Words Dept.: category

A couple of very awful things have got me riled this weekend and I can’t work out which is the more dreadful. One is China’s human rights record and the fact that many of its worst aspects, such as detention without trial, aren’t being reformed despite claims that the Olympics would bring about change. Which [...]

The rest of the media has joined in an extended reporting-as-gloating session over the out-of-court settlement that Express Newspapers agreed with Kate and Gerry McCann today. It has been top of the running order on news bulletins all day, with pundits queuing up to decry the coverage of Richard Desmond’s papers. Nobody does schadenfraude better [...]

Compare and contrast Britain with North Korea. One has a state-controlled media, news blackouts and pages and pages of congratulatory and uncritical PR puff about senior members of a privileged, unelected elite. The other is North Korea. Boom boom. The BBC has been justifying its decision not to report for the last ten weeks the [...]

George W. Bush is clearly disturbed. He grins like a post-coital bonobo on Prozac for the duration of his BBC interview with Matt Frei. Perhaps it’s understandable, considering Frei is asking him about such rib-tickling topics as AIDS in Africa, “genocide” in Darfur and China’s human rights record. Bush, as we know, finds it difficult [...]

Mike Jeffries, the boss of Abercrombie & Fitch, thinks the store will still be trading from London’s Savile Row in “200 years time”. He appeared on BBC Four’s documentary series Savile Row tonight, which featured a lot of grumbling, sharp-suited tailors bemoaning the presence on “the Row” of A&F, which opened its first store outside [...]

Happy New Year to all 14 of my unique visitors! The beginning of 2008 is a chance to reflect on the fact that in the six months that I’ve been writing this blog, virtually no-one has read it. Despite my transparent attempts to build traffic by baiting Andrew Gilligan (which did, at least, result in [...]

The outcome at 18.33 today – whereby the appointment of Fabio Capello as the new England manager was finally “approved” – was reached unpredictably speedily during the course of this week. And, rather as it does with Wimbledon and the Eurovision Song Contest, the BBC has taken ownership of the event. It’s been impossible to [...]

I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! was beaten for the first time in the ratings on Friday… by Children in Need. It’s baffling that up to 8.7m people are tuning in to watch what must be the least inspiring selection of jungle D-listers yet. But the fact that, at its peak, 10.9m were [...]

Presenter Nicky Campbell got into a spot of bother this morning on The Big Questions, a religious/”issues” programme I found myself watching on BBC1. The author Joanne Harris was on there as a guest and Campbell was talking to her about a religious experience she supposedly once had. He reminded her of the time she [...]

I’m watching in disbelief a programme called Most Annoying TV Moments We Hate To Love on BBC3. It’s really innovative – they have lots of clips of TV shows interspersed with talking heads, most of whom you’ve never heard of – Neil “Don’t Call Me Doctor” Fox, Derek Acorah and Nikki off Big Brother are [...]