Words Dept.: archive

Seems I wasn’t the only one baffled by the BBC’s decision to cut short Tony Blair’s speech on Wednesday. Fending off conspiracy allegations, the corporation is now investigating what happened, after admitting “the wrong decision” was made. Link to the story on Media Guardian – registration required. Or if you can’t be bothered registering, here [...]

Proving political correctness is almost certainly dead, Nuts magazine has a semi-nude photo spread this week featuring disgraced posh racist Emily from Big Brother. (For those unfamiliar with the intellectual tour de force that is Channel 4′s summer schedule, she got kicked out for calling a fellow contestant the N-word… apparently in jest, blah, blah, [...]

I could be wrong, but I’m sure it was no more than about six weeks ago I saw Mel “Melanie C” Chisholm on that vaguely annoying Sunday morning cookery programme with Tim Lovejoy, saying she would never be part of a Spice Girls “reunion” because she didn’t want to destroy the memories (man). She admitted [...]

I just took an early lunch break to watch Tony Blair’s final performance at Prime Minister’s Question Time. It overran by about five minutes and, just before the end, BBC 2 cut back to Andrew Neil in the BBC’s Westminster studio, who apologised and said they were going to have to end the Daily Politics [...]

There’s a very funny article in the Guardian today by the excellent Charlie Brooker, who dons his emerging “grouch for all seasons” persona (rather than his former “foul-mouthed TV reviewer” persona) and buggers off to Glastonbury. Having listed camping, mud and “loud noises” as three things he hates, he is forced to admit that by [...]

There’s an interesting review of Michael Moore’s new movie, Sicko, on Salon.com. The film is about the apparent failures of the healthcare system in the USA. In one section, Moore travels to the UK and, in an attempt to illustrate how the USA has got it all wrong, presents free healthcare on the NHS as [...]

The Guardian’s bloggers have posted 13 times from the Glastonbury festival so far today, and 11 times yesterday. Perhaps a little excessive, considering the most obvious audience for this stuff is drowning in mud and cow shit on a farm in Somerset… and presumably hasn’t packed the MacBook. The majority of comment seems to be [...]

Jamie Hewlett, of Gorillaz and Tank Girl fame, has created the art and costume design for a new production of a Chinese “circus opera” to be staged as part of the Manchester International Festival, which starts next week. It’s called Monkey: Journey to the West and features music by Damon Albarn. Dazed & Confused has [...]

CNN has linked up with YouTube, inviting people to post questions to US presidential candidates. Predictably, the results are Godawful. Here’s a link to an amusing selection of the worst five videos posted.

I’ve just been reading about so-called “murder simulator” Manhunt 2, a game which has been banned this week in the UK and looks to be heading to a global ban, thanks to what the BBFC calls its “casual sadism” and “unremitting bleakness”. The game was earmarked for the Wii, which would mean stabbing people to [...]