Worth staying in for

This Wednesday, BBC2, 9.50pm: Wonderland: The 92-Year-Old Danger Junkie, a portrait of the late Ron Cunningham, aka The Great Omani.

The Big Freeze

Edinburgh, yesterday, 3.30pm: a "flash mob" spends five minutes silent and motionless outside the National Gallery (details here):

Last day at work

On his 96th birthday, two weeks before his death, Sir John Gielgud concluded his 76-year movie career by appearing in Catastrophe, a six-minute play by Samuel Beckett, with Harold Pinter and Rebecca Pidgeon, under the direction of David Mamet:

Assassinating reputations

Dominic Lawson on the Diana inquest.

(More about Lord Foulkes here.)

Guns and scalpels

A nasty footnote to Oxford history: the 1938 plot to kidnap Lord Nuffield.

My spellchecker hates them

If yours does too, fight back with the Semicolon Appreciation Society.

Winston's bohemian girl

Four minutes with the superb First Lady of the Glastonbury Festival, Arabella Churchill, who sadly died in December:

Very much alive

Sir Brian Urquhart is 89 next week and still not short of fire-power - as his review of John Bolton's Surrender Is Not an Option shows.

Mungo mourns

Goodbye to Archie Hind, author of Glasgow classic The Dear Green Place. Alasdair Gray pays tribute.

Bit late

But I only just found it:

Ultimate Stoic

Emily Perry, better known as Madge Allsop, the much-enduring bridesmaid of Dame Edna Everage, dies at 100.


She made a spirited appearance in this 2007 article on Brinsworth House, the entertainment industry retirement home.

And here she is in all her glory:



Independent / Telegraph / Times

Wayne hits the road

A rumpus on the Guardian website gives rise to a memorable parody.

More here.

Fixin' to die

Don't sing the blues before you know the rules.

By A Waterfall

The Bonzo Dog Band enjoying themselves in the Sixties, with exquisite frontman Vivian Stanshall:

You've been a lovely audience, mein Führer

The 104-year-old cabaret singer with a dark past.

Stuff White People Like

We're weird.

Method trumps message

A thoughtful spin doctor reflects on Rowan Williams's recent travails.

Heroin Galore

The Fast Show updates Compton Mackenzie:

Latest buzz

What if Britain loses its bees?

Galloway on Paxman

It's WAR.

Ignoring all their hard work

At A-level results time, the Warden of New College, Oxford, fired a broadside.

Wot, no bassoon?

William Shatner performs Pulp's "Common People", assisted by Joe Jackson and Ben Folds:



Hat tip: Froog. And "Shatner's bassoon" gets 7,900 hits on Google…

Portraits of desolation

Shaun O'Boyle's Modern Ruins.

Vanishing uglies

Non-cute endangered species.

Willie's back!

One of my all-time favourite bloggers returns to us* after a two-year silence.

Try this critique of jury trial as a taster. Or would you prefer Andy Kershaw?

 

* Three months ago, but I've only just noticed. Oops.

Awkwardness at the Palace

Miriam Margolyes runs foul of the Queen (4 minutes):

Larger than life

Independent and Times obituarists make the most of wine merchant Bill Baker.

Aids cure "hushed up"

Nonsense latest?

Spot on

Brilliant parodies of British press commentators - Toynbee, Rees-Mogg, Gove, Fisk, Finkelstein…

Long gone

Forty silent seconds with the last Tasmanian Tiger (died 1936):

Oxford to Belmarsh

The sad story of the troubled writer who tried to hire a hitman.

Suspicious fellow

Guido Fawkes, the blogger who brought down Hain, on politicians - and his own beliefs.

"Inscription for the ceiling of a bedroom"

Dorothy Parker reads her own poem: