“I never have gaffes, or apologising for something that I said… I never have to clarify, because I think very carefully about what I say.” - Kemi Badenoch, September 2024
Nicholas Pegg
@nicholaspegg.bsky.social
Actor, writer, director, gardener. Author of The Complete David Bowie. Probably the only Equity member to have played Hamlet, a Dalek and an otter.
It’s always disappointing to learn that someone whose work you hold in the highest esteem - Charles Dickens, say, or Patricia Highsmith - fell short of the mark as a private individual. But I’ll take that any day over being expected to care if a weapons-grade public bastard-hole was nice in private.
Many years ago, I bumped into Jimmy Cricket in a graveyard in Scarborough. He was off duty, of course. We were both there on the same mission - to visit the grave of Anne Brontë - and we had the briefest of chats. He was gentle, twinkling, and simply delightful. Well, that’s my Jimmy Cricket story.
Remembering that heartwarming occasion when a Durham University college principal tried to troll his own students by inviting his pal Rod Liddle to speak at a formal dinner, and when the students walked out, the principal had such a public hissy fit that he had to step back pending an investigation.
Durham head steps back after calling students ‘pathetic’ at Rod Liddle event
South College principal Tim Luckhurst will not attend external events while investigation into dinner takes place
theguardian.com
Looks like those peace talks between the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front are going swimmingly.
Bunting. Don’t get me wrong; there’s a place for bunting, and that place is a wedding marquee. But strung up in pointless festoons around a car dealer’s forecourt - or worse, zigzagging repulsively down the high street of an otherwise beautiful old market town - it drives me into a seething rage.
Sanjay Srivastava@sanjaysrivastava.com · 6d agoWhat is an extremely nerdy/obscure/specific thing you hate with a white-hot wrath?
Bunting. Don’t get me wrong; there’s a place for bunting, and that place is a wedding marquee. But strung up in pointless festoons around a car dealer’s forecourt - or worse, zigzagging repulsively down the high street of an otherwise beautiful old market town - it drives me into a seething rage.
Sanjay Srivastava@sanjaysrivastava.com · 6d agoWhat is an extremely nerdy/obscure/specific thing you hate with a white-hot wrath?
This makes me realise how many of my favourite acts are solo artists. However, bands: Plastic Letters / Parallel Lines / Eat to the Beat The Head on the Door / Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me / Disintegration Voulez-Vous / Super Trouper / The Visitors Now We Are Six / Commoners Crown / All Around My Hat
Mia Murphy 🏳️⚧️@miamurphy.com · 4d agoWhat's the best three album run from a band? (the correct answer is Moving Pictures, Signals, and Grace Under Pressure by Rush, but I'm excited to learn second place)
The hill I will die on: the Grauniad’s ‘The hill I will die on’ feature is fast becoming a useful directory of people you would cross the road to avoid.
Timeless. Chaplin and Keaton couldn't have constructed a more perfectly timed bit of physical comedy.
Parody Nigel Farage@parodypm.bsky.social · 6d agoIt is two years today since this dimwit gave us the most hilarious demonstration of karma in history.
Out of touch as I am, I’ve only just become aware that the classic 1976 BBC drama serial I, Claudius is being made available on various platforms. Simply and seriously: if you’ve never seen it before, go for it. Don’t miss a minute. Start with episode one and go right through. It’s the best TV ever.
This breathtakingly terrible take has just come to my attention. In terms of foaming-at-the-mouth wrongness, it’s on a par with ‘The 1990s was a dodgy decade for David Bowie’. Hands up anyone who thinks Season 4 classics like Sand and Orbit are worse than Season 1 dung like Breakdown and Bounty.
Anon Opin@anonopin.bsky.social · last wk.Series 1-3 of Blake's 7 is some of the best and most innovative scifi tv ever made. Astonishing, must-watch stuff. Series 4 is utterly dire and you should definitely not ruin your experience of the show by continuining to watch it beyond the end of series 3.
