. A video of Clarke joking - somewhat sneeringly - about Barrowman's behaviour at a 2014 SF convention in Chicago resurfaced and went viral last week. In 2008, Barrowman apologised for exposing his genitals during a live Radio 1 broadcast. At the time, he said he 'was joining in the light-hearted and fun banter of the show and went too far.' In a new statement to the Gruniad, he said that his 'high-spirited behaviour' was 'only ever intended in good humour to entertain colleagues on set and backstage.' He added: 'With the benefit of hindsight, I understand that upset may have been caused by my exuberant behaviour and I have apologised for this previously. Since my apology in November 2008, my understanding and behaviour have also changed.' The Gruniad quotes Russell Davies and Julie Gardner, executive producers on Doctor Who at the time these alleged incidents took place as saying, that had complaints been made at the time, action would have been taken. 

Meanwhile, according to a hilariously mangled - and entirely unconfirmed - report from some plank of no importance at the Daily Mirra, 'lost Doctor Who episodes starring William Hartnell [are to be] regenerated as cartoons.' By which they mean, it would appear, that the latest 1960s story to be animated for a DVD release may (or may not) be 1965's Galaxy Four. In an effort, presumably, to get The Chumblies into the shops before Christmas. 
The BBC has commented on the future of From The North favourite Line Of Duty following last week's finale. Ahead of the series six finale's broadcast on Sunday 2 May, the show's creator Jed Mercurio had paid tribute to his cast and crew and thanked the BBC for 'six incredible seasons.''Viewers were then left wondering if the show would return due to the feeling of finality in the episode, which has been widely panned as "disappointing" after being watched by a staggering number of people in the UK,' according to some smear at the Independent. And by 'widely panned' they mean 'whinged about by half-a-dozen malcontents on Twitter whose views matter not in the slightest except to Middle Class hippy Communist journalists who believe that social media is "the sole arbiter of the worth of all things."' Which, just in case you agree with them, it isn't. And, whilst were about it, who uses the word 'panned' to mean 'whinged about' in anything other than an ironic sense? The BBC - seemingly nowhere near as bothered by the whinging of some malcontents on Twitter as the Indi and the Gruniad Morning Star - has suggested it is more than happy for the show to continue should Mercurio want to make more. And, considering that the finale had an overnight audience of almost thirteen million punters - most of whom aren't members of the Twatterati - who can, honestly, express any surprise at this 'news'? In a statement, the BBC's Chief Content Officer Charlotte Moore said: 'I'm looking forward to having a conversation with the team about where we go next and what the future of the series might be.' Moore added: 'Addictive event television, Line Of Duty has kept the nation guessing for the last seven weeks, so it's no surprise that last night's jaw dropping finale set a ratings record.' She hailed Mercurio as 'a master of his craft,' continuing: 'I would like to congratulate him and the entire cast and crew for delivering such an incredible drama series.'
And, speaking of Jed Mercurio, the Line Of Duty creator has, very satisfyingly, bee-atch slapped one of the whinging malcontents on Twitter down into the gutter along with all the other turds. It was, dear blog reader, quite a sight to see. One trusts that 'Lorraine from the London area' was suitably chastened after receiving such a beautifully delivered withering put-down in front of all of her Twitter peers. That's what you get when you mess with Jed Mercurio, Lorraine from the London area. Bigger - and better paid - gobshites than you have tried before and received an even more vicious (metaphorical) slap in the mush. Take that there Cressida Dickhead, for one. 
Whilst many of us have occupied ourselves during the on going pandemic by performing some minor home improvements, for the former comedian Adrian Edmondson the usually straightforward act of cleaning his windows took a turn for the worse, according to a piece of gossip masquerading as 'journalism' in, of course, the Gruniad Morning Star. Edmondson described having to be rescued by fire services after getting himself trapped on his window ledge, saying that he had to ask passers-by to get help but that, despite the precarious position, the fire brigade 'didn't snigger too much' when they carried him to safety. Some of Edmondson's three hundred thousand plus followers on Twitter used the confession to link to his previous work, claiming that it sounded like a scene featuring his characters in The Young Ones or Bottom - when he used to be funny - and that it would have no doubt greatly amused his former comedy partner and co-star, the late, great Rik Mayall. The Gruniad then went on to expand four sodding paragraphs of newsprint and bandwidth on repeating several - not especially amusing - replies sent to Ade about his mishap. Trees died to bring you this crap, dear blog reader.
The Circle will not be returning to Channel Four, after three years on our screens. Because it was shit and no one was watching it, which is the reason why the vast majority of cancelled shows get cancelled in the first place. The only outstanding issue now, is for Channel Four to identify the brain-damaged moron or the victim of a cruel medical experiment who commissioned this atrocious banal slop in the first place and relieve them of their employment. Based around catfishing (no, me neither) and social media, contestants chat online and vote each other off based on popularity. And, trust this blogger, it was every single bit as horrific and vile as tat description makes it sound. The series was, for example, a prominent feature in From The North's Worst TV Shows of 2018 list. 'It was hosted by Maya Jama and Alice Levine - both of whom should be sodding ashamed of themselves - and has been compared to Big Brother,' this blogger wrote at the time. 'So, in other words, it's a TV format ripping off another TV format ... The series was won by twenty six-year-old "Internet comedian" (whatever that means) Alex Hobern, who had played the game claiming to be a twenty five-year-old woman called Kate, using photos of his real-life girlfriend, Millie. A single sentence which should sum up to everyone who avoided The Circle like the plague why you made entirely the right decision. This is television in Twenty First Century dear blog reader. Horrifying, isn't it?' It had three regular series and one featuring z-list alleged celebrity type individuals, each with contestants living in the same block of flats during the show. A spokesman for Channel Four lied: 'The Circle has been a huge hit for young audiences and has grown successively over three seasons.' And we know that's a lie because, if it wasn't, there's no way it would have been cancelled. The Z-List Celebrity Circle was won by Lady Leshurr (no, me neither), who pretended to be one Big Narstie. No one knows why.
The story that From The North favourite Susanna Hoffs was 'pranked' into singing the vocal on The Bangles 1987 number one 'Eternal Flame' whilst naked by the song's producer Davitt Sigerson is not new. Susanna mentioned it in the 2015 BBC documentary I'm In A Girl Group and, prior to that, in a 2012 interview with Rock Cellar magazine. But, that didn't stop the Gruniad Morning Star from treating this amusing but somewhat lightweight story as an 'exclusive' in a recent piece. 'Davitt had recently produced Olivia Newton-John and pranked me by telling me she did her best vocals in the nude,' Sussana told interviewer Amy Fleming who, seemingly, couldn't believe her luck at the 'scoop' she'd just been given. 'I imagined it would feel like skinny dipping - vulnerable yet freeing - and I decided to try it. Nobody could see me; there was a baffle in front of me and it was dark. After the first song went so well, I became superstitious about it, like in sports where you have to have your rabbit’s foot, and ended up compelled to skinny dip my way through most of the album.'
A recent discussion on Facebook focused this blogger's attention on the history of the BBC's acquisition of Star Trek back in the day. The popular American SF drama (you might've heard of it) was bought by the BBC in either late 1968 or early 1969 at almost exactly the same time that, in the US, NBC were in the process of cancelling it (production on the final episode, Turnabout Intruder, wrapped in Los Angeles on 3 January 1969). It's worth remembering, of course, that contrary to the iconic worldwide status the franchise subsequently achieved, Star Trek was never a hit in America, either critically or commercially, during its initial run - constantly being on the verge of cancellation during its three series after its debut in 1966. When this blogger was co-authoring The Doctor Who Discontinuity Guide in the early 1990s, the question of when, exactly, knowledge of Star Trek first arrived in the corridors of the BBC cropped up. Some of the later Patrick Troughton Doctor Who stories seemed to contain a few, stray, elements which could, at a stretch, have been described as being 'inspired' by aspects Star Trek. Albeit they were mostly aesthetic - like, for instance, Dudley Simpson's eerie choral-heavy music for the opening sequence in The Ice Warriors (produced in the autumn of 1967). Certainly the LP Leonard Nimoy Presents Mister Spock's Music From Outer Spacehad received a UK release - on Dot Records - in 1967 (a full two years before the series finally turned up on telly in Britain) although whether Dudley, or anyone else at the BBC, had heard it at that stage is unknown.
Myself and my fellow authors asked Terrance Dicks - then Doctor Who's script editor - when he first recalled hearing about Star Trek. He noted that he and producers Derrick Sherwin and Peter Bryant had been shown a handful of Star Trek episodes by the BBC's then head of drama, Shaun Sutton, during the period before the BBC committed to purchased the series and had been asked for their opinions on it. They had, Terrance recalled, been positive although he doubted that - with its far higher production budget - the series had much of an influence over Doctor Who at that time. The BBC thus became the broadcaster for Star Trek in the UK for the next twenty years. Curiously, episodes were not shown in either US broadcast or production order (although unlike NBC in America, the Where No Man Has Gone Before pilot episode wasshown first by the BBC, on 12 July 1969. Stark Trek was, initially, placed in Doctor Who's traditional 5.15pm Saturday tea-time slot, sandwiched between Grandstand and the Simon Dee chat show, the sixth series of Doctor Who having concluded with the final episode of The War Games on 21 June.
The first twenty five Star Trek episodes broadcast in the UK, a combination of stories from the first and second US series', ran during 1969 until 27 December (meaning, for example, that the character of Chekov was introduced to UK viewers earlier than he had been to those in the USA). The BBC edited some episodes of their more violent content and/or for timing reasons. There seemed to be no obvious rationale for the order in which episodes were broadcast - for example, one of the series most famous stories, The City On The Edge Of Forever, the twenty eighth episode to be broadcast in the US was shown third in the UK run (on 26 July). Other early highlights included the two-part The Menagerie (shown on 23 August and 30 August) and The Devil In The Dark (6 September). All episodes were broadcast in black and white up to and including another of this blogger's favourites, What Are Little Girls Made Of? on 8 November. The following Saturday was BBC1's first full day of colour broadcasting and the first episode of Star Trek to benefit from this technological leap forward was another memorable one, Arena. At which point people in Britain were shocked - and stunned - to discover that Starfleet uniforms were, actually, red, yellow and blue rather than the various shades of grey they had previously assumed them to be.
Following the return of Doctor Who in January 1970, the BBC reassessed their placement of Star Trek, moving it to Monday evenings at 7.10pm when it returned on 6 April 1970. The second 'series' - twenty one episodes - were mostly drawn from the second US series, with a few leftovers from the first and included the debut UK broadcasts of such well-remembered stories as The Trouble With Tribbles (1 June 1970), Bread & Circuses (8 June) and Journey To Babel (22 June). The run concluded with A Piece Of The Action on 7 September 1970. However, within a month the show returned, switched again, this time to Wednesday evenings at either 7.10pm or 7.20pm from 7 October for a further seventeen episodes. This featured a rag-tag mixture of episodes from all three US series, including the first UK showings of Mirror, Mirror (11 November) and Amok Time (25 November).
However, problems lay ahead. On 2 December 1970 the BBC showed the last remaining unbroadcast first series episode, Miri. Almost certainly it had been held back to this point because someone sensed the episode, with its storyline concerning a community of feral, Lord Of The Flies-type children might be problematic when shown in what was still seen as, essentially, a 'family viewing' slot. Sure enough, the episode did prompt more than the usual number of complaints from parents who considered it to be too disturbing for seven year olds. The BBC seemingly agreed; the corporation looked through the rest of the episodes which they hadn't shown up to that point and decided that three - The Empath, Whom God's Destroy and Plato's Stepchildren - couldn't be edited to an acceptable level and were, therefore, effectively, 'banned'. (Rumours persist to this day - as this article proves - that the real reason the latter was on the disapproved list was due to the US controversy over the episode's famous inter-racial kiss rather than anything related to violence. Whether that's true or not, we may never know.) The Empath had, in fact, been due to go out on BBC1 on 16 December 1970 and was even listed as such in the Radio Times but it was replaced by The Paradise Syndrome at the eleventh hour.
The final batch of fifteen Star Trek episodes were broadcast on BBC1 in 1971, starting with Spectre Of The Gun on 15 September. This included the series worst episode, the risible Spock's Brain (13 October) and concluding with Turnabout Intruder on 15 December, the last UK debut for a Star Trek episode for over twenty years. Along with Miri the three unbroadcast episodes remained unbroadcast throughout the regular (and hugely popular) BBC repeat runs of the 1970s and 1980s. Because 'they all dealt most unpleasantly with the already unpleasant subjects of madness, torture, sadism and disease,' the BBC said in a reply sent to the Star Trek Action Group, a fan collective who, in 1976, had written to the Beeb asking, politely, why those three episodes had never been shown in Britain.
There was, eventually, a happy conclusion to all this nonsense. The story goes that, following the success of the BBC's broadcast of the first three series of The Next Generation (1990 to 1992), the corporation decided to, again, repeat the entire original Star Trek series this time on BBC2 starting with the first UK showing of the original pilot, The Cage (18 August 1992). However, when they looked at their film copies of the 1960s episodes, they were rather battered, scratched and faded after twenty years of regular showings. So, the BBC ordered a complete new set of prints from America. And it was, seemingly, only at this stage that they looked again at the 'banned' episodes and wondered 'why are these on the banned list?' given how much the world had changed in the ensuring two decades since those decisions had been made. So, the first UK broadcasts of the three previously unbroadcast episodes took place around Christmas and New Year of 1993-94 (22 December 1993, 5 January 1994 and 19 January 1994). Perhaps surprisingly, given the controversial nature of the whole issue, the BBC didn't make a particularly big deal in terms of publicity surrounding these 'first' broadcasts and it is probable that some of the audience outside of the chalk circle of rabid Star Trek fandom, didn't even realise they were watching episodes they had never seen before. The run also saw the first UK broadcast of Miri in twenty two years. And, also, because of various edits which had been made over the years that was the first occasion the majority of UK viewers had ever seen Star Trek episodes in full as originally broadcast in America.  
Records that yer actual Keith Telly Topping has been trying to track down a copy of for far too long that he's finally managed to lay his hands on via the Interweb. Part one (of a potentially on-going series). The George Martin Orchestra Gets Shafted. 'Y'all take this honky out an' waste him!'
According to the BBC News website, Coldplay's Chris Martin says lockdown made him confront his ego. So, seemingly, what our mothers used to tell us was true, dear blog reader, every cloud does have a silver lining. Now, hopefully Martin's 'confrontation with his ego' will have resulted in him not making any more of those wretched records which sold in their millions - to Middle Class hippy Communist Gruniad Morning Star readers, mostly - but, when played, evaporated on contact with the ear. We can but dream, dear blog reader. Dreaming (as Blondie - as far better band than bloody Coldplay - once said) is free.
Two jellyfish were swimming in the sea, dear blog reader. One said to the other: 'Have you heard about Harry?' The other jellyfish replied that he had not. 'What's up with him?''You'll never guess who he stung,' said the first jellyfish. 'He only went and stung Sting?''Harry stung Sting?' asked the second jellyfish. 'Sting, the former singer with The Police.''Yeah.''Sting, the lute playing, tantric sex advocate and would-be saviour of the planet?''The very same.''So,' asked the second jellyfish, 'what happened?''Aw, man, it was a total tragedy,' replied the first jellyfish. 'He was in so much pain. They tried peeing on it, they tried medication, they tried even stronger medication, they tried positive thinking, nothing worked. The doctors couldn't do anything for him.''That's terrible,' said the second jellyfish. 'You're telling me, mate. After three days of screaming uncontrollable agony and hallucinations, poor Harry died ...' Nah, listen ...
The lawyer for a Delaware man charged over the Capitol attack in January is reported to be floating a unique defence: FAUX News made him do it. Anthony Antonio, who is facing five charges including violent entry, disorderly conduct, impeding law enforcement during civil disorder and general naughtiness in a public arena, fell prey to the persistent lies about the so-called 'stolen election' being spread daily by now extremely former President Mister Rump and the right-wing scumbag network that served him, his attorney Joseph Hurley claimed during a video hearing on Thursday. Antonio spent the six months before the riots mainlining FAUX News while extremely unemployed, Hurley said, likening the side effects of such a steady diet of misinformation to a mental health syndrome. 'Fox television played constantly,' Hurley said. 'He became hooked with what I call "Foxitis" or "Foxmania" and became interested in the political aspect and started believing what was being fed to him.' Antonio's segment was somehow only the second most notable part of the hearing according to media reports. 'Another defendant shouted obscenities, sending the proceedings into near chaos at one point.' Hurley's argument calls to mind the infamous 'The Devil made me do it' defence, although one might argue The Devil has nothing on the prolific manipulators at FAUX News. And, whilst there is certainly an element of believability to the harmful nature of persistent right-wing scumbag propaganda effectively manipulating a person's ability to distinguish fact from reality it remains to be seen whether or not there is considered to be any legal merit to such a claim. For Fox's sake, if noting else. Multiple videos obtained by the FBI from the day of the riot appear to show Antonio as being especially active in the chaos. He is seen wearing a bulletproof vest featuring a patch of the anti-government extremist group The Three Percenters. At one point in video footage he can be seen shouting at officers: 'You want war? We got war. 1776 all over again.' It was a revolutionary sentiment spread by the radical right-wing congresswoman Lauren Boebert and others on the day. Elsewhere, Antonio is seen with a riot shield that appeared to have been stolen from law enforcement, squirting liquid on an officer being dragged into a crowd, stealing a gas mask and jumping through a broken window into the Capitol. FAUX News has continued to spread misinformation about what happened that day. The network is currently being sued for billions of dollars by two voting machine companies, Smartmatic and Dominion, for spreading lies about their role in the alleged 'theft' of the erection.
Billie Hayes, whose portrayal of the flamboyantly and comically wicked witch Witchiepoo on the Saturday morning live-action children's classic HR Pufnstuf, died of natural causes on 29 April at Cedar's Hospital in Los Angeles. She was ninety six. Her death was announced by her family. A Broadway veteran by the time she reached national fame as the flute-stealing nemesis to a psychedelic dragon, Hayes had starred as Mammy Yokum in both the Broadway and film versions of the popular late-1950s musical Lil' Abner. She made her Broadway debut in New Faces Of 1956 along with an ensemble that included Maggie Smith. Following a couple of guest appearances on episodic TV in 1967 - including a Mammy Yokum-type matriarch in the Hillbilly Honeymoon episode of The Monkees - Hayes endeared herself to a generation of glued-to-the-TV Saturday morning viewers in 1969 as the eccentrically costumed, ever-cackling and always bumbling Wilhelmina W Witchiepoo. With a performance panache that was so-over-the-top-it-was-down-the-other-side even by the standards of the Sid and Marty Krofft universe of costumed creatures, Hayes was an immediate scene-stealer. Though Witchiepoo was the HR Pufnstuf nominal villain, intent on stealing the magical talking Freddy the Flute as if he were a pair of ruby slippers, Hayes' wildly entertaining vaudeville, slapstick style had legions of young viewers rooting her on to a victory that never came. 'Why me?,' she would constantly whine after the inevitable backfiring of her latest evil scheme. Born in Du Quoin, Illinois, Hayes began her showbusiness career aged nine, dancing professionally in local nightclubs. While still in high school, she joined the fourteen-piece regional orchestra of Vince Genovese and performed solo in her teens in Chicago and throughout the Midwest. After moving to New York, Hayes performed selections from her nightclub song-and-dance routine in an audition for famed theater impresario J. Shubert, who was so taken with her comic and musical talents that he cast her in principal roles of three roadshow operettas: Student Prince, The Merry Widow and Blossom Time. Soon, she was co-starring with fellow newcomer Paul Lynde in the New York revue What's New?, which led to her Broadway debut in Leonard Sillman's New Faces show. She then took over the role of Mammy Yokum from the original cast's Charlotte Rae, finding herself alongside another up-and-comer in the replacement cast, Valerie Harper. Hayes, with old-age make-up, a white wig and a long-stemmed pipe, would reprise the role in Paramount's 1959 film adaptation of Lil' Abner and, in 1971, a TV-movie version. She would return to the stage in the late 1960s as the character Minnie Fay in the national touring company of Hello, Dolly! starring Betty Grable. After her 1969 arrival in the cult Sid and Marty Krofft series, which also starred Jack Wild as the on-the-run Dorothy Gale-stand-in Jimmy and, providing the voice of Pufnstuf The Dragon, Lennie Weinrib (actor Roberto Gamonet was inside the puffy, full-body green-and-yellow costume), Hayes had found what would be her signature role. She returned as the character in the 1970 feature film adaptation Pufnstuf, along with Wild, Martha Raye and, in her sole feature role, Mama Cass Elliot (as Witch Hazel). Hayes even reprised the role in 1976 on the ABC Halloween star vehicle of her old friend Paul Lynde, appearing with The Wizard of Oz's Margaret Hamilton in a comedy sketch which revealed the sisterly bond between the two famous witches. The cancelation of HR Pufnstuf in 1970 led to yet another Krofft casting, this time in the dual role of Witchiepoo and the kindlier Weenie the Genie in the even more bonkers Lidsville (1971-72), with Charles Nelson Reilly taking the show's chief villain spot as the magician Horatio J Hoodoo. Hayes had a long and busy subsequent TV career in voice roles - The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries, The Flintstones Comedy Show, Trollkins, The Real Ghostbusters, Rugrats, Transformers: Rescue Bots, among many others - and she appeared in a recurring role on the daytime soap General Hospital in the early 1980s as a street-wise international spy, Brighton O'Reilly. Off-screen, Hayes founded the Los Angeles-based animal rescue non-profit organisation Pet Hope, a cause she had championed since adopting a puppy abandoned in the basement of Broadway's St James Theatre during the run of Lil' Abner. Hayes is survived by her niece, Nancy Powers, nephews Tom Brosch, Louie Brosch and Guy Brosch and several great-nieces and nephews.
As a postscript to the previous, sad, item, this blogger has to report that he once risked arrest at Minneapolis International Airport. When, as he was about to catch a plane back to the UK following a visit in 2001, during a bag-check, the airport official discovered, in this blogger's suitcase, a carrier bag containing a video box-set. A video box-set of HR Pufnstuf to be exact, which this blogger has purchased for his (weird) fiend, Christopher. 'Err, that's not mine,' this blogger hurriedly told the official, only later reflecting that this was, he suspected, exactly the sort of thing the poor chap normally heard from recently captured heroin traffickers. Fortunately, perhaps, the official saw the funny side of the situation. Otherwise, it is perfectly possible that Keith Telly Topping would have been writing From The North for the past two decades from a cell in The Federal Joint whilst doing a thirty-to-life stretch (without the possibility of parole) for 'being a smartarse in the USA.' True story, dear blog reader. Still, it could've been worse, in less enlightened times one could get sent to The Chair for possession of anything related to Scooby Doo, Where Are You? Well know fact, that. 

It has been a positive age-and-a-half since yer actual From The North was last updated (well, it's been just over three weeks if we're being completely accurate about it). This blogger could give all dear blog readers a whole ream of crass excuses for this, frankly, right shite state of affairs - one or two of them may even be true. But, at the end of the day, life is not built that way and even the most foresightful amongst us cannot always predict those moments when life bowls a tricky googly which goes the opposite way to what you'd expected. Cricket mtaphor for the uninformed. 
Firstly, in this latest bloggerisationisms update, therefore, we have some cautiously good news. This blogger now is in possession of that there full prickage. Keith Telly Topping is, as a consequence, able to reply to any enquiring tobacconists: 'I am no longer infected.' Which is, obviously, nice for all concerned. The side effects this time around were pretty much the same as with the opening shot; a bit of a headache and some arm pain for a day afterwards but, thereafter, no alarms and no surprises.
Before that malarkey, however, this blogger had a full weekend-and-a-bit of feeling geet grotty-as-shat (it was just a heavy cold, nothing more serious than that, thankfully). It was serious enough, however, to necessitate this blogger spending much of four consecutive days in his stinkin' pit being aal snotty and discombobulated. During which time he managed to re-read (for the third time) all nine hundred and fifty odd pages of Mark Lewisohn's acclaimed Be-Atles biography Tune In between bouts of severe coughing and eating bowls of chicken soup. After that, this blogger subsequently needed a rest to get over his enforced rest.
The Be-Atles incidentally, just in case you're wondering, were a popular beat combo of the 1960s, you might've heard of them.
During this period of enforced rest and much coughing, this blogger spoke on the phone with his brother, an unusual enough occurrence in and of itself. It was a conversation which began concerning a small gift that Our Colin Telly Topping was, very graciously, giving to this blogger in lieu of ... nothing in particular. What can I say, dear blog reader? Some people are just nice. We went on to talk about our collective forthcoming prickage(s), this blogger's prior health issues and other general ephemera. And then, for some bizarre reason which loses a lot in translation, ended up in a lengthy discussion about whatever happened to 'H' from Steps. True story. The Telly Topping family, ladies and gentlemen - mad as toast.
An allegedly 'new' trailer, allegedly, for the 'forthcoming series' of Doctor Who has, allegedly, confirmed at least one - not entirely unexpected - return of an old favourite according to an over-excited piece posted on the Independent website on 21 May. Except that this allegedly 'new' trailer was, in fact, an old trailer - for the 2019 New Year's Day episode Resolution Of The Daleks to be precise. So, pretty much an example of atypical arse reportage which we've come to expect from the Middle Class hippy Communists at the Indi, then? Congratulations, as embarrassing mistakes go, that's a really good one.
On a somewhat-related theme, we should also probably be congratulating some plank of no importance at the Metro for the (one assumes) 'exclusive' revelation that the producers of licensed Doctor Who audio products have undergone something of a piscine regeneration. A product of whales, one imagines. 
There has been something a right old stroppy kerfuffle going down in parts of Doctor Who fandom over the BBC's allegedly 'heavy-handed' stance on copyright (of, let us remember, a creation of their own to which they and they alone are entitled to financially exploit) related to certain fan productions. However, it appears that not everything is as black-and-white as it may appear. Allow the Radio Times to explain further. At great length. 
Meanwhile, old Barrowman his very self continues to lose gainful employment left, right and centre due to his - alleged - past groinal activities and self-confessed 'tomfoolery.' As detailed here and here. If you were ever wondering just how quickly a career can get itself derailed, John me auld china, have a word with Kevin Spacey, one is sure he'll be able to fill you in on the unexpurgated details. It appears that Barrowman's replacement in the latter production - the 'interactive experience'Tim Fracture - will be the very excellent Jo Martin. Who, as far as this blogger is aware, has never been accused to waving her penis about in an untoward manner. And, a jolly good thing too, this blogger reckons.
Further additions to the cast of the forthcoming - and much anticipated - adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Sandmanhave been announced. Although Stephen Fry has already given the game away about his involvement in the Netflix series, as previously mentioned on this blog. Earlier cast announcements were made in February. This blogger hopes - and, indeed, believes - it's going to be great.
Perhaps inevitably, since this is the world we now live in, some self-entitled pricks 'took to social media' to whinge like whinging whingers about some of these recently announced casting decision. As though that has anything to do with them in the first place. From The North favourite Gaiman was, delightfully, having none of that crap and told them where to get off and what to do with the horse they rode in on. Which was, not unexpectedly, extremely funny. Still, one imagines 'being publicly slapped down into the gutter along with all the other turds by Neil Gaiman' is something of a cause for bragging rights in parts of Sandman fandom. Perhaps we'll never care. 
Fans eagerly awaiting the final episode of Kate Winslet's acclaimed drama Mare Of Easttown were made to wait for even longer when streaming service HBO Max crashed just as it was due to start. Winslet plays a detective in the murder mystery, which has been one of the most talked-about TV shows of recent months. For what it's worth, this blogger thought it was great. But many US viewers trying to watch on HBO Max had to wait several hours. And, gosh but were they unhappy about such malarkey? The finale was praised by critics, though, with the Daily Torygraph hailing it as 'an absolute masterpiece. The whodunit has always been only one element of Mare Of Easttown,' wrote the paper's reviewer That Awful Singh Woman. 'What unfolded was a compendium of all that made the show great.' Soon after episode seven was due to be made available on Sunday, HBO Max tweeted that it was 'aware some customers may be experiencing issues streaming.'
With its second and final series now concluded, Prodigal Son co-creators Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver have reflected on the blood-splattered carnage of the finale featuring Tom Payne's Malcolm Bright and Michael Sheen's Martin Whitley. Not entirely unexpectedly FOX cancelled the series - From The North's 2020 'curiosity of the year' - after two spasmodically interesting but, often, frustratingly uneven series. A report on the Bleeding Cool website suggests that the production company, Warner Brothers, have not yet given up hope of finding Prodigal Son a new home. This blogger's advice, however, is don't hold your breath.

One man in his time really does play many parts, it seems, according to an Argentine newsreader who mixed up the author William Shakespeare with the first man to receive a Pfizer inoculation. Canal Twenty Six presenter Noelia Novillo announced that 'one of the most important writers in the English language, for me The Master' had, sadly, died. In fact it was his namesake, Bill Shakespeare who died in a hospital earlier this week aged eighty one. Shakespeare (no, the other one) died in 1616. However, that was seemingly news to Novillo who told her audience on Thursday: 'We've got news that has stunned all of us given the greatness of this man. We're talking about William Shakespeare and his death. We'll let you know how and why it happened.' With social media proving that all the world is now a stage, commentators feasted on the presenter's silly gaffe. 'The Montagues and the Capulets went to the wake,' one wag wrote on Twitter. 'The UK took more than four centuries to warn of the virus. On top of that, they blame China,' wrote another. Bill Shakespeare, a former Rolls Royce worker and parish councillor, received his first jab in December becoming the first man - and the second person - to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in a blaze of publicity. He died on Thursday from an unrelated illness, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust said.
The Premier League has agreed to roll over its existing television deal with broadcasters for a further three years. The new deal with Sky Sports, BT Sport, Amazon Prime Video and BBC Sport will run from 2022 to 2025. The current 4.7 billion knicker deal, agreed in 2018, represented a ten per cent drop in value. Which, one imagines, comes as a considerable blow to the more greedy of football's current hierarchy. They - and you - know exactly who they are. So, good news there, then. The Government has approved the deal 'in principle' with an 'exclusion order' under the competition act, which allows the league to renew without its normal tender process. 'In light of the damaging impact of the Covid-19 pandemic throughout the English football pyramid, the Premier League was able to demonstrate to Government exceptional and compelling reasons for the Exclusion Order,' the league said. As part of the new deal, BT Sport say that to help with the fixture congestion, they will change their Saturday lunchtime game to an evening slot when teams involved have played in Europe on the previous Wednesday. Clubs had been concerned that there could be another fall in value if the usual open-market auction started as planned next month. The value of rights for domestic leagues in Europe also appears to have peaked. The Premier League say that the renewals will provide financial certainty to professional clubs and also enables an additional one hundred million smackers of funding to be provided to clubs throughout the football pyramid over the next four years. The extra funding will be available to more than a thousand clubs in the National League system, women's and girls' football, EFL League One and League Two clubs and the Football Foundation. It will also support a number of football-wide projects, including the Premier League's work looking at head injuries in football, anti-discrimination and fan groups. The EFL said it 'welcomes' the increased funding but warned: 'It is important to acknowledge that the current media rights deal will preserve the status quo of an unbalanced, unsustainable and unfair financial distribution model across English football. While we recognise the attempts by the government to increase the level of solidarity provided to League One and Two clubs through this process, what is more urgently required is a fundamental reset of the game's financial model - both in terms of fairer distribution of monies at all levels and sensible, realistic cost control measures to ensure clubs will live within their means.' This blogger is decidedly unsure about this entire 'preserving The Status Quo' malarkey, however. Forty years of imaginative use of demin and ponytails is, surely, enough? 'Covid-19 has had a significant impact on football, and renewals with our UK broadcast partners will reduce uncertainty, generate stability and promote confidence within the football pyramid,' said Premier League chief executive Richard Masters. 'We know that, once concluded, this will have a positive impact on the wider industry, jobs and tax revenues.' The Football Association has welcomed the extra one hundred million knicker of funding which chief executive Mark Bullingham says will 'help the pyramid get back on its feet.' David Kogan, the former Premier League rights executive, said the government's involvement in the deal was a 'really marked difference in the way football's been run in the past.' He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'This will buy the Premier League three years of some peace.' Sky Sports and BT both claimed the deal was 'good news' for its viewers. And, for their pockets, obviously.
The football season has now, pretty much concluded and socherball fans are looking forward with considerable 'oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about that' to the - much-delayed - '2020' European Championships coming up next month. But, in the meantime, now is probably an opportune moment for a round-up of how the 2020-21 season unfolded. The one hundred and forty first season in English football concluded with Sheikh Yer Man City winning the Premier League. In a season played almost entirely behind closed doors, City overcame a shaky (no pun intended) start to the campaign and secured their third Premiership title in four years; having been in eighth place in mid-December, the team went on a thirteen-match winning run that sent them rocketing up the table and, despite a couple of unexpected losses in the closing stages of the season, secured the title on top of a fourth consecutive League Cup victory and reaching their first ever Champions League final. But, they lost that one. City's local rivals, The Scum, finished second in the Premiership, despite not really being in the title race for much of the season, a consequence of a poor start which included three home losses in their opening six games; however, The Red Devils at least ensured Champions League football once again, thanks in part to a remarkable run of form which saw them go unbeaten away from home all season. But, they ended the season on a downer, losing the final of the Europa League on penalties to Villareal. The battle for the other two Champions League spots went to the final day of the season, with Moscow Chelski FC, Leicester City and The Liverpool Alabama Yee-Haws all in it to win it. Taking third spot were Liverpool, whose first title defence since 1990 was, mostly, one of struggle; whilst they stood top of the league at the end of 2020, a collapse in form in the new year saw both the team's hopes of retaining the title as well as their sixty eight-game unbeaten run at Anfield implode under the weight of a lack of fans and an injury crisis, including a season-ending injury to Virgil van Dijk just five games into the campaign. However, a strong late run (including that outrageous victory over West Brom in which goalkeeper, Alisson, scored the winner in the final minute of injury time), coupled with the teams above them dropping points, helped The Reds squeeze into the top four. Moscow Chelski FC finished fourth, a strong second half of the season under new manager Thomas Tuchel pushing The Blues from as low as ninth near the end of January to both securing a Champions League spot again and winning their first Champions League final since 2012, a successful end to a mixed season (which included a second consecutive FA Cup final defeat). Having spent most of the season in the top four, another stuttering end to the league saw Leicester City finish fifth and miss out, again, on the Champions League, with inferior home form costing them badly. However, The Foxes at least finished the season with a trophy, winning their first ever FA Cup and giving Brendan Rodgers his first piece of silverware with the club. Finishing sixth were West Hamsters United, who surprised many in going further than their seventh-place finish in 2016. The Arse and Stottingtot Hotshots enjoyed differing form across their respective campaigns, The Gunners even hovering just above the drop zone in November, but ended up battling it out for seventh place and the last European spot - which ultimately went to Spurs, at least ensuring European football for the club next season. Dirty Leeds's first top-flight season since 2004 proved to be highly successful, both the team and manager Marcelo Bielsa attracting plenty of praise for their attacking brand of football and providing some spectacular results even in defeat. Despite achieving a few superb results, including taking four points off city rivals Liverpool, Everton's hopes of European football were done-for by a poor run of form at Goodison, securing just six wins compared to eleven on the road. They ended their season in a disappointing tenth position. In what proved to be Nuno Espirito Santo's last season as coach, Wolverhampton Wanderings endured a less successful campaign than their previous two, the loss of striker Raúl Jiménez to a freak accident in a win at The Arse contributed to Wolves sliding down the table after a decent start and only avoiding a relegation scrap because of the poor form of the teams below them. In what also ended up as Roy Hodgson's final season as manager, Crystal Palace also comfortably avoided the drop, extending their record run of top-flight seasons to nine in a row for the next campaign. This blogger's beloved though (still, sadly) unsellable Magpies finished a creditable twelfth thanks to a fine late run of form which, effectively (and, much to many fans severe disappointment) saved the job of Mister Bruice (nasty to see him, to see him nasty). At the bottom of the table, all three relegated teams had their demotion confirmed with at least three games to play and, for the first time since the introduction of three points for a win, none of the relegated sides broke the thirty-point barrier. Just one season after breaking into the top ten and strutting around like they owned the place, Sheffield United endured one of the worst seasons in their history, breaking many unwanted records and equalling the record for the most losses in a Premier League season and the lowest goals scored in a thirty eight-game season. Ultimately, The Blades simply weren't sharp enough. West Bromwich Albinos finished above them, the controversial decision to sack manager Slaven Bilic in December in favour of that odious lard-bucket Sam Allardyce going against The Baggies, the former England manager suffering his second relegation in his managerial history (his first since 1997). Also returning to the second tier after one season was Fulham; despite enjoying a much better campaign defensively, the London club's hopes were ultimately let down by a lack of goals (including a mere nine scored at Craven Cottage), making it the fourth season in a row where they moved between the Premier League and the Championship. Burnley and Brighton & Hove Albinos comfortably avoided the drop as a consequence of the bottom three's significant inadequacies. 
Having been relegated with a whimper the previous year, Norwich City responded in emphatic style, securing both an immediate return to the Premier League and their second Championship title in three campaigns. Finishing second were Watford, who overcame yet another mid-season managerial change (their sixth in just over a year) to join The Canaries in returning to the top-flight after one season. Taking the final promotion spot through the play-offs by beating Swansea City - and ending a barren run of nine play-off campaigns - were Brentford. Who made amends for their narrow play-off loss the previous year and secured promotion to the Premier League for the first time, their win also sending The Bees back into the top-flight for the first time in seventy four years. Despite ultimately losing out in the play-off semi-finals, Barnsley were the surprise package of the campaign; having looked likely to battle relegation again at the end of October and then seeing their head coach depart for America, the appointment of virtually unknown French manager Valérien Ismaël saw The Tykes rocket up the table and comfortably secure fifth place just ahead of Bournemouth. After having battled against relegation since losing in the play-off final in 2017, Reading also enjoyed a much improved season under Veljko Paunović, only missing out on promotion owing to several bouts of indifferent form. Despite hovering above the relegation zone for much of the season, Coventry City managed to get their shit together in their first season in the second tier since 2012, a good run of results in the closing months pushing them into mid-table whilst The Sky Blues also received some good news off-the-pitch, managing to secure a contract to return to The Ricoh Arena after two seasons away. For the second reason running, the battle to avoid relegation saw all three places open going into the last round of games. Taking bottom place in the closing minutes of the season were Sheffield Wednesday, who fought valiantly to avoid the drop, only for the points deduction (twelve later reduced to six on appeal) for breaching financial rules imposed prior to the start of the season result in survival falling out of their reachand sending the Yorkshire club back into the third tier after a nine-year absence. Rotherham United finished second-bottom and were relegated back to League One, making this the fifth successive season in which they swapped between the two divisions; despite ending up as statistically the worst team in the division, they managed to keep themselves in contention for survival - mostly because of having a multitude of games in hand as a result of two COVID-19 outbreaks - and would, actually, have survived had they not conceded an eighty eighth-minute equaliser in their final match. Despite having what proved to be a spirited first season in the Championship, Wycombe Wanderers endured immediate relegation back to League One, their chances ultimately being undone by a dreadful start which saw them lose their first seven games. Derby County, who struggled all season following the appointment of Wayne Rooney as manager in November, would also have been relegated if not for Wednesday's points deduction; they did secure survival on the final day by holding Wednesday to a draw, albeit the result would have relegated them both without Rotherham conceding that late equaliser at Cardiff.
Playing in the third tier for the first time since 2005, Hull City made amends for their dramatic collapse in form and consequent relegation the previous season, this time being in the top two for almost the entire campaign and ultimately emerging as League One champions. Peterborough United finished as runners-up, making this the third time that manager Darren Ferguson had taken The Posh into the Championship and his fourth promotion with the club overall; Peterborough successfully achieved promotion in a three-three draw with Lincoln City. Qualifying for the play-off final were Blackpool and Lincoln with The Seasiders winning the final, two-one at Wembley to secured their return to the Championship for the first time since 2015. Whilst missing out on promotion yet again, The Mackem Filth did at least secure some success, winning the EFL Trophy whilst also gaining new ownership, in the form of businessman Kyril Louis-Dreyfus. Nevertheless, their defeat to Lincoln in the play-offs will be a bitter blow to Sunderland's long-suffering support who now face a fourth season in the third tier. So that's, like, really sad, obviously. A poor start to the campaign for Burton Albion saw The Brewers pulled into a relegation battle, which was won with games to spare following the return of influential manager Jimmy Floyd Hasselhoff for a second spell as manager. Wigan Not Very Athletic endured what proved to be yet another turbulent season both on and off the pitch, battling both a potential second successive relegation (and a potential fourth in seven seasons) and an uncertain future; however, a good run of form late in the season which coincided with The Latics finding new ownership saved the club from the drop. Bristol Rovers finished rock bottom and returned to League Two for the first time in five years, with three different managers - the most recent being Joey Barton - all trying and failing to improve the club's fortunes. Swindon Town's season rapidly fell apart after promotion-winning manager Richie Wellens moved to Salford City early in the campaign, finishing the season with both the most defeats and the worst defence in the division as they suffered relegation back to League Two; fellow newly-promoted side Northampton Town joined them in immediate relegation, The Cobblers being undone by a terrible run during the winter. Rochdale occupied the fourth relegation spot, bringing an end to their longest spell to date in the third tier and finally enduring the relegation they had battled against in previous seasons. Elsewhere, Ipswich Town finished ninth, Accrington Stanley in eleventh and Fleetwood Town in fifteenth. 
In a campaign marked with constant changes among the top three, Cheltenham Town secured promotion back to League One for the first time since 2009, having stayed in the promotion race for nearly the entire season before edging back into the top three in late February. The battle for both the remaining automatic promotion places and the play-off spots ended up going to the final day, with eight different clubs involved. Taking second and third place were Cambridge United and Notlob Wanderers; despite a poor run of form in December, promotion had never looked unlikely for Cambridge, The U's securing promotion to the third tier for the first time since 2002, giving manager Mark Bonner the first promotion of his managerial career. Having spent the majority of the season looking likely to battle a third successive relegation, a surge in form in 2021 saw Notlob head up the table and edge into third place, securing an immediate return to League One. Qualifying for the play-off final were Morecambe (without Wise), a remarkable achievement considering their consistent battles against relegation in the previous seasons and Newport County, who successfully saw off Forest Green Rovers in a tightly fought semi-final second leg. Morecambe (sans Wise) ultimately gained promotion thanks to a controversial penalty in extra-time. In their first ever Football League season, Harrogate Town defied all expectations and achieved safety with a number of games to spare - whilst inconsistent form prevented the Yorkshire side from challenging for promotion, they were never in any serious danger of an immediate return to non-league football. Barrow's first Football League season for forty eight years saw the club ultimately secure survival against all odds - whilst first hit by the loss of manager Ian Evatt to Notlob and then sacking two different replacements before the end of February with results and form looking bleak, the club managed to pull themselves over the line thanks in part to caretaker manager Rob Kelly, who oversaw ten of The Bluebirds' thirteen wins in both his caretaker spells. Scunthorpe United endured the worst season in their one hundred and twenty two year history, finishing third bottom of the league though results elsewhere meant their defeat to Stevenage on the final day of the season did not send them out of the league. Grimsby Town had a season full of struggle and woe on and off the pitch which culminated in relegation - with even the return of manager Paul Hurst, who had overseen their return to the Football League in 2016, failing to help the club escape another drop into the National League. Finishing just above them were Southend United, who suffered their second consecutive relegation and fell out of the Football League for the first time in their history, a run of just one win in their opening fifteen games on top of an inability to score (their twenty nine goals being the lowest scored by anyone in a twenty four-team division since 1982) ended up setting the tone for the club's hopes. And, in similar circumstances to Grimsby, the return of former manager Phil Brown late in the season proved unable to save The Shrimpers from losing their one hundred and one-year Football League status. In a season marked with different teams taking top spot in the National League across the season, as well as postponement, delays and expunged results off the field, Sutton United finished top in their penultimate game and secured promotion to the Football League for the first time in their one hundred and twenty three-year history. The battle to qualify for the play-offs saw the last two spots open going into the final round of games. Torquay United and Stockport County finished second and third, with the play-off quarter-final places being taken by Hartlepool United, Notts County, Chesterfield and Bromley. Mounting financial problems finally took its toll on Macclesfield Town, who were expelled from the National League and then finally wound up in the High Court before the campaign even began - the only positive coming late in the season, with the creation of Macclesfield FC and the new club being given the go-ahead to enter the tenth tier for next season. Dover Athletic also encountered financial problems, which resulted in the team refusing to play due to a lack of promised funding and their results expunged for the season. As a result of the National League electing to declare the sixth tier null and void, no teams were relegated or promoted between the fifth and sixth tiers; a combination of all these factors proved beneficial for King's Lynn Town and Barnet, who were at threat of being cut adrift at the bottom of the table with the most losses and the worst defences in the division, ensuring fifth tier status for both clubs for next season.
Campaigners are calling for a Grade-II listed estate, owned by the BBC, to be opened to the public. Reading's Caversham Park was home to BBC Monitoring before it moved to London when the site was put on the market in 2017. Local residents have now launched a campaign to reinstate footpaths they claim existed in the grounds and to have a say in its future. A BBC spokesman said the corporation was 'still seeking offers' for the site. Don't Fence Me In founder James Denny, who chaired an online public meeting on the issue last month, said residents in Caversham 'felt strongly' about the lack of recreational space. He said the group would first look at opening the estate's footpaths to the public and would then look at working with any potential developer in a bid to use some of the space 'in almost cohabitation - so a museum, an art space, a day centre, or opening up the old swimming pool.' Deputy leader of Reading Borough Council, Tony Page, said: 'In the meeting a number of former employees of the BBC said they thought previous footpaths, they remember using across the site, had disappeared. Whether they are registered rights of way is unclear but I have invited anyone who used to work there, or local residents, to submit evidence of paths that went across the site so we can do further validation on the status of those footpaths.' The BBC spokesman declined to comment on footpaths but said: 'As we've said previously, we are currently seeking offers for the Caversham Park site and we will provide an update once a sale has been completed.' Reading East MP Matt Rodda said he was working with the local community and the council 'to protect the historic building and open it and the grounds, up to the public.' He added: 'I would like to see the house open to the public with a museum celebrating its links to the BBC and earlier history incorporated into any redevelopment.' The Victorian stately home and ninety three-acre estate was bought by the BBC in 1941. Two years later it served as headquarters of BBC Monitoring, which summarises news from one hundred and fifty countries in one hundred different languages for the BBC and is now based at Broadcasting House in London. The service played a key role in analysing communications from Nazi Germany during World War Two - while at Caversham Park and in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Ed Sheeran (he's a - bafflingly - popular beat combo, yer honour) has admitted that his eight-month-old daughter 'just cries' when he sings his new songs to her. So, it's nice to know that at least one member of the Sheeran family has normal faculties shared with the rest of the human race.
On one of the days where this blogger was feeling less that wholly chipper a couple of weeks back - but, after he'd finished the massive Be-Atles book re-read - he spent four and a half hours watching Rosseter's Twin Peaks ACTUALLY EXPLAINED (No, Really) on You Tube. And then, he needed a stiff drink and a pee. Before watching the sequel.
A thread on one of this blogger's fine Facebook fiends page concerning Marine Boy reminded this blogger of one of the most traumatic moments of his, then, young life. The popular Japanese anime series, with its excellent jaunty theme tune - imported into the UK and dubbed into English - had been a regular part of many of our lives since it began its BBC run in early 1969. Then came that moment. It was 30 July 1971 at 5.20pm. The latest episode of Marine Boy ended, the last in the current series and the BBC continuity announcer stated, confidently: 'Marine Boywill be back later in the year.' And now, it's 2021 and we're all still waiting ... (Actually, the series did have a couple of repeat runs in 1976 and 1977 but, by that time, many of us had moved on to other interests. Like punk rock and girls.) This blogger hates it when TV lies to us. It destroys ones faith in humanity so it does. Or, in this particular case, it destroys ones faith in dolphinity. 
A cluster of decapitated bodies discovered at a burial site were 'probably' from victims of Roman military executions, archaeologists have said. Cos, they didn't mess around with community service and ASBOs in them days. The 'exceptionally high' number of Third Century decapitated bodies were found at a military supply farm settlement at Somersham, Cambridgeshire. Several were kneeling when they were struck from behind with a sword. Archaeologist Isabel Lisboa said thirty three per cent of those found had been executed, compared to six per cent in most Roman British cemeteries. Three cemeteries were excavated revealing fifty two burials, of which seventeen were decapitated. At least one of those executed - an older woman found face-down - appears to have been tortured immediately before death or mutilated afterwards. Their heads were found placed at their feet or lower legs. Doctor Lisboa, from Archaeologica, said they dated from a time of increasing instability for the Roman Empire, when legal punishments became harsher. 'The number of capital crimes doubled in the Third Century and quadrupled in the Fourth Century,' she said. 'As it was part of the Roman army, directly or indirectly, the severity of punishments and the enforcement of Roman law would have been more severe at the Somersham settlements,' she added. The settlement is believed to have supplied the Roman army, part of a wider network of nearby military farms at Camp Ground and Langdale Hale. A 'lack of genetic relationships' between the bodies suggests they were either in army service or slaves. At least two of those found were born in Scotland or Ireland and another in the Alps. Doctor Lisboa said 'Knobb's Farm has an exceptionally high proportion of decapitated bodies - thirty three per cent of those found - compared with burial grounds locally and across Roman Britain.' Cambridge University's archaeology unit excavated Knobb's Farm between 2001 and 2010, ahead of gravel extraction by Tarmac Trading. Analysis of finds has just been published.
Whilst scientists have amassed considerable knowledge of the rocky planets in our solar system much less is known about the icy water-rich planets, Neptune and Uranus. In a new study recently published in Nature Astronomy, a team of scientists recreated the temperature and pressure of the interiors of Neptune and Uranus in the lab and, in so doing, have gained a greater understanding of the chemistry of these planets' deep water layers. Their findings also provide clues to the composition of oceans on water-rich exoplanets outside our solar system. Neptune and Uranus are conventionally thought to have distinct separate layers, consisting of an atmosphere, ice or fluid, a rocky mantle and a metallic core. For this study, the research team was particularly interested in possible reaction between water and rock in the deep interiors. 'Through this study, we were seeking to extend our knowledge of the deep interior of ice giants and determine what water-rock interactions at extreme conditions might exist,' says lead author Taehyun Kim, of Yonsei University in South Korea. 'Ice giants and some exoplanets have very deep water layers, unlike terrestrial planets. We proposed the possibility of an atomic-scale mixing of two of the planet-building materials (water and rock) in the interiors of ice giants.' To mimic the conditions of the deep water layers on Neptune and Uranus in the lab, the team first immersed typical rock-forming minerals, olivine and ferropericlase, in water and compressed the sample in a diamond anvil to very high pressures. Then, to monitor the reaction between the minerals and water, they took X-ray measurements while a laser heated the sample to a high temperature. The resulting chemical reaction led to high concentrations of magnesium in the water. Based on these findings, the team concluded that oceans on water-rich planets may not have the same chemical properties as the Earth's ocean and high pressure would make those oceans rich in magnesium. 'We found that magnesium becomes much more soluble in water at high pressures. In fact, magnesium may become as soluble in the water layers of Uranus and Neptune as salt is in Earth's ocean,' says study co-author Sang-Heon Dan Shim of Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration. These characteristics may also help solve the mystery of why Uranus' atmosphere is much colder than Neptune's, even though they are both water-rich planets. If much more magnesium exists in the Uranus' water layer below the atmosphere, it could block heat from escaping from the interior to the atmosphere. 'This magnesium-rich water may act like a thermal blanket for the interior of the planet,' says Shim. Beyond our solar system, these high-pressure and high-temperature experiments may also help scientists gain a greater understanding of sub-Neptune exoplanets, which are planets outside of our solar system with a smaller radius or a smaller mass than Neptune. ub-Neptune planets are the most common type of exoplanets that we know of so far and scientists studying these planets hypothesise that many of them may have a thick water-rich layer with a rocky interior. This new study suggests that the deep oceans of these exoplanets would be much different from Earth's ocean and may be magnesium-rich. 'If an early dynamic process enabled a rock–water reaction in these exoplanets, the topmost water layer may be rich in magnesium, possibly affecting the thermal history of the planet,' says Shim. For next steps, the team hopes to continue their high-pressure/high-temperature experiments under diverse conditions to learn more about the composition of planets.
