Priests, Vicars and Pastas
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Author Archives: The Ed
I thought a Harlem Shake was a Cocktail
Last night we popped round a friends for a drink. Then we had another one.
I don’t know what happened after that.
Farewell to the real Charlotte Grey
From the BBC today:
Australia WWII agent Nancy Wake’s ashes scattered
The ashes of Australia’s most decorated World War II servicewoman, former saboteur and spy Nancy Wake, have been scattered at a ceremony in France. The service took place in a forest near the village of Verneix, whose mayor attended the ceremony, as did an Australian military representative.
Mrs Wake died in 2011 at the age of 98. It had been her wish that her ashes be scattered in the area, where she played a key role in the resistance movement against German occupation. Australia was represented at the ceremony by military attache Brig Bill Sowry.
“We are here today to pass on our respects, to give her the respect she deserves,” Brig Sowry said. It’s great the people of Verneix have done so much to recognise her and make this little part of France part of Australia as well.”
Mrs Wake was partial to an early morning gin-and-tonic and after her ashes were scattered, there was – as she had apparently asked for – a drinks reception at the local mayor’s office.
Mrs Wake was one of the most highly decorated Allied secret agents of World War II. Born in New Zealand but raised in Australia, she is credited with helping hundreds of Allied personnel escape from occupied France.
The German Gestapo named her the “White Mouse” because she was so elusive.
The ceremony took place in the grounds of a chateau in central France
After studying journalism in London, Mrs Wake became a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune in Paris and reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. After visiting Vienna in 1933, she vowed to fight against the persecution of Jews.
After the fall of France in 1940, Mrs Wake became a French Resistance courier and later a saboteur and spy – setting up escape routes and sabotaging German installations, saving hundreds of Allied lives.
She worked for British Special Operations and was parachuted into France in April 1944 before D-Day to deliver weapons to French Resistance fighters.
At one point, she was top of the Gestapo’s most wanted list.
“Freedom is the only thing worth living for. While I was doing that work, I used to think it didn’t matter if I died, because without freedom there was no point in living,” she once said of her wartime exploits.
It was only after the liberation of France that she learned her husband, French businessman Henri Fiocca, had been tortured and killed by the Gestapo for refusing to give her up.
She returned to Australia in 1949, where she failed several times to win a seat in parliament.
In 1957 she went back to England, where she married RAF fighter pilot John Forward.
Her story inspired Sebastian Faulks’ 1999 novel Charlotte Gray. A film based on the book, with the lead role played by Australian actress Cate Blanchett, was released in 2001.
Cockroaches and Nutters
When your own president of your political party describes the party as Cockroaches and Nutter you sort of know that things ain’t going all that well for the poor old LibDems. Not since the former protest vote party sold all decent-thinking people down the river and played Quisling to Cameron and Osborne’s occupying force, has their public image been quite so poor – nor quite so amusing.
Shortly after the LibDems stole office, the liar and expenses-fiddler David Laws had to resign as a minister after having been found to be trousering public money. Mr Clegg, of course, knew nothing of this until he read it in the newspapers (bastards).
The memory of Laws’ (sic) misdemeanours had all but faded enough for Clegg to re-introduce him to polite society when the Liberal Chief Exec Lord Rennard was accused of interfering with young women, often against their will. Naturally, Mr Clegg knew nothing of these events or accusations before the press (nasty old good-for-nothing press) broke the story.
Now we read (in a national newspaper, of all places) that half the Liberal Cabinet (though not Mr Clegg, you understand) knew about Chris Huhne and his wife perverting the course of justice weeks before the Sunday Times broke the story. Fuckin’ papers. Why can’t they just shut them all down ? All they do is ruin people.
Anyway, all the above is, of course, by-the-by, and just a reason to run again one of the great pieces of British comedy.
Our older reader will remember with much mirth the Jeremy Thorpe/Norman Scott Affair, when the establishment and the legal system weighed in to exonerate the Liberal Leader Mr Thorpe from accusations of a (then illegal) homosexual affair and of hiring a hit-man in a cocked-up murder attempt to silent his (alleged) gay lover, Mr Scott. Here’s the great Peter Cook’s take on the summing up of the case by the judge, Mr Justice Cantley, when, according to all who were there, he left the jury in little doubt over what verdict they should reach.
Always worth another look.
Freebies and the Bean Counters
I wish this was the start of a slippery slope. Nearer the bottom of it, sadly
A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist—2013
Here is an exchange between the Global Editor of the Atlantic Magazine and myself this afternoon attempting to solicit my professional services for an article they sought to publish after reading my story “25 Years of Slam Dunk Diplomacy: Rodman trip comes after 25 years of basketball diplomacy between U.S. and North Korea” here http://www.nknews.org/2013/03/slam-dunk-diplomacy/ at NKNews.org
From the Atlantic Magazine:
On Mar 4, 2013 3:27 PM, “olga khazan” <okhazan@theatlantic.com> wrote:
Hi there — I’m the global editor for the Atlantic, and I’m trying to reach Nate Thayer to see if he’d be interested in repurposing his recent basketball diplomacy post on our site.
