Words Dept.: category

I was intrigued to see in the promo promoting the forthcoming BBC drama schedule (you know, the one with Elbow singing in the background) that Kenneth Branagh is starring as Kurt Wallander in an adaptation of the Henning Mankell books. I recently discovered the joys of Scandanavian crime fiction, which is a generally magnificent and [...]

Michael Howard, the former Conservative leader now making a living as a Count Dracula impersonator, has waded into the Peston debate, demanding an investigation into how the BBC’s business editor found out about banks requesting a financial bail-out from the government. I sense some political momentum gathering behind this, having seen Michael Portillo honking on [...]

I may have created the impression the other day that I think Robert Peston is a tosser. This wasn’t my intention at all because, notwithstanding his numerous presentational faux pas, I actually deeply admire his ability to get up the noses of the Daily Mail (“Does this man have too much power?”), various bloggers and, [...]

God love BBC business editor Robert Peston, whose broad range of bizarre vocal ticks brings a light touch to news of even the most dire financial crisis. His willingness to experiment with the boundaries of word and syllable emphasis within a given sentence never ceases to amuse. You sit there waiting for it to die [...]

I shared a lift with David Miliband earlier. He muttered something about having scrambled eggs for breakfast, which he described as “jolly nice”. Some bloke standing next to him agreed they had been quite tasty. Can I have a job at the BBC now?

I’ve always felt a strange affinity with Noel Edmonds and recently realised I had several things in common with the man. Bad facial hair, diminutive stature, wardrobe full of crap shirts and knitwear, etc. Now I find out that he shares my view (first expressed in April – like, get with the program, Noel) that [...]

I’m thoroughly enjoying Journey to the East, Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn’s animated title sequence for the BBC’s Olympics coverage. Much better than some of the dross that’s actually taking place in Beijing – I mean, really, who wants to watch the Czech Republic win gold in shooting, let alone watch it in high definition, [...]

One thing that’s good about BBC iPlayer is that when you see something unusual on Newsnight, you can go and check that it really happened and that you haven’t just fallen asleep and dreamt it. Last night, for example, I could have sworn I saw Jeremy Paxman flirting with a semi-articulate 20-year-old girl called Stacey. [...]

BBC News 24 is dead. It’s a shocking thing but they’ve got rid of the 24 part, so now it’s just “BBC News”. I’m going to stick my neck out with a controversial statement here: News 24 was actually quite a good name. “BBC News” is just confusing because if you mention it, it isn’t [...]

The BBC, or, more specifically, the various contractors it uses to collect TV licenses, have invented something called a “database”. I didn’t know what this meant so I looked it up and apparently it means a structured collection of data that can be accessed by a computer. According to the hoary female voiceover on the [...]