The From The North'well done, them' award this week goes to the Independent for managing to get headlines concerning both cheese and crackers onto the same page.
It's also nice to see that the Gruniad Morning Star's readership haven't lost their sense of humour in these dark and troubled times. Or, one of them, anyway. 
And finally, dear blog reader, sometimes naming and shaming is the only way some people learn.

HBO has announced more of the cast for The Time Traveler's [sic] Wife, the upcoming drama series based on the novel by Audrey Niffenegger. Caitlin Shorey, Everleigh McDonell, Michael Park, Jaime Ray Newman, Taylor Richardson, Peter Graham, Brian Altemus, Jason David, Kate Siegel, Josh Stamberg, Chelsea Frei, Marcia DeBonis, Will Brill and Spencer House join the previously announced Rose Leslie, Theo James, Desmin Borges and Natasha Lopez in the series which is currently in production. Adapted by The Lord Thy God Steven Moffat (OBE), The Time Traveler's [sic] Wife tells the 'intricate love story' of Clare (Leslie) and Henry (James) and 'a marriage with a problem.' David Nutter will direct and is an executive producer along with The Moff, his good lady Sue Vertue and Brian Minchin for Hartswood Films. The series is a co-production with Warner Bros. 
Holby City, the extremely long-running BBC medical drama, is to end after twenty three years, producers have confirmed. The series, created by Tony McHale and Mal Young, was first broadcast in 1999 as a spin-off from Casualty. The BBC announced on Wednesday that the drama will broadcast its final series in March 2022. The corporation said it was 'incredibly proud' of the drama but said it 'had to make difficult decisions to make room for new opportunities.' Around two hundred and fifty people who work on the show - including actors, camera operators, engineers and hair and make-up professionals - will be affected by the decision. Holby City won a BAFTA for best continuing drama in 2008 and still regularly attracts more than three million viewers. 'We are incredibly proud of Holby City but it's with great sadness that we are announcing that after twenty three years, the show will end on screen in March of next year,' the BBC said in a statement. 'We sometimes have to make difficult decisions to make room for new opportunities and as part of the BBC's commitment to make more programmes across the UK, we have taken the difficult decision to bring the show to a close in order to reshape the BBC's drama slate to better reflect, represent and serve all parts of the country.' It added: 'We would like to take this opportunity to thank the amazing team at BBC Studios and all the cast and crew who have been involved in the show since 1999. Holby has been a stalwart with audiences, delighting millions of viewers each week and winning hundreds of awards with a compelling mix of cutting edge medical stories and explosive personal stories. We look forward to working with the team over the coming months to ensure that when it ends, Holby goes out on a high.' Both Holby City and Casualty are based in the fictional county of Wyvern. But, the bulk of the on-set filming for Holby City takes place at the BBC's Elstree Centre in Hertfordshire, as well as shots from in and around Bristol. In March, the BBC announced its plan to move some of its key departments and staff around the country in order to make the corporation 'more reflective' of the UK as a whole. 'Our mission must be to deliver for the whole of the UK and ensure every household gets value from the BBC,' said director general Tim Davie. 'These plans will get us closer to audiences, create jobs and investment and develop and nurture new talent.' Racking up more than one thousand episodes over twenty three series, Holby City has also proved to be a fertile breeding ground for some top acting talent down the years. Killing Eve's Jodie Comer received one of her first acting jobs on the drama, as did fellow BAFTA-winner and Black Panther actress Letitia Wright, Peaky Blinders actor Joe Cole and Lee Ryan from the boyband Blue. Already-established stars such as Adrian Edmondson and Patsy Kensit were also given recurring roles, while the likes of Maureen Lipman, chat show host Paul O'Grady and the alleged comedian Romesh Ranganathan have also appeared as guests. The show has held its place in the BBC schedule on a Tuesday night for many years, tackling many topical issues. One of its most memorable storylines involved the separation of the conjoined Tan twins, in 2008. The surgery was completed by the show's longest-serving character Doctor Ric Griffin, played by Hugh Quarshie. Two years earlier, it showed Professor Elliot Hope's wife, Gina, travelling to Switzerland to end her life after struggling with motor neurone disease. Some of the hospital's fictional staff have themselves also faced health issues. In 2014 junior doctor Zosia March was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, after suffering a breakdown following her mother's death. Doctor Arthur Digby was diagnosed with melanoma two years later. The hospital came under siege during a shooting spree in a 2017 episode. The following year, a special episode entitled The Anniversary Waltz helped to mark the seventieth anniversary of the National Health Service. It saw characters explaining what the NHS means to them, as they attempted to get an outbreak of norovirus under control.
Flicking about through some of the more obscure digital channels early this week, this blogger stumbled upon the pilot episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 being shown on Pick (irritatingly in two parts on consecutive nights). So, he watched it. This blogger was, instantly, reminded exactly why he has spent much of the the last thirty years describing DS9 as 'the Star Trek series that got good the quickest and stayed good the longest.' It's so nice to be reminded, occasionally, that one is right every now and then.
And now, dear blog reader, this week's 'no, really, someone actually thought this daft idea had legs ...''Mettez Votre Pantalon Sur Vous Sont En État D'Arrestation!' Or, if you prefer, 'Nous sommes Les Sweeney, mon fils, et nous n'avons pas eu notre déjeuner. Vous nous avez fait attendre.' Jacques, Georges, ou est le plume de ma tante? 
NASA has announced that it is sending two new missions to Venus in order to examine the planet's atmosphere and geological features. Although, since Venus is hellishly hot it is presumed that they will be sending the probes at night. Nah, lissun. The missions, which have each been awarded five hundred million dollars in funding, are due to launch between 2028 and 2030. NASA administrator Bill Nelson said the missions would offer the 'chance to investigate a planet we haven't been to in more than thirty years.' The last US probe to visit the planet was the Magellan orbiter in 1990. However, other spacecraft - from Europe and Japan - have orbited the planet since then. The missions were picked following a peer review process and were chosen based on their potential scientific value and the feasibility of their development plans. 'These two sister missions both aim to understand how Venus became an inferno-like world, capable of melting lead at the surface,' Nelson said. Venus is the second planet from the sun and the hottest planet in the solar system with a surface temperature of five hundred degrees Celsius. The Davinci+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) mission will measure the planet's atmosphere to gain insight into how it formed and evolved. It will also aim to determine whether Venus ever had an ocean. Davinci+ is expected to return the first high resolution images of the planet's 'tesserae' geological features. Scientists believe these features could be comparable to continents on Earth and could suggest that Venus has plate tectonics. The second mission, Veritas (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy), will map the planet's surface to understand its geological history and investigate how it developed so differently than Earth. It will use a form of radar to chart surface elevations and discover whether volcanoes and earthquakes - or, technically, Venusquakes - are still happening. 'It is astounding how little we know about Venus, but the combined results of these missions will tell us about the planet from the clouds in the sky through the volcanoes on its surface all the way down to its very core,' said Tom Wagner from NASA's Planetary Science Division. 'It will be as if we have rediscovered the planet,' he added. Over the last few decades, Mars has dominated NASA's budget for planetary missions. In the meantime, researchers studying Venus have become philosophical about the lack of priority given to their planet. But that has been changing. New ideas, interpretations and new people have been transforming our understanding of Earth's nearest neighbour. Long thought to have been a 'dead' planet by some, there are many who now think Venus may be geologically active, perhaps with periodic volcanism. Plus, the Shanghorns, obviously. Never loan one your Perigosto Stick, dear blog reader, or you might get it back covered in shite. Venus may have harboured oceans for a billion years of its history and there is even a region of the planet's thick atmosphere where microbial life could survive, floating among the clouds. Scientists who have devoted their careers to studying this hothouse world are jubilant that the planet is finally back on NASA's radar.
The American space agency's Juno probe has returned some close-in views of Ganymede - one of Jupiter's four Galilean moons and the largest natural satellite in the Solar System. The imagery was acquired from a distance of about one thousand kilometres. It is the nearest any spacecraft has been to Ganymede in more than twenty years. Juno's was an opportunity pass; its everyday duties are to study Jupiter. But the European Space Agency will soon send a dedicated mission. The Jupiter Icy moon Explorer will make a series of fly-bys around two other Galilean moons, Callisto and Europa, before then putting itself in a settled orbit around Ganymede, expected to occur in 2032. Juno's pictures show the impacted and cracked surface of the big moon in remarkable detail. They'll be compared with the pictures acquired by NASA's Galileo (1995-2003) and Voyager (1979) probes to see if there have been any changes through time. 'This is the closest any spacecraft has come to this mammoth moon in a generation,' said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. 'We are going to take our time before we draw any scientific conclusions, but until then we can simply marvel at this celestial wonder.'
It was celestial showtime on Thursday, dear blog reader, as much of the Northern Hemisphere got to witness a solar eclipse. This particular event was an annular eclipse. It saw the Moon move across the face of our star but not completely block out the light coming from it. Instead, there was a thin sliver of brilliance left to shine around the Sun's disc, the so-called 'Ring Of Fire' or corona. The best of the action occurred in the Arctic, but, a good portion of the globe were treated to a partial eclipse where the Moon appeared to take a big bite out of the Sun. And, jolly pretty it was too.
A section of major road turned bright red after a lorry crash caused a spillage of tomato puree and olive oil. The crash happened not at Spaghetti Junction but, rather, on the A14 near Godmanchester, Cambridgeshire, on Tuesday evening. The driver of one of the two trucks was taken to hospital but was subsequently discharged. Social media users could not resist weighing in with puns, with one calling it 'a disaster, puree simple.' Though, tragically, no one advised road users that the red road has not jammed but, rather, tomatoed. Come on! One Radio 2 listener asked if it 'was suitable for traffic to passata safe distance.' Oh, suit yerselves. Another tweet read: 'Some of our drivers had to go pasta this earlier today. They are starting to ketchup after the delay though.' Nah, the previous one was funnier. A twenty three-mile stretch of the road was closed but has since reopened. Albeit, somewhat stickily. 
The six Premier League clubs involved in the collapsed European Super League have agreed to make a combined 'goodwill' payment of twenty two million smackers. The Arse, Moscow Chelski FC, The Liverpool Alabama Yee-Haws, Sheikh Yer Man City, The Scum and Stottingtot Hotshots all got their greed right on and wanted to form a breakaway league. Which would, effectively, have pissed on the other fourteen Premier League Clubs and everyone else in the English football pyramid without, seemingly, a single thought in their collective head other than how much wonga the greedy fekkers were going to makefor themselves. Should they attempt any similar malarkey again, the clubs will be fined twenty five million knicker each and have thirty points deducted. So, that makes any such repeat extremely unlikely. Although, it would be pure dead funny if they tried it. Meanwhile, UEFA has temporarily paused disciplinary proceedings against Juventus, Barcelona and Real Madrid. They are the only three clubs - with their greed right on - from the twelve that signed up who are yet to accept any punishment or renounce the ESL and all its Devilish works. European football's governing body had opened disciplinary proceedings against them in May. In a joint statement, the Football Association and Premier League said that the English clubs had 'collectively agreed' to make a payment of twenty two million notes as 'a gesture of goodwill.' The money 'will go towards the good of the game,' it has been claimed, which includes 'new investment in support for fans' and will 'help fund grassroots and community projects.' One or two people even believed that was, actually, where the money would end up. 'The six clubs involved in proposals to form a European Super League have acknowledged once again that their actions were a mistake and have reconfirmed their commitment to the Premier League and the future of the English game,' the two bodies said in a statement. 'They have wholeheartedly apologised to their fans, fellow clubs, the Premier League and the FA.' Albeit, apologised nowhere near grovellingly enough to satisfy the impotent rage felt against these greedy scum by the majority of the game's supporters, including many of their own. 'The Premier League and the FA have worked closely together throughout this process and this agreement brings both investigations into the matter to a conclusion,' the statement continued. The BBC Sport website claims that The Scum's owners the Glazer family, Liverpool Alabama Yee-Haws owners Fenway Sports Group, The Arse's majority shareholders Kroenke Sports Enterprises and Stottingtot Hotshot's owners will pay the fine rather than their clubs. Whether the billionaire owners of Sheikh Yer Man City and Moscow Chelski FC will do likewise is not, at this time, known. Or, indeed, much cared about frankly. Former The Scum and England defender Gary Neville, who has been a vocal critic of football's governance and the ESL, tweeted the punishment was 'an absolute embarrassment.' And, he's absolutely correct. An average of about three-and-a-bit million quid is roughly what these bunch of jokers spend on vol au vants for the boardroom each season. Nine of the ESL clubs - the six Premier League sides, plus AC Milan, Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid - were fined a similar amount by European governing body UEFA last month. They agreed to pay fifteen million Euros between them and have five per cent of their UEFA competition revenues held for one season, starting in 2023-24. In May, UEFA said the other three clubs involved - Real, Barca and Juve - would face 'appropriate action' having failed to distance themselves from the ESL. Media outlets were told the clubs were risking being removed from the Champions League if the case went against them, but that now looks unlikely. The three clubs believe an order issued by a Madrid court in April that prevents UEFA taking action against them is valid in Switzerland, where the governing body is based. This has now been passed to the European Court of Justice for a ruling, which has led to the initial case being stopped. UEFA said it was 'confident' in its case and would 'continue to defend its position in all the relevant jurisdictions.' The negative reaction to the ESL has sparked a huge debate about how football is run. The government has already announced a 'fan-led review' into football governance and the prospect of an independent regulator in English football is set for a parliamentary debate after a petition, launched by a number of ex-footballers, gained more than one hundred thousand signatures.
In town doing a bit of shopping on Tuesday and, for the first time in months, this blogger was able (and, indeed, was delighted) to have an actual proper sit-down lunch in an actual proper sit-down restaurant. And it was in one that, according to allegedly 'reliable sources' on the Interweb was, now, permanently closed for business. Except, it seemingly wasn't. Photographic evidence was taken as a result but, rest assured, this blogger really deserved that piece of good fortune.
The gaff does, admittedly, appear to be under new management since the blogger last ventured there sometime in the autumn of last year (in so much as it now has a different name). But, importantly, it was extremely lovely to be back in the joint. 'Are you open?' this blogger asked. 'Why yes sir, we most definitely are as the sign on the door clearly indicates (and, despite what you may have read elsewhere),' they replied. 'Please, do come in and buy food as you look both Hank Marvin and particularly windswept and interesting this fine day.'
This blogger replied: 'Okay then, I will. And, I see from the menu that you clearly knew I was coming.'
And, lo, it was geet lush in this blogger's sight, so it was. (Not cheap, mind you, considering that it was lunchtime, but still lush.)
As this blogger mentioned during a recent From The Northbloggerisationisms update during a recent period of enforced bed-rest this blogger re-read a particular favourite tome of his, Tune In, the first part of Mark Lewisohn's acclaimed biography of The Be-Atles (a popular beat combo of the 1960s, you might've heard of them). It was, inevitably, suggested to this blogger by his good fiend - and fellow Fabbite - Jan, that this blogger really ought to get himself the 'extended, special' seventeen hundred page, two-volume monster edition of the book. One which, remember, still only goes up to the end of 1962. This blogger noted that, sadly, he'd never picked up a copy of the big version - mostly, because he simply couldn't afford it and, during a period last year when he could've afforded it, he had other priorities. Still, this blogger noted, one never knows what the future may hold never expecting for a single second that the future held anything in this regard. A few weeks on and, would you Adam-and-Eve it, dear blog reader, this blogger had a bit of a windfall in terms of some Amazon vouchers (a result of a daily online survey yer actual Keith Telly Topping has done for years and never gotten much from previously). Therefore, look what only went and rocked up at Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House, then? It's an ill-wind that blows the righteous some good, they reckon ... Or something like that, anyway. Of course, now in all likelihood it's going to take this blogger almost as long to read the damned thing as it's taken him to actually obtain it. Christ, dear blog reader it's heavy (in more senses that merely its weight).
And, speaking of Merseyside musical icons, unreleased material by Billy Fury is finally seeing the light of day as part of a new compilation of his late-1960s performances for the BBC. After signing with EMI in December 1966, Fury recorded eleven singles for Parlophone up until late 1970. During this period, the singer also performed live sessions for BBC television and radio. In keeping with BBC policy of the time, most of the recordings were destroyed. Eight performances from 1967-1970 have made it to release, but nothing from 1968-1969 was thought to have survived - until now. Released with the blessing of the Billy Fury Estate via the Top Sounds label, Three Saturdays With Billy offers seven previously unreleased live recordings made for the Radio 1 programme Saturday Club, as well as audio of a performance taken from an appearance on Simon Dee's Dee Time TV show. The Saturday Club performances include unique covers of David Bowie's 'Silly Boy Blue' and The Bee Gees''One Minute Woman', as well as Billy's own 'Bye Bye' and Chuck Berry's 'Sweet Little Sixteen'. Fury's studio version of 'I Love You' was never released in his lifetime although an alternate version was issued as a bonus on The Missing Years CD compilation. Two interviews with Billy also survive from those broadcasts and feature on the new release, as well as Fury's most left-field single, 'Phone Box (The Monkey's In The Jam Jar)'. Three Saturdays With Billy is available on vinyl and CD and comes with a twenty four-page illustrated booklet including previously unpublished photographs. The CD also features a radio broadcast of Fury's 'Lady' single introduced by the singer.
From The North's semi-regular Headline Of The Week award goes, this week, to the Independent for their, seemingly serious, exclusive Fact Checkers Declare Trump Was Not Wearing Pants Backwards But It's All Anyone Can Talk About From Return Speech. Now extremely former President Mister Rump's tailoring had, apparently, 'created a social media firestorm' when observers pointed out that a video clip seemed to suggest that his pants did not have a zip showing. And, once again, dear blog reader, let us simply stand up and salute the utter shite that some people chose to care about.
A woman has been fined for exposing herself during the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh. Marissa Scott carried out the offence while shouting 'save the environment' in front of crowds who had gathered near Windsor Castle on 17 April. The fifty five-year-old pleaded extremely guilty to 'causing harassment, alarm or distress' under the Public Order Act. Deputy senior district judge Tan Ikram described her behaviour as 'disgraceful.' Slough Magistrates' Court heard tourists, families and members of the media had gathered in High Street when Scott exposed herself. Tina Flannery, prosecuting, said Scott removed a tabard she was wearing and 'exposed her breasts' following the national minute's silence to mark the duke's passing. Whether the fact that she waited until the minute's silence has concluded was taken into account is not, at this time, known. The moment was 'captured' by members of the press. Who, one imagines, could hardly believe their luck. During a subsequent police interview, it was claimed that Scott said 'she wanted to show solidarity with the World Wildlife Foundation and save the planet' (because, nothing 'shows solidarity with the WWF' like getting yer knockers out in public, clearly) and 'she didn't think it would cause any distress.' Scott was fined one hundred and fifty knicker and made to pay eighty five sobs in prosecution costs and a thirty four quid victim surcharge.
People are increasingly likely to use 'strong swearing' in their everyday life, suggests research from the British Board of Film Classification. Which sounds just about twatting correct. The body, which gives age ratings to films, says that 'about a third' of people in the UK are more likely to use 'strong swear words' than five years ago. They do not reveal what they strong swear words include but one imagines that 'wee-wee' is amongst them. But, the research also found parents did not want age restrictions weakened for swearing in movies and DVDs. Fekking-well right, an'aal. Parents wanted to protect children 'for as long as possible' from swearing. The BBFC also said it would treat acronyms such as 'WTF' as though the full swear words had been spelled out, because the meaning was so widely recognised. As 'what the flip?', obviously. The report on 'swearing habits', based on research with one thousand people, found 'about six in ten people' saw strong swearing, such as the F-word, the C-word and the S-word ('semprini') as 'part of everyday life.' A third were 'more likely' to swear than five years ago, but there was a significant 'generational divide', with eighteen to thirty four year olds most likely to let rip with a good, hard, ear-shattering 'fuck' and to be 'desensitised' to its impact. Among older people, strong swear words still remained 'a taboo' - with seventy five per cent of those over sixty five saying they would not use strong swearing in public, according to research which included focus groups and in-depth interviews. Parents were also keen to keep strong swearing away from their children - with about two thirds of parents saying while they 'might' swear among their own friends they would avoid it if they thought their children, up to the age of sixteen, could hear. There was also 'anxiety' among parents about how much swearing could be 'normalised' in the online video content available to young people. The context also made a difference, with parents more worried if swearing was used in an aggressive or violent way, with a particular concern if it was used in terms of sexual violence. The BBFC said the research suggested that while swearing might be increasingly used and tolerated, that parents did not want a dilution of the limits on how it appeared on-screen - such as not having very strong language in a 12A-rated film. The strongest swear words should be 'infrequent' for a 15 rating and if accompanied with violence they might need an 18 rating, said the BBFC. 'Children are watching more content on multiple screens and their parents want to protect them from strong and very strong language wherever they can and for as long as possible. Parents told us they are keen for media industries to share the responsibility,' said David Austin, the BBFC's chief executive.
Harrison Ford has been spotted on Tyneside for a second day while taking a break from filming the latest Indiana Jones movie. The actor was photographed by Terry Blackburn on Newcastle's Quayside earlier, having been cycling nearby on Tuesday. He was also seen having a meal at The Ship's Cat in North Shields on Tuesday. Ford is currently shooting the fifth film in the adventure series at Northumberland's Bamburgh Castle. The popular tourist destination is closed until 14 June due to filming and props including World War Two military vehicles have been spotted being delivered to the coastal location. While in North Shields, the seventy eight-year-old was seen having a meal with colleagues by Alex Liddell, who was on her work hen do, at the Fish Quay nearby. She said: 'It was really bizarre. You do not expect to see a Hollywood star at the Fish Quay in North Shields. It was really quite exciting. He looked like he was enjoying himself, but I don't think he wanted any attention.' The Ship's Cat posted on Instagram that it was 'an honour' to have the actor as a customer and he was 'welcome back any time.' And, one is sure that should Harrison ever be out with his mates drinking on Shields High Street again in the future, he's sure to pop into The Ship's Cat for a return visit. The Disney-produced film also stars Mads Mikkelsen, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Thomas Kretschmann, with parts also being shot in the village of Grosmont, North Yorkshire. From The North favourite Mikkelsen, known for his villainous roles in Casino Royale and Hannibal, was also pictured in Newcastle. Film buff Iain Makepeace said he was 'shocked' - and stunned - to find the star in the city. As was this blogger given that Mads was only about three or four miles from yer actual Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House and yet never took the opportunity to pop in for a cup of tea and a slice of cake. Same with Harrison who was, seemingly, even closer to the gaff. I dunno, dear blog reader, these Hollywood types, they never write, they never call ...
Police in Sunderland (the actual Mackem Filth, if you will) are reportedly looking for a person who has been stealing new-born lambs and leaving them in suburban gardens. Why anyone would wished to do so, one hesitates to speculate, they're a weird lot down in Mackemland. Residents have emerged from their homes three times in the last fortnight to find a lamb abandoned on their lawn after being taken from its mother in the night. The RSPCA has collected each of the frightened animals and taken them to be looked after, but they have not been able to reunite them with their mothers because police have not managed to trace the farm which they came from. Amy Scollen, who lives in Ryhope, discovered a lamb in her garden on 13 May, which she described as a 'very weird morning.' Not least, fro the lamb. She said: 'I don't know how it got in my garden and I could hear it but couldn't see it until I opened the door to grab the milk and it was staring me in the face.' She called her mother who, in turn, called Northumbria police. The force arrived, all tooled up with truncheons and mint sauce and said the lamb was 'distressed and was headbutting the fence, trying to get out of the garden' when officers arrived. Which, to be fair, is not that unusual behaviour. For Wearside. This was, reportedly, followed by two almost identical incidents over the next couple of weeks. Heather Wade, an RSPCA rescue officer, attended one of the calls to find the lamb, which was too young to have been separated from its mother, cold and shivering. 'These little ones were only days old so were very vulnerable and would have been frightened to be away from their mum,' she said. 'I know the lambs could not have wandered into the gardens as they were enclosed so it suggests someone has deliberately done this and I have no idea why. Maybe they think it is some kind of joke. We are not sure where they have come from as there are no nearby farms, so we could not reunite them with their mum and they are now being hand-reared by a specialist.' She is appealing for information to find the person or persons responsible and urges anyone with information to call the RSPCA. 'If anyone sees an animal in distress or is concerned for a baby animal then we would urge them to call our cruelty line for advice,' she said.
Some people they do say to this blogger, 'for why, Keith Telly Topping? Why is there that oversized office fan in the front room of yer actual Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House? You live in that there England, where it rains all the bloody time, you must only get to use this implement about four days a year, if that?' This is, indeed, broadly speaking correct. However, those four days per year usually include at least one like Thursday of this week where it was steaming like the virry tropics. And, the bongo drums never ceased. So, that's why if you were wondering, dear blog reader. Cos on days like that it is, if you will, fan-ruddy-tastic.
This week also occasioned the first strimmage of the manicured Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House lawns of the summer.
And, the first washing of the Telly Topping smalls of the week to boot.