Could someone connect me with him, please?
thanks,
Olga Khazan
okhazan@theatlantic.com
From the head of NK News, who originally published the piece this morning:
Hi that piece is copy right to NK News, so…
View original post 754 more words
Awards Season
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A Good Week to Bury a Bad King
Man is attacked by plasticine while playing Richard III, Peckham Town Hall
Apparently, when the great and the good the boffins and the geeks, the beardies and the weirdies assembled the press to great fanfare and pomp to announce the results of a recent dig, they decided to do so in a long and drawn-out manner— the idea being to keep the world and its media on the edge of their seats and build the suspense to a Hitchcockian level. Unfortunately for them, by the time their little show had come to a climax and they were to actually, finally reveal their findings into whether or not the body underneath a car park in Leicester was indeed that of the much-maligned King Richard III of England (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) news events elsewhere had taken precedent and, by the wonders of modern electronic communication, the reporters and photographers, the news hounds and correspondents, the hacks and the monkeys had been ordered by their newsrooms to clear out and go cover the news that a prominent British politician had persuaded his wife to take the blame for a traffic misdemeanour, and to accept the penalty points for speeding. The news agenda had overtaken the professors in Leicester and they were rudely reminded that they, rather like this paragraph, had taken far too long to get to their point. When they were finally ready to reveal all, they had lost the attention of everyone save the man from Leicester Car Park Weekly and the reporter from Cockney Rhyming Slang Gazette. You might say they had Leicester talk to. Then again you might not.
You gotta feel sorry for them though. I’ve since heard many say that they should have front-loaded the announcement, should have got the important and relevant info up front to satisfy newspapers and The Daily Express alike. But what were the chances of their declaration of national importance being usurped by another in a long line of dodgy Liberal Democrat gaffes ? They felt they were safe with the only story in town to risk a long, drawn-out build-up.
Wrong.
There are some days when I watch the tv news at 5.00 am (I’ve told you about my sleep patterns, right ?) only to switch on the bulletin again at 10 o’clock that night and sit through exactly the same bulletin as I’d seen some 17 hours previously. The lead story on both would be a new Michael Gove initiative for schools, Scotland experiencing a cold snap, or something equally as riveting.
But this week is somehow different.
There are, very occasionally, times when I miss working in the news industry. Not often, just every now and then. This week would have to be one of those times. How much fun must it be to be in a newsroom at the moment ? Take this lunchtime’s T’BBC news broadcast, for example:
ITEM 1. Children in Lancashire (it’s in the north somewhere. Near the BBC, oddly) have been served up with horse meat in their cottage pies (a menu item which, for the foreign readers’ benefit, is a rite of passage for UK children of the lower classes.). This is one of those stories (like hospital killer bugs, foxes/dingos stole/ate my baby, or GangNam Style dancing by celebrities or sportsmen) that keep on giving and keep papers going to the real silly season starts (usually just after Easter Monday).
Imagine if there was horse meat served (gedditt?) at Wimbledon or Ascot Ladies’ Day how much hilarity would ensure ? [“News” editors are normally seconded from the Features Dept or the Fashion desk during Ladies’ Day when “Woman Wears Frock” suddenly becomes a news item. Real news men would be incapable of recognising great stories like that. Thank Buddah I was one of those men.]
ITEM 2. Oscar Pistorius weeps in court having been charged with murdering his model girlfriend (run VT of bikini shots), and confronted with the phrase “premeditated murder”. When this one broke in the early hours of the previous morning, the scuttlebutt was that dear, dear old Oscar mistook the missus for an intruder and, as is de rigueur in the “Rainbow” Nation, shot the shit of of him/her, preferring to ask questions later. However we are now told that Oscar and Reeva had a bit of previous on the domestic dust-up department, and therefore he’s been hauled up in front of the beak for planning the whole thing.
This is a huge story. Huge. Obviously not as huge as meat being found in a school meal, but large, nevertheless. I put it to you, more people in the world know of The Blade Runner than knew of OJ Simpson before he definitely didn’t kill his missus. Pistorius wins track races without legs. The world knows this and he is the face of Paralympic sport. OJ was a footballer. Or a Basketball player. We outside the States knew he was famous for something over there and went along with the furore and spectacle of CNN’s first live news story that didn’t involve watching huge cannon fire things into a desert, beautifully commentated on by Christianne Amanpour though it may have been.
The enduring image of the OJ Trial was of the guilty party innocent man claiming proving for the cameras that some gardening gloves didn’t fit him. It’s gonna be a bit tougher for Oscar if he tries that defence with his lower limbs. (As a side note, I was told a good few years back by a sports journo that Pistorious was the most obnoxious, self-centred, arrogant man he’d ever met. That certainly doesn’t make him a murderer but may explain why he’s loved and admired all over South Africa.)
Back to the news.
