philmophlegm | Entries tagged with television comedy

OK, we haven’t had a Phligm Phlagm post since mid-October, and the world was a different place back then.

I’ve been busy all right? Anyway, here’s the first load of links to catch up on. Feel free to take your time over them…

Christmas Reading List 2025

The Red Dwarf theme tune has secret lyrics, and they've only just been discovered. (But they’re actually suprisingly easy to hear once you know about them!)

What would you call a mystery species of aurochs / bison known only from cave paintings? The Higgs Bison of course!

I think we can call this "corruption", don't you?

Canoes are racist now, apparently. (Or to put it another way, the University of Victoria employs a complete fuckwit as its Professor of English, apparently.)

£250,000 gold coin found in child's pirate treasure collection.

"Kid needs permission slip to read 'Fahrenheit 451', his dad's response is brilliant." Of course, both teacher and dad (as well as almost everyone else) have in fact misinterpreted what the book is about.

One of the overlooked greats of RPG art: Russ Nicholson. I love his stuff.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams on being bullied by Clinton supporters.

True story: The raven in Poe's poem was inspired by Charles Dickens's pet raven.

OK, now will leftards shut up about tax 'avoidance'?

"...where he displayed upper body strength far beyond his supposed years and also was able to completely strip a rifle at a shooting range."

You don't need this laptop either.

BBC admits Bake Off is catastrophic social experiment

A pretty clever piece of political profiling and surveying from the Social Market Foundation.

Terror attack stopped by heroic activist who established a safe space in local mall.

A blog that examines the use of fonts in science fiction. What a time to be alive.

Labour's new shadow minister for domestic violence has personal experience of the issue - a police caution for domestic violence.

Typical day at the Labour Party conference.

Brilliant picture of Jeremy Corbyn at his own party conference protesting to bring back the position of Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health. Now, see if you can guess which politician it was who abolished the position of “Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health”…

Amazingly, there is an article on the website of Standard Life all about collecting tabletop games. Pretty good article too, although there are a couple of factual errors. They should have asked me! (One of the people interviewed described H1 Bloodstone Pass as “almost impossible to get hold of”. We had one in stock, although ironically we sold it last week to a bloke in Denmark.)

Epipens are really expensive in the US. Here's why.

Jewish Labour Movement heckled by Corbynistas at the Labour Conference. The speaker (not the heckler thank god) was a friend of mine at Magdalen.

Testing Godwin's Law

The McLaren F1 needs a 20 year old Compaq laptop

The pilot episode of Korgoth of Barbaria. Why didn’t this make it as a series? It’s great!

The Game of Thrones title sequence, done with slime moulds

Those Finns sure like their metal.

"Dr Heimlich saves choking woman with manoeuvre he invented."

Kim Jong-Un's aunt runs a drycleaning business in the USA.

Why yes, I am a Mad Men fan. And why yes, I was tempted to bid on Harry Crane's Calculator or Don Draper's saucepan or Don Draper's Ray-Bans.

Kudos to Viking Direct's HR department.

Have you ever had a job interview that went really, really badly? There's always someone worse off than yourself...

I'm just about old enough to remember when Bryan Adams was cool, something that I imagine anyone not well into their forties would struggle to believe was ever the case. But there was a Bryan Adams before that awful Robin Hood song that spent seemingly most of 1991 at number 1 in the charts. (I'm also old enough to remember when singles charts weren't just random dance acts and boy bands.)

And this was a damned good song. I really like the Bowling for Soup cover version too, but I've decided to present the original to you. Here's the video:

You may recognise the girl in the video as Lysette Anthony. She was quite the British starlet at the time. There was a sitcom with the bloke out of Boon and the woman who played Marjorie in To The Manor Born (the name of the sitcom escapes me) and she was also in a few historical dramas featuring young ladies in tight corsets breathing in and out a lot. The photographer David Bailey called her "The Face of the Eighties". Her career seems to have dried up since then and she's apparently been living on benefits in a grotty part of London.

The Cold War historian Robert Conquest has died. Second obituary.

The Tornado is still a useful combat aircraft.

The antirant - "What an amazing time to be alive!"

Global median income doubled between 2003 and 2013. Global income inequality declined over the same period. Absolute poverty rates have fallen around 80%. Understanding why is very important.

I didn't get where I am today by not acknowledging the passing of one of Britain's greatest ever comic writers.

Did the early solar system have five gas giants?

Top Myths of Renaissance Martial Arts

Changing the Face of Doctor Who - an amazing collection of made-up-merchandise for the Doctors who never were. (Thanks to parrotknight.)

All 82 of Eric Cantona's goals for Manchester United. 13m10s for my favourite Cantona goal and celebration.

"Sepp Blatter deserves Nobel Prize" says Vladimir Putin.

The Complete Blake's 7 Costume Index

Total respect to the owner of this Porsche 918 Spyder.

Really nicely done Star Trek fanvid set to William Shatner singing* Pulp's 'Common People'. (* Maybe singing isn’t quite the right word. If you’re familiar with Mr Shatner’s musical career, you know what I mean.)

Milton Friedman was right, part 865.

Apparently it's now politically incorrect to describe an immigrant who came into the country illegally as an "illegal immigrant".

After more than 6,000 episodes of Countdown, this happens.

Air conditioning is "sexist".

If Malcolm Tucker did motivational posters.

I wonder which particular service this government whip from the Heath government was called upon to provide...

Not only did the Conservative Party give Britain its first female Prime Minister, it apparently (allegedly) also gave us our first homosexual and paedophile one too.

A new series of The Clangers!

Paul Krugman on Scottish independence. (And it's nice to see that even neo-Keynesians have come around to my way of thinking on the Euro.)

Prices, Paul Krugman, and Consistency

This is why poor kids don't grow up to be interior designers.

Is Apple quietly killing off its best product?

Why US forests are fuelling Europe.

Logic and theology.

Five ways that films get gunfights wrong.

Interesting account of 9/11 as it happened, as seen by White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.

Universities must convert widening access into graduate jobs. I see that the university at which I will be lecturing is the second best in the country at promoting social mobility while the one I studied at is the second worst.

This is why all those Scottish independence campaigners were protesting outside BBC Scotland.

The best moments from Friends, animated as 8-bit style GIFs.

Why don't children want to learn the violin? (Do they have to ask the question? If you can play the guitar, you are cool. Also, a highly paid career is open to you. If you can play the violin, you probably look uncool and violinist salaries are terrible. I used to audit one of the world’s great orchestras, and except for their superstar conductor, ALL of the musicians’ salaries were really low. Supermarket checkout girl low.)

Who killed lard?

What would the political map of Europe look like if all the nationalist parties got their way?

Today is the 75th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.

Before and After Photoshop celebrity portraits

The world's cutest frog.

Ricky Gervais's 'Derek' was brilliant (I agree) - moving, superbly acted (especially Kerry Godliman), but many people will hate it just because they don't like Ricky Gervais or because it deals with taboo subjects.

"Scarfolk is a town in North West England that did not progress beyond 1979." Great nostalgia.

Academic research shows that Twitter reaction to events does not always reflect the views of the wider population. (Geez, I could have thold them that...)

Using Google Maps to plot where Stalin's Moscow victims lived.

Was Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner a paedophile? (His biographer argues no, but it's on something of a technicality...) The review is worth reading just for the Biddy Baxter incident. Not that you should giggle at this sort of thing.

"We must preserve the Earth's dwindling resources for my five children."

If we used the SNP's argument that oil fields nearer to an independent Scotland rather than the remaining UK would become Scottish, then Shetland should totally declare independence from Edinburgh.

OK History Channel, whose bright idea was it to cast a Barack Obama lookalike as the Devil in your dramatisation of 'The Bible'? (And come to think of it, what the hell (pun intended) is the History Channel doing dramatising ‘The Bible’?)