And finally, dear blog reader, some jolly sad news. The actress Damaris Hayman, famous to Doctor Who fans for playing Olive Hawthorne, the gloriously batty white witch of Devil's End in the well-remembered 1971 five part story The Daemons, has died at the age of ninety one. Damaris had a long career in British Film and Television, playing mostly well-to-do, slightly eccentric, ladies. She made her TV debut in 1953 as Eliza in The Story Of The Treasure Seekers. Her film debut came a year later in The Belles Of St Trinian's in an uncredited role as a sixth former, the first in the comedy series set in a private girls school. It was a world Hayman knew well having been educated at the exclusive Cheltenham Ladies' College before moving into acting and being mentored by Margaret Rutherford. Later movies included The Pink Panther Strikes Again, The Missionary, Confessions Of A Driving Instructor, Mutiny On The Buses, Bunny Lake Is Missing and Bitter Harvest. Many supporting roles on TV included appearances in productions such as The Citadel, Citizen James, The Somerset Maugham Hour, Crossroads, Steptoe & Son, Z Cars, The Dickie Henderson Show, Love Thy Neighbour, Sez Les, Clarence, The Liver Birds, Beggar My Neighbour, Armchair Theatre, Ours Is A Nice House, The Onedin Line, The Morecambe & Wise Show, The Witches' Brew, The Small World Of Samuel Tweet, The Dick Emery Show, The Basil Brush Show, If You See God Tell Him, The House Of Eliott, Filthy, Rich & Catflap, Mind Your Language, Robin's Nest, Wodehouse Playhouse, The Sweeney, The Tommy Cooper Hour, Albert!, Here Come The Double Deckers, Vile Bodies, From A Bird's Eye View, Not In Front Of The Children, The World Of Beachcomber, How We Used To Live, Point Counter Point, The Bed-Sit Girl, Badger's Bend and One Foot In The Grave. In, probably, her second-most-famous TV appearance, she played the old lady who asks Neil if he 'digs graves' in the Nasty episode of The Young Ones (1984). To which the obvious answer is, 'yeah, they're all right!' After appearing in a sketch in Tony Hancock's last British TV series in 1967 (Hancock's), she became a close friend of the comedian during the remaining year of his life according to Hancock's biographer, John Fisher. It was in 1971 Damaris took on the role that endeared her to several generations of Doctor Who fans when she played Miss Hawthorne in The Daemons. It was a perfectly-pitched comedic performance and one that she was very proud of. Her chemistry with Jon Pertwee and the rest of the cast helped ensure the story's long-term popularity. In 2017 she returned to the character to appear in The White Witch Of Devil's End, a spin-off story based on the character released on DVD by Koch Media. Retiring from acting in the 1990s, Damaris lived for many years in Cirencester.

A total right-shite state of affairs has descended from high a'top The Thing with an uncomfortable splat upon yer actual Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House over the last few days, dear blog reader. It's been a sight to see, so it has. As many of Keith Telly Topping's dear Facebook fiends will already know, this blogger's Facebook account (established in 2006) appears to have been well and truly hackerised like buggery and he is, currently, entirely unable to access his account due to his e-mail address and password having been changed by the naughty - alleged - hackerisation-type individual involved in the - alleged - hackerising. Yer actual has e-mailed an address which is alleged to be Facebook's Help Centre for, you know, help in his hour of need - but he has yet to hear anything back from them as of the time of this bloggerisationism update. And, anyway, this blogger is not even sure if the address he sent his plea to is a genuine one. So, if any dear blog reader out there has any practical suggestions about what Keith Telly Topping can do, a) either to contact Facebook or to b) sort out this ungodly mess (or, ideally, both), this blogger can be contacted via e-mail at keithandrewtopping at gmail dot com. However, can I ask that only anyone who actually has something practical which is likely to improve this blogger's temper contacts him. Please, don't - for the love of God - send messages of sympathy or anything along those lines. Because, frankly, his blogger is just a wee bit beyond the accepting-sympathy-in-the-spirit-it-was-intended stage now.
To be fair, this here right-shite state of affairs has had but one positive side-effect. Since this blogger - for the moment, at least - is not spending a couple of hours each day checking out Facebook postings from his - many - fiends, he's had more time than usual to devote himself to other things in his life. Like reading the recently-acquiredmega-massive-tastic seventeen hundred page monster that is Mark Lewisohn's extended Be-Atles biography, Tune-In (Part 1). They were a popular beat combo of the 1960s, you might've heard of them. He is currently up to page three hundred and seventy three if anyone is taking notes. It's June 1957 and future alcoholic wife-beating Scouse junkie John Lennon's O-level results have just turned out to be just as bad, if not worse, than everyone (including him) expected and his auntie reckons he's not going to make a living from this guitar-playing nonsense. Meanwhile, Keith Telly Topping's wrists are really suffering from holding the damn thing whilst he's reading it. Alternatively (to give his wrists a bit of a break), he's also carrying on with his current complete Star Trek: Deep Space Nine rewatch. He's just about up to the end of series five of the Star Trek series which got good the quickest and stayed good the longest and The Dominion and The Cardassians are about to get really heavy on Captain Sisko and co's collective ass. Or, he's been watching - and, actually, rather enjoying - the Euros (at least, until the Germans give England a right good shellacking next Tuesday, after which the novelty may well wear off somewhat). Et cetera, et cetera. Life? It can be a right bloody chore, innit? Still, the weather's been quite nice ... 
As a consequence, therefore, of all this previously discussed right-shite state of affairs, this latest From The North bloggerisationisms update will be somewhat shorter than usual. Since roughly half of what this blogger posts in an average bloggerisationisms about his own various doings are, usually, collected from stuff that he's told his fiends about on Facebook. So, you know, if you're wholly uninterested in yer actual Keith Telly Topping his very self, dear blog reader, that's a double bonus, surely?
Firstly, last week saw the unveiling of The Doctor's new costume for the forthcoming series of the BBC's popular long-running family SF drama. This blogger is not sure it entirely works for him, to be honest. Although, he does like the - presumably sonic - wand. A lot.
Last week, the Lack of Culture Secretary The Vile & Odious Rascal Dowden announced that 'a new frontier' had been opened for British musicians who want to play live in Europe. Thanks to 'ambitious' negotiations, he suggested, artists and their crews can now tour without visa requirements in Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. The deal comes after Brexit meant that performers must obtain costly permits to play in most European countries. Touring musicians called The Vile & Odious Rascal Dowden's announcement 'tragic' and 'a joke.' And those were some of thing kinder things said. 'Iceland's population is roughly the same as Wigan. Liechtenstein has a similar number of residents as Wilmslow,' said The Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess. 'If it wasn't tragic it would be funny.' He added: 'The Charlatans have played all over the globe for thirty one years and we've had three number one albums. However, Oliver Dowden, we have never played in Iceland or Liechtenstein due to sheer expense/very small populations there and few venues or promoters. But thanks for your help.' One imagines that was Tim being a bit sarcastic, there. The UK government claimed that the deal with Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein - which are not part of the EU, but are in the European Economic Area - was 'only one part' of an overall effort to reopen Europe to British musicians. One or two people even believed them. Of the UK's major touring artists, a grand total of none have played in Liechtenstein in the past decade. Only one act - over-rated ginger strummer Ed Sheeran - has visited Iceland since 2011 (for which, one trusts, the people of Reykjavik will accept our sincere collective apologies), but Norway does remain a regular touring stop for many bands on the European touring circuit. 
England's opening Euro 2020 (ish) match at Wembley on Sunday was watched by a record audience on BBC iPlayer. The - actually half-way decent for once - one-nil win over Croatia pulled in a peak TV audience of 11.6 million and a seventy nine per cent share of available viewers. One really has to wonder what the other twenty one per cent were watching. Contemplating the inherently ludicrous nature of existence, probably. It also set a BBC iPlayer live viewing record with the game being streamed 3.9 million times and 4.5 million times on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport online.
Astronomers claim they have solved the mystery of why one of the most familiar stars in the night sky suddenly dimmed just over a year ago. Betelgeuse, a red supergiant in the constellation of Orion that no one knows how to pronounce correctly (it's 'bet-al-gurr-z' if you were wondering), abruptly darkened in late 2019 and early 2020. The behaviour led some to speculate that it might be about to explode if a firework display that would've been quite a sight. But a team using the excellently-named Very Large Telescope in Chile says the cause was 'almost certainly' a giant dust cloud between us and the star. Even if you can't name many points in the sky, you'll almost certainly know Betelgeuse by sight. It's the orange dot in the top-left corner of Orion - or bottom-right, if you're viewing the constellation in the Southern Hemisphere. Close to Earth, relatively speaking, at a distance of about five hundred and fifty light-years, Betelgeuse is what is known as a 'semi-regular variable star.' It naturally brightens and darkens over a period of roughly four hundred days. But what happened eighteen months ago was out of the ordinary. The loss of brightness was far greater than anything previously recorded. Astronomer Miguel Montargès and colleagues investigated the event with the European Southern Observatory's VLT, one of the most powerful telescopes on Earth. It has the resolution to directly image the surface of Betelgeuse. The researchers compared pictures before, during and after the dimming and did some modelling to see what kind of behaviour might give rise to the views obtained. Two ideas were dominant. Perhaps there was a large cool spot on the surface of the star, because red supergiants like Betelgeuse are known to have large convective cells which can cause hot spots and cold spots. Or maybe there was a cloud of dust forming right in front of the star as it was viewed from Earth. The explanation turns out to be 'a bit of both' according to colleague Emily Cannon from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. 'Our overall idea is that there was a cool spot on the star which, because of the local drop in temperature, then caused gas ejected previously to condense into dust,' she told BBC News. 'So, the cool spot on the surface would initially make the star look dimmer to us. But then this condensation of dust would add to the rapid drop in brightness of the star.' Betelgeuse is about fifteen to twenty times as massive as the Sun. An object that big is likely to go supernova at some point. So, it wasn't crazy to wonder when this unusual dimming occurred that Betelgeuse might be about to go bang in a spectacular explosion. Emily Cannon said: 'I don't think this event means Betelgeuse is going to go supernova any time soon, even though that would be incredibly interesting and I was kind of wishing it myself! We know that red supergiants can display increased mass loss rates, which may indicate there's a later stage in their lives when they are more likely to go supernova. But Betelgeuse we think is a relatively young red supergiant and it probably has a lot more time left.' How much time? Tens, even hundreds, of thousands of years is the sort of period astronomers will often quote. Although, in cosmic terms, that's effective 'some time soon.' When it occurs with will be an amazing thing to see; the event would be visible in daylight. The last supernova observed in our Milky Way Galaxy was Kepler's Star, which was observed in 1604. Records from astronomers at the time indicate it was visible during the day for over three weeks after it went ker-blam. Miguel Montargès' team reports its findings in the journal Nature.
And finally in this shortened From The North update, some jolly sad news. The actress and agent Jackie Lane has died at the age of seventy nine. Jackie appeared in nineteen episodes of Doctor Who in the 1966 playing Dodo Chaplet a companion of The Doctor, William Hartnell. Jackie was born in Manchester and, after training as a child actress she had small parts in soap operas like the BBC's Compact and Granada's Coronation Street as well as series such as The Villains, The Caucasian Chalk Circle and The Protectors (no, the other one). She also appeared in Anna Neagle's radio production of Wonderful Things in 1958, with Charlie Drake in Grandad Was A Wrestler in 1959 and as a panelist on a 1961 episode of Juke Box Jury. In 1963, aged seventeen, her agent put her forward to play the character of Susan Forman in the BBC's new science fiction seris, Doctor Who. Jackie however withdrew from consideration upon learning that she would be expected to sign a year-long contract should she gain the role. Three years later, with Doctor Who a major success, the actress was offered the role of Dodo by producer John Wiles. Arriving at the end of The Massacre, the character travelled with The Doctor and his companion Steven (Peter Purves) across four stories, The Ark, The Celestial Toymaker, The Gunfighters and The Savages. Jackie told Doctor Who Magazine about her time on the series: 'It was very friendly, although Bill Hartnell had put up with a lot of cast changes over a short space of time. It was really beginning to get to him. We got on very well, although I wouldn't say I ever really knew him that well.' Jackie's contract expired after four months and it was not renewed by the incoming producer Innes Lloyd. The character disappeared from the series, without a goodbye, after appearing in a couple of episodes of The War Machines. 'Innes had definite plans for the series, which neither Steven nor Dodo fitted. I think I would have liked a dramatic ending. My farewell was a bit of an anti-climax. Still, I got my revenge. I now run a voice-over agency and Innes Lloyd once asked me to find him work. I reminded him that he had once sacked me from Doctor Who and said a very firm no.' Soon after Jackie left Doctor Who she effectively retired from acting. She spent some time as a diplomatic secretary working for the Australian Government and as an antique dealer before returning to the theatrical world, this time as an agent. In this role, for a time she represented both Tom Baker and Janet Fielding and managed Nicholas Courtney. A very shy lady, Jackie Lane was always reluctant to involve herself with Doctor Who fandom - and who, honestly, can blame her? She gave very few interviews about her time on the popular long-running family SF drama series but did make an appearance at the time of Doctor Who's fiftieth anniversary in 2013.

Sad to report, dear blog readers, this blogger remains Facebook-deprived after the events described in such detail in the last From The North bloggerisationisms update. Despite four e-mails to two different e-mail addresses (both of which are alleged to be current contact sources for the Facebook Help Centre) and several other attempts to contact someone (anyone) who would be able and willing to assist this blogger with his hacking-related problems, no contact has been established at the time of writing. It's ironic, really, in the very week that Facebook has taken great pleasure in announcing to the world that the stock market value of their company has topped one trillion bucks, their employees appear to enjoy actively avoiding engaging with their customers, particularly if that customer happens to have a problem which requires their urgent attention.
So, on the trillion-to-one chance that trillionaire despot Mark Zuckerberg happens to be one of From The North's very occasional dear blog readers, here is a short - and sincere - plea. Hi Mark, how you doing? Good, Keith Telly Topping hopes. This blogger wonders if you could do him a geet excellent favour. Could you, if you're not too busy counting the trillions you've made of your social network, ask (politely) one of your, I'm guessing considerably less well-off, minions to drop this blogger a quick e-mail on the From The North e-mail address alluded to in the previous bloggerisationisms update. This blogger has always been a satisfied customer of and vocal supporter of Facebook and has never described its creator as a money-grabbing, tax-avoiding scumbag. Not even once. And, Facebook was always jolly keen, it seemed, to inform this blogger of how he was a 'valued' customer of the company. So, Mark, now would be an excellent time for you guys to, you know, prove it. Over to you, Mark. That's if you're reading this. Which you almost certainly are not. So, that was all a colossal waste of time and energy, wasn't it?
This lack of contact with this blogger's many dear Facbook fiends has been, of course really annoying, as one is sure you can all appreciate. This week of all weeks. After all it's not often that you get a day like Tuesday where not only do this blogger's beloved England cricket team give Sri Lanka a right good hiding in an One Day International at Chester-Le-Street, a mere ten miles away from the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House but, also, this blogger's beloved England football team won a game a socher-ball. Against Germany. For the first time in any international match since 2016. For the first time in a competitive match since 2001. For the first time in the finals of one of the two major international socher-ball competitions since 2000. And, for the first time in a knock out tie in the finals of one of the two major international socher-ball competitions since 1966 and all that. So, you know, that was a moment which this blogger would rather have enjoyed talking about with his dear (former) Facebook fiends. Current hacking-related right-shite states of affair notwithstanding.
Sadly, dear blog reader, it was not to be. Why, this very blogger couldn't even share with his dear Facebook fiends how much he really deserved this here curry salt and chilli pepper king prawn with steamed rice malarkey which was a necessary emergency purchase from the local takeaway on Wednesday evening. He'd liked to have shared that, dear blog reader, really he would. Cos it was geet lush.
England's previously mentioned two-nil victory over Ze Chermans at Euro 2020(ish) on Tuesday attracted a peak live TV audience of 20.6 million to BBC1, with an eighty per cent share of the available. What the other twenty per cent were watching, we can only speculate. Although, there was a rather good episode of The Brokenwood Mysteries on the Drama Channel at the same time. Apparently. Goals from Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane were the highlights of a tense and memorable last-sixteen tie at Wembley. The match also pulled in six-and-a-half live streams across BBC iPlayer and the BBC Sport website combined - making it the most watched Euro 2020(ish) match so far. The iPlayer set a new live viewing record with 5.6 million streams. England's quarter-final against Ukraine in Rome will be live on BBC1 and BBC iPlayer on Saturday. And now watch, having done the hard part of getting this far, what's the betting Gareth's young lions go and lose that one?
In the last From The North bloggerisationisms update, this blogger mentioned that he'd just about reached the end of series five of his current complete rewtach of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - the Star Trek series that got good the quickest and stayed good the longest. Sadly, his Facebook experiences should've told this blogger that plans can fall through as so often they do. As Morrissey once said before - importantly - he turned into an odious, bigoted right-wing apologist. The recently purchased second-hand series six DVD box-set which this blogger was totally looking forward to watching a few episodes of during the lead-up to Tuesday's Wembley clash only went and turned out to be a dud, didn't it? Just three episodes into The Dominion War arc the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House DVD player started to suffer all manner of discombobulations as the first three discs of the set all featured at least one episode which wouldn't play at all, or stuttered through a couple of minutes before grinding to a less-than-dignified halt. They say misfortunes come in three so this blogger can't wait to find out what the third part of his current misery-trilogy is. Fortunately, Amazon via whom this blogger had purchased this crock of shat, unlike Facebookdo answer e-mails sent to them complaining about their goods and service. A refund and/or replacement was offered (the latter is currently on its way to the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House as we speak) and, in the meantime, this blogger was able to dig out his videotapes - yes, he still has loads of them - of many of the affected episodes and watch them that way (having first managed to hook up the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House bedroom tellybox to one of the two surviving Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House VCRs. And, they actually played. Which was nice. Especially given that the run of episodes we're talking about included a handful of this blogger's favourite DS9 stories - Sons & Daughters, Behind The Lines, Sacrifice Of Angels, The Magnificent Ferengi (yes, 'the one with Iggy Pop'), Waltz and Far Beyond The Stars not least amongst them.
From the North favourite Elvis Costello has defended pop singer Olivia Rodrigo after she was accused of lifting one of his guitar riffs. 'Brutal', a song on Rodrigo's CD, is based around a chord sequence which also featured in Costello's 1978 hit 'Pump It Up'. But when some trouble-making shat-for-brains on Twitter said Rodrigo's song was 'pretty much a direct lift' from 'Pump It Up', Costello replied: 'This is fine by me. It's how rock & roll works,' Declan said. 'You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy.' He added: 'That's what I did.' The veteran singer-songwriter also included hashtags referencing Bob Dylan's 1965 classic 'Subterranean Homesick Blues', which inspired 'Pump It Up'and Chuck Berry's 1956 single 'Too Much Monkey Business', which in turn had influenced the Dylan song. Costello's refreshingly relaxed reaction comes despite a surge in music copyright cases in recent years. Perhaps the most infamous case was over the hit song 'Blurred Lines' - in which the family of the late Marvin Gaye accused Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams of plagiarising Gaye's song 'Got To Give It Up'. The jury's controversial verdict found that Thicke and Williams had copied the 'vibe' of Gaye's 1977 hit - rather than lifting a melody or chord sequence, which is usual bar for plagiarism. Since then, artists like over-rated ginger strummer Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry and Childish Gambino have all been sued for millions over similarities between their songs and earlier hits. Although, they haven't all lost. Others have taken the precaution of crediting writers who 'might' have a claim, even a tangential one, to protect themselves against legal action. Notably, Taylor Swift (she's a popular beat combo, yer honour) gave Right Said Fred a share of her song 'Look What You Made Me Do' because her chorus melody followed a similar rhythmic pattern to their 1990s hit 'I'm Too Sexy'. Rodrigo and her co-writer Daniel Nigro have not done the same for 'Brutal' - but it seems Elvis is honoured, rather than annoyed, by the hat-tip. As you'd expect from a true gentleman like he. Costello previously gave permission for 'Pump It Up's riff to be sampled in Rogue Trader's 2005 dance hit 'Voodoo Child'.
The former actress Allison Mack has been sentenced to three years in The Joint for her role in the Nxivm sex cult. The thirty eight-year-old admitted racketeering and conspiracy charges in April 2019 related to her efforts to recruit women. Last year, cult leader Keith Raniere was handed one hundred and twenty years in The Slammer for multiple crimes, including forcing women to be his sexual 'slaves.' In a letter before sentencing, Mack begged forgiveness from her victims. The letter addressed to 'those who have been harmed by my actions' was filed to the court by her lawyers, who requested that she face no prison time for her crimes. But, that was never really an option. 'I threw myself into the teachings of Keith Raniere with everything I had,' she wrote. 'I believed, whole-heartedly, that his mentorship was leading me to a better, more enlightened version of myself ... This was the biggest mistake and regret of my life,' Mack continued. And given that includes an appearance in Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves! we can probably believe her. 'I am sorry to those of you that I brought into Nxivm. I am sorry I ever exposed you to the nefarious and emotionally abusive schemes of a twisted man,' she added. Mack, best known for her role on the television series Smallville, fled to Mexico with the group's leader as authorities began closing in on them in 2018. Since her return to the US and her arrest she has been living in her California family home while taking university courses and working in catering, her lawyers claim. 
Meanwhile, just moments after that announcement can the revelation that some members of now extremely former President Mister Rump's grubby spawn could be soon(ish) to join Allison Mack for a spell in The Big House ending each day slopping out the pail. Rump's company and its finance chief are expected to be charged with alleged tax-related crimes, according to US media reports. The Manhattan District Attorney's office will bring charges against the Rump Organisation and Allen Weisselberg on Thursday, outlets said. It is not thought that Rump himself will be implicated personally, they reported. New York City has already cut business ties with the twice-impeached former president. The Rump Organisation is a family holding company that owns hotels, golf clubs and other properties. Any criminal charges brought against it would mark the first in long-running investigations on alleged fraud by both the Manhattan district attorney and the state attorney general. Charges by District Attorney Cyrus Vance on Thursday are expected to focus on whether Weisselberg and other company executives - including Rump family members - received benefits such as apartment rentals or leased cars without reporting them properly on their tax returns, according to the reports, which first appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Rump has previously suggested that the investigations are politically-motivated. And, to paraphrase the late Mandy Rice-Davies, 'well, he would, wouldn't he?' In a statement earlier this week, Rup claimed that the case was looking at 'things that are standard practice throughout the US business community, and in no way a crime.' One or two people even believed him. If the company were found guilty, however, certain business partners might draw a line under their relationship with the Rump Organisation, as well as facing fines and possible jail time. New York City, for example, has already announced it will terminate contracts with the firm to run skating rinks, a carousel and a golf course, in the aftermath of the US Capitol riots. The investigations will also take into account eight years of Rump's personal and corporate tax returns, obtained by prosecutors after a long legal battle, which ended in the Supreme Court in February. Rump, who inherited money from his father and went on to become a property developer, was the first president since Richard Nixon in the 1970s not to have made his tax returns public. Despite facing a number of investigations, the now extremely former president has denied any wrongdoing personally or in his business. Mandy, you're on again.
A man has reportedly been arrested in Kuwait and banged up in The Joint after he posted a video on TikTok complaining about the country's bad weather. In the footage uploaded to the social media app the man who is said to be Egyptain but who has not been identified, can be heard complaining about a sandstorm which had engulfed the country in the previous few days. 'I'm inside a dust storm right now, I literally can't see anything in front of me,' the man says, showing the dust coating the highway like a thick fog. 'Fine, Kuwait, fine,' he adds, with an expletive in Arabic. Kuwait's Ministry Of Interior & Brutalising Dissent, said on Sunday that the person behind the 'offensive' video was extremely arrested after being 'referred' to authorities (for which read 'snitched up like a good'un by some Copper's Nark') and that they would 'take the necessary legal action against him.' The Gulf Arab state has an outspoken parliament and relatively vibrant civic life, but authorities have been known to use cybercrime laws to prosecute dissidents and police speech. Rumours that the British government is also having a crackdown on people whinging about the weather have been dismissed since, apparently, we don't have enough jails to hold all sixty five million of us.
Scientists have detected two collisions between a neutron star and a black hole in the space of ten days. Researchers predicted that such collisions would occur, but did not know how often. The observations could mean that some ideas of how stars and galaxies form may need to be revised. Professor Vivien Raymond, from Cardiff University, told BBC News that the surprising results were 'fantastic. We have to go back to the drawing board and rewrite our theories,' he said. 'We have learned a bit of a lesson again. When we assume something we tend to be proved wrong after a while. So we have to keep our minds open and see what the Universe is telling us.' Black holes are astronomical objects that have such strong gravity, not even light can escape. Neutron stars are dead stars that are incredibly dense. A teaspoonful of material from a neutron star is estimated to weigh around four billion tonnes. Both objects are cosmological monsters, but black holes are considerably more massive than neutron stars. In the first collision, which was detected on 5 January 2020, a black hole six-and-a-half times the mass of our Sun crashed into a neutron star that was one-and-a-half times more massive than our parent star. In the second collision, picked up just ten days later, a black hole of ten solar masses merged with a neutron star of two solar masses. When objects as massive as these collide they create ripples in the fabric of space called gravitational waves. And it is these ripples that the researchers have detected. The researchers looked back at earlier observations with fresh eyes and many of them are likely to to have been similar mismatched collisions. Researchers have previously detected two black holes colliding, as well as two neutron stars but this is the first time they have detected a neutron star crashing into a black hole.
A prototype flying car has completed a thirty five-minute flight between international airports in Nitra and Bratislava, Slovakia. The hybrid car-aircraft, AirCar, is equipped with a BMW engine and runs on regular petrol-pump fuel. Its creator, Professor Stefan Klein, said it could fly about six hundred miles, at a height of eight thousand feet and had clocked up forty hours in the air so far. It takes two minutes and fifteen seconds to transform from car into aircraft. The narrow wings fold down along the sides of the car. Professor Klein drove it straight off the runway and into town upon arrival, watched by invited reporters. He described the experience as 'normal' and 'very pleasant.' The vehicle can carry two people, with a combined weight limit of two hundred kilograms. But unlike drone-taxi prototypes, it cannot take off and land vertically and requires a runway. There are high expectations for the nascent market in flying cars, which have long been heralded in popular culture as a visionary landmark of the future. In 2019, consultant company Morgan Stanley predicted the sector could be worth one-and-a-half trillion bucks by 2040. So, by that time, Mark Zuckerberg should be in a position to buy it. At an industry event on Tuesday, Hyundai Motors Europe chief executive Michael Cole called the concept 'part of our future.' It is considered a potential solution to the strain on existing transport infrastructures. The company behind AirCar, Klein Vision, says the prototype has taken two years to develop and cost 'less than two million Euros' in investment. Anton Zajac, an adviser and investor in Klein Vision, said if the company could attract even a small percentage of global airline or taxi sales, it would be 'hugely successful. There are about forty thousand orders of aircraft in the United States alone,' he said. 'And if we convert five per cent of those, to change the aircraft for the flying car - we have a huge market.' Doctor Stephen Wright, senior research fellow in avionics and aircraft, at the University of the West of England, described the AirCar as 'the lovechild of a Bugatti Veyron and a Cesna 172.' He did not think the vehicle would be particularly loud or uneconomical in terms of fuel costs, compared with other aircraft. 'I have to admit that this looks really cool - but I've got a hundred questions about certification,' Doctor Wright added. 'Anyone can make an aeroplane but the trick is making one that flies and flies and flies for the thick end of a million hours, with a person on board, without having an incident. I can't wait to see the piece of paper that says this is safe to fly and safe to sell.'