ITEM 3. Coronation Street Star accused of 19 (count ’em) NINETEEN sex offences including raping a child, indecently assaulting a child and sexual activity with a child. A man who has starred on our screens, apparently, for 30 years is arrested for multiple sex offences comes in a poor third in the running order behind a Palamino Pasty and an accused without, frankly, a leg to stand on. We have become very blasé about sex offenders in this country. The Jimmy Savile and Gary Glitter cases seem to have dulled our senses to any more kiddy-fiddling stories (more of which later), and as famous as this latest bloke surely is in his native third world of Mancunia, he ain’t no Stuart Hall, allegedly. Or maybe he is. So third place he stays, behind the Paralympian and just ahead of:
ITEM 4: 950 injured as meteors crash to earth. I’m sorry, I’ll re-type that : 950 injured as meteors crash to earth. Yes, you read that right: Nine Hundred and Fifty. Injured by Meteors. METEORS. This isn’t a FOURTH story of the day. This is the stuff of Hollywood. This is some cock-awful dreadful movie starring Bruce Willis and Nick Cage (with, perchance, a cameo by Jude Law as a lump of moon rock) and Tom Wilkinson playing the retired Astronaut. I can see it now. Or rather I can’t. I couldn’t possibly. But you know what I mean. It’s made for filming. And whatever happens, it couldn’t possibly be a worse movie than Armadeddon (1988) Dir Michael Bay . Could it ? Really. But instead, like journalists in a Leicester car park we have to wade through all frippery of mass poisonings, celebrity murders and serial rapists before we get to the , ahem, meat of the matter which is THE WORLD IS BEING DESTROYED BY ASTEROIDS. Or something. A clue as to why this story was so far down the running order is to be found when you see that it all happened in the Urals. Fucking Russians. Fuck ’em. If it had happened in Bangladesh they would have hidden it between “Local Man Bitten By Local Dog, Locally” and “Mayor of London wins Rear of the Year”
So there you have it. Time your news conferences and special events carefully. In a busy week, you never know which story will hog all the coverage. What you think is earth-shattering news will be overtaken by events and quickly be forgotten. Just ask the scientists, still there talking in a Leicester car park. Or that ex-Hitler Youth, Peadophile Apologist who retired this week— he’s hardly had a look-in since.
See: You’ve forgotten him already !
STOP PRESS:
Yes, it was Richard III. Please tell the world (unless you’ve already buggered off).
That Would Explain a Lot, Freddie
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…And the Winner Is
Best Performance in a Leading Roll (in a Foreign Comedy)
In a tightly contested race, the award of biggest comedian on show yesterday went to the French No.10 Frédéric Michalak for his near perfect portrayal of an explosion in an idiot factory during an amateur production of Les Miserables in Paris last night. Michelak, although easily carrying off the award (while trying not to drop it), had to fight off some pretty strong competition, notably from the likes of The Stade de France groundsman, Monsieur Herbe du Somme; Scotland’s own Jim Hamilton for Sunday Morning Lummox —his harrowing portrayal of a 1974 ExB Lock Forward with a forearm smash addiction; and Luciano Orquera, the Italian Outside-Half for his reprise of the Daniel Day Lewis‘s role from My Left Foot.
But in the end the award rightly went to Michelak for possibly the most embarrassing display by an old man on a sports field since Muhammed Ali ‘fought’ Trevor Berbick or Henry Leconte stopped his ‘zany’ antics on the ATP veterans tour. Michelak, of course, even in his prime could never be accused of having been an Ali, but yesterday many french rugby fans were heard to dub him “Leconte”. Or something like that.
The 30 year of from the south of France (born To Lose Toulouse 1982) is also in the running for Worst Director of 14 Other Men, and The Academy‘s honorary Do Us All a Favour and Hang Up Your Boots Award (colloquially known as The Warnie), but has been withdrawn from circulation until further notice, having been found to contain at least 90% donkey.
Upright Grandiose
A movie which is sure to pack them in when it previews at this years Tory Party Conference, “Beyond the Candelabra” is a biopic by Steven Soderbergh and features Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his lover, as shown is the magnificent image above. If you listen very carefully you’ll hear the hurrumphing sound of a million homophobes lining up to criticise the release, even before they’ve seen it. Give it a little while and the usual suspects will be commenting on it right here.
The movie has already run into trouble for, would you believe it, ‘camping-up’ the story. One thing’s for sure, there’s no way Liberace would want any Hollywood portrayal of him to come across as too gay:
“Brokeback Mountain” and “Milk” may have captivated audiences and swept award shows in recent years, but it seems Hollywood still has some reservations when it comes to portraying gay content on the big screen.
Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh has revealed that many studios weren’t exactly keen on “Behind the Candelabra,” his much-anticipated Liberace biopic which is now set to air on HBO.
“Nobody would make it,” Soderbergh told The New York Post of his new movie, which stars Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. “We went to everybody in town. They all said it was too gay.”
Soderbergh, whose credits include “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Traffic,” as well as last summer’s smash “Magic Mike,” said he was “stunned” by the response.
“This is after ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ by the way, which is not as funny as this movie,” he recalled. “The studios didn’t know how to sell it. They were scared.”
Damon, who plays the long-term lover of Liberace (Douglas), has previously said of the film, “These two men were deeply in love and in a real relationship — a marriage — long before there was gay marriage…The script is beautiful and relatable. Their conversations when they’re dressing or undressing or having a spat or getting ready for bed? That’s every marriage.
(Huffington Post)
The Sharp Single 