How well do you know your fiscal facts?

Dying Total War fan's likeness put into Rome: Total War II. (When I die, ask Sports Interactive to put my name into Football Manager…)

Six growth-stimulating macro-economic policies that are more sensible than fuelling another property bubble (George...)

These are the mods you need to make Skyrim even more gorgeous. (I've tried them, they really do.)

The Inspector Gadget theme at one eighth speed. Sounds almost classical.

I saw this pointed out the other day. It had never occurred to me before, but it is a bit odd:

Nobody in The Big Bang Theory ever seems to read a book.

Well yes, the four boys read comics, but that's about it. Wouldn't they read books too?

Surely Sheldon would read hard SF - Arthur C. Clarke for example. I could see Leonard liking classic SF, but nothing too political - Asimov rather than Heinlein say. Raj is girly enough to go for Twilight, while I reckon Howard would have all of the Gor books. It seems really odd to me that very clever geeks don't read SF or Fantasy. Even when things like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings are mentioned, it's the films or TV series rather than the original novels.

And while we're thinking about it, wouldn't Penny read chick lit?

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.

[Poll #1890345]

David Cameron mourns the death of fascist historian

Say what you like about Robert Mugabe, but at least inflation has come down.

"We are luckier than we realise to have had Labour as our Left-of-Centre party".

Major League Baseball's triple crown

I like this US Democrat…

...but this one might be the most pathetic US Senate candidate in the whole country.

Life imitates South Park.

This year's Nobel economics prize winners.

I'm getting really fed up with all these ridiculous "Corporation X doesn't pay enough tax" stories. The ebay one is a particularly silly example.

RIP Ceefax.

The difference between a free trade area and a customs union, and why that is important.

Andrew Neill pretty much does to Ed Balls what Jeremy Paxman did to Michael Howard.

So, you're a developer of very dry, very nerdy train simulators for the PC. You want to earn some easy money for Halloween. What do you do...?

Lance Armstrong's seven TdF wins will not be given to anyone else.

Looking at the BBC culture that allowed the Jimmy Savile situation to develop. (Thanks to parrot_knight for the link.)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9295997/BBC-cancels-Dirk-Gently-drama.html

OK, this isn't quite on the Firefly level of infuriating cancellations, but it's still pretty annoying. Apparently ratings were low. Well what do you expect if you tuck something away on BBC f***ing Four with no publicity? This should have been a mainstream comedy drama. The main three actors were all recognisable to a mainstream audience, it's based on a couple of books written by one of this country's most enduringly popular authors and it's (sort of) a detective series, for Arkleseizure's sake! It should have been on BBC2 if not BBC1. Instead, it was tucked out of the way alongside the likes of 'Michael Portillo's Great British Railway Journeys'* and 'Canal Walks with Julia Bradbury'. In a hundred channel environment, BBC4 is not the first place to look for light entertainment / comedy drama.

* This is a real programme. It sounds like a joke programme that a desperate Alan Partridge would come up with to pitch to BBC execs, only for them to shake their heads sadly. To be fair though, tonight's episode takes the former Defence Secretary to Wrexham, so I will watch it.

Of course a library tidy-up wouldn't be a real tidy-up just if we moved some books around. No, for a proper tidy-up, you have to be prepared to chuck some stuff out. Some of these are duplicates, some of these are books we probably won't get around to reading any time soon, and others we just don't want or need any more. Before I chuck them or take them to a charity shop, I thought I would offer them to you lot. Price is free plus P&P, assuming the latter is other than trivial. If you're interested, say what you want in a comment. First come first served.

( Here's the list of available books (plus one DVD)... )

Some of my favourite things from 2011. Also, some of my not-so-favourite things.
Warning: may contain sport. I know most people on my friends list don't really do sport, but…well tough. This is my review of the year. Also contains books, games, television and a whole host of other stuff.

( Read more )