French police say they have extremely arrested a naughty woman suspected of causing a huge crash during the Tour De France on Saturday by waving a sign in the riders' path. The peloton was twenty eight miles from the end of the first stage, when her carelessly waved sign hit the German rider Tony Martin. He fell to the ground and caused dozens of other riders behind him to follow suit, in what was one of the Tour De France's worst ever crashes. French authorities say that the woman, who is French, is currently in custody in Landerneau. Video footage of the incident has been shared widely online. The woman can be seen holding a sign with 'granny and granddad' written in a combination of French and German and grinning like a loon. Until she caused the crash. Then he expression changed a bit. She was looking away from the peloton coming towards her and did not see them approach, while holding her sign into the road. As a result of the crash, one rider - Jasha Sutterlin - had to pull out of the Tour completely and another eight riders, including Martin, were treated for injuries. The crash held up the race, which was between between Brest and Landerneau in North-West France, for five minutes, while bikes and riders were untangled and cleared from the road. Following the incident, Tour De France Deputy Director Pierre-Yves Thouault was incandescent with rage and said the tour would take legal action against the foolish woman. 'We are suing this woman who behaved so badly. We are doing this so that the tiny minority of people who do this do not spoil the show for everyone,' he told AFP news agency.

Sunday saw the final of the socher-ball Euro 2020(ish) competition played at yer actual Wembley Stadium. If you missed it, we lost. Next ...
During the 1980s, in the middle of an Ashes series in which the Australian team were doing especially badly for once, the popular Australian comedian and actor Paul Hogan was appearing on a British chat show. He noted, with some amusement that the English press (particularly the tabloid press) seemed to enjoy English sporting defeat far more than English sporting victory, noting that if England were winning at football or cricket or rugby 'there'll be two pages of it, if they're losing, there'll be eight pages of it!' He contrasted this with the ways of the Australian popular press whom, he noted, seemed to have a much more positive spin of things. 'They basically ignore it,' he noted. 'So, they'll say, "in the test match, Australia lost. Meanwhile, in the tennis ..."' Therefore, moving swiftly on from Sunday's bitter penalty-related disappointment (how hard can it be to score from twelve yards?!), England's cricket team pulled off another impressive victory over Pakistan by fifty two runs in the second one-day international at Lord's on Saturday to clinch the three-match series with a game to spare. 

     After rain reduced the contest to forty seven overs per side, England recovered from one hundred and sixty for seven to two hundred and forty seven all out in just over forty five overs. The hosts were unchanged from an eleven that included five debutants in the first ODI two days previously after a Covid-19 outbreak had forced the quarantine of England's entire first-choice white ball squad. England then grabbed the initiative of an entertaining game by reducing Pakistan to eighty six for five with a fine new-ball spell. Fast bowler Saqib Mahmood stood out again, dismissing captain Babar Azam LBW for nineteen and Mohammad Rizwan caught behind for five, while Lewis Gregory removed opener Imam-ul-Haq with his first ball - the seventh delivery of the innings. Saud Shakeel kept the tourists in the game with fifty six from seventy seven balls, while Hassan Ali took twenty two runs from one Matt Parkinson over - including three massive sixes - to energise the vocal Pakistan supporters. But Shakeel holed out to deep square-leg off Parkinson and Gregory claimed the final wicket in the following over, Pakistan dismissed for one hundred and ninety five with thirty six balls remaining and there wasn't quite so much noise or chest beating from the green and whites. Indeed, the crowd went home. All-rounder Gregory, who took three for forty four, earlier scored forty in a crucial eighth-wicket stand of sixty nine with Brydon Carse. England had lost five wickets for forty two runs, seamer Hassan ripping through the middle order en route to figures of five for fifty one, after opener Phil Salt hit an aggressive sixty from fifty four balls and James Vince scored fifty six from fifty two. It resulted in another impressive win for this inexperienced England side, who lead the series two-nil going into the final match in Edgbaston on Tuesday. Forced to play the series without Eoin Morgan, Joe Root, Johnny Bairstow, Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood et al due to a covid outbreak amongst the squad following the recent series against Sri Lanka, it will have done England much good to realise their impressive strength-in-depth in the shorter formats of the game. This was also the first cricket match in England to be allowed a capacity crowd since the start of the pandemic, althseries without ough the attendance was twenty two thousand seven hundred and four - around three-quarters full. This England success was almost as impressive as the nine-wicket win in Cardiff, given it was a more all-round performance and at times they were put under significant pressure. Asked to bat in damp conditions, Dawid Malan nicked to slip and Zak Crawley was brilliantly bowled by a Shaheen Afridi yorker, both for ducks, but Salt and Vince counter-attacked with a stand of ninety seven from eighty balls. Salt and Vince were bowled by the spin of Shakeel and Shadab Khan respectively and when captain Ben Stokes had his off stump removed by Hassan for twenty two, before John Simpson and Craig Overton quickly followed, England appeared to be in serious trouble. But they responded well. Carse and Gregory had relatively quiet debuts in Cardiff but the pair showed maturity in rotating the strike while still scoring at a decent rate and punishing any bad balls. Without their stand - the highest for the eighth wicket in an ODI at Lord's - England would likely have been well short of a winnable total. Their influence continued in the second innings when Gregory took the first wicket - Imam caught by wicketkeeper Simpson - and the last - Haris Rauf taken down the leg side. Carse ended Hassan's onslaught of thirty one from seventeen balls by having him caught at fine leg for his first international wicket and Simpson, another in his second ODI, caught the eye with a brilliant take off Parkinson. He anticipated a sweep from Faheem Ashraf and caught the left-hander off the face of the bat down the leg side. The fact the result was not completely certain even with Pakistan nine men down showed England's total was not insurmountable. Instead the loss of early wickets cost Pakistan again, as it did in Cardiff. Babar, the number one ranked ODI batter in the world, showed a flash of his brilliance in hitting three boundaries in one over including a perfect on-drive, but he was removed by a good ball from Mahmood, which nipped in and would have hit the top of middle. In contrast, opener Fakhar Zaman made a tortured ten from forty five balls before being bowled by Overton to the relief of pretty much everyone. Pakistan's bowling was improved, with Hassan the standout performer, though Rauf and Ashraf allowed Salt and Vince too many loose balls. Ben Stokes noted after the game: 'The really pleasing thing about that is the inexperienced players coming in and still continuing that mindset that we've produced over the last four or five years. The performance was fantastic.'
Mark Cavendish made history in the Tour De France as he equalled Belgian great Eddy Merckx's record of thirty four stage wins on Friday. The Deceuninck-Quick Step rider won the sprint into Carcassonne by a few inches ahead of team-mate Michael Morkov. 'It's what I dreamed of as a kid. I've worked so hard for it,' said Cavendish. Tadej Pogacar of UAE-Team Emirates remains in the leader's yellow jersey on a day that will be remembered for Cavendish's exploits, thirteen years on from his first win at the Tour. An emotional and physically drained Cavendish embraced each of his team-mates at the finish and cried out 'we've made history' as he hugged Davide Ballerini. Cavendish added: 'I'm so dead - two hundred and twenty kilometres in that heat, in that wind. I went so deep there - the boys were incredible. I can't believe it. For a lot of the day it didn't feel like it was going to happen. I was so on the limit. You saw that at the end [which was] slightly uphill. It is just like my first [win on the Tour]. It was what I dreamed of as a kid and it is what I dream of now. I have worked so hard for it.' If Cavendish can survive the mountain stages in the Pyrenees to come, he could yet eclipse the mark that Merckx, a five-time overall winner of the Tour, set in 1975. The Manx rider should have two more opportunities to take the record outright, first on stage nineteen into Libourne and then on the final day of the race on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, where he has previously won a record four times. The two hunred and nineteen kilometre stage from Nimes was tagged as a day for a breakaway but Deceuninck-Quick-Step largely maintained control of the peloton with Ballerini and Morkov, arguably the world's best lead-out rider, coming to the fore late on. '[Cavendish] knew I was picking the right moment,' said Danish rider Morkov. 'He had a beautiful victory. It is only the second race I have done with him. The experience he has is extraordinary. We went into this Tour thinking, "if we could bring him to one stage victory it would be more than amazing'. Now he has taken four. He told me a couple of years ago that he needed just one Tour De France to tie to the record. Maybe he will beat it.' Simon Yates of Team Bike Exchange was forced to abandon the race following a crash in which several riders fell down a ravine.
Almost twenty four viewers watched England's historic Euro 2020(ish) victory against Denmark on Wednesday on ITV. According to overnight figures, the semi-final at Wembley brought an average audience of 23.86 million. The last five minutes of the match drew a peak audience of 25.71 million - almost five million more than the peak audience recorded during the previous Saturday's match against Ukraine. The game was the most watched non-news event since Croatia knocked England out of the 2018 World Cup at the semi-final stage. That match was watched by 24.3 million in July 2018. England's four-nil win over Ukraine attracted a peak TV audience of 20.9 million, making it the most-watched live TV event of the year up to that point. The most watched event of recent years remains the Prime Minister's May 2020 coronavirus announcement, which was seen by 27.49 million viewers across six different channels.
Meanwhile, a TV audience of a fraction under thirty one million punters watched the tense closing minutes of the Euro 2020(ish) final, overnight figures show. Ratings peaked during Sunday's calamitou penalty shootout between England and Italy at Wembley, which was broadcast on both the BBC and ITV. An average of 29.85 million watched the whole match live. Te combined figure makes it the highest TV audience since the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. Whilst England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford saved two of the Azzurri's spot kicks in what was, very much, a game of two halves, Marcus Rashford hit the post with his spot-kick before Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka had theirs saved to hand Italy a, in the end, well deserved victory. 'You can cut ratings in so many different ways and audience measurement has changed over the years, but safe to say this: it is among the biggest audiences in UK broadcasting history,' said Deadline's international editor Jake Kanter. In footballing terms, the highest ratings before Sunday's figures were released came from the West Germany versus England semi-final at the World Cup in 1990, watched by twenty five million viewers across both of the main hannels. That also featured a painful penalty shootout exit for England. The official audience for Sunday's match may rise still further when those who saw it via catch-up services are taken into account. The overwhelming majority of people watched the coverage on BBC as compared to ITV - by a factor of more than four to one.

Historical discoveries could be at risk if government does not put archaeology at the heart of its new planning reforms, experts have warned. Archaeologists, academics and professional bodies have launched a campaign to ensure their work with developers remains a legal requirement. It has the backing of TV academics From The North favourite Professor Alice Roberts and Dan Snow, along with a number of MPs and peers. The government said it was 'determined to protect archaeological treasures.' One or two people even believed them. Boris Johnson first announced his proposals for reform of the planning system in England last year, with the aim of stopping local opponents blocking development in designated 'growth' zones. The Planning Bill was then confirmed in the Queen's Speech in May - with the promise of a vote in Parliament in the coming year. But there has already been disquiet on the Conservative benches over concerns it could side-line locals and lead to a 'free-for-all' for development. Archaeologists are concerned that the current rigorous assessments required by developers - laid out in law in 1990 by the then-Conservative government - are missing and they want guarantees the bill will include them, else heritage in the country could be lost. Doctor Chloe Duckworth, who presents The Great British Dig on More4, co-founded the campaign and told the BBC that without specific mention of archaeology in the Planning Bill, 'we could see some of the less conscientious developers trying to save time by avoiding this route - and that could see an absolute destruction and loss of archaeological heritage.' She added: 'If we don't have those protections in place then we actually don't know what we are going to lose. And, that is the key point really. Until you excavate and survey and look at an area in that level of detail, we can't say what archaeology might be there.' Her campaign has the backing of academic Professor Roberts, who presents the BBC's Digging For Britain. 'I have just written a book about some important burials throughout Britain and actually quite a lot of the examples are things you just wouldn't have known about, had it not been for archaeologists involved in planning developments. One recent one was the discovery of the amazing Pocklington chariot burial - an Iron Age burial in Yorkshire - that was on the site of a housing development, an amazing discovery. What having archaeology built into planning means is heritage is treated in a very careful way that we recover as much as we can before any development happens.' Historian and TV presenter Dan Snow has also joined the appeal to the government to make sure archaeological work is secured in the planning reforms. 'Planning is always going to be a compromise between the demands of the economy, homeowners, industry, towns expanding and those of us who wish to preserve the past,' he said. 'If we wipe out things of extraordinary value in order to create what we think in the short term will be more valuable, it almost certainly won't be.' He added: 'If you look at the destruction of medieval sites in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, it would now bring in billions of pounds of tourism for example. It is a terrible mistake to destroy and disrespect your archaeology and your heritage.' The Conservative MP - and former archaeology student - Tim Loughton already has concerns about his government's planning reforms, but says he has raised this particular campaign with ministers. 'Archaeology is really important in so many aspects of our lives, it is not just slightly strange middle aged men like me wandering around with a trowel in muddy pits,' he said. 'Archaeology is all about showing people their cultural background, it is about education of our children and where they came from. It is a big employer that contributes several billion pounds to the UK economy and it is also a major contributor to cultural tourism as well.' He said the new legislation 'needs to take much greater regard to the cultural and heritage importance of some of those areas which are now vulnerable to development.' Loughton added: 'I shall be at the forefront of the queue to make sure there are amendments that improve the legislation to take account of our culture and heritage assets before they get concreted over.' Rob Lennox of the Chartered Institute of Archaeologists works with the government on legislation and supports the campaign. He said there are 'good noises' coming from Whitehall about the inclusion of archaeology, but the industry has just not had any guarantees. 'The danger is, as we get close to needing to produce a bill and have the wider discussions around the broad shape of the reforms, that archaeology gets lost between the cracks,' he said. 'We just need the message to get across to the highest levels of government that archaeology isn't just a tack onto this system, it isn't something that slows the system down.' Lennox added: 'This is fundamentally about preserving our heritage and making sure the planning system doesn't inadvertently destroy that as it tries to create the housing and infrastructure that we need.' A spokesman from the Department of Communities, Housing and Local Government - which leads of the planning reforms, said: 'We know that our archaeological treasures are irreplaceable and we are determined to protect them. Our planning reforms will build on the strong protections already in place - we will continue to work with key archaeological bodies as we develop detailed proposals for the Planning Bill.'
The United Kingdom's longest ancient monument has been damaged by 'centuries of gradual benign neglect,'says an association fighting to preserve it. A fund has started to help preserve the Eighth Century Offa's Dyke earthwork. Offa's Dyke has 'a lot of catching up to do' compared with other monuments of historic importance like Hadrian's Wall and Stonehenge, according to its association chairman. Dave McGlade said the one hundred and seventy seven mile monument on the Wales-England border is a 'sensitive archaeological landscape. It is also a scheduled monument, protected by statute law and deserves to be treated with the utmost respect,' added the Offa's Dyke Association chairman. The association has said because the scheduled monument exists largely within private land, it has fallen to landowners and local communities to keep it maintained. It said in consultation with Welsh historic environment body Cadw, the National Trail unit and Historic England, the Offa's Dyke Rescue Fund would seek to purchase parts of the monument considered to be under threat. A 2017 survey showed just 8.7 per cent of Offa's Dyke was in a 'favourable condition' and artist Dan Llewelyn Hall has been commissioned for an exhibition celebrating fifty years of the Offa's Dyke Path. He said while it is a 'modest little bump in the landscape,' it is 'hugely important to our identity of Wales,' such as in preserving the language and culture. 'It embodies a border culture between England and Wales and goes beyond that but it encases communities across the border that want to preserve it,' said Hall, from Llanfyllin in Powys. 'For a lot of people the path can seem irrelevant or inconvenient to maintain as it runs through a lot of private land and farm yard but once you lose that significance you never retrieve it.' Offa's Dyke is named after Offa - the king of the Mercians, a warrior tribe from central England, from AD 747 to 796. He ordered it to be constructed in the Eighth Century, probably to divide his kingdom from rival kingdoms in what is now Wales, according to National Trails. The work required thousands of men shovelling mud from one place to another. Which must've been quite a sight. The earth bank in places still stands to a height of twelve feet and sixty feet wide. The one hundred and seventy seven-mile National Trail opened in the summer of 1971 and links Sedbury Cliffs near Chepstow with the coastal town of Prestatyn on the shores of the Irish sea. According to Visit Wales, fell-runners take an average of five days to complete it while hikers take twelve days. It passes through eight different counties and crosses the border between England and Wales more than twenty times. It links three Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty - the Wye Valley, the Shropshire Hills and the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley. The exhibition Walking With Offa will bring together art, poems and music celebrating fifty years of the path and will run through from Saturday until October, at Offa's Dyke Association and Centre in Knighton. Hall said it was a way to persevere and shed light on the 'monument of fragile existence that hasn't really been explored or given so much limelight,' with the fund emerging after he and the association 'realised it needed attention. We are hoping we can press upon people the importance of the monument and hope people will engage with it and absorb the sites and love it,' he said. The Offa's Dyke Path's national trail officer Rob Dingle said the monument is important for the local economy as it attracts walkers from all over the world. 'They call it the breathtaking borderlands,' he said. 'The trail itself brings walkers from all around the world to enjoy our landscapes and when they are here they are staying in Airbnb's, drinking in our pubs and spending in our shops so that money coming into the rural economy is huge.' He said because of the Covid pandemic, getting people to walk the trail and enjoy the area was 'hugely important.'
Media regulator Ofcom - a politically-appointed quango, elected by no one - received a huge number in complaints over the last year, the highest since it started in 2002. The UK broadcasting watchdog received one hundred and forty two thousand six hundred and sixty whinges between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021, a four hundred and ten per cent rise in whinges on the previous twelve months' total. Odious oily and hateful twat Piers Morgan's comments on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's Oprah Winfrey TV interview on Good Morning Britain in March drew a record fifty four thousand plus complaints. And, very satisfyingly, the old tin-tack for Odious oily twat Morgan his very self. So, you know, out of all this did, at least, come some good. Morgan accounts for three more of the ten most-complained about TV broadcasts. The other instances relate to two Good Morning Britain interviews with social care minister Helen Whately and a third with Home Office minister Victoria Atkin. Morgan chose to leave Good Morning Britain in March rather than retract his criticisms of the Duchess of Sussex and get his arse kicked into the gutter along with all the other turds by ITV. Diversity's Black Lives Matter-inspired dance routine on Britain's Got Toilets in September prompted just over twenty five thousand complaints. From racist scumbags. Ofcom did not launch a formal investigation into the routine, which went on to win the Must-See Moment award at this year's TV BAFTAs. Much, one imagines, to the chagrin of racist scumbags everywhere. So, again, some good comes from the existence of Ofcom. Another two thousand five hundred and sixty five whinges were received after Alesha Dixon wore a BLM necklace while judging the ITV talent show. Again, from racist scumbags. The use of live animals during trials on I'm A Z-List Former Celebrity Desperate To Get My Boat-Race Back On TV ... Please Vote For Me To Stay Here As Long As Possible (I'll Even Eat Worms If You Want) prompted eleven thousand five hundred and sixteen whinges to the media regulator. From people who haven't got anything more important or worthwhile to do with their time, seemingly. All ten of the most complained about TV broadcasts originated on ITV, though only three of them generated more than three thousand complaints. Good Morning Britain accounts for half of the ten, with Britain's Got Toilets accounting for four. Ofcom said: 'In many of the cases above, we did not find the issues warranted an investigation.' So, in other words, the whinging whinges whinged over nowt worth whinging about, essentially. Sounds about right. Ofcom added that on 'some occasions,' where they did decide a programme 'did not raise substantive issues under the code but there was significant public attention,' they published the reasons behind their decision not to investigate. According to Ofcom, the vast majority of the whinges it received during 2020-21 were about 'content that audiences found offensive.' It said there was an 'increase in the number of complaints specifically about potentially racially offensive broadcast content.' Previous research by Ofcom found 'societal norms have shifted in recent years and discriminatory behaviours and language are now more commonly perceived as unacceptable than was previously the case. We're a nation of TV lovers and it's kept us entertained and informed like never before during lockdown,' its spokesperson said. 'From time-to-time viewers see things that trouble them and that's where we come in.' Ofcom said it was 'unusual' to receive such a large volume of complaints about individual broadcasts. Albeit, this is odious oily (and, now unemployed) twat Morgan we're talking about here so, frankly, nothing should be all that surprising. The regulator said it had also received a high number of whinges relating to 'content about the pandemic.' Which proves that what this blogger has always suspected is, indeed, true; that some people will whinge about any old shit given the opportunity to do so. Almost half of the broadcasts Ofcom formally investigated - forty eight per cent - were found to be in breach of its broadcasting code.
Edinburgh-based rocket company Skyrora is issuing a challenge to find a way to retrieve the Prospero satellite. The object was the first and only UK spacecraft to be launched on a British rocket, from Australia in 1971. It is defunct now, obviously, but is still circling the globe on an elliptical orbit some one thousand kilometres up. Skyrora, who will soon start sending up rockets from Scotland, regards the satellite as an important piece of UK space heritage. The company has already recovered part of the Black Arrow vehicle which placed Prospero in orbit. That fell back to Australia in the course of the mission where it languished for decades in the Outback until the firm had it shipped home and put on display. Now, Skyrora is looking for ideas as to how best to approach and grab hold of the sixty six kilogram satellite, whose original mission was to investigate the space environment. It might not be possible to bring it all the way home through the atmosphere intact. For starters, it would need protection from the heat of re-entry, but, at the very least, just de-orbiting what is now a piece of space-junk would be a statement of Britain's commitment to the sustainable use of space. Orbits above the Earth are becoming cluttered with old hardware, which risks colliding with - and destroying - those operationally useful spacecraft which provide us with important services such as Earth observation, meteorology and telecommunications. 'This is a challenge to ourselves, to the space industry in the UK,' said Alan Thompson, Skyrora's head of government affairs. 'Ultimately, we'd love to recover Prospero and bring it all the way down, but we recognise that would be very difficult. The point here, though, is to accentuate industry principles of responsibility and sustainability,' he told the BBC News website. The company held a reception on Wednesday evening to discuss ideas. This took place at the inaugural UK Space-Comm Expo, which is being staged this week at the Farnborough International Exhibition & Conference Centre in Hampshire. Prospero and its launch rocket, Black Arrow, represented something of a false dawn for Britain's space efforts. Even as the lipstick-shaped rocket - which looked like something designed by Gerry Anderson for Thunderbirds - climbed skyward, the government had already decided to cancel the technology development programme. The UK remains the only country to have developed a successful launch capability and then, immediately, abandon it. Half-a-century on, an indigenous capacity is being revived in the form of Skyrora, Orbex and a handful of other start-ups who wish to launch from the UK proper - not, this time, from Australia. Regulations are in the process of being signed off by government with the intention that operating licences will be open for application later this year. Skyrora is determined to pursue its activities in as green a way as possible. Although burning a carbon-based fuel, kerosene, in its rockets, this will be made from recycled plastic. It also wants the top section, or third stage, of its orbital vehicle to not only place satellites in orbit, but be capable of removing redundant spacecraft as well. It has been busy testing a 'space tug' that would do just this kind of work. 'The challenge of removing space debris and either knocking it into the atmosphere so that it burns up, or bringing it back to Earth, is one of the most important and topical challenges in space,' commented Lord Willetts, the former UK space minister. 'It would be great if British enterprise and British entrepreneurship played a role in tackling this challenge.' In order to retrieve Prospero, one would first have to locate it. Although the satellite is no longer communicating with Earth (the las contact was in 2004), its orbit is known, says Ralph Dinsley from space surveillance experts Northern Space & Security Ltd. 'It's in an elliptical orbit around the Earth, coming as close as about five hundred and twenty two kilometres and going out as far as about thirteen hundred kilometres,' he said. 'Not only is Prospero up there, but part of the rocket body that put it there is up there as well. Finding Prospero is all about applying inspiration to what we need to do for the future. There's a lot of discussion about active debris removal, a lot of discussion about the threat of the space junk apocalypse. Wouldn't be great if the UK actually took responsibility for some of that junk?'
Billionaire Sir Richard Branson has successfully reached the edge of space on board his Galactic rocket plane. Pretty cool if you can ignore the fact that The Beardy Billionaire Hippy was ascending the heavens in a craft with the word 'Virgin' plastered all over it. The UK entrepreneur flew high above New Mexico in the US in the vehicle that his company has been developing for seventeen years. The trip was, he said, the 'experience of a lifetime.' Tragically, he returned safely to Earth just over an hour after leaving the ground. 'I have dreamt [sic] of this moment since I was a kid, but honestly nothing can prepare you for the view of Earth from space," he said in a press conference following the flight. "The whole thing was just magical.' The trip also makes him the first of the new space tourism pioneers to try out their own vehicles, beating Amazon's Jeff Bezos and SpaceX's Elon Musk. So, if you ever about a single by The Sex Pistols, XTC, The Skids or Public Image Limited, this one's down to you. The businessman was accompanied on the mission by the vehicle's two pilots, Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, and three Galactic employees - Beth Moses, Colin Bennett and Sirisha Bandla. The latter trio and Sir Richard were presented with commercial astronaut wings after the flight by former space station commander and Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield. Branson billed the flight as 'a test of the space tourism experience' he expects to begin selling to customers from next year. These are all people who want to reach a height where they can see the sky turn black and marvel at the Earth's horizon as it curves away into the distance. Such a flight should afford them about five minutes of weightlessness during which they will be allowed to float around inside Unity's cabin. It has been a long road for Sir Richard to get to this point. He first announced his intention to make 'a space plane' in 2004, with the belief he could start a commercial service by 2007. But technical difficulties, including a fatal crash during a development flight in 2014, have made the space project one of the most challenging ventures of his career. Space tourism is a sector being rekindled after a decade's hiatus and it's about to get very competitive. Throughout the 2000s, seven wealthy individuals paid to visit the International Space Station. But this adventurism, organised under the patronage of the Russian space agency, ceased in 2009. Now, new initiatives abound. As well as Branson's approach, there are projects coming from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the California tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. The Russians, too, are reprising their commercial flights to the ISS and there are even those who want to launch private space stations for people to visit. Among these is Axiom, a company started by a former NASA ISS programme manager. Musk travelled to New Mexico to support his friend Branson and following the flight Bezos sent his congratulations. There Is clearly something of an edge in the Branson-Bezos relationship, however. On Friday, the retail billionaire's Blue Origin space company had issued a tweet that took a dig at Virgin Galactic's Unity vehicle. The posting repeated a claim that anyone who flew on the rocket plane would forever have an asterisk by their name because they wouldn't reach the 'internationally recognised' altitude for where space begins - the so-called Kármán line of one hundred kilometres. Which is a little bit like saying that anyone who climbs Everest should've taken a step ladder up with them so they could get just that little bit higher. The US government has always recognised the boundary of space to be at about eighty kilometres and it awards astronaut wings to anyone who exceeds that altitude. Before Sunday, only five hundred and eighty people had ever been above this height. At least, without the use of mind-altering drugs. Unity is a sub-orbital vehicle. This means it can't achieve the velocity and altitude necessary to keep it in space to circle the globe. The vehicle is designed to give its passengers stunning views at the top of its climb and allow them a few minutes to experience weightlessness. Unity is first carried by a much bigger aeroplane to an altitude of about fifteen kilometres where it is released. A rocket motor in the back of Unity then ignites to blast the ship skyward. The maximum height achievable by Unity is roughly ninety kilometres. Passengers are allowed to unbuckle to float to a window. Unity folds its tailbooms on descent to stabilise its fall before then gliding home.

Someone once, wisely, noted 'blogging isn't writing, it's graffiti with punctuation.' Welcome, you are, therefore dear blog reader, to another weekly batch of yer actual physical graffiti. And we begin, with this: The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House remains, sadly, as it has been since mid-June, a Facebook-free-zone - in a saga which is now taking on quasi-Shakespearean tragic proportions. Due, in no small part to the seeming impossibility of contacting anyone at Facebook who actually wishes to engage with one of their - currently, extremely dissatisfied - customers. This blogger has received absolutely no help or support from Facebook's alleged 'Help and Support' department each time he has tried to initiate contact with them. Nor, indeed, has he received anything even resembling help or support from anyone else. Which is useful information to future reference since it is at times like these that one tends to find out who ones real beast fiends actually are. This blogger, it would appear, hasn't got any! Which, as previously noted, is useful knowledge going forward. Thus ...
From that, dear blog reader, to this week's really big news. From The North favourite Gillian Anderson has revealed that she has stopped wearing a bra and has no plans to return to using one. Speaking in an Instagram Live Q&A to her 1.8 million followers on Monday, From The North favourite Gill explained how she had become 'so lazy. I don't wear a bra any more,' she declared from her living room in Atlanta. 'I can't. I'm sorry, I don't care if my breasts reach my belly button. I'm not wearing a bra any more. It's just too fucking uncomfortable.' The revelation that Gill has decided to let them both swing free has 'sparked widespread praise' on Twitter, apparently, with a clip of Gill speaking of her new liberated ways garnering more than one hundred and twenty four thousand views and many supportive comments from women claiming that they too had stopped wearing a bra. One commentor said: 'If two-time Golden Globe and EMMY winning actress Gillian Anderson says no more bras, who are we to disagree?' Well, indeed. This blogger, for instance, stopped wearing his some considerable time ago. The Free The Nipple campaign - for such malarkey does, indeed, exist - has been 'gaining traction' on social media for some years, apparently, but liberation from bras reached new heights during lockdown when many women working from home prioritised comfort when it came to their clothing choices in relation to dangling wally jumblats. Another feature of the Q&A was Gillian's dog, Stella, whom she purchased in December of last year. The actress poked fun at the interest surrounding her then-recent break-up with The Crown creator Peter Morgan by introducing her new puppy as her 'girlfriend' on Twitter. 'Meet my new gf Stella [sic],' Gillian tweeted alongside a photograph of herself cuddling the chocolate brown puppy whilst reclining on a sofa. Braless. Both of them. Gillian spoke about what it was like to work with her then-partner in an interview with Harper's Bazaar. Recalling being on set in full costume, she said: 'I smiled at [Morgan], as me, Gillian, smiling at her boyfriend and he said, "This is Thatcher! This smile is Thatcher!" And I'm like, "no! This smile is me!"'
Okay, dear blog reader, hands up whom amongst you spotted Indiana Jones and Ethan Hunt hanging out in the pit lanes at Silverstone on Sunday? Clearly the current filming of IJ5 and M:I7 are going so fantastically well, their respective stars were allowed a day off to go swanning around the British Grand Prix like a pair of celebrities.
Lewis Hamilton for once wasn't being tripped up by his own lip as he fought back from a ten-second penalty after a crash with title rival Max Verstappen to pass Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and claim a dramatic British Grand Prix victory. Hamilton was blamed for a collision with Verstappen's Red Bull at Copse Corner on the first lap, which led to the Dutchman crashing out of the race. Verstappen was taken to hospital for precautionary tests after the accident whilst Hamilton set about trying to win the race. The Grand Prix was stopped after the incident with Leclerc in the lead from Hamilton and the Ferrari driver held that position until two laps from the end, when the Mercedes driver passed him, ironically, at the same corner at which he had crashed with Verstappen. The controversial win, in front of a crowd of one hundred and forty thousand, was Hamilton's eighth in the British Grand Prix and cuts Verstappen's championship lead to eight points. 'It's overwhelming. It's was such a physically difficult race, great weather,' said Hamilton. Of his crash with Verstappen, he added: 'I just try and stay measured in my approach - particularly with Max, he's very aggressive. And then today, I was fully alongside him and he didn't give me the space. But regardless of whether I agree with the penalty, I take it on the chin and I just kept working. I wasn't going to let anything get in the way.' Verstappen later responded to Hamilton's celebrations on the podium, calling him 'disrespectful' and 'unsportsmanlike' in exactly the sort of whinging manner that one usually associated with Hamilton when he's just lost to Verstappen. He added on Twitter: 'The penalty given does not help us and doesn't do justice to the dangerous move Lewis made on track.' The moment many had considered to be inevitable at some point in this battle between Verstappen and Hamilton happened after an intense scrap between the title rivals on the first lap. Hamilton, starting second on the grid after Verstappen's victory in F1's maiden 'sprint' race on Saturday, got away better and was alongside the Red Bull driver into the first corner, but Verstappen held him off. Hamilton nosed ahead into the Brooklands corner at the end of the Wellington straight, but was again held off. Heading down into the one hundred and ninety miles per hour Copse Corner, he dummied Verstappen, feinting to the outside and then diving for the inside. And that was where it all kicked-off, big-style. Hamilton had more than half his car alongside Verstappen as they began to turn in, but backed off slightly as he saw the Dutchman was going to sit it out around the outside - and the Red Bull edged back ahead. Hamilton was a little wide of the apex and his front left wheel made contact with Verstappen's right rear around the corner and the impact sent Verstappen flying into the barriers on the outside. He climbed out of the car and was walking around before being taken to the circuit medical centre for mandatory checks after such a heavy impact and complaining of dizziness. Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said the impact measured Fifty One G and Verstappen was taken to a local hospital for 'further precautionary tests.' He then went on to whinge like a big whinging whinger on live telly about the manifest unfairness of Hamilton not being banned. For life. Probably. In their written reasons for handing down the sanction to Hamilton, the race stewards said the Mercedes driver had 'room available to the inside' of the corner and 'did not avoid contact' when Verstappen turned in, and concluded that Hamilton was 'predominantly at fault.' Leclerc, who had passed Hamilton's team-mate Valtteri Bottas off the line, took the lead out of Copse in the aftermath of the incident and began the re-started race from pole position. The Ferrari showed strong pace in the first stint and Hamilton was not able to challenge Leclerc, who was two seconds ahead when Hamilton made his pit stop to serve his penalty and change tyres on lap twenty seven, dropping behind Bottas and McLaren's Lando Norris. Hamilton passed Norris on lap thirty one into Copse and then closed on Bottas, who was ordered to let Hamilton by on lap forty. The seven-time world champion then had twelve laps to close an eight-second gap to Leclerc and pass the Monegasque for the lead. On the basis of Leclerc's pace earlier, it looked a tall order, but Hamilton was soon going a second a lap quicker than Leclerc and he was on the Ferrari's tail with three to go. He went for the inside at Copse in a very similar move to the one that led to the Verstappen incident. But Hamilton was more cautious, backing off a little more and then Leclerc ran wide on the exit of the corner allowing Hamilton to sweep by and extend his record of British Grand Prix wins to eight. Reacting to the win, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said over the team radio: 'Lewis we never give up! We never give up! This is still on!' Leclerc was second after a superb drive by the Ferrari man, but saying he was 'so disappointed' to come close without victory, despite scoring his first podium finish of the year. Bottas took third ahead of Norris. McLaren's Daniel Ricciardo benefited from a pit-stop problem for Ferrari's Carlos Sainz to take fifth, holding off the faster Spaniard to the flag. Fernando Alonso drove an excellent defensive race to finish seventh, the starting position he earned with a brilliant drive in the sprint race, in which he passed six cars on the first lap in his Alpine. Alonso held off Aston Martin's Lance Stroll for most of the race and the second Alpine of Esteban Ocon took ninth ahead of Alpha Tauri's Yuki Tsunoda.
Mark Cavendish's bid to set a new record of thirty five stage wins in the Tour De France was denied - as Wout van Aert won the final stage of the 2021 Tour. Cavendish struggled to find space and could not come past Van Aert in the final few metres of the bunch sprint on Paris' Champs-Elysees. But the thirty six-year-old had already won four stages this year to equal the Tour record of thirty four set by the great Eddy Merckx. Slovenia's Tadej Pogacar of UAE-Team Emirates won the overall yellow jersey. Cavendish may have missed out on the chance to take sole ownership of the stage wins record, but to have drawn equal with Belgian legend Merckx is an astonishing achievement, given he had struggled for form for several seasons and feared last year his career was over. He was only called up by Deceuninck Quick-Step as a late replacement for injured Irish sprinter Sam Bennett. But, a full five years after his previous Tour stage win, his sprinting dominance earned him his second Tour De France green jersey, awarded to the winner of the points classification. Cavendish was never supposed to be at this Tour. It is only nine months since he proclaimed, through tears, the likely end of his career following a difficult one-day race last year. He has battled the Epstein-Barr virus, several heavy crashes and depression, all since his last victory at the Tour five years ago for Dimension Data. Back then he won four stages early in the race in what was seen as a swansong. After signing a surprise one-year deal with Belgian one-day and sprinting specialists Deceuninck-Quick Step, the team were firm on Cavendish not being part of their Tour plans. But a long-term injury to their young Dutch talent Fabio Jakobsen - who suffered serious head injuries in a horror crash at the 2020 Tour of Poland - and a last-minute knee injury for last year's green jersey winner Bennett left the team and its characterful owner Patrick Lefevere with few options. In many ways, Lefereve and Cavendish are kindred spirits - outspoken and passionate about their craft. But Cavendish is also fiercely loyal, especially to his team. He speaks of Danish rider Michael Morkov as 'the anti-me' because of his unflustered, calm demeanour. And also of the class of team-mates at Quick-Step who have led him out for his sprint victories. Cavendish said last week he has 'no real sentiment either way' about the record - will he back next year to try to extend it? Pogacar has dominated this Tour. Unchallenged in the mountains, he blew away the rest in the first time trial on stage five. The twenty two-year-old did not once look troubled by the pace of the race, or his rivals. This is the polar opposite from last year, when he overhauled countryman Primoz Roglic of Jumbo-Visma on the penultimate stage's time trial to win by more than a minute after Roglic had dominated up to that point. But the demeanour of Pogacar has changed this time around - from a young, respectful rider disbelieving of his own achievements, to one who is happy to make a point of rivals' kidology on the climbs, by aggressively punching the air and pointedly smiling in his rivals' direction, in the same way other legendary riders did in their pomp. Pogacar may have been unmatched, but the fact the French police have been involved twice tells you this Tour has been an eventful one. Day one saw a terrible crash: a stupid woman holding a cardboard sign giving a shoutout to her grandparents caused several horrible injuries and abandonments after she stood in the road with her back to the oncoming peloton to ensure prime TV exposure. Organisers ASO announced they would begin legal proceedings against her and she was subsequently arrested by police, although both later dropped any action, with the organisers hoping that 'lessons will be learned' in future. Some hope. Four-time winner Chris Froome suffered a bad crash on the same stage, struggling to walk as he was helped back to his feet - a worrying sight given his two years of recovery from a near career-ending crash in 2019. He was already resigned to not being competitive at this year's race, despite a multi-million pound deal with Israel Start Up Nation, but it was encouraging to see him at least finish such a punishing three-week Tour. The race was also marred by several of Pogacar's rivals crashing, leading to the abandonment of Jumbo-Visma's Primoz Roglic and Geraint Thomas riding with a shoulder dislocation sustained on stage three. Off the bike, Team Bahrain-Victorious' hotel was raided by The Fuzz late in the race following allegations over doping. For a rider so young, and so good in the mountains, it is not surprising to see Pogacar claim the polka dot king of the mountains jersey and the white young rider's jersey. The only remaining one - the green points jersey - went to Cavendish for his stage wins and intermediate efforts. Although richly deserved, it is worth noting many of his rivals abandoned the race through injury, such as Lotto-Soudal's Caleb Ewan and Bora-Hansgrohe's Peter Sagan. Other sprint favourites, such as France's Arnaud Demare of Groupama-FDJ and Nacer Bouhanni of Arkea-Samsic, were eliminated after missing the time limit on mountain stages.
England's spinners squeezed Pakistan till their pips squeaked to claim an emphatic forty five-run victory in the second Twenty20 and level the series at one-one on Sunday. Although Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali and Liam Livingstone - who twice hit sixes out of Headingley - all sparkled with the bat, England failed to post a total that would have put Pakistan out of the game. From one thirty seven for three in the fourteenth over and one sixty four for five in the sixteenth, England lost their last five wickets for thirty six runs to be bowled out for two hundred. However, England's trio of spinners, led by Adil Rashid, superbly exploited a pitch that rapidly deteriorated. Rashid claimed two for thirty, fellow leg-spinner Matt Parkinson one for twenty five and off-spinner Moeen two for thirty two as Pakistan lurched to one hundred and fifty five for nine in their twenty overs. The series decider is at Old Trafford on Tuesday. After the thrilling entertainment of Pakistan's thirty one-run win in the series opener, this was another thoroughly enjoyable contest, played in front of a full house on a baking hot day in Leeds. England stuck with their plan of experimenting with October's World Cup in mind. Captain Eoin Morgan was rested, Jonny Bairstow shifted down the order to number six and Moeen's off-spin employed after he did not bowl at all on Friday. With the World Cup set to be played in the United Arab Emirates and Oman, most encouraging will be the combined performance of leg-spinners Rashid and Parkinson, who lined up in the same England team for the first time. The hosts' total looked no more than par, only for Rashid and Parkinson to stifle Pakistan on a pitch that became increasingly responsive to the slow bowlers. Fresh from his dazzling forty two-ball century on Friday, Lancashire's Livingstone was again striking the ball with awesome power. Buttler, captaining in his first match for a month because of a calf injury, added the early impetus with his fifty nine from thirty nine balls, putting on sixty seven with Moeen, who crashed thirty six from sixteen. But it was Livingstone, himself sharing fifty two with Buttler, who provided the stand-out moments. A first straight six out of the ground, off spinner Imad Wasim, was handsome, but a second, off the pace of Haris Rauf that went over the new stand and onto the rugby ground, was a massive hit. Livingstone was run out for thirty eight from twenty three balls when he failed to respond to Tom Curran's suicidal call, a signal for England to lose momentum against a Pakistan side that held their length with the ball and caught well in the field. Still, England have not lost a T20 when they have posted two hundred batting first, a record that never looked in danger. In hindsight, the way the pitch behaved suggested Pakistan made a mistake in fielding first after winning the toss, but that should take nothing away from the way England bowled. Although captain Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan reprised their stellar opening partnership from Friday by adding fifty in the powerplay, after Saqib Mahmood had Babar miscue to extra cover the spinners took over. Rashid bowls with a fizzing pace and possesses a dangerous googly. Parkinson is much slower, using his flight and guile. At one stage they bowled five overs in tandem that cost only twenty eight runs and brought two wickets - both to Rashid, one a superb caught and bowled to remove Rizwan. The life had been sucked from the chase. Moeen followed up with two wickets in an over, while Parkinson finally got his reward from the last ball of his spell when Azam Khan was stumped. In all, England sent down eleven overs of spin, the most they have bowled in a T20, before seamer Mahmood nipped in at the death to pick up two further wickets and end with three for thirty three.
The Crown and The Mandalorian lead the charge for this year's EMMY Awards, with twenty four nominations apiece. Netflix's The Crown garnered acting nominations for Olivia Colman, Josh O'Connor and Emma Corrin. It is also up for best drama series, while Disney's The Mandalorian is recognised in the same category. Michaela Coel's critically acclaimed I May Destroy You - a big hit with us here on there From The North2020 Best Of list - is nominated in the competitive limited series category. The BBC/HBO drama which charts the fallout of a sexual assault will be up against Mare Of Easttown (HBO), The Queen's Gambit (Netflix), Barry Jenkins' Underground Railroad (Amazon Prime) and WandaVision (Disney+). Possible British contenders including Steve McQueen's Small Axe series and Russell Davies's It's A Sin missed out in a tight category which only admits five nominations - whereas comedy and drama have eight each. Coel is also up for best actress in a limited series/movie. The Brits dominate that category, with Kate Winslet and Cynthia Erivo also in the running - their competition is Anya Taylor-Joy and Elizabeth Olsen's superhero turn in Marvel's WandaVision. The Crown and The Handmaid's Tale rule the supporting actress in a drama nominations, with From The North favourite Gillian Anderson, Helena Bonham Carter and Emerald Fennell all recognised for their roles in The Crown. British men are also in a strong position for best actor in a limited series/movie, with hopes resting on Paul Bettany (WandaVision), Ewan McGregor (Halston) and Hugh Grant (The Undoing). They'll be up against Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda and Leslie Odom Junior - a film of the musical that was supposed to be released in cinemas but changed tack due to the pandemic. In the best supporting actor in a drama series, there are three nominations for The Handmaid's Tale for From The North favourite Bradley Whitford, Max Minghella and OT Fagbenle. Tobias Menzies is also in the mix for his role as the Duke of Edinburgh in The Crown. Star Wars spin-off show The Mandalorian was mainly recognised in the technical categories. Best drama nominees alongside The Crown and The Mandalorian are The Boys, Bridgerton, The Handmaid's Tale, Lovecraft Country, Pose and This Is Us. Horror series Lovecraft Country also earned recognition for its stars Jurnee Smollett and Jonathan Majors in the best actress/actor in a drama, despite HBO cancelling the show after just one season. Other lead actress nominees in the former category alongside The Crown's Colman and Corrin and Smollett are Uzo Aduba (The Treatment), From The North favourite Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid's Tale) and Pose's MJ Rodriguez, who becomes the first trans woman to be nominated for a major acting EMMY. Bridgerton's popular star Regé-Jean Page - who won't be returning for series two - is up for best lead actor in a drama, as is Sterling K Brown (This Is Us), Billy Porter (Pose) and Matthew Rhys (Perry Mason). Black-ish, Cobra Kai, Emily In Paris, Hacks, The Flight Attendant, Pen15, Ted Lasso and The Kominsky Method are nominated for outstanding comedy series. Jason Sudeikis is up for best comedy actor for his turn as the titular Ted Lasso, a US American football coach employed to be a football manager in the England. Wins for Ted Lasso would mark a breakthrough for Apple TV - Netflix has never won a series award at the EMMYs either. Sudeikis is joined by Michael Douglas (The Kominsky Method), William H Macy (Shameless), Anthony Anderson (Black-ish) and Kenan Thompson for Kenan. Ted Lasso and Saturday Night Live dominate both the supporting actor and actress categories for comedy series, with Kenan Thompson, also nominated as leading actor in a comedy series in his self-titled show, recognised here too for SNL. Lead actress in a comedy nominees are Aidy Bryant for Shrill, Kaley Cuoco for The Flight Attendant, From The North favourite Allison Janey for Mom, Tracee Ellis Ross (Black-ish) and Jean Smart for Hacks. Smart also gets a second nomination in the best supporting actress in a drama category for Mare Of Easttown. The ceremony takes place on 19 September. Cedric the Entertainer, who stars in the Eye Network comedy The Neighbourhood, will host an awards show with a limited in-person attendance due to the pandemic. Previous multiple winners have included Succession, Game Of Thrones, Veep and Fleabag. The EMMYs are voted for by more than twenty five thousand members of the USA's Television Academy, which represents those in front and behind the small screen.
A legal battle between former members of The Sex Pistols - a popular beat combo of the 1970s, you might've heard of them - has begun in the High Court in London. Guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook are suing yer actual John Lydon to allow the use of their songs in a new Danny Boyle-directed TV series, Pistol. The show, which is being made by Disney, is based on Jones's memoirs. But Lydon has got all stroppy and discombobulated (how unusual for Our John) and said that he is not prepared to approve the necessary licences for the band's music unless ordered to by a court. Hence, they're all up a'fore the beak. The six-part show, based on Jones's Lonely Boy: Tales From A Sex Pistol, has reignited longstanding feuds among the surviving members of the band. On Thursday, Mark Cunningham QC, representing Lydon, said in written arguments that his client believes the book 'depicts him in a hostile and unflattering light.' Edmund Cullen, the lawyer representing Jones and Cook, called the relationship between the former bandmates 'bitter and fractious', noting how there had been failed attempts to resolve their differences. Cullen said that under the terms of a band agreement made in 1998, decisions regarding licensing requests could be determined on 'a majority rules basis.' He said Lydon was the only member of the band who was preventing the songs from being used by Oscar-winning director Boyle. Former bassist Glen Matlock and the estate of the late Sid Vicious both support the licensing, he noted. In a Sunday Times interview in April, Lydon said the script has been written and an actor selected to play him without his participation or consent and that he had been put 'in a corner like a rat.'
There is a splendid piece by Vice News's Cameron Joseph on the reporters who survived the January insurrection and are still covering Congress but are also still suffering from something akin to post traumatic stress disorder which this blogger wishes to draw your attention to, dear blog reader. You can find it here and it's well worth a few moments of your time.
It is going to be 'a difficult summer' with Covid cases in the UK possibly reaching two hundred thousand a day, the scientist whose modelling led to the first nationwide restrictions has suggested. Professor Neil Ferguson said there could be as many as two thousand hospital admissions per day, which would cause 'major disruption' to the NHS. England and Scotland are set to ease restrictions more or less as this blogger is writing this bloggerisationisms update. The UK recorded more than fifty thousand cases on both Friday and Saturday. The last time case numbers were that high was in mid-January. Professor Ferguson, who sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, told the BBC's The Andrew Marr Show it was 'almost certain' that the UK would reach one hundred thousand cases and one thousand hospital admissions per day as almost all legal restrictions on social contact end in England and school holidays begin. He said maintaining that level could be described as a success. 'The real question is do we get to double that, or even higher?' he said, though adding that it was 'much less certain' to predict. He said a further five hundred thousand people could get long Covid. Professor Ferguson said that the 'best projections' were that the peak of this wave could occur between August and mid-September and it would 'take around three weeks' to know the impact of relaxing restrictions. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has described England's approach to easing lockdown as 'cautious but irreversible.' Asked whether restrictions could be reintroduced, Professor Ferguson said there may be 'a need to slow the spread to some extent' if hospital admissions were to reach two or three thousand per day. 'It's going to be a difficult summer for many reasons. I think case numbers are likely to be declining at least by late September, even in the the worst-case scenario,' he said. 'Going into the the winter, I think we will have quite quite a high degree of immunity against Covid, the real concerns are a resurgence of influenza, because we haven't had any influenza for eighteen months.' He added that flu 'could be, frankly, almost as damaging both for health and the health system, by December or January, as Covid has been this year.' Earlier, Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said there would be 'some quite challenging weeks ahead.' Social distancing rules will end in England on Monday, although government guidelines advise face coverings should still be worn in enclosed spaces such as in shops and on public transport. 'We will all need to exercise good judgement,' Jenrick told Sky News. And then announced that he would be taking part in the next series of Mastermind with his specialist subject being Stating The Bleedin' Obvious. Scotland will move to level zero of Covid restrictions this week, meaning pubs and restaurants can open until midnight. However, limits on outdoor meetings will remain, the return of workers to offices will be delayed and face coverings will still be mandatory. Most Covid rules in Wales are set to be scrapped from 7 August, but face coverings will still be required in most public places and on public transport. In Northern Ireland, restrictions will be eased further on 26 July, if approved at a review on 22 July.
Ministers decided to ditch mandatory face masks after being warned the UK economy would lose billions of pounds if people were made to wear them after 19 July according to i - if not a real newspaper. Modelling from reviews of social distancing and mass gatherings revealed public dislike for wearing face coverings at sporting, music and arts events. Keeping compulsory face masks could cost the events and hospitality industries more than four billion knicker in lost revenues, the analysis suggested. An alleged - but anonymous and, therefore, almost certainly fictitious - Whitehall 'source' allegedly told the i that the research was 'compelling' and 'the driving force' behind the decision to scrap mandatory face masks when all restrictions are lifted in England. This was despite warnings by scientists from The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies that the Government should keep 'baseline measures# in place. It suggests that ministers are now 'following the economy' rather than 'the science' as the country grapples with an exit wave from the pandemic, the newspaper claims. Probably correctly. The public dislike for face masks in recreational settings such as football matches and live concerts is in contrast to broad support for coverings on public transport, which is regarded as a necessary inconvenience, the alleged source allegedly said.
