• Richard Herring.com: Warming up – Herring responds to out-of-context quotes in Guardian piece. “To have those contentious lines quoted out of context, with absolutely no explanation of what else takes place can have no other effect than to make the casual (and even the quite careful) reader assume that I am a racist.” He has a point.
• Dan Wilson’s Blog: How 31 Year Olds Consume Media
• Evening Standard: Andrew Gilligan on council ‘propaganda’ newspapers – “In London more writers are currently employed by local authority titles than by the local independent press (which has around 350 editorial staff).”
• Good: Picture Show: Waiting for the End of the World – Photos of bomb shelters from around the globe.
• Guardian: Government releases 20-page guide to using Twitter – Tempting to take the piss but actually sounds quite thoughtful and well done.

• Spotify for iPhone – Clever use of PR. Spotify says the app is ready, whacks ball over to Apple for a response.
• Mobile Industry Review: Can SpinVox spin their way out of this? – “Hi-tech voice recognition software” is actually a bunch of low-paid workers in a foreign call centre (claims BBC)
• SpinVox: blog – Response to BBC claims

• The Marple Leaf: Silver linings on dark clouds “There is light at the end of this dark tunnel. These people [the BNP] are nutters. They will now have to face the same level of scrutiny as other politicians for the decisions they make and the examples they set. Not just the things they have said.”
• Living with Rats: Living with a cancer – “Democracy won’t be renewed in the pages of the Guardian or through Facebook groups. These might help, but they won’t influence those who don’t read the Guardian, don’t use Facebook and don’t think – to use the BNP’s catchphrase – politics has any space for ‘people like you’.”
• The Daily Mash: THIS IS HOW THE NAZIS STARTED, SAYS EVERYONE – “As the British National Party achieved its first success in a UK-wide election, amateur historians said they would be amazed if this time next year people like you were not in some sort of camp.”
• Telegraph: Tetris turns 25 – Images from the history of Tetris
• Guardian: No new stadium. A huge debt. Despite their promises, Hicks and Gillett have ‘done a Glazers’ - Excellent piece by David Conn about Liverpool’s problems

• Twazmuppet
• BBC News: Councils get banned jargon list – Nice use of the phrase “predictors of beaconicity”
• Guardian: How Peter Cook and Dudley Moore fell foul of the law yet still escaped prosecution – National Archives reveal four police forces wanted Derek and Clive banned

Thus an appearance on Jonathan Ross and the cover of the Guardian Weekend is not a copper-bottommed recommendation of the quality of Silverman’s comedy. Rather, it demonstrates that she has a good agent.

Since when does it cost £50 to watch a stand-up comedian anyway?

Firstly we saw Justin Moorhouse’s show, Justin Moorhouse’s Ever Decreasing Social Circle. It’s got elements of that slideshow comedy popularised by Dave Gorman, although this is more northern and foul-mouthed, with fewer slides. Essentially it’s about Moorhouse’s Facebook friends (See? Zeitgeisty) and his attempts to whittle several hundred hangers-on down to one true friend by way of questions such as “Do you hate Morrissey” and “Do you like motor sports?” (The answers to these are no and no if you want to be in Justin’s gang.) It’s all rather pleasantly done and gives Moorhouse a chance to hang a show around a coherent theme while entertainingly venting his spleen on a wide range of personal prejudices.

Subsequently, we managed to get tickets for a John Shuttleworth show. At five quid a pop we thought this was a bargain until we got to the venue and realised it was a test screening of Graham Fellows’ new Shuttleworth film, Southern Softies, with no actual live show attached.

Our initial thought as the comment cards were handed out was that Fellows should have been paying us a fiver to watch it. But we soon came round because, even in rough-cut form, Southern Softies is very funny indeed. It was especially charming to have a sandal-wearing Fellows bellowing stuff out from the back, such as “we need to sort out the sound on this bit”.

The film is a follow-up to It’s Nice Up North and follows Shuttleworth as he attempts to decipher whether southerners are “softer” than people from the north. The Sheffield-born “versatile singer/songwriter” starts his quest in the Channel Islands but ends up getting side-tracked by producer and neighbour Ken Worthington who vanishes early on. In the end, Shuttleworth doesn’t actually escape the Channel Islands and ends up financing the film via a series of local product placement agreements.

My favourite bits were where Shuttleworth goes for a walk at a country fair and ends up wandering through the middle of a marching band, a recurring joke about noddy-shots and a scene in which Shuttleworth takes to the stage to entertain some bemused hotel guests.

Fellows is putting the whole thing together himself and apparently wants to get it finished by next year. I’m not sure of when/how it will be released and I’m not sure if he was joking when he said the film has been selected for the Channel Islands Film Festival.