Unintelligent man who famously revealed on live TV that he didn’t know Rwanda was a different country from the Democratic Republic of the Congo accuses France of something something something
Tory MP accuses French navy of firing ‘warning’ shots near him in Channel
Chris Philp says shots were ‘deliberate intimidation’ while he filmed interview on small boats crisis but France says it was training exercise
theguardian.com
What a sad day. Raising a glass to that very fine actor Tom Chadbon, who graced every franchise from James Bond to Blake’s 7 to Game of Thrones, and whose brilliant comic turn as Duggan, the out-of-his-depth private detective in the 1979 Doctor Who classic City of Death, is the stuff of TV legend.
Bill Oddie, what a lovely bloke. He wrote us a letter when we started making The Young Ones, wishing us the very best, and warning us against interference from higher up. He didn’t know anyone in the cast personally. It just came out of the blue. Lovely thing to do.
Raising a glass to the mighty Bill Oddie. What a remarkable legacy he leaves us of laughter, music and ecological passion. I had the pleasure of working with him on Doctor Who and the Pirates, in which he was superb, so I was able to tell him how much he had enriched my life. I hope he didn’t mind.
“People say that when the moon is full and all the stars have gone to bed, you can see her ghost but that’s a lie because the naughty woman isn't dead”
Secret Drug Addict@scrtdrugaddict.bsky.social · 2w ago
InGen Corporation says Jurassic Park is safe despite rampaging tyrannosaurus rex on the loose
20 July 2026: Farage ally Sarah Pochin describes financial investigation as ‘kangaroo court’. 29 June 2023: Johnson allies Zac Goldsmith, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nadine Dorries, Priti Patel, Michael Fabricant, Andrea Jenkyns and others censured for describing Partygate investigation as ‘kangaroo court’.
In the garden today: the Echinops is out, and the bees are mad for it.
Given that it’s approaching 30 years since he ballsed up the one decent film he ever made by splattering it with charmless and instantly dated CG effects, moviegoers might be forgiven for treating his opinions on filmmaking technology, and on filmmaking in general, with a degree of caution.
IGN@ign.com · 3w agoGeorge Lucas says rejecting using AI to make movies is like rejecting cars in favor of horses. https://t.co/AoDntWVDcz
We had huge fun recording this Pointless Doctor Who quiz. Click away to see me battle it out with old friends and worthy opponents Gary Gillatt and Jac Rayner. I think it’s fair to say we all managed to display an alarming degree of nerdy knowledge, but who’s top nerd? Quiz lord Gav calls the shots!
Gav Rymill@themindrobber.bsky.social · 3w agoBack by popular demand!!! Rayner v Gillatt v Pegg Another episode of Pointless Doctor Who! Story titles, marriages, dolly soldiers. Watch now! youtu.be/nfl42mk-nP4?...
We had huge fun recording this Pointless Doctor Who quiz. Click away to see me battle it out with old friends and worthy opponents Gary Gillatt and Jac Rayner. I think it’s fair to say we all managed to display an alarming degree of nerdy knowledge, but who’s top nerd? Quiz lord Gav calls the shots!
Gav Rymill@themindrobber.bsky.social · 3w agoBack by popular demand!!! Rayner v Gillatt v Pegg Another episode of Pointless Doctor Who! Story titles, marriages, dolly soldiers. Watch now! youtu.be/nfl42mk-nP4?...
I don't think I've ever seen a group of people take a joke quite as badly to heart as this lot have this week
If the story doing the rounds is true, we can stand by for Farage to seize it with both hands and weaponise the hell out of it.
Very much enjoying the desperation of the right-wing machine as it seeks to frame Farage vs Binface as 'the London elite laughing at the people of Clacton' rather than the more logical and factual 'absolutely everyone laughing at Farage'.
Quintessential Badenoch to build "a party of the future" by actively resisting the future. In the middle of a heatwave. She's the Liz Truss who hasn't had the opportunity to blow herself up yet
James Murray@james-bg.bsky.social · 4w agoA sad and not a little shameful day for a once serious party. www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...