And finally for this latest, brief, From The North bloggerisationisms update, dear blog reader something properly amusing. That Awful Hopkins Woman has been sent home from Australia for bragging about flouting the country's quarantine rules. Although in one regard this is a shame as she is, obviously, being sent back here. Couldn't you have just kept her, Australia, we really don't want her? She's horrible and nobody likes her. That Awful Hopkins Woman - who has often drawn anger for hideous bigoted and idiotic remarks on a whole range of subjects - had entered the country to appear in the reality TV show Big Brother Australia. On Friday, she posted a video from her Sydney hotel room where she sneered about putting frontline staff at risk. Her comments, of course, sparked widespread anger. In the video, That Awful Hopkins Woman said that she planned to 'lie in wait' for workers to deliver food to her room so she could open the door 'naked with no face mask.' She also called lockdowns the 'greatest hoax in human history.' Australia's two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, are both currently in lockdown after local cases of Covid-19 were detected. The post has since disappeared from her Instagram account. On Monday, the Australian government confirmed that it had cancelled That Awful Hopkins Woman's visa, after the TV programme sacked her sorry ass. Police said she had been fined one thousand Australian dollars for not wearing a face mask and was 'escorted' to the airport (for which read 'shoved in the back of a meat wagon and driven there at high speed') to be sent back to the UK. Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews called That Awful Hopkins Woman's comments 'appalling' and a 'slap in the face' for Australians in lockdown. 'Personally, I'm very pleased she'll be leaving,' she told broadcaster ABC. That Awful Hopkins Woman has not commented on her deportation, but on Sunday claimed - unconvicingly - that she had been 'joking' in the video. That Awful Hopkins Woman was extremely banned from Twitter last year for breaching its policy on 'hateful conduct.' Andrews said that the decision to allow That Awful Hopkins Woman to enter the country had been made by the New South Wales state government 'on the basis of potential benefit to the economy.' Or, in other words' nowt to do we me, mate.' But opponents accused the national government of 'allowing a far-right troll into Australia.' That Awful Hopkins Woman was also detained in South Africa in 2018 for 'spreading racial hate.''The decision is particularly painful for the thirty five thousand Australians who remain stranded overseas,' said Labour MP Andrew Giles. Australia closed its borders in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, preventing many citizens outside the country from returning. The policy has prolonged family separations. But dozens of celebrities, sports stars and others with exemptions have been able to bypass the rule.

From The North favourite, yer actual Jodie Whittaker is to step down from the lead in Doctor Who, the BBC has confirmed this week. The first woman to play The Doctor will bow out of the BBC's popular, long-running family SF drama in Autumn 2022, along with current showrunner Chris Chibnall. Whittaker will star in a new series later this year and then in three further specials next year. In a statement, Whittaker paid tribute to Chibnall and the Doctor Who team, adding: 'I will carry The Doctor and the lessons I've learnt [sic] forever.' This blogger thinks Jodie is great but he has one complain to make at this point. It's 'learned' Jodie, not 'learnt'. Chibnall, who appointed the actress to replace Peter Capaldi in the role, has been in charge of the BBC series since 2017. 'In 2017 I opened my glorious gift box of size thirteen shoes,' Whittaker said in a statement. 'I could not have guessed the brilliant adventures, worlds and wonders I was to see in them.' She continued: 'My heart is so full of love for this show, for the team who make it, for the fans who watch it and for what it has brought to my life. And I cannot thank Chris enough for entrusting me with his incredible stories. We knew that we wanted to ride this wave side by side and pass on the baton together. So here we are, weeks away from wrapping on the best job I have ever had. I don't think I'll ever be able to express what this role has given me. I know change can be scary and none of us know what's out there. That's why we keep looking. Travel hopefully. The universe will surprise you. Constantly.' For her final series, Whittaker will once again be joined by Mandip Gill as Yaz and large-toothed Scouse comedian John Bishop, who will play a new character named Dan, Dan The Time Travellin' Man. Chibnall is currently producing the next series of Doctor Who, which will be broadcast later this year. It will be followed by three specials, the first of which will be broadcast on New Year's Day 2022, with another later in the spring of 2022. Whittaker's final feature-length special, where The Doctor will regenerate, will be shown in the autumn as part of the BBC's Centenary celebrations. Really tedious and ill-informed speculation will now, inevitably, turn to who Whittaker's replacement might be, as Doctor Who approaches its sixtieth anniversary in 2023. Remember this blogger's - lengthy, but considered - advice when it came to this sort of nonsense from four years ago when first Jodie got the gig, dear blog reader. 'On the last three occasions that a new Doctor has been chosen, in all cases the incoming Doctor - Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi and Jodie Whittaker - have been mentioned virtually nowhere by any newspaper, broadcaster, website, media speculator or bookmaker until about three or four days before the announcement was due, at which point they suddenly become an overnight favourite ... So, next time there's going to be a change of Doctor here's a tip for everyone; don't bother to speculate and ignore all of the people who are speculating to fill column inches. Rather, just wait until about three days before the announcement is due and then check out who is betting on whom. That will save us all a lot of bullshit.'
Chibnall said: 'Jodie and I made a "three series and out" pact with each other at the start of this once-in-a-lifetime blast. So now our shift is done, and we're handing back the TARDIS keys. Jodie's magnificent, iconic Doctor has exceeded all our high expectations. She's been the gold standard leading actor, shouldering the responsibility of being the first female Doctor with style, strength, warmth, generosity and humour.' He added: 'She captured the public imagination and continues to inspire adoration around the world, as well as from everyone on the production. I can't imagine working with a more inspiring Doctor - so I'm not going to!'
Meanwhile, large-toothed Scouse comedian John Bishop has revealed he was involved in a car crash when he swerved to avoid 'a big chicken.' Bishop said he was driving through Wales on his way to catch a ferry to Ireland when the crash happened. He shared photos on Instagram of his Land Rover smashed into a post at the side of the road with a broken windscreen. Bishop confirmed he missed the ferry and, instead, travelled as a foot passenger on a later crossing. He wrote: 'I was driving to catch a ferry to Ireland when something happened. To avoid a car that was swerving to avoid a big chicken as I overtook I ended up like this. Nobody was hurt thanks to Land Rover being brilliant and no oncoming traffic. I missed my ferry but went on as a foot passenger on a later one thanks to James and Tony from Dyfed Powys Police. Amazing how helpful people can be when you need them and thanks to the other drivers for staying, including Andrew who I think sadly hit the big chicken anyway.'
And, just in case you don't know what one actually looks like, dear blog reader, here is an image of a massive cock.
Speaking of which, ITV have confirmed they have 'no plans' for another series of The X Factor. Because it was shit and, by the end, no one was watching it. The last full series of Wee Shughie McFee, the sour-faced Scottish chef off Crossroads' pop music lack of talent show was broadcast in 2018, although a z-list celebrity edition was shown the following year. During its peak - in the late noughties - The X Factor was one of the most viewed TV shows in the UK. However, ratings have fallen dramatically in recent years. An ITV spokesman told the BBC: 'There are no current plans for the next series of The X Factor at this stage.' A report in that ever-reliable bastion of truthful and accurate reportage, the Sun, claimed the show will be 'rested' for 'at least five years.'The X Factor first shown in 2004 and judges on the show have included Sharon Osbourne, Louis Walsh, Cheryl Whatsherface and Nicole Scherzinger. A US version of the show ran for three seasons from 2011 to 2013 before it was cancelled due to lack of interest. In 2019, ITV signed a deal with Wee Shughie McFee, the sour-faced Scottish chef off Crossroads to broadcast Britain's Got Toilets until at least 2024, but did not commit to keeping The X Factor past 2020. The singing competition regularly attracted an audience of more than ten million a decade ago, with more than seventeen million punters tuning in to see Matt Cardle crowned the winner of the 2010 series. But that was a long, long time ago. Ratings fell in subsequent years. In 2018, an average of 5.3 million people watched Dalton Harris crowned the winner, when the judges were Louis Tomlinson, Robbie Williams and Ayda Field (no, me neither). The show was absent in 2019, with the depressingly z-list celebrity edition taking its place and in early 2020 it was revealed that Wee Shughie McFee, the sour-faced Scottish chef off Crossroads was to give it another year off. Last month, it was revealed the music mogul's attentions have now turned to leading a fresh panel of judges in an upcoming new ITV musical game show, entitled Walk The Line.
A sculpture claimed to be the work of Henry Moore was not made by the renowned artist. The artwork, previously used as a water feature and a door stop, would have been worth up to a million pounds if it had been sculpted by Moore. But, it wasn't. It was assessed by the Henry Moore Foundation, based in Hertfordshire, as part of the BBC's Fake Or Fortune?. Owner Neil Betts said: 'It will go back to being a door stop again.' The piece was found in the long grass of Mergate Hall, near Norwich, when retired dairy farmer Betts was strimming it back for his neighbour. The show saw hosts Philip Mould and yer actual Fiona Bruce visit Norfolk to investigate the sculpture. Betts and his wife Barbara inherited the piece from their neighbour. When she died, she left it to the Betts who subsequently used it as a door stop and to hang a hosepipe on. It was only when a friend suggested it looked 'very much' like the work of Henry Moore they began to see it in a different light - and started to call it 'Henry.' The couple sent photographs of the sculpture to the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green, Hertfordshire. It has the authority to decide whether previously uncatalogued pieces are genuine works by Moore (1898 to 1986), who was from Castleford in Yorkshire and studied at Leeds School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London before finding international fame. They were interested enough in the sculpture to ask them to submit it to their Review Panel. But the panel concluded: 'Unfortunately the panel is agreed the work is not by Henry Moore.' Instead the Fake Or Fortune? investigation pointed in the direction of the - much less famous - Norfolk sculptor Betty Jewson, who used to live at Mergate Hall. Mould said despite it not being a Moore piece he had been 'impressed by its presence and boldness.'
Better Call Saul actor Bob Odenkirk is in 'a stable condition after experiencing a heart-related incident' on Tuesday, his management has said. The actor was rushed to hospital while filming his Breaking Bad spin-off show Better Call Saul in New Mexico. Odenkirk's son Nate also tweeted an update on his father's condition, saying: 'He's going to be okay.' The actor and his family expressed thanks for the support he has received from both medical staff and colleagues. His management added: 'He and his family would like to express gratitude for the incredible doctors and nurses looking after him, as well as his cast, crew and producers who have stayed by his side. The Odenkirks would also like to thank everyone for the outpouring of well wishes and ask for their privacy at this time as Bob works on his recovery.' Bryan Cranston had posted about his friend on Instagram, saying: 'Please take a moment in your day today to think about him and send positive thoughts and prayers his way.' Odenkirk has received four EMMY nominations for Better Call Saul, which was first broadcast in 2015 following the conclusion of Breaking Bad. Filming for Better Call Saul is currently in its sixth and final series and is due to broadcast next year on AMC. Odenkirk was also recently seen in the - utterly superb - action thriller Nobody (a particular From The North favourite), with other film credits include supporting roles in Little Women, Nebraska and The Post. He previously worked as a comedy writer for Saturday Night Live and The Ben Stiller Show.
The son of the late Eric Morecambe has said how 'fantastic' it was to find a missing episode of The Morecambe & Wise Show in the family home's attic. Dating from 1970, the tape of the show had been wiped by the BBC. Gary Morecambe said that he was 'hunting round in the attic' when he found film in a canister. 'It's a huge discovery because it was presumed missing and lost for good,' he said. Morecambe and Wise fronted over one hundred and seventy shows over a twenty two-year television career and in their 1970s heyday regularly pulled in more than twenty million punters every week, with the duo's annual Christmas shows seen as a 'must-watch' by British viewers. You knew all that, right? Whilst looking for paperwork, Morecambe's son found the unlabelled film can at the family home in Harpenden. 'I was looking through other stuff. As the decades go by we hadn't really sorted enough out and my mother said why don't you have a look in the attic,' said Gary. 'I came across five large canisters with spools in them. Four of them were blank or damaged, but the other one had a BBC stamp on it.' The film was checked by experts and the episode turned out to be their first show made for BBC1, dating from 8 October 1970 after they moved from BBC2. The Morecambe & Wise Show began on BBC2 in September 1968. It marked the duo's return to the BBC after thirteen years away, during which time they had found success at ITV with the series Two Of A Kind. Eric and Ernie became the nation's most popular double act and their show became unmissable television, culminating in the 1977 Christmas Day special, which was watched by an estimated twenty eight million viewers. Gary Morecambe, who now lives in Ernie Wise's home city of Leeds, said Eric would always watch the Christmas specials with his family. 'He would never stop laughing. He loved watching the show. And at the end he'd stand up and say "I thought Ernie was really good."' The pair returned to ITV at the end of their career in a show that ran between 1978 and 1983. Eric Morecambe died in 1984 and Ernie Wise in 1999. Gary Morecambe said the episode was one from their earliest days of working with writer Eddie Braben, who went on to script the majority of their most famous sketches. 'There is a lot in the show that will be incredibly familiar to people, showing the Eric and Ernie we came to know and love,' he said.
Laugh-a-minute wacky funster John Lydon has railed against an agreement his former Sex Pistols bandmates claim allows the band's music to be used in a forthcoming Danny Boyle TV drama. Lydon said the band agreement made in 1998 was 'like a total trap or prison,' likening it to 'slave labour.' Paul Cook and Steve Jones are extremely suing Lydon to allow their songs be used. They argue the BMA means decisions regarding licensing requests can be determined 'on a majority rules basis.'Pistol, which began filming in March, is a six-part series based on a 2016 memoir by Jones called Lonely Boy: Tales From A Sex Pistol. Lydon's lawyer has argued the drama, which is being made by Disney for its FX channel, portrays the singer in 'a hostile and unflattering light.' Johnny Rotten? 'Hostile and unflattering'? Surely not? Last week Jones denied this was the case, telling the High Court the legal action was 'not about slagging anyone off in this TV series.' The estate of the late Sid Vicious has approved Sex Pistols music being used in Pistol, as has Glen Matlock, whom Vicious replaced in the band in 1977. Giving evidence in London on Wednesday, Lydon said: 'I care very much about this band and its reputation and its quality control and I will always have a say if I think anything is being done to harm or damage [it]. I don't want anything I'm involved in to victimise any one of us. It would destroy the whole point and purpose of the band and so I don't understand the BMA ... I don't remember signing it.' Lydon also told the court: 'You can't let your history be rewritten for us by a complete stranger with no interest in it. This is my life here. This is my history. I didn't write these songs [for them] to be given off to nonsense.' He added that The Sex Pistols had, until now, managed to agree how to conduct their business with 'unanimity' since their split in 1978. Lydon said the BMA had not been applied since its creation in 1998 and that 'all decisions' about the use of Sex Pistols music and imagery had been based on 'unanimous' agreement. 'I don't understand how Steve and Paul think they have the right to insist that I do something that I so morally heart-and-soul disagree with without any involvement,' he continued. 'My fear is that they're demanding that I agree to sign over the rights to a drama documentary that I am not allowed any access to. I don't think the BMA applies,' the sixty five-year-old went on to tell Jones and Cook's QC. 'I didn't ask for this court case, it was brought to me, so I will naturally defend myself. There is no point in me being here or ever was if it is the case that I can just be completely outvoted by the vested interests of all in one management camp.' Edmund Cullen QC, representing Jones and Cook, suggested to Lydon that his reference to 'slave labour' was a sign of 'how deeply you regret having signed the BMA.' The barrister also said: 'Given that you regard it as slave labour, you will do whatever it takes to try and get out of it.' Earlier this week, Cook told the court that he and the other members of the band had 'always wanted to work harmoniously,' but felt they had to take Lydon to court so the group's songs could be used in the TV drama. In his witness statement, Cook said Lydon 'can be a difficult character and always likes to feel that he has control.' Cook added that he had never used the 'majority rules agreement' before because 'I thought that our relationship with John would get worse when we used it. Maybe Steve and I have been too nice to John over the years in trying to maintain good relations and that we should have been tougher,' he said. 'I am unhappy that he would behave like this over an important personal project for Steve, particularly as we have always backed his personal projects.' In a Sunday Times interview in April, Lydon claimed that the script for the TV series had been written and an actor selected to play him without his consent and that he had been put 'in a corner like a rat.' He claimed that Boyle had made 'no attempt' to contact him about the project - a version of events disputed by the Oscar-winning director of Slumdog Millionaire, Yesterday, Twenty Eight Days Later and Trainspotting. Actor Anson Boon will play Lydon in Boyle's TV series, the cast of which includes Louis Partridge, Maisie Williams, Iris Law and Talulah Riley. Lydon was previously portrayed on screen by Andrew Schofield in the 1986 film Sid & Nancy, which did not feature any of Sex Pistols' songs. The singer would go to call Alex Cox's movie 'nonsense' and 'the lowest form of life' in his autobiography, accusing it of 'glamorising' heroin addiction.
This blogger had the good fortune early this week to leave the safety of the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House and visit his local cinema for the first time in what seems like forever to catch a preview showing of Edgar Wright's much-anticipated documentary The Sparks Brothers. And, not unexpectedly, quite superb it was too with this blogger coming out of the screening with a grin on his geet ugly mush as a wide as ... a very wide thing. Keith Telly Topping highly recommends this entertaining, amusing and (sort of) revealing work to all dear blog readers. He also recommends you check out Edgar, Ron and Russell's interview with Simon Mayo on a recent episode of the BBC's always superb Kermode & Mayo's Film Review. And, whilst you're there, you can also listen to Mark Kermode's glowing - and entirely justified - review of the movie, available here. Hello to Jason Isaacs. There's also a very good interview with Edgar on David Hepworth and Mark Ellen's excellent Word In Your Attic podcast about his music of choice.
The first image of Imelda Staunton portraying the Queen in the fifth series of The Crown has been released. Netflix released the picture via their Twitter account, saying it was an 'early glimpse' of the new monarch in the royal drama. Staunton takes on the role previously played by Claire Foy and Olivia Colman, as the latest series follows the royal family into the Twenty First Century. Netflix said the drama's sixth and last series will end in the early 2000s. Series five and six of The Crown are set to encompass the 1990s - a decade that saw the Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales split, the collapse of the Duke of York's marriage to Sarah Ferguson, the Windsor Castle fire and Princess Diana's death.
A Wembley steward has admitted trying to sell security wristbands and lanyards to ticketless fans for the Euro 2020(ish) final. Yusaf Amin pleaded extremely guilty to theft at Willesden Magistrates' Court. He posted screenshots on Facebook Marketplace offering two passes, two uniforms and wristbands for four thousand five hundred pounds. A second man, Dalha Mohamad pleaded not guilty to theft. He will go on trial in December. Clashes between fans and members of security occurred when hundreds of people tried to storm the ground before the historic game between England and Italy on 11 July. Amin was arrested outside a supermarket on Wembley Way near the stadium after people saw the post and called police. His post read: 'Steward pass available times two with uniform and pass and I'm outside Wembley. Anyone wans [sic] to get in I have two passes and two uniforms and wristbands for you to go in and watch the game. Looking for serious people only. Detailed brief available. Guaranteed entry or money back.' Prosecutor Edward Aydin told the court this raised security concerns, explaining that: 'You will recall the Ariana Grande concert. You can imagine the security risk of people getting their hands on passes and official jackets. People were desperate to get into that game. You saw on television, desperate people stampeding to try to get in,' he said. Amin will be sentenced at Willesden Magistrates' Court on 23 August.
English Defence League founder so-called Tommy Robinson has been ordered to pay one hundred thousand knicker in libel damages to a Syrian schoolboy. The anti-Islam activist who is, obviously, not a vile racist scumbag, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, published two Facebook videos in response to a viral clip of Jamal Hijazi being attacked. He failed to convince the High Court his claims, such as Hijazi attacking 'young English girls,' were true. Which they were not. Mr Justice Nicklin found in Hijazi's favour after a trial earlier this year. The judge also ordered Yaxley-Lennon to pay legal costs understood by the BBC to amount to about an eye-watering half-a-million wonga. Which, to be fair, was funny. Hijazi was filmed being attacked in the playground at Almondbury School in Huddersfield in October 2018. Shortly after the video of the assault went viral, Yaxley-Lennon made unsubstantiated claims in two Facebook videos that the teenager was 'not innocent and he violently attacks young English girls in his school.' In clips viewed by nearly one million people, the thirty eight-year-old also claimed Hijazi 'beat a girl black and blue' and threatened to stab another boy at his school, allegations denied by Hijazi. 'As was entirely predictable, the claimant then became the target of abuse which ultimately led to him and his family having to leave their home and the claimant to have to abandon his education. The defendant is responsible for this harm, some of the scars of which, particularly the impact on the claimant's education, are likely to last for many years, if not a lifetime.' The judge said Yaxley-Lennon's defence that the 'very serious' allegations were 'substantially true' had not been proved and that he had used language 'calculated to inflame the situation. The defendant's contribution to this media frenzy was a deliberate effort to portray the claimant as being, far from an innocent victim, but in fact a violent aggressor,' he added. At a further hearing, the judge granted an injunction against Yaxley-Lennon preventing him from repeating the allegations. The final damages and costs figures will be agreed and submitted to the High Court at forthcoming hearings to establish Yaxley-Lennon's means and assets. Yaxley-Lennon's repeated jailings down the years - including nine months for interfering with a trial of a sexual grooming gang - have, so far, failed to silence hs odious views. But, a turning of the legal screw on his finances may have a more profound effect. He made a small fortune from his provocative social media channels attacking Islam and Muslims - enough to fund a lifestyle which would be the envy of many, complete with a large country house. The cash, however, began to dry up as he was thrown off Facebook and Youtube and some of his wealthy benefactors in North American backed away. Now his social media reach is a shadow of what it once was. It's never been clear how much coin he has made over the years and, indeed, where it has all gone - and that is why this judgement is so important. Not only does it vindicate Jamal Hijazi - but it opens the door to a court examination of Yaxley-Lennon's finances in forensic detail to find out exactly how he affords to keep his activities going. Jamal Hijazi's lawyers welcomed the judgement and praised Hijazi's 'courage' in pursuing the claim. Francesca Flood, from Burlingtons Legal, said: 'Jamal and his family now wish to put this matter behind them in order that they can get on with their lives. They do, however, wish to extend their gratitude to the Great British public for their support and generosity, without which this legal action would not have been possible.' During a trial in April, Catrin Evans QC, for Hijazi, said that Yaxley-Lennon's comments led to the teenager 'facing death threats and extremist agitation.' She described Yaxley-Lennon as 'a well-known extreme-right advocate' with an 'anti-Muslim agenda' who used social media to spread his repulsive views. His videos 'turned Jamal into the aggressor and the bully into a righteous white knight,' she said. Yaxley-Lennon, who represented himself during the trial, maintained he was 'an independent journalist,' telling the court: 'The media simply had zero interest in the other side of this story, the uncomfortable truth.'
Health Secretary Sajid Javid has grovellingly apologised after saying people should no longer 'cower' from coronavirus. He made the comments in a tweet announcing he had made a 'full recovery' from Covid, a week after testing positive. Labour accused him of 'denigrating' those who followed the - government suggested - rules, while the founder of a victims' group said his comments were 'deeply insensitive.' Javid said: 'It was a poor choice of word and I sincerely apologise.' No shit? 'I was expressing gratitude that the vaccines help us fight back as a society,' he claimed. In a new tweet, the health secretary also said that he had deleted his earlier post, adding: 'Like many, I have lost loved ones to this awful virus and would never minimise its impact.' Cower, if you were wondering, is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as meaning to bend down or move backward with your head down because you are frightened. The tweet on Saturday said: 'Full recovery from Covid a week after testing positive. Symptoms were very mild, thanks to amazing vaccines. Please - if you haven't yet - get your jab, as we learn to live with, rather than cower from, this virus.' Nearly seventy per cent of UK adults - including this blogger - are now fully vaccinated, and eighty eight per cent have had their first jab, according to the latest figures. Every adult in the UK has now been offered a vaccine. But, amid a spike in cases caused by the Delta variant, the government has launched a series of appeals in recent weeks to encourage people who have not yet come forward to have their jab. Javid replaced Matt Hancock as health secretary last month after his predecessor resigned shortly before he was sacked and thrown into the gutter along with all the other turds. Javid tested positive for Covid on 17 July and spent the following week in self-isolation. The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group said Javid was 'right' to apologise. The group's co-founder, Jo Goodman, said that the 'flippancy and carelessness' of Javid's comment had 'caused deep hurt and further muddied the waters of the government's dangerously mixed messaging.' Shadow justice secretary David Lammy also questioned Javid's use of the word, saying: 'Don't denigrate people for trying to keep themselves and their families safe.' Lib Dem health spokeswoman Munira Wilson (no, me neither) said Javid's tweet was 'outrageous' and his 'careless words have insulted every man, woman and child who has followed the rules and stayed at home to protect others.'
A California man who had previously mocked Covid-19 vaccines on social media has died after a month-long battle with the virus. Stephen Harmon, a member of the Hillsong megachurch, had been a vocal opponent of vaccines, making a series of online jokes about not having the vaccine. 'Got ninety nine problems but a vax ain't one,' the thirty four-year-old sneered to his seven thousand Twitter followers in June. He was treated for pneumonia and Covid-19 in a hospital outside Los Angeles, where he died on Wednesday. In the days leading up to his death, Harmon documented his fight to stay alive, posting pictures of himself in his hospital bed. 'Please pray y'all, they really want to intubate me and put me on a ventilator,' he said. In his final tweet on Wednesday, Harmon said he had decided to go under intubation. Despite his struggle with the virus, Harmon still said he would reject being jabbed, saying his religious faith would protect him. But, it seemingly didn't. Prior to his death, had joked about the pandemic and vaccines, sharing memes saying he trusted the Bible over top US disease expert Doctor Anthony Fauci.
Supermarkets have warned the rising number of retail workers being forced to self-isolate is beginning to affect the availability of some products. The Co-op said it was 'running low on some products,' while Iceland said shops might have to be shut. Sainsbury's said it 'might not always' have the exact products people wanted, but downplayed fears of shortages saying the problem was 'not widespread.' Iceland also urged shoppers not to panic buy, claiming it was 'not necessary.' The Co-op said items such as soft drinks, personal care products such as deodorant and beer were worst affected. And toilet rolls, obviously. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the government was 'concerned about instances of shortages. I don't want people to get the impression that every shelf in every supermarket is bare - that is not the case but we are certainly concerned about instances of shortages, we are looking at the supply chains of critical industries and we are reviewing that situation,' he added. Supermarkets and other sectors, including hospitality and transport, have said growing numbers of staff have been affected which means they have to self-isolate for ten days. Some companies have reduced opening hours to cope with the staff shortages or shut parts of the business. Firms want people who have been doubly vaccinated or have daily tests to be able to return to work.
An Australian activewear firm has been fined five million Australian dollars for claiming - based on on evidence whatsoever - that its clothing 'eliminated' and stopped the spread of Covid. Lorna Jane had advertised that its clothing used 'a groundbreaking technology' called LJ Shield to prevent the 'transferal of all pathogens.' However, in a ruling, a judge said the company's claim was 'exploitative, predatory and potentially dangerous.' Lorna Jane said that it 'accepted' the court's ruling. Though, to be fair, it couldn't really do anything else apart from prove its claims. The company maintained that it had, itself, been 'misled' by its own supplier. 'A trusted supplier sold us a product that did not perform as promised,' alleged Lorna Jane chief executive Bill Clarkson. One or two people even believed him. Because, as excuses go, 'miss, don't cane me, I was led stray by older boys' isn't really cutting it. 'They led us to believe the technology behind LJ Shield was being sold elsewhere in Australia, the USA, China and Taiwan and that it was both anti-bacterial and anti-viral. We believed we were passing on a benefit to our customers.' The legal action was brought by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission after Lorna Jane began marketing the clothing last July during the Covid pandemic. In a judgement published on Friday, a federal court judge found that Lorna Jane 'represented to consumers that it had a reasonable scientific or technological basis' to make its claims when it had none. The court fined the company 'for making false and misleading representations to consumers and engaging in conduct liable to mislead the public.' And for being a bunch of daft planks. Probably. Rod Sims, chairman of the ACCC, said: 'This was dreadful conduct as it involved making serious claims regarding public health when there was no basis for them.' He added: 'The whole marketing campaign was based upon consumers' desire for greater protection against the global pandemic.' The company also admitted that its founder, Lorna Jane Clarkson, who is also its chief creative officer, 'authorised and approved' the LJ Shield activewear promotional material and 'personally made some false statements' in a press release and an Instagram video. The judge said that he had taken into account that 'the conduct emanated from a high managerial level within the company.' Clarkson, who was born in Lancashire but emigrated to Australia with her family when she was a child, started the business more than thirty years ago. Lorna Jane, which has stores across Australia, New Zealand, the US and Singapore, has been ordered by the judge to publish corrective notices. It is also not allowed to make any anti-virus claims related to its activewear clothing for three years unless it has 'a reasonable basis' to do so. Last week, the company was also fined forty thousand Australian dollars by the Therapeutic Goods Administration drug regulator for 'alleged unlawful advertising' in relation to Covid. It said: 'This kind of advertising could have detrimental consequences for the Australian community, creating a false sense of security and leading people to be less vigilant about hygiene and social distancing.'
Norwegians have been left pure-dead proper awestruck by a bright meteor that illuminated the night sky in the country's South-East. Footage shows powerful flashes of light over Norway, followed by what witnesses described as loud bangs on Sunday. Norwegian police say they received a flurry of emergency calls but there were no reports of injuries or damage. A team of experts are hunting for the meteorite, which they believe landed in a forest near to Oslo. A meteor is a space rock that burns brightly after entering Earth's atmosphere at high speed. It becomes known as a meteorite if it survives its passage to the ground. The Norwegian Meteor Network says Sunday's fireball was visible for at least five seconds after it appeared at about 1am local time. Travelling at about sixteen kilometres per second, the meteor could be seen over large parts of Southern Scandinavia, the network says. Norwegian astronomer Vegard Rekaa has told the BBC that his wife was awake at the time. She could hear 'shaking in the air' before an explosion she assumed was something heavy falling near the house. Rekaa woke up, he said, to 'fantastic' videos of the meteor, which was 'something very seldom seen' in Norway or anywhere in the world. A team of experts have been sent to the area where the meteor is suspected to have landed, he added. Initial research suggests the space rock may have hit the ground - hard - in a wooded area called Finnemarka, about forty miles West of Oslo. One group of campers reported 'a large explosion just above their heads,' Rekaa said. A female camper told him of seeing the fireball from a short distance but thinking it was her friends playing a trick on her. Analysis of the meteor suggests it could have weighed at least ten kilograms. While not astonishingly large, the meteor was special because so many people either heard or saw it, Rekaa said. His colleague at the Norwegian Meteor Network, Morten Bilet, was among the witnesses. He told Reuters news agency the meteor had probably hit our solar system's asteroid belt as it was travelling between Mars and Jupiter. Bilet described it as a 'spooky' event, rather than a dangerous one. Such meteor strikes are rare, but one did cause widespread damage and injure at least sixteen hundred people when it crashed down in Russia's Ural Mountains in 2013.
The International Space Station was destabilised after engines of a newly arrived Russian module inadvertently fired up. 'Mission control teams corrected the action and all systems are operating normally,' NASA said. This was done by activating thrusters on other modules of the ISS. An investigation is now reported to be under way. US and Russian officials stressed that the seven crew members aboard the space station were never in any danger. One or two people even believed them. The malfunction happened three hours after the Nauka module docked with the ISS on Thursday, following an eight-day flight from Earth. NASA officials said Nauka's jets started firing uncommanded 'moving the station forty five degrees out of attitude.' The Russian Zvezda segment and a Progress freighter then responded to push the station back into its correct pointing configuration. 'What we saw today was just an awesome job by the mission control flight teams,' said Joel Montalbano, NASA's ISS programme manager. 'Those guys were rock stars again and got us back in attitude control. That also shows you what a robust vehicle we have, and our ability to take these contingencies, recover from them and move on,' he told reporters. Communications with the ISS crew were lost for two periods, of four minutes and seven minutes, during the incident. However, the US agency said that the astronauts were safe. They 'really didn't feel any movement,' it added. The mishap forced NASA and Boeing to push back Friday's uncrewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner capsule, a vehicle intended to carry astronauts in the future. 'We wanted to give the ISS programme time to assess what had happened today, to determine the cause and make sure that they were really ready to support the Starliner launch,' explained Steve Stich, the manager of NASA's commercial crew programme. the earliest opportunity would be 3 August. The thirteen metre-long, twenty-tonne Nauka was earlier attached to the rear of the orbiting platform, linking up with the other major Russian segments on the station. The module should have launched in 2007, but the vessel suffered repeated slips in schedule, in part because of budget difficulties but also because engineers encountered a raft of technical problems during development. Even after it launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan a week ago, it experienced propulsion issues that required workarounds from controllers in Moscow. In the end, however, it docked with the station on the planned date. The new module will result in a significant boost in habitable volume for the ISS, raising it by seventy cubic metres. Cosmonauts will use the extra space to conduct experiments and to store cargo. They'll also use it as a rest area, and it has another toilet for crew to use on the station. In addition, the module carries with it a large robotic arm supplied by the European Space Agency. This eleven metre-long device will be able to operate all around the Russian end of the ISS. With the aid of an 'elbow' joint, it will shift position by moving hand over hand. Nauka's installation comes just as Russia has been questioning its future role in the ISS project. Moscow officials recently warned about the more-than-twenty-year age of some of their on-orbit hardware and intimated the country could pull out of the station in 2025. And Russia has shown little interest in joining the US-led lunar platform, known as The Gateway, which will be assembled later this decade.
Jackie Mason, the US comedian and actor, has died at the age of ninety three. The stand-up was ordained as a rabbi before turning to show-business in the 1950s. He was well known for his social commentary, talk show appearances and one-man shows on Broadway. Mason won numerous awards in his career, including a TONY Award and an EMMY for voicing Krusty the Clown's father on The Simpsons. Born Yacob Maza in Sheboygan, Wisconsin in June 1928, Mason and his family moved to New York when he was five. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather had all been rabbis and after college he was ordained and began leading congregations in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. He would later tell the Chicago Tribune that a lot of non-Jewish people 'would come to the congregation just to hear the sermons' because he told so many jokes. Mason turned to comedy full-time after his father died in the late 1950s. Known for his heavy New York Jewish accent, Mason's humour was based on pun, innuendo and sometimes gloriously politically incorrect humour. 'Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe,' he once joked. The comedian was a registered Republican and later in life spoke out in support of now extremely former President Mister Rump. He was also staunchly pro-Israel. Mason was hospitalised two weeks ago and died at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital on Saturday. He is survived by his wife Jyll Rosenfeld and daughter Sheba.
Pink (she's a popular beat combo, yer honour) has reportedly offered to pay the fines disgracefully handed out to the Norwegian women's beach handball team, after they wore shorts like their male counterparts instead of bikini bottoms. Good for her. The team was, disgracefully, fined fifteen hundred Euros for 'improper clothing' at the European Beach Handball Championships last week. 'I'm very proud of the Norwegian female beach handball team for protesting sexist rules about their uniform,' tweeted the singer on Sunday. 'Good on ya, ladies,' she added. 'I'll be happy to pay your fines for you. Keep it up.' The Norwegian Handball Federation had announced last week that it was prepared to pay the fines, adding that what to wear when playing the sport should be 'a free choice within a standardised framework.' The European Handball Federation - who are, obviously, all utter vile sexist bastard scum - said it fined the Norway team for its choice of kit during their recent bronze medal match against Spain in Bulgaria because the players' shorts were 'not according to the athlete uniform regulations.' However, the country's minister for culture and sport, Abid Raja, described the ruling as being 'completely ridiculous.'
Pizza for Italy, Dracula for Romania and Chernobyl for Ukraine. These were the pictures and captions used by one South Korean broadcaster to depict nations at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympic Games. MBC has since snivellingly apologised for offending viewers, after complaints the visuals were 'offensive' and 'ridiculous.' The channel claimed that it wanted to 'make it easier' for viewers to understand the entering countries quickly but said it was an 'inexcusable mistake.' At a press conference on Monday, the channel's CEO Park Sung-jae apologised, saying MBC had 'damaged the Olympic values of friendship, solidarity and harmony. I bow my head and deeply apologise,' he said, adding that MBC would be putting 'in all [their] effort to prevent another accident from happening.' A Twitter thread by freelance journalist Raphael Rashid drew wide attention to the 'unique' descriptions where even civil unrest was not off the cards. When Haiti's athletes walked on to the stadium, for instance, an on-screen caption described the country as one 'with an unstable political situation due to the assassination of the president.' And, when the Syrian team entered, a caption read: 'A civil war that has been going on for ten years.' Neither of which are technically incorrect but, you know, here's a time and place for that sort of thing, guys. 'Did they literally just pick whatever the first picture was that popped up on Google when they did an image search for the country?' one person asked on Twitter. Others started trying to guess what images would be used for different countries. Some - like a piece of salmon for Norway - would have been easy enough to figure out. Others like Chad which was described as 'the dark heart of Africa' could not have been. MBC has been in trouble for this very same offence before. It was fined after using similar captions and images at the Opening Ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It had then referred to Zimbabwe 'as a country with deadly inflation.'
And finally, dear blog reader, this blogger trusts you've all been watching and enjoying the much-delayed Tokyo Olympics which has been jolly entertaining thus far despite the weird cirumstances. And also, appreciating the performances of Great Britain's young men and women in their various sporting endeavours. Which - with a few notable, shamefully inept, exceptions - have been broadly adequate. Mostly.

Welcome you are, dearest bloggerisationisms reader, to the latest From The North bloggerisationisms update. Which comes to you, as usual, from the virry heart of The North itself, the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House (near Waalsend). Where it is currently raining.
Let us, therefore, kick-off our latest bloggerisationisms missive with a - somewhat - significant moment in the history of this virry blog. One which, as it happens, came and went so fast this blogger missed it and didn't spot it until a few moments after it occurred.
So, The Olympics, dear blog reader. It's been going on for the last fortnight - you might, just have noticed. As mentioned in the previousFrom The North bloggerisationisms update this blogger has been really enjoying it. Anyway, now it is over and the final result was that Great Britain's team matched their medal total from London 2012 on the final day of the Tokyo games. Track cyclist Jason Kenny's historic gold medal moved Great Britain up to sixty four medals on Sunday, hours before boxer Lauren Price won another gold in the Middleweight final. That put Britain on a total of sixty five medals - equalling their performance as hosts nine years ago and making Tokyo their second-most successful overseas Olympics after Rio 2016. It all, they claimed twenty two golds, twenty one silvers and twenty two bronze medals in Japan.
Britain won sixty seven medals at the Rio Games - finishing second in the overall medal table - and UK Sport had set a medal target range of between forty five and seventy medals for these much-delayed Olympics. Simon Gleave, the head of sports analysis at Nielsen Gracenote (whoever they are), said: 'At Rio 2016, Great Britain became the first country to improve on its medal tally in the Olympics after being the host - and Team GB have now become the first to equal or win more medals at each of the next two games.' Although, as noted on this blog five years ago, after the same Simon Gleave made a complete and utter fool of himselfand Nielsen Gravenote when declaring, boldly and to every national newspaper thatwould quote him that the British team was 'underperforming' during the early days of the Rio games, Simon's actual title at the company should, perhaps, be 'head of guessing ... and taking shite'.
The British team's overall performance in Tokyo has exceeded pre-games predictions of fifty two medals and fourteen golds - despite some high-profile setbacks including a shock first-round taekwondo defeat for Jade Jones, injury issues for Dina Asher-Smith, Adam Gemili and Katarina Johnson-Thompson and the withdrawal of potential gold medal shooter Amber Hill with Covid before the games started. Plus the abject failure of the entire British rowing squad to justify the massive amounts of lottery-based funding spent on them. For which they should all be thoroughly ashamed and someone, somewhere in a position of authority should probably be getting the tin-tack right about now. Britain's medal aspirations were revised down by the governing body to take account of the 'extraordinary circumstances' presented to athletes and staff in the build-up to these particular games. UK Sport claimed that success would also be measured in 'a broader and more holistic way' than just medals. But, you can guarantee that they'll now be bigging-up matching their London total and getting within two of the numbers in Rio. And, you can't really blame them for that, to be fair. The British team's chef de mission, Mark England, hailed the medal haul in Tokyo as 'the greatest achievement in British Olympic history.' Which it isnt, quite, but it's not far off. He said: 'Not only has the team made history but it has probably made history on the back of the most complex and most challenging and difficult environment that we will face certainly in my lifetime. It has been against all the odds. It has been the miracle of Tokyo.' England believes the team is 'in great shape' before the 2024 Games in Paris. 'The Bryony Pages of this team, winning another bronze after her silver medal in Rio and the women's artistic gymnastics team winning a bronze with two sixten-year-old twins - these kept the scoreboard ticking over and gave everybody the confidence that the team is in great shape,' he said. 'We've had sixteen fourth places. This is a very, very young team and a very talented team and a team I'm absolutely confident that will go to Paris in less than three years and do exceptionally well.' Six-time Olympic cycling gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy - Chris on a Bike - told BBC Sport that the British team 'should be incredibly proud' of their achievements in Tokyo. He added: 'Expectations were mixed going into it. Certain sports didn't perform as expected, others overachieved. You get payment in kind for a gold. We have a limited pot of money and you have to use that as best you can. It's about intelligent use of money, thinking outside the box and being inventive. They have done us all proud - a great performance.' Britain won medals in twenty five sports in Tokyo - more than any other country.
A German coach was extremely thrown out of the Olympics for appearing to punch a horse who was refusing to jump or trot during the modern pentathlon competition. Kim Raisner, herself a former Olympian, was heard on German TV urging the tearful pentathlete, Annika Schleu, to 'really hit' the horse with her whip whenSchleu struggled to control the horse, Saint Boy, during the showjumping round of Friday's women's event. Schleu had been leading the competition before the equestrian stage, where athletes are given just twenty minutes to bond with a horse they have never ridden previously. Most of them manage the best they can. Schleu never even came close. Modern pentathlon's governing body, the UIPM, said that it had reviewed video footage which appeared to show Raisner - who competed at the 2004 Olympics in the modern pentathlon - striking the horse with her fist. Really hard. 'Her actions were deemed to be in violation of the UIPM competition rules, which are applied to all recognised modern pentathlon competitions including the Olympic Games,' the governing body said in a statement. 'The UIPM Executive Board has given a black card to the Germany team coach Kim Raisner, disqualifying her from the remainder of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games. The EB decision was made today at the Tokyo Stadium before the resumption of the men's modern pentathlon competition.' The horse cleared just four fences before crashing into the fifth and then repeatedly refused to jump, eliminating Schleu with zero points as it had done earlier to another competitor, Gulnaz Gubaydullina. The German Modern Pentathlon Union claimed that Saint Boy had been 'traumatised by the previous rider' even before Schleu's round, during which he bucked and refused to trot around the course level Schleu in floods of snivelling tears and, apparently, feeling very sorry for herself. Which was, frankly, the single funniest moment of the entire Olympic fortnight. If you missed it, dear blog reader, trust this blogger it was a sight to see. The horse's refusal to cooperate cost Schlau dearly. After scoring zero points she fell from first position in the competition to thirty first out of thirty six competitors. Britain's Kim French subsequently claimed a dramatic gold with a superb and thrilling performance in the final run-and-shoot. As to what became of Saint Boy - surely the most misnamed horse in equine history - he was nowhere to be seen during Saturday's men's competition. Rumours that his next gig was in a can of Pedigree Chum®™™ cannot, at this time, be confirmed or denied.
Miserable auld scrote Sir Van Morrison has reportedly dropped a legal challenge against the 'blanket ban' on live music in licensed venues in Northern Ireland. Which, presumably, cost him loads in legal fees. It follows the Stormont Executive's decision to allow live music to resume as it eased Covid-19 restrictions. The singer and well-known misanthrope 'welcomed' that decision but said he was 'disappointed' he had to cancel concerts in the Ulster Hall in Belfast from 29 July. Mozza has been vocal in his criticism of Covid restrictions. At the end of 2020 he released three lockdown protest songs. In September, the musician - who was last vaguely interesting sometime in the early 1990s - performed at the London Palladium at a time when restrictions were in place in Northern Ireland. He whinged: 'For some reason, completely unknown to me, [the ban] remained in force in Northern Ireland with catastrophic consequences for many artists, venues and the economy as a whole. As we look to the future, we need to understand the plan and strategy to support the arts and live music sector going forward as ultimately this helps support society as a whole. It's concerning that such considerations appear to have been forgotten.' His solicitor, Joe Rice, claimed his client had 'sought to engage constructively with government' on the issue. One or two people even believed him. No, hang on ... run that one by this blogger again. Van Morrison? 'Engage constructively'? In the same sentence ...? 'Surely some mistake? 'I know that Mister Morrison was disappointed by the failure on the part of the NI Executive to engage with him and that he was ultimately compelled to bring legal proceedings in order to achieve the lifting of the ban on live music for the benefit of fellow musicians, performers the live music sector as a whole,' continued Rice. 'He also believes that had the NI Executive engaged meaningfully with both Mister Morrison and the industry from the outset, more pre-planned events, such as his Europa Hotel and Ulster Hall concerts, could have proceeded as planned.' When legal proceedings were launched in January, a spokesman for the Department of Health said in response: 'It is an accepted scientific fact that Covid-19 can spread when people are brought together in enclosed indoor locations. Stopping the spread of the virus is a priority for governments across the world - to save lives and stop health services being overwhelmed.' When Mozza - seen below during his long and memorable 'Mister Happy-Fun-Guy' period - released his anti-lockdown songs in September, Northern Ireland Health Minister Robin Swann wrote a scathing opinion piece for Rolling Stain magazine in response. Swann said the songs were 'dangerous', challenging Mozza to 'present his own scientific facts.' The ban on live music was lifted in Northern Ireland as of 5 July. However there were limits placed on sound levels for indoor venues. Mozza said he was 'made aware' of the decision to reopen venues without sound limits from 27 July when it was 'too late' and the Ulster Hall concerts had been cancelled.
And now, dear blog reader, the semi-regular From The North Headline of The Week award. Which goes to the BBC News website for the utterly awesome Drug Dealers Jailed After Getting Car Stuck In Trolley Bay.
A recent episode of ITV's wretched horrorshow Love Island prompted four thousand three hundred and thirty whinges to the regulator Ofcom (a politically appointed quango, elected by no one), a record for the current series. Most of those viewers said a postcard sent to female contestants during Casa Amor week, which appeared to show partners cheating, was misleading and 'caused unnecessary distress.' The week places male and female contestants in separate villas with the chance to be unfaithful. Ofcom said it was assessing whether to launch an investigation. The whinges were about the episode on 28 July. A staple of the ITV2 show, the card twist promises 'high drama' as islanders 'receive evidence of supposed transgressions' involving new recruits from the other villa. But the images frequently lack context and, received days before their original island partners return, can prompt contestants to 'act rashly under false pretences' by cheating in response. The 28 July episode attracted four times the previous highest number of complaints about a single episode this series, which started in late June. The following day, there were one hundred and three further complaints, including fifty six about the 'ongoing fallout' from the Casa Amor fiasco. This included Faye Winter (no, me neither) being 'duped' into believing her partner, Teddy Soares (likewise), had been persistently unfaithful, leading her to hook up with new Casa Amor entrant Sam Jackson in retaliation. As you do. There were six hundred and ninety nine further complaints about the 30 July episode, of which six hundred and eighty two cited the 'manipulation' of the couple, who have since got back together. Presumably, the other seventeen were from people who felt that their intelligence had been insulted by having this horseshit beamed into their living rooms. There were one hundred and seventeen complaints about the 1 August episode, of which ninety five related to the treatment of Millie Court after her split from Liam Reardon. The postcard also led Kaz Kamwi to separate from Tyler Cruickshank. Apparently. The impact of fame on the mental health of Love Island contestants and the aftercare offered to them has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. ITV introduced 'revised duty of care protocols' this year, including training islanders on how to handle the 'potential negativity' of social media. And, of the withering scorn of 'normal' people.
The Rolling Stones drummer, the Godlike genius that is Charlie Watts, is expected to miss the band's forthcoming US tour dates as he recovers from an unspecified medical procedure. 'For once my timing has been a little off,' the eighty-year-old said in a statement, revealing he had been told it would 'take a while' for him to 'get fully fit.' Sir Mick Jagger said the band looked forward to welcoming Watts back 'as soon as he is fully recovered.' Steve Jordan will fill in when The Stones resume their No Filter Tour in September. The musician has worked with Stones guitarist Saint Keith Richards on his side project X-Pensive Winos and is also a member of The John Mayer Trio. Watts' spokesman said that while his procedure had been 'completely successful', the drummer had been told by doctors he needs 'proper rest and recuperation.' He said it was 'very disappointing' that Watts was unlikely to be able to go back on the road at present, adding that 'no-one saw this coming.' Watts said: 'I am working hard to get fully fit but I have today accepted on the advice of the experts that this will take a while. After all the fans' suffering caused by Covid I really do not want the many [Rolling Stones] fans who have been holding tickets for this tour to be disappointed by another postponement or cancellation.' The Stones' first concert will be in St Louis on 26 September. They will be the legendary band's first performances since the virtual rendition of 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' during the One World: Together At Home concert in April 2020. Jordan said it was an 'absolute honour and privilege' to be Watts' understudy. 'No-one will be happier than me to give up my seat on the drum-riser as soon as Charlie tells me he is good to go,' the sixty four-year-old added. Watts was previously treated for throat cancer in 2004. He has been a member of the Stones since January 1963, when he joined Jagger, Richards and Brian Jones in their fledgling group.
UK adults spent nearly a third of their waking hours watching TV and online video content in 2020, according to a report from regulator Ofcom. A politically appointed quango, elected by no-one. Screen time, spurred on by pandemic lockdowns, was a daily average of five hours and forty minutes, up forty seven minutes on the previous year. Which, if true, means this blogger is doing at least two people's jobs, daily. Possibly three. For the first time, more households had a Netflix subscription than a paid TV account such as cable or satellite. And nearly eighty per cent of households now have their TVs connected to the Internet. The Media Nations Report, which Ofcom compiles annually, found that Covid-19 restrictions were the main drivers for the increase in screen time, especially for on-demand content. It helped the UK's public service broadcasters secure some of their highest TV viewing figures for five years. But the highest growth was seen in video-on-demand, with time spent on services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video almost doubling in 2020 to an estimated one hour and five minutes per person per day. Such services were used by sixty per cent of all UK households by the third quarter of 2020, up from forty nine per cent a year earlier. YouTube remained the most popular user-generated online video service, with people spending an estimated forty one minutes per day watching videos on its channels. But Chinese-owned video app TikTok is also gaining in popularity and was being used by thirty one per cent of adult Internet users by March 2021. Yih-Choung Teh, Ofcom's group director of research, said: 'TV and online video have proved an important antidote to lockdown life, with people spending a third of their waking hours last year glued to screens for news and entertainment. The pandemic undoubtedly turbo-charged viewing to streaming services, with three-in-five UK homes now signed up.' Some twenty nine of the thirty most watched titles on subscription services were on Netflix, including Bridgerton, The Dig, Behind Her Eyes and Fate: The Winx Saga. And, during the UK's winter lockdowns, people sought to cheer themselves up by spending almost an hour a day watching comedy programmes. The average time spent watching traditional broadcast TV each day was just over three hours, but this was mostly driven by people aged forty five and over. Younger age groups spent far less time on linear TV, with those aged sixteen to twenty four only spending just over an hour watching broadcast content, slightly down from the figures in